12 Themes From the Birth of Jesus, Pt. 5

So glad to see all of you today. Thank you, Matt, for reading that quote. That's pretty powerful and exactly true. I wanna get back into our book that we're studying through in Colossians here in a minute.

So you can turn to Colossians 1. Before I do, I want to quickly say a couple of finishing remarks on the study we did over the Christmas story, because I said there were 12 great doctrines that were found there, and I only mentioned 10 because I decided I think we need to stop and get back into Colossians.

But let me give you those last two where you can look them up later right quick. The 11th point was found in Luke 4, verses 22 through about 32. You can read that later, but it's an amazing story because it's actually a story where Jesus Christ himself taught a lesson on the sovereignty of God, just like what Matt just read.

It's interesting that you just read that this morning, Matt, but it was on the same subject. And Jesus taught a lesson on it. And so it's about how that doctrine is hated by mankind and always has been.

And it doesn't matter who the teacher is, it can even be Jesus Christ and they hate it. And then that was the 11th major doctrine or thought in the Christmas story was that the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is found there, but it's hated.

And then the last one, the 12th, was actually where a couple of demons acknowledged who Jesus Christ was. I mean, the demons knew who he was and it teaches the deity of Christ that he is God. So let me just read.

I'm just gonna read. I'm not gonna read all that because I wanna get on into Colossians today, but I do want to go into Luke chapter four. And I'm not even gonna read the teaching where he taught the sovereignty of God.

You could go back and read it. You have to read it kind of carefully and think about it, or you might not know that's what it's talking about,.

But it is.

And I'll guarantee you that the Pharisees knew that's what he was teaching because look at the result. Here's how this story ended. It said, after he taught this, after Jesus taught this, excuse me, in Luke chapter four, verse 28, Jesus Christ taught this lesson on the sovereignty of God, that God's in control of everything, not man.

And verse 28 says, and all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things were filled with wrath. Now this is God teaching, right? And they're filled with wrath. And they rose up to thrust Jesus out of the city and led him into the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong and kill him.

They're gonna throw him off the cliff because he taught on the sovereignty of God. So if you think you're gonna teach your friends and kin folks this at Christmas, and it's gonna come out really good, think twice.

But it will work for good and you should speak up when the Holy Spirit leads you to teach people this because they're not gonna learn it in church anymore. Matt read part of Charles Spurgeon's sermon in the late 1800s and it was in almost all of his sermons, but you won't hear any Baptist preachers in Corsica, Texas today talking about it, most likely, or anywhere in the state of Texas, most likely, because they don't wanna get cast headlong out of the city.

Same result, same thing, but it's still as true as it ever was and Jesus Christ, who is God with us, taught it and look at this, they tried to cast him out of the city. Verse 30 says, and he passing through the midst of them went his way.

So how many of you have ever seen a person who the way that he would escape when a mob's trying to throw him off the cliff is to go through the middle of them, but that's what Jesus did. So he just passed right through the middle of them and left them in their anger, right?

And then he came down to Capernaum, the city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days and they were astonished at his doctrine for his word was with power. Now, so that taught the 11th point that I learned on the Christmas story was that the sovereignty of God, this awesome, amazing, powerful doctrine, perhaps the most important doctrine we ever learned in the Bible.

By the way, Tabitha, that's what that book's about that I just gave you from Arthur Pink, who's the best writer on that subject on the planet. But anyway, it's a hated, hated doctrine. Even in fact, I say even in most churches today, in the modern church, you go back a hundred years ago, not so, almost most, in fact, nearly probably 95 of the Baptist churches agreed with it in the late 1800s, but not now.

It's flip-flop, maybe 5 agree with it now. But anyway, we're not Baptist anyway anymore. I don't know what we are. We could put Spurgeon Church or something. Okay, so he goes and he preaches here and they're astonished at the doctrine.

In verse 33 says, and in the synagogue, there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil or demon, it should be. In the Greek, it's actually demon. And he cried out with a loud voice saying, let us alone.

Now this is the demon speaking. And he was in church that day, not really church, Jewish synagogue, right? He was in church that day in a person and Jesus is preaching and they're all amazed at the power of his preaching.

And all of a sudden, this man that was sitting there in the congregation who had a demon inside of him, the spirit of this unclean demon cried out with a loud voice in verse 34 saying, let us alone. What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?

Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. Does that give you goosebumps? I mean, the Pharisees didn't know who he was. They wanted to kill him, but the demons knew who he was.

And it's the same way today. So anyway, that ends the Christmas story. So now back into, I had to do that because Ben categorizes everything and puts it out on the website and it wasn't finished. There were two points missing.

So now you have it. So thus ends the Christmas story. Demons decided that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah. So now we know.