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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Last week, Cindy and I were able to go to Tallassee to watch the play It's a Wonderful Life. And our two oldest, Caleb and Kenzie, were in that play, and they did a great job. And it was sort of like a.
Like a radio version of the play, and it was really cool and fun to watch, and they did an amazing job.
And I don't know if any of you know the story of It's a Wonderful Life, but it's kind of a unique story and a great story about perspective, about understanding kind of how life is and how things go.
It centers on a guy by the name of George Bailey. And for those of you who haven't seen this before, when Cindy and I saw it this past weekend, we wanted to come home and watch it. And so this past week we did. And it just is a reminder again of what a great story it is. But it centers on a guy named George Bailey. And George Bailey, as a child, does a couple of really outstanding things.
Just a good quality kid. But one of the things that he does is he saves his little brother, who's about to drown or freeze to death in this pool, this pond that had ice, and he kind of fell in, and George went in to save his brother Harry.
Later. He's like a courier for a druggist who is putting together medications, and he notices that the druggist has put the wrong medication in a capsule. It could be poisonous to another child. And so when he's sent with that medication to make the delivery, he does not, because he wants to make sure to keep one that child safe, but also to keep the druggist in business.
And so he does those kinds of things and sort of, you know, the appreciation for who he is kind of grows. And he becomes a young man who has these huge aspirations. He's in a town called Bedford Falls, and it's kind of fallen on some difficult Times, it's during the Depression, and you got a situation where there's a man who's coming, a shrewd businessman who's buying everything and raising prices of everything and making it very difficult for the normal people. So George's father owns this building and loan company where they come in and they pool their money, and he would help distribute the funds and those kinds of things and help, you know, the commoner, the person who's really struggling to find a way. They collected their resources and loaned and borrowed from one another, and it was just a good setup. He would keep the ledger, and he helped a lot of people over that time. But he didn't make much money. And that was not what George had in his mind.
He did not want to be a part of that business. He wanted to do something fantastic. He wanted to build big buildings. He wanted to travel the world and make lots of money. And so that was his plan all along. But what happens is some circumstances really out of his control happen. His father passes away. He's expected to lead the business. He does. So he loses his opportunity to go off to college. He's got money to save to do that, but instead, his brother has an opportunity to play college football. So he gives it over to that brother that he rescued for him to go and experience college life. And then the plan was for him to come back, take over the business so George could go and chase his dreams as well.
Well, his brother Harry ends up getting married and moves off and finds another job. And so George is kind of stuck in Bedford Falls to take care of this business.
And it's a very difficult thing. And he has a little bit of a struggle with this because not only is it very difficult to do this, and although he's not chasing his dreams, he's not making the that he was hoping for. But also he's got all these people who are kind of counting on him. It's very heavy. And when things fall apart, then everybody comes and panics and they want all their money.
And it's just hard for him to sort things out. And it's very frustrating, as you can imagine. It's definitely not the life that he wanted. His rescue, in his terms, would have been to get out of this place and to go somewhere else and not be burdened by this business.
But he still. He labors on.
He ends up having money, gets married, wants to go and explore, a great vacation and a good honeymoon, and the bottom falls out, and people need money. And so he uses that money to help bail People out. I guess the long and short of it is, after a while this gets to him and to the point where he realizes life is not good.
A few bad decisions by a family member meant money was lost.
And with that loss of money became a crowd of people who were upset.
The old man who had come in and taken the town and sort of purchased everything and made everything difficult for everybody was going to foreclose on the business and then also require him to be imprisoned for the way he treated people as far as not taking care of their money.
So he gets to the end of his rope and he says, I'm not. I'm not worth anything. I wish I had never been born. And he comes to this bridge and he's about to jump off this bridge. And as the story goes, an angel comes to kind of save him. And by saving him, he jumps into the water and George does what George does. He goes and he saves the angel and he says, I'm worth more dead than I am alive based on an insurance policy.
And he says, I just wish I'd never been born. And so the angel says, well, I can show you what that would look like.
So the angel takes him around and he looks around the town and everything's changed.
He doesn't have his family.
His brother, who went on to be a great football player and a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, who had saved a lot of people in the military, highly decorated. He never exists.
He goes through the town and all the things that he had done to help different people, those things were gone.
This man had taken over town. Everything's still expensive, everything's crazy. The name of the town has changed to Pottersville.
It's ridiculous. The wife that he married is not married now. She's just an old maid.
The children that he had, they're non existent. And all of a sudden he recognizes, hey, that life that I had, that I was so upset about actually held all the things that were very special to me.
And his rescue was one of those things where he wanted to be somewhere else.
But in this process, as he comes to and he realizes what he's done, he races home to be with his family. He goes see his family. An amazing thing happens.
Word spread that the bank and Loan was or the Building and Loan Company was going to go under, that he was in trouble, that he might get arrested if he couldn't produce the amount of money that was needed. He looks up and he shows up at home and all of these people from the town come in and they say, hey, if it hadn't been for you, I would have never made it. Take this money, pay off the debt.
If it hadn't been for you, I'd have lost my house. If it hadn't been for you, we wouldn't have been able to pay for that. And one by one, all of these community members are coming in and they dump this money, more than enough to cover the cost and to free him up and to take care of things solely out of appreciation for all the little things that he had done to them in their life. Isn't it true that rescue sometimes comes in ways that maybe we didn't imagine or maybe we couldn't have fathomed.
His rescue was going somewhere else, getting out of this place.
But in reality, his rescue came in a different form.
Well, I think about that with regard to the Old Testament history.
If you look at all of the stories of the Old Testament, can you imagine for a second Noah, you know, stopping and praying and saying, lord, I'm surrounded by all of these evil people. I'm surrounded by everything that's nothing but good all the time. Can you just deliver me from that? Do you think he ever imagined? Okay, I got an idea. We're gonna build this big ark. It's gonna take you 100 plus years.
You know, you're gonna struggle through all of that, and that's gonna be the thing to rescue you and your family while everything else is obliterated.
Would you have drawn that up that way?
Probably not. I think about when God promised Abraham that his seed would be a blessing to all nations for all time.
And Abraham kind of takes things into his own hands and he and his wife kind of conspire and they do something different, and it causes more problems and more struggles. And yet still God is faithful in his promises to give him that descendant that would bless the world.
I think about what it took place for the. The Israelites to end up over in Egypt. You know, it's kind of a silly thing, right? You got Abraham, you got Isaac, you got Jacob. Jacob has 12 sons. 11 of his boys, can't stand one of them, sends him off into slavery. You know how this story goes. And Joseph, through a lot of providential things with God and persistence and faithfulness and letting God kind of work in his life, promoted him to second in command in Egypt just about the time a famine hit all of his other family.
So they come to Egypt for rescue.
And Joseph, being in charge, is able to provide that for them, but not only that, to bring them over into the land. Of Egypt to give them safe haven, to rescue them from that famine?
Well, this is all prophesied about to Abraham that this is going to happen. You're going to have this great nation, you're going to have these descendants, but they're going to spend some time in slavery.
And he kind of hears about this, but this is actually happening in fruition. And can you imagine what it was like when Moses was told to go and get those people out of there? Do you imagine that rescue would have imagined, like, you know, frogs and flies and lice and all those kinds of things that would trigger and soften the heart of Pharaoh to let him go?
Can you imagine as they got into Canaan and they had all these different. These different nations that would rise up against them, their enemies that would come to them. I'm thinking about the Amlokites, the Moabites, thinking about some of the other groups, the Philistines that were there, and how they always had to have some kind of battle going on and had they always needed some form of rescue. Well, it's during these times that you get the kingdom of Saul, and that was kind of a failure on sorts. But then David shows up on the scene, and his kingdom is amazing. It is a. It's a visual of God being with a nation, right? They're powerful, they're mighty, and God was with them during those times. And it's during that process that Nathan the prophet comes to David in this moment of grandeur when everything is going well, and he says, when the days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, here's a promise. I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish his throne and that kingdom forever.
And as you look at this, your mind immediately goes to Solomon, right? Because, I mean, hey, Solomon was one of his children. He was going to be king. He did build the house, the temple of God. And so you might think to yourself that the fulfillment of this is found right in Solomon. And yet there's one thing that Solomon couldn't perform, and that's the reality that his kingdom would not last forever. And that would be a failure. In fact, Solomon would kind of lead them into idolatrous behavior. And ultimately from his descendants came like a split of that kingdom where you had the northern and the southern, and the siblings were fighting and all kinds of things. And there's power struggles. And it took them off into idolatrous behavior and took them further and further away from God.
But King David became that representation of God being with him.
So they held onto these promises, the promise that somehow, through the line of David, they would be made right, that they would be brought to this grand kingdom that would never, ever go away.
And so they'd hear these other prophecies, and it would just kind of stack on top of each other. And I don't want to belabor the point here, but Micah, chapter five, verse, verse two, we talked about it. You know, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, you're small among the clans, but you're going to have. This ruler of Israel is going to come from you. And when they heard this idea of ruler and that it was gonna be something that would come and be an eternal thing, it would be, you know, from the ancient of days, meaning coming directly from God. When you look at this and you see this situation, they would hold onto this, and they would think that that is something that we need to latch on. And when they think of ruler, they think about this term, the coming Messiah. And so the Bible is filled with all of these different examples, and I will not go through all these. But in Psalm 2:18, 1, 10, 6, Isaiah 60:1, and then in Daniel, chapter 9, among a host of other passages, there are these moments that it talks about and longs for and looks forward to the day when this king would arrive. And so I'm. I want to kind of help us understand, if you. If you can gather in your mind, what the desperation for this would be, as they had experienced this division, as they experienced later captivity and other things, how in their hearts and their minds, they're still holding on to these prophecies that came so in Daniel, or not in Daniel, but in Isaiah, in chapter seven, you know, the curiosity is going to ultimately get us right. What is it that we're looking for in this king? How will we know that he is coming? And so Isaiah gives us a little bit of insight into how that's going to be.
He says, therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. There's going to be something that's going to show you that this is the Messiah says, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. And so when I see that, and I'm looking at it, the word for virgin is sometimes translated young girl. And so some people will dispute and say, well, this was just talking about a young girl. But, folks, that would not be much of a sign for a young girl to have a child, right? This had to be something that was miraculous, something that God was doing. And so this prophecy has given us insight into this sign of that they are all looking for. He goes on to talk about this when he says in chapter nine, verse six and seven, he says, for to us, a child is born and a son is given. So when you look at the child is born, I want you to think in terms of like natural birth, the idea that just in the same way that everyone else is born, there's going to be a birth. But then he says this, a son is given. And the language there is more like it's a gift, it's something that's been bestowed upon them.
So not necessarily the birth in the same way, but that God would be a part of a birth, but also something very special and a blessing that he would provide for them. And listen to how it describes this coming Messiah. The government shall be upon his shoulders. His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and, and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. And catch that the zeal of the Lord of hosts will make this happen. He will do this.
And so as you read this, as they are hearing these prophecies, their hearts and their minds are filled with this God or this king that will come. And he will be all the representation of God. He's all of those things, all those characters that make the characteristics that make God incredibly special and unique. And this king is going to come and provide this for him. He would go on to say, come forward as a stump of Jesse. The branch from his roots shall bear. Listen to what it says about the Spirit resting upon him, Wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of the Lord.
This is being drawn up as a king who would be so powerful and so mighty and so different from anything they had ever experienced coming from the line of David. And then Jeremiah says this again, I'll raise up for David a righteous branch. He'll deal wisely, execute justice, righteousness in the land. They hear these things.
And as they have had these experiences of division and struggle and the need for rescue, this sounds so incredibly appealing. And so with these promises came the expectations of that royal line of David. So you can imagine this was a very important thing for them to follow along.
And if it were just a matter of so and so begat so and so, begat so and so if it were just that easy, that would be remarkable.
But as you heard, even in our communion thoughts? There's some people in this list that create some struggle for this situation. There's. There's things that happen that kind of jeopardize some of this promise and this plan of God. And what I hope to do over the next few minutes is to help you see that God is still in control. He is sovereign. He is powerful. He is mighty. And even through all of our mistakes and anything that we might do, God can still work his powerful plan as he has promised to do. So listen to this one. There's a story in the Bible here in Jeremiah, how Jeconiah or Jehoiakin, some of you may have heard of him, he fell into idolatrous behavior and really had made a wreck of the kingdom. And so God was really, really upset with him. And so what he does is he declares a curse on him. And this is what he said. Write this man down as childless.
This is a king of Israel, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed him in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah. He's later taken into captivity, and with that, the loss of that kingdom. Sure, he had children, but they weren't occupying that throne.
And so when you get to Matthew, chapter one, and we're getting into this text and, you know, we've been studying the book of Matthew and we've seen, like, what it means to embrace the idea of the rule and the reign of Christ in our life. I want you to understand something. The language that he uses here is something obviously that's happened after Jesus has already been here. He's lived, he's died, he's been resurrected, and he's issued to them their marching orders to follow afterwards. But here as Matthew is putting this all together, the first thing that he says is, this is the record of the ancestors of Jesus, the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham.
This would have been a bold declaration. People would love to follow their line. They would love to go through and figure out their genealogies. And they would spend often a lot of times chasing those things down because they all wanted to mark themselves back to Abraham.
But to go from Abraham all the way down and to chart yourself to David was another connecting piece of this messianic prophecy, right?
But he is tagged with the term the Messiah.
So this was meant to be a in your face to all the kings around, to the Herods that existed at other places.
He was meant to be the king.
Now, if you look at the genealogies, there's two different ones that we could look at. In Matthew, it kind of details, kind of from a legal perspective, who the descendants were. And so it follows it all the way down from Abraham down to David through Babylonian captivity, and then all the way down to Jesus. And uses this in a powerful way, because, remember, Jeconiah was told that none of his descendants would sit on the throne. But in that line is Jesus.
But again, it comes through Joseph, his adopted father, where they did not share blood. But if you go over into Luke's account, you're going to see that the line follows all the way from Mary down into the bloodline and takes it all the way down to Jesus Christ.
And so Jesus, had he not been a blood relative, would not have been in that royal line in the truest of sense, but because he was not on the legal side of things, he was a descendant of Christ, I mean, descendant of Abraham and of David, but not one that could rule on the throne from that perspective. It had to be from that bloodline. So see how powerful it is that God even sorts things and works things out from that situation. So if you look at the list, there's a lot of names, okay? And it details this. From Abraham to David, there's 14 generations, from David to the Babylonian captivity for 14 more generations. And then from that captivity all the way down to Jesus, another 14. So you can think of it in three sections of 14. Or how about this?
Six sets of seven.
And if you think about this from a Jewish perspective, anytime you see the number seven, it represents perfection.
And so when you think about that, as Matthew is going through the process of detailing all of these descendants, he goes down through this line and. And Jesus being the seven of the seventh generation or the beginning of that generation is kind of a significant thing because it details that he was the goal of the whole list, that all of this was working to this one point.
But when you look at that list, and again, it's already been mentioned, and I won't even get into all their stories here, but there's some folks in here that could have messed things up or things that God providentially put in place.
Like, you can see how his plan was working all along. Judah, his sinful behavior with Tamar. Boaz was the son of Rahab, the harlot in Jericho. If you remember, she helped them go and take the city, and she and her family were rescued. She ends up being the mother of Boaz, who then takes A Moabitess, Remember this? The Redeemer kinsman. A kinsman redeemer kind of thing, where he takes in a woman that's a relative of a descendant to make her his wife, and she turns out to be the great grandmother of King David, who then turns around and tries to mess things up again as he sees Bathsheba and takes her into his home and has a relationship with her that's adulterous in nature. Do you understand what I'm saying? God does not necessarily approve of these things. But what I'm telling you is that God is sovereign and he works through all the circumstances of our life to create his will, to put his will in place. And that to me is mind boggling.
But think about even from that perspective of your life, that you're a part of this world and that God has you in mind and that he's using you for his purpose. And even if we make mistakes, sometimes God is greater than our mistakes and can bring us back to a redemptive place. How powerful is it to see that God works through the mistakes of life and also providentially puts things in place? Man, what a thing for us to stop and consider about what he's done.
But then it mentions in the genealogies, the captivity.
And can't you imagine that because of their idolatry and God's, their sin against God and his anger toward them and him sending them off into captivity, that you might even say to yourself, well, surely those promises are going to come to an end. But it's during that captivity that at least a couple of prophets are specifically dealing with what God is going to restore. Considering one of those, In Ezekiel chapter 34, I will set up them with a shepherd, my servant David. And he will feed them. He shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. Again, what is he saying? Even in your captivity, God still plans to restore that promise to Abraham and to David. What a powerful thing to say, even to the people that have been rejected and have been over there, you know, because of their sinfulness and their idolatry.
Then as you get to the end of the old covenant and all the prophecies and you get to Malachi and there's the promise of a forerunner who's going to come and lay the groundwork for Jesus to come into the world after that, there's literally 400 years of no messages from God.
And I don't know how long you feel like waiting for Anything.
I mean, we text somebody and we're expecting, you know, why aren't they answering?
You know, we expect instant responses.
But God has said all of these things. He's given them hope and the promise of something amazing.
And now they're to sit in silence as he works.
And God is not quiet during this time. He's not.
He's quiet in the sense that he's not saying anything, but he's not inactive.
God is still working his plan very powerfully. I don't know if you can remember this, but back in Daniel, it talks about how Nebuchadnezzar was having like some terrible dreams and he was trying to figure it out. And if you remember, Daniel's brought in to interpret those dreams, to tell him what it was he dreamed. And it was this wild statue thing that had like all these different types of metal and construction and all kinds of things. And, you know, it was just sort of weird.
But ultimately what we know it now represents is represented different kingdoms that would come in that there would be, you know, beyond the Persians, there would be this kingdom that was. Was Greek in nature, and then it would have one that was Roman in nature. And ultimately there would be a kingdom that would come that would be unshakable, that would stand the test of time and be forever. And so as you think about that and God is working that plan in the background, you know, if you go back into history, you'll find out that during this intertestamental period where God is not talking to them, there's lots of things that are happening. I'm sure you've all heard of Alexander the Great.
He had a great army that came through and took over the known world. In fact, as he pursued every end of the earth as far as he could go, he kind of got sad and had a pity party that he didn't have another place to conquer. He just had that fire about him.
And during that time, one of the great things that happened is the Greek language was brought into all of the known world. And it kind of became like a universal language.
But it wasn't long till after he conquered everything that he started dividing people up into different groups. And there was a group called the Ptolemies that were over in Egypt, and then a group of Syrians called Seleucids that were over in this area. And the Seleucids came into Jerusalem and totally desecrated the temple and messed things up completely. And it made the Jews so mad that they organized a revolt and they came up and they Took back Jerusalem and they were under self rule for a short period of time, and they restored the temple back to where it should be. And they did this for a while until General Pompey from Rome came through and took over the area, the known world at that time, and had the Roman Empire come in and occupy these forces. Well, this is all happening like 60 something years before Jesus was ever born.
But in that process, and this is what I want us to understand, that God is working things out. Because not only did they have a language now that stretched the entire known world that was universal in nature, but when the Romans came in, they created this transportation system, these road systems that were amazing that allowed traffic to be much easier for things to be traded back and forth, for information to be exchanged, for written language to pass from one place to the next. And so not only did those things happen, but because they had this road system and Roman was occupying the area, they had all these soldiers all over those roads to create a sense of peace and structure and comfort for them. And you may not have liked their occupying force, you may not have liked the approach that they had, but there was certainly what they called Pax Romana. It was the idea that peace was throughout the world because they provided it.
That was awesome. Right? And so when you think about all that and all of those things coming together in that time where God is not talking to them, but he has promised them and their promises are still sure that it's amazing when we see passages like Galatians chapter 4, verse 5, or verse 4 and 5, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son born of woman to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. Do you catch that?
That's the fullness of time when things were the right, the right situation for word of Jesus to spread the right way for us to be able to get out and to teach other people the right way for the world to be impacted for the cause of Christ. At that point, God says, hey, it is time for Jesus to come. So Matthew, chapter one, verse 18, going back to it says, this is how the birth took place.
When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Now when it says she was found to be with child, I want you to understand what that means. It means she probably had a baby bump and they were like, okay, what's going on here? And she's betrothed to a guy named Joseph. And we'll talk a little bit about him in just a moment. But it's interesting when it says she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, sure, there are lots of questions that we have about that and how that even happened and what that was like or what have you. And Matthew really doesn't give us any kind of clue at all. But if you go over to Luke, it does give us a little bit more insight, although not necessarily us completely understanding it, but it says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
Now, if you go back to Matthew, chapter one, verse 19, what you're going to find out is that Joseph, recognizing that she is pregnant by something besides him, is stunned by this.
But he's a respectable, loving, kind person, and he decides that while he has a right to divorce her. And by the way, betrothal in those days was like a little bit a step up from what we would call engagement. It was almost like being married until the ceremony made it fully official. But in that, betrothal was sort of the idea of marriage to end that had you had to get a certificate of divorcement.
And so Joseph is thinking, I don't want to embarrass her. I don't want her, I love her. I don't want to put her to shame. And so he was thinking about doing this privately. But verse 20 reminds us that an angel came to visit him and said, hey, Joseph, son of David, do not take, do not be feared to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She's going to bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Now, you've been hearing about the promise of a king coming through the line of David.
You've been hearing about these prophecies that have kind of fed this situation.
And perhaps this is the coming king, as they would say. But notice the shift in terminology here. For he will save people from sins. That's a different kind of mission, right?
And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. In other words, this is directly tied to what we know already, which is the virgin shall conceive, bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel, which really just means. It doesn't have two names like Jesus and Immanuel. It means Jesus, but we will announce that God with us.
Powerful stuff.
So after he was Born in Bethlehem, just as the prophecy had said. Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who is born King of the Jews? For we saw his star and it rose, and we have come to worship. So when you look at this, you're like, hey, who are these people? Who are the wise men? And what do they care about this coming king, this child that's going to be born? Why would they care about this? Well, who are they exactly? Well, I think we can draw some parallels and tie this together a little bit when we think about what that word means, the magi. You've heard that term before. Well, they were magicians. They were oriental scientists. Okay? They studied astronomy and they studied philosophy, and they studied world religions, and they would dig deep into these kinds of things. And they were kind of referred to as, like, a caste group, a special caste of Babylonian priests.
All right, well, what do we know about them? If we go back to tie this all together, how God's plan was working. Remember, Daniel was over in Babylon in captivity, and it's Daniel who was given a special post when he was in Babylon. Do you remember this? It says the king appointed Daniel to a high position. What was that? He made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, as well as chief over all of the wise men.
So here is Daniel, and we know him to be a man of prayer. We know him to be a man of courage. We know him to be a man who was, you know, impressive to the king and was brought into these high places. But we also know that him being the chief person over these wise men meant that he spent time with them, teaching them. And it was Daniel who said in Daniel, chapter seven, as he prophesied about a vision that God had given him about this coming son of God, this coming king. He said he was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him.
His rule is eternal. It will never end, and his kingdom will never be destroyed. Now, if you're those wise men and you're hearing what Daniel's having to say, you have to get excited. And so that had to been passed down from the centuries to the point where they're always looking at the sky. They're always looking for things, for ways to know exactly when this Savior is coming, when this king of kings is coming. And they themselves want to fall at his feet and give him their praise, because they want to fall in line with the king who is gonna rule over everything.
So when Herod Heard this. He's troubled. And he says, hey, where is it that this baby is gonna be born? Now, isn't it interesting that this is King Herod of the Jews, and he doesn't know anything about the prophecies that tells you a little bit about who he was. And so the scribes and other people come in Bethlehem of Judea. They come in and let him know this is going to be happening. And so he's going to become. He's going to be a shepherd rule. And they go back and they quote that Micah 5 passage that we've already quoted today. And so Herod pulls those wise guys back in here and he says, hey, I want you to go and I want you to find him, okay? And when you find him, hey, let me know, because I want to come back and I want to. I want to spend some time, you know, worshiping him too. So this is the king looking to worship the baby king to replace him, I guess. And of course, the problem is we know a little bit about Herod. Herod was a client king of Rome. He wasn't really a Jew. He was a person who was appointed as the king there. He basically did the bidding of Rome. He was not a good guy. He was paranoid. In fact, it said that. That he killed not only his wife, but any of his family members that he thought might be suspiciously, you know, underneath everything, trying to find a way to sabotage his rule there in Jerusalem.
And so he's not a good person. And we know ultimately that, that when he was about when that he issued a decree that upon his death, there would be people who would go out and kill some folks in Jericho so there would make sure to be the morning for him as well as he died. This is not a good dude. This is a crazy man, right? And it's the same guy who we will find out later, you know, issues a decree that all the baby boys in Bethlehem two and under are put to death to just make sure that he takes care of everything. And don't you see the parallel between that and the time of Moses?
Remember this, as the pharaoh in Egypt was trying to control the population, and so he decided to kill all the baby boys to keep population under control. And then here, you know, Jesus comes under the same threat in the middle of all this.
Well, the wise men, they listen to what he says and they go on their way and it says they saw the star and they rejoiced. They were so excited to see exactly this thing. And so they went to him and they found him with his mother Mary, and. And it says the first thing they did is fell down at his feet and worshiped.
That's awesome. These people are not tied to the prophecies. They just have heard about these things over the years, and they are so excited that this is happening in their minds. There's no doubt this is the one that has been promised based on what they knew in their whatever faith it was that he would be the king. And not only that, but they opened up their treasures. Now, I'm not going to get into the details of this, but if you go back into our YouTube channel or even on our sermon podcast, you can go back to 2023 and you can look. We did extensive study on each of the gifts that came as a result of this visit by those magi. And so you can go back and look for details on those. But in a nutshell, here's a few things that we can know about them. First of all, the gold that was given was certainly worthy of a king. Precious metal, valuable. But then frankincense was kind of something that was used in temple worship. It was a fragrance, and so it was something that would have been used for a priest. And then myrrh is one of those things that was used kind of like an embalming type substance. And so it was one for someone who was going to die. So if you think about who Jesus is, these gifts were not just, you know, random gifts that they came and brought out. These are things that were tied to his purpose for being here on the Earth. One, he would definitely be our king. He would also serve as our high priest, and then also he would come and die for our sins. And I hope you will come back next week to hear what takes place as Jesus gives his life for us.
And so I look at this situation and I see the king's arrival, and it's kind of, you know, ridiculous on some level in that here is the promised Messiah that shows up. There's no military might, there's no wealth that comes with him. There's no powerful forces. There's no big castle, there's no big walls. There's none of those things. It's just a little infant boy born to a virgin.
But I consider all of the things that took place and what God was pushing, what God was putting together and how he was manipulating things.
And I see all the things that were promised that were fulfilled. Born of a virgin, seed of woman and the Holy Spirit, born in Bethlehem, line of David, Jesus, Jehovah's salvation, Emmanuel God with us, gifts of worship, the promised Messiah.
So if I stop right now and I just think in anticipation, waiting for this moment, and here he is.
It's not like anything we expected.
Sometimes rescue comes in different forms than maybe what we're looking for.
Maybe they wanted, like a king that would come and be powerful and mighty and take over the world and it would last forever. And that sounds great. That sounds like the rescue we've been waiting for all this time. But instead, what we find out is that Jesus came for other reasons. Matthew 1:21 reminds us, she'll bear a son, she'll call his name, Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Ephesians, chapter one reminds us that God was in the background, working these things all along according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. And again, to us, a child is born and a son is given.
Jesus came in the flesh, and he came as a baby, not as a threatening king, not as some powerful source, but as a tender baby born in the middle of nowhere to arrive here and be crowned the king.
And we know there are difficult days ahead. We've already read through a lot of the book of Matthew and we've seen what's gone on with him.
What do we do with this information?
First thing I would say is rejoice. Rejoice in his birth. And we're at a time of year and it's already been mentioned that people are asking questions. People are excited. They. They want to know more. Maybe they want to sit down and talk about you, man. We all need to be rejoicing in that and being ready to talk to them. Now, does the Bible say that he was born on December 25? Absolutely not. In fact, we're pretty certain that it wasn't that day. We're not celebrating it as a holiday for the sense of celebrating Jesus birthday per se.
But what we are saying is that as people are open and interested and talking and willing to listen, that we open our mouths and sing the praises of Jesus, that He is here, that he came. He could not have died for us had he not arrived first. And so it makes me excited to think about the opportunities that are out there right now as people are asking questions. But man celebrate, rejoice at his birth. But also, and I hope that this message has shown you, marvel at God's sovereignty, marvel at all the things that he put in place to bring this about.
And then offer your worship and your gifts and your talents and everything else that you have.
Let Jesus rule in your heart.
That's what we do with this birth, is we acknowledge what God has done, we stand in awe of it, and we are moved by it to obey obedience.
That brings us to a closer relationship to our King, where He rules in our hearts.
This morning, if there's anything that you need to get off your chest, if there's anything that you need encouragement for, if you want to give your life to this Messiah, if you want to give your life to Jesus and be baptized into him for the forgiveness of your sins, there's no better time than this morning. So I hope you will do that. Altogether we stand and sing.
