All right, one more time. If you can hear me outside, go ahead and beep the horn. Thank you. Appreciate it. We have the same batteries from last week, too. At this time, you can go ahead, if you like, and turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 1, verses 30 through 35. And actually, I have those passages for you in the bulletin there, if you want to follow along right there as well. All right. So Luke chapter 1, 30 through 35. And I'll begin reading that right now then. Luke chapter 1, beginning at verse 30. through 35. Here you then the word of the Lord. And 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 bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he shall be great and will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob and of his kingdom. There will be no end. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, 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. We stopped right there at this time. Father, we do thank you, Lord, for your holy word. We pray to bless it to our hearts and to our understanding that you would stir our hearts up before you and worship before you even through thy word. Father, we praise you, we thank you, in Jesus' holy name, amen. Well, of course, Christmas is right around, I mean, really right around the corner and going really faster and faster all the times it seems like. The year is flying by. But this coming right up, I do hope that you'll have a blessed event as well with your families and all that without any fear, without any problems. One that is filled with thanksgiving before the Lord, the one that is filled with love for your Savior, love for your family and friends, and love for your church family as well. Because we do all have so much that we can be thankful for, as we heard on last Thanksgiving. But we have a lot to be thankful for and what God has done for all of us. We thank the Lord for that. Now last time we looked at the Christ of the prophets as Isaiah proclaimed the branch of the Lord, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. And before that, we looked more at what God revealed through the prophets concerning the Messiah with his nature, his divinity, and his humanity, his family, his tribe, and even more than beyond that. And we recognize the hand of God ordaining whatsoever comes to pass for he has sent his only begotten son. And so today we consider the Christ of the prophets, not only in the promise of his coming, which is certain, but also in the fulfillment of it as well. Because with these many and precious promises of God, we see clearly the promise and fulfillment because God is faithful. He keeps his word, he keeps his promises, and he will bring about every jot and tittle of his holy word until all is finally brought together at the consummation. Now I have given you three passages in your bulletins, and you can follow along there or in your Bibles, either way, that'll be great, but three passages dealing with the birth of Christ our Savior. But we're gonna go beyond these, and we will see and point out these fulfillments of promise because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Christ is born. It is a day of remembrance. It is a day of celebration because God has demonstrated his love. He has made it known unto us. He has sent the promised one himself, the Messiah. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And we should all throughout this day, even with the rain, and the coolness of the weather that is before us. Because first we see in the words of Luke chapter one, The angel told Mary, he said, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. Because this is the child of the promise, and he will be a human child. He will have a human body and soul, just like you and I have. And this child will be hungry. He will be thirsty. He will need his swaddling cloths changed every once in a while, just like you or I would. He will cry, and he will smile and laugh, and he will look like any other child who would be born to a Jewish family on that day. He'll look like any other child, no glow about his face, no halo painted around him or anything like that. He will look like any other child that is out there on that day. So unlike the pictures and the paintings you may see, this child doesn't have anything that would draw special attention unto him by his physical appearance. Okay, nothing there like that. Because his glory has been veiled in human flesh, not to be seen until much later upon the mount, when a glimpse of his glory is revealed to Peter, James, and John, who are up there with him. But for now, he will need to be kept warm. Okay, he'll need to be kept warm, and he'll snuggle up with Mary as she takes him in her arms there on that particular morning. And the angel told her, you shall call his name Jesus. And as the angel told Joseph in Matthew 1 verse 21, he will save his people from their sins. That's why he'll be named Jesus, right? He is Emmanuel. He is God with us. but he will be named Jesus, meaning Savior. But even though this will be a human child, okay, born lowly and mild with a true human body and soul, he will be great and mighty and he'll be called the Son of the Most High. And that is a divine title, a title for God. He is declared and he actually is Almighty God who has taken to himself a little body here as a little child, a little baby, a body and soul like one of us. Okay. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, an everlasting throne, even according to the promise. Second Samuel chapter seven, verses 12 and 13, God told David through Nathan the prophet, he said, when your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, 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 the throne of his kingdom forever. forever. This cannot apply, cannot apply to anyone else who has ever sat upon the throne of David because their days were brief, their days were numbered, and their lives were temporal. But Christ, the one who has come, he is the one who sits upon the throne forever and ever and ever. Amen. The word of God has been fulfilled. It has happened just as he said. Promise and fulfillment. and the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 33, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there shall be no end. This is not a reference to some kind of earthly rule as if Christ had come to overthrow the Romans even as the Jews of the day thought he might do and they were hoping Messiah would simply free them from Roman oppression This is not even a freedom from a political kingdom. It's not a political kingdom that Christ is bringing in either. This is the kingdom of grace. This is the kingdom of truth established in the very hearts of all those who have the God of Jacob as their refuge. The kingdom of Christ set up in your hearts. This is the eternal kingdom. This is Mary's child, born in humility, born without wealth, born without position, without any kind of worldly position, yet he is born truly the king of all kings. Yes, king of the Jews. Yes, the king of all kings. Whoever lived or will live upon this earth, he is the king of kings. Now imagine Mary hearing all this for the first time about how can this be? And can it be? Really, in verse 34, she says, how would this be? Because I'm a virgin. And she is not expressing any kind of doubt or lack of faith because she sees the angel before her. She is not expressing doubt at all. But she wonders, how can this happen? Because she is a virgin. It's still a mystery to her. How can it happen? But she does believe. She does believe and is not rebuked. because truly the Messiah, the Christ, must be born of a virgin in fulfillment of the prophecy of the word of God that was delivered through Isaiah in chapter seven, verse 14. There we read, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. And so the promise was made. And now in the life of little Mary, It is fulfilled. And Gabriel explains even more to her. He 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. And so yes, to Mary, the answer is, it will be a miracle. How can it be? It will be a miracle of God. when God the Son takes to himself a real human body and soul. And not only will you give birth to the child of promise, but that child will be God's only begotten Son, the one and only, the one, the Lord Jesus Christ. That child will be God in the flesh, God and man, to be the promised Savior. according to the Word of God. He is there to bring forgiveness of sins to his people and to come and to die as a lamb of God in the sinner's place. This child is the child fulfilling the promise of God through the prophets. This is the child of hope. This is a child of grace. The child of truth, grace and truth in this child, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal son of God who has become man. Here a helpless, hungry little baby who cannot even feed himself, who needs his little diaper changed like any other baby would need. He's been born as one of us, and he starts even as one of us. He's a little helpless little babe. That is not who he is today, though. He is no longer a little helpless babe, but rather the lion of the tribe of Judah. Second, the days of registration came, or the census or taxation you may have, but the day of registration that was issued by Caesar Augustus. gave the decree, anyone, everyone had to go and be registered. Yes, probably for the exact purposes of taxes. But so Joseph and Mary, they had to go and leave Nazareth. They had to leave there because, remember, they had to flee there in the first place to escape the attempted murder of the child by Herod, even as the prophet foretold, out of Egypt. I called my son, for the baby must not be born in Galilee. He must not be born in Nazareth, but he must be born in the city of David, the city of kings and Bethlehem. And so the Lord Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph make their way back there. Yes, for the purpose of registration and taxes, but ultimately in God's eternal plan. because his son must be born in the city of David in fulfillment of the word of God. Remember when Herod questioned the chief priest regarding the child, where is the Christ to be born? Surely you're going to have to let me know some way or another, but they knew immediately. They knew quickly. They knew it's in Bethlehem of Judah as promised in Micah chapter five, verse two. There the word of the Lord said, and you, O Bethlehem, and the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel." And so the promise was made and these priests knew it and the fulfillment of the promise is what we have here. God called his son out of Egypt even by means of Caesar's decree. It will happen as God has said it will. Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem to the house of bread, which is Bethlehem. What that means for the birthplace of he who literally is the bread of life. And so there you find the bread of life in Bethlehem, the city of bread, the house of bread. And while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born. Look at chapter two, verse seven. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and she wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn. Okay, the end, like we would say a hotel today, but here the great and the mighty king of kings, the one who is God made man, will be born and the greatest of humility. He is and he will be meek and mild. He'll be gentle and kind and yet there will be no place available for his birth except a manger, an animal shelter, a stable for livestock, one that was connected to the end. which usually be on the back or a nearby cave, probably a cave. And so why there was no room at the inn, we don't really know exactly, but it's probably because of the decreed registration. The city was crowded. The city is overflowing. The Roman soldiers will be filling up the inns. They're not going to be invited into the Jewish homes to sleep in their homes because they might be considered ceremonially defiled. But the Roman soldiers would be filling up the inns as well because the Jews would not want that at all. They were not willing to take them into their homes. And so the innkeeper, you have to understand, the innkeeper was not being mean. He was not being cruel. But he had a full house. The inn was full. That's what it was. And so he offered the stable that was attached to the inn and they took it. And they took it and they were glad. And they laid the baby in a manger. And the manger simply is a feeding trough, an animal's feeding trough, the grain of the hay that they would put in there and of course they would lay him on top of that. And Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, the King was born there in an animal's feeding trough. and a stable, which is probably a cave. There in his humble setting, the God of all the universe, there the son of God would take human flesh unto himself and a human nature as well like ours to be our redeemer. He had a body and soul like us. Okay. So the hope of Israel had finally come. The fulfillment of the prophets had arrived. The light and the light of salvation to the Gentiles lay there in his manger, there in a feeding trough. The one who would bring hope to the nations, forgiveness of sins and life to the nations was born there in a feeding trough. There in a stable. And third, we arrive on the scene then of the shepherds. The shepherds watching their flocks in the fields. And these were a despised class of people. These were the lowest class of people of the day. These were, you know, very much looked down upon. In fact, they were often excluded from giving testimony in a court of law because they were looked down upon so much. They were viewed or their word can't be taken as being truthful. And so they were rejected from giving testimony. So much was there being despised there. But these shepherds were different from many others. They were very different. These will be present to see the angelic proclamation of the birth of the savior. And so they see the angel and they see the glory of God shining about them. In chapter two, verse 10, the angel said to them, fear not. And by the way, literally the language is this, stop being afraid. Okay, that is literally the language of it. Fear not sounds more poetic, but literally we would say like parents to the children, stop it, stop being afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the peoples. And this is the announcement of the gospel coming to pass, the evangel, the good news, the great news, that the promise of God is yes. And here we know because the Christ is born and so they are true, the promises are true, and the gospel is true. And so you hear it now, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Imagine the shepherds pondering and seeing and beholding and hearing things they've never heard or seen such as this before, and yet hearing of the grace of God being manifest. There in the city of promise, The Savior has been born. Now you might say, saved from what? Yes, sin and death and hell itself. To these poor men, okay, to these poor shepherds, these despised shepherds, they would be some of the very first to hear the precious good news of God, the Messiah has come. Salvation for God's people has arrived on the very scene before them. So this is the Christ, this is the anointed one of the Lord. It's good news for all peoples everywhere, not just Jewish good news, not just Gentile good news, The good news for all people everywhere. God has sent his son, born of a woman, to come and give his perfect righteous life as a ransom for sin. Good news, no matter their nationality, no matter their age, their wealth, their fame, their social status, their sex, their education. This is the proclamation of the good news of God. He has sent his son. And so these shepherds will be some of the very first. to hear of this evangelist good news as being declared to them the good news of God that the Messiah has finally come, and the promise of salvation by grace through faith must go forth into all the world. It begins here, it began there, but it must go forth through everyone. The free offer of Christ must be declared to all, and those who hear and those who believe upon this Christ shall know the joy of the Lord, and those who reject Him will never know joy ever. That blessing belongs only to those made children of God by faith in the Messiah. Only them. Long ago the promise was made through the prophets of God. Long ago. But now the promise has been fulfilled. The Christ of the prophets is born. And just so they didn't miss it, the angels tell them, this will be a sign for you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths. and lying in a manger. Now remember, there are a lot of babies born all the time of every single day and almost every single minute. So they would be wrapped in swaddling cloths. There would be babies around, but this one will be found in a feeding trough, in a manger. And so they have a sign, okay, but only this one at this time, this child, this baby at this moment, wrapped in swaddling cloths in the feeding trough. And they go, and they find the baby, and they praise God all the way back home. After telling them the sign to look forward, the angel and a whole multitude of them began praising God, saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so the angel knew the Son of God before in all of his glory. The angels knew him previously in all of his glory. And here they get to declare what has taken place. But they're also aware, not only of Christ prior to the incarnation, but they're also aware of the very tragic and horrific fall of man. The angels were not ignorant of what happened. They're aware of the fall of man, and they knew that the greatest need among all of humanity, the greatest need for all them, is they need a savior. And behold, God has sent his son. Hope is now restored. Forgiveness is now available. Life is there in the very person and the child, the Lord Jesus Christ, and peace. These are all available through faith in the son of God, whom they looked upon as a little newborn infant. Here, in this feeding trough, we see God's hope for humanity. for every nation, tribe, and tongue. So glory to God in the highest, they shout. Glory to God in the highest, for all of creation should be breaking out in song upon that day and every day as we reflect upon what God has done. It is the glory of God, not only to the Jews, but the light to the Gentiles here is born. The very promises of the Old Testament of the one who would bring the blessings of Abraham to the Gentiles, to the nations. The blessing of Abraham belongs to the Jews who believe in Christ the Messiah, and it belongs to the Gentiles who belong and have faith in Christ the Messiah likewise. The blessings of Abraham are yours in Christ. They're all yours. They are yes and amen to you, to those who are in Christ. But do we know the Lord Jesus Christ? Is he our Messiah? Are we trusting in him today? Not yesterday, not 20 years ago. Are we trusting in him even today? Because there is no other Messiah. There is no other hope. And no matter what the people may say, no matter what the tell us evangelists or no matter what the latest Oprah show may say there are not many ways to heaven. There's only one and God has said this is my son. This is the way. The only way is God's way. And only there and in him do you find forgiveness and life and reconciliation. There is no forgiveness or salvation anywhere else on this planet, nowhere else, but only by faith in God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so like the shepherds, like Mary and Joseph, like the prophets of old, and like the multitudes of those who will be saved by grace through faith in Christ, Will you be saved today? Will you hear the call of the gospel upon your heart? Because if you will, and if you have, then you must repent and believe upon the Christ of the prophets, the Christ of the word of God, the Christ as he is fully revealed in scripture, that God has said, this is my son. Look at all of scripture has said concerning him. Jesus said, all of these things speak of me. They all point to Christ. They all speak to him and our need for him. Are we hearing the gospel call the very Christ of the prophets, the Christ for the nations? Then we must embrace God's good news. And we do so by embracing Christ. We do it today. We do it by faith. We don't wait till tomorrow. We must hear and we must heed. We must hear and we must believe and we must do it today while it is today. People are dying out there and they must hear and they must repent and they must believe while still today because the time comes and the door is shut and no man may open when the Lord comes on that day of his return. Father, we do thank you, Lord, for thy holy word. And we do pray to bless it to each one, Lord. All of us, Father, help us to truly walk in accordance with your word and your will. And Father, we know that sometimes we don't always do that which you command. And Father, we thank you for the cleansing blood of Christ. Forgive us, help us to walk faithfully before you, moment by moment. Lord, if anyone that knows not your son, they don't know Jesus Christ, I pray, Lord, by your Holy Spirit, open their heart, open their mind, their eyes, their ears, that they might hear and see and believe for the salvation of their souls, Lord. It's your work, O Lord. And it's marvelous, and it's wonderful. And Father, we thank you. for the Christ of the prophets, the Christ of the apostles, the Christ to the nations, the one through whom we have access through his blood and to your very presence. And father, we do thank you and we praise you and Jesus Holy name and I'll receive the Lord's benediction. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, the father and the communion of the Holy spirit be with you all. Even now, and forever. Amen. God bless you. Saints, please remain. Um, you can get in your cars, but you, uh, if you're here, you can, Oh, don't forget the poem says as well.