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 in.

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 off 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 these 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, 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 in the New Testament scripture,.

And I'm sure Zacharias 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. But they had the book. 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, 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's 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 Hebrews 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 3, 6, 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, Romans 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 gonna 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 stand there.

And you all know her, right?

She's so amazing. Brother David, I don't really disagree with you at all.

I don't want to, I'm not debating anything.

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'd 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 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 gonna 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 has to be in your Bible.

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 gonna take them a while to see it.

But once they see it, they're gonna see it on every page, every page of the Bible. You're gonna see that God is sovereign, not man, on every page of the Bible. You're gonna see that God is in control of who gets saved and when, not man.

You're gonna see that if you mess up in your technique of witnessing, it is not gonna 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 will raise it up at the end.

And you're not gonna 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.

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 been nice but I've 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, that 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 in these 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, we 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 a 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 might, 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. I've seen everybody at the end of the millennial kingdom. All right, and then 76 says, and thou child is 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 and to 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 prophesy 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.