12 Themes From the Birth of Jesus, Pt. 1

So the title this morning is 12 Great Bible Themes Surrounded by the

Birth of Jesus. And I'll get right into it. But I had a student a while back who told me a quote from his seminary professor.

And so this is why we don't always think it's great for young people to go to seminary and go to school.

So we've got plenty of books here you can read and so forth. But here's what it was. Okay, the professor said there are two plans of salvation in the world.

And it's not totally bad, it's kind of cute. But he says, the first plan is good, better, best.

Never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best. And like ivory soap, you float right up into heaven.

So that would be salvation by works, I guess. Okay, here's the second plan of salvation.

The second is God descends the golden staircase from heaven, he is holding a bundle, inside is his son.

He leaves the gift of Jesus in a manger for Mary and Joseph and for the world. Cute, I like that plan better.

It's a little bit oversimplified. I liked Ben's expression of it at Sunday school better like it was a little bit more detailed, right?

But anyway, this is what kids are getting. And so, okay, so you think about the idea of the world where a totally depraved, blind, deaf man or woman or child, which is how we come into the world, the

Bible says, and he thinks that he could add to his salvation perhaps and so forth.

But he can't do it. And God's plan of salvation, there's no way in the world it could be invented by a human being because it's not how a humanist would think.

It's not how a humanist would write. It's not how any human would write. And in fact, the

Jews certainly wouldn't write a book that criticized them today. Even King David, would he write a book that revealed his most secret sins like the

Bible does. And yet the Holy Spirit wrote all of this. And sometimes the Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David and that gives a great description of how holy inspiration works.

God uses men as the penman, but God is the author. So I want us to turn to Luke chapter one and start with about verse 67.

And I'd like you to be looking at it either on your phone or in your actual Bible or something and follow here.

Luke chapter one, verse 67. And his father

Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied saying, now this is speaking of John the

Baptist's father, who was a priest. And he was filled with the

Holy Spirit. It was his time to go into the temple and do the temple service. It was his turn. And so he went into the temple and while he was in there, he dealt with the

Holy Ghost. Now that proves one thing, the filling of the Holy Spirit is different than the indwelling because the indwelling didn't start until after Pentecost, which is still often in John the

Baptist's father's future at this point when this is written, but he was filled with the Spirit. And in the

Old Testament that took place. You think of stories like Samson, how the

Holy Spirit would come upon him and he could do mighty works and so forth. Or King David, as he wrote these beautiful songs to God that are recorded in the

Psalms and how he walked with the Lord even in battle and all of these things could happen.

And so this took place. Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and he began to prophesy.

Now here's an interesting point in case, I don't know how long some of you've studied the idea of where Paul said prophecies shall cease, tongues shall pass away, things like that.

But a lot of the New Testament, especially in the Gospels, even though it's written in the

New Testament, it's still living in the Old Testament because the church age didn't begin until Pentecost.

And so most of the preaching that Jesus Christ did on the earth was to Jews under the

Jewish Old Testament system still. Now, I understand that he's God and he has foreknowledge and that he did speak many things that are useful to us in the church age, but he wasn't talking about the church age a lot of the time.

He was talking about the Old Testament and he was speaking to Old Testament, predominantly Jews. And he was, in essence, showing them what it would be like to try to be saved by keeping the law and showing them that they needed him, that they needed

Jesus Christ, they needed grace. Because when he talked about the law, he showed how difficult, he says, it's a higher law than even you think.

If you hate a person in your heart, Jesus said, you have killed him, thou shalt not murder. You've murdered him if you hate him in your heart.

See, that's a higher law. And Jesus said, this is how difficult it is to keep the law. Do you think you can do it?

And he told the Jew that again and again. And he was presenting himself as the savior, salvation by grace through my death on the cross for you.

But he did it gradually over the bits of his teaching here and there as he took his ministry on for three years.

And so all of that was really happening in the Old Testament economy, we call it.

Theologians call it the Old Testament economy and the New Testament economy. They just mean it's how it works under the

Old Testament versus how it works under the church age. And then you have to note this, that you had, obviously you had prophets in the

Old Testament, correct? I mean, they could not only speak forth God's word, which is part of what the definition of prophesy means, but they could also tell the future, couldn't they?

Which is another part of what prophesy meant. And that's the part that Paul said would cease and it has ceased.

But for the time period when Jesus and the apostles and other certain prophets were walking together during his ministry, you still had prophets because you're still in the

Old Testament. Does that make sense? Okay, so people could prophesy. Now Hebrews chapter one, verse one says that the way it worked back then, it no longer works that way.

So we don't have that now, but they did still have it until Pentecost. In fact, really it extended on until all of the apostles had gone to heaven and some of the

New Testament prophets had gone to heaven. So it extended on beyond some, even into the church age, you had what

I call early church prophets. And, but then it ceased, it began to go away.

And we know from history that it did go away from early church fathers that wrote about the fact that it no longer existed in the church.

And we know from Paul's writings when it went away, it went away when that which is perfect had come and that's the

Bible. And so we know all of that. So I just want to put this in context. This is still Old Testament economy, even though Jesus is about to come on the scene,

Zacharias is living in the Old Testament as a priest, fulfilling his priestly role.

And he goes in there and he may not have been expected, he may not have expected to have been filled with the Holy Spirit, but he was filled with the

Holy Spirit and he began to prophesy. And it's perfectly acceptable in part of how

God himself said he operated in the Old Testament. And he says, but I no longer operate that way now, but we speak through Jesus Christ, my son is how he speaks to us now, not through the ways of old, through the prophets and so forth.

So Zacharias begins to prophesy and he says in verse 68, blessed be the

Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people. Now I want you to pay close attention to every phrase and every word in here, because I want you to notice the phrase his people.

So blessed be God the Father. Now, this is a man who is prophesying, which means the Holy Spirit is telling him what to say.

So this is coming straight from God. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he,

God has visited and redeemed his people. Now, does that mean every individual person in the world or in the mathematical

Greek language, as my son Ben said in Sunday school this morning, and it's like math or in grammar, does it mean his people or does it mean all people?

Tell me. So is there a difference between his people and all?

There is a difference. Grammatically, you cannot get the grammar right and the word definitions right and make this mean that God has visited and redeemed every human being on the earth.

It doesn't say that, it says his people. Now, and he has raised up a horn of salvation for us.

Who do you think us is in that context? It's God's people.

Now, it meant to the Jew first, later on, Testament scripture, and I'm sure

Zechariah, being a priest, knew this too, that says that the Messiah is gonna come for the benefit of the

Gentiles as well. Do you remember that? He's coming not only for the Jews, but for the

Gentiles who are part of God's people. So God has, Jesus came to save all men.

Now, let me explain though. In the Greek, that word pas, which means all, does not mean every individual usually.

What it usually means is some from all people types. So to the

Jew, what it meant was, and Paul said it again and again, all the Jewish people he preached to thought that God would only save Jews.

They called Gentiles dogs. God wouldn't save a dog. And so Paul was correcting them again and again, saying, no,

Jesus died for all men. Now, in that context, would you think that he meant every individual or would you think he meant both

Jew and Gentile? But some, he will save some people from Jews and some from among the Gentiles.

In other words, he died for all types of people. That's what the word pas means.

And so here, when it talks about his people, it means he will die for some people from every race,

Jew and Gentile. Now, Jew is one race. Gentile is all the other races. It's many races, but Jesus died for some people in every race, not just for the

Jew. And when you take this in strict context, which you have to do to get the Bible right, when speaking to the

Jews, they don't think God will save a Gentile. Now, I don't know why they didn't think that. Actually, I do know why.

In my library back in Mahea, I've got a book that has photographs of some of the

Targums, which were the Jewish paraphrases that the Jewish teachers were teaching from for 300 years before Jesus was born.

And these very teachers became the Pharisees who were the enemies of God who killed the Son of God, Jesus.

They were the ones that chose to teach through paraphrases rather than from the Old Testament scriptures.

So when you go into Isaiah 53, that's so great to use to witness to a Jew, because it literally shows a

Jewish person from their book that Jesus came to die for the sins of many, that he would die in the place of his people.

And it's right there. The gospel's right there in the Old Testament. But guess what? They weren't teaching from the scrolls and the parchments.

They were actually teaching from the Targums. And I actually have a copy of Isaiah 53. And when you read it, every place where it says

Jesus died for the sins of his people, it changes the word. It doesn't say Jesus, but it talks about the

Messiah. It changes the idea of the Messiah to the whole nation will suffer.

So everywhere where it's a reference to the Messiah suffering, it changes it to the nation of Israel will suffer all the way through chapter 53, 100 % of the time it's changed.

That's no different than if you go and read a Jehovah's Witness Bible, where they translate the

Bible to say what they want their doctrine to teach. And it varies greatly from our

Bible. And the Catholic Bible is a little different as well. That's why it's in the scripture,

Greek New Testament's coming from in particular. So they were teaching the

Jewish people for 300 years from Targums that had no mention of a Messiah dying for the people.

No mention at all. No mention of a suffering servant. They thought it was teaching about a suffering nation.

So they missed the Messiah, except for a couple of Jewish people we'll talk about here in a minute. They happen to be people, by the way, that were actually reading this book called the

Bible, the Old Testament. They were reading that rather than the Targums. And I'll show you the difference from those people and all the rest of the

Jews that wanted to kill their Messiah later on. May the blood is blood be upon our heads. And upon the children, they said, and they said, crucify him.

And so that's why 8 million of them were killed by Hitler in World War II, because that prayer got answered.

When they prayed and they said, may the blood of this man be on our heads and the heads of our children got it sometime later during World War II and 8 million

Jews, because they said that. And so at the same time, he used that horrifying event to make it where the whole world felt sorry for the

Jew and set up a nation, a place in Israel, which was really already their land anyway, and made it legal for them to have a nation in Israel.

So modern Israel was created because of the killing of 8 million Jews. So God turned evil and used it together for good for his purposes.

Now here, he keeps speaking about his people and he will raise up a horn of salvation.

That's an Old Testament expression, the horn meaning the horn of these animals that can use those horns to attack.

So it's like an offensive weapon. And so here he's prophesying and he's calling the

Messiah the horn of salvation for us. So this one that he is writing about and speaking of under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit and not fully even understand what he's saying, I'm sure at this time in history, Zechariah has had no idea what this meant yet.

And he says he's gonna raise up a horn of salvation an offensive weapon to save his people and to push back

Satan. And that's exactly what Jesus did when he died on the cross. He destroyed Satan, the

Bible says, made a show of him openly, mocked him with his own death and especially with his resurrection.

So he raised up a horn of salvation in the house of his servant, David. Guess what?

The Savior came from the Jews and now today the world hates the Jews. Everything you read in the newspaper about this war that's going on, talks about they've killed 8 ,000 women and children, the

Jews have. And yet when you look at the small print that says who reported it, it is Hamas's news agency that reported that.

Now, do you think Walter, you guys that are more my age, do you think Walter Cronkite would have reported that that way?

And he was a liberal for back then. He voted for Kennedy. I'm sure quite certain that he did.

But Kennedy was a conservative compared to today's liberals, especially economically.

But my whole point, my point is, like you're quoting the enemy's news agency.

Well, if they're gonna make it look like Israel's evil. And so, you know what?

The one thing I know about Israel, if you wanna go in there and kill their women and children and take their babies and do what they did to them, then

Israel's gonna come back at you. They're not like America. I mean, we've had, we've had, Iran has attacked our own military ships and about 12 or 15 of our military installations in the world.

We done that, we just slapped their head. But Israel's not like that. If you kill their women and children, they will come and annihilate you.

And that's what they're doing. And the whole world is saying, they're the ones that are the terrorists. Can you imagine? Oh, you call me and you come try to get in my house and do harm to my kids.

I'm gonna be a terrorist. You can say what you want. It won't stop what I'm gonna do or try to do.

And they're the same. And they're good. And Netanyahu, their leader, said it so well as he was interviewed,

I think maybe it was on Fox. But he said, look, the whole world is calling good evil and evil good.

He said, we stand for good. We stand for a normal society like the entire

Western society has. Hamas stands for Islamic rule.

Cut your head off if you don't become Islamic. And he named all the things that they believe in. And he says, and the world is calling them good and us evil.

He said, the world has it backwards right now. We better get it straightened out or we're gonna lose our entire society of the West. And he was so correct about that.

So here we see predominantly that the for us in this context means the

Jews. Now we know from Isaiah that the Holy Spirit also said that the Messiah is coming to save those who, like the

Gentile, those who the Bible calls are blind, which is the Gentiles. And that it came to save those who are in darkness.

That's the Gentiles. So he came to die for some people from every race.

We know that, but in this context, it's still talking about the Jews, but it sort of morphs into meaning

God's people from all races. It's just the people of God. And so in verse 70, it says, as he spake by the mouth of his

Holy prophets. So you see how God used to speak, right? And that's what

Hebrew one said times, he spake to us by the prophets, which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.

Now he's prophesying still. All right. So next,

I want you to start to begin to see great Bible themes that are mentioned in this story of the birth of Jesus.

Here's the first one. It speaks of number one, the Abrahamic covenant. Look at me too. This Messiah is coming to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his

Holy covenant, the oath, which he swearing to our father, Abraham. Right? So the first thing that we see about the

Christmas story is that it was prophesied by John the Baptist's father, that when the

Messiah would be born, he would come to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant. Now, if you go into Galatians in the

New Testament, chapter three, verse six, what you will find to many people's surprise is that those of us in the church age, especially predominantly

Gentile church age now, who are saved at all, if we are saved at all, we are saved through the

Abrahamic covenant. And most Christians don't even know that anymore because they're preaching powder puff stuff like that seminary professor just taught them.

You know, so deep, right? So Galatians three, six, even as Abraham believed

God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. So that shows that in the Old Testament, they were saved by faith, not by works.

And you got to understand, Abraham was 400 years before Moses, 400 years before the law was even given, 400 years before there was a 10 commandments.

Abraham was saved by faith. It says he believed God and God counted that as righteous.

And it didn't say he was righteous. He said, but God counted him to be righteous. That is the doctrine of imputation.

It is basically a New Testament doctrine, we think, right? But it's always been the way human beings were saved because what has to happen is

God the father has to look at the death of his son, which is the only thing that pleases him with regard to the payment of sin.

And he's at the death of his son for all of God's people that he knew before the foundation of the world, Ephesians chapter one,

Roman chapter eight, and the whole rest of the Bible, all of those people that he knew, someone had to pay the sin debt for those people because they're all born into this world lost and depraved and deprived and sinners.

And so we have to have payment. Well, that's what Jesus did. And he died in our place.

And so God took our sins and put them and the Old Testament saints, which is what this was talking about here in Galatians and the

Old Testament saints and everyone who would ever be born that's God's family and took their sins and put them on the body of Jesus who died for their sins.

This is how I know that Jesus didn't die for every individual because the only thing that saves us is his blood.

You're not saved by your works. You're not saved by your religiosity. You're not saved by some church.

You're not saved by your grandma, your grandpa, or your own mama. You are saved by the blood of Jesus plus nothing.

And if that's true, then everybody that he bled for is going to be in heaven. And we know they're not all going to heaven.

So he didn't bleed for everybody. He bled for the sins of his people, his people whom he knew before the foundation of the world.

Check it out. The whole Bible speaks of it. If you don't see it, it's because you've been blinded by modern fake preaching.

I like Trump's terms. Fake news from pulpits around this country.

And if Glenda were here today, I might get her to just come right up here and give her testimony because when she and Paul came to this church, they came from the independent fundamental

Baptist movement which Charlotte and I were in that for a while before we knew better. We didn't realize what legalism was and we came out as soon as God showed that to us.

But they came out when they moved here. And I knew that. And I told them, look, I preach a little different than what you're used to, but I promise you,

I'm only going to preach the Bible. And as long as you like the Bible, you will like it here. And he said, brother David, if you preach the

Bible, I will like it. And I said, okay, this will work. So about the third Sunday, Glenda comes down after the service and stands there and you all know her, right?

She's so amazing. I'm just confused.

And I said, what are you confused about? And I had just read a portion from Ephesians 1 where it says he knew us before the foundation of the world.

He knew who his own were. I didn't preach it or exhort or what do you call it?

Exhibit it. I just read it. So I asked her, I said, so I read scripture. What in that scripture was confusing to you?

She said, nothing. It was very plain. And I said, so why are you confused?

She said, I don't know. And I said, could I make a conjecture? She said, yes.

And I said, could it be you've heard so much bad preaching that when you hear the truth, it confuses you?

That's it. She's never been up here since, except to say that was a great sermon.

You see, see, this is what has to click in the minds of most people today. Because if you go back to the 1800s, 90 to 95 % of all,

I'll just talk about Baptist because I've read more Baptist history than Presbyterian history or anything else.

Well, I guess I've studied the Protestant movement, which is Lutheran and Therian mainly, but I mean,

I know a lot of Baptist history. And if you go back to the 1800s, 90 % of all Baptists were called a particular

Baptist, which means they did not believe Jesus died for every individual. He only died for the elect, which means the ones that God knew before the foundation of the world.

And he said of them, I will lose nothing. Those, that's who he died for because everyone that he died for is going to be saved.

That's what this is saying when it prophesies and says he is going to save us from the enemy.

That's what he came to do to save his people though, not every individual, because Jesus taught that a lot of the human beings on this earth are not wheat that he planted.

He said, I didn't plant the bad ones, Satan did. He planted the tares. So there's human beings all over this earth that are never going to be saved.

They're called tares. Or some places the Bible calls them goats as opposed to sheep. And no one reads that anymore.

They don't see that. In fact, when you tell it to them, they just say, I don't believe that. And I say, well, you know what I'm showing you?

It has to be in your Bible. Read it right here, it's right here, believe that. And they'll point to it in the Bible and say,

I don't believe. You're more confused than Glenda was. At least

Glenda opened her eyes and saw it in like a nanosecond. And God's sheep will see it eventually.

And if they're babes in the Lord or if they've been in a church that all they preach is Arminianism, it's going to take them a while to see it.

But then once they see it, they're going to see it on every page, every page of the Bible. You're going to see that God is sovereign, not man, on every page of the

Bible. You're going to see that God is in control of who gets saved and when, not man. You're going to see that if you mess up in your technique of witnessing, it is not going to hurt

God's plan one bit because Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the father draws him.

And of them, I will lose nothing, but we'll raise it up at the end. You're not going to keep someone from getting saved because you didn't witness right or you didn't witness enough.

And I'll tell you this, if you believe you're an Arminian, then you shouldn't be sitting here right now. You should be out there in Corsicana somewhere witnessing right now because you're sending people to hell because that's their plan.

You see my point? Woe be unto us if that's God's plan, but it's not.

It's God's plan that any way that the gospel gets to them, then they'll get saved by that plus the

Holy Spirit and you didn't do it anyway. So it didn't take a human priest to get somebody saved.

It took two things, the water and the spirit. The water is this book right here. Ephesians says the water of the word and the spirit is the

Holy Spirit and you don't even have to be there. In fact, I got saved in my car going probably too fast one day from Waco to Mahea to go to work because I was finishing up the

MBA classes in the morning and running the oil company in the evening for my dad because he'd already quit basically.

And I got saved in my car, just me by myself. How does that happen? There are no priests there. There was no

Baptist preacher to tell me, pray this prayer, dear Jesus come heart and save me. There was nothing but me and the scripture that my mother and grandmother had put in my head growing up and the

Holy Spirit. So I had the water and I had the spirit and I got saved and it changed my whole life that day.

Never been the same, 24 years old. And it'd been nice if I'd have been eight, but God's plan was for me to learn about the world a little bit,

I guess. And before I got saved and then he saved me at the exact appointed time for me.

So Galatians says, this is funny, I got 12 points. I'm gonna only do one. Galatians says, it's because Ben took up all my time with Sunday school this morning.

Yeah, that's what happened. He admitted it. All right, so Abraham believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know you therefore that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham.

Oh, so every person, whether Jew or... Now remember Abraham lived before there was a

Jew. I mean, he was the first one, but he himself was a Gentile until God changed his name from Abram to Abraham and made him the first Jew, right?

But the law was still 400 years in the future. So he was saved by faith and the

Bible says, every person, whether Jew or Gentile, who is saved by faith is a child of Abraham, right?

See, I blowed the Jews mind, wouldn't it? And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen.

Now there's the Gentiles. If you look that up, it's the same word that's translated Gentiles in the Bible. Through faith that God would justify, or in other words, make them right with God through faith preached before the gospel to Abraham so long before we heard the gospel,

God preached it to Abraham and Abraham believed and was saved by faith. And everyone that ever gets saved by faith without works is a child of Abraham saying, indeed shall all nations, that's including

Gentile nations, shall be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

Now Galatians 3 .14, if you skip down a little, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the

Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith.

That word promise to a Jew means the Abrahamic promise. So we Gentiles received the

Abrahamic promise through faith in Jesus, and we are now connected with all of God's people.

So this, I mean, you can read more, you go all the way from 14 to 18 and keeps talking about it. And he ends it by saying, for if the inheritance be of the law, it's no more of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

So we see that we're saved the same way the Jew, that all the people of God are saved the same way through the

Abrahamic promise. Now back to our passage in Luke chapter one. So this

Messiah, it is prophesied, will come to perform the mercy promise to our fathers, and that's the

Abrahamic promise, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, that's the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to them, earthly enemies,

Jews all totally surrounded by Arabs everywhere that hate them and always have hated them, that God, the

Messiah, will deliver us from the hand of our enemies and mights, and then we can serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life.

That is the fore view of the millennial kingdom period when Jesus reigns from Jerusalem over all people, including all the

Arabs, and everybody in the millennial kingdom, all right? And then 76 says, and thou child, he's talking to John the

Baptist, not Jesus, but to John the Baptist, thou child shall be called the prophet of the highest, for thou shall go before the face of the

Lord, that's Jesus, the Messiah, you will go before the Messiah to prepare his ways.

This is speaking of John the Baptist. To give knowledge of salvation unto his people, not to everybody, do you see that?

To his people by, and I have to tell you that in the Greek is ein, which means in or through, or through the instrumentality of something.

So he's going to give knowledge of salvation to his people through the instrumentality of the remission or removal of their sins.

Now that was news to the Jews because they thought God covered their sins, it's called atonement. But this is telling them, no, moving forward this direction into the future, when the

Messiah comes and dies and pays for your sins, he will remove your sins, which that's not a concept they ever heard of.

This is a new concept to anyone who heard this man prophesied this day and all of the rest of us who read it.

Pretty interesting stuff. So verse 78, through the tender mercy, now he continues to talk about the second point.

The first point is Abraham covenant. Now he talks about the second important point in this story surrounding the birth of Jesus.

And I call it Roman numeral two, the salvation by grace, as opposed to by the law.

Salvation is a free gift that you cannot earn. You can never earn it if you tried. And so you can't lose it if you try because you didn't earn it to get, you didn't get it by doing anything.

It was a gift given to you, a free gift. That's what grace means. Look at how it talks about this in verse 78.

How is he going to save his people? In verse 77, he's talking about saving his people, giving them knowledge of salvation and talking about the removal of their sins as opposed to the covering of it.

And how is he gonna do it? Verse 78, through the tender mercy of God.

Now, mercy and grace, as opposed to keeping the law. You see the difference? It's a contrast. He's gonna do it through the tender mercy of God, whereby the day spring from on high has visited us.

So he's going to do it through his mercy by giving us the Messiah. Wow, this is totally new information.

No one ever heard this before this moment in time. And what else? To give light to them that sit in darkness.

Who do you think that is? The Jews or the Gentiles? That's the Gentiles. He's gonna give light to them that sit in darkness.

Now, do you think the Jews also sit in darkness but just don't know it? They don't know what they don't know.

You've heard that expression, right? They don't know what they don't know. They think they're the righteous people, don't they? And we have to guard ourselves against that, thinking that that's us in this church.

Like we're it. Our way of interpreting the scripture is the only right way. It's not.

Your job is to point them out when we make them so we can fix them. But the Jews thought that they had a hold on the truth.

No one else had it. And God would only save them. And all of the apostles in the New Testament are proving them wrong and telling them they're wrong all the time.

That Jesus came to save all men, not just Jews. All kinds of men. Doesn't mean every individual.

All kinds of men. All does not always mean all. But many can never mean all.

And in Isaiah where it talks about the Messiah, it says he died for many. That can't mean all. Grammatically, it never means all.

So people just need to read the Bible. So here we go. Through the tender mercy of God, the

Dayspring who will visit us to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace.

He's called the Prince of Peace, isn't he? This salvation happens through the tender mercy of God through which the

Dayspring from on high visits us and he gave, that's a very important word.

It means it's a gift. You can't earn it. You can't pay for it. You can't do anything to get it.

It has to be given to you by the Holy Ghost. That is the spirit and the formula that says by the water and the spirit.

Jesus said, you gotta be saved by the water and the spirit. The spirit is who gives this to you as a gift. And if he doesn't, you ain't gonna get it.

So there has to be the calling. In Romans chapter eight, it says, for whom he foreknew, he also predestinated.

In whom he predestinated, he also called time on your lifeline.

You have to be called by the Holy Spirit and awaken and your blind eyes open and your deaf ears open and your dead spirit made alive.

And at that moment, he regenerates you while we were yet in our sins. He quickened us, you're brought to life and then everything else is an effect of that.

All the stuff you thought saved you, there was an effect of it, it didn't save you. The thing that saved you was the blood of Jesus plus the

Holy Ghost applying it to your individual person. That's what saved you. Now, it's not taught hardly anywhere.

I mean, there's a few pockets around, we don't know about, they're teaching the true gospel still, but not many. So when you hear it, it's confusing because you haven't heard it in your whole life in any church you ever went to.

But if you went back to the 1800s, you would hear it in almost every church that you went to. And Jesus said, in times, which is where we are, there'll be many false prophets.

And we don't even, we just blow that off and say, oh, that's cool. No, it's not cool. It means almost every church you go into, it's a false prophet teaching you false stuff because we're in the end times.

And yet we think, well, it's confusing if we hear the truth straight from the scripture because these other guys are not saying that.

Yeah, that's what Jesus said would happen. So that's where we are now. So he came to give us light and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

So here I see the third point is, if I look at verse 77 again, where it says to give knowledge of salvation to his people,

I see the doctrine of election, that not everyone gets this knowledge, but everyone that God chose gets this knowledge.

And you say, well, what if I'm sitting here and how do I know if I'm chosen or not? Well, let me just ask you, do you ever worry about your soul when you die, where you might go?

Well, if you do, then you're a sheep. You may not be a saved sheep yet, but you're not a goat because they don't care.

Tares do not hear any of it. Go read the parable. He said, it's like, if you have a tare or a goat and you give them the gospel,

I can sit here and preach my heart out. And if there is such a person as a goat in this room, when

I throw the seed, it's like throwing it on a dry path, a hard path that's in the field where it's pouring, it's a path where the workers walk.

It is so hard that the seed can't even get into it at all. It just lays there. And Jesus said, and the birds come and eat it.

And they asked him later, what do you mean by that? He said, well, before it can even go down into the heart, Satan removes it from the life of that person.

That's the goats. That's the tares. So if you're sitting there and that's still that seed that I'm putting in your head, you're ruminating on it and thinking about it.

You're not a tare, you're a sheep. So all you have to do is when the Holy Spirit moves your heart and you sense it, yield to it like a bride would to the groom.

I mean, that groom chasing you down with chocolate and flowers for probably weeks before you even notice he's there, women.

I mean, that's how you ladies are. Like the poor guys just buying diamonds and candy and stuff.

And you think, well, he's just a guy, but he's thinking you are the one. I'm gonna marry you. And you don't even have a clue, haven't even noticed him.

And he keeps at it until you finally do notice him. And then you respond to all that and you marry him. That's how it works.

That is a picture of how Jesus and the bride of Christ are. He's been chasing you down your whole life.

And if all of a sudden you feel something for him, then it's getting there. That's how it works, the water and the word.

And the Holy Spirit is the one wooing you and pulling you towards Jesus. And when it's the right time, you'll just say,

I do. I don't believe, I can't believe I didn't do this like two years ago, but I didn't want to two years ago.

And the Holy Spirit made me want to. Now I want to, and then that's how salvation works. So I don't have a prospect of the truth.

I mean, I just, I did at first, when I first started seeing these things as I've been doing it the wrong way. And so, you know, all you do is you put it out there and the

Holy Spirit does the rest. I don't have to make you pray some prayer. And this room was saved anyway, probably out there too, but preaching to the choir today.

So the third thing I see is that he came and brought light to his people. That is election.

It's not every person, it's his people. All right, and then the next thing that I see is if I look in verse 77 and some of the other verses around here that I'm gonna get to, like, let me just show you.

Luke chapter one, verse 17. It says, he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to wisdom of the just to make ready a people, not all people, but a people that are

God's people prepared for the Lord. And talks again in Matthew chapter one, verse 21.

And she shall bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

If you read that in literal Greek, it says he will save the people of him from the sins of them.

It's not every person, it's his people that he knew before the foundation of the world. So here I see not only election, but I see limited atonement.

But really it's not limited atonement, like Calvin called it. It's unlimited atonement for everyone that's elected.

It's unlimited. I mean, you are saved to the uttermost. There's no limit on your salvation. It is complete atonement.

In fact, it's not even atonement because atonement means a covering. It's removed as far as the east is from the west.

And as deep as the deepest sea from you. And this is the message that God is giving human beings for the very first time through the prophecy of the dad of John the

Baptist, when he told them that he will show them the knowledge of salvation to his people through the remission, the removal of sin.

That's a concept they knew nothing of for 4 ,000 years or something of history.

And God reveals it right here. And this is what Jesus did. So I see number one, Abrahamic covenant. I see salvation by grace.

I see election and I see limited atonement because it says here in verse 79, that he gave us light to guide our feet into the way of peace, not everybody.

So he died for his people. Acts chapter three, verse 23 says, and it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.

That prophet meaning the Messiah. Now, so listen, if you don't have ears that hear, you can't hear the gospel.

Like you just don't get it. You don't want it. You don't want to be sitting in church. It's not you, but there's people out in the world that may hear us even off the website.

They may hear this sermon someday, but you just sit there and like, you just don't, you don't hear it. You don't have ears in here.

You don't rejoice in the word of God. So you, it's a boring book that's never ending and you'll never read it because it's just horrible.

Then you're not saved yet. You don't have ears to hear. So the

Bible says in Acts 3, 23, that it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet, meaning

Jesus, shall be destroyed from among the people, which means the people of God.

You won't be part of God's people. But the beautiful thing is the job of the

Holy Spirit, open your ears, is to open your ears and your eyes and make

Jesus for the first time and hear his word for the first time, where all of a sudden for the rest of your life, the

Bible will be interesting. Now you won't understand all of it at once and some of it will seem difficult. So you just keep reading right past that till you get something that you go, aha, and you take that and the next year you come through here, maybe you'll learn that one.

See, that's how that works, but that is a work of the Holy Spirit. And so the very name

Jesus means, for he shall save the people of him, that means the people of God, from the sins of them, from their own sins.

Now, all this was done, I'm in Matthew 1, verse 22.

Now, all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord, by the prophet saying, and this goes back to the

Old Testament and quotes it, behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name, actually his title, his name is

Jesus, but his title is Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us.

So the deity of Christ taught, this is the fourth great doctrine that we all must know right here in the story of the birth of Jesus.

The fourth great doctrine is the deity of Christ. God, Jesus is not only fully man, he is fully

God. He is fullness of the Godhead bodily. He is all of the fullness of the

Godhead in a body. That's who he was. So when we look at him, Jesus said, when you look at me, you've seen

God. When you, you know, he told the apostle who said, well, tell us how this works.

He said, well, when you look at me, you've seen the father, for I am in him and he is in me.

And this is the great message of who the Messiah actually is. And this is why, you know, the

Islamics who say, well, we talk about Jesus and we say he's a great prophet. That doesn't cut it. He's not just a prophet, he was a great prophet, but he was more than a great prophet.

He was God with us. He was the son of God. I got to ask a young Arab man one time,

I said, well, if you don't, what's the difference between your religion and biblical Christianity?

He said, we don't have a son of God like you did. And I said, oh, well then how long did Muhammad have to stay in hell?

Oh, don't say that. Do not say Muhammad went to hell. No, no, no, no, no. This is a problem. I said, it's not my problem, it's your problem.

How long do you have to stay in hell? He said, don't say that. He did not go to hell. I said, well, if you don't have a son of God who died for his sins, he went to hell.

And we didn't talk anymore. The rest of the trip to Mahab. And anyway, that was an interesting trip.

Now, all this was done that might be fulfilled and that his name would be Emmanuel, God with us.

Then Joseph being raised from the sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife and he knew her not.

So there was no intimate relationship until after the baby was born. So he was born while she was still in a virgin state, which is his firstborn son.

And he called his name Jesus. Why? Because Gabriel told him to. He would have never called him anything but Jesus.

Now I see here in Luke, let's go back to Luke chapter two. Look at verse four.

You know, so I've already seen four of these great doctrines including the doctrine of election. You might as well say predestination.

But what do I see in Luke chapter two, verse four? And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea and to the city of David, which was called

Bethlehem because he was at the house and lineage of David to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished. And she had this baby in Bethlehem where the

Old Testament already said he'd be born in Bethlehem. It was prophesied three or 400 years prior that he would be born in the town he'd be born in.

Now the reason they were was a human reason though is because the

Roman empire was taxing the Jews and they required them to go to the city of their lineage. Well, Mary and Joseph were of the line of David and they were supposed to pay their taxes in Bethlehem.

So that's where they went. So what do I see in that story? Human responsibility. So everywhere the

Bible teaches the sovereignty of God and predestination and all of those truths that it teaches and you can't remove them unless you take a pen knife to your

Bible as the great Charles Ferguson said. Everywhere it teaches that, it also teaches human responsibility that we have to do the best we can do with the knowledge and equipment we have today and God will do the rest.

And that's our responsibility every day. And at the end of our life, we will be judged for reward, loss of rewards based on how well we did that.

So it's very important that we understand we're responsible to live for God and to obey him.

Salvation by grace doesn't mean we have a ticket that says you can just live like you want to, live like a heathen and die and go to heaven.

Once saved, always saved. I don't even like that phrase that much. I don't see that phrase in the

Bible, but I do understand what people mean when they say it, but bless their hearts, a whole lot of people that say that, if you watch what they're doing on Friday night and Saturday night, you wonder are they really saved while they're saying that because they're living for the devil, right?

And you wonder how's that work? Well, because it's true once saved, always saved, but you gotta really be saved and you don't get saved by parroting that little prayer that the preacher told you, dear

Jesus come to my heart and say amen and then go out and live for the devil. That is not the gospel. Jesus, when he brought sight to the blind, he said, now go and sin no more.

Well, it's not the fact, now hear me, it's not the fact that he went and sin no more that made him see though, the going and living a good life did not make him see, he can't save himself.

Jesus made him see, that is the salvation part. No works were involved with that.

The man could never make himself see, Jesus made him see, that's the salvation.

And he says, now that you are saved, go and sin no more. That is not salvation by works, that is works which are an effect of the salvation that already happened, you see the difference.

And all of that's there and that's why the whole book of James is written about effects. It's about, here's how you're supposed to live if you're really saved.

And if you're really saved, you will live this way. Because Ephesians 2, 8, 9, the greatest verses in the

Bible on salvation by grace, the very next verse is verse 10, which says, but God ordained that you should walk in good works.

Why? Because you are saved, it's who you are. So it all fits together if you have ears that hear and eyes that can see.

So here I see human responsibility. The reason Jesus was born in Bethlehem was not because the prophet said thousands, or actually hundreds, many hundreds of years that he would be.

That's not why he was born there. He was born there because Joseph and Mary, if you want to look at it from the human viewpoint on the timeline, because they obeyed the law of the

Romans and they went to the town they were supposed to pay, and God told them, pay your taxes.

And so they were responsible and did the right thing. They ended up in the right place. Now, let me ask you this. Would there be any possibility that they wouldn't have ended up in Bethlehem?

No, because God already said that's where the baby's gonna be born and he's sovereign. He's in control of everything. Joseph and Mary just thought they were in control, just like you and I think we are.

And it's okay for us to think we are to a certain extent if that means that we try to do the right thing all the time.

And that's our job. That's the responsibility. But God is ultimately responsible for all of history and how it turns out, and it's gonna turn out like he wants it to.

So he's going to make things I want to so that we want to do the thing that he's already seen us do. And you're not gonna change it.

He's already been there and seen it. So you can take comfort in that too. He's in control. We're not.

Isn't that comfortable to know that? So I see both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man in this beautiful story.

If we were to read on, which we're out of time, I can see that and that's fine.

It's not as fun to listen as it is to teach. But I see the doctrine of divine revelation as I go down through verses 12 through about 15.

I see the doctrine of responsibility of witnessing to people because as soon as John the

Baptist's dad came out of the place where he had this, he told everybody about it. And so it says, and when they had seen it, and then you have the shepherds out in the field and they come to see

Jesus. And it says, after they saw the Messiah, when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying, which was told them by the angels concerning this child.

They went and witnessed to everybody that they could think of and told everybody about it. So I see the idea of witnessing there.

And down in verse 25, I see the responsibility to study the

Bible because that's where we see the story of Simeon and Anna. Now, why did those two Jews, when

Simeon held that baby in his arms, he said, I am holding my salvation in my arms.

How did he know that? Because he was not studying the targets. He was reading the Bible. And Isaiah 53 told him that.

And in Micah, it told him he'd be born in Bethlehem. And he was in Bethlehem holding the baby. And the Holy Spirit told him, this is the baby.

And he knew it. Why? Because he'd been in the Word. So I see there the idea that we have responsibility to be studying the

Bible so that we don't miss the Messiah, right? We don't want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when he comes back the second time.

So we need to be studying the Bible, which is all of the secrets that tell her to be and how to be living when he comes back.

Thing is true. So you had Anna also who was reading her Bible. She was actually working in the temple every day where she had access to the scrolls and to the scriptures.

And in Luke chapter four, verse 13, I see that it speaks of the first advent.

What's interesting, I'm gonna finish with this idea here just so be in your mind because I don't have time to preach it.

But in Luke 4, 13 is a place where Jesus went into the synagogue after he grew up and his ministry started.

And he had just been tempted by Satan in the wilderness and he comes out. And one of the first things that he does earned in the power of the spirit to Galilee, fame of him went out throughout all the region.

This is Luke chapter four, verse 14. And he went into the synagogue Bible. Now here's what's interesting about this.

As he taught this Bible, the scripture that he read from was in the book of Isaiah.

And you can actually go and see where he read this scripture but you can see that it was a really long verse or two.

And he only read half of it and then he closed the book and he said, this is fulfilled in your ears.

The part that he read, the rest of it that he talked about was stuff that hasn't happened yet at any time in the history of humanity.

He didn't read that part that day. So that part had not been fulfilled yet. So the part that he read about had to do with his first coming of Jesus.

And he said, this is fulfilled in your eyes this day, I'm him. But the rest of it talked about the second coming and he didn't say that's fulfilled and he stopped.

He didn't read that part that day and didn't teach on it. But what's so fascinating about it is if you go into this passage and you understand that's what it's talking about and then you go and you find the passage in Isaiah chapter 61, verse one and you read the part he did read and you say, okay, that's obviously talking about the

Messiah is gonna come. But then you read the part that he didn't read. It's all the stuff that hasn't happened yet.

And I don't have time to show you that, but you can go look at it. It's Isaiah chapter 61. But the thing it will teach you is you've got three major positions in the world and in the seminaries today.

It's been the same way since I was a young man about the end times.

You have what's called amillennial, which means they don't believe anything is literal like the thousand -year millennial kingdom that the

Bible talks about doesn't literally happen. They just don't believe any of it basically. And then you have postmillennial, which they don't really believe it like it is written in scripture.

They just say it's all allegorical, but somehow at the end of time, the church is just gonna make the world better and better.

Now, how many of you buy that one? The church is gonna make the world better and better until it gets good enough for Jesus to come back is basically their theory.

Most people quit believing that when Hitler killed 8 million Jews. They said, oh, that can't be true. So it went away for a while, but now there's a resurgence.

There's young people starting to become postmillennialists. So you got that one. And the third one is premillennial, which is what we are.

We believe Jesus is gonna come back for us just prior to the millennial kingdom, and then he will usher in a thousand -year literal kingdom and reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years.

And if you go into that passage in Isaiah 61, and you read what

Jesus didn't quote that day, none of that stuff has happened yet, and all of it is going to happen.

And it proves that the premillennial position is the only true position possible. Because the amillennialists and the postmillennialists, one of the things that they all say is that everything in Matthew 24 has already happened.

And they said, well, that was the Greeks, and this was the Romans, and it's all already happened.

So that's not talking about a future millennial kingdom or a future coming of Jesus.

That's what they say. And the problem with that is everything that Jesus left out, none of that's happened yet, so they're wrong.

So I was gonna talk about it, but we're out of time. So anyway, the story of the baby

Jesus is not just a story of the baby Jesus. It's a story that literally lists 12 of the major doctrines of the

Christian church all in one place, and it's pretty cool to see.

But we're out of time, so let's stand, and we'll dismiss you with prayer. Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that we can find things both old and new, things maybe we've not seen before.

I've studied this story almost every Christmas for 40 years in the ministry, and I had not seen that 12 of the major doctrines, 12 of the major Bible themes that we all believe are embedded in this story.

But we thank you for showing that to us this morning. And Lord, we just ask you to go with us in time of fellowship, bless the food we're about to have, bless our loved ones who are not here because they're ill, strengthen their bodies.

We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. And protect us on the way home. All right, we'll see you for lunch here in just a few minutes.