us pray. Father, it has been our joy and privilege to sing this morning of our rescuer, the one who came from heaven above, the one who was born in extreme humility and poverty that we might be made rich. We thank you Father for every remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ and as we think of the time of His coming this morning, may your spirit illumine our hearts and minds in His name we pray. Amen.
I noticed that one of the young ladies in the front looked in the middle here. Tinsel. Tinsel for me typifies everything I don't like about Christmas. It's shiny and it has no value.
It's sparkly and it has static electricity that makes it stick to your clothes. It's hard to clean up after when you take the tree down. My tree actually confession time I did zero work in putting up that tree and I will probably do zero work in taking it down and it has no tinsel because my wife also has decided that tinsel is more trouble than it's worth. And this stuff you know it speaks to me of how insubstantial, how lacking in substance, the world's concept of Christmas is.
The insubstantial nature of their understanding of Christmas is all contained in me, for me in my mind and those kinds of things, those kinds of things. So I'm sorry to tell you that I don't like to put a wet blanket or you know rain on people's Christmas parade but perhaps you have felt the same thing, perhaps you have as a believer who worships the Lord Jesus Christ, you have listened or not to music in Walmart and you have seen all kinds of decorations and then more recently you get emails about, at my work we're going to have a carol sing. Now that's because they've removed Christmas from as many places as they can possibly remove it from. So we're not singing Christmas carols, we're singing carols.
And in various settings as you may have seen the Christ and Christmas has been removed deliberately, consciously, seemingly fairly thoroughly from the entire vocabulary of this time of year, which is absurd. Without the Lord Jesus Christ there is no Christmas, that is quite obvious. This morning in fact we thought about this child and there is that lovely melody that we'll sing later as a closing hymn, sometimes attributed to King Henry VIII, the melody known as green sleeves and it asks this very, very important question, what child is this? What child is this?
The way in which various people cross paths with the Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing to study and to think about as you read the accounts of the four Gospels and very interestingly it begins at his birth. You can find hours of sermons on the internet, some of them quite good, on just the interaction of the magi and where they came from and who they might have been and how they worship and what they brought. You can find people speaking about the shepherds, you can find people speaking about the angels, you can find many aspects of this all around someone who has not taken a step yet, all around a baby. What did you ever think of that?
What child is this that should cause this kind of holy kafuffle? This holy child caused a great deal of attention and brought about events of a very unique nature. Nicodemus once said, how can these things be? Indeed, how can these things be?
How is it that this child brought about so much and he has not yet taken a step later in his life as he would teach, as he would do miracles, the ground would shake, the spiritual and physical ground would shake with his presence. People would come in their throngs to get near him and that isn't the end of it yet. Who is this man? Who was this child?
It's a very good question. If you were to go out on the street and maybe ask people in the McMachamal, who was the emperor of Rome at the time of Jesus' birth? I don't know that one in 100 people would answer that question correctly. And who was the emperor that followed him?
That the Sea of Galileas named after, the Sea of Tiberius. The great nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar was Octavius and then you have Tiberius and then you have briefly an awful man named Caligula and then you have Claudius and then as you get to the end of the book of Acts, you have Nero, the string of Roman emperors who controlled the known western world. Does anybody know their names anymore? They controlled the western world.
Vast armies were at their disposal and vast riches and nobody knows their names anymore. But here's a name that everybody knows. Jesus Christ. Have you heard that name?
Oh yes, of course I've heard that name. How is it that a man who was an itinerant preacher who walked on foot most of the time and didn't travel more than a few hundred miles, who never wrote a book, who was never elected to office, who never led an army, who had no political stature, is the name that they remember or the name that they know. Not Valerius Gratus. You're going, who's that?
Because the guy that came after him was Pontius Pilate and not Marcellus who came after Pontius Pilate. They don't know him. The only reason anybody who's heard of Pontius Pilate is because of Jesus Christ. That's the only reason.
This was not an ordinary child. This is not an ordinary man. Alexander White, the Scottish divine, suggests that there was a man named Joseph and his heart and mind were in a state of agony. His throat was pregnant and his mind and heart were in a state of agony.
We read in Luke that Gabriel had explained things to her and that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant and she left Nazareth and went to the hill country of Judea, ostensibly Hebron where Zacharias and Elizabeth lived, leaving Joseph behind in Nazareth to do his work, his daily work with a heavy heart. You know, when we read in early, in the book of Luke, when the angel reveals himself to Mary, he begins highly favored of God. That's how he addressed her. Now, many people give Mary more than her due as we know out there in great denominations.
And sometimes we might say that as a result of that, we give Mary less than her due here within the evangelical denominations who we would never pray to Mary. No, of course we would not. But at the same time, perhaps that causes us to miss some pretty obvious things about this woman. A woman favored of God.
A woman, a beautiful character. And she was gone and she was pregnant. His mind was torn. Deuteronomy says, cast out, stoning.
She's pregnant. It's biology. It's not mine. I love her.
I don't understand. And so he realized that he is torn between having someone put out to great public shame and probably danger whom he deeply loved and respected as a woman of wonderful character. And he couldn't do it. And at the same time, he knew that the child was not his.
How can I marry her? How can I put her away? How can I marry her? How can I put her away?
What? He probably didn't sleep very well. His heart and mind were tortured. And now it's under white suggests that at the scripture reading, one finds Sabbath, Saturday, that this was read.
You know they systematically go through. In Luke 4, you can read that the Lord Jesus stood up at the identification of the Messiah in Luke 4 and said, this day, in your ears, this is fulfilled. Perfect timing. So perhaps there was another perfect timing, the combination of which set Joseph on the right track.
He heard, therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And shall call his name Immanuel. Could it be?
Could it be my Mary? And then he lay down at night and he had a fitful sleep and he went into a dream. And it says, while he, Joseph, thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take Mary thy wife for that, which is conceived in her is of the holy ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.
And he knew, he knew that the scripture of Isaiah was going to be fulfilled in his betrothed. One of my purposes this morning is to try to help you to see that real people were involved in this. I really have a dislike when people say, you know, it's Christmas morning. In my father's country, the tradition was that the eldest son reads from Luke of the Christmas account.
And so sometimes he would ask me to do that. It seemed to depend on my dad's mood that year. But to say that this is a Christmas story makes me bristle. This is a detailed historical account that is interwoven with detailed historical facts, people and geography, and parts of what was meant to be Jewish that are woven together.
This is not some clever tale designed to entertain. This is the historical account of the origin of Christmas. And so I alluded to what had already happened. And that was that the angel, Gabriel had said to Mary, you are going to have a child and your cousin is also is already pregnant.
Let's read this. And the angel came in onto her Mary and said, hail thou who are highly favored. The Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him she was troubled at his saying and cast her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
And the angel said to her, fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor with God and behold thou shalt conceive and thy womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus he shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. It's interesting to look at the words that describe this very real person. Mary is a very real person. Joseph was a very real man.
And this woman, this very godly woman is contacted as it were. An angel appears to her and communicates to her and she is troubled or perplexed. And the idea within that troubling, it's the same word that's used in John with regard to the pool of Salom and the troubling of the waters. If you throw a stone into a quiet pool you see the ripples go out to the edge of the pool and bounce back.
And then you get different interesting interference patterns. I'm retiring on Saturday. I don't have to think about them anymore. And the word that is used in engineering is perturbation when you perturb.
And then there is the propagation of the small solotons, the the the oscillatory waves and her inner person between her mind and her emotions. What to make of this? My mind is trying to process it. I'm having an emotional reaction that affects my mind reflecting back on my emotions.
It has this sense. And then it caused her to cast in her mind a good way of expressing that is to try to synthesize, to get to to throw together, to put together, to try to synthesize what's happening. We'll see that this person, this Mary, she was that kind of person. She was the kind of person who thought deeply.
When the angel appeared to do, she faint. Did she scream? She had a deep inward reaction and began to process to try to process and to take in the information that the angel provided to her. She did not become hysterical.
She did not swoon. She thought. And we read this about the Messiah and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever enough, his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said it, Mary unto the angel, how shall this be?
Seeing I know not a man. And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee in the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold, I cousin Elizabeth she hath also conceived a son in her old age.
And this in the six months with her who was called barren for with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, behold the handmaid of the Lord be it unto me according to thy word and the angel departed her. And she gets, she high-tales it out of there, leaves Joseph behind in time he will understand. Maybe he has already had this similar revelation and a dream and she heads for the hill country to go and be with a woman who has conceived a child by the ordinary way but who is also via promise.
John the Baptist is the last Old Testament promise of profit and he is coming also by promise by promise. And so we have what is called the Magnificat. Mary said, my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced and God my Savior. For he hath regarded the lowest state of his handmaid and for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with his arm he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. Another illusion to Isaiah to whom hath the arm to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed. If you know the Lord it has been revealed to you.
And Mary says it has been revealed to me. Wonderful. Mary has a deep soul. She makes that connection.
Mary was a woman with a deep soul. There was a man, a famous man you may have heard of Mahatma Gandhi. Do you know what Mahatma means? Deep soul.
A person of deep soul and yet he knew not the Lord and he was subject to sin although these things are not so publicized. And yet he knew and felt things deeply even in a secular sense. This blessed virgin was a person of deep soul and not only by her very nature but because of God, because of God's spirit within her because of God's revelation to her. She continues, he hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel. In remembrance of his mercy and he spake to our fathers to Abraham and to his seed forever. We have the verse in which it says, but Mary kept all these things pondering them in her heart.
Darby says, kept these things in her mind pondering them in her heart. Putting things together as I was saying. Synthesizing things. Allowing the spirit of God to minister her to her to give her strength for what was coming.
And this was her character. It may be that Joseph decided to try to catch up with Mary and to find that place where she stayed for some months. It may be that that priest Zacharias reaffirmed their betrothal and that there was a happy reunion and that he brought her back to Galilee but no sooner had he brought her back that the emperor of us said, there's going to be a census. And so he had to return to the place of his origins which was Bethlehem.
And so we can read that the words that were spoken. They keep on resonating and they keep on resonating. She kept these things in her heart and pondered them and then later Joseph and Mary listened to these things and they marveled at these things. And some 12 years later it says, and Jesus went down with them to came to Nazareth and was subject to them.
But his mother kept all these things in her heart. And you will remember how that happened and why that happened because he was teaching the teachers of the law and they were amazed at what he knew. They were amazed at his wisdom and his insight and he was 12 years old. And he became separated from his parents for a short time and then they went back and they found him in the temple.
And again, Mary treasured these things in her heart. But I want to move to the time in which after the escape to Egypt was over and they came back. I believe that that was when they brought him to the temple for the ritual and for this child. Some say that it is a 40 day wait before the circumcision.
I wonder whether there was a man that we know about and read about. His name is Simeon. He's a righteous man. And I wonder whether in like manner he was considering Isaiah.
And one of the things that that man may well have been involved with was to translate the make copies in Coine Greek from the Hebrew. And White suggests that he came to this chapter and he wrote therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear son and you shall call his name Emmanuel. And then a little later in the same book for unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful.
Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace and he threw down his pen and said how can this be? How can this be? How can these things come true? And then the child was brought.
He had been told that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Christ. And the Lord's Christ came and he actually got to hold that child in the temple. And it says, then he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said Lord, now let us thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word from my eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, alight delight in the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel and Joseph and his mother marveled again at the things that were spoken of him. Mary's him, the first him of the New Testament, the last psalm of the Old Testament is called the Magnificat and this is called the Nukdimittis which means now let me go.
This man had been given this promise. He held this child. He knew who it was and he said, now let me go. What had he seen?
What was the key word? What is the key word? Salvation? 30, verse 30.
My eyes have seen thy salvation. Now did Simeon understand all of the different aspects of this word, of the salvation that Jesus Christ would be bringing? Well, he would have some understanding if he understood Isaiah 53 and how the Lamb would be given and how there would be one who was pierced. If he understood those things he would have some inkling of the result, the end point of the result of this person.
But this key word is the same key word for you. It is the same key word for me. Salvation? It's all about salvation.
It says, and Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary, his mother, behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be spoken against, Yay, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also. This morning at the breaking of bread we were reminded of that and how Mary would stand at a short distance from the cross and witness her dying son there on that cross with nails through his hands and feet with a crown of thorns in between two criminals and during the death, the execution of a criminal. And then Simeon says, the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. Well, that's a wonderful statement right there.
What are the thoughts of your heart in connection with salvation? What child is this? At this juncture in these gospels, the gospel account, the gospel history, the life of Christ which would end in his death but lead to his resurrection is only beginning. What do you make of these things?
What child is this? What is this salvation? This is the key thing. I really don't know how anyone can decide that these things are some kind of cleverly fabricated tales as one of the writers of the epistle says.
These are not cleverly fabricated tales. This is a historical account involving real people who had real feelings and who were confronted by angels of God and who came to know who Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, was in reality, who he really was. He was as it says, Emmanuel, that's who he was, God with us. All of these people Herod the Great, Herod Arcalaeus, his half-brother, Herod Antipater that Jesus stood in front of and Herod Agrippa the first and Herod Agrippa the second that Paul stood in front of.
All these historical figures going from before the birth of Jesus to after the death of Paul. Does anybody remember their names or consider them to have been significant? Basically, the answer is no, but everybody remembers the name Jesus Christ. I managed to turn off the, oh, it's the TV.
Oh, it did a reset. Well, no matter. I want to tell you about something that Peter preached in Acts 4. Peter had some interactions with angels.
Joseph in your Bible had three interactions with angels. The first one to tell him the nature of his wife's pregnancy. The second one to tell him to flee to Egypt. The third one to tell him to go back because hairs were dead.
And the fourth one must have been quite a thing. If you have a dream and you see an angel, you might go wake up. I'm pretty sure I saw an angel in my dream. Some dreams, of course, are very vivid.
But as we know, when the shepherds and the Magi came there around that stable, angels, Joseph looked up, he promised, more angels, more angels. Angels have been speaking to me about who this child is. And now the angels give testimony and bear witness to who this child is. Who is this child?
There it is. Peter received instructions from angels, but and saw them break the jail door, lead him out. And this man, Peter, who was told not to speak of this name, don't speak this name. Don't talk about this name.
He said, well, there's a thing about this name because neither is their salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. This Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth is Emmanuel. He is the reason for Christmas. He is the basis for salvation, the salvation that Simeon got a window into and had the privilege of holding that child.
This name is the name by which I must be saved and you must be saved. There is no alternative. I pray this morning as we have meditated upon the circumstances around the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Emmanuel, God with us, that God will use these things in your heart if you are a believer to strengthen you, to remind you of the certainty of these things and of the reality of these things. And if you know not the Lord, it is high time that you gave your life to Christ because there is no other.
There is no other name by which you must be saved. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you that we have this historical record given to us in your word. We marvel at the revelations given to Joseph and to Mary and to Simeon, to Anna, to all of those who witnessed these things and these things are recorded for us.
Though they happened 2,000 years ago and more, they happened. And we who know you Lord, we rejoice in these things, we marvel at these things. Though our understanding is dim, we know that there is no salvation outside of the name of Christ and that only in him is their salvation. For those who know not the Christ, the Christ of God, we pray that your Spirit would work in their hearts this very day that they may be saved.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for your time.