December 23, 2016 Show with Andreas Köstenberger on “The First Days of Jesus: The Story of the Incarnation”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 23rd day of December 2016, just two days before Christmas and we are going to be discussing a

Christmas theme today and before we get to that topic and guest, I just want to announce once again that we are only a couple of weeks away from two major Iron Sharpens Iron radio events that I hope many if not most of you come to.

The first is for men in ministry leadership only. This is going to be held on Thursday, January 12th, 11 a .m

to 2 p .m at the Carlisle Vault Catering Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

This is a free event for men only in the ministry or in ministry leadership such as pastors, elders, deacons, leaders in parachurch organizations, seminary professors, teachers at Christian schools, that kind of thing and it's for men only and it's being held at the

Carlisle Vault which is a gorgeous catering hall in Carlisle that was a historic bank going back to the early 20th century hence the name

Carlisle Vault and the Carlisle Vault ownership is doing this for me for free, believe it or not, but the only thing that I am paying for is the cleaning crew after the event is over so we are very much grateful for the very generous and gracious owners of the

Carlisle Vault also providing the free food, the gourmet sumptuous banquet that you are going to have is a chef executive in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Pastor Danian White, I'm sorry,

Chef Danian White is not a pastor, he's a chef. Chef Danian White is doing the event for free as well and you are getting, everyone who is attending is getting a stack of free books probably between 30 and 40 free books, brand new books donated from major Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom, nearly every single major Christian publisher has been donating to us every year, they'll be giving us each a hundred copies of a single title that I pick out for the men in the ministry so in other words every publisher is donating a hundred books and so each man that attends will probably receive about 30 to 40 books for free and these are really new published works and some classical works too but they're all brand new books.

The following day we are having the Great Debate featuring

Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary who is a Reformed Baptist scholar, he is debating

Robert Syngenis, a Roman Catholic apologist and founder of Catholic Apologetics International, they are debating on the theme

Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace at the historic

Carlisle Theatre, a gorgeous facility also dating back to the early 20th century that has been restored to its original beauty and grandeur and this event requires a five dollar ticket purchase because of all the expenses connected to it and that's very inexpensive these days, you can't even go to movies these days for five dollars and this is going to be held

Friday the 13th at 7 p .m. the day following the pastor's luncheon and I think I failed to mention that Dr.

Tony Costa, one of the debaters at the debate, is also going to be the speaker at the pastor's luncheon but for any of these events email me, my gmail account for chrisarnson at gmail .com

is still frozen by google for sending out too many emails so right now you can send your emails to chrisarnson at comcast .net

chrisarnson at comcast .net or ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com

ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com and please put luncheon or debate in the subject line, you can also use those email addresses to ask questions of our guest today who is

Andreas J. Koestenberger, he is the senior research professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

He is a prolific writer, distinguished evangelical scholar and editor of the

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is the founder of Biblical Foundations, a ministry devoted to restoring the biblical foundations of the home and the church and Koestenberger and his wife have four children.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Ironsharpensiron, Dr. Andreas Koestenberger.

Chris, great to be with you and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you too and by the way, is it Koestenberger or Costenberger?

Koestenberger. Koestenberger, I'm sorry for mispronouncing your name, hopefully that will not happen again.

And today we are going to be discussing your book, The First Days of Jesus, The Story of the

Incarnation, a book that you wrote with co -author Alexander Stewart and Dr.

Stewart is academic dean and assistant professor of New Testament language and literature at Tyndale Theological Seminary in the

Netherlands and he is co -author of this book that we are discussing but today our guest will exclusively be

Dr. Andreas Koestenberger and before I even go into the topic at hand,

Dr. Koestenberger, I would like to get to know something about you, the religion of your youth, of your of your upbringing, if any, and what providential occurrences did our sovereign lord bring about in your life that drew you to himself?

Wonderful. Well, I grew up in Europe, in Vienna, Austria, in a Roman Catholic family and would go to church as a child and as a young person but then in college was very secularized and explored various philosophies and worldviews, existentialism and others and then was converted, fairly radical experience, through hearing a passage from Galatians 5 on the fruit of the spirit and the deeds of the flesh read to me actually on a train ride from Vienna to Venice and just explored

Christianity, reading the Bible through twice in about six -month period and then giving my life to Christ at the end of that and that was about 25 years ago and after that I went to Columbia International University for seminary and then

Trinity International University for my PhD studies with D .A. Carson there and then taught various places and I've been at Southeastern now for about 20 years teaching

New Testament, mostly on the doctoral level, PhD seminars. Yeah, well,

God willing, I'm going to be seeing D .A. Carson in a matter of weeks at the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

I'm looking forward to seeing him once again. I've had the privilege of hearing

Dr. Carson speak and preach probably five times at least and meeting him personally.

I've also interviewed him on a couple of occasions on Iron Sharpens Iron and I just spoke with him today providentially and he plans to come back on the program when his

Christmas schedule is a lot less hectic. That's great.

Yeah, he was a great mentor. Yeah, he's quite a dynamic speaker. He is not a stuffy professorial speaker by any stretch of the imagination.

He's pretty exuberant and vibrant. Right. And so what led you to become a professor to begin with?

What did God place upon your heart to realize that you indeed wanted as your life's vocation to teach on a higher level of education the things of God?

Yeah, well, I didn't read the Bible at all for the first 22 -23 years of my life and when

I became a Christian, I just had an almost insatiable hunger for God's Word and I just, you know, wanted to know

God through reading and understanding the Bible as best as I could.

And so I developed a passion and a lifelong commitment for studying the

Bible, you know, as much as possible even, you know, by learning the original languages and by teaching others how to study it responsibly because I believe that scriptures are final and ultimate and really only authority in our faith.

And if we want to know God, we need to get to know him through our word. And also if we teach with authority, if we're going to teach with authority, we also again need to, you know, authority doesn't rest in our own opinions or even in our own interpretations, but only in Scripture itself.

And so it's just part of my lifelong passion and I've had the privilege of training pastors at Southeastern for the last 20 years and, of course,

I also have a vision for the writing ministry because our books and our publications through the internet and through other channels can go where, you know, we can't go.

And so Lourdes enabled me to have really a global ministry through Biblical Foundations and through my various publications.

Great. One thing that I forgot to mention, which is odd that I forgot to ask you this, because I'm doing this debate coming up on January 13th, the

Catholic versus Protestant debate, how did your family react to your conversion and are they still

Catholic and are you warmly welcomed still in your family's homes and so on?

Yeah, well, it was a bit different, you know, on the other side she was fairly devout

Catholic and so I remember when I started going to the Vienna International Chapel, which was a, you know, evangelical church,

I would come home for lunch on Sundays after that and sometimes there was this icy, you know, silence and I think she took it very hard, just almost like since her family had been ruptured, you know, because of my conversion.

My father rejected me for about 10 years, not so much for religious reasons, but because I went into the ministry and he supported me throughout my college education and then took it as a personal, you know, affront that I kind of rejected, you know, the career that he had chosen for me and so it was definitely, you know, had an effect on my family in the short run, but after those 10 years, my father and I, through the intervention of my sister, were able to reconcile when

I visited Vienna and I think my mother, once I became a professor, started realizing that, you know,

I'd not ended up in some sort of a cult, but that I just, I guess, chose a different form of Christianity than the one that, you know, she follows.

Well, praise God. And yeah, different families react different ways.

Some Roman Catholic families, if someone converts to Evangelical Christianity, they write them off for dead, much like some within Orthodox Judaism.

Some of them are very happy and rejoice for the mere fact that the person's life was transformed.

I can say that my mother, although when she went home to be with the Lord on her deathbed for the last six weeks of her life, she made it clear that she was trusting in the biblical gospel and she renounced prayer to saints and so on.

She was praying exclusively to Jesus and trusting in his finished work on the cross alone for her salvation, so I know that she is in glory with him.

But prior to that, she was a very typical religious and superstitious

Roman Catholic and prayed to not only Mary, but I think her favorite patron saint was

Saint Jude, the saint of hopeless causes, and I think I was one of them.

And my mother was very happy. There was a part of her who that sentimentally was a bit sad that I had left

Catholicism. Of course, like I said, when she went home to be with the Lord, she never even thought of that regret, but she was happy and rejoicing because she knew of my rebellious, wicked lifestyle that I was leading as a teenager and a man in my early twenties.

She was just thankful that the Lord had rescued me out of that, so she was very happy that I was more in love with Jesus as an evangelical than I was as a

Catholic. Yeah, that definitely resonates with me and that's been my experience as well.

Over time, if you have a wholesome family and a strong marriage...

My wife and I have been married now for 27 years and have four grown children, and I think there's a powerful witness that speaks beyond just any beliefs that may be abstract and hard for people to relate to, and I think it's hard to deny that, as you mentioned, that the

Gospel really transforms lives for the better. And I want to read just a couple of the endorsements that this book has received, since they are fairly powerful endorsements.

We have Paul Meyer, Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University.

He says, This latest work on the Incarnation and Nativity is an excellent example of serious scholarship served up in a most readable manner.

No birth in history has had such prophetic preparation, which is a powerful central theme in these pages that celebrate the start of the greatest life ever lived.

This is a welcome antidote to the cheap sensationalism in recent books on Jesus that try to demolish every reason for regarding Christmas as the most wonderful time of the year.

What a great endorsement from Dr. Paul Meyer. And also,

Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement and the

Howard G. Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.

He says, The First Days of Jesus is a revealing book at the earliest days of Jesus in Matthew, Luke, and John, set against some of the skeptical takes on these passages.

Add to this a taste of Jewish messianic expectation, and you have a nice overview of the start of Jesus's career and where it fits in God's plan.

Solid yet devotional, it is a great introduction to the first days of our Lord. And finally,

Robert W. Yarborough, Professor of New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, says,

The First Days of Jesus combines scripture passages, historical background, scholarly insight, and practical application to cast

Christ's incarnation in fresh light. Few tasks are more urgent than for today's

Christians worldwide to rediscover and deepen their connections with their origins.

This book is a valuable resource for achieving that aim. Like the Star of Bethlehem itself, this volume leads those who seek

God to find him afresh in the events of Jesus's historical appearance, the prophecies that preceded, the apostolic testimony that accompanied, and the social world that God split wide open when he sent his

Son. Wow, that's a really powerful one as well. Well, obviously this is a book that should be taken seriously, and anybody listening should make note of it and perhaps order a bunch of copies of it for next

Christmas to give out to those you love with plenty of advance notice, and perhaps even especially those that you know and love that do not yet know

Jesus. But there are a lot of books about the

Christmas story in print. There are reams of them there that you could fill many, many shelves of books with books with a theme on the

Christmas story. Not necessarily all good, but many of them. Why did you find the need to write the first days of Jesus, the story of the incarnation?

What void do you think this book fills? Well, one thing is we kind of backed into the first days of Jesus by first writing a book on the final days of Jesus, on the final week of Jesus, including the crucifixion and the resurrection.

And so the first days of Jesus is a sequel to the final days of Jesus, because we wanted to trace the roots of Jesus back all the way to his birth.

And I think we also wanted to help people understand that Christmas is more than just one day in the year, or one series of holidays.

But in the original first century context, it was the culmination of centuries, even millennia, of Messianic promises and expectations.

And so we wanted for them to enter into the historical cultural milieu of the first century a little more profoundly than just the superficial

Christmas story about Mary and Joseph and the swathing cloths and the major and so forth.

And I was just wondering how much of your book is dedicated to the little drummer boy. I'm just kidding.

Probably my least favorite Christmas carol. Interesting you would mention that. Well, you know something?

I actually used that song. I was asked to speak years ago at a conservative

Baptist association Christmas party. And they wanted me to do a stand -up comedy routine, which is something that I happen to be known for.

But they also wanted me to conclude with something more serious. And I actually took that song and said, well, we all know this song called the little drummer boy, which is just a fairy tale, really.

It has no place in history. But I said, I want to tell you about a real drummer boy that you can tell your friends about every

Christmas and your loved ones and your family members. And I went into the story of an actual drummer boy in the

Civil War named Charlie Kelson. I don't know if you know the Charlie Kelson story.

But very briefly, Chapel Library has a booklet about him that was written by a

Jewish doctor who converted to Christianity in the 19th century, who happened to be the surgeon taking care of this little drummer boy,

Charlie Kelson, who was dying of the wounds he received on the battlefield.

He was a drummer boy that actually was playing the drums along with the soldiers to invoke more courage and things like that, as they did back then.

And he received mortal wounds. And while he was dying, this little boy evangelized his Jewish doctor.

And that Jewish doctor eventually came to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and wrote this little book about him.

And it's all true. So that's how I used that little fairy tale to bring people to a true figure from history who was a drummer boy.

And you're right. It's so hard sometimes to separate fact from fiction. And, you know, there's just so many traditions surrounding

Christmas and, you know, many of them quite innocent. But I think as Christians who ultimately need to make sure that our faith is based in solid history, there's a need for us to separate, you know, fact from fiction and tradition from what actually happened.

Exactly. And there is a lot that is said during this time of year.

Typically, your major television stations, or at least major cable stations like the

History Channel and similar types of stations, they will air documentaries on Christmas.

They'll do the same typically for near the Easter season. And you will typically have liberal scholars on.

You might occasionally have Roman Catholics also, and liberal

Protestants mixed in with agnostics and atheists who happen to be just historians, like John Dominic Crossan is an agnostic.

He is with the Jesus Seminar. And Bart Ehrman is an agnostic. And he is also a historian who believes that Jesus actually lived.

But a lot of these folks on these documentaries will talk about that the

Jews, when it came to the virgin birth of Christ and the supernatural connection, they will just basically tie it in with the myths and legends of paganism, the mother and child stories that have arisen from pagan cultures that have to do with gods and goddesses and so on.

But if you could explain how this story is very different. Absolutely. And you know, there's no way around this.

I think as Christians, we sometimes forget that at the heart of Christmas is an unbelievable miracle, which is the virgin birth.

And so we claim that Jesus was conceived by no man, but by the

Holy Spirit in Mary's womb. And this is clearly affirmed in the

Gospels of both Matthew and Luke. And so it is impossible to claim to be a Bible believing

Christian and to deny the virgin birth. And I just heard earlier today, a fairly well known preacher who does just that.

And I'm just thinking, that's just not possible, because there's really no doubt, room for doubt, when you read the

Gospel of Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 through 25, or Luke chapter 2, or chapter 1 and chapter 2,

Matthew and Luke clearly claim that Jesus' birth was miraculous, and that he had a human mother, but he had no earthly father.

It's actually intriguing when you look at Matthew's Gospel, and in the genealogy, you have this long series of, and so -and -so became the father of such -and -such, and so forth.

And then at the very end, in chapter 1, verse 16, it says, And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom

Jesus was born. And so you see how he very elegantly reworks his usual way of presenting the genealogy in a way that Joseph is not the father of Jesus, but he is the husband of Mary, who is the mother of Jesus.

We already have a question from a listener in Youngstown, Ohio. Pete asks,

How do you explain the discrepancies in the two infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke?

Well, I'd like to know which discrepancy, because the way I look at it is, there's different perspectives, but I think what's really amazing to me is how much agreement there is in key details.

You see in both that Jesus' parents' names are Mary and Joseph, and that they're engaged, but, you know, without having engaged in sexual...

Hello? Hello, Dr. Kostenberger.

For some reason, Dr. Kostenberger is off the air, and I don't know why. We're going to have to get

Dr. Kostenberger to call us back, and hopefully he will do that while we go on a station break, which is about the time that we normally go on a station break anyway.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Andreas Kostenberger, our email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net.

chrisarnson at comcast .net. Dr. Kostenberger? Hello, Dr.

Kostenberger? I thought that was Dr. Kostenberger calling in. The email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net,

and you could also email ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com. ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com.

Don't go away, we are going to be right back with Dr. Andreas Kostenberger, God willing, and more on the story of the first day of Jesus, so don't go away.

We're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Ironsharpensironradio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris's show

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad M.

Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people. We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the

Ironsharpensiron exhibitors booth. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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That's wrbc .us. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and I believe we have Dr. Andreas Kostenberger back on the phone, correct?

I'm sorry, I had you on mute there, I'm sorry. Are you back on the air with us? Yes, I am.

Yeah, great. And we are discussing for the full two hours today, with 90 minutes to go, the first days of Jesus, the story of the

Incarnation. And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at comcast .net,

one of our new email addresses, chrisarnzen at comcast .net, and you can also email ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com,

ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com. And we already were in the midst of having

Dr. Kostenberger answer a question by Pete from Youngstown, Ohio.

And before we even go back into that, I just have an announcement to make about the new radio program,

A Visit to the Pastor's Study, hosted by Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

It airs every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern time on WLIE 540

AM on the radio dial, if you live in the New York Tri -State area. If you live anywhere on the planet

Earth and have a computer, you can hear it via live streaming on wlie540am .com,

wlie540am .com. That's A Visit to the Pastor's Study, hosted by Pastor Bill Shishko of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and he is receiving phone calls from you, the listener, every

Saturday on any question involving theology or pastoral counseling.

And you may remain anonymous when you call him as well, if it's a personal and intimate and private matter.

But just make sure you tell Pastor Bill Shishko that you heard about his program from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Now, we return to our discussion with Dr. Andreas Kostenberger about the

Incarnation, and as I said just a few moments ago, Pete in Youngstown, Ohio, was asking you to explain the discrepancies in the two infancy narratives in the

Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But what you would expect, you know, even when you have a court case and maybe you have different witnesses to a car accident, you would expect that there would be agreement in some of the most salient details.

And this is exactly what you find in the case of Matthew's and Luke's accounts of the virgin birth. They both affirm, you know, the names of Jesus' parents.

They affirm, you know, the birthplace, some of the circumstances. They both affirm the virgin birth, that Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb by the

Holy Spirit. And so I think that ought to be the most striking thing that ought to inspire great confidence in Scripture in us, that there's large agreement on the details.

Right, and I even know a Christian attorney who has said during public lectures on certain topics involving his faith that in law, if you have witnesses, eyewitnesses to a certain event or crime, and they all tell you in the exact same words what they saw, they are immediately viewed as suspect for being deceitful, for being liars for some reason or in some shape or form, because people just don't do that.

And if the authors of the Gospels were in lockstep with their language and telling the exact same story in the exact same way, that they would be viewed as just copying each other.

They're not saying anything that contradicts one another, even though people might on the surface think that's what they're doing.

They're just telling the same story that has the same facts involved in it, but from a different view.

Am I correct? Exactly, yeah. And so when you look a little more closely at who those two individuals, Matt and Luke, are, and we know quite a bit about them, of course,

Matthew's background is he was a tax collector, and he, you know, was one of the twelve apostles, part of Jesus's inner circle.

Luke, on the other hand, was a medical doctor who's most likely a Gentile.

He was not a member of the twelve. He's probably not even an eyewitness of quite a bit of what happened, but as he explains in his preface to his

Gospel that he researched very carefully, you know, medical doctors need to be able to do the accounts of those who were eyewitnesses, and most likely that might even have involved talking to Mary, Jesus's mother, talking to Elizabeth, and a number of other people who would have been in a unique position to tell the story to Luke, and then he would be able to retell it to his readers.

Well, guess what, Pete? You have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today by our guest,

Dr. Andreas Kostenberger and his co -author, Dr. Alexander Stewart, The First Days of Jesus, The Story of the

Incarnation. You've also won, because this is a special Christmas program of Iron Sharpens Iron, you've also won an absolutely free

New American Standard Bible. This is their gorgeous compact edition.

It's got a beautiful cross embossed on the cover, and I hope that you have many years of enjoyment from that Bible.

If you already have plenty of Bibles, please give that as a gift to someone you know and love, especially if they don't have a

Bible. So we are going to, God willing, have those shipped out to you after the

Christmas holiday next week, perhaps sometime, and these are being shipped out to you free of charge by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their faithful sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron, and for shipping out all of our winners in the audience over the years their free books,

Bibles, CDs, DVDs, and everything else they win by submitting questions to us. And thank you very much,

Pete. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron and keep spreading the word about it in Youngstown, Ohio and beyond.

We have, let's see, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know,

I have heard that the story of the three wise men actually being at the side of the manger presenting their gifts to the baby

Jesus is not biblically accurate, that when they came to him, it was already a young boy and living in the house of Joseph, no longer in a stable.

Could you clarify if this is true? And I have also heard that we don't even know the number of the wise men.

Excellent, yes, that's a great question, and it's very well -informed, and yes, you know, of course, all we know reliably is what we read about those wise men in the

Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, because that's really our only source that we have for that story.

And first of all, we know they brought three gifts, Frankincense, gold, and myrrh, but it mentions that in Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 11.

It doesn't necessarily say how many wise men there were. I think people have inferred that, well, there's three gifts, so there are probably three wise men, but, you know, there's no reason necessarily why that had to be the case.

In many cases, people of that stature would have traveled with a fairly large entourage, so almost certainly, regardless of how many wise men there were, there were probably, you know, quite a few additional individuals that were part of that.

But nobody wants to pay the money for the hundred figurines that would have been added to the manger scenes in their living rooms or their front lawn.

That's right. So again, it's a good example of how you have, you know, certain limited information in Scripture, and then various legends grow, you know, around that that can't really be reliably verified.

Also, the question of the timing of the visit. We see in, like, the

Nativity story and other note depictions, and of course the manger scenes, right? The wise men are right there at the birth, but again, it's very likely that they might have only visited, you know, several months, if not, you know, a year to after the birth, because we see in Matthew chapter 2, verse 11, that they're going into a house.

Now, house is a different word in the original, you know, like, idea than, you know, the inn or the stable that, where Jesus was born in.

And also, it says there that they saw the child, and again, child is a different word by Dion in the original from baby or infant.

And so, Matthew chapter 2, verse 11, does seem to point to a later time when that visit came, rather than, you know, right the day of the birth.

And we have Joe in Slovenia.

Joe in Slovenia says, please ask Dr. Kostenberger to comment on his thoughts about why many question the miracle of the

Incarnation as if it is unbelievable when they don't question other miracles performed by Jesus during this, during his

Incarnation. Thank you for a great topic. Yes, well, my sense is that, as you alluded to, skeptics or agnostics, you know, biblical scholars who are more liberal, such as John Dominic Crossan of the

Jesus Seminar or Bart Ehrman, who teaches at UNC, they approach

Scripture already with what is often called a historical critical approach, or I might even call it a skeptical approach.

In other words, they don't approach Scripture with an open mind, especially open to the possibility of the supernatural.

And to some extent, that skepticism then affects pretty much everything they read.

So generally my sense is that those kinds of individuals who approach Scripture with this kind of skeptical posture, they would try to find natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanation for just about anything, whether it's one of the miracles

Jesus performed or also the virgin birth. So I'm not sure if I've found scholars be any more skeptical toward the virgin birth than any of Jesus' other miracles.

I think it's a pervasive approach that pretty much affects the way they look at any instance of the supernatural in Scripture.

That's interesting. You know, I think, though, if I'm not mistaken, I think I very surprisingly and oddly heard

John Dominick Crossan, who's an agnostic, say something about he may actually believe in the possibility of the resurrection or something because of the phenomenal response to the

Christian community after that occurred, where people were willing to risk their lives to follow

Christ in great numbers. But I don't know. I can't verify that, but I thought that that was,

I remember something odd about the inconsistency. Yeah, I think the other thing to be said there may be that typically the way those people try to verify information in the

Bible is by looking at extra -biblical literature. And so if they can find any, you know, legendary or mythical accounts of, say, the gods rising, they may then take that to the

Bible and say, well, maybe, you know, there's some sort of a parallel, and it would gain added credibility in their eyes because it's mentioned in other writings of the same time period.

Of course, I don't think that the truthfulness of Scripture rests on whether or not there's some extra -biblical parallels.

In many cases, Scripture claims that something entirely unique happened in the life of Jesus.

We haven't even talked about the Gospel of John that goes even further back and says that not only was

Jesus miraculously conceived in Mary's womb, He actually pre -existed with God from the beginning before the world was created.

That's a very important... John, of course, pushes that much further back. Yeah, that is a very important aspect of the

Jesus story, because there are cults that claim to be Christian who believe that Jesus did not exist in the eternity past, but arrived on the scene when

He became man in the womb or in the manger after the

Incarnation. They think that that's when He arrived on the scene, but that is not the case at all. Exactly, and that's,

I think, why the Gospel of John is so important. And I think our book is in three parts,

Matthew, Luke, and John. And I think especially the section on John is fairly unique, because I think most books naturally would gravitate toward the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke and overlook

John. And I think, you know, for us, that's an omission that we tried to remedy by pointing out that, in some ways,

John, who I believe wrote last after Matthew and Luke, and who may well have known the

Gospels, according to Matthew and Luke, tried to show the background, and then actually deliberately didn't just repeat their infancy narratives, but went further back to almost, like, correct an impression that could be given that Jesus began

His existence in Mary's womb. And by the way, Joe and CJ earlier,

I think I forgot to tell CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, but both CJ and Joe, you have won a free copy.

You have each won a free copy of The First Days of Jesus, the Story of the

Incarnation, by our guest Andreas Kostenberger and Dr. Alexander Stewart, his co -author.

And you are also both getting a free new American Standard Bible, because it's

Christmas time and we're giving you something extra that we want you to either cherish and use yourself, or if you have scores of Bibles already, if you could give it to somebody that you love.

It's not a cheap paperback Bible, although every

Bible is a precious gift and contains the life -giving words and the

Gospel of Jesus Christ, but this is a very beautiful Bible that you could actually give as a gift, and people won't think you swiped it from a hotel room or something.

And it's got a cross embossed on it, and that's thanks to our friends of the

New American Standard Bible, thanks to our friends who publish the New American Standard Bible, who have been sponsoring this show ever since we began broadcasting in 2006, and we thank them for their loyalty to us.

But we need your mailing addresses, and we thank you, Joe, in Slovenia for providing an

American mailing address where your daughter lives to spare Cumberland Valley Bible book service of the enormous cost of shipping things overseas.

So thank you very much, Joe, in Slovenia, and thank you, CJ, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, as well.

Well, tell us more about the Gospel of John, which that is a wonderful Gospel because it contains so much doctrinal truth in it that, you know, you could, if you didn't have a whole

Bible to give somebody, if you had just the Gospel of John in a tract form or something,

I mean, it contains so much of everything that is needed to know for salvation and to know about the one who we are to worship,

Jesus Christ. Tell us more about the Gospel of John, and why it is so important, and why it even goes deeper than the other narratives.

Yes, I think probably the most distinctive feature is that he boldly asserts the deity of Christ throughout his

Gospel. He begins and ends with a clear affirmation of Jesus' deity, and not only does he in the beginning say that in the beginning was the

Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, but also he ends with Thomas' confession of Jesus as my

Lord and my God, which is really striking.

And even when it comes to the trial before Pilate after the

Jews try to present Jesus as a common criminal, you know, to sway

Pilate's judgment, claiming that Jesus was some sort of an imposter, a rival to, you know, the

Roman Emperor, when that doesn't work, they come right out and say in chapter 19 that, well, the real reason why we want

Jesus executed is because he, being a mere man, claims to be God.

And so I think John, you know, with a single focus, stakes the entire

Gospel story on the claim that Jesus was not a mere human, but that he was

God incarnate. Amen. And let's see, we have, we have, let's see, we have

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and B .B.

says, I have heard recently that Andy Stanley, the son of the world -renowned

Charles Stanley, made comments that whether or not you believe in the incarnation story that Jesus Christ, fully

God, was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary miraculously, apart from any normal physical relations between Mary and Joseph, and that Christ was born of a virgin, that this part of the story of Jesus's life is not essential, and that the resurrection is really the only essential aspect of the life of Christ, is this totally out of line for a man like Andy Stanley, who should know better to say such things?

Are not the incarnation and resurrection equally important and valuable in the whole story, and are they not both inseparably connected to the gospel itself?

The short answer is yes. I, you know, was certainly troubled when

I heard that statement earlier today, and I, in fact, alluded to Andy Stanley, I didn't want to mention by name, but early in the broadcast, where I talked about individuals who claim to be

Bible -believing Christians, but then back away from the miraculous nature of the virgin birth.

So, of course, we always need to be careful when we were not present or haven't read a statement in its, you know, full context.

It's, you know, to some extent, I would, before making a final determination, look at that statement in context to understand the intent, but at least from everything

I've seen, I'm very concerned, and I've also seen that Albert Muller, who's the president of Southern Seminary, has given a very strongly worded and pointed response to Andy Stanley's statement as well, along the lines that it's unacceptable to basically, you know, diminish the importance of the virgin birth.

There's this classic work by J. Gresham Mason on the virgin birth, and I think to this day, it stands as a testimony to the great importance.

Of course, if Jesus was not miraculously conceived in Mary's womb, then

He was not God, and then He could not, you know, sufficiently atone for our sins, and so that's how the virgin birth and the crucifixion and the resurrection are integrally related to each other, and none of them is necessarily more or less important than the other.

Right, because the main thing is that the

God -man rose from the dead, and you have other people who are just men rising from the dead.

You have Lazarus rising from the dead. You had a number of people rising from the dead at the crucifixion of Jesus, and you have

Jesus raising people from the dead, you know.

So, I mean, obviously, the incarnation is quite a valuable aspect of this, and it just seems to be another example of modern evangelicals who think that they can cleverly use wording and presentations to convince dead lost sinners of the truths of the gospel by changing or leaving out or softening things that are recorded in scripture, and it really,

I think, unfortunately, can be traced back to Arminianism, really, because if you are an

Arminian and believe that any human being can be convinced of the truths of the scripture and the gospel, then you're going to more likely become very pragmatic in the way that you evangelize, and that's why you have all kinds of gimmickry and really modern novel inventions of men where they try to win sinners to Christ in all kinds of really ridiculous ways, and, of course, they wouldn't even call them sinners very often.

They even downplay that aspect of it. Very true. I think, you know, like I mentioned earlier, we need not and should not be embarrassed by the miraculous.

That's at the core of the Christmas story, and I think at best it betrays a lack of understanding of the necessity of the virgin birth to the identity of Jesus as the

God -man, as you mentioned. Amen, and well, thank you,

B .B., in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Give us your full mailing address, B .B., because you have won a free copy of The First Days of Jesus, the

Story of the Incarnation by our guest, Dr. Andreas Kostenberger and his co -author,

Dr. Alexander Stewart, and you're also, because it's Christmas, getting a free copy of the

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Christmas, we're giving that out to everybody who wins the book today, because it's

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CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. We're going to another break right now.

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net,

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Don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages with the second hour of our discussion on the first days of Jesus with Dr.

Andreas Kostenberger. Don't go away and send in your questions as soon as you can.

Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Weiss and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

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Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

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That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnes, and if you just tuned us in for the full two hours today with one hour to go, our guest is

Dr. Andreas Kostenberger, and we are discussing his book, The First Days of Jesus, the

Story of the Incarnation. If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at comcast .net.

That's chrisarnsen at comcast .net, or ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com.

Before we return to our discussion, I just want to remind you, although Christmas is already two days away, and you don't have time to purchase

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ironsharpensironradio .com. But we need the support of advertisers like those that you hear, and we need the support of those listening.

And I thank from the depths of my heart all of you who are listening, who have been ordering books and patronizing the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, and those who have sent in personal donations.

That means more to me than I could possibly describe. And I really mean that from the depths of my heart, and I thank you very much.

And you know if you listen to this program that I am not begging for money every time we're on the air. I hardly ever do, as you will recall.

It's actually probably just a couple of times a year that I do that, a few times a year. But anyway,

I really appreciate all of you who help us remain on the air. And if you could,

Dr. Kostenberger, if you could go into some of the other elements about the few days of Jesus, the first days of Jesus, that some folks who are not very familiar on an in -depth level with the scriptures, they have a cursory knowledge of what the

Christmas story is about, that even most of humanity has some kind of an idea of the story, even if they are not

Christians. But if you could tell us some of the things about what you have recorded in your book that may be overlooked or unknown to the average person.

Absolutely. So you know Matthew is the first Gospel, the first book of the

New Testament, and it's placed there because it presents

Jesus as the last and the long line of God's promise to his people to send his deliverer.

And Matthew says that Jesus is the son of Abraham, or the descendant of Abraham, the son of David.

And so it follows on the heels of the entire Old Testament, showing that Jesus his pedigree, his human ancestry, reaches all the way back to Abraham.

And maybe for us that's a small thing, but for his Jewish readers that was a huge and very important argument to make, that Jesus is the promised son of Abraham who had actually come at the end of time in history to redeem his people.

And then you see in Matthew's family tree of Jesus that there are several women that are mentioned, which is rather unusual because typically women would not be mentioned because the family line was typically traced through the father.

But Bathsheba, Ruth, Tamar, and Rahab are all mentioned as well, of course, as Mary.

And so the question often is why those five women? Scholars don't always agree, but I tend to think that a likely explanation is that in one way or another, either the appearance of scandal or real scandal attaches to each of those five women.

In the case of Bathsheba, it was her, or David's adultery with her. In the case of Ruth, it was her being alone with Boaz on the threshing floor that one night, and him whisking her off early in the morning, even though nothing actually scandalous had occurred and so forth.

Rahab, of course, was a prostitute, but one that protected Israel's spies and so forth.

And so I think Matthew's pointed, this is not the first time in Israel's history that at least the appearance of scandal attached to an ancestor of the

Messiah. And so this is some sort of an apologetic in favor of the virgin birth, if that makes sense.

That just because there was some question as to who the real father of Jesus was,

God's people should be open to the possibility that Matthew's actual account of the virgin birth is true, that Jesus was actually conceived by God the

Father through the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb. We have

Chris in Runnels, Iowa, who says, Would you please ask

Dr. Kostenberger how we can best exalt the glory of God becoming man while preventing superstition?

Not really quite sure what he means by that. I know that there are ridiculous accounts of Jesus as a young boy in the

Gnostic Gospels, but I'm not really sure what he means. Maybe you would have a better understanding of what he means by that, exalting the glory of God becoming man while preventing superstition.

Well, I think the question resonates with me because that was very much the reason why we wrote our book, to put the

Christmas story on more solid historical footing. In other words, what you see in the

Gospel stories, as you Chris mentioned, is there's a certain amount of restraint. You know, neither

Matthew nor Luke really give you some sort of an exuberant, you know, kind of a magical account.

I think, you know, it's really striking when you look, for instance, at Luke's story of just the humility and just the ordinary circumstances in which

Jesus was born into, you know, the swaddling cloth, you know, which tells you that this was just, in many ways, you know, an ordinary baby like any other, even though, of course, he was conceived by the

Holy Spirit. And so you see this, you know, interplay between Jesus' deity, but also his birth into very humble pedestrian circumstances side by side.

And so I think it's something that is important for us to remember, that this is not like some of those historical, critical, skeptical scholars are arguing some sort of a pagan, you know, intrusion into Christianity, but it's rather intended to be a historical narrative of what the

Gospel writers really believed happened historically and through the birth of Jesus, which included

God's intervention into human history by sending the Messiah and by doing so through supernatural means.

Well, thank you very much, Chris, in Runnels, Iowa, and we are going to send you a free copy of this book that we are discussing,

The First Days of Jesus, and a New American Standard Bible that you can either keep or give to someone else as a gift for your question today, and we wish you a

Merry Christmas, and we thank you for contributing to today's show and hope that you continue spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Iowa and beyond.

And we thank, once again, Crossway, the publishers of this book who have donated the copies to us, and also the publishers of the

New American Standard Bible for providing the Bibles that we are also giving away.

And by the way, you can go to nasbible .com for more information on the

New American Standard Bible, nasbible .com, and also Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, once again, is cvbbs .com.

One thing I don't want to forget, if you ever want to give a wonderful gift to your church, if your church happens to perhaps not be financially blessed and the

Bibles that are in your pews are falling apart, or perhaps your pew

Bibles are from a translation that a church committee picked many years ago and your church is no longer happy with the translation that is used in the pew

Bible, why not contact nasbible .com if you have the financial means and purchase new pew

Bibles for your church from this publisher, nasbible .com, nasbible .com,

and tell them, certainly, that you heard about the New American Standard Bible from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We would appreciate that. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know, the one thing

I cannot wrap my head around is that the baby in the manger was eternal

God in flesh, and that mind in that baby, however, was not quite the mind of an infinite being who knew all things.

The mind had to grow in knowledge as that child grew. I just don't understand this, and of course the

Jehovah's Witnesses and others will point to these things as reason to discredit the doctrine of the deity of Christ.

Does your guest have any explanation I can give when confronted with this biblical fact?

Yes, so Luke, at the end of the Infancy Narrative, you know, after the 12 -year -old

Jesus visited the temple, you know the verse Luke 2, 52 says, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

So, certainly, the Bible does affirm that Jesus grew, you know, developed as an ordinary human being would, and I would not want to reduce that mystery.

Clearly, we're dealing here with theology, right?

With Christology, with the supernatural, and so I'm certainly the first one to acknowledge that there's limits to which we should expect to understand, you know, the interface.

I mean, how can we really rationally understand the Trinity, you know, completely, or even the way in which the humanity and the deity of Christ coexisted in one person, the

Lord Jesus Christ? I would just point out that, personally, while I don't fully understand how that can happen,

I don't have any problem with understanding that Jesus could take on human nature, and part of that would be for him to develop as an ordinary human being, even though, you know, it doesn't lessen the degree or the extent to which he was

God all the way through that process. Well, thank you, R .J.,

for the excellent question, and give us your full mailing address there in White Plains, New York, and we'll get you a free copy of this book that we are talking about,

The First Days of Jesus, and also a copy of the New American Standard Bible. Thank you very much for contributing to the program with your excellent question, and we have

David in Ada, Ohio, who is asking about something that we already discussed, but he is just asking a different aspect of a question on a different aspect of it.

David in Ada, Ohio, says, is it possible there was a lot of the gold, frankincense, and myrrh so much so that they would be able to live off of it while in Egypt?

And I'm assuming that would be that Mary Joseph and the child

Jesus could live off of it. I'm assuming that's what he means. So did a Brinks truck back up to the manger and drop off gold and a lot of other stuff there,

Dr. Klostenberger? Well, that's actually a good question, and it's one that I never really thought about.

So, you know, I don't know if they would have, you know, sold those gifts while in Egypt, or if they would have, you know, hung on to those, you know, because they're obviously of a special acknowledgement of the fact that this was no ordinary baby.

I don't think any of us really know or can know. There's a lot that we really don't know, and I think that's the kind of thing, you know, when you watch any of the movies, you know, surrounding the birth of Christ, the filmmakers always have to creatively fill in the spaces that are in the gaps in the biblical accounts.

And fortunately, as a biblical scholar, I don't have to fill in those gaps. I can, you know, affirm that what the text does say has been given to us by God, and it's sufficient for our purposes, which is not to necessarily, you know, answer all our questions in every detail, but simply to present

Jesus as the Messiah and as the Savior, you know, so that we can believe in Him for salvation.

I think that's really the primary purpose of the gospel narratives, rather than, you know, satisfy curiosity.

Not that it's wrong to ask those questions, it's just important to acknowledge that we don't know all the answers.

Well, thanks, Dave, and you've also won a free copy of the book and a free copy of New American Standard Bible.

Thank you for contributing to the program with your question, and please spread the word, continue spreading the word in Ohio and beyond about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And, well, this book, as you were saying earlier, you have it broken up in three major sections.

The virgin -born Messiah, the light of the nations, and the incarnate word.

Now, what did you mean in the first section of the book by a conflict between two kings and the two kingdoms?

That's a great question. That's something that I kind of had missed for many years, and working on the book, it became clear to me that both

Matthew and Luke have this implicit and sometimes not -so -implicit contrast between Jesus on the one hand, and then

Herod, or even Caesar Augustus on the other hand, to show that Jesus was no ordinary king, and in many ways came to, and Christians believe, is to be said in contrast to the political ruler of today.

There's some very striking parallels between Caesar Augustus, for example, who issued that famous decree that sent

Jesus' parents to Bethlehem. He was said to usher in a golden age, an age of peace.

He was even called the divine son or the son of God on some coins that we still have today.

And so, you can see how, for Christians, it's very important to realize that in a very real way,

Jesus' entrance into this world, he put him on a collision course with the rulers of this world.

We know in John that Jesus tells Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world.

But nevertheless, there's often quite a bit of tension between the political authorities, even the

Jewish authorities, and certainly the Roman authorities on the one hand, and in Jesus. And of course, probably the most important teaching that Jesus gave was that he taught about the kingdom of God, which is of course a term with very strong political overtones.

And so, I think that's already intimated and founded as a very important aspect of Jesus' coming in the birth narratives, and one that we often overlook, especially as we tell the

Christmas story. And one of the things that makes

Jesus so much universally adored, or the

Jesus story, is the fact that he is a meek and mild and helpless little baby in a manger.

And people often forget, especially when we're talking about those in rebellion against God, that he is no longer this baby in a manger.

He is a wrathful God that takes sin very seriously. And he, when he returns, is going to be a

God returning with vengeance upon the enemies of his people, and wrath poured upon those who have rebelled against him, who will no longer at that point have any time to repent and flee to him for refuge and salvation.

The Christmas story should never just end in that manger, should it? No, and that's the importance of what you might call biblical theology, which is something that starts at the beginning, right there in the book of Genesis, where God promises the first people,

Adam and Eve, that he would send a promise to deliver, you know, would crush the head of Satan on the one hand, and then you see

Jesus coming really at the center of human history. And then, as you mentioned, the book of Revelation shows

Jesus at his return, at the second coming, coming no longer as the

Lamb, but as the Lion of Judah, the one who is the rider on the white horse, who comes not just in salvation, but also in judgment for those who have rejected him.

And so certainly anyone listening who has not placed their trust in Jesus would need to very urgently consider that Jesus will come again, and he will, and each one of us will have to give an account to him for what we've done, with what he's done for us on the cross, which is given his life so that we could have eternal life again.

I'd like you to think about, before we go to our break, and you think about them actually during our break, because I'm going to go to our final break right now,

I'd like you to be thinking about the specific prophecies that Jesus has fulfilled from the

Old Covenant. Why are Jewish friends and loved ones and neighbors and acquaintances, why they should be compelled to believe this

Jesus is in reality a fulfillment of the promised Messiah that their prophets foretold in the

Hebrew Scriptures, and that is, of course, for those Jews who take their word, the

Hebrew Scriptures, seriously, and why we should be ready to have these things on our fingertips and on our tongues when we are talking to our

Jewish friends during this time of year, many people, because of the politically incorrect climate of not only our nation, but the globally politically correct oppression that we have, where people are very nervous to talk about these things to people with differing religious views, when the height of love is to inform people of theological error that will damn them.

I can't think of anything that is more loving when done in a loving spirit and for a godly motivation than to warn somebody and seek to rescue them out of a belief system or life that is sending them to hell, but if you could during the station break consider some of the prophecies that Jesus specifically fulfilled, and we're going to be going to that final station break right now, and if anybody would like to join us during the final half hour of the program, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we will be right back with Dr. Andreas Kastenberger and the first days of Jesus.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 25 minutes to go is

Dr. Andreas Kastenberger. We have been discussing his book, The First Days of Jesus.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

I'm sorry, I'm giving the gmail address. chrisarnzen at comcast .net. chrisarnzen at comcast .net.

Or ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com. That one's okay. ironsharpensironradio at gmail .com.

And before we go to any listener questions, Dr. Kastenberger, before the break I asked of you to gather together some of the

Jewish prophecies from the Old Covenant that foresaw and foretold the coming of the

Messiah, if you could unveil them now. That's right.

There's just an incredible number of predictions that all converge in Jesus.

To give just a few that are mentioned, mostly Matthew, first of all he was born of a virgin,

Isaiah 7, 14 makes that exact point. He's born in Bethlehem, Micah 5, 2.

Also, incidental details like the slaughter of the infants by Herod is predicted in Jeremiah 31, 15, the flight to Egypt by Jesus and his parents in Hosea 11, 1.

The fact that Gentiles come and bring gifts to wise men is a narrative that people don't often realize that seems to be harking back to the coming of the

Queen of Sheba to Solomon in, I believe, it's 1 Kings chapter 10.

Jesus' ministry in Galilee is predicted in Isaiah 8 and 9.

And there's just so many other supernatural manifestations surrounding the birth of Jesus.

The star of Bethlehem, multiple angels appearing to Joseph in the dream,

I think at least three times, the baby itself lying in a manger, certain circumstances that helped the shepherds find him, the story of Mary in Luke chapter 1 parallels the story of Hannah, and surrounding the birth of Samuel, who of course had a special place in God's plan of salvation as well, who anointed the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David.

And so for anyone who's Jewish, I think it'd be really important for them to realize that all of those scriptural texts were written before the birth of Jesus.

In fact, in the Qumran library, the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, we have manuscripts that attest to the fact that, like Isaiah 53, for example, already was written and existed before Jesus was born.

So this was not just some sort of an after -the -fact write -up, and it is just striking, and I think you,

Chris, would agree with me that it really is important for people to realize and to consider, is it just a coincidence, or is it not more likely that God had an integral part in sending

Jesus in keeping with a whole web of prophecies that span many centuries?

Isaiah, for instance, wrote in 800 BC, a full 800 years before the birth of Jesus, and he already predicted the virgin birth, the suffering, and the resurrection of Jesus, and so forth.

Praise God. And one of the things that has been brought up to me by an

Orthodox Jewish friend of mine regarding the virgin birth, he approached me sort of puffed up, thinking that he was going to deflate one of the primary teachings of Christianity by saying, did you know,

Chris, that in Hebrew, the word there in Isaiah, when it refers to a virgin conceiving, that can mean in Hebrew just a young girl.

It doesn't have to be a virgin. But I said to him in response, how is that a sign if a young girl gives birth when thousands upon thousands upon thousands of young Jewish girls were giving birth?

Because normally during that era of humanity, girls were married sometimes by the time that they were 15 years old.

And he actually stopped dead in his tracks, acted like he never heard that before, and he said, yeah, you're right.

Sadly, he's not a Christian yet, but if you could comment on that. Yeah, it's true, and in the book, we spend quite a bit of time.

Obviously, that's a very, very central passage in understanding the virgin birth, especially in its

Biblical context. Isaiah 7 .14, the virgin will be with child. And of course, as with any

Biblical prophecy, you have the original prophecy when it was first given, and then you have the fulfillment sometimes centuries later, also in this case.

And so in the original context in Isaiah's day, about 800 BC, it does talk about a young woman, and it's true that it could simply refer to a, you know, not necessarily a literal virgin, but a young woman.

And again, in context, it refers to a particular war and God delivering his people.

But I think what Matthew claims is that that prophecy was uniquely fulfilled in Jesus in the way it was not fulfilled in anyone else.

And it's what scholars often call typology, which means that in the Old Testament, you see some sort of a pattern, a foreshadowing of something, and then it comes true in history in an escalated, dramatic way, in a way that is really unprecedented.

You know, one of the things that is coming up as a very crucial aspect of the debate on January 13th between Roman Catholic theologian

Robert St. Genes of Catholic Apologetics International and Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, is one of the main aspects of that debate, which is on the theme,

Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace, is the doctrine of the

Immaculate Conception taught by the Roman Catholic Church. And it is amazing to me how many people, both

Catholic and Protestant, think that is referring to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and his being conceived in the womb of a virgin and conceived without sin and remaining sinless for the entirety of his life and being obedient to his father.

But that is not what the Catholic Church means by that doctrine or dogma of the

Immaculate Conception. They actually mean that Mary was conceived in her womb free from sin, although they do not believe that Mary's mother was a virgin who conceived.

But if you could contrast that false and heretical teaching which robs

Jesus, I think, of his majesty and uniqueness and the true virgin conception and birth of Christ.

Yeah, you're exactly right, Chris. And I think it's just a fact that for many

Roman Catholicism, they're not thoroughly familiar with some of the foundational doctrines.

And it's a good example of the biblical teaching about Mary then being taken beyond what the text actually explicitly affirms, and then traditions grow over the centuries.

In some cases, those doctrines were only enunciated by the

Roman Catholic Church maybe 100 or 200 years ago, especially with regard to Mary.

So they're really fairly recent. The assumption, I think, wasn't it just in the 1950s that that was made doctrinal?

That's right, the ascension of Mary and so forth. And so it is just part of this process of almost some sort of a deification of Mary, almost as if she were the fourth person of the

Trinity, based on a veneration of Mary that goes way beyond the depiction of Mary in Scripture as, yes, a young girl who had amazing faith and who was willing to let her life be completely, you know, derailed, humanly speaking, by God's mission for her.

And so I think for women, Mary can be a tremendous role model in the incredible faith and submission to God's will that she exemplified without going to the unbiblical extreme of claiming that she was not sinful, that she, you know, ascended to heaven and a variety of other doctrines, that she had no further children beyond Jesus, her so -called perpetual virginity, and so forth.

Amen. What did you mean in your section on light to the nations, two miraculous conceptions, coming off the comments that are just made?

Right. Well, it is really striking in Luke chapter 1 that he has this parallelism going on between John the

Baptist, Jesus' forerunner, who was born, I think, about six months or so prior to Jesus, and the account of Elizabeth, most likely

Mary's cousin, and the mother of John the Baptist, and then Jesus' birth.

And, of course, what we're not implying in the book is that John the Baptist and Jesus' birth were on the exact same level in terms of the miraculous nature of their births.

Clearly, John the Baptist was not the product of a virgin birth or a miraculous conception by the

Holy Spirit in Elizabeth's womb. But what we are saying is that also, the way

Luke tells the story, Elizabeth was past childbirth, and the very fact that she could conceive a child was also a miracle in that God overrode and suspended, you know, normal the age of childbearing in Elizabeth's case.

And so, there was also a sense in which John's birth was remarkable and revealed the work of God, and I think that's part of also the way

Scripture attests to Jesus being the Messiah, that God was at work in the events surrounding the birth, including the circumstances surrounding the birth of his forerunner,

John the Baptist. Yes, and just like Abraham's wife giving birth quite past the age that is biologically typical.

And, of course, you have something quite miraculous in the fact that there was something about the fetal

John the Baptist that was aware of whom he was near when

Elizabeth and Mary were near each other. He leapt for joy in Elizabeth's womb.

Right. And we don't really know all of the depth of what that means, but he certainly, obviously, if he had joy, there was some kind of an acknowledgement supernaturally that this fetal

John, this young child in the womb, was aware of the majesty and glory of the

Messiah that was within an arm's length of him. Exactly, and so you see that the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke are just chopped through with the miraculous and the supernatural, and I think that's just so important for us to keep that intention with the fact that all of this happened historically.

It just shows that Christians believe and the Bible witnesses to the fact that God was at work in salvation history centrally in and through the birth of Jesus Christ.

In fact, I think that verse is one of the most powerful verses attesting to the importance of the pro -life movement, attesting to the fact that that is a human being in the womb, and to abort such a being is nothing short of murder, in fact, gruesome, grotesque butchery and murder to the most helpless and fragile and innocent among us.

And of course, I'm not saying, you know, people don't jump on me about the innocent aspect. I'm not saying that babies are free from original sin or anything like that, but they are innocent of anything that would demand them being murdered.

Exactly. But anyway, this has been such a fascinating discussion.

I definitely want to have you back on the program again, that's for certain. But if you could discuss a bit before we run out of time about God at work again at last deliverance for Israel and Israel's restoration.

Right. Again, we need to realize, as you know, probably many of us are non -Jews, that Jesus was the

Jewish Messiah. He came first and foremost to Israel, and it was only after the

Jewish nation represented by its leaders rejected him as their Messiah that he was crucified.

And then the book of Acts tells us that this is what triggered the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all who believe, and then the mission by the early church to the ends of the earth.

So there is a salvation historical movement, first to the Jews, as Paul wrote in Romans as well, and then to the

Gentiles. And so Jesus is this absolutely critical link between God choosing one people, the people of Israel, but then wanting

Israel to be a blessing and a channel of blessing from God to all the nations of the world.

And Israel, of course, failed in that mission. And this is where Jesus then steps in as the prototypical

Israelite, and he is able to be that channel as a

Jew through whom the son of Abraham, through whom Jesus is able to then extend salvation, not only to the

Jewish people, but also to those who are not Jewish, like myself and probably most of us.

Well, there is a lot more that we could talk about from this book, but I would like you to conclude with the king's rejection and return.

Of course, we've been discussing a king in a manger that other kings gave honor to when he was a young boy, and that he is no longer, as we had discussed earlier, he is no longer a harmless, helpless king, no longer a a cute, cooing baby.

He is a wrathful king that is coming with vengeance, and a thing that is very rarely discussed from pulpits today or in the one -on -one evangelism of Christians.

Sadly, we have created a Jesus that is only suitable for greeting cards and for warm and fuzzy sentiments.

But if you could, tell us about the king's rejection and return. Yes, that's sometimes something that you mentioned that we try to suppress, especially at Christmas time.

We want this to be a time of harmony and a time of peace, and yet the way the

Gospel writers tell Jesus' story, there's already this ominous note that Jesus will be rejected.

Luke tells us that there was no room for Jesus in the end, and I think it's

Simeon in Luke's Gospel who tells Mary that a sword will pierce her heart, prophetically predicting the fact that she would be grieved when she sees her son crucified.

And I think it's fitting to close with the Gospel of John. He probably wrote last among the four

Gospels, and I think he had that unique hindsight, and he wrote that Jesus was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him, but he doesn't stop there.

He then says, in what is the climax of this prologue, he says, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

And that is the Christmas story, that Jesus demands a response from all of us.

He didn't just come for himself, he came to die on the cross for us, and this is how the birth of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus are inextricably linked, and how it is impossible to divide the two events.

They belong together, and they demand a response, not of rejection, but of reception, and the choice is really up to you and to me this

Christmas, and really any day of the year. Well, I would like you to now, for five minutes before we end the program, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about this very important event in history, and its importance today, over 2 ,000 years later, the things that you most want our audience to be left with before this program is over.

Thank you very much. I think one thing that really strikes me is that in the end,

Christmas is a call to witness. You know, the lowly shepherds in the story, and the host of angels, they're bearing witness to not just the coming of Jesus, but to the significance of his coming.

And so, of course, that requires that we understand what the significance is, as we were talking about it, and as we talked about in the first days of Jesus.

But for Christians, we are not simply called to gather with family at the

Christmas tree, and to open presents, and give presents to each other, but to go to the world to witness about Jesus the way the shepherds did, and the way the angels did.

And so that's something in my study, and my reflection, my meditation about the significance of the birth of Jesus, and about the way

Matthew and Luke write up that story, that really came to the fore, even as a

Christian, in a way that I hadn't previously understood it. That Christmas is not this pious, you know, family event that we just ought to enjoy in our own four walls, but it is really a call to mission, and a call to witness.

Well, I really thank you so much for being a guest on our show, Dr. Kostenberger, and I hope that you come back soon and often to the program.

I want to remind our listeners, if you didn't have a chance to win this book today by submitting a question, that you can purchase this book from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

It's published by Crossway, and you can purchase it at CVBBS .com.

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service dot com. So I hope that you not only purchase one for yourself, but even those of you who have won this book,

I hope that you purchase it for others, perhaps even with plenty of advance notice now you could purchase them for next

Christmas, or even those you are visiting during the Christmas season after this

Sunday, you perhaps could get it in time to give it out to those that you will be gathering to celebrate this holiday after the actual day itself, which many people do.

So go to CVBBS .com and order this book, and whenever you go to that website, if you don't see a book listed that you want to order, you just tell them anyway, and they will order it for you, and you will get a very good price on it.

Other than that, I know that your Biblical Foundations website is BiblicalFoundations .org.

BiblicalFoundations .org. Do you have any other contact information that you care to give? No, but I think it's important to notice that we have a lot of resources associated with both the first days and the final days of Jesus, including video content, interviews, blogs, and so forth on that website as well.

Great. Well, I hope that you all visit that website often, BiblicalFoundations .org,

and just keep spreading the word about the upcoming Catholic versus Protestant debate at the

Carlisle Theater, and that is between, as I've been saying, Roman Catholic apologist

Robert Syngenis of Catholic Apologetics International, and it's kind of interesting how his last name, as a

Roman Catholic, it's interesting that Syngenis, I believe, is the Greek word for cousins, which is the word that should have been used if the

Catholics were right, that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were his cousins and not his real brothers, which is a claim they make.

But Robert Syngenis is the Catholic debater opposing Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary on Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven, or Sinner Saved by Grace, at the

Carlisle Theater on Friday, January 13th, and you can go to ironsharpensironradio .com

for more details. Also, don't forget, the day before that, for any of you men in ministry leadership, at the

Carlisle Vault, the catering hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we're having our

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastors Luncheon, which is absolutely free of charge, and every man in ministry leadership that attends will get a free, sumptuous gourmet meal, free books from nearly every major Christian publisher in the

United States and the United Kingdom, and what I'm sure will be a powerful message by Dr.

Tony Costa, the keynote speaker at this luncheon. I hope that you all have a safe and blessed and joyful Christmas.

I look forward to hearing from you next week with your questions for our guests, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Merry Christmas to all of you, and Happy New Year, and I look forward to hearing from you next week.

God bless you, and spread the word about Iron Sharpens Iron, and more importantly, spread the word about the

Incarnate King whose birth we celebrate, and the gospel without which we cannot have eternal life.