God with Us

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Be Thou my vision, O Lord, of my heart.

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Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.

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If you guys want to get ahead of me, you can open to your Bibles to Luke chapter 1.

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As you guys get there, I failed to mention also one really important element, too, when

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I announced not forget to do so. We, as a church plant, have been growing and functioning and being blessed with you guys and your gifts.

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And I mean that sincerely. Just the people who come and serve and to greet people at the doors, to this ministry, to those who serve in children's ministry, to every single thing you do.

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If you participated in the thing we did to bless the high schoolers in Glendale to feed them.

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I mean, every one of your gifts are so necessary and meaningful to us. And so we've been growing ourselves as pastors and trying to organize all your gifts and everything else.

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So we have liked you guys coming early at 5 o 'clock. We've left it on the signs.

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We'd like you guys to be here to get to know each other. So we want to maintain that. Please come early and please hang out and get to know each other.

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And we usually said service starts about 5 .30, but it usually starts about 5 .40, 5 .45. But what we're going to do starting next week is officially really now start at 5 .30.

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So if you guys have been anticipating the 5 .40 time period, don't do that next week because we're starting at 5 .30.

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Sound good? So from now on, and get the word out too, we are going to make sure we pull everything together. We're organizing the schedule.

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So we actually do begin at 5 .30. So you guys know that. And A is starting at 5 .30. So if you're usually 10 minutes late, it's 5 .20

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for you. Okay? So if you guys would join me in prayer as we get into the message.

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Father, I come to you, Lord, humbly. I come to you as your servants, Lord, as your kids, as your slaves,

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Jesus. I come before you, Lord, to rejoice, to revel in, to delight in the truths surrounding you,

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God, coming into history. To redeem your people, to save them from their sins.

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And we come to you now, Lord, with a real burden at this moment. Because of a display before all of our eyes of just pure and utter fallenness.

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On display before the eyes of the whole world. And so we ask you to meet us in this place.

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Give us strength, Lord, to keep our eyes on you at this moment. Again, I just pray,

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God, by your spirit that you meet us in this place. Open the eyes of the blind.

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Break hard hearts. Give hearts of flesh. Give us understanding and give us delight in you.

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Pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So if you guys were here for the beginning of our

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Christmas messages. We love Christmas at Apology at Church. And we basically celebrate it every

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Sunday. Because we're always talking about God becoming a man to come redeem people. So that's a significant thing for us. It's kind of an odd thing.

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Christmas comes around and we're talking about a lot of the same things. Because that's just how awesome sauce it is.

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Okay? And I mean that sincerely. The whole year, that's all we're talking about. Is God becoming a man and dying for our sins.

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And rising from the dead to reconcile us to himself. And that's a core part of our message. It never changes and never gets old.

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It's always beautiful. That's unsearchable. We will never search out the beauty of that truth. God becoming a man to reconcile and redeem his people.

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You're never ever going to tap them out. You're never going to get to the end of that truth and go, Okay, I've had enough. It's no longer beautiful.

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As a matter of fact, the more you think about God splitting history. Taking on flesh to become a man. To reconcile sinners to himself.

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The more you think about that. The more you ponder it. Particularly in light of wicked events that unfold and unravel right before our very eyes.

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The more beautiful that truth becomes. The gospel doesn't ever get old to a believer. It only becomes bigger, more full, and more beautiful.

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And you get more bold. And you get more experienced in delighting in the truth surrounding the good news.

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So God becoming a man is a significant thing for us at all times here at this church. We're humbled by that truth.

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We love that truth. I told you guys last week that my family, we're known. We're known. We're known for a love for Christmas.

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We love Christmas. When my wife and I first started dating,

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I remember this distinctly. I had a little Toyota Paseo. What's up, Paseo? They still make those?

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Are those still around? Nope. Thank you very much. And I even specifically got the

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Paseo that was a stick shift. What's up? Not automatic. Stick shift. So I could pop it, make it go faster, squeal the tires in my

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Paseo. And I even, this tells you how awesome I was, is I even got the special grip for the stick shift, the clutch thing.

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I even got the special grip that was light. It was lighted. It was like neon lights. What? What? And my wife and I are dating.

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It's like July. I think it was like July. I think it was July. It was really, really hot. Wife gets in the car.

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This wasn't my wife at the time. We're dating. She's my wife now. What's up? I won. She gets in the car.

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We've got this lighted up little gear clutch in there. And I remember distinctly, my wife's in the car, and I popped in a

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CD. And it wasn't like boom, boom, boom. Nothing like that. No bass. It was

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Elvis Presley, If Every Day Were Just Like Christmas. What?

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And I remember my wife looked over at me, and she was like, what's this? She was like, why are you listening to this in July?

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I said, oh, you will begin to understand. And now my wife and I will have our kids in the car in July, and we'll be listening to Christmas music.

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That's how much we love Christmas. All right? And I love that song, If Every Day Were Just Like Christmas. Because you know what's amazing about that is just, and not to highlight something really silly, but just to talk about the truth that for Christians, I don't mean because the gifts, the presents, the beautiful trees, but for Christians, what we focus on in this time is we're celebrating collectively together in a bold way

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God splitting history. God the King bringing his kingdom to come reconcile sinners to himself.

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That's a significant thing. And if every day were like that, your life would change. And as a believer, I want to say this.

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Your life should be like that every single day. That should be something you're preaching to yourself every single day, that God became a man to save this wretch that I am.

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Christmas is significant because God enters history and split it. I mentioned something last week I want to highlight again.

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You can't get away from the significance of Christmas that God enters humanity and he splits history.

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I said this, that every atheist and agnostic on the planet today, when they write their emails or they fill out their checks, they are unavoidably stuck with the year 2012.

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And why is it 2012? Because our calendars have been irreversibly marked with God the

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King entering history to come and redeem his people. Did you know that? We often don't think about that, that the date 2012, the

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Mayans are wrong by the way, chill. The date 2012 is dated 2012 because history is divided into two sections by the

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Christian calendar. And there's inescapable realities associated with that. History was split when

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God entered it. And that's an awesome, awesome thing. It's a beautiful thing.

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But the significance of Christmas cannot be something that you just, you relegate to a season that we're in, to the beautiful lights and the presents and the trees and the 99 .9

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KPI, or whatever the channel is that has the amazing Christmas music on 24 hours a day. And you can't just have it just as significant for that reason.

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It's a significant thing because of what just happened this week. We all live surrounded by death and the shadow of death.

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And so the truth of Christmas is the truth about God fulfilling his promises, entering the world to once and for all make an end of sin, to reconcile sinners to himself, to finally put to death, death in his own death ultimately for his people, and to conquer it by rising from the dead.

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These are truths that will always be significant. We'll never out -learn it. We'll never beat it.

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We're never going to out -logic the situation. We're never going to have enough technology where we finally look back and go, oh, that's an irrelevant truth and message.

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This will always be relevant because our condition before God is always relevant. Having new gadgets and iPhones and computers and Facebook and ways to communicate and faster forms of transportation and all the fancy clothes we have has not resolved the problem of our wickedness and our sin.

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And Friday is a glaring example of that. The message of Christmas is the most important thing that you have to focus on, and not just at this time.

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It's the truth that you need to set your heart on at all moments, every second of your life, always.

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And if you don't delight in these truths, I'm going to call you to do that tonight, to once and for all turn your life to Christ, to this

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King of Glory, God entering history, to split it with his coming, to take death. So many things we need to talk about tonight, but I will at least back up a bit to last week's message if you weren't here.

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The beautiful message that I wanted to get across to us is something from Scripture. I tried as much as possible last week to stay in the text, and I did a lot of reading of the text for you guys last week.

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And I wanted to talk to you about anticipation. And the anticipation that I brought out was a tale of two prophets.

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Remember that? The tale of two prophets. And who were those prophets? Go ahead and give it to me.

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You can talk. John and Jesus. John and Jesus, right?

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You can feel free to answer. I will not hurt you. I promise, okay? No wrong answers. Just we'll get them out. John and Jesus, the tale of two prophets.

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And it talked about the building anticipation of the Messiah coming into the world. I talked about the fact that Jesus coming into the world was not some novel experience.

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It wasn't like the angel came in and said, Hey Mary, you're going to have a baby, virgin born, and Messiah is coming.

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And she was like, well that's odd. When did this whole thing come into play? You see, it was anticipation, anticipation, anticipation, building up, always getting ready for this moment where Messiah, Mashiach, was going to finally enter the world to bring to fulfillment all of God's promises.

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You see, the message that's going on here in the tale of two prophets is that God keeps his promises.

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You know, the thing that you're hearing constantly in social media and the questions going on in blogs around the world today is this question, where's

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God? That's the question. Where now is there God? It's a question that's constantly being asked in the world.

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And if you haven't gotten that challenge from an atheist, you will. And if you haven't asked that question yourself, you will at some point in your life.

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You're going to ask the question of Psalm 115 .3, Where now is there God? And the tale of two prophets that I brought up last week about what happens in the birth narratives of Jesus and Matthew, Mark and Luke and this beautiful story is really about this.

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The answer in Psalm 115 goes like this, Where now is there God? And here is the definitive answer from Scripture.

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It's the only one you want. It's the only one that will suffice. Here's the answer from God in Psalm 115.

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Our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. That's the message. And this pleasing pursuit of God was to fulfill his promises that he had promised to send the

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Messiah, the Deliverer, to save. And it comes with a tale of two prophets. The tale of two prophets begins with John the

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Baptist and then Jesus in fulfillment. And the beautiful thing, I think it was

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Cheryl, Luke's wife, that came to me afterwards and she said to me, I must have done a decent job because I had a pastor's wife come to me and say,

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I'd never heard it that way before. I was like, all right. Officially, all right. No, I'm just joking.

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It wasn't popping my collar. But it was an interesting thing that we don't really contemplate the truth surrounding the tale of two prophets that the anticipation building up to Mashiach was not something that, oh, he just enters the world and isn't that a neat thing?

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It was promises, promises, promises, anticipation, anticipation into fulfillment. And the beauty of last week was that the story of John the

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Baptist was something that was already promised. And I told you to look at Malachi chapter 4. It's the end of your

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Old Testament. Look at your Old Testament. Get to that last book and to the last chapter. And the last thing you're hearing before these years and years and years of silence,

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God speaking, speaking, speaking, and then quiet for hundreds of years.

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The last thing is that God is promising to send someone before Messiah. And that person that's going to come is

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Elijah. And you say, well, John the Baptist isn't Elijah. And Jesus says, yes, he was

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Elijah who was to come. Because what was Elijah known for in the Old Testament? He was known as the prophet of repentance, calling the people of God to repent and to turn back to God.

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And so the call and the promise was that this messianic figure was going to come, but not before first this other prophet came in the spirit and power of Elijah that was going to turn the hearts of the fathers and people back to God, that people were going to be called to repentance to prepare the way for the

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Lord who was to come. But the awesome thing was, and this is what's significant and really cool about the story, is that Zechariah and Elizabeth don't have any kids.

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The angel comes and tells Zechariah, you're going to have a baby. And it's the one that was promised to precede the Messiah. And his question is awfully silly if you think about it.

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You should have read his Bible. His question was, well, how am I going to do this when I'm old? And the angel said, well, now you're not going to be able to talk for that one.

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You should know your Bible, Zechariah. You should know what God did with an old couple named Sarah and Abraham who were too old to have kids.

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But you're not going to be able to talk, but this is who's coming. And Elizabeth conceives now, and she has this baby in her belly, and its anticipation is just growing.

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The anticipation is growing. The anticipation is growing, and it's continuing on from that revelation of the

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Old Testament. And now it's in a womb, and that womb is growing slowly, anticipation, anticipation.

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And all of a sudden, the angel comes now, Gabriel. I said very reliable source of information, by the way. Gabriel comes to Mary, and he tells this little girl, young woman, that you're the one,

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Mary. You're the one that's going to conceive and give birth. And Mary's like, I've never known a man. And that's like, that's right.

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Because you see, the Old Testament tells us the story in Genesis and in Isaiah that when Mashiach comes, when the

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Messiah comes, he's going to come not like you and I, with a mommy and a daddy.

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He's going to come via the woman. It's going to be, Genesis 3 says, the woman's seed that's going to deliver the death blow to Satan's head, but be wounded in the process.

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And then Isaiah says something very peculiar in Isaiah 7, 14, that the virgin's going to conceive, that's odd, and give birth to a child, and you will call his name

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Emmanuel. And now the angel comes to Mary and says, you're the one. And what's beautiful is anticipation, anticipation, and then

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Mary goes to her relative Elizabeth's house. And when she gets there, when she gets there, it says in the text, that the baby in Elizabeth's womb,

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John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus, leaps in the womb. And Elizabeth can't believe that the mother of her

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Lord has come to visit her. And then Mary breaks out in this awesome, awesome, beautiful, beautiful saying about God her

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Savior, how He's come to bring His kingdom. And the amazing thing is, is that you just see this anticipation.

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They're waiting, and they're waiting, and they're waiting, and all that's around us is darkness and death.

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You see, they had the same questions back then that you and I have. They saw death. They saw depravity.

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They saw poverty. They saw sickness. They saw disease. They saw betrayal. And they're asking the same questions.

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And God is constantly telling them, I'm coming, I'm coming. I'm gonna make an end of sin. I'm gonna bring you into reconciliation with me.

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I will remember your sins no more. And it's gonna be a virgin. And He's gonna come at this time. He's gonna die for sins and conquer death.

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And it's anticipation, anticipation, and then silence. And then now, little babies.

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Little babies forming in wombs, and they're next to each other. And it's so crazy to think about Mary and Elizabeth in the same house, cooking meals together, doing what ladies do together, hanging out, right?

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And they get these little babies brewing in their bellies, just growing and growing and growing in anticipation, in anticipation of what's coming next.

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So I want you to look with me now at the next part of the story. In Luke chapter 1, after this beautiful anticipation is now coming into fruition, it's getting ready to explode.

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In verse 57 of Luke chapter 1, So they motioned to his father to find out what he wanted him to be called.

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He asked for a writing tablet, and he wrote, His name is John. And they were all amazed.

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Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. This man had his mouth shut for nine months.

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He should have known. He should have trusted. God keeps His promises. He keeps His promises. That's what this story is about.

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People look at darkness all around them, and what we see here is this keeps His promises. Zechariah is asking questions.

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How do I know I can trust that? How do I know I can believe that? How do I know this is real? And the angel says to him,

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Well, you're going to shut up for nine months for that one, and you will know that it's real.

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God keeps His promises regardless if you believe it or not. But at the end of this time period, as the baby comes out, he says,

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His name is John. That's what I was told to call him. His name is John. All of a sudden, his tongue is loose. God keeps

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His promises despite your disbelief. But when he finally sees His promises come to fruition and he trusts

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God, he says, You call him John. His mouth is released and he begins praising God. Fear came on all those who lived around them, and all these things were being talked about throughout the hill country of Judea.

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All who heard about him took it to heart, saying, What then will this child become? For indeed, the

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Lord's hand was with him. Anticipation, anticipation, anticipation.

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Here's the baby. Here's the forerunner of Mashiach as promised and on time. Then his father,

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Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. And I want you to hear this. Listen to these most important words.

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Listen. Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and provided redemption for His people.

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He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, just as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets in ancient times.

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Salvation from our enemies and from the clutches of those who hate us. He has dealt mercifully with our fathers and remembered

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His holy covenants. The oath that He swore to our father Abraham, He has given us the privilege since we have been rescued from our enemies' clutches to serve

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Him without fear in holiness and righteousness in His presence all our days. And child, you will be called a prophet of the

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Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give

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His people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our

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God's merciful compassion, the dawn from on high will visit us to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

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And the message that Luke has afterwards is this, the child grew up and became spiritually strong and He was in the wilderness until the day of the public appearance to Israel.

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Anticipation brewing and fulfilled now. And I want to highlight something that you need to see from this text.

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A couple things. If you want to go with me to the text, I want you to have your eyes on it and I want you to walk with me through this.

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You need to walk through the text with me. Notice in verse 48 that the praise going on to God here is because there's redemption for His people.

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Did you hear that? That's not a small thing. It's not a trivial matter that God brings redemption, that He removes people from the slavery that they're in and He comes to redeem them.

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That's no small issue. The peculiar thing is not that God... Okay, let me say this.

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The peculiar thing is not events like Friday. You see, Friday was an event that you need to think about.

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We always wonder, we look at something like that and we say, well, how could something like this happen? And if you understand the biblical foundations, the real first response, biblically speaking, people say

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He was crazy. The man who came in there with a gun, he had mental problems, he was deranged. No.

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He was wicked and he was fallen and he was a sinner. And this

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Friday was an element of a moment where the world got to see what is truly in our hearts at all times.

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It was a moment of God unrestraining His hand and us seeing what was truly there.

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And watch this. Those moments are displays of what is always in the heart of humanity.

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Destruction, misery, darkness, selfishness, evil.

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And so when you see something like this, praise the Lord because He has visited and provided redemption for His people.

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That is the peculiar thing. Not that evil is in the world, but that God would bring redemption is the peculiar thing.

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Why would a holy God, whom we have offended and we offend every day of our lives, why would He visit us with redemption?

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That is the most beautiful, glorious thing you could ever contemplate. That the God that we've offended chases down rebels and provides redemption for His people.

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He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David. How awesome is that? Listen. Horn of salvation in David's house.

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What's that saying? Check it out. The Bible promised a lot of stuff of Messiah. Who He is. When He's coming.

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Yes, when He's coming. What He's going to accomplish. His death and resurrection. Where He'd be born. All the details necessary to know

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Jesus are there, but a specific one is His genealogy. King David's line was going to produce

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Mashiach, the Messiah. And what this praises now from Zechariah is God has visited us now.

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He's brought redemption. He's brought this horn of salvation and Messiah and He's done it in the house of David as promised.

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God keeps His promises. I told you at the beginning people ask the question where now is their God? And let me just tell you this.

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He's been eminent all the time. There's never been a time in history where God hasn't kept His promises.

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Where is God? Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever He pleases. And the peculiar thing is that He brings redemption and that He keeps those promises.

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And you have to see that's what's happening here. Just as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets in ancient times. If you're new to church can

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I encourage you with something? There's a radio episode that I did fairly recently on Redemption Radio.

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Just look it up. Just Google search it. I think it might even be on our webpage. And I did a message. I did two radio shows about an hour each.

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I did two radio shows on how we know Jesus is Messiah. How we actually know that. And I take us through the

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Old Testament on these radio programs going to all these verses showing that Jesus is most definitely the Messiah.

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And the most amazing thing here is that watch the proclamation. Look at the praise. His redemption has come. He's raised up a horn of salvation in the house of David just as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets in ancient times.

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You want to know where God is? He's imminent. He's never left.

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He's the God that keeps His promises. And the praise coming from Zechariah right now is this God. This God has kept

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His promises and He showed up mightily now. The anticipation has been building up and this is that moment where we can say it's here.

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It's here. Verse 72. He has dealt mercifully with our fathers and remembered

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His holy covenant, the oath that He swore to our father Abraham. Another example. Watch this. This is important. Another example of God doing whatever

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He pleases is that He made a promise to this guy named Abraham that in Abraham's line and in his seed

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He was going to bless the whole world. Not that Abraham deserved that. Not that we deserve it. But the beauty is that God condescends.

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He condescends and He promises Abraham through your seed I'm going to bless the entire world. And man, guys, this has been a long time coming.

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And here it is. And Zechariah's in praise now. This is little John, the forerunner of Mashiach.

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Redemption has come. God has raised up a horn of salvation in the house of David. Here it is.

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This is that moment as promised in all the prophets. And guess what? I like them apples.

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That promise to Abraham is happening. It's happening. God is keeping His covenant.

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He's keeping His promises. That's what's going on here. But I want to show you this. Verse 77. To give

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His people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. The fundamental need that you and I have that is inescapable is this.

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We are sinners before a holy God. Yes, God is love. He is limitlessly love.

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He is good. He is merciful. He is kind. His love endures forever. His mercies are new every morning.

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In Him is light. There's no darkness at all. He never changes. He's that kind of God. He's the kind of God that crushes

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His own son for sinners. He's that kind of God. But He's also good and we're not. And so this is significant and massive that God brings salvation through the forgiveness of our sins.

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You want to know what all of this is about? It's about Jesus bringing salvation to His people.

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It's about forgiveness of sins because of His merciful compassion.

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I have to weave in what happened Friday to today's message because it's highly significant. It has to be done.

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I don't think that I'd be a faithful pastor if I didn't. You think about what happened on Friday and the wickedness there.

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We think about the darkness and the sin surrounding that. We think about the slaughter of little children. And I hope you cried.

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And I hope you were broken. And I hope you still are. But we look at situations like that and the world looks in and says, how could such wretchedness dwell in the heart of a man?

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How could a person do such a wicked, wicked thing? And I want to say to you, yes, and more fury is in God's heart over that than can ever, ever be brought to bear on ours.

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But I want to say something significant. You won't understand the message of Christmas or this message that I'm giving right now or the praise given in this prayer to God if you don't understand that you're as guilty before a holy

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God as that man that committed that horrendous act. Yes, there are greater consequences and yes, the degree is greater.

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But the significance of Christmas is that that God we've all offended came to meet us, to kiss earth, to split history, to redeem wicked wretches like me.

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This message is everything. It's all that matters. And why?

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Look at the rest. Because of God's merciful compassion, verse 78, the dawn from on high will visit us to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death.

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Isn't that just what, isn't that just what highlights what happened on Friday for us?

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Look at the text. Nothing's changed. Nothing is new under the sun, is there? Look at the praise coming from Zechariah to God in this moment.

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He's talking about forgiveness and salvation. What for? To shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death.

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That was true 2 ,000 years ago and it's true right now. Stop for a second and think about it.

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Does your heart break when you finally reel back from all the blur and all the distractions of life?

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Oh, we're good at it. You know what

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I do? I'm gonna confess something I never told anybody. I haven't even told my wife this. Sometimes when

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I drive home, I stop by cemeteries. You might think, that's kooky.

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No, I do. Sometimes I stop by cemeteries to get my perspective right. I'll drive home and I'll pull over to a cemetery and I'll just pull in and I'll stand there and I'll just walk around and I'll look at graves.

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Not as a morbid thing, I do it to repent. I do it to remember that my life is a vapor and I do it to remember how quick it's over and I do it to remind myself constantly of the fact that in this world we live in the shadow of death and we're so, we are so good.

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We're masters at hiding it. We don't wanna see it. We wanna over quick.

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We want the graveyards and their special place with the gates closed. We don't wanna pay attention to it. We don't wanna look at it when we drive by it.

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We never wanna remember the fact that all of us live in the shadow of death and then all of a sudden on Friday you wake up and you turn the news on and you hear about a wicked man that walked into a school and slaughtered little babies and then death gets put right back in front of you again.

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That all of us have to recognize constantly you live in a fallen world. You live in the very shadow of death and the glory of Christmas, the glory of this gospel is just this moment that that God, that God that we've offended and we've run away from and we've thrown our fists up at, that God comes to chase rebels and bring salvation and forgiveness, that that God has continued to keep his promises even when we've never kept ours.

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That's the glory of the gospel and that's the glory of Christmas. It's not just about the light and this moment and the fact that we happen to all be celebrating at the same time.

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It is that it's the core of life. It's all that matters and you could say, oh, that's a good helpful message and that's exciting and you may try to walk away and say that was nice and try to forget about it but listen, at some point, a

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Friday's gonna come again where you turn the news on and it's something else that reminds you that you live in the shadow of death and the only hope that you and I will ever have is this horn of salvation, redemption in him.

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It's the only thing that matters. It's all that matters to guide our feet into a way of peace.

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Okay, so, fulfillment now is happening. Praise is now erupting out of people's mouths.

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The babies have been coming in anticipation, anticipation, and anticipation and now here's John. But we're gonna go backwards for a second because we seem to forget even something else.

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There was also Jesus. He was there. Elizabeth, little baby, leaping in the womb. I told you last week that means

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John was a charismatic. He was leaping in the womb so it's good to dance. David danced naked before the

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Lord. Try to wrap your mind around that. That was like around other Christians too so don't you dare. Don't even.

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Then here's Mary with Elizabeth and you got these two little babies. The one that's the forerunner, the one that's

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Jesus, they're cousins. Jesus and John the Baptist, cousins and they're there and they're growing and you gotta think about something very strange.

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We tend to look at the Bible and we get airy with it. We get foggy with it. We read them as just as stories and we stop thinking about the fact that this is real, tangible, earthy stuff.

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Jesus met history and this is real people, real flesh and blood and you got a little girl and the angel comes and says, you're the one, virgin born.

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That's the baby Messiah. You're the one, you're the one and then she comes to Joseph. Joseph, I'm pregnant and it's the

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Holy Spirit. Now we all know how babies get here, right?

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And so you gotta think in that time period to be betrothed to somebody was not like our engagement. I mean honestly, someone can get engaged in our culture and put the ring on and a day later you can say, ah, change our mind.

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No big thing. Walk away from it and I've actually seen that. Got the ring. I'm getting married and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone and then it's gone

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So, this is coming from Mary, a very difficult apology she wrote.

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close to Joseph. She would say that she loved him so much anymore in the Holy Language.

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She said that he promised Jesus to keep you. and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.

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That was nice of him. Joseph, I'm pregnant, and I've never been with another man.

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It's the Messiah. He's coming. Joseph's like, oh, he's wrestling with this. He's thinking, this has been hard.

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This is hard. I'm in love with you, and you say you're pregnant, but I know how babies get here. I know what it looks like.

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I know how that happens. And so he's a righteous man, and he tries to put her away privately. What's that mean in that culture?

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Listen, it was a civil sanction. God so values human beings and life and family that, listen, the civil sanctions that he gives in the

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Old Testament is that if you're a person that engages in sexual disharmony, you're a heterosexual that commits adultery, that was considered a civil sanction of even death because the destruction of the family was seen as a very unraveling of society itself.

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And God took that so seriously. He said, what's the penalty for that? Unrepentant? Person's there, they get death.

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And so what Joseph does now with Mary coming to him is says, I'll put her away privately. That's preserving her life, for one, and not disgracing her.

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And so what happens is the angel has to come to Joseph and explain to him, watch this, verse 20.

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It says, but after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take

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Mary as your wife because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to name him

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Yeshua. Your text might say Jesus, but the word is

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Yeshua. Jesus' name in Hebrew is Yeshua, and that's so significant. Joshua is his name in Hebrew.

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And it means the one who saves. The angel says, you shall call him

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Yeshua. He's the one who saves. That should identify Jesus always. He's the one who saves.

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Now watch this. Because he will save his people from their sins.

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The angel announcing Jesus, it's from the Holy Spirit, and you are to call him Yeshua. Let his name shout out what he's about.

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His name is the one who saves, for he will save his people from their sins. How do you like that?

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I want you to just take a step back as a Christian today, and I want you to look at that. Listen to what the angel says to Joseph.

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You shall call his name Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins. Do you have any question at all?

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If you trust in Christ that you're going to make it, you shouldn't, because he's a perfect Savior. He is a perfect Savior.

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And the angel says, identify him as the one who saves, for he will, not maybe or possibly, he will save his people from their sins.

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That's guaranteed. If you're in Christ, that's a guaranteed thing. He does not lose anyone given to him by the

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Father. He will never lose you. His name means Savior, and he's a perfect one. Forever.

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Listen, verse 22. Now, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets.

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Now, this is awesome. And you've got to stop for a second, take a deep breath, and you have got to let this set in your heart as one of the most amazing things ever.

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The angel is telling Joseph, listen, don't worry, chill. It's cool.

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Yeshua, he'll save his people from their sins. And then the angel does something really awesome. He doesn't just give his testimony, it's okay,

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Joseph. He says, Isaiah said this. And what does he do?

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He goes back to the Old Testament. The angel tells Joseph something he should have already known. Isaiah chapter 7 says this.

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See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel.

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And you might be thinking to yourself, I thought his name was Jesus or Yeshua or something.

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Emmanuel is Hebrew for God with us. A virgin giving birth is an odd thing.

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It's even more strange that it's God. You hear what I just said?

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A virgin giving birth is an odd thing, but it's not as crazy and as astonishing as it being

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God. I want to just talk to you about something that is the most significant part of the whole discussion.

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We have to consider what it means for God to be in a womb. Have you thought about that?

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There's only one God. God says, there's none before and none after. He's the first, the last, the beginning, and the end.

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He's a self -existent God. People will say, Richard Dawkins is famous for this.

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Famous atheist. He'll say something like this. All right, you say God created the universe. I want to know who created

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God. John Lennox has an awesome answer to that. That's false God. We don't believe in created gods.

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The universe is here. You say God created it. I want to know who created God. No, he's not that kind of God. He's the eternal, from eternity into eternity, everlasting, alpha, omega, first, and last, beginning, and end.

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He's the only one. He's a self -existent God. No one counsels him. No one can say to him, what are you doing?

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Ultimately, he is God. He's the very God -ness of God. He is self -existent, not dependent and eternal.

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And the significant thing is that God, the holy God, the one that we've offended, the one that we run from every day of our lives, even when he causes your heart to beat at this moment, the one that we've cursed at at times of our lives, even when he causes rain to fall on us, we still throw our fists up at him.

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There are times when God causes our hearts to beat while we have a needle in our arms. That God.

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That God penetrates humanity, and when he comes, he comes into the womb of a very, very young girl.

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And here you have the creator of the cosmos, the one who created the stars is now underneath them.

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The one who actually took dust and formed a human being and breathed into it the breath of life, those humans ran from him, and he jumps into humanity, and he covers himself in flesh in the womb of a young woman.

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That God penetrates humanity, and he doesn't just come walking among us. He first comes in the lowliest, most defenseless place, the womb of a young woman.

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The one who creates the animals, when he's born, is surrounded by him.

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He made the animals, and when he comes into the world, he's as lowly as they are. And the most significant thing is the one that we've offended actually chases us down.

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I want you to just consider the life of Jesus for a second, and that God becoming man, what that displays. Think about the fact that when

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God becomes man, he displays it. He walks on water. He heals sick people. He gives sight to blind people.

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He has a wisdom that's unparalleled in history. Even people who hate Jesus have to say, yeah, but he's pretty awesome.

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Richard Dawkins was talking about, you know, he was talking about Jesus, and he was talking about how he doesn't like Christians, and he hates Christianity, and religion is stupid, and it's dumb, and everything else, but Jesus is pretty cool.

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He's a pretty cool guy. Even Gandhi hated Christians, did not like the message of Christians, but said,

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I do like that Jesus. I just don't like his Christians. You can't get away from his wisdom. It's unparalleled.

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He could search people's hearts. They'd be thinking stuff, and he'd answer them before they actually said it. He'd walk on water.

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A little girl would be dead. He'd raise her from the dead. A little boy would be dead. He'd raise him from the dead. Jesus knew the future before it happened.

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Jesus is surrounded by death. God kissed the earth, and when God the King came, he split history.

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And the amazing thing is is that when God came, he came in the most humble of circumstances. He doesn't just burst into history and start walking among us with all the pomp and all the circumstance and the red carpets.

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Jesus comes as a baby in a womb, raised in Nazareth in the most humble of circumstances.

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And then when this king comes, he doesn't get the bulletproof glass and the podium with the thousands of followers shouting, when he comes as king, he comes lowly on a little donkey.

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And then when he comes to do his definitive work, his definitive work was to die, to receive death in your place.

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If you are here today and you belong to him, you've trusted in him, he came as that baby to die, to taste death.

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And I want the team to come up for a second. I have more to say, but I don't want, this is not a moment for us to sing because this is not a worship song so much as it is a song that I want you to reflect on the truth about what

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I just said. God penetrating humanity, taking on flesh.

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Again, this is not a moment necessarily to sing because it's not really a worship song to God, but it is something to think about and reflect on about these truths.

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♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

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To address the story of a wicked man.

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You all know the story. There's a story of a person with a heart so dark that they would imagine that it is acceptable or something at all necessary in any way to take the lives of precious babies.

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What kind of heart does a person have to have? It's a fallen heart.

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But when you consider what must it taste like, what must it be like to be chased down by a man who only has destruction and misery in his path and his aim is to end your life.

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We look at that as people and we say, where is God? Where is

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God in a moment like this where you can have a wretch, a wicked, dark man that would in his heart want to slaughter innocent children?

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What does God have to say about that in a world like this where those kinds of things happen?

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What kind of God is this? Is the question that will often arise. I was talking to an atheist friend of mine.

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He's been a friend of mine since I was in high school. We had these discussions long ago. But I said something on my

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Facebook. I post and I want to encourage you guys to be careful what you post. But yes, do talk about this.

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Christians have to have the answers. You need to be speaking up and be careful. And I did say something.

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I said, I want to humbly suggest something. If you want to know just how eminent

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God is and how obvious he is to every single one of us all over the world, then count the tears of your atheist friends who are grieving over Friday.

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That's how obvious and eminent God is to every single one of us. Because the atheist will go along all of his life he'll be shouting out,

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No, there is no purpose, no meaning. It's just blind, pitiless indifference. We are all just meaty protoplasm on the surface of the cosmos.

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We're just stardust. This is what they say. I'm using their terminology. I was on the radio with Dan Barker doing a discussion and a debate.

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He's one of the most famous atheists in America. Richard Dawkins says he is the most famous atheist in America.

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And on my show I said to him, I said, what's wrong with stardust bumping into stardust? He said, ultimately nothing. It doesn't matter.

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Cosmically, it doesn't matter. I said, one thing that interests me, Dan, about your atheism is that sometimes you're very honest.

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You say human beings are no more than cosmic broccoli or ants. And he said, that's right. And that's not a derogatory thing.

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That's a compliment. But what's amazing is that the atheist who professes disbelief in this

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God and says that we evolved from a simpler biological organism who climbed out of the slime to fish, to apes, to us, that that atheist will shed tears when an ex -fish destroys other ex -fish.

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He can't live consistently with his atheism because he's an image -bearer of God. An atheist or not, every image -bearer of God shed tears over Friday.

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But listen, if you don't have God, what happened on Friday was just the scattering of protoplasm. But we know better.

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Amen? But I have to ask this other question. Where is

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God? Where is He when a man with a wicked heart devises a plan to slaughter children?

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Where is God? That must be asked. And I want to tell you where God is in His plan in history when you have a man who is wicked that slaughters innocent children.

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To see it, you have to go to Matthew 2. This is all in the birth narrative of Jesus.

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Matthew chapter 2. So He assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the

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Mashiach, the Messiah, would be born. In Bethlehem of Judea, they told Him, because this is what was written by the prophet.

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And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah, because out of you shall come a leader who will shepherd

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My people Israel. Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said,

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Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report back to me so that I too can go worship him. After hearing the king, they went on their way, and there it was, the star they had seen in the east.

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It led them until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed beyond measure.

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Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and falling to their knees, they worshipped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented

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Him with gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.

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By the way, the story that I was telling you about a murderous person who would take the life of innocent babies, I was not talking about Connecticut.

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I'm telling you this story. After they were gone, an angel of the

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Lord suddenly appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Get up, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.

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For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt.

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He stayed there until Herod's death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled out of Egypt, I called my son.

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Then Herod, when he saw that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage. He gave orders to massacre all the male children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under.

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In keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men, then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled.

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A voice was heard in Ramah weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be consoled because they were no more.

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You want to know where God is in the story of humanity where wicked men devise plans to slaughter children?

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God plunges into that story. You say,

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Where is God in moments like this? He's about redemption.

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Where is God? God is 2 ,000 years ago taking on flesh, having a wicked evil man devise a plan to slaughter children, and Jesus narrowly escaping.

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And it's only because of the plan of God. God's plan was bigger, not that Jesus would die in that slaughter, but that Jesus would go to a tree to be slaughtered for you.

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Where is God? God is entering into humanity as a child. That's why

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I told my wife,

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Listen, this will be hard to do. As a

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Christian, you have every right to grieve, and you should, but you don't grieve as those without hope because this story is about God who became a baby, who narrowly escaped death, a man who would slaughter babies.

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He entered into humanity. And yours, you and I have a hope in this

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God. And when you look around us, the shadow of death that we live in, this is a story of that God who took death for us.

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Where is God in this story of death? He's taking it. He's our only hope.

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It's been a rough weekend for me. Friday was that. I'm trying to prepare this message.

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And then yesterday, I had to go to the funeral of a baby who died. And I think about this sovereign moment that God's brought together in my own life personally.

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And on Friday, I'd be looking at these beautiful, precious babies whose lives were robbed from them by a wicked man.

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Then I'd be sitting in a church on a Saturday morning while they carried a baby in a box. And as a

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Christian, you have every basis and every reason to cry and weep.

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But as I watched them take this baby out yesterday in a box who died just before being delivered,

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I thought about the utter brokenness of a baby first, and then the coldness and the defeat of death.

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And I thought about the fact that God knows both. That's what it's all about.

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We have to reflect on this story. You will not escape it.

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You will not get away from it. It will come up in your life. As much as you try to push it down, this story will come up.

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And I have to call you to something now. If you are in this room and you don't know Christ, the call is to come to him in repentance and faith.

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Turn from sin, turn from darkness to this God, and come be reconciled to God.

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He lived sinlessly, he died for sinners, and he rose from the dead. Be reconciled to God. If you're a believer in this room today, don't waste

01:00:02

Friday. Don't waste it. Moments like this pop up in our lives, and God opens our eyes, he peels our eyelids back for us to look.

01:00:13

If you're in this room and you are a believer, and you've been indifferent, or you've been holding on to something that has been your

01:00:21

God, functionally, for the moment, this is the night for you to repent.

01:00:27

Come be reconciled to God and renewed. This is not just a

01:00:35

Christmas message to get everyone excited, and just motivational speech.

01:00:42

This is a moment for all of us as a church to repent, to come to God, to rest in him, to turn from our sin.

01:00:57

I'm going to invite you to do something that I don't always do. I'm going to have us do communion, but I'm not going to do it before...

01:01:13

I'm going to give you guys a few minutes. I'm going to offer you guys the opportunity to come to God in repentance.

01:01:21

And I don't want any music right now. No music, no worship right now. This is just us quiet before God, thinking through all of the truths that we've just reflected on from Scripture.

01:01:32

I'm going to give you guys an opportunity as a church to get on your knees before God and to come to him in renewal with no music, no nothing.

01:01:39

And I just want to leave you before the Lord before you do any music or any communion. I just want to leave you as a church before God to respond to this message.