This past week has revolved around death, it
seems.
The death of Terry Schiavo and the death
of the Pope.
And I'm just so grateful this morning that
we have life in Jesus Christ.
That we are to look unto Jesus, and
not to men.
We don't trust men, we trust the author
and the finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ.
And because of that, we are not a
people that have to fear death, as we
talked about last Sunday.
Our victory is in Jesus Christ.
And I want to encourage you to focus
on that.
Thank God for the hope that we have
in and through Jesus.
It is because of your relationship with Jesus
Christ that you're going to heaven.
That your sins are forgiven.
And judged.
Isn't that a great thing, that our sins
have already been judged?
Not a one of us could stand before
a holy God, if we had to be
judged for our sins.
We'd be judged, what?
Guilty!
And we wouldn't be in heaven anymore.
But because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross
at Calvary, all of our sins have been
forgiven.
All of them.
Past.
The ones 20 minutes ago.
And we hope not a whole lot ahead.
But even in those, Jesus has forgiven us.
He went to the cross to forgive us.
So, he is the beginner and the finisher
of our faith.
And our trust is in him.
And may we just be encouraged in that
this week.
As you encounter people, they're going to ask
you, What do you think about the Shivo
case?
What do you think about the Pope?
What do you think about this?
And we can just say, you know what?
I'm thinking about Jesus.
And Jesus has set me free.
And he can set you free too.
I don't think it's our place to get
into a big discussion as to the theological
positions of the Catholic Church and so forth.
This is a time when a lot of
those people are mourning.
And they're very, very sad.
And we don't have to insult them or
anything along those lines.
We just need to talk about Jesus.
And thank God for what Jesus has done.
And let the joy of the Lord be
your strength.
And perhaps bring that joy of the Lord
into their hearts as well.
Amen?
All right.
Chapter 1 of Matthew.
We're going to be jumping now into the
New Testament.
Actually, we've been in the New Testament.
We got Old Testament on Wednesday nights.
And now we're going back to the beginning
of the New Testament.
And the Gospel of Matthew is a beautiful
bridge from the Old Testament to the New
Testament.
In the Gospel of Matthew, with Matthew writing
more towards the Jewish student in mind, he's
bridging the gap of the Old Testament and
the New Testament and explaining how the Old
Testament prophecies are fulfilled in the person of
Jesus Christ.
And Matthew does this by quoting the Old
Testament constantly.
Close to 130 different references to the Old
Testament in the Gospel of Matthew.
Each of the Gospels present a unique picture
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Mark's Gospel, it shows us Jesus as
the suffering servant.
In Luke's Gospel, it shows us the humanity
of our Lord Jesus.
In John's Gospel, it shows us that Christ
is the Son of God.
And Matthew, writing to the Jews, zeroes in
on Jesus as the Messiah, the King of
the Jews.
Now, Matthew's approach to the way of salvation
is really a call to repentance for entry
into the kingdom.
Repent.
Turn from your sins.
Turn to your Savior.
He calls us to a commitment of oneself
to the King as his follower.
We are called to be followers of Jesus
Christ.
Not followers from a distance, but right on
his heels, walking together with him.
And so Matthew uses language that relates the
rule of Christ to each of our lives.
Very personal.
And this means that the life of faith,
which we're all called to, amen, the life
of faith is to recognize Jesus as Lord
and ourselves as his subjects.
And that's something Americans don't like to do
very much.
I mean, just by our Western nature, and
combine that with our sin nature.
And we don't like anybody to tell us
what to do.
Somebody tells us what to do, there's something
in us that goes, I don't have to
do that.
You know, kind of rebel.
But as we go through the gospel of
Matthew here, we'll see it so clearly that
to be a Christian, to be a follower
of Jesus means he is Lord and we
are his subjects.
I've heard it once said that if Jesus
is not Lord of all, he's not Lord
at all.
I mean, otherwise we're lying.
We're not really trusting him as Lord if
we take control of our lives and just
do everything ourselves.
We've got to learn to submit to him.
Because he's God.
And he made us.
And he knows how we tick.
And he's got a purpose for us.
Predetermined before we ever took our first breath.
We need to submit our lives to his
way.
Our way, we could line up here for
the rest of the morning and give you
a testimony on how our way wasn't the
way.
How our way got in the way of
what God wanted to do in our lives.
And once we get out of the way,
then the way of the truth and the
life begins to empower us in a way
that we could never know and never do
ourselves.
God help us to yield to him.
Now, Matthew introduces us to the King first
with his genealogy in chapter 1, which in
Jewish history was the most natural and essential
way to begin the story of a man's
life and to prove to Jewish readers and
I think skeptics of all nations that Jesus
is the Messiah.
The Messiah of our hope.
The Messiah of Jewish hope.
The Messiah of Gentile hope.
The promised redeemer of all mankind.
And so we begin with verse 1.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, and the son of
Abraham.
The son of David refers to the royal
kingly line.
The son of Abraham refers to the line
of promise.
The racial line.
The line of grace as well.
Matthew begins our Lord's genealogy with Abraham, the
man who was called the friend of God,
the father of the way of faith, showing
that Jesus fulfilled Israel's hopes.
Right there at the beginning.
Remember in the Old Testament, God promised that
through Abraham all the nations of the earth
would be blessed.
Genesis 22, 18.
In your seed all the nations of the
earth shall be blessed because you've obeyed my
voice.
And in the New Testament, in Galatians 3
.16, when Paul is quoting that, he makes
it very clear that seed, that in your
seed was singular.
The word seed there was for that promise.
He says in 3.16 of Galatians, Now
to Abraham and his seed were the promises
made.
He does not say and to seeds, plural,
as of many, but as of one and
to your seed who is Christ.
Abraham was promised that through his seed the
Messiah would come.
And that was later repeated to David.
In 2 Samuel 7.13, the Lord said,
He shall build a house for my name
and I will establish the throne of his
kingdom forever.
That had to go beyond Solomon.
Verse 16 of that same chapter, And your
house and your kingdom shall be established forever
before you.
Your throne shall be established forever.
David understood that the Messiah would come through
him.
And if a person were to lay claim
to be the king of Israel, he would
have to prove that he had kingly lineage,
a son of Abraham, of Judah, through David.
Now that's an impossibility today, by the way.
No records exist today that any Jew today
could trace back.
In 70 AD, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem,
all the genealogical records of the Jewish people
were destroyed.
Matthew shows that Jesus is the son of
Abraham and David, and thus has the right
to claim to the claim of the throne
of Israel.
Ron Daniel, another Calvary pastor, said this, The
kingly line of David descended to Joseph.
Joseph's firstborn son would have the right to
sit on David's throne.
But God had cursed everyone with that bloodline.
If you remember back in Jeremiah 22, there
was one of the kings named Jeconiah, or
called Keniah, back there in Jeremiah 22.
He was a wicked king, and a curse
was pronounced upon him.
And there it's predicted, back in Jeremiah, hundreds
of years before Christ, that none of Jeconiah's
seed would prosper sitting on David's throne.
Had our Lord been the natural son of
Joseph, who was descended from Jeconiah, and we
see that in this genealogy, then Jesus could
never reign in power and righteousness because of
that curse.
But note this, while Jesus had all legal
rights to Joseph's lineage, he did not have
the blood of that line.
For he was born of a virgin, conceived
in her womb by the Holy Spirit.
Does this mean that Jesus is not truly
the branch of Jesse and the root of
David?
No, because you see the gospel of Luke
also gives us Jesus' genealogy, but not through
his legal line.
Luke tells us his biological bloodline, which he
had through his mother Mary.
You see, Mary's line also descends through Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, through Jesse, to David.
But from David, Mary's heritage did not extend
through the kingly line of Solomon.
Instead, she was a descendant of David's son,
Nathan.
Thus, according to Jewish law, Jesus could legally
inherit the throne while completely avoiding the blood
curse on Jeconiah's line.
So it's apparent, from eternity past, that God
had the whole thing worked out.
He foretold of a specific Messiah who could
only be one, and that is Jesus Christ
our Lord.
And so we see the genealogy given in
verse 2.
And we're not going to comment real closely
on this line.
Just kind of follow it through.
And, you know, you can do a lot
of study on your own as you go
through this.
Abraham begat Isaac.
We're studying Abraham right now in Genesis chapter
15.
You can join us in that study on
Wednesday night, if you so desire.
Isaac begat Jacob.
Jacob begat Judah and his brothers.
Now, Judah begat Zerah by Tamar.
Perez begat Hezron.
Hezron begat Ram.
Ram begat Amminadab.
Amminadab begat Nashem.
Nashem begat Salmon.
Salmon begat Boaz by Rahab.
Boaz begat Obed by Ruth.
Obed begat Jesse.
And Jesse begat David the king.
David the king begat Solomon by her who
had been the wife of Uriah.
That's another interesting study, looking at the four
women that are mentioned here in the genealogy.
And that was very, very uncommon in the
listing of any Jewish genealogy.
It was not kosher to mention the women
in the genealogy.
But here we've got Tamar and Rahab and
Ruth and Bathsheba.
One commentator said, the presence of these four
women in the lineage of the king emphasizes
a genealogy of grace.
We note that all four of these women
were aliens, Gentiles.
Three of the four were suspected of adultery.
Including these women in the lineage of Christ
highlights the message of divine grace.
God forgave and accepted persons in the lineage
of Christ whose history was clouded, men and
women.
The fact that these particular women are named
makes clear that God in grace does not
discriminate against persons because of their past mistakes.
And I don't know how many of you
have ever said this or had it heard
said to you, but I'm too bad.
I could never be a Christian.
I've made too many mistakes.
I've sinned too hard.
I saw a guy at breakfast this morning.
And as I was getting up to leave
breakfast, there were three or four guys sitting
at the breakfast bar.
And the language had gotten kind of low
and the subject matter had gotten even lower.
And as I went up to the cash
register, I kind of looked at the gal
and looked over at them and said, well,
I know a few guys that need prayer
this morning.
And I was smiling as I said it.
And the guy sitting next to me, he
said, well, I don't think prayer would ever
work for me.
He said that.
And I said back to him, I said,
well, you know, you never really know.
God is very powerful.
I said I was a piece of work
and God got a hold of me.
And that's how I left it as I
walked out.
But God can do amazing things with pieces
of work like us.
Sinners like us, who at one time people
may have looked at us and go, they're
going to be a Christian?
Come on.
But God does the impossible.
We serve a God of the impossible.
You might think it's impossible because of your
background.
But background was never an impossibility to God.
And we see that illustrated as we go
through this genealogy.
John Corson said, what does this say to
me theologically?
It says the stage is already set for
the Lord to do a new thing.
He said, my kingdom is a kingdom of
heaven, not the kingdom of the nation of
Israel.
It's much broader than Israel, as we see
with these Gentiles included in the genealogy.
It's a whole new thing.
The Lord says in his word, behold, I
make all things new.
But you know what it says to us
personally?
Let these words never pass from our lips
again.
The Lord can't use me because I have
sinned greatly.
I've let down my family responsibilities.
I've messed up my family, like Tamar could
have been accused of doing with her trickery
and her deception.
Oh, but he couldn't use me, you might
say, because I have a bad reputation.
Remember Rahab, the harlot.
Your reputation isn't any worse than hers.
Corson says, I don't care who you are
or where you've been.
If you're willing to say, I'm throwing my
lot in with the Lord and join Rahab
in this genealogy, he'll use you and the
Lord Jesus will be birthed in you and
shine forth through you and through your life.
It is possible.
The Pharisees might stick up their noses and
say, how can this be?
Let them know this.
He does all things new.
And he's included people like Rahab along with
people like you and me.
In fact, the gospels tell us that Jesus
is the friend of sinners.
So whatever kind of sinner you were, or
maybe even are today, that can change through
Jesus Christ.
You might not be able to change it.
And in fact, you can't change it.
You can't change it.
There's only one who can take away the
stain of sin, and that's Jesus Christ.
But you need to know that he died
on the cross and rose from the grave
for you, not just for those religious folk.
Remember Jesus said, I didn't come to save
the righteous, but to save sinners.
And it's interesting.
I was reading one comment.
I think Warren Wiersbe said it.
He said, and by the way, there were
no righteous at that time.
There were those that thought they were righteous,
but there was none that were truly righteous
before a holy God.
That could only happen through the sacrifice of
the Messiah, where their sins could be totally
washed away.
And because our sins have been totally washed
away, we can now have fellowship with the
one true God.
We can be joint heirs with Jesus Christ
of heaven.
We belong to the Lord now.
And all through the scripture we're exhorted, now
let's walk that way.
That's why we gather together week after week.
That's why we study the word book by
book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.
Because we want to grow in our faith.
We want to be the people that God
has called us to be.
Feed us, Lord, this morning.
Amen.
So, we continue on with the list.
Solomon begot Rehoboam.
Rehoboam begot Abijah.
Abijah begot Asa.
And these are all the kings of it.
These are the kings that we find as
you go through the book of 1 and
2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
This is the descent of the kings that
came through David and Solomon and ruled in
the southern kingdom of Judah.
So, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Uzziah, Jotham,
Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Ammon, Josiah, and then we
came to Jeconiah and his brothers about the
time they were carried away to Babylon.
After they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot
Shealtiel, and then Zerubbabel, and Abiud, and Eliakim,
and Azor, and Zadok, and Achim, and Eliud,
and Eleazar, and Mithon, and Jacob, and Jacob
begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom
was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Very specifically pointed out.
You see how the language changes there in
verse 16 to show that he was not
from the bloodline of Joseph, but rather through
Mary.
And so all the generations from Abraham to
David, 14 generations, from David to the captivity
in Babylon, 14 generations, and from the captivity
in Babylon until the Christ are 14 generations.
Matthew breaks the lineage up into three sections.
First was the time of the patriarchs from
Abraham to David, and if you know your
Old Testament in that period, it was not
a pretty picture.
The immorality and the sin of the nation,
the sin that the nation was involved in,
especially during the time of the judges.
And then from the monarchy, from David to
their deportation in Babylon, again, not a pretty
picture.
We see their rebellion finally bringing the judgment
of God upon them and the destruction of
Jerusalem and carrying them away to captivity in
Babylon.
I think of all of those kings that
descended from David up to the captivity in
Babylon.
There was only five, I believe, that were
truly godly kings.
The rest of them gave themselves over to
all of the false idol worship of the
Canaanite peoples that inhabited that land before they
came in.
And then lastly, the deportation to Babylon up
to the birth of Jesus.
Again, a period of time filled with apostasy.
And what's the point of all of that?
Again, I think we see the grace of
God at work even during some of the
darkest periods of history to bring forth the
Messiah.
And you see the hand of God through
all of the genealogies from all the way,
and when you get to Luke's Gospel, all
the way from Adam to Christ, God had
his hand upon those lineages.
Now, as we...
You know, it's just important to remember that
God's work in history is not limited by
human failures or sins, and he works through
ordinary people.
God had a purpose and a plan.
And even though there were human beings involved
in that plan, God still saw that his
purpose would be accomplished.
And just as God used all kinds of
people to bring his Son into the world,
he uses all kinds of people today to
accomplish his will.
And God wants to use you and me.
And that's amazing grace, no matter which way
you slice it.
God wants to use each and every one
of us.
Let us today say, Lord, use me.
Lord, work in my life.
I yield it to you.
Have your way in me.
Use me for your glory and for your
purposes.
Teach me your way, Lord, that I might
walk in your path.
I want to grow in my love for
you, Lord.
And I want your love to flow more
and more and more out of my life
till the day I take my last breath
here and I take my next one in
that new body that you created for me
in heaven.
You know, why waste our time on things
that don't profit, the things that don't have
an eternal impact, that aren't going to make
a difference for righteousness and other people's lives?
We need to be sold out for Jesus
Christ.
Now, that doesn't mean you all stop, you
know, you all quit your jobs and put
on a white robe and you're all just...
God said you're the salt of the earth.
And all of us have been planted at
different places in the earth.
We've got different jobs, different responsibilities.
All of us are called to be faithful
in what God has given us to do
and to honor him in all that God
has given us to do.
And thus we find that we all have
mission fields all around us.
How many of you might be in education?
Any of you here involved in education?
What a mission field, right, you guys?
All around you.
How about any of you involved in the
trades?
The construction trades.
Boy, is that a mission field.
How many of you are involved domestically, like
your housewives?
You know, and your job is your family.
Boy, what a mission field your family is
and your kids are.
And what does God call us in all
of those things?
He calls us to be faithful and to
love him and to honor him and to
grow in him because those are our mission
fields.
And there's much to be done and many
to be reached.
We need to live our lives as unto
the Lord in all of those fields.
And I pray that that would be the
cry of your heart today.
Recognize God does want to use you.
And if he is Lord of your life
and you are subject to him, then you
can be certain that he will use you.
Now, as we continue our study of Matthew,
we focus in the last part on the
virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
And as we do, I hope you'll take
a look at your own heart and examine
the work of God in your own life
today.
Verse 18.
Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as
follows.
After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
before they came together, she was found with
child of the Holy Spirit.
Pretty radical.
In those days, girls were often married by
the age of 14 or 15.
Often engagements took place by the arrangement of
their parents when the children were quite young.
About a year before the actual marriage took
place, a second period called the espousal or
the betrothal period took place.
It was a year of waiting, preparing, courting,
and keeping themselves from each other.
There was no sexual involvement.
This was a sacred period.
It had to be kept pure.
It could only be broken by a divorce.
They were legally bound to each other, but
not consummated yet.
During this period, in Mary and Joseph's relationship,
Mary was found to be with child, but
not by Joseph.
Luke's gospel gives us greater detail here.
In Luke 1, verse 26.
Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel
was sent by God to a city of
Galilee named Nazareth.
That would be the sixth month of Elizabeth's
pregnancy.
Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist.
To a virgin betrothed to a man whose
name was Joseph of the house of David,
and the virgin's name was Mary.
And having come in, the angel said to
her, Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is
with you.
Blessed are you among women.
But when she saw him, she was troubled
at this saying, no kidding, and considered what
manner of greeting this was.
And then the angel said to her, Do
not be afraid, Mary, for you have found
favor with God, and behold, you will conceive
in your womb and bring forth a son
and shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called
the son of the highest.
Not the son of Joseph, the son of
the highest.
And the Lord God will give him the
throne of his father, David.
Going all the way back.
And he will reign over the house of
Jacob forever.
And of his kingdom there will be no
end.
Luke clearly understood this to be the fulfillment
of the promises of the Old Testament concerning
the Messiah.
Back in Isaiah chapter 9, you've heard it
before, verse 6.
Again, hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
For unto us a child is born, Isaiah
9, 6.
Unto us a son is given, and the
government will be upon his shoulder, and his
name will be called Wonderful...
A lot of people...
What a wonderful child.
Counselor.
A lot of people are wise, but nobody
can do the third one.
Mighty God.
Everlasting Father.
Prince of Peace.
And of the increase of his government and
peace, there will be no end.
And we're testimony to that 2,000 years
later.
Upon the throne of David and over his
kingdom to order it and establish it with
judgment and justice from that time forward, even
forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts
will perform this.
Augsburger notes this.
He says, The Holy Spirit, the same divine
creative agent who brooded over chaos and brought
order at the dawn of creation morning, who
acted in the creation of the first man
and the first woman, was the divine agent
who ushered the life of the eternal Christ
into the body of Mary for the miracle
of the ages known as the Incarnation.
Thus, the God who created man in the
beginning from nothing, who created woman from man
without the agency of man or woman, now
created Jesus of Nazareth through Mary without the
agency of a man.
If you believe God created the heavens and
the earth out of nothing, it is no
problem for you to believe that in the
Virgin Mary's womb became the Son of God.
That's what the scriptures declare.
And so Mary said to the angel back
in Luke 1.34, How can this be
since I do not know a man?
Very normal reaction from a 14 or 15
-year-old girl whose marriage hadn't been consummated
yet.
How will this be?
And the angel said to her, The Holy
Spirit will come upon you.
The power of the highest will overshadow you.
Therefore, also, that Holy One who is to
be born will be called the Son of
God.
How many of you ask that question, I
wonder, How can this be?
Concerning how God might be wanting and what
God might be wanting to birth in your
lives.
Have you ever thought that concerning the work
God is desiring to do in your life,
the new life that God has for you,
how can this be?
I mean, you hear me preaching up here
week after week and no doubt some things
are stirred in you, but a lot of
times you go out of here, I don't
know how that's going to happen.
He's talking about the mission field.
He's talking about us doing this and doing
that.
How can this be?
Did any of you ever ask that question?
How about freedom from the grips of sinful
habits?
We talked about that extensively last week.
How can this be?
When you're caught in the grip of a
sinful habit.
It's almost impossible in your thinking to think
of you free from that habit.
And you would say that, how can this
be?
God is saying, I want to set you
free.
I want to birth something brand new in
you.
Bible says, if anyone is in Christ, he's
a new creation.
The old things are passed away, behold, all
things become new.
How can this be?
Some of us at one time going to
church regularly.
How can this be?
I mean, we treasured our Sundays and our
Wednesday nights and Thursday nights and Monday nights.
And we always had different things filled in
and we wondered, how could this be?
Telling others about Jesus.
How can this be?
Tithing and giving sacrificially.
You might look at your budget and go,
how can this be?
Going to the mission field.
How can this be?
When Jesus and his calling is birthed within
us, folks, our fleshly reaction is often, how
can this be?
But as Luke's gospel goes on and the
angel is responding to Mary, he says in
verse 37, for with God, nothing will be
impossible.
With God, nothing will be impossible.
What was Mary's response?
I pray it's the response we have too.
She said, behold the maid servant of the
Lord, let it be to me according to
your word.
Let it be to me according to your
word.
Not according to how I feel.
Not according to my emotions.
Nor even according to my abilities.
But Lord, let it be done to me.
Let it be done in me according to
your word.
What do you want to do in my
life, Lord?
Let it be according to your word.
And that's what God would ask us to
pray this morning.
As we're preparing to come on up to
the communion table this morning.
And we're going to take these elements, this
bread, this cup of juice, reminding us of
the body and the blood of Jesus Christ
that was given for us.
That we might be his children.
That we might be called by his name.
That we might be his servants.
That we might follow him wherever he would
lead us.
As we take those elements this morning, I
pray that we could truly from the depths
of our hearts say, Lord, I don't know
how it can be, but I know you're
God.
I know you can do the impossible.
And whatever you want to do in my
life, let it be done to me according
to your word.
I want to be who you want me
to be, Lord.
I want to follow you.
And I pray that we would have that
same response and that encouragement to one another,
to others.
You know, sometimes when God really gets a
hold of somebody, their friends, rather than encouraging
them, they kind of mock them.
They go, whoa, aren't you spiritual?
Who made you so high and mighty?
You know, God is telling us in these
next couple of verses in Matthew's gospel what
Joseph's reaction was to all of this.
And I think it's important for us to
look at that, don't you?
And we can learn from that how to
react.
How do we react to God working in
someone close to us, in a good friend,
in a spouse, in a child?
How do we react to God working in
those around us?
Let's look at verse 19.
Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man
and not wanting to make her a public
example, was minded to put her away secretly
by publicly exposing her and declaring that he
was not responsible for her pregnancy, would subject
Mary under the law of being stoned to
death.
Joseph didn't want to make her a public
example, but just divorce her and put her
away privately.
According to the law, he could do that.
Joseph was a man of integrity and faith.
He took this turn of events before the
Lord and pondered about what to do.
He did not want to just react with
his feelings, but truly wanted to do the
right and honorable and loving thing, and he
needed God's perspective.
He needed God's wisdom.
But now divine confirmation of the story Mary
had given him comes.
Verse 20 tells us, But while he thought
about these things, behold, an angel of the
Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid
to take to you Mary your wife, for
that which is conceived in her is of
the Holy Spirit.
And she will bring forth a son, and
you shall call his name Jesus.
For he will save his people from their
sins.
I'm glad Joseph waited on the Lord.
You shall call his name Jesus.
Jesus is a Greek name for the Hebrew
Joshua or Yahweh Shua, which means Jehovah has
become our salvation.
We're told here that, For he shall save
his people from their sins.
Through Jesus Christ alone we have salvation.
Acts 4.12 tells us, Nor is there
salvation in any other, for there is no
other name under heaven whereby men can be
saved.
No other name under heaven given.
Among men by which we must be saved.
In John 3.36, Jesus said, He who
believes in the Son has eternal life, S
-O-N.
And he who does not believe in the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath
of God abides on him.
Jesus said in John 14.6, you know
it, I am the way, the truth, and
the life.
No one comes to the Father except through
me.
In 1 John 5.11, And this is
the testimony that God has given us, eternal
life.
And this life is in his Son.
And he who has the Son has life.
And he who does not have the Son
does not have life.
Jesus' purpose in coming and his mission was
to save sinners.
Luke 19.10 says, For the Son of
Man came to seek and to save that
which was lost.
How can this be?
How can I have this certain hope?
How can I know I am no longer
condemned by God?
How can I have a true eternal perspective?
The answer, simply, only through Jesus.
Only through Jesus.
And verse 22 tells us, So all this
was done that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the Lord through the prophets,
saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child.
Isaiah 7.14, quoting there.
And bear a son, and they shall call
his name Emmanuel.
Which is translated, God with us.
In the beginning was the Word.
John 1.1. And the Word was with
God.
And the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him.
And without him nothing was made that was
made.
In him was life.
And the life was the light of man.
And the light shines in the darkness.
And the darkness didn't comprehend it.
John 1.14. And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us.
And we beheld his glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth.
And so Joseph has this angel speaking to
him and confirming what was going on in
Mary.
And then verse 24 says, Then Joseph, being
aroused from sleep, did as the angel of
the Lord commanded him and took to him
his wife, and did not know her, that
is, did not know her intimately, sexually, till
she had brought forth her firstborn son.
And he called his name Jesus.
He obeyed the Lord.
And he rejoiced in the work that God
was doing in his wife, even though he
would no doubt have to face ridicule, scorn,
perhaps embarrassment down the road, even though he
knew that Mary would have to bear the
public ridicule.
And as we go through the Gospels, we
find that there were times when the Pharisees
even lashed out at Mary, because evidently by
that time it was knowledge that Joseph was
not the father.
But God's word clearly tells us who was
the father and who is the father.
Jesus, born miraculously of the Holy Spirit, to
do what?
To be the perfect human intermediary.
There's one mediator between God and man, the
Bible tells us, and that's Jesus.
It's not the church.
It's not your pastors.
It's not any other clergy.
It's Jesus.
And through Jesus Christ, you can have life
and have that life so much more abundantly
that God has planned for you.
Do you dare to say this morning, be
it done to me, Lord, according to your
word?
How can this be?
Through Jesus, it can be.
And God can do a new, fresh work
in your life today.
And I pray you would open your heart
to him and allow him to do that
work.
I'd like to have the pastors and the
worship team come on back up this morning.
And we're going to invite you to come
on up to the tables here in just
a moment and to partake of the cup
and the bread.
And as you do, we would invite you
to pray.
Of course, I would ask you to be
praying even right now before you come on
up.
If you have never asked Jesus Christ into
your heart as your Lord and Savior and
the forgiver of your sins, I would encourage
you to do that right now.
Right now, say, Lord, I'm a sinner and
I can't save myself.
Lord, would you forgive me?
I believe you died on the cross and
rose again that all of my sin could
be forgiven and washed away.
I believe you are God.
Take over in my life.
I surrender and yield my life to you.
And if you honestly pray that, God will
meet you this morning.
You'll be born again this morning.
You can partake of your true first communion
this morning because you're now a child of
him.
You're not a child of God because you're
an American.
You're not a child of God because your
parents were Presbyterians or Baptists or Catholics.
You're a child of God because of faith
in Jesus Christ.
If your trust is in Jesus as the
one who died and rose again for you,
then that's where new life comes.
As you come to the table this morning,
may you come with an attitude of prayer,
an attitude of humility to God's purposes in
your life.
Lord, I want to get out of the
way and I want you to work in
me, please.
Take over in my life.
As I take this bread, as I drink
this cup, Lord, I do it in remembrance
of you.
I remember what you did for me and
how you suffered for me, how you sacrificed
yourself for me that I might have life.
Lord, help me not to be so selfish,
so stubborn, so intent on doing it my
way.
When you were Almighty God and you could
have dissolved this earth in a word and
yet you went to the cross and you
bore that pain beyond what anything I have
ever experienced and you bore it being perfectly
sinless and holy for someone so defiled by
sin as I was.
Oh, Lord, help me not to have a
puffed-up heart and attitude.
God, I want to be who you want
me to be.