Good morning.
How are y'all doing today?
You know when there's hugs and hellos going on, we could wait for that.
That's a good thing.
If this is your first time joining us here at Hosanna in our sanctuary or if you're joining us online for the first time,
we want to say welcome to all of you.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
I am Pastor Nathan and as this is the beginning of Christmas week,
we're going to be taking a short break from our study in Genesis and really looking at the birth of Christ.
You know, some of the strangest, most unusual births and pregnancies on record are recorded by the Guinness Book of Records
and I looked up a few of those just to see what has happened over the time that we've been tracking.
And so the largest baby ever born, 28 inches long, 22 pounds, and both the baby and the mom survived.
Smallest baby ever born, 9.4 inches long, 11.3 ounces.
Baby was 108 days premature and survived.
The most babies born to one mom over her entire lifetime, 69.
And that is not 69 labors, however, because this particular mom had 16 pairs of twins,
seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets.
She did not sleep ever, yeah.
Most babies born at one time by a single mother in a single birth, 8.
The longest labor, and this is from the point of going into labor to the birth of the child,
75 days.
And the oldest mother on record to give birth, she was seven days short of turning 67 years old.
You know, it's pretty amazing, yeah.
There's some interesting details and stats and records and stuff revolving around births,
but above all of these strange and interesting pregnancies and births,
the record for the most unusual birth ever is Jesus Christ, right?
We're going to look at the details of his birth this morning,
but we start with this simple understanding that the birth of Jesus Christ was not just another birth among humanity.
It wasn't just another human baby being born.
His birth was unique. It was very special.
It was a birth that affected all of human history.
And for those of you that know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it has affected your life forever.
Why? Because of who he was and what he did.
And so as we're entering into this season and Christmas is just in a few days,
we want to remember the uniqueness of this birth because it's the uniqueness of the birth
that matters with everything we know about it.
Every effect it's had in our life revolves around the fact that it was a very truly unique birth.
And this season, especially as we're going to be getting together with family and friends and possibly coworkers,
there's a lot of people out there that don't know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
And we have the opportunity to share with them this season, to share with them the hope that the birth of Jesus,
it wasn't just Jesus brought, it wasn't just about the trees and the gifts and the reindeers and the wise men and frosty and all those things.
No, it was about salvation.
It was about hope coming into the world for the first time
and the only time necessary because he changed everything. Amen?
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much, God, that we get to celebrate this every year.
Lord, to look at your birth and what that meant, God, it was you, the God Almighty,
God of the universe above and beyond all things.
You became one of us.
And Lord, I think most of us know that's not necessarily a glorious thing.
But God, you set aside your divinity to come in the form of a servant in the likeness of humanity.
God, that then you would live showing us what your intention is for human life.
Lord, that you would then die our death penalty, paying the price for our sin,
that you would then rise from the dead, God, defeating the power of death in the grave.
Lord, your birth changed everything.
It's because you were born, you were able to live and die.
It's because you were born as one of us, Lord, your word tells us that you understand everything we go through.
You understand every trial, every temptation, Lord, because you went through it as well.
And yet, God, you still look at us with all of our mess and tell us you love us.
And you extend the free gift of salvation to all who would call upon your name.
God, we can't do anything but glorify you and praise you and worship you for that.
And so, Lord, that's what we want to do now.
We ask, Lord, that you would be blessed by your people, praising you.
God, that you would bless us today through your word and encourage us.
Lord, we just, we're speechless really, Lord, when it comes to what you did for us.
God, we thank you.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, well, we are going to be looking at the birth of Christ as I was sharing with you earlier.
And, you know, the birth of Christ has so many unique elements to it.
There's so many aspects to the birth that are really special, that are unlike any other birth that has ever happened in history.
And one of those things is the timing of his birth.
In Galatians chapter 4 verse 4, Paul writes, when the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law.
You know, we always say during Christmas, when Jesus came into the world, hope came into the world.
Because prior to Christ, there was no hope.
After Christ, there is no hope without Christ.
People were mired in their sin, dead in their sin, living lives of hopelessness with no point, no end but the judgment of God.
Now God had created a covenant that the Israelites followed in their temples and in their religious observance.
But when Jesus came, it was the final hope, the once for all hope that mankind needed for his sin.
Now Paul said there, it came at the time of completion.
That's when the birth of Jesus arrived, at the time of completion.
Now what that phrase simply means is that the birth of Jesus came exactly when the time was right.
Have you ever thought about why Jesus was born when he was born?
Like why wasn't he born in the beginning?
Why wasn't he born right after the fall? That would have been a great time, right?
Mankind introduced sin into the world, boom, Messiah is born.
Put your faith in me all is well.
But no, it didn't happen then.
We're all in this prophecy that one of her offspring in the future would be the one to crush Satan's head.
But it was not until this time that Jesus was born into this world.
Now there are a number of reasons as I was saying and one of those is because at the time Jesus was born,
it was exactly the right time spiritually in the world.
You see at the time of Jesus' birth, there was a spiritual hunger that had been developing in Israel,
a longing and a looking forward to their Messiah that they had been doing for a long time.
The Jews had been looking forward to their Messiah for generations at this point.
And so the time was right within the people of the Jewish people.
And then the time was also right during the secular cultures because there's a lot of evidence in histories and stuff
that tell us that during the time of Jesus, even secular citizens of Rome were getting burnt out
on the dead paganism that they were following.
There were a lot of people saying these gods never speak to us, they never do anything, they don't answer prayers.
Like this is lame.
And a lot of people, secular people were turning to the monotheistic Judaism that existed in Israel
because they spoke of a one true God that was something different than what they were getting from their false religions.
And so a lot of Gentiles at that time were becoming, they're called proselytes, they were converting to the Jewish religion.
And so this whole time and place of false religions all over the world and then the Jewish religion was creating a hunger among the people.
It was exactly the right time culturally because at the time of Jesus' birth, it really was a scenario of,
since the first time since the Tower of Babel, the whole world really had a common language.
It was Greek. Everybody spoke Greek.
The Roman Empire had spread to every extent of the known world and Greek was a language that was spoke all over the place.
Yes, people had local languages still, they had their own dialects and stuff, but they also spoke Greek everywhere.
It's kind of like English today, right?
Everybody has their native languages, but most places of the world you go, people know English.
It's kind of looked at as the common language of the planet.
And during Jesus' time, the fact that there was a unified or one language that everybody spoke at the time
created a scenario where people can go from India all the way to the farthest west side of the Empire of Rome
and still communicate ideas, still communicate truths, still communicate philosophies,
still could share knowledge with one another in a common language.
It was also the right time politically because at that time we know that Rome controlled the known world
and despite the oppressiveness of Rome and the debauchery of Rome,
the Roman Empire did bring a unification or a connectedness to the known world at that time.
You see, there was this thing called Roman Peace, Pax Romana, that essentially was the fact that Rome had conquered everybody
and so Rome controlled everything.
So there was economic growth and there was military stability and the cultures and the arts
and all these things were flourishing at the time.
But the most important thing that was there is because Rome controlled everything,
they wanted their empire to be connected and so they built about 250,000 miles of roads.
I don't know if you've seen some of those memes that are going around today where they say,
hey, we discovered this Roman road that's still intact and here's the Roman or here's the road in my town
that has potholes all over it, right?
It's like these roads from thousands of years ago are still intact.
Now, back in the Roman times, 50,000 miles of all of that was actually paved roads and so the entire empire was connected.
So what that meant is at the birth of Christ, it was exactly the right time for this good news to come into the world
because at that time it could be shared everywhere in one common language that people would understand.
He was born in a relative time of peace where there wasn't warfare and battle tearing everything apart.
Instead, there was a peace, a forced peace in many places that provided accessibility
where people could walk, travel from India all the way to the west side of the known world
and get there without having to worry about all the dangers.
Rome had checkpoints set up all over their empire to protect travelers on the road
because it protected commerce, it protected economy.
And so when Jesus came into the world, the time had come to completion.
It was a time for the Messiah and the Savior and the one true God to come.
The world was in a place where it was accessible, where the good news can be shared without confusion or misunderstanding.
And then when he came into the world, Jesus gave us, or God gave us three things through the birth of Christ
that Isaiah the prophet spoke of 700 years before the birth of Jesus.
In Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 it says this,
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel.
Isaiah is one of the great prophets of Israel.
He is actually quoted in the New Testament more than any other Old Testament prophet.
And so he gave us this prophecy here about the birth.
Now, what he told us here is that the Lord will give you a sign, the virgin will conceive, have a son.
That there was this child born and it would be a sign.
It would be a mark, it would be a notification.
And that's what the word means, a token or a signal, if you will.
The word also means miracle.
And a miracle would be considered a sign, right?
If you see a miracle, you're like, whoa, that's a sign that something supernatural has happened.
Well, the birth of Jesus was God showing the world a miraculous notification
that something significant had happened.
Namely, that God was fulfilling the promise he made to Eve all the way back in the garden.
That promise was here.
The nature of Jesus' birth was fulfilling prophecy.
And it was fulfilling prophecy so that God would, or people would know,
that God is fulfilling what he promised to fulfill.
Now, Matthew, when he was writing about the birth of Christ,
he links what was happening in his time, the birth of Jesus, to this prophecy of Isaiah.
He says in Matthew 1, 22,
Now, all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.
See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel,
which is translated, excuse me, God is with us.
Now, to get some understanding of the background of this prophecy
and why it's significant that it applies to the birth of Jesus,
is when Israel gave this prophecy,
the kingdom of Israel had already been split into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.
And so the northern kingdom was called Israel, the southern kingdom was called Judah,
and Judah was ruled at the time of Isaiah's prophecy by a man named King Ahaz,
and he was the one leading the nation of Judah in the south.
Now, at the time that King Ahaz was leading Judah,
there was a lot of pressure militarily on his kingdom,
a lot of pressure politically on his kingdom,
there were a lot of threats coming at him, seemingly from every direction.
Well, two of those threats were the nations that were directly north of him,
the northern Israel kingdom, and then above that was the kingdom of the Syrians,
which was known as Aram at the time.
They were starting to join forces to defeat an even bigger threat,
which was the Assyrian Empire that was coming against the lands where they occupied.
They had gone down to King Ahaz, both Israel and Syria,
went down to King Ahaz and said,
hey, can you join forces with us to fight against Assyria?
King Ahaz said, nope, I don't want to mess with that, they're buff, they will wipe us out.
And so Israel and Syria said, fine, then we're just going to attack you,
install our own king in Judah, and then we'll get your help that way.
So now King Ahaz was panicked, he was worried,
he was just wondering what is going to happen, how does he deal with this,
and so what he did to solve the problems, he sent a bribe to the Assyrian king and said,
hey, can you wipe out Syria and Israel for me so that my nation is safe?
At that moment, God sent in the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz.
And what Isaiah said to him is, God is telling you, King Ahaz,
don't worry about Israel, don't worry about Syria, trust me,
they're not going to be a problem for you, there's going to be no destruction in your future.
And then he says, in fact, they won't even exist as nations in the near future
because Assyria is going to conquer them and take them captive.
And then the Lord says this interesting thing to King Ahaz through Isaiah,
if you want confirmation that what I'm telling you is true, ask me for a sign.
Now God doesn't often do that, he often says, trust me, right?
And then it's actually in the New Testament stated that those who seek a sign are missing the point, right?
They're lacking faith because we have to have these things proved,
but in this instance, God is actually telling King Ahaz, ask me for a sign.
It could be anything in heaven, it could be anything under the earth,
anything you want, I will give a sign to you to prove that what I'm telling you is true.
Well King Ahaz responds to Isaiah very piously, very religiously,
and he's like, oh no, no, no, I'm not going to test the Lord, I'm not going to do that.
And what he really meant was that I don't trust the Lord.
And we see that because instead of trusting the Lord, he sent a bribe to Assyria already,
trying to handle it his own way.
And Isaiah then tells him, the Lord is telling you, this is the Nathan translation, whatever,
even though you won't ask for one, God is going to give you a sign anyway.
And it's not just going to be a sign that God is going to take care of your problems,
it's not just a sign that God is going to protect you, that you will find salvation in him,
it's going to be a sign to the entire house of David, everybody here in Judea and Jerusalem,
it's going to be a miraculous sign that is going to deal with everybody's ultimate problem, sin.
And he says, what that sign's going to be, a virgin is going to get pregnant,
give birth to a son, and he will be named Emmanuel.
Now Matthew translated that Emmanuel for us and said, it means God is with us.
That's how you're going to know the Savior has come.
That's how you know I'm fulfilling the promise I made to Eve.
That's how you're going to know that I'm coming to not just take care of your problem,
but take care of the problem for all of mankind.
It's going to be God among you, a miraculous birth.
So 700 years after this prophecy, we read that Matthew said, that sign has happened in our day.
That sign is what has taken place here in this birth.
This is what was spoken of by the prophet.
The sign that a virgin will give birth was a very unique sign.
It was a very special sign.
God wanted to make sure that nobody, nobody, whether it was Jew or Gentile,
could refute that this birth was the promise.
And so he attached these very unique signs to his birth.
Now it wasn't just that he would be born of a virgin.
God also gave us so many signs hundreds of years before his birth
so that mankind wouldn't miss the point.
Micah the prophet said he would be born in Bethlehem,
and that was 720 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
The prophet Hosea said he will come out of Egypt.
That was years, hundreds of years before Jesus was taken down to Egypt by his family
to avoid being killed by Herod, and then he came back into the land out of Egypt.
Another prophet said that he would come forth out of Galilee.
Well Jesus grew up in Nazareth, and guess where Nazareth is?
In Galilee.
Sign after sign after sign.
Jesus fulfilled them, and there are hundreds of these signs.
But why is that so important to our faith?
Why is it so important that it was a sign and Jesus fulfilled it?
Well, there are 26 other holy books that exist in the world today.
26-ish.
And these are holy books that are purported to be words from the gods
of these other religions to their people.
They claim to be scripture.
Guess what not one single one of them has within their pages?
Fulfilled prophecy.
The Bible is the only holy book in the world that has verifiable fulfilled prophecy.
None of the other religions have that.
That's why we know Christianity is true.
That's why we know we can trust the Bible.
Because God said through his people, hey this is going to happen in the future,
and it happened.
That's pretty convincing thing to do.
So we rely on these prophecies being fulfilled.
It was a sign.
It's going to be exactly this way.
So he said see the virgin will conceive, so that was a sign in and of itself,
and then she will have a son.
Now this whole virgin getting pregnant thing, that is a sign in and of itself.
That's a big deal because we all know how babies are made, right?
Has everybody not had that talk with their parents yet?
Okay, the kids are gone so we're good.
It's not a stork.
It's biological.
The birth of a baby requires a contribution from both a mother and a father.
We understand this biologically.
Without a mother and a father, without a contribution from a mother and a father,
the sperm and the egg, there is no baby.
Now there has only ever been one baby born without the biological contribution of a male.
That's Jesus Christ.
This is why Joseph, who was Mary's fiance at the time, had such a hard time with this.
Mary got pregnant and her husband's like, well, I know I didn't get her pregnant,
so that means she cheated.
He was absolutely right in that conclusion as far as his understanding
and human biology is concerned.
He was so unnerved by this it took a special visit from an angel
specifically to come and tell him, hey, bro.
Nathan translation, you're right.
But she's not pregnant by cheating on you or by any other man.
What is in her is conceived by the Holy Spirit.
So chill out.
Don't leave her.
Don't divorce her.
She is pregnant by a miracle of God.
An angel had to tell him that he was so upset by it.
What he had to understand and be told by this angel is that she's pregnant,
this is a unique pregnancy.
This is a rare, never before pregnancy.
This is something that has never happened before and will never happen again.
This is a virgin birth.
Now, some people want to argue that point, that a virgin gave birth,
and we call it a miracle of God.
There is this thing that exists within creation called parthenogenesis.
Parthenogenesis is what we would call an asexual birth.
Like where a creature without having fertilization from an outside source
will have a child, have an offspring.
There are honeybees do this sometimes.
Frogs do this.
Silkworms do this.
And so what people do is they go, no, no, no, no.
There's this thing called asexual procreation that already exists,
and that's all Mary did.
It wasn't a miracle of God.
Now, if you study this, and I don't encourage you to because it's quite boring,
but I did it for you, there's different kinds of parthenogenesis, right?
And the differences in the type of parthenogenesis depend on the gender
determination system of the species.
That means that the species has chromosomes that determine male and female.
There are actually different types of these chromosomal systems
in the kingdom of creation.
Humans use the XY chromosome system, right?
You've heard that before.
If a baby has an XX chromosome, they are female.
If they have an XY chromosome, they are male.
Well, science knows that amongst all the different types of parthenogenesis,
when it happens in a species with an XY chromosome system,
the offspring will always, 100% of the time, be female.
What that means is if Mary had in some way conceived parthenogenetically,
she would have had a daughter.
But she didn't have a daughter.
What did she have?
A son.
And that's a part of the sign, that God is saying, look, this is unique.
This is special.
This is a singularly unique miracle of God.
And then Isaiah 7.14 says,
The virgin will conceive, she had a son, and name him, you will name him Emmanuel.
So the third thing that the birth of Jesus gave us that makes it unique
is the one and only Savior of all mankind.
Now, I get that people are going to say, well, you believe that as a Christian.
I'm not.
I don't believe that.
But it's all wrapped up in the name, Emmanuel.
Matthew translated that for us.
It is God with us.
You see, one of the things that has attacked so aggressively today,
and has been attacked for generations, and probably will be attacked until Jesus comes back,
is that Jesus, whether or not Jesus is God.
I've asked people from different cults, and they always have a different version of who Jesus is.
Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus is Michael the Archangel, not God.
Mormons, he's just another God, but he's not God.
He's the brother of Lucifer.
And then you go down the list, and you find that they all have a different interpretation,
but every interpretation the cults have always come down to Jesus is not God.
But God told us that you're going to call him.
His name will be God is with us.
Now, incidentally, when it says you will name him that, it's not like that's his name.
You know, we're going to name him Nathan.
It's a title.
It's a designation of what he is, his position among all things.
And so it is God with us.
It's very important to understand that this birth was unique from every other birth that has ever happened,
because it was literally God being born into the form of a man.
The Bible tells us that when Jesus laid aside all his divinity, laid aside everything that makes him God,
all the rights, all the stuff, he put it aside, and then he came to be born as one of us.
He wasn't just another human birth.
He wasn't just a good guy.
He wasn't just a really sweet prophet, as Islam says.
It was God being born into this world.
Isaiah said in chapter 9 verse 6, he said,
That is one of the best proof texts of who Jesus is.
That as Isaiah is going through these chapters that he's writing or that are written for us
and he's given these prophecies and stuff, he keeps telling us about this son,
the son that will be born of a virgin, this son that will be given to us,
this son who will become the ruler of all things, this baby who is called what?
Mighty God.
There is no clear declaration of the nature of Jesus than that.
I guarantee you if you have a conversation about baby Jesus this Christmas with somebody who doesn't know the Lord,
that's going to come up in your conversation.
He's not God.
Well then why are we celebrating him and not every other birth that has ever happened?
He's God.
The Bible declares it.
Isaiah 9 tells us that this male child will be born, given, delivered to us.
That child will be mighty God who lives among us.
It also calls him eternal father.
I want to address that because there are cults in the world today.
One of them is the oneness Pentecostal church that says, no, God the father, God the son are not separate within the Trinity.
They say in fact there is no Trinity, that there is only oneness within God, that God is one only,
and that God the father actually left heaven and became the son.
So when Jesus was here on earth, heaven knows there's no one in heaven, no one on the throne.
This is what some cults teach.
But when it says eternal father here, it's saying father as in the source or the author of all things.
He is the author of eternity.
That's who Jesus Christ is and the Bible tells us that, that he is the one who created all things.
All things were made through him.
This is not a statement that he is the father in heaven.
So Jesus' birth is the virgin birth of Isaiah 7.
Jesus is fully human because he was born through the womb of Mary.
He was born in the flesh, but he is fully God, mighty God because he wasn't conceived by man.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, by God himself.
And Jesus is the source, the author, the creator of everything,
who was pre-existent to everything before it existed.
You see in Colossians chapter 1 verse 16 it says this,
For everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
All things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
He is also the head of the body, which is the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have first place in everything.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
Why is it so important for us to believe and understand that this birth was indeed miraculous?
That it was indeed of a virgin?
And that this baby born Jesus was God, is God?
Why is it so important?
Because if Jesus isn't God, then our salvation is non-existent.
The Bible makes that argument.
Like if Jesus was just another baby,
if he was just another human,
then that means he was born stained with sin like all of us are.
That means that he would be a sinner like every human is.
And throughout the Bible, God makes it very clear that
because of his justice and his holiness and his purity and his perfection,
that the only sacrifice that could possibly wipe away the sin would be a perfect sacrifice.
It couldn't be anything stained or corrupted,
and if Jesus was just a human,
then it doesn't matter if he died on the cross.
It did nothing for us spiritually.
It was just another human baby.
If Jesus is not God, then there is no hope.
If there is no hope, then what is the point?
And that incidentally is what a lot of people struggle with during this season, every year.
Some of you may be entering this Christmas season this year,
and this is the first one without a loved one.
Maybe it was a spouse that has gone home to be with the Lord.
Maybe it was a child or a family member or a friend.
Maybe this season every year is something that hurts
because of how you were raised or what happened to you in your past.
There are so many people out there that look forward to this joyous season
as the most gloomy and depressing of their life.
We have the opportunity to tell them about hope.
We have the opportunity to share with them the hope that is Jesus Christ.
We have the opportunity to share with them that,
yeah, what we're celebrating here is not just a baby in the manger,
but it was God who came to this earth to be born, live as a man,
so that his perfect life can be attributed to you through faith,
so that when God the Creator would look at you, he'd say,
you're perfect, and that when you would leave this earth,
when you would die, when this body would perish,
you would go home to be with God forever in paradise.
It's a little bit more than Christmas trees and ornaments.
It's a little bit more than Christmas decorations.
It's a little bit more than candy canes and reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, right?
It's about life being forever changed.
And we have the opportunity to share that with people this year, in this season.
Every year we get to share that.
We need to take advantage of those things because Jesus is God,
and if you believe that, then everything that is based on that is true.
And if you have salvation, if you've been saved, the sinner that you are,
the sinner that I am, if you understand that God loved you so much that he said,
look, I'm going to give you a gift, and it's a gift you have to receive,
but it's not a gift you earned, it's not a gift you're worth or that you deserve.
Isn't that what we do with gifts during Christmas time?
We buy gifts for our loved ones, and we don't hold the gift back and say,
you were bad yesterday, no gift for you.
Right? Can you imagine that?
If it was based upon how bad we were, I would have never gotten a single gift in my life.
In fact, I probably would have been the one having to give gifts,
but please forgive me, right?
We give gifts because we're like, I love this person, I know what they like,
I want them to be blessed, I want to give them this gift to show them how important they are to me.
Well, when Jesus sent, when God sent Jesus Christ down to this earth,
when God the Father sent God the Son, two persons of the Trinity,
which is one God, to be born, to live, and to die,
it was God saying, this is how much you mean to me.
This is how much you matter to me, that I want to secure your eternity,
and all you have to do is receive the gift.
If it is true that Jesus is God, that he was miraculously born of a virgin,
without any contribution from human male, then he is God.
He was God, he is God. He did live a perfect life without sin.
He did die on the cross for you and me, to pay the price for our breaking God's law.
He did rise from the dead, which was witnessed by many, and he is alive today,
praying for you and me. That's hope. That is hope.
He saves us from the great enemy, Satan.
He says, don't worry about them. I dealt with that.
I took care of the enemies that are coming to threaten you.
I took care of the ones who are coming to destroy you, who are saying,
we're going to take you out. I took care of the sin that has put you in a situation
where you deserve destruction. Matter of fact, this is how I did it,
so you won't miss it. There was a baby born of a virgin.
He was a son, and he's God with us.
And that God died for you to pay the price for your sin.
What more could anybody possibly ever ask for?
Now, as a man, he's the perfect representative of all of us.
The Bible tells us that he is tempted in every way we are,
but he's sinned in none of it. He gets it when it hurts.
He understands when life throws curve balls at you.
He understands the times where we say, God, just please anything else.
He understands being let down by friends.
He understands his family not getting him.
He understands that he lived it all.
But he went through it without ever sinning.
Nothing we did. We experience all those things, and we sin in it, right?
I mean, let's be real. Some of you are going to get to Grandma's house
Christmas Day, and it's going to be the wrong cranberry sauce.
And you're going to be like, come on, Grandma.
You're going to judge.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. It's not about cranberry sauce.
We mess up all the time, but Jesus lived through all of it.
He's the perfect representative of us to God the Father.
To say, look, I get it. I get why they struggle. I get why they fall.
It doesn't mean get right. It doesn't mean we don't deserve the judgment for it.
He goes, but I understand.
And so, Father, take my sacrifice in their place.
And as God, Jesus is the only one, that only pure, that only perfect sacrifice
that has ever existed. He is the atonement we all needed.
The picture is this. The two that were separated by sin, you have God the Creator,
and you have mankind.
Separated by sin. No possible way man could get to God because God is holy and perfect,
and man is sinful.
So without something to bridge the gap, man is going to go to judgment forever.
And so Jesus was born into this world, taking God in one hand, taking us in the other,
and bridging the gap over his dead body.
That is the gift of Jesus Christ.
And because of that, there is fellowship between us and God again.
Yes, there have been many unusual and amazing births in the histories of humanity,
but there has never been one quite like this one.
This unique virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
Jesus wasn't somebody that was parthenogenetically produced.
Jesus was not someone who was just another human baby.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb.
And then God did that work to enable her to produce that single cell zygote.
And then that zygote developed into an embryo, and then that embryo became a fetus,
and then that fetus became a child, and that child grew up, and then that child died.
And then that man rose from the dead again, now living forever.
Telling you today, I love you, I took care of your tab, trust in me.
You don't have to earn it, you don't have to do anything.
I want to give you this gift freely.
Just put your faith in me, and I will save you.
Because Jesus was fully man and fully God at the same time,
he was the only one who could bridge the divide between man and God.
And so that we wouldn't miss it, God gave us a very detailed sign,
that virgin birth, that son being born, that Savior that we need.
You know what that means in short?
When we look at this prophecy, and we look at these signs that God gave,
and the gift he gave to us, you know what that means in summary?
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Marvel at his birth because of what it was, a miracle.
A miracle that brought hope into this world,
the miracle that brought all of us of our salvation.
In this Christmas season, if you haven't taken the opportunity yet,
pray that God would give you the opportunity to share that hope with someone who doesn't know him.
As you celebrate Christmas in a few days, I'm looking forward to celebrating with you
at our candlelight service and our Christmas day service,
but in and with all of our families that are going to be there with us,
take the opportunity.
The greatest gift you could offer to somebody is the gift of Jesus Christ.
Step out in faith and share.
And don't forget yourself how utterly unique this birth was. Amen?
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for who you are.
We thank you for sending your son Jesus to this earth,
to be born as a man,
to have that humanity, to be clothed in that humanity,
to be tempted in every way we are,
to understand what it is to be human.
All the challenges, all the weaknesses,
all the strengths, all the joys, Lord, he experienced all of it.
But God, none of those outside things have really anything to do with the inside problem that we are sinners.
And that God, because of sin that we were born with, that we cannot pay for on our own,
we are forever separated from you, our Creator.
And yet, God, in the very beginning you made a promise to send one who would defeat the enemy for all time.
Lord, you've given us your word so that as we read it and we study,
we, like King Ahaz should have done, can be like, God, I trust you.
You're going to protect me. You're going to grant me salvation from the enemy.
And that, Lord, when we do that, we have the promise, the hope of heaven,
the hope now of a changed heart, the hope now of finding joy and peace, even in the midst of travesty,
to find victory in the midst of struggles.
And God, it was because of you. We can't miss it.
It's not something else. It is you, the baby born of a virgin,
who is and was and will forever be God who is among us.
Lord, may those that don't know you receive that gift this season.
May we, God, be filled with the Holy Spirit to share that in love with people,
to take the opportunity to share what Christmas is really about,
to share that impossibly unique gift that God has offered to everybody
and to share the hope that they, too, can have if they put their trust in him.
Lord, we thank you for this time of year to focus on this.
And we ask, Lord, that you would bless us as your people,
that you would be blessed, Lord, and that your name would be lifted high above all names.
We love you and we thank you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Well, let's worship church.