CONSOLATION IN THE FIERY FURNACE DR. ROGER BARRIER Daniel 3:1-30 S-1445 •BACKGROUND SLIDE : Love jalapeños: The hotter the better Describe Queso appetizer Grabbed in fingers Incredible burn Ate meal with fingers in glass of ice water I have one verse in mind this morning from which we will take our text. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:25: "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods." In this verse we see Muammar al-Gaddafi watching his three victims quietly surviving the fire which he had intended for their instant destruction. Did I say, “Muammar al-Gaddafi”? I meant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon—2600 years ago. How do three of God’s men manage to end up in the furnace? •SLIDE # Daniel 3:1: “King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, ninety feet high and nine feet wide, and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.” What kind of guy was Nebuchadnezzar? Totalitarian ruler over Babylon Hanging gardens one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world See his gate with giant lion reliefs Honored Daniel, Meshach and Abednego as young teenagers Dream of multi-metallic man: “You are the head of Gold.” Neb praised the name of Jehovah Sixteen years later and it has gone to his head. Egomaniac who thinks he is god. Grotesque: Statue: 90 feet by 9 feet is a 10:1 ratio. Tall and skinny. Average ratio of a man is 5 to 1. I know some 4 to 1 and some 3 to 2. Looks like missile set up at Cape Canaveral. “Plain of Dura” would be like the airport - Large expanse of territory which enabled a great multitude to assemble. •SLIDE # Big Tex at state fair is 52 feet tall: 75 gallon hat Not uncommon for a ruler to make posters and images of himself to remind people to submit and often to worship. Talk about over compensating. Monster truck and 5’3” guy gets out Called all high officials through out the kingdom for the dedication. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:4-6: “4 Then the herald loudly proclaimed, "This is what you are commanded to do, O peoples, nations and men of every language: 5 As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. 6 Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace." •SLIDE # Daniel 3:7: Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the peoples, nations and men of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Except for three men who did not cooperate. The royal orchestra began to play and the great multitude fell quickly on their faces while some cried urgently to the three who remained standing, “Get down! Didn’t you hear the music? Get down or you’re dead!” They stood out like sore thumbs. But from early childhood they had developed a relationship with God that went to the very core of their beings: Exodus 20:3-4: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make any graven image of anything in heaven above or earth below and fall down and worship it.” Verse 3:13: Nebuchadnezzar blows his stack… Calls in the three Hebrews to give them a second chance! •SLIDE # Daniel 3:15: “… if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" Fire is a horrible way to die. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:16-18: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." Goes both ways: look at their understanding: Our God is Able—but may choose not to. Not upset if God chooses for them to die in the flames. Times in God's sovereign will when He has more important plans for us in the furnace than out of the furnace. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:19-20: “Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude toward them changed. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual 20 and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace.” •SLIDE # Daniel 3:21-23: “So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. 22 The king's command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, 23 and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.” God delights in leading us into green pastures, but to be frank about it, we do not always think that the paths into which God leads us are very pleasant. Sometimes He takes us through the Valley Of Death. Some of you are wrestling with this because some of you are not walking in pleasant places. You have done what is right to the best of your ability; but even though you have done what is right, the furnace of testing is hotter than ever For you in particular Daniel 3 is included in the Bible. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:24-25: Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, "Weren't there three men that we tied up and thrown into the fire?" They replied, ‘Certainly, O king.’ He said, •SLIDE # Daniel 3:25: "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods." This is a preincarnate appearance of Jesus Christ—who walked with Enoch, feasted with Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, spoke to Moses in the burning bush, spent the night in the Lion’s Den with Daniel, and came to be born in a manger. The Son of God has been in many fiery furnaces through out the ages. It makes no difference how hot the furnace or how severe the test, He will always be there. •SLIDE # Daniel 3:26: So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, 27 and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them. We find the three saints in the fiery furnace, and to tell the truth, that is the place where God’s people are usually to be found. Ask any Christian and he’ll tell you, he’s always got problems. •SLIDE # FURNACES COME IN ALL SHAPED AND SIZES •SLIDE # ☻Some furnaces are kindled by people against other people. Business Troubles Slander Gossip Broken Relationships Persecution Julie and Sally •SLIDE # ☻Some fires are stoked Satan by furiously using a large bellows. Fires of Physical Pain and Suffering. Paul's Thorn Accusations. Mom: OK to go to Middle East. Turn for the worst: Come home. Ron, no plenty of time left. DFW: drove to hospital. Her bed empty—sheets stripped. Said the preachers’ curse word: “Boulder” biggest damn around. Satan: “If you were a good son, you would have been there. ☻SLIDE # Our broken world fires some furnaces. Japan earthquake (Already off the front page)—but pain is still going on Tsunamis Nuclear meltdowns (Many brave volunteers will not live a full and normal life.) Floods on Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri bring devastation to many. Tornadoes in South and Midwest ☻SLIDE # Some furnaces are fired up for God’s eternal purposes. John 9:1-3 How I deal with Jessie's death To appreciate the application of Daniel 3, we should look first into the second chapter of 1 Peter. As silver is purified in the furnace simply because it is silver, so saints are sometimes afflicted simply because they are saints. •SLIDE # 1 Peter 1:3-4: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you… SLIDE # 1 Peter 1:6-7: In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. DRAW CRUCIBLE OF REFINING GOLD. Men do not cut common pebbles, but the diamond is cut again and again with sharp cuttings – and so must be the believer in Christ. I can’t leave this point without observing that these holy men were helpless when thrown into the fire. READ Daniel 3:23. They were cast and bound – they fell down in the midst of the fire. How often we feel bound when we’re cast into the fire. So often a fit of fainting overtakes the saint at the beginning of his troubles – the very troubles in which afterward he’ll rejoice. But the present fills them with heaviness. Pity that plight to be in – none of us willingly choose it. Stages Of Loss Recovery: Disbelief—Anger—Grief—Depression—Resolution •SLIDE #: Daniel 3:26-27: Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!" So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them. Now. let's learn some lessons from the midst of the fire. •SLIDE #: NOTICE WHAT WE LOSE IN THE FIRE The text is clear that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego lost something in the fire! Not turban, coats, pants, not one hair on their heads or beards - NO! What then? They lost their BONDS there —the ropes tying their hands: “Cast three men in bound? See four men loose!” The fire did not hurt them, but it burned away their bonds. Note carefully: Many of God’s servants never know the fullness of spiritual liberty until they are cast into the midst of the furnace. Corrie Ten Boom forgiving German soldier after the war. When Nebuchadnezzar had done his worst to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, what more could be done? Already heated the furnace, seven times hotter. He had done his worst. What more could there be to fear? •SLIDE #: NOTICE WHAT WE DON’T LOSE IN THE FLAMES CROWN: Nebuchadnezzar says, “And they have no hurt.” They did not lose anything there. The child of God loses nothing worth losing in the fiery flames. He doesn’t lose salvation, or garments – not one grain of heavenly treasure. In summary, he loses nothing. GIRL MARTYRS IN CHINA Chiu-Chin-Hsiu and Ho-Hsiu-Tzu Jiangxi, Mainland, China During the Red Guard era, 1966-69\ The two Christian girls waited in the Chinese prison yard for the announced execution. A fellow prisoner who watched their faces from his prison cell described their faces as pale but beautiful beyond belief; infinitely sad, but sweet. Chiu-Chin-Hsiu and Ho-Hsiu-Tzu had decided to submit to death rather than to renounce their faith in Christ. Flanked by renegade guards, the executioner came with a revolver in his hand. It was their pastor! He had been sentenced to die with the two girls. But, as on many other occasions in Christian history, the persecutors worked on him, tempting him. They promised to release him if he shot the two girls. He accepted. The girls whispered to each other, then bowed respectfully before their pastor. One of them said, “before you shoot us, we wish to thank you heartily for what you have meant to us. You baptized us, taught the ways of eternal life, you gave us holy communion with the same hand in which you now hold the gun. You also taught us that Christians are sometimes weak and commit terrible sins, but they can be forgiven again. When you regret what you are about to do to us, do not despair like Judas but repent like Peter. God bless you and remember that our last thought was not one of indignation against your failure. Everyone passes through hours of darkness. May God reward you for all the good you have done for us. We die with gratitude. They bowed again. The pastor pulled the trigger twice. Afterwards the Communists shot him. •SLIDE # NOTICE WHO WAS WITH S, M and E IN THE FURNACE It's in the furnace that we always have our nearest and dearest dealings with Jesus. Personal example. Psalm shadow of his wings Psalm 23 •SLIDE #: NOTICE WHAT DO SAINTS DO IN THE FURNACE? Praising God See Paul and Silas - prison stocks - yet sing for all to hear. I know you dread the furnace, brethren, but have courage. The Lord who permits that furnace to be heated will preserve you in it. Therefore, be not dismayed. •SLIDE #: 1 Corinthians 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. DRAW: REFINING CRUCIBLE WITH LOVE THERMOMETER God never promised to keep us out of the fire. Instead, He promised to walk with us through the fire. •SLIDE #: ONE LAST THOUGHT. THE KING BECAME A BELIEVER WHEN HE SAW WHAT HAPPENED TO GOD’S PEOPLE IN THE FLAMES. •SLIDE #: Daniel 3:28-30: Then Nebuchadnezzar said, "Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king's command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. •SLIDE #: Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way." Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon. I believe that’s probably where people see God in us more than in any other place. They see God in us when we are going through the fire. It is easy to be a Christian when everything is going great - but when the fire is hot and all our friends are watching - Do they see God in us? A couple in the Midwest came to Casas Of course suffering in the Midwest has been intense in recent years... factories shutting down... car industry on the rocks (Uh -- Roger -- how old is this? --TW) One particular Christian couple had suffered greatly. Both lost jobs. All benefits had run out. House foreclosure. Just eaking out a bare existence. Gaining assistance through local church benevolence funds. During this time their next door neighbors came to Christ. Someone asked them how they had come to Christ. They gave this testimony: “We lived next door to this Christian couple and we watched as God literally took away everything that they had - and we saw them with as mile on their faces, never complaining, but rejoicing in their faith. One night, after supper, we were talking about that and we said to each other, ‘Whatever they have, that’s what we need.’ We went over to their house and they led us to Christ.” When God frees us up from the things that bind you it is impressive. We become the sermon.

Reversing Demonic Consequences Dr. Tony Evans Mark 5:1-20 If you feel tortured by sin and demonic activity, the consequences of them can be completely reversed once you submit to the authority of Jesus Christ. Now, throughout Jesus's life in ministry, he had to deal with demons. When you read the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he is constantly confronting physical realities with spiritual causation, demonic influence, oppression, or possession; where demons that infiltrated a situation, bringing destruction to a life or to a community because they were undetected or unaddressed. One of the more famous encounters of Jesus with demons is in Mark chapter 5, and that I want to use to bring this to your attention; so that in case you are dealing with a demon in your life and did not know it, you can become both aware and acquainted and seek to address that undiagnosed cause of everything else that may be wrong. Jesus has crossed the sea in verse 1 of chapter 5 of Mark. "He gets into the boat, and immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He had been dwelling among the tombs. No one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces. And no one was strong enough to subdue him. Constantly, day and night he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains and gashing himself with stones". And the reality is, something is graphically wrong with him, but the root of his problem, it says, was an unclean spirit. The behind the craziness that we were looking at, that people observed was something that you could not see. It was a spirit that was unclean. Now, it's not that folk didn't try to help this guy. We're told they tried to shackle him. They tried to chain him. They tried to control him. They tried to manage him. And every time they tried to do something to control the anger, the outburst, the craziness, he shook it off. In other words, society couldn't help him, people couldn't help him, programs couldn't help him because the demons were so much in control. When you see yourself or others living an out-of-control life, this is not an out-of-control moment. This says day after day, night after night. In other words, Now, the demon is described with his nickname, an unclean spirit. He's going to be called a demon later, but right now he's just called an unclean spirit. And with that one phrase, we are introduced to the root of this man's problem. You see, demons go where dirt exist. So they look for unclean mess to make themselves at home. And when they come and infuse themselves through either influence, oppression, or domination and possession, they amplify what is already unclean. So it is unfortunate today that even though we're in church, we regularly have meals with the devil, and we don't even know he's being invited to dinner. Paul goes on to say in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 to 5, that the demonic world feeds on lies. See, the Scripture says Satan is the father of lies. He is a liar from the beginning and he's the father of lies, and any father has childrens. The demons, the ones who followed Satan's rebellion against God, or the unclean spirits gravitate towards lie. That's why it is in their interest to keep you from the truth because they feed on lies. So this demon thing is real. The problem is, it's unseen. It's invisible because it's spiritual. And this man's life has been taken over by the demonic, and he is now out of control. He's gotten worse and worse and worse. And I would like to submit to you, things in our lives that are dirt, that go unaddressed, ongoingly unrepented of invites demons, the demons come, make themselves at home and begin to reorganize the furniture in our lives so that we are carrying out their bidding not even knowing that it's them, and the way we know it is, it's getting worse and worse and worse even while we're taking over the-counter solutions. But because it's unseen and unfelt in terms of the spiritual nature of it, it goes unrecognized, unaddressed while we come to church because there's something else going on. This man, however, sees Jesus in verse 6 from a distance. He ran up and bowed down before him. So this man who's demon-possessed sees Jesus, and he comes down and he falls down on his knees in a posture of worship and submission. He bows down before Jesus in worship and submission, which creates a problem. Notice verse 7. "And shouting with a loud voice he said, 'What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the most high God? I employ you, by God, do not torment me.'" Okay, this now is getting very confusing. This is very confusing. The man runs and drops down in a posture of worship, but then the man says, "What do we have to do with you"? Wait a minute. I don't know if you follow that. The man that's a singular, that's a he dropped down in worship, but then the man says, "What do we have to do with you, oh Son of God"? So what the man does is he drags his demons to Jesus 'cause the demons are inside of him. They're controlling him. But he brings his demons to Jesus, and so, the question now is a group question. "What do we have to do with you, oh Son of God? Do not torment me". We did go back to singular. So we did go from singular to plural back to singular again because the man is battling with himself. When demons take over but Jesus is brought into the equation, there is going to be an internal conflict between what you want Jesus to do and what the demons want to do. He says, "Do not torment me". And it is in this tormenting phrase that this man drags his demons to Jesus, and he is now wrestling because the demons want to know, "Why you bring us here? We don't want this. Don't you torment us". What is the torment? Here it is. The spiritual is meeting the spiritual. For he had been saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit". Jesus asked him in verse 9, "What is your name? What is your name? Tell me your name". He's asking the man, him, "What is your name"? "My name is Legion for we are many, and we don't want to be tormented by you". Jesus is saying, "Come out of him". And he began to employ him. The man began to employ Jesus earnestly not to send them out of the country. "Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. The demons employed him, saying, 'Send us into the swine so that we may eat them.' Jesus gave them permission, and coming out of the unclean spirits entered the swine. The herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about 2.000 of them, and they were drowned in the sea". Oh, there's so much here. Number one, the demons asked for permission. That's 'cause even the devil can't do anything without God allowing it. They asked for permission, and what they asked for is, "If you're going to make us leave this man, give us another place to go". Because as you see in the movies, demons need host. They need something alive in order for them to express themselves because they are spirit. They're invisible although they are persons. They have intellect, emotion, and will. So they are persons, but they are invisible. So Luke 11:24-26 says that when they're in waterless places; that is, places without life, where there's no water, there's no life, when they're in waterless places, no life, they're looking for a place. They've got to express themselves. And so when they see dirt in our lives unaddressed, then they come upon us so that they can express their uncleanness in our uncleanness, making our uncleanness worse than the uncleanness it was before they arrived. And so they express themselves in us. Jesus says, "Come out". They say, "Well, will you allow us to go to the pigs"? Why? Why did Jesus say, "You can go to the pigs"? Simple. They're unclean animals. So he lets them leave an unclean man for an unclean animal because they can only flow where there's uncleanness that goes unaddressed. When they enter the swine, they go hog wild in pig-slop crazy. It says they run downhill and drown themselves because the goal of demons, one, is to always take you downhill. It is to div of your life, defeat your life, ravel up and tie up your life, destroy your life. Demons have one goal; that is, you go down, and their ultimate goal is suicide. It says that the pigs went out down the hill and drowned themselves. The difference between the pig and the man is that the pig doesn't have a soul and the man does. So there was some resistance in the man that does not exist in the pig. So when they went to the unclean pig, the unclean pig committed suicide. Jesus comes along and he addresses it because he addresses the spiritual cause, not merely the physical symptoms. The enemy looks for spaces, and we've all given him some at some time or another. He doesn't need a lot of space, he just needs it to be open and dirty. And if it is, he will seek to enter that space, bring his family behind him in order to bring demonic downturn into our lives. "The herdsmen," verse 14, "ran away and reported it to the city and in the country, and the people came to see what had happened. And when they came to Jesus, they observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed, and in his right mind, the very man who had had legion, and became frightened". Do you see what happened? It looks like a U-turn to me, looks like a reversal to me. He now has clothes on. He was naked. He was not in the tomb. He's out of the tomb. He was cutting himself. He's now in his right mind all because Jesus overruled the demonic, the spiritual. And when he overruled the spiritual, sanity came to the insane. Now, this man is way off 'cause he's had 2.000 demons. How many demons do you have, or do I have? Maybe you only have 2, maybe you have 200, or maybe 2.000. But the more the demon, the more the oppression, influence, and possession. Let's look at the herdsmen. Verse 17, "And they began to employ him to leave the region". They told Jesus, "Get out of here. We don't want you here". You would have thought they would have been grateful. You would have thought, "Boy, this man has a power to get rid of demons, to make insane people listen to him so he can work with everybody". You would have thought they would have been glad. They said, "Get him out of here". Why? "Get him out of here 'cause he costing us money". See, the pigs went and committed suicide. They were pigs' herdsmen. So when their pigs drowned, their money got funny. They said no more pork chop, no more pig feed, no more chitlins, no more ham hock. Sweet Georgia Brown got to shut down 'cause there is no more pig. "This man is costing us money. Get rid of Jesus. Let's keep the business coming even if we've got to keep the folk hooked". The man wanted to get in the boat with Jesus, in verse 18, who was demon possessed, employing him, Jesus, that he might accompany him. And Jesus said to him, "You go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you". That tells me right there the man needed mercy 'cause of how unclean he was. "And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed". I want to make two observations. When they told Jesus, "Get out of here," he left, 'cause Jesus doesn't want to be where he's not wanted. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens the door, I will come in and sup with him". But if you do not open the door for him, he will not stay where he's not welcome. He has to be welcomed in order for him to stay. But the second thing is, he told the man, "No, don't come at me. I want you to go to Decapolis". That's made of two words. Polis meaning city, decap meaning ten. "Go to the ten city region. You go home first, then you go to the ten cities in your community, and I want you to talk about what I did for you". So here's the deal. I challenge you to approach the downward hill of your life spiritually first. Do that first. Let's get to the right question first, the whole first, and see if there's a demonic thing by throwing yourself at the feet of Jesus in worship and submission. And yes, it may be tough at first because if it's demonically influenced they don't want to come out. They want to hold on to you as long as they can, but you keep throwing yourself at the face of Jesus. And like Jacob say, "I will wrestle with you till my change come". "But I am going to throw my face and submission to you, Jesus. That's what I am going to do". And then when he delivers you from your demonic infestation, you bet not keep that to yourself. You go to all the communities around and you let it be known, from family and friends and everybody you know in the surrounding neighborhoods. You go to Frisco and Plano and you let it be known, "Jesus Christ has delivered me, and I'm not keeping this to myself. Anybody who can deliver me from what I could not deliver myself from, I'm going to tell it, I'm going to tell it, and then I'm going to tell it again 'cause I am not ashamed of anybody who can deliver me at no charge". Demons are real. These are rebellious angels who have been removed from God and whose job it is to serve Satan by bringing spiritual death and consequences into our lives. Demons want to possess us. They want to influence us. I remember the adage, "Ain't nothing but the devil". Well, that's not too far off. It may not be the devil directly, but it could be one of his posses, the demons. They wreak havoc in our lives and in our circumstances, and it's easy to snuff them off as just bad people, bad problems, bad timing, bad days, when it's really bad demons. But because we don't take demons seriously, we don't identify things as demonic, even though we wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities and powers that are in heavenly places, demonic forces. But as long as you can discard them and not recognize them, then you won't treat them for who they really are. And so you'll be dealing with symptoms and not causal powers behind the symptoms that you and I are facing. You know what you do with demons? You don't pet them like a pet. You must exercise them, remove them, and only Jesus Christ can do that. The closer you are to Christ, the more power you have over demonic influence. The further you are from Christ, the more controlled you will be by demonic influences. So if you're tired of demons influencing your thinking, influencing your walking, your talking, your acting, oh, then let's get Jesus. He's the ultimate Ghostbuster. He's the ultimate demon discarder. Recognize where there is spiritual influence and let the Spirit of God, 'cause greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world, begin the process of releasing you from demonic influence and, if necessary, demonic possession.

Bible teaching on the resurrection, God's purpose, and Christ's victory over death.

Names matter in the Bible, because names are used descriptively to describe something or somebody, and one name that, we'll look at other names a little bit later, but one name that I would like to focus on today is found in Matthew !:23. It reads as follows, "'Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,' which translated means, 'God with us.'" Here we have a name given to Jesus Christ and that he was to be called Immanuel. Now, if you will notice closely in your Bibles, you will see that this is a quote. Verse 22 says, "Now all that took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet," so verse 23 is a fulfillment of something that had been previously predicted or prophesied. That comes from Isaiah 7:14, where it says a virgin shall have a son. So, in order to understand what Matthew 1:23 means, you have to go back to what Isaiah 7:14 meant, since Matthew 1:23 is a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. We know what it's translated to mean. It means "God with us," but what does that really mean to call Jesus Immanuel, God with us? Well, back in Isaiah 7:14 God's people were being attacked by the enemy. God showed up and told King Ahaz, "I'm going to give you a sign of victory, and the sign of victory I'm gonna give you is a virgin having a son, which will be my sign that you win and the enemy loses. So, the virgin that has the son is really a sign of your victory and that I'm gonna be with you in spite of what is attacking you". Matthew picks up that quote and quotes it related to the birth of Jesus Christ, so one of the things you need to understand about Immanuel is that no matter what you have gone through, no matter what's been good, bad, and ugly this year, no matter what you're going to face next year, you need to know the name Immanuel, because that means you're not facing it alone. God is with you. So, when he talks about the birth of Jesus Christ, he talks about it in the context of things not going well, of things not being apparently in your favor, of things that are coming against you, and he reaches back into history, prophetic history, and to say that the birth of Jesus Christ is God showing up at the worst of times. He says that this child that is born will be not just with you, but God with you, so the first thing you need to understand about Jesus Christ is his designation as God. He is designated as God. Now, we'll talk about how that happened in just a moment, but for right now the New Testament over and over and over again equates Jesus with God, so when we talk about Jesus we're talking about God, not just another man. When I began to look at some of the names of God in the Old Testament and then some of the declarations about Jesus in the New Testament, it became even more replete about the deity of Jesus Christ. That he is God. For example, God is called in the Old Testament "Elohim," the Creator God, yet the New Testament says everything that was created was created by Christ Jesus. In the Old Testament God is called Jehovah, the I Am. Jesus says to the Jews, "Before Abraham was I am". In the Old Testament God is called Adonai, the boss. In the New Testament the Bible says we must confess Jesus as Lord, your boss. In the Old Testament he's called Jehovah-Nissi, your banner of victory. In the New Testament Jesus says that "I have overcome the world". In the Old Testament God is called Jehovah-Rohi, the Lord is my shepherd. In the New Testament Jesus says, "I am the Good Shepherd, and the sheep hear my voice". In the Old Testament God is called Jehovah Sabaoth, he's the Lord of hosts. In the New Testament Jesus said, "I could have called 10.000 angels". In the Old Testament God is called El Elyon, the Lord who is high and mighty. In the New Testament Jesus says, "I sit on the right hand of the Father way up high". In the Old Testament God is called El Shaddai. In Revelations 1:8 the Bible says Jesus Christ is Lord Almighty. So, if you can get confused about the name of God, all you gotta do is remember Immanuel, because he is not only with us. He is God with us. But how did God get to be with us? Because God is transcendent in nature. The theologians say he is holy other. That is, he's outside of our realm. He exists in another realm. He is infinitely distinct from his creation, so you cannot talk about creation as though God is a part of it, because he's distinct from it. He's in another zone, but he wanted to be with us, dwelling among us, so exactly how did this occur? Well, the prophecy tells us, because the Scripture says that a virgin would get pregnant and have a baby boy. Well, a lot of things go into that. We call this in theology the hypostatic union. That means the union of two natures in one person, unmixed forever. Let me say that again. The hypostatic union is two natures in one person unmixed forever. That's why Jesus is sometimes called the Son of God, because he has the nature of deity, and other times he's called the Son of Man, because he has the nature of humanity. Two natures in one person that never cross each other, unmixed forever. Well, the way that occurred is that a virgin would have a baby. When Mary asked the question in the book of Luke, "How could this possibly be that I'm pregnant"? The angel told her, "Well, let me explain, girlfriend, how this works. You have an egg, and the Holy Spirit has got the sperm, and he's going to fertilize your egg with the sperm of deity, and so you are going to apart from a man get pregnant and give birth to a baby boy". That is the only time in history that this has occurred, so the reason that Jesus Christ can be God and man is he has the egg of humanity and the sperm of deity coming together to produce two natures in one person, unmixed forever. The Bible explains how that occurs in Philippians 2, because it says in verse 6, "Who, although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped," or held on to. So, let's just stop there. It says, "Although he existed in the form of God". That is, Jesus, before he became a man, existed as part of the Godhead. That's why Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6 says, "Unto us a child is born, but unto us a son is given," because even though the child was born the son had to be given, because the son existed before the child ever got born, because the son existed in the form of God prior to the child being born in the form of man. So, the only reason you got the child being born is 'cause you previously had the son in existence. He says now the way that that occurred, according to this next verse, it says, "But he emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men". He emptied himself. What does that mean? Well, let's pretend you've got a pitcher of water. The water in the pitcher represents deity, or divine nature, and then you've got a glass, and you take the pitcher and you pour the water. You empty the water out of the pitcher into the glass. Whatever is in the pitcher, the water, now has been deposited or emptied into the glass, so what you had at the virgin birth was deity being poured into humanity. So, all that made God, God was poured into human flesh so that apart from sin God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. He emptied himself into humanity. And why did he do that? So he could be with us, so that he could be human in every aspect of the word apart from sin, while at the same time being God, and go through the growth and development process that every human being goes through without losing his deity. So, what you're dealing with: fully God, fully man wrapped up in one person, the unique person of Jesus Christ. And so, it says he emptied himself and made himself in the likeness of men. "And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient even to the point of death". The Old Testament prophesied that one day there would come a Messiah, and when this Messiah came, he would come through the legal and the biological lineage of David. Now, I need you to follow me on this one. The whole Old Testament said there will come a King and this King will be God in the flesh, and he has to come through the line of Judah, via the lineage of David, because there were a lot of lineages in the line of Judah, but it had to come through this one line that would be through the lineage of David. Now, there are two genealogical records in the Scripture. One is the record of Joseph, and the other is the record of Mary, the most boring parts of the Bible, the parts you don't wanna read and that you skip over when you read your Bible. God never wastes words, and so what the Bible had to show was that Jesus Christ could be proven to be the one that had been prophesied in the Old Testament. So, when you read the genealogical record, it designates that Jesus Christ is from the line of David both biologically and legally. One story is in a whole book of the Bible called the book of Ruth. Ruth wasn't even a Jew. She was a Moabitess, but because she followed Naomi, her mother-in-law, back to Israel and met Boaz, got married to Boaz, Boaz was a Jewish man. She had a baby named Obed, Obed had a baby named Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David, so God even reached to a foreign country to get her to the right country, to meet the right man so that they could be in the right lineage to fulfill the list in Matthew chapter 1. He goes even further, and he traces this line, and then he comes to verse 16. "Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah". So, we get to Joseph, but if you look carefully you'll see a switch. It doesn't say Joseph was the father of Jesus. It only says Mary was the mother of Jesus. Let me show you two words that would be easy to skip over: by whom. You need to know that "by whom" is a relative feminine pronoun. Why? 'Cause Joseph had nothing to do with this. This was totally outside of Joseph, but Jesus had to come from the legal line, so since Joseph became Jesus's stepfather, 'cause he was not his biological father, and Joseph is from the legal line of David, Jesus qualifies to be Messiah because Joseph is his legal father, even though he is not his biological dad. But according to the Jewish line, the Messiah also had to have the biology of David. That's why when you look in Luke 3 there is a whole 'nother genealogy, but that's not the genealogy of Joseph. That's the genealogy of Mary, and he traces the genealogy through David biologically and comes all the way down to Mary, who is the physical mother of Jesus. So, now God's gotta do something else. He gotta get two people to fall in love who are both from the same line, one from the legal and one from the biological, so he gets a cupid to shoot some arrows, and Joseph sees Mary, and the two fall in love, and they get engaged. But we still got a problem, because the Old Testament prophecy said that Messiah, Micah 5:2, had to be born in Bethlehem. It's like a little country town, but Jesus was prophesied: the Messiah would be born in this little town called Bethlehem, so God not only has to get two people from the line of David, one legal, one biological, to fall in love. He's also gotta get them in the right location to fulfill the prophecy the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. So enter the Roman IRS, because a census was taken and people were being taxed and had to go back to their place of birth. Joseph then had to go back to Bethlehem, which was his place of origin, in order to fulfill the Roman IRS census. He wind up going back at the exact time that it was time for Mary to give birth to her baby boy so that the prophecy would be fulfilled that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem through the right line. See, God will deal a whole lotta stuff for you, and the God of heaven has entered into human history. And why? Because he wanted to let you feel like you experienced what it's like when God is sitting right next to you. And guess what else he wanted? He wanted to know what it feels like for man to sit next to him. You see, God in his core essence is a spirit. The Bible is clear in John 4 that God is a spirit and that he is not in his essence corporal. That is, he's not in his essence physical, so he knows all about you, but he wants to feel you, okay? That's why when Abraham was sacrificing Isaac, and he says, "Now I know that you fear me". He says, "Because now I know what it feels like to be chosen above your own son, and I like how that feels". God wants to feel you, so God became a man, according to Hebrews 4:14-16, so that he could sympathize with our weakness. That we have a high priest who feels it, why? Because during his 33 years on earth he went through every category of situation you now face. He went through loneliness. He went through being forsaken. He went through being rejected. He went through being crucified. He even went through death. He went through everything you're going through, so you ain't saying nothing to him that he doesn't know what you're talking about, 'cause he not only knows it informationally and academically, he knows it experientially, see? So, when you talk to Jesus, you're talking about somebody who can feel you, who not only knows you, 'cause he's God with us. No, he's not a movie. He's the real deal, and he became flesh and blood and lived among us so that we can have a personal relationship with the living and true God. That's who he is, so let's give him what he deserves. Let's give him the adoration. What should be the response? Well, let me close with Philippians chapter 2. Here is what it says, beginning in verse 9. "For this reason, God has highly exalted Jesus," he's highly exalted him, "and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of the Father". You say, "I wish I could feel Jesus. I wish I could feel the closeness that God with us was meant to say". Well, it gives you the secret, if I can call it that, of not only knowing him, but feeling him. He says at the name of Jesus God has proclaimed that every knee should bow, every knee up in heaven, so let me tell you what's in heaven right now. Everybody who's in heaven is paying homage to Jesus Christ, because God has declared that everybody is to give recognition to Jesus Christ. Then he says everybody on Earth is to pay homage to Jesus Christ. Then he says everybody, folk who have died, God is calling to pay homage to Jesus Christ, so here is the option. You can pay homage to him now voluntarily, or you will pay homage to him later mandatorily, but everybody is gonna have to pay homage to the Christmas miracle of Jesus Christ, so why don't we give him some real praise during the holiday season? Why don't we give him some real glory? Because this is not another man. This is Immanuel. This is God become a man, who wants to dwell among us, and all you gotta do is bow and give him the glory due his name, give him the recognition that he deserves, because he is Lord of life, and he is Lord of Christmas. Well, let me say merry Christmas to you, and, you know, when I think about Christmas, I think about the name of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, all of God, all of divine nature deposited into humanity, so in Christ all that God is, is resident in the person of Jesus Christ. So, when you think of Jesus this Christmas, you're actually thinking about God Almighty, since the fullness of God dwells in him in bodily form, so I'm excited. I'm excited about Christmas because I'm excited about Jesus, and since God became a man, the incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, you have someone relating to you this holiday season who can really relate to you, because when God became a man he came into the realities of life, the realities of oppression, the reality of social conflict, the reality of poverty, the reality of family struggle, the reality of life and death, so in Jesus you have a real person who is really also God. So, as you get together with family and friends and as you celebrate all the things that will make up this holiday, I hope that you will remember the name Immanuel, God with us. Unto us, unto us a son is given, but a child is born. That's the incarnation right there. That's God with us. Stay close to Jesus, because in staying close to Jesus you are really staying close to God. Merry Christmas, God bless you, and remember his name is Immanuel.

Turn in your Bibles please to the book of Acts; the second chapter of the book of Acts. So a Sunday school teacher was telling her third graders about the Resurrection, and then she asked them a question. She goes, OK, students, does anyone here know the first words Jesus said when he left the tomb? And little Bethany shot her hand up in the back. She goes, I know, I know. And so she stood up and said, Jesus' first words when he came out of the tomb, and she opened her arms up, were this, ta-da! I always liked that story. Ta-da. From time to time when I travel, I like to, if I have spare moments, go to cemeteries and read the inscriptions on the gravestones. You might think, you are a weird person. But I love to see what either they have made sure was written about them, or what loved ones had to say about them. Some are quite lengthy; some are very minimal. But some of them are funny. And I did a little research. And these are recorded, registered inscriptions on gravestones. Let me just share a few with you. This is from Niagara Falls, Canada. It reads on the tombstone, here lies the body of Jonathan Blake, who stepped on the gas instead of the brake. Well that's one way to always remember that he died in an automobile accident, I suppose. Another one from Edinburgh, Scotland was the grave of a local dentist. And the stone reads, stranger, tread this ground with gravity. Dennis Brown is filling his last cavity. And here's one from Ruidoso, New Mexico that reads, here lies Johnny Yeast, that's his name, Johnny Yeast, here lies Johnny Yeast, pardon me for not rising. New Mexico. If there was an inscription over the Tomb of Jesus Christ, it might have been appropriate if it read, don't worry I'm just borrowing this for the weekend. Because he only was in that grave just a part of three days, and then he rose again from the dead. Well that is one of the themes... Yes, it's worth celebrating. You can't clap too much for that truth. In Acts chapter 2, that is the main theme of Peter's sermon. It is a sermon on the day of Pentecost. It is Peter's first sermon that is recorded in the Bible. And what's interesting is that while this is Peter's first sermon, this is our last sermon in the series, Against All Odds. So I'm just going to rip Peter off and let him preach the last sermon in the series. We're going to take a portion of what he said and we're going to examine it in Acts chapter 2. Now, let me just say, as a preacher, I'm going to give Peter an A on his preaching exam. This is his first sermon. He gets an A; not that he cares what I think. But I give him an A for two reasons. Number one, 3,000 people respond to his message and get saved that day. That's a good message. 3,000 people. And number two, because it was a message filled with hope. Filled with hope because it's about the fact that Jesus conquered death through resurrection. Now, I want you to think of Peter for just a moment. We know what Peter did. What was his occupation? He was a fisherman. So he had what a lot of men like that around the Sea of Galilee had. He had a few boats and nets, and he'd get up every day, and he'd fish for fish, and it was a very meager kind of a life. It was a very predictable life. In many ways a monotonous life. I'm even sure that Peter looked over the Sea of Galilee in a few days and thought, is this all there is to life? Is this it? I'm born, I die. In between I catch a few fish, period. But then, one day, one day, a man named Jesus stepped into his life and said, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. And in hanging around Jesus, watching him, hearing him day after day, something happened in Peter's heart. It's called hope. Hope. It was a hope that began to grow and grow and grow, and he thought, man, this is the life. Watching him perform miracles. And what he's saying, nobody has done anything like this. He was greatly impacted. But then one day, something happened that shattered all of Peter's hopes. And that was Jesus died on the cross. Peter did not expect that. The day Jesus died, Peter's hope died. It's like those disciples on the road to Emmaus who said about Jesus, and we were, past tense, we were hoping that he would have been the one to deliver Israel. So Peter went from an all-time high to an all-time low until the third day. And that first day of the week, that Sunday when Jesus rose from the grave and showed himself to Peter. Now Peter's hope, well, it could be called, a living hope. That's what Peter called it. Peter said in first Peter, chapter 3, he said, according to His abundant mercy, He has begotten us again to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." The day of the Resurrection, Peter's hope came alive and stayed alive. On that day, on Resurrection Sunday, Peter's life moved from hopeless living into a living hope. And that becomes the theme of this sermon that we're looking at. And again, we're not going to look at all of it, just a portion of his sermon. But Peter has a premise. He's speaking about Jesus. That's the main subject of his sermon. It's always good to have Jesus as the main subject of a preacher's sermon. Jesus is the main subject, but what Peter wants to show is that this man Jesus was a man, but not an ordinary man. He was the God man. That He was unique from all other people in history. He was not normal. He was supranormal. He was not ordinary. He was extraordinary. He was, in fact, God's predicted Messiah fulfilling all of the Old Testament prophecies. And so Peter gives three lines of evidence for this. And they're simple. Jesus' life, Jesus' death, and Jesus' resurrection. That's what he looks at in a few verses. His miraculous life, his meaningful death, his magnificent resurrection. Go to Acts chapter 2 and look at the 22nd verse. Just one verse to begin with. Here, Peter zeros in on the life of Jesus when he says, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know. Jesus' miracles got people's attention. It's easy to figure out why. They never had seen a miracle before. People got sick, people died. There were blind people around, there were deaf people around. People got hungry. Then Jesus shows up. And he touches people who are blind. Suddenly, they can see. Deaf people, suddenly, they can hear. It got people's attention. And it was to them overwhelming evidence that Jesus was who He claimed to be. And the New Testament records over 30 miracles that Jesus performed where He suspended natural law and enacted supernatural force. He had power over disease, He had power over deformities, He had power over demons, He had power over death. He miraculously showed power giving evidence of who He was. And Jesus Himself appealed to His power, His own power. He said this, John 14, "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me, or at least, believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves." Then, Jesus said in John, chapter 10, "The works that I do in my father's name, they bear witness of me." Sort of like saying, nobody else can do what I've just done. Nobody else is out there performing miracles. I am; and it shows that I am who I claim to be. So He appealed to his miraculous life. Even Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night, said, "We know that God is with you for no man can do the signs that you do unless God is with him." And for that matter, the most bitter enemies that Jesus had were forced to admit that He had miraculous power after Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. His detractors in Jerusalem said, what shall we do? For this man works many signs. They had heard of them, they had seen them, there was evidence all around them. Simon Greenleaf, who was once a lawyer and at one time the professor of Law at Harvard University said, and I quote, "A person who rejects Christ may choose to say that he does not accept it, but he may not choose to say there is not enough evidence," close quote. Jesus' miraculous life, as attested by the New Testament historians, prove that God's power was uniquely operating in Him. And if He can do those miracles, then He can do the greatest miracle. You know what that is? Save someone. What greater miracle could there be than getting a person from Earth to heaven? That's the biggest miracle ever. And if Jesus can unstop deaf ears and open blind eyes and raise people who were dead back to life, then He can do the greatest miracle. And that is get a person from Earth to heaven by salvation. A while back, a girl approached me. She had been at our Wednesday night Bible study. We were going through the Old Testament. And the text that I read, one of the texts in that evening Bible study says, "The Lord saved Israel on that day." She got so excited. And I'm trying to listen; trying to figure out why she is so excited that that text made so much difference. The Lord saved Israel on that day. And she goes, I was praying for my boyfriend; and my boyfriend came forward that Wednesday night at the altar call. I go, well that's great. I'm trying to think, what does that have to do with the text? God saved Israel that day. And I said, well that's great. And she goes, no you don't understand. My boyfriend's name is Israel. The Lord saved Israel on that day; and that day he gave his life to Christ. She saw a miracle. She'd been praying for that for a long time. And I get the privilege of watching people every week say yes to the Savior, and have Him immediately and eternally change their lives. So His miraculous life, that's Peter's first line of evidence. Second, Jesus' meaningful death, verse 23. Him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, "You have taken, by lawless or wicked hands have crucified and put to death." Now, at first blush, it would seem unthinkable, unimaginable, that a man of that caliber like Jesus Christ could even die. I mean, think about it, the very one who raised people back to life died? Unstopped deaf ears, walked on water, fed the multitudes. So Peter wants to make it clear that just as Jesus' life was no ordinary life, his death was no ordinary death. In fact, do you notice in one verse how Peter approaches it from two different angles? It was God's foreordained plan, but you by your lawless or wicked hands have crucified and slain. So on one hand, Jesus' death was a vicious plot. On the other hand, it was a victorious plan. God ordained it. So we have both those elements together. Divine sovereignty, God purposed it. Human responsibility. You did it. All in one verse. There's an age old question I've been asked time and time again. The question goes like this, who's responsible for the death of Jesus Christ? Is it the Romans? Is it the Jewish leaders? Is it Judas Iscariot who betrayed him? Is it Pontius Pilate who gave him the sentence? Is it the false witnesses who accused him before the Sanhedrin? Answer? Yes. All of the above. But wait, you've left someone out. Me. I'm responsible. You. You're responsible. Because Jesus died for our sins. But wait, you left somebody out. God. God. It says, who being, verse 23, "delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God." What that tells me is God predetermined it. It was part of his plan all along. All along. For years there has been a theory about Jesus' death and resurrection. That it was all part of a plot. In fact, there was a book out years ago called, The Passover Plot that says Jesus' death was staged by Him, and His Resurrection was also staged by Him. That Jesus had one of His followers give Him water laced with a drug that would render Him unconscious but not dead. And then He had another friend of His, Joseph of Arimathea, stick Him in a tomb and nursed Him back to health, because He was still alive. Though I don't agree with that theory at all, I do agree with the premise. It was part of a plot. But it wasn't a plot hatched by Jesus or Joseph of Arimathea or a few followers. It was a plot hatched in heaven by God Himself, who determined in advance that His son would come into this world; part of a divine plan. So in summing up the death of Jesus, let me make a few statements. Jesus' death was a strategy. A divine strategy. He is called in Revelations 13, "The lamb slain from the", do you know the rest of it? "Foundations of the world." From the very beginning of time, it was part of the plan of God, the purpose of God, that His son would be crucified. So it was a strategy. It was also voluntary. Jesus didn't get caught and taken to court where He said, aw man, bummer. I got caught. No, He didn't get caught. And this is not an accident. And it wasn't that He was just murdered by them. He chose to do it. It was voluntary. He said that He was the good shepherd and the good shepherd lays His life down for the sheep. He even made this statement, No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of myself. I have the power, listen to what He said, I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it back up again. So His death was a strategy, and His death was voluntary. But there's more. His death was substitutionary. Jesus didn't die for His own sin. Because He didn't have any sin. He was the only one that lived a perfect life from beginning to end. Never committed a single sin in His life. No, He died as a substitution for others. Isaiah the prophet put it this way, "All we like sheep have gone astray, but God laid on Him the iniquity of us all." So His death was a strategy. It was voluntary, and it was substitutionary. Another statement I want to make about it is that Jesus' death was necessary. Had to happen if the obstacle between us and God was going to be removed. It was absolutely necessary. There is this separation that mankind has from God. You may not know about it. You may not feel it, but it's there. It's called your sin, and my sin. And that roadblock can only be removed by that atoning death on the cross. Romans chapter 5, Paul says, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His son. That is, we were reconciled. The roadblock, the obstacle, was removed so that one party and the other party can be reconciled or brought together. They're brought together by the removal of an obstacle. That's what the word reconciliation means. So His death was necessary. Now, although it was God's plan from the very beginning, as stated here by Peter, it doesn't make the ones who put Jesus on the cross any less guilty. Because it was their choice. They chose to be in that crowd and shout, crucify Him! Pilot chose to listen to the persuasive voices of the crowd and say, OK. Take him to the place of execution. Everybody that day made a choice. And today, you have a choice to make. What are you going to do with Jesus Christ? You can say, well I don't plan on really doing anything with Jesus Christ, thank you. I'm just going to wait and see what happens. I'm just going to live my life as I live my life. I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to accept Him, I'm not going to reject Him. But you know what Jesus said? That if you don't receive Him, you've rejected Him. If you don't receive Him, you've rejected Him. You either are either for me, He said, or you are against me. So if you say, well I'm not for Jesus, then and Jesus' view, you're already against Him. You have a choice to make. And then, I want to makes one final statement before we get into the third vital point of Peter and His line of evidence. And that is Jesus' death was a victory. And you know why it was a victory? Because He didn't stay dead. Pretty simple, right? He didn't stay dead. Remember the old saying, you can't keep a good man down? Well, you can't keep the God man down. They put Him in a grave, but three days later, He got up from that tomb. His resurrection conquered death. It was a victory. So that's Peter's line of evidence in two short verses to them. His miraculous life, His meaningful death. Now, he goes to the third line of evidence. That Jesus is different than anyone else, and that is His resurrection. His miraculous resurrection. Now I want you to notice how important the Resurrection is. There are nine verses that Peter uses to speak about the Resurrection. Now think of it. He has used one verse to speak about Jesus' whole life, one verse to speak about Jesus' atoning death, and nine verses to speak about His resurrection. Why? Because it's that important. Because that's the theme of His sermon. That's the theme of every sermon in the book of Acts. That is really, essentially, the theme of the New Testament. The culmination of all redemptive history is the Resurrection. So Peter says, verse 24, after speaking of His life and His death, "Whom God raised up having loosed the pangs of death because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David said concerning Him, 'I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart rejoiced, my tongue was glad. Moreover, my flesh will also rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Hades nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life. You will make me full of joy in your presence." That's the quote. Peter's quoting a psalm, Psalm 16. He in his sermon is preaching from the Bible, in this case, Psalm 16. Now look at his application, "Men and brethren let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David," that is the one who wrote the psalm, "that He is both dead and buried and His tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet and knowing that God has sworn with an oath to Him that of the fruit of His body according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on the throne. He, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the Resurrection of the Christ or the Messiah. That His soul was not left in Hades nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God has raised up of which we are all witnesses." You know, the world has noticed that we make a big deal out of Easter. I was walking my dogs yesterday and somebody recognized me and he said, well, tomorrow's your big day. I smiled and I thought, well, you know, I'm not really doing much. I'm just showing up. It's already been done. But thank you. Yeah, it's your big day tomorrow, and good luck, he said. Good luck. You want to know why we make such a big deal out of Easter? And by the way, we do. We make a huge deal out of it. We like to party hardy on Easter. We like to have the stadium fulfilled and have joyous music. Because to us, Easter is like the World Series and the Super Bowl and the Balloon Fiesta all rolled up into one. And it's simple why. It's because as Paul said, without the Resurrection, we're hopeless. Without the Resurrection, we're dead in our sins. Without the Resurrection, we just die. And it's over. Period. We're like everybody else that lives without hope. And he said in 1 Corinthians 15, "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable." His point is that our hope goes way beyond it. That's why we celebrate it. We don't just celebrate it once a year, by the way. We celebrate it every Sunday. The whole reason the church doesn't meet on Saturday, the Sabbath, but on Sunday, is because of the Resurrection. It's a weekly celebration. Look at verse 24 for just a moment. Look at how Peter phrases it. I love this fisherman's sermon, "Whom god raised up having loosed the pangs of death," now look at this, "because it was not possible that He should be held by it." You know, that makes perfect sense. That is pure logic. The one who said, I am the Resurrection and the life can't be held by death. The one who had no beginning can't have an end. The one who caused all things to exist cannot Himself cease to exist. Perfect logic. It's impossible. Death cannot hold the author of life. It's not possible that He could be held by it. Now when Peter was preaching, he was aware that he had a Jewish audience. He was also aware that they knew and had seen the miracles of Jesus. He did it in their town. They saw them. But he also knew that as a Jewish audience, because Jesus had died on a cross, that Jewish audience would reject Jesus as being their messiah. Because He died on that cross. Their messiah, in their view, that would never happen. So that's why Peter says, doesn't end there. He died for a purpose, but then God raised Him to life. So he demonstrates that not only did He rise from the dead, but He rose from the dead, listen, as predicted by the prophets, in this case David. He said, him being a prophet, foresaw what was going to happen. And he quotes Psalm 16. Now Psalm 16, most of us have read it. We're familiar with it. Peter was Jewish. As were all the apostles. They grew up on psalms like Psalm 16. They heard it all their lives. They heard it in synagogues. But Peter never understood its meaning till the Resurrection. Have you ever been around something familiar, but you were oblivious to a lot of what's going on? I know some of you gals are going, you just described my husband. Sorry, couldn't resist. But I'm going to use myself as the illustration husband, so relax a little bit. So my wife will frequently, when I come home, she'll bring me into a room of our house and she'll go, now stop, look around. Do you notice anything different? So now I'm on high alert. And it's usually a plant. She bought a plant and she placed it in a certain place and goes, oh! That's a perfect plant for there! So she did this not long ago. She took me in her room she goes, do you notice anything different? So I start looking around I go, oh, I see that vase is gorgeous! I start talking about it, she goes, that vase has been there for 10 years, honey. She wanted me to see the plant that she got. So Psalm 16 to Peter and the apostles was like that vase to me. Been there all along. But now for the first time, they're understanding really what it's all about. And here's Peter's premise. He's saying Psalm 16 speaks of a resurrection. But since David died and didn't get resurrected, it can't be speaking of him. So therefore, David was speaking as a prophet. That the messiah who was to come, namely Jesus, would rise from the dead. That's his premise. He sums it up in verse 32, "This Jesus God raised up of whom we are all witnesses." Premise is simple. When David wrote this, he wasn't writing it as a personal story but rather a prophetic statement. A statement of Jesus. Now, why is the Resurrection such a big deal? Why do we make such a big deal out of it? Why is it the center point of the whole New Testament? Why is it the heart and theme of every sermon in the book of Acts? Because after all, if Jesus' death on the cross was enough for our salvation, why did He need to rise from the dead? Well, one of the reasons is that this psalm predicts a resurrection. It says, "You will not leave my soul in Hades," that is the grave, "nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption," or literally, decay. Now there's only two ways for your body not to decay. Number one, never die. Never die. And I know some people that are working real hard on that. They'll stretch their face, they'll put creams on their face, they'll try to look like they're 40 years younger. It only works, well, barely. Never die. If you never die, your body will never decay. OK, so that's out. Second option, as soon as you die, get raised from the dead shortly thereafter. Resurrection is the only cure. And if you can get resurrected, it means that death has died. Death has died. You see, when Jesus died on the cross, he conquered sin. When Jesus rose from the grave, he conquered death. And he appeared to his disciple. I mean, He showed up after. He didn't just rise and people said, let's spread that rumor. He actually for 40 days showed up with them, hung out with them, and even ate food with them. You see, He wasn't some little translucent being when he ate fish. You could like see the fish going down, wow, check that out. He didn't like, hover over the ground. He was a real human god in human flesh raised back from the grave. For the last 12 weeks we have been looking at a series, Against All Odds. We've considered the odds of one man fulfilling those prophecies the Old Testament has spoken about. We've gone into great detail, mathematical detail. And we have discovered that in all three of these categories, life, death, and Resurrection, the Bible prophesied in advance hundreds of years before. We have considered that the Bible predicts hundreds of years before He would be born of a virgin. He would be born in Bethlehem. He would come from the tribe of Judah. His ministry would begin in Galilee. His work would be working miracles. He would enter Jerusalem one day on a donkey. He would be betrayed by a friend. He would be sold for 30 pieces of silver. He would be wounded and bruised. His hands and His feet would be pierced. He would be crucified next to thieves. His garments would be torn and lots cast for them. That His bones would not be broken at His death. That His side would be pierced. That He would be buried in a rich man's tomb. And finally, that He would rise again from the dead. We've been considering that the last 12 weeks. And we have made known the fact and we discovered the fact and today we just sort of affirmed the fact that it is impossible for those things to be humanly arranged. You can't decide what tribe you're going to be born in. You can't decide or arrange what place you're going to be born at or what mother you are going to be born to. And we have looked at the mathematical probabilities of one man fulfilling 8, then 16, then 48 prophecies, etc. And let me just remind you that in 100 billion years, there would be no chance for one person in history to fulfill all of those predictions apart from God. Apart from God. There's just no other way to explain the Bible's ability to predict the future. And every time a prophecy is given, and it is fulfilled, it's as if God is saying, ta-da. I love it. Most of you have heard of the name Harry Houdini. His name is synonymous with magic or escaping. He was an escape artist. His friends said he could escape from anything. And people tried everything. They said he had the flexibility of an eel and the lives of a cat. They would place him in a casket, lock it up, he'd escape. They put him in a box, put the box wrapped with chains in a river. He'd escape. They would put him a canvas bag and rivet him to the side of a big boiler. He'd escape. They'd put him in water upside down in a straight jacket. He'd escape. But in 1926, in October, death got a hold of Harry Houdini and took him to the grave. Before he died, he said to his wife, "If there is a way out, I'll find it." He never found it. But he said, "If there is a way out, I'll find it." I'm here to tell you, there is a way out. It's called a resurrection. And Jesus found it. And when Peter was preaching this sermon, Jesus was alive at that moment. Raised from the dead in power, He was alive when Peter was preaching that. But there were hundreds, thousands of people in that crowd who were dead. Living physically, dead spiritually. Peter himself was alive. He was born again. John, 120 other disciples, they were alive spiritually. But when Peter was preaching, there were many in that crowd who were dead. The Bible says, in trespasses and sins and needed as Jesus said, to be born again. Oh, how Jesus wants to touch the deadness of your life today. I just want to take it a step further. Some of you believers need a resurrection. Some of us followers of Christ have gotten a little stale over the years. A little stagnant over the years. Some of you believers in Jesus have come to believe that your best days are in the past rather than ahead of you. And so you have sort of put your life into cruise control. You've resigned to barely making it through life and then, I'm going to die and go to heaven. That's not a good plan. We need a touch from God. Maybe it has to do with a relationship you're struggling with. Maybe it has to do with an addiction that's got a hold of you or a practice, a sin, a pattern that you need to break. Or maybe it has to do with the first step of coming to Jesus Christ. You know, it's quite simple, really. You just come. You come as you are. You don't say, OK I'm going to do something first and then I'm going to come. I'm going to fix this first, and then I'm going to come. I'm going to get my act together first, then I'm going to come. You just come as you are and admit that you need him. You have to first realize that you're a sinner. The Bible says, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." All of us have sinned. You have to realize that you are a sinner. Now some are better sinners than others. I'll grant you that. I'm not as bad as so-and-so. Great. He's a better sinner than you are. He sins much better than you do. But you're still a sinner. And I've got to tell you, God does not grade on a curve. It's the same. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory. You have to realize that. Next, you have to recognize Jesus died for you; that he loves you. To bridge that gap, if you have ever wondered about how much God loves you, just look at the cross. That'll tell you. Then number three, you have to repent of your sin. You say, what does repent mean? It means to turn around. You make a U-turn on the road of life. You change your mind about the direction you are going and you say, I'm going to go His way. You say, well I feel really bad for things that I've done. Repentance isn't just being sorry. Repentance is being sorry enough to quit what you're doing and go His way. And He'll give you the power to do that. And then, you must receive Jesus as your Savior and your Lord. You can't do this on your own. You can't do it by your own works. The Bible says, as many has received Him, He gave them the power to become His children. And let me just add one other thing. I think you should do it publicly. Because when Jesus called people, He didn't say, hey, you, while nobody's listening, meet me over here. We'll have a private conversation. He just would walk right up to Matthew's tax station, and in public, say, get up, follow Me. And he got right up right there and publicly followed Jesus. And Jesus even said, if you acknowledge Me before people, I will acknowledge you before My Father in heaven; if you deny Me before people, I'll deny you before My Father in heaven. Hey, why not make a public stand for Jesus? He made a public stand for you on that cross. Make a public stand for Him in your life. And you don't want to wait another day. You want to settle this now. You can leave this room, this building, or this amphitheater, or this overflow room, wherever you're at, a changed human being from this day forward. You go, well how can I be sure? You'll never know unless you receive Him. You take that step and you see if Jesus doesn't change your life completely. Let's all stand. Father, as we close in prayer, we pray that you would do what no man can do. And that is convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Bring people into a relationship with your Son. Bring people to the foot of the cross. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. As we sing this final song, if you've never given Jesus your life before, you've never said yes to Him, you may have been raised in a church, you may have gone to Sunday school your whole life your parents taught you at home about Jesus, but it's not a personal discipleship. You're not following Him. You haven't made a decision to surrender your life yet to Him. I'm going to ask you to get up and find the nearest aisle and stand right up here where I'm going to lead you in a prayer to receive Christ. Maybe you've wandered away from Him. Whatever excuses are in your life, the truth is, today you're not following Him, you're not obeying Him, and you need to come home to Jesus. As we sing this song like we did in the stadium, we saw over 140 people come forward just an hour and a half ago. I'm going to give you an opportunity. You get up and come right here and stand right up in the front. Some of the counselors are going to show you how it's done. Come with a friend. Come with a relative. If you're in the family room, walk through that door. Come and receive eternal life for yourself. We'll give you that opportunity. If you're on the balcony, walk down those steps. Walk down those steps. We just want to give you a couple minutes. Make your way down here. Want to do that honor. Just be a little bit patient as we make room for the most important decision that could ever be made is being made in some people's lives right here, right now. You might be in the middle of a row and you're thinking, I'm in the most inconvenient place to walk forward. I don't think I'm going to do this. No, just turn to the person say, pardon me. And they may stand with you, but believe me, we're used to this. And you will part the Red Sea in your row. They'll get out of your way or you'll encourage others to come. We'll wait just another few more minutes. If you're thinking if you should do this or not, let me ask you a question. What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose by right now getting up from where you're standing and making your way here? What do you have to lose? You say, well, I'll lose my dignity. No, I'll tell you what you have to lose. You have to lose hopelessness, you can lose that. You have depression to lose. And you have everlasting hell to lose. That's what you have to lose. If you don't receive Christ, those things are true in your life. If you give your life to Christ, you will lose all of those things. But now what do you have to gain if you say yes to Jesus? Peace. Hope. A family of God. Peace. And heaven in the end. That's what the Bible, the same Bible who talks about the Resurrection, talks about heaven, Jesus said I've gone to prepare a place for you. But you won't go there automatically. You have to receive what He has done for you on the cross. So you come as we sing the song one more time through. You get up and come. I neglected to say, if you're out in the amphitheater, in the overflow, or in the overflow rooms, there's a pastor there. You could raise your hand right where you're seated in the amphitheater out there. Just raise it up and a pastor will acknowledge you right where you're at. If you're in the overflow rooms, you can raise your hand and a pastor will acknowledge you there. But those of you who have come forward, so glad you're here. I'm going to lead you now in a prayer. Come on up, come on up close. We're family now, or just about to be. So I'm going to lead you in a prayer. I'm going to ask you to pray these words out loud after me from your heart. Say these things from your heart to the Lord himself. Say: Lord, I give you my life. I know that I am a sinner. Forgive me. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe He died for me. That He shed His blood for me. And I believe He rose again from the grave. I turn from my sin. I repent. I turn to Jesus as Savior. I want to follow Him as my Lord. Help me to do that. In Jesus' name, I pray, Amen.

In this sermon series, “Tell Me What You Want,” we learn that God sees and cares about our brokenness, hurt, and need. He invites us to turn to Him for help, and the process is simpler than we might think. Tell Me What You Want” “I Want to Be Healed” Jeff Jones Hello everybody! Welcome to our series, Tell Me What You Want—What You Really Want, which comes from a Jesus story we covered the first week of this series where Jesus looks at someone who is blind and says, “What do you want me to do for you?” It may have seemed obvious, but Jesus ended up doing way more than just make the guy be able to see. So, the idea of this series is, “How would you answer that question—what you want?” And are you open to all that Jesus has for you? From feedback, we build this series around what you would say, and today is the most popular one and whenever we ask for prayer requests this category is also always at the top. Today we are talking about healing, like physical healing—but also other ways God heals what is broken in our lives too. Some really good news today is that God is way more like my wife Christy than me—in at least one big way. Christy is a repairer, a fixer. I’m not. If something is broken and it looks like it is going to take a whole lot to fix it, I’m pretty quick to say, “Well, we need a new one of those!” I hate fixing things, and I usually just make them worse when I try. Our vacuum cleaner broke the other day, a back wheel snapped off. I was ready to push the Amazon app and take care of it by getting a new one right away. But I knew that Christy would want to try to superglue it back on. She’s pretty convinced that she can superglue anything, and she will always try because she is not a throw-away-er. She is a fixer. And she is pretty good at it. That’s great news by the way for me because last week I had a cold, and she didn’t just throw me away because I was broken. She did superglue my nose shut to keep it from running, which was kind of a problem, but she didn’t throw me away. God, even more than Christy, is a repairer, a redeemer, a healer. He doesn’t move away from our brokenness but desires to move toward it--when we open up that part of our life to him. That’s great news because we are all broken. We all have areas of life that need healing and help. Some of you feel that in a big way right now. Maybe you or someone you love is physically sick and getting better is beyond your control. It’s a scary time. We are going to talk about that. Or maybe the brokenness is not physical. Perhaps you are broken emotionally, relationally, in your marriage, family, or career. It might feel beyond repair, even with superglue. Maybe you feel spiritually beyond repair right now. Whatever is going on, God cares about. We can go to him for healing and help, and today we are going to see how that works. Today is a little different around Chase Oaks because today is a healing service. That may sound really scary, and some of you may be thinking, “I knew I shouldn’t have tried church!” This is not the kind of healing service you may be thinking about. No snakes involved and I’m no faith healer, which is why my hair isn’t slicked back. And you can give me money if you want to I guess, but it won’t help you get healed because that’s not how the New Testament says it works. But the New Testament does tell us how it works, and we will simply do what it says to do. We will see this illustrated in another time Jesus asks a really big question, and then go to a very clear instruction we are given in the book of James on what to do when we need healing. So, let’s do this! The Jesus story with the big Jesus question is in John 5, John 5:1-5 “Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.” The ancient pool of Bethesda is one of the places that we visit on our church trips to Israel, and it is one of the places you know you can walk where Jesus walked. After our Immerse Series at the beginning of the year a lot of you have asked about when our next Israel trip will be, and it looks like Christy and I will be hosting one in October 2023. More details to come, but pencil that in if you are interested. The pool of Bethesda was a very popular place for people who wanted healing because of a popular rumor that is reflected later in the story. Every now and then the water level would quickly rise up and then fall back down, which would make it a little more like a jetted tub. The rumor spread that when this happened it was an angel who stirred up the water, and if you were the first one into the water when that happened, you would be healed. It was a magic pool of healing, which is why a large number hung out there, hoping to be there at the right time for the angel magic to happen to them. Jesus comes to the pool, and he sees all these people desperate to be healed. For whatever reason he zeroes in on one paralytic, who had been unable to walk for 38 years. Imagine that, especially 2000 years ago when there were no wheelchairs and no social safety net. We don’t know how long he had been hanging out at the magic angel pool—we just know he was there when Jesus visited and that he had been there for some time, unsuccessfully trying to be the first one in when the waters stirred. Jesus walks up to him and asks a big question: John 5:6 “When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, ‘Would you like to get well?’” A strange question, “Do you want to get well?” Why does Jesus ask it? Why doesn’t he just heal him? We can’t be completely sure, but there are a couple of possibilities. It may be because a lot of people really don’t want to get well—they just want to stay sick. A lot of people just choose to be stuck in their brokenness. You’ve probably heard the horrible stories about some parents who keep their children sick because the parents are codependent and prefer their children to be that way. Terrible. A lot of people though do that same thing to themselves. We just choose to stay broken because it becomes our identity. It’s comfortable, and we get the kind of attention we want. We like the role of the victim because we don’t have to take responsibility. Our problems are someone else’s fault, not our own. Playing the victim card seems trendy these days. So, we stay addicted. We don’t move from anxiety or depression to get help. We always have the most dramatic prayer requests in any group of people praying. We refuse to forgive and let go of hurt, because our hurt is part of who we are. Some call it Stockholm syndrome, where people are more comfortable in prison than they are free. God will heal those who are open, but a lot of people really aren’t open. It could have been that for this guy, but I think for him it was another common trap—false hope. We know that was at least part of his issue by how he responds to the question, “Would you like to get well?” He replies: John 5:7 “’I can’t, sir,’ the sick man said, ‘for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.’” He thought his big problem was that nobody would help him get into the magic angel pool soon enough, because that magic pool was his big hope. But guess what? There was no real hope in the magic pool. The pool was a spring fed pool where water flowed into it from upper elevations. Every now and then natural cisterns along the flow would fill up, overflow, and inject a bunch of new water into the mix causing the quick up and down in the pool. That was it. No angels, and of course Jesus knew that. So, when Jesus asks him, “Would you like to get well?” there is a sense of “Would you (actually) like to get well—because it doesn’t seem like it. At least, it’s never going to happen in a mythical angel pool.” With some space and time, the guy’s false hope seems kind of silly…except for the reality that we all have our own false hopes that we stake our lives on. These are things that make us feel better but don’t actually make us better. They often make our lives worse. We might come home from a hard day and say, “Wow, I need a margarita!” Nothing wrong with a margarita. But if a drink, followed by another drink, and another drink becomes our way to try to dig out of life disappointment or difficulties, it’s not going to make us better. Hear Jesus say, “Would you like to get well?” Or Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for you?” There are lots of these, pornography, that feels like an escape but is actually trapping you. Henry Cloud calls these pseudoconnections, things we connect to for life that don’t actually give life. They can even be good things we use in a bad way, like relationships—one more guy or one more girl or spending time with people who only tell us how wonderful we are. Materialism, food, more money, more hobbies, a promotion at work…we probably get the idea. We all have places we go to make us feel hope that don’t give hope, that make us feel better that don’t make us better, that we are looking to for life that don’t bring life, that we hope will fill us which just empties us. False hope. The wonderful news for this guy, who doesn’t realize it yet, is that the only sure hope is right in front of him asking the question, “Would you like to get well?” He can see that the guy of course does, so Jesus then gives a command: John 5:8 “Jesus told him, ‘Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!’” Catch what Jesus is doing here. He gives him a command. He commands him to do something that he has no ability to do. He looks at the guy and says, “Stand up! Pick up your mat! Walk!” He has no ability to do any of that, and he hasn’t that ability for 38 years. Jesus doesn’t so, okay, “poof” I just healed you, so now try to walk. He says, “Get up and walk!” That first step is a faith step, and he is either going to take it or not. He has no idea what will happen if he tries to get up and walk, but by faith he decides to take the step Jesus asks him to take. That’s what we read next: John 5:9 “Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking!” One thing we must understand about Jesus healing our brokenness is that most of the time he will ask us to take faith steps. Faith is not simply a feeling. Faith is an action. Jesus asks us to step forward, to walk with him toward a new life. He will enable us to do that step which we have no power on our own to do, but we must take a step. You can stay stuck in your brokenness if you want to, or you can hang on to false hopes. But Jesus is right in front of you saying, “Do you want to get well?” If so, walk with me. Take a step. Whatever step God is calling you to take, take it. So maybe you are struggling with addiction. Okay. God can bring healing and help, but you need to take a step. Maybe you are struggling with depression, which I have in my past, so I get that. And depression makes you feel helpless. But you aren’t helpless because help is right in front of you. So, follow Jesus toward healing. Take a step. Reach out to somebody. Talk to a counselor or a pastor. Maybe you are dealing with a broken relationship, a marriage or a parent child relationship. By faith take a step. Maybe you are struggling with guilt or shame, and, it has you trapped. You don’t have to stay trapped. Hear Jesus say, “Get up and walk!” Today is an opportunity to take an important step, and I’m going to challenge you take it. Because today we are talking about healing and how healing works. We’ve talked about emotional and relational healing, but let’s talk about physical healing. Some of you are dealing with a sickness with you or someone you care about, and you would love Jesus to show up like he did for this guy and ask, “Do you want to be healed?” Jesus isn’t walking around the planet right now, so that’s not going to happen. So, does healing still happen? The answer is yes, and the New Testament tells us how. In fact, it is so straightforward. It’s not what you see on TV with the slick faith healers with all of their drama, that get satirized like “The Righteous Gemstones.” We don’t roll that way, but we do have an approach to healing, and here it is from James 5. James 5:14 “Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.” That’s really straightforward. It’s not mysterious. It’s not flashy. Just call the elders, a church word for leader, and have them pray for you for healing and God will answer that prayer. We take James 5 very seriously around here, so you can reach out to the church when you want healing prayer, and we’ve seen God work in all kinds of ways. God promises to always answer, though he doesn’t always heal the way we ask him to. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. I’ve shared before how I believe I was healed from leukemia when I was 12 years old as my pastor granddad prayed, and it is a dramatic healing story. I love those dramatic healing stories. You’ve also heard me talk about my dad, who died six or so years ago from ALS, and God did not heal him from that. Or my brother who had brain cancer and died a little over a year ago. We prayed for that cancer to be healed, but God did not choose to do that. They were both Chase Oakers, and the elders of the church prayed for them, so what’s up with that? Haddon Robinson, a former professor at my theology grad school gave a very helpful way to look at how God answers prayers for healing. He says that God can bring his healing power to bear in one of three ways. Intervention, Interaction, and Innervention. Intervention is always on the front of our minds, when God just chooses immediate healing. God can just heal right then and there, and we do see that from time to time. I have a really good friend in cancer treatment right now, and I would love for God to just heal her that way. And it is the one we expect, even feel entitled to it. But God often doesn’t do that, which is why we don’t have 2000-year-old Christians walking around who always get physically healed and never die. Interaction Another way God answers healing prayers is Interaction, which is a process of healing where he interacts with steps we take or that doctors take toward healing. So, with my friend, Susy, right now, I am also praying for interaction—that God will give the doctors wisdom and that the treatment will work. It’s amazing what God has enabled humans to do with medical treatment, and we should pursue that. Innervention The third way God will answer is what Haddon calls Innervention, where God doesn’t heal our sickness but does do something in our lives even more profound. We see that in the life of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12: 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” He did not choose to heal Paul physically but gave grace in the sickness to bear it. It is not always God’s will for people to be healed. Many times, God chooses to not heal but to give grace to help the person endure the suffering. In such times God is wanting to do something in our lives that can only happen through the difficulty. I certainly saw that at work with my brother and with my dad, how he did things in their lives in the lives of others of us that were really profound that would have only happened in that kind of journey. Bottom-line, God will always answer such prayers for healing, though he can do it any of those three ways. Praying for healing is a step that Jesus asks us to take if we want healing, and today we are going to do that in this service. Picture Jesus in the story we looked at today walking among all the sick and broken people, coming to you like he did that guy, and asking, “Would you like to be healed?” Today is that kind of opportunity, as we are going to encourage you to take one step that we are told in the NT, in James 5, to take. The leaders of the church are here, at each campus, and we are going to invite you to come toward the front of the room to ask them to pray for you so that you may be healed. We are about to sing a song, and during that song is your opportunity to slip out of your seat and come for prayer. The truth is, we are all broken, and we all have areas in our lives that need healing. So, where do you need healing? Maybe you need physical healing for you or someone close to you. I invite you to come. You may need healing in your marriage or some other relationship, because it is broken, and one step you can take to walk toward wholeness is prayer. You might need healing from a recent loss or a broken heart. You might need emotional healing as you are weighed down with anxiety or depression. Maybe it is a failure that keeps haunting you, and it is weighing you down. You feel so much guilt and shame, and you are stuck in that. Maybe you’ve really messed something up, had an affair or gotten fired, and you need healing from that regret. Or perhaps you’ve been hurt by someone else, and you are stuck in that hurt. You don’t have to stay stuck. Maybe you are bitter and angry, and you need help to forgive so that you can be healthy again. We talked about false hopes that can entrap you, and you could need help to move beyond an addiction. Today may be the day you stop being a victim and take responsibility for your own life, to take a step you know God wants you take and you want prayer for courage to do that. I don’t know, but I do know that God answers prayer. I get that it is easier not to come forward, because it is uncomfortable. Some of you may think, “If we come forward, people will know we have problems.” Guess what? They already know you have problems. That’s not news. The reason is that we all have problems. We are all broken. The smart people are those who are willing to bring their brokenness to Jesus. Chase Oaks is not a collection of perfect people who impress each other. It’s a collection of imperfect, broken people who are on an authentic journey with Jesus toward wholeness. Today is just an opportunity to take a step on that journey. So, let’s go to God in prayer right now, and again, I invite you at your campus to come forward for prayer in this song. We do this from time to time, and God always works just as he promises he will. I will pray, and then your campus pastor and worship leader will take it from there. For those online and not in our area, you can reach out for someone to pray with you or even contact you if you want for prayer remotely. Let’s pray together. www.chaseoakschurch.org . Used by permission.

The Millennium-Tony Evans Do you know your answer could be sitting right next to you, but you'll never know it until God is ready to reveal it? God says, "If you come back home, you'll see I haven't gone anywhere". So, you draw near to him, and he will draw near to you 'cause he's the one who's never left. If you walk in the Spirit, or walk by means of the Spirit, he will open up the hole for you to get through. The snake is gonna try to stir stuff up. The snake is gonna try to get you away from God. There is a serpent in the garden, and your job is to keep him out. Sometimes he brings a little something that's a little cue to let you know, "Keep on going, keep on trusting because I hear you". Mankind has longed for utopia, paradise. You've seen it in TV, in movies; where we long for a time when the pain will end, when peace will reign, when problems will go away. Something has interrupted the dream of utopia. It's called sin. Whether it's your sin or somebody else's sin that affects you or even the environment that has been cursed by sin, sin has disrupted the possibility of utopia, paradise. In fact, Paul says in Romans chapter 8 that the whole creation groans under this curse. However, there is coming a time when there will be utopia, and that time is coming in history before we ever get to eternity, and we call it the millennium, the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. Millennium means 1.000. Let's review. Jesus raptures the church, seven years of tribulation, Jesus comes back to set up his millennial kingdom. And so, today I want to talk to you about paradise, not heaven. We haven't gotten to heaven yet. I'm talking about history, the 1.000-year rule of Jesus Christ. To understand this, you have to understand why this 1.000-year period of time must occur. When God created Adam and Eve, he said let them rule. We call it the dominion covenant, where man was going to rule on Earth as managers of God's creation. That rule got interrupted by Satan and sin when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, leading to the deterioration of Earth. Lifespans began to decline, marital conflict entered in, Cain kills Abel. The world becomes wicked. The whole world, in Genesis 6, has to be destroyed by a flood because sin cursed the creation that man was supposed to rule on behalf of God. Because of the sin cycle, there was no man who God could use to oversee the rule on Earth, so God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. In Luke 1:31-33, we are told that Mary, the mother of Jesus, gave birth to a son who was to be in the seed of David and who was to rule on the throne of God. We know him to be Jesus. He has redeemed the people for his namesake called the church: Christians. There will be tribulation where God will remove the church. All hell is going to break loose on Earth as God's wrath is revealed, for it will no longer be held back because of the death of Christ. Christians during that seven-year period of time are going to be rewarded based on their faithfulness now. So, what you do now (I'll pick this up in a moment) will affect what you get to do in the millennium, in the 1.000-year rule of Christ, or what you don't get to do. Luke 19 gives one of the many illustrations in the Bible of a person who, based on their faithfulness, gained or lost reward in the millennial kingdom. He says some will be over ten cities, some will be over five cities, some will be over no cities because they were unfaithful during their earthly life here. All of this is setting the stage at the return of Christ, when the Bible says Christians will come back with him for this 1.000-year rule of Christ known as the millennium. The two reasons why the millennium will be utopia, paradise, the Bible even calls it a return to Eden, Ezekiel 36:35, a return to Eden, we get back to what God originally designed. There are two reasons why this will be paradise. One, as we'll say in a moment, Jesus will be ruling from Jerusalem. The capital of the whole earth will be Jerusalem. It's the conflict of the whole earth today. It will be the capital of the whole earth then. Jesus Christ, the Bible says, will rule with a rod of iron. In other words, there will be allowed to be no rebellion. You and I, based on our rewards, will be the people who he utilizes to make sure his rule is exactly as he wants it to be, and nobody will be able to override you 'cause you will have a glorified body. So, you won't have to worry about rebellion against you 'cause nobody can overcome you. Now, who exactly will you be overseeing in the millennium? Well, that is explained to us in Matthew 25:31-46, because in those verses, at the end of the tribulation, God is gonna separate the sheep from the goat, that is, the unrighteous Gentiles, the goats; from the righteous Gentiles, sheep. It says the unrighteous Gentiles coming out of the tribulation will be sent to eternal judgment; and the righteous Gentiles coming out of the tribulation, they're going to go into the millennium in their natural human bodies. So, there's gonna be a whole earth full of folk in natural bodies while you and I will be overseeing them in glorified bodies. So, in our glorified bodies, based on the positions that we have earned during our stay here in our natural bodies, will affect your assignment, then, in your glorified bodies over those who are in the millennium in their natural bodies, and I'll prove to you in a moment how those natural bodies will function, but of course, you and I are in a glorified body, and this will last for 1.000 years before we ever get to eternity. So, one reason is that Jesus will rule through the saints from the capital of the world, Jerusalem, when he returns. There is a second reason why this will be paradise. The second reason you read in the first two verses of Revelation 20 because it says, "And Satan will be bound for 1.000 years". Satan will be bound so that he no longer is able to deceive the nations. Let me give you a little summary of satanic strategy. It exists today. That's why he has to be bound. And that is deception, that he will no longer deceive the nations anymore. The reason why we are messed up is 'cause we've been tricked. And because Jesus will rule with a rod of iron for 1.000 years, even if you wanna rebel, you won't be able to. You will not be allowed to rebel. So, your rebellion, you better keep it to yourself because in the millennium with you and I as judges and in various relationships, we'll be co-heirs, the Bible says. We will be co-heirs with him. So, this will be the ultimate answer to the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Earth will take on the look of heaven. So, let's get this straight. For 1.000 years, if you are a believer today, most of your time is going to be spent on earth, not in heaven. There will be an event that will lead into the millennium. The judgment separates your sheep and goats, but leading into that is going to be a wedding. Look at chapter 19, verses 7 to 10. "Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him, for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, 'Right, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are true words of God.' Then I fell at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, 'Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and your brother, who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.'" So, everybody loves a wedding. So, let me tell you about a wedding, because this wedding involves you 'cause you're the bride. See, the Bible calls the church the bride of Christ. So, God uses this terminology to express our relationship. Jesus is called the bridegroom, okay? So, there's gonna be a wedding. To appreciate this, you have to understand the oriental weddings. So, let me tell you the oriental weddings, and then how it applies to us, and then how that applies to the millennium. In biblical days, the wedding took on a number of different parts. The first aspect of a wedding in biblical times was the betrothal period. You and I would say "engagement," but there was a big difference between our engagement and the biblical times' engagement because the biblical time engagement was a legal contract. Then there was the marriage, okay? That would lead to what we all are aware of, and that is the reception. You know what the reception is? It's a party. Jesus's reception is gonna last 1.000 years. They were being made ready for the marriage supper of the lamb. That's the reception. So, there's going to be a party with Jesus and his bride, and it is gonna happen on Earth even though you're in a glorified body, and for 1.000 years carrying out your responsibilities as Jesus's bride. You are going to be in a wedding reception called the marriage supper of the lamb, and you will be there based on the level of your reward. So, everybody won't party equally, and, in fact, the Scripture says some who are part of the wedding will be in outer darkness.   www.ocbf.org .

The Bethlehem Principle Micah 5:2 ; Matthew 2:1 ; Genesis 49:10 S-1741 ☻SLIDE #: ANCIENT WHISPERs Turn to Micah 5:1-5 . ☻SLIDE #: Mother-in Law To daughter-in-law: You call this a meal… Give me a rag; I’ll clean this house right. I don’t know what my son ever saw in you! To son-in law: I always knew you’d turn out to be a loser. Would you stop watching tv long enough to listen to me. *The Talking Mother in Law Nutcracker is not really a nut cracker. ☻SLIDE #: Marie Antoinette Bobble head on spring: push on her head and it pops off ☻SLIDE #: Door mat: Nice Underwear 99 cent store: Light up Christmas Madonna Our gifts to God at Xmas. God probably chuckles. Insignificant to the one Who holds the stars in his hands. He loves everyone of them. “Ancient Whispers.” Old Testament Prophecies predicting the advent (coming) of Jesus Christ. ☻SLIDE #: THE Bethlehem Principle: strength FOR the weakest of the Weak. ☻SLIDE #: Micah 5:1 : Marshal your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. Babylonian Hordes sweeping upon Israel in 600 BC. Israel weak and defenseless. No hope. All is lost. Success could never depend completely on them. If God did not send a Savior they were really in trouble.         (Jehoikim blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. Jerusalem burnt to the ground.) ☻SLIDE #: Micah 5:2 : “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” ☻SLIDE #: Micah 5:3-5 : Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. 4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5 And he will be their peace. (Double fulfillment) (Overarching prophecy spanning 600 BC to second coming of Christ. ☻SLIDE #: Matthew 2:1-2 : After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” ☻SLIDE #: Matthew 2:3-5 : When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ☻SLIDE #: Matthew 2:6 : “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.” Of all the places for the Savior to come, why in the world would God pick Bethlehem? ☻SLIDE #: God: Why not Alexandria, Egypt etc, All the resources of ancient Egypt to fund His ministry! Rome was the power city. Kingdom spanned the known world. If you want to get the message, start in Rome and cover the earth. Jerusalem was the center of Israeli religion and culture and power. These are the power cities, wealth, resources to fund the ministry. Anybody who was anybody came from these. If Christ were to come from Arizona, He would not come from PHX or TUS, PHX looks down on TUS; TUS looks down on Marana; Marana looks down on Oro Valley and Oro Valley looks down on Marana; they both look down on Eloy; and Eloy looks down on Picacho. Jesus would be born in Pichaco. Jesus did not come from the power broker cities of the world. ☻SLIDE #: He came to a little, powerless, weak, vulnerable village named Bethlehem. You don’t have to be a powerbroker in life to experience God’s grace and power. ☻SLIDE #: THE Bethlehem Principle: strength FOR the weakest of the Weak. The Bethlehem principle is the hope of Christmas: If the Messiah can come as a little baby from one of the weakest villages on earth, then He can come for me. ☻SLIDE #: Thank God, what happened in Bethlehem didn’t stay in Bethlehem. ☻SLIDE #: the CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE ☻SLIDE #: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 : But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. If this kind of Grace was sufficient for Paul, then it can be sufficient for us. ☻SLIDE #: READ AND EXPOUND 2 Corinthians 11:21-31 . ☻SLIDE #: READ AND EXPOUND 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 . Describes vision he had fourteen years ago Probably a spiritual highlight of Paul’s life — transported to the third heaven. But, in the time of his greatest exaltation came also his greatest weakness. Read 2 Corinthians 12:5-7 . ☻SLIDE #: The word here for “Thorn” is the same word as “Stake:”  No, not the kind of Not steak we eat. “Stake” like a tent stake you drive in the ground.  From Babylonians – sharpen trees and impale people on stake.  Paul had stake twisting in his body to keep him humble. (Boxers: “ Torment: “to strike with the fist.” ”) “Torment” means “to beat, to strike with the fist.” Four Main Guesses as to the nature of Paul’s thorn. – l. Ugly – 2 Corinthians l0:10 – “Letters weighty but bodily appearance is weak.  “Beaten with rods.” 2. Malaria – very prevalent and incapacitating in Asia Minor. 3. Epilepsy:  Read Galatians 4:13-14 .   Ancient world believed epilepsy caused by demons.  Spit to ward off demons.  In Galatians 4:14 , “reject” = “to spit at”  (read with “spit at”) 4. Eye trouble – Most probable – blind at conversion, scales –         Galatians 6:11 ″Large letters with my own hand”         Galatians 4:15 – “Pluck out eyes”         Acts 23 – trials, chided high priest, slapped “Didn’t you know you were speaking to high priest?  “No didn’t perceive that.” ☻SLIDE #: To one degree or other, we are all like Paul in our weaknesses. How many of us have stepped on the gas but we have to admit again and again that the power just isn’t in us. God didn’t equip us with 8 cylinders or with 6 – only four – and those none too good. Maybe you had expectations of a normal, well-adjusted, happy life, but like a beast from ambush, an accident, or sickness leaped and now you must work with crippled machinery. Maybe yours is a life that wanted love and missed it. Maybe yours is a home where marriage might have been a thing of beauty but was a tragedy instead. Maybe yours is a family where a child created as a blessing became an inward agony. Maybe yours is a household where death has severed the tie that binds. ☻SLIDE #: The “AH-HA!” moment: God promises to us the same Grace for our weaknesses that He poured into Paul during his great weaknesses. ☻SLIDE #: GRACE POWER We usually think of grace in terms of something soft and feminine like a petite young lady, or a graceful ballerina. Or we think of the Holy Spirit as a dove. But that is not at all the connotation of the concept of grace. The working hypothesis behind grace is awesome, unleashed power. ☻SLIDE #: A mechanic from a garage in Mangum, Oklahoma, answered the distress call of a woman whose car had stalled. He examined the car and informed her that it was out of gas . The woman asked the mechanic, “Will it hurt if I drive it home with the gas tank empty?” With Grace, we never drive on an empty tank. VIDEO TECH: SWITCH TO ROGER’S COMPUTER SCREEN. Grace = God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense Grace is experienced at the moment of our spiritual New Birth when God gives us forgiveness of our sins and peace with God. (By the way, grace is when Jesus gives us what we don’t deserve. Mercy is when Jesus does not give us what we do deserve.) Grace is experienced as a deep-inner strength and peace that carries us through the most difficult of circumstances. Grace is strength in times of suffering, help in times of need, comfort in times of hurt, courage in times of fear and sustenance in times of despair. Paul in Philippian jail: beaten, whipped. Bleeding, chained. Singing songs at midnight. Ask Paul, “is it still worth it?” “Yes, I know that His grace is sufficient.” VIDEO TECH: SWITCH BACK TO OVERHEAD PROJECTOR SCREEN. ☻SLIDE #: The potential for experiencing great grace is built through Prayer, Bible Study, and Previous Life Experiences with Christ. In other words, the foundation for experiencing grace comes out of a deep-trusting relationship with Jesus Christ. VIDEO TECH: SWITCH TO ROGER’S COMPUTER SCREEN. Spiritual Growth Graph from -10-+10 Experience Grace better at different spiritual levels. This is one more reason to grow up in Christ. Grace is more caught—experienced—than taught. so, let’s just have a little talk. VIDEO TECH: SWITCH BACK TO OVERHEAD PROJECTOR SCREEN. ☻SLIDE #: ·Grace Enables To Live On A Higher Plane. ☻SLIDE #: Many Americans were moved by the Vietnam-era Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc (pronounced fuke), naked and horribly burned, running from a napalm attack. But for John Plummer, pastor of Bethany Methodist church in Purcellville, Virginia, that picture had special significance. In 1972 he was responsible for setting up the air strike on the village of Trang Bang. He was twice assured there were no civilians in the area. ☻SLIDE #: In June of 1996 he saw a network news story about Kim Phuc and learned she was not only alive but living in Toronto. Plummer found out she was speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. As Kim addressed the crowd, she said that if she ever met the pilot of the plane she would tell him she forgives him and that they cannot change the past but she hoped they could work together in the future. Plummer was able to get word to Kim that the man she wanted to meet was there. “She saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow,” Plummer wrote in an article in the Virginia Advocate. “She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,’ over and over again. At the same time she was saying, ‘It’s all right; it’s all right; I forgive; I forgive.'” Plummer learned that Kim Phuc became a Christian in 1982. ☻SLIDE #: ·Grace May Be Experienced As A Second Chance. ☻SLIDE #: ·In 1986 Bob Brenley was playing third base for the San Francisco Giants. In the fourth inning of a game against the Atlanta Braves, Brenley made an error on a routine ground ball. Four batters later he kicked away another grounder. And then while he was scrambling after the ball, he threw wildly past home plate trying to get the runner there. Two errors on the same play. A few minutes later he muffed yet another play to become the first player in the twentieth century to make four errors in one inning. Now, those of us who have made very public errors in one situation or another can easily imagine how he felt during that long walk off the field at the end of that inning. Brentley’s manager must have thought about his removal from the lineup.  But instead he chose to forgive him and to give him another chance.  It paid off.  In the bottom of the fifth, Brenley hit a home run. Then in the seventh, he hit a bases-loaded single, driving in two runs and tying the game.  Then in the bottom of the ninth, Brenley came up to bat again, with two outs. He ran the count to three and two and then hit a massive home run into the left field seats to win the game for the Giants. From the outhouse to the penthouse: Broadcaster; 2000 became manager of Arizona Diamondbacks. ☻SLIDE #: ·Derrek lost 45 pounds with a problem in his esophogas. Spasms kept food from going down. Considering putting in a feeding tube. Vocal Cords injured. Couldn’t talk loud or long without his throat spasming closed. For someone who intends to preach this is a career killer. Led 7 sports camps and could hardly talk. Gave invitations and 115 children prayed to receive Christ. Only one in 630,000 have this problem. God led us to surgeon who had pioneered a surgical repair. Only done 112 in his career. Complete recover. In Palestine, Texas last Sunday as forty men prayed over Derrek and ordained him to Gospel Ministry. Brie had a severe reaction that scarred one-third of her lungs. Swollen breathing problems. Pneumonia. Almost died twice on the way to the hospital after attacks. Doctors care. Breathing treatments. Couldn’t leave house—fear of germs for three months. “Are you angry at God?” “Yes. But if I have to live with this, God will give me grace. Kept writing for Insight for Living. On the road to recovery. Last week was the best week she’s ever had. ☻SLIDE #: ·Grace May Be The Only Thing That Enables Us To Handle The Most Difficult Experiences Of Life. Relocation sign story ☻SLIDE #: ·No Matter Where We Are In Our Spiritual Journey, We Can Experience God’s Grace. Even -5s Non-Christians can experience God’s grace. Story told by John Goth, the English Evangelist. Once saw two boys in hospital — cots were side by side. One boy had a fever…other boy had been struck by a truck. The boy with the fever was very weak and the one who had been struck by the truck said to him: “Say, I was down at the Mission SS and they told me about Jesus and I believe that if you ask Jesus, He will help you. They said that if we believe in Jesus and pray to Him, when we die, He will come and take us to be with Him.” The little boy with the fever said, “But, what if I am asleep when He comes and I can’t ask Him?” The other boy said, “Just hold up your hand. That is what we did in SS. I guess that Jesus sees it.” The fevered boy was too weak to lift up his hand so the other fellow leaned over and propped up the pillows and braced it under the fevered boy’s arm. And so the little fellow fell asleep with is arm up in the air. In the morning when the nurse came in, she found the little fellow dead, but with his arm still propped up! Now, you know that the Lord saw that arm. “Well,” you say, “that was very simple faith.” Jesus said, “If you have the faith of the grain of a mustard seed…Except a man become as a little child, he cannot enter into Heaven.” Bow heads: Feel weak today? Like for God to pour in the power? Simple faith? You don’t need much—trust God. ☻SLIDE #: O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie, Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light, The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Introduction Favorite Christmas Song “White Christmas” – best-selling Christmas song of all time Guinness Book of World Records – over 50 million sales Written in 1940 by Irving Berlin Popularized by Bing Crosby Written in Palm Springs, California Irving Berlin was from Russia Moved to New York Now in Palm Springs dreaming of a white Christmas We have chosen the theme of this Christmas: Red (not white) God's perspective: It takes red to get white Blood red Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins (see Hebrews 9:22) The blood of Jesus cleanses us (1 John 1:7-9) "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" Isaiah 1:18 Galatians 4; three verses Theology, history, and philosophy By Christmas - hope that you will be thoroughly equipped and knowledgeable of what Christmas is really all about Galatians 4, "The fullness of time" The end of a period of preparation God readying the whole world The Law of Moses that governed the Jews had accomplished its purpose All people failed to keep the Law God introduced a new era of redemption Picture: a glass slowly, slowly, slowly filled with water, until it finally reached its proper fullness Why didn't Jesus come sooner? Why at that time, in that culture? That was the fullness of the time --the right time Two main thoughts: God always keeps His appointments; God's time is always the right time - He make appointments and always keeps them "To everything there is a season..." Ecclesiastes 3:1 Story: Skip's busy earthly dad "God is not slack or slow..." 2 Peter 3:9 "There are no loose threads in the providence of God, no stitches are dropped, no events are left to chance. The great clock of the universe keeps good time, and the whole machinery of providence moves with unerring punctuality." -- Charles Spurgeon Jesus comes on the scene (seed Mark 1:9-15) 1. Goes down to John to be baptized 2. Goes into the wilderness to be tempted 3. Came back and started His ministry 4. His first words: "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand." (Mark 1:15) There are references throughout Scripture about the time 1. At the miracle of the water into wine, He tells his mom, "My hour has not yet come." (John 2:4) 2. They tried to take Jesus by force and make Him a king. (see John 7) 3. At the Last Supper, He got up to wash His disciples’ feet because He “knew that His hour had come” (John 13:1) 4. In His prayer, “Father, the hour has come.” (John 17:1) God makes appointments and He always keeps His appointments God's time is always the right time We look at B.C. and A.D. - Jesus split time forever What made this time the "fullness" of time? 1. The right time spiritually a. A pervasive hunger for spiritual things b. Influence of Monotheistic Judaism c. Alexander the Great "colonize the world" d. Rome had conquered the world i. The gods of the cultures who had been conquered had not saved them ii. They were open to an alternative belief system e. The Jews believed in Messiah -- a Deliver i. Romas also believed in a deliverer ii. A Roman poet, Virgil, wrote that Caesar Augustus was the ideal savior king, "This one will be the divine king of which the world has awaited." iii. They were already open to a deliverer coming f. The world was ripe spiritually for both the Romans and the Jews i. The expectation of the Messiah coming reached fever pitch ii. "Prior to the first century, the Messianic interest was not excessive. The first century however, especially the generation before the destruction of the second temple, witnesses a remarkable outburst of Messianic emotionalism. When Jesus came into Galilee, spreading the gospel of the Kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, He was voicing the opinion universally held that the age of the Kingdom of God was at hand. The Messiah was expected around the second quarter of the first century of the Christian era." -- Rabbi Abba Hilel Silver iii. That is exactly when Jesus came iv. No wonder when John the Baptist was at the Jordan River baptizing, people asked, "Are you the Christ?" (see John 19) g. Jews believed that was the time because i. Ancient prophecy in Genesis ii. Jacob gives his last words to his sons iii. Judah - "The scepter shall not depart...until Shiloh comes" (Genesis 49:10) iv. Rabbis down through the ages believed that Messiah would not come until the right to rule was taken from Judah v. Josephus, the Jewish historian tells us that in the first quarter of the first century, when the Romans took over, they took the right of tribal rule from Judah vi. When that happened, the Jewish Sanhedrin put sackcloth and ashes on their bodies and marched through the streets of Jerusalem bewailing, "The scepter has departed from Judah, but Shiloh has not come." vii. They believed God broke His promise viii. Interesting: about that time Jesus was about to lay down His carpentry tools and march down to the Jordan river - Shiloh had come h. It was the right time spiritually It was the right time culturally 1. First time since the tower of Babel there was a universal language - Greek 2. Alexander the great thought that the world should be Hellenized 3. He managed to go as far as India and make Greek the language of the East 4. Then Rome made Greek the trade language of the West i. Now you could express ideas together in the same language ii. People could understand each other - free flow thought in expression and ideas iii. Greek is the most precise instrument to convey human thought iv. Interesting that God waited for the most previse language to be the language that the New Testament would be written in It was the right time politically 1. Rome was in charge 2. Caesar Augustus established the Pax Romana - Roman Peace i. Peace ii. Cultural growth iii. Road system - 250.000 miles, 50,000 miles paved iv. Travel safely and freely around Roman Empire v. Some of the soldiers got saved It was the fullness of the time It was the perfect time The right time By the end of 312 A.D., every one in ten people in the Roman world claimed to be Christian Closing - God's timing in your life is perfect We don't always understand God's timing This day could be the perfect time in your life He might be bringing you to a personal confidence and trust in Him, in a relationship with Him This could be the fullness of the time for you Today is the day of salvation (see 2 Corinthians 6:2) If you would like to commit your life to Christ, do it right now Publications referenced :  Guinness Book of World Records Figures referenced : Irving Berlin, Bing Crosby, Charles Spurgeon, Virgil (Roman poet), Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, and Josephus Cross references :   Genesis 49:10 ,  Ecclesiastes 3:1 ,  Isaiah 1:18 , Mark 1:9-15 ,  John 2:4 , John 7 , 13:1 , 17:1 , John 19 ,  Hebrews 9:22 ,  2 Peter 3:9 ,  1 John 1:7-9

Beatitudes: Blessings of Kingdom People Tony Evans The beatitudes: These are the blessings that accrue to Kingdom people. Not church people - Kingdom people. Kingdom people are the men and women, boys and girls, who consciously, upfront, unapologetically flow under the rule of God. "Kingdom" means "rule or authority". Jesus preaches this sermon to espouse Kingdom living. He gives the beatitudes to tell you the blessings of those who adopt this Kingdom mentality, mindset, orientation, focus, and priority. Nine times in this segment, the word "blessed" is used, and it is a rejection of religious externalism. When we get into these beatitudes, there will be a rejection. He does this a number of times throughout the sermon, and I would encourage you to read the whole sermon, chapter 5 through chapter 7. It is a rejection of religiosity, that is, worshipping God for show. You know, you're doing the religious thing. Jesus Christ rejects the religious thing. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven". He didn't say, "Blessed are the poor". He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit". He's not talking about money here, finances, stuff, or things. He's talking about a spiritual poverty. In other words, "Blessed are those who live their lives in conscious dependency on God". In other words, they are needy people for God. They're poor. The Greek word "poor" was used of a beggar in Biblical times, a beggar, somebody who would be on the street corner because they were insufficient of themselves to take care of themselves, and so they would be out on the streets, begging. He says, "The blessed person, the blessed Kingdom person, is the person who recognizes their own inadequacy," and, in the words of an old school song, "ain't too proud to beg". They recognize their own insufficiency. They recognize, "I can't do this without you". They recognize spiritual impoverishment. They recognize their need for God, and they are not ashamed to declare spiritual bankruptcy. The greatest sin of all is the sin of independence or self-sufficiency, that, "I don't need God". But he's not just talking about your ability to say it. He's saying, "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who feel this thing". It is a spiritual dependency, or, as Jesus said in John 15, "Without me, you can do nothing". In other words, "You cannot accomplish what I want you to accomplish. You can't be what I want you to be. You can't do what I want you to do without me," and, as long as you think you're rich in spirit, meaning, "I can pay for this myself. I can handle this myself. I can take care of me myself," then that makes you independent, and, if you are independent, you're proud. If you become spiritually impoverished, meaning you are desperately dependent upon God if you're gonna make it, if you're going to be what you were created to be, do what you were created to do, become what you were created to become. He gives you a promise. "Theirs is the Kingdom of heaven". Remember, a Kingdom is rule. You get to see God's heavenly rule in your earthly life. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who are saddened by what saddens God". In other words what makes God sad makes you sad. Mourn. To mourn is to be sorrowful over something. Blessed are those who cry at stuff that shouldn't be laughed at because they have the heart of God, and the only thing that makes God mourn is sin and its consequences. That's what makes God mourn, when he sees people being independent from him, sin, and, when he sees the fallout of sin in the consequences. Jesus looked over Jerusalem, and he was saddened, and he was in a mournful state. He said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you like a hen who gathers her little ones, but you wouldn't let me". When Jesus was at Martha and Mary's brother's tomb, Lazarus, the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11, "Jesus wept," when he saw the consequences of sin that produced death, when he had to cry with these two sisters who had lost their brother. What causes God to mourn we often laugh at. We don't mourn over the sin and consequences of others, and so we've lost the heart of God. Nothing shows the heart of God than what saddens God also saddens you. He says, "The blessing is for those who mourn," so one of our prayer requests is, "To God, give me your heart and your emotion". Nothing should sadden you more than when you have saddened God or when you see others who have saddened God. God mourns over our culture. He weeps over our culture because he knows everything that's wrong with our culture has come because our culture has departed from him. He says, "The blessing is they shall be comforted". When you develop, I develop, we develop God's heart about sin and its consequences, he comforts us. The word "comfort" is used of one who comes alongside to help. It's the word used of the Holy Spirit, who comes alongside to encourage us, strengthen us, enable us as we deal with the pain of what we're going through. "Blessed are the gentle or the meek. They shall inherit the earth". Meekness in the Bible does not mean weakness. Meekness was used of breaking a horse, breaking a horse. You've got this stallion that's wild. It's bucking. It's trying to knock the rider off because it doesn't want anybody on its back, so it's bucking. The cowboy gets on it, and the horse bucks, bucks. "Get off me. Leave me alone. Yeah. If you don't get off, I'm gonna shake you off," throws the cowboy off. What does the cowboy do? Get right back on. It's trying to, watch this, break the horse. It's what they call it, breaking the horse. What is he breaking the horse of? He's breaking the horse of his will 'cause the horse was saying, "Get off of me". He's breaking the horse of what? He's not breaking of horse of its strength. He's not breaking the horse of its power. He's not breaking the horse of its speedy ability to run. He's breaking the horse of its will so that, now, the horse does what the rider calls for... Whoa... Giddy up. In other words, the horse now comes under the direction of the rider 'cause it's been broken. That's the Greek word for "meek". Meek means to be broken of your self-will. "The meek shall inherit the earth," okay? To inherit something means something has been willed to you, okay? He's not talking about heaven. He says, "You will inherit the earth". Let's put it another way. "You shall receive your allotted portion," for those who will allow God to break them, whatever is yours, you get 'cause it's in the will. You have an inheritance. Many will live their lives never getting what God has prescribed for them to have because they were never meek enough, broken enough, to submit to him, and you don't get your allotted portion. Verse 6, "Blessed are those who hunger, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied". He now wants to discuss the blessing of having the right spiritual appetite, the right spiritual appetite, because far too many of God's children are malnourished not because they're not eating. They're just not eating the right stuff, so the question is hungry for what? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, that is, who have an insatiable appetite for what pleases God. Why? Here. Let me tell you a secret. Your soul, my soul, our souls are starving for what pleases God. If you are saved, you have a hungry soul. David said, Psalm 42, "As the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after thee, oh, God". You have a hungry soul if you're saved, and that hungry soul wants to be fed with righteousness. There will be some things about righteousness you don't like. There'll be some things you don't want to eat, but the question is do you want to be healthy? He says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness". Let me tell you about hungry folk. You go to a restaurant, and they give you a menu, right? They give you a menu. The menu is a written documentation of what they have to offer. Sometimes, you can salivate just by reading the menu. You're reading the menu. You're going... I mean, it just looks good. "Ooh. That looks good. That looks good," so you can read it and feel good about it just by reading it, but not only do they give you a written menu. They have somebody there to proclaim the menu, to teach you the menu. It's a waiter or waitress, and they are menu expositors. They do an exposition of the menu. They say, "Well, this is this. This is this. This is this," and they offer you a Q and A session. "Do you have any questions"? So, they will proclaim the menu to you. Now, after you have read the menu and after they've proclaimed the menu, and you do not then ask for your coat to leave because you didn't come there to read about it or to hear somebody else tell you how good it is. You came there for your personal experience with it, and until you've experienced the meal, you're not satisfied that you read about it or that somebody talked about it until it has entered into your tummy. See, the reason why a Sunday meal isn't enough is 'cause you come with a menu. It's a thick menu. It's called a Bible. It's got all kind of recipes in it. Then you got somebody who will teach you about the menu, but it's not over yet 'cause God wants you to taste and see that the Lord is good. He wants you to taste this thing. He wants you to meditate on this thing so that it just doesn't become something you heard in your ears. It becomes something that you start to digest in your soul so it can take root and flow all week long. He says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness," and then he gives the blessing, "for they shall be satisfied". Guess what God offers you? When you passionately pursue him and his Kingdom through that which pleases him, he says, "I will remove your discontent," but you've gotta be hungry and thirsty after what he's cooking. Hunger and thirst after righteousness, and he removes the discontent. The more we hunger for righteousness, the more satisfied we become. He says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy". Mercy is not giving you what you do deserve, not giving you what you do deserve. To express mercy is to seek to remove the misery that someone is going through, even if they deserve it. Mercy is not just feeling sorry. Mercy is a tangible act of removing the misery. He says, "There's a blessing for those who show mercy," 'cause you can bet your bottom dollar there is coming a day in your life when you're gonna need mercy, when you're gonna want God not to give you all that you deserve. Yeah, there's coming a time. I don't know whether it's already been, it is, or it will be, but there will become a time when you're gonna want God to, "Hold back. Don't give me what I deserve". You may be good now, but there is coming a day when you're gonna want mercy dispensed to you. He says, "Blessed are those who show mercy, for they will receive mercy". On the day you need it, God's gonna check your record to see whether you gave it. This is one of the great blessings, that you can call on God for the mercy that you showed somebody else in their day of misery when you have your day of misery, when you are needing it. He goes on, and he says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God". The word "pure" means "unmixed, undivided, no defect". It has to do with being authentic on the inside, being for real on the inside. Now, you know you. You know you better than anyone knows you, but you don't even know you perfectly, but, but all of us knows what it is from time to time to be plastic, you know? Pure in heart means to be authentic, and, in order to be authentic, you have to first of all be honest with God. You're respectful, but you are clearly honest, raw with God, no double-mindedness. Jesus told us, told the Pharisees in Matthew 23, he said, "Clean the inside of the cup before you clean the outside". See, here's the problem. Many of us want to change what we're doing outside when we haven't dealt honestly with what goes on inside. In order to have a pure heart, you have to be authentic with God. You have to come clear with God. You have to be honest with God about the good and the bad and the ugly. The pure in heart, being authentic. He says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God". Are you tired of just talking about God and never seeing him? "They shall see God". You'll see him operating, moving. He won't just be a concept to you anymore, a thought, an idea, a perspective, a philosophy, a religious ornament. You're gonna see his reality moving, rolling, tweaking, twisting, turning in your life. God will become real. You'll see him. You'll see him. The unseen God, you will see, and you will see him for yourself. You won't need somebody else's testimony 'cause, if you come real with him in the heart, you'll see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God". Peacemakers, not peacekeepers. Peacemakers. Peace is harmony. It is the resolving of conflicts with the truth by which sin is exposed and addressed and right relationships established, the peacemakers. Sometimes, we want to keep peace. Jesus said you've gotta make peace, and you make peace by identifying the truth, by exposing the sin, addressing the sin, and then constructing a bridge between the parties that were at odds. That's what you do. Whether it's a marriage or whether it's two Christians or two groups of Christians, he said you've gotta make peace. You don't just keep peace. We keep peace by ignoring it. He says you make peace by addressing it. "Blessed are the peacemakers," and he says, "Peacemakers shall be called the sons of God". Why will you be called the son of God? Because you look like your daddy. He got the same DNA 'cause the Bible says, "God sent Jesus to make peace and to bring sinful men to a holy God". Jesus is the emulsifier 'cause a perfect God and sinful men can't mix, so what Jesus did was he reached up and grabbed God. He reached down and grabbed man so that the two could get connected again. That's what. He is our, he is our mediator. He is our emulsifier. Let me tell you something else about a son of God. A son gains access 'cause you're dealing with Daddy. You're dealing with Daddy. Let me close. He says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted". "Treated in an evil manner," that's what it means. Why are you being treated in an evil manner? Because you're showing these qualities. You're not talking about treated in an evil manner because you evil. He's talking about treated in an evil manner because you're showing these characteristics, these Kingdom characteristics, and some folk won't like you. And he says, "And you're in the company of a great class of people, those who've gone before you," and he pronounces a double blessing on those who are willing to be rejected by men in order to be accepted by God. So, don't take my word for it. Try it. Try becoming a Kingdom Christian, and watch the blessings come your way. Don't take my word for it. Don't buy it because I said it. Go read it for yourself, and begin to implement it, and you tell me whether you're experiencing God at a whole 'nother level. A man one day was dying of thirst, and he was in this desert place with no water. He couldn't make it much further when he saw a little shack. He walked into the little shack, and there was a well with a little jar of water and a sign. The sign said, "Use this water not to drink but to prime the pump because, then, you'll have ongoing water". He says, "I don't know whether I can take this risk. I'm dying here. If I pour this water in, and this pump doesn't prime, I'm gonna die. At least if I drink the water, I can live for a while and hope tomorrow will be a better day". So, he had to make the decision whether to take the risk on the well or just be satisfied with the jar. He took the risk, poured the water in the well, in the pump, primed the pump. Up gushed enough water to last him for as long as he needed it. A lot of you are gonna take this sermon and use it like a jar. You're gonna drink it up, and, by tomorrow or Tuesday, it'll be gone, but, if you let it prime the pump of the well of the Kingdom of God, you'll find it flowing for life ongoing. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus opens it up by offering to his followers the blessings, that is, the benefits of the Kingdom. He calls them blessings or the beatitudes we know them as. These blessings have to do with the favor that God dispenses when we are Kingdom people doing Kingdom work the King's way. These blessings, a blessing is a, the experience, the enjoyment, and the extension of God's favor in your life and through your life to others. By the way, a blessing is not just what you get. It's what God can give through you because you got it, and he gives a number of blessings that come when we are aligned with the Kingdom aptitude and attitude of the King. Whether it's mercy or whether it's the pursuit of righteousness or whether it's the pursuit of purity or even when it's the struggle with persecution, when we function in a Kingdom way, he says that will accrue benefits from the King to this Christian who is Kingdom-oriented, so it is absolutely critical, if you want to experience all the favor of the Kingdom and all the benefits of the King, then you must be willing to be a Kingdom Christian. When these blessings come your way, these are not blessings only for eternity. These are blessings that God offers his followers, his disciples in history as well, so you can affect how much you get from God and how it flows to your life, in your life, and through your life by how you align with the King, who offers these blessings. The backdrop to this whole concept is a little island that was self-contained. The beautiful thing about God's Kingdom blessings is that they are built in, so you don't have to, like, go get them. They're already set up to flow like lava coming out of a mountain. It's already built in when the conditions are right, so we establish the conditions for the flow of God's goodness in our lives, so don't lose out on the blessings because you refuse to honor the blessedness of our King.

PRE-INCARNATE JESUS TOMMY NELSON “Now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” (John 17:5) “. . . He existed in the form of God . . .” (Phil.2:6) “. . . He was rich . . .” (2 Cor. 8:9) Where does one begin in examining the unfathomable majesty and mystery of Christ? One begins in eternity, for “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” But we must always remember that the unique Person of the Godman, Jesus Christ, that unique theanthropic Person has only existed from Mary’s womb onward – an existence that will never end or be altered. But the preincarnate Son of God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, had eternally delighted in the Father’s love. The Bible only hints at that unique and inexplicable relationship. Only that there was the sameness of deity and of glory. There is just so much that created beings are able to peer into. “Things into which angels long to look.” But never has a distance so enormous been so traversed as that from the Son, the infinite Creator, to the finite creation. Never has a humiliation been so great, never a condescension as enormous as the Word become flesh. The classic type and prefiguring of this was the Old Testament tabernacle. There the unobservable, unendurable glory and Presence of God, the Shekinah, was localized in a small cubicle. A Holy of Holies, where Glory and the fullness of deity was contained and confined in skins. A glory upon which no unauthorized eye could gaze, and yet confined to that which was approachable. And so was the “mystery of godliness – God manifested in the flesh.” Such was the eternal Son of God taking residence in a body that could be laid in a manger – sit at table – mount a cross. As Paul wrote, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who though He was rich for your sake became poor . . .” (2 Cor. 8:9) What a thought. “He was rich.” Rich in power. Rich in glory. Rich in angelic worship. Rich in deity. Such was the “form of God.” Yet He became a pauper for me. This is a theological point we cannot fully understand. This is not merely a moral admonition we can obey. All we can do is stand back in awe and wonder. What profound humiliation. God will never demand more from me than He has modeled in the most extreme form. He, as God, taking up time and space. Indeed did Isaiah understand this when he prophesied, “His name shall be called ‘Wonderful’ . . .” The Hebrew word for “wonderful” is elsewhere used in the repeated Old Testament statement “nothing is impossible with God.” It means something which, though true, is beyond our ability to comprehend. Such is the baby born in Bethlehem who was named by Isaiah “Everlasting Father.” Such is full of wonder. Certainly did the angels sing at His birth and announce to Mary and Zacharias His approach. Certainly did the angels attend Him in the wilderness and Gethsemane. Certainly did the angels sit reverently in His vacated tomb and stand reverently in mid-heaven at His ascension. Certainly will they sound forth His return when He descends from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God. And most certainly did the demons fall prostrate at His feet in the body of that most wretched demoniac and beg not to be sent in to the abyss. And how rightly does John’s gospel end in the crescendo of Thomas – “My Lord and my God!”

I was in Starbucks a few hours ago, getting coffee for the weekend and getting some beans, and I heard something that I guess I didn't expect. It was busy, it was crazy, it was loud in Starbucks. But over the PA it was Elvis Presley singing Silent Night, and it just sort of struck-- it was like, (IMITATING ELVIS) Silent night. And it's like, OK, there's the King of rock and roll singing about the King of Kings, and it's a very silent, quiet night, and it was crazy pandemonium in Starbucks. It's just not what I expected. Speaking of what you don't expect, there was a woman in Australia who woke up to something very odd for Christmas. And it wasn't a gift under the tree, it was a snake under the tree. It was a snake that's very venomous, highly poisonous, indigenous to Australia, and it was curled up on the branches amongst the tinsel. It shocked her and she, of course, had to call the authorities and get the snake removed. It's not what she expected for Christmas. Nobody would expect that. For Joseph and Mary it was also very unexpected. It's not what they expected in their relationship with each other. Suddenly they're confronted with an unexpected pregnancy. They are not certain what to do. It requires special Revelation from God in order to deal with it. What they did know is that there had been a snake for centuries underneath the tree of humanity, so to speak. Back in Genesis when Satan showed up and beguiled Eve, and a prophecy came forth in Genesis 3 that a woman would one day have a child, and that child would have the power, the authority to crush the serpent's head with its heel. To take it completely out of the picture. Well, this is all new to Joseph and Mary. And so Joseph has a dream about what is happening with his girlfriend, whom he is engaged to, and what to do about it. I'm going to read the story. It's familiar to you. It's out of Matthew, chapter one. This is Christmas through the eyes of Joseph. 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. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her public example, was minded to put her away secretly. 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. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son. And they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, "God with us." Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took him his wife. And did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. Experts tell us that every one dreams. You do it every night. You don't remember them all, but you dream. You go into a period of sleep called REM, R-E-M, rapid eye movement. That's where you are more likely to have a dream than any other period during the sleep cycle. Your dreams last anywhere from just a few seconds to up to 30 minutes, and you typically have between three and five dreams a night. Again, the problem is always the recall, but sometimes they're very vivid and you remember them. My wife, when she dreams, she communicates to me in her dreams often. And it's very sweet and very articulate. She'll say the sweetest things. I'll carry a conversation on with her and she will have no recollection the next day that any of that took place. So a few years ago, in the middle of the night, she turned over. She was in her dream but she said, honey, I love you so much. And I told her I loved her. And we had a little conversation and it was sweet. And then a few minutes later she turned around and she said, OK, now shut up and go to sleep. It was a dream, or so I'm told. She had no remembrance at all the next day that that took place. We dream as a means of our subconscious dealing with what goes on during our conscious, normal activity of life. Sometimes we go through a very difficult period of time and we try to sort it out in our dreams, we are told. At other times we get the weirdest, wildest dreams that seemingly are unrelated to anything at all. Am I right? It's the result of a late night pizza with red chili. And so you'll get some kind of a response in your brain. You'll get a dream. But sometimes God uses dreams. He uses them to communicate to people, and he did throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament Abraham received a dream that confirmed the covenant that God made with him and with those who would follow after him, in Genesis, chapter 15. A man named Abimelech, who was the King of Gerar, received a dream not to touch Abraham's wife, Sarah, in chapter 20 of Genesis. Jacob received a dream when he ran away from his brother, and he saw a ladder stretching up to heaven with the angels of God going down and going up, all in a dream. Joseph is one of the most famous dreamers in the Bible. Remember, he received a couple of dreams, and he didn't win any points with his family because of those dreams. He went to them one day and he said, hey guys, I had a dream last night that there were 12 stars, the sun, and the moon, and the sun and the moon and the 11 stars all bowed down to my star. And they didn't really like that dream all that much. But God was setting it up, and he was speaking through a dream. This is a dream where the Lord is speaking through his angel to this man, Joseph. Now, I find something interesting. Basically the same information that Joseph gets is what Mary gets earlier from the angel Gabriel, when the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in real time. Not a dream, but more of a vision. She actually sees the angel and hears the angel while Mary is wide awake. Joseph, on the other hand, gets it in a dream. I can't tell you why, except sometimes guys are just harder-headed and they need to be put out to get a message. By the way, sometimes God does his best work when he puts a man to sleep. And I don't say that facetiously. Adam was asleep when God fashioned out of his side, Eve, and then brought the woman to the man. This story of Joseph is a story of what I call the forgotten man of Christmas. There's a lot of Christmas songs and there's a lot written about Mary and Jesus. Joseph is there, we know, but he's sort of the background guy because he didn't have anything at all to do with the pregnancy of Mary, but he is part of this family. This forgotten man-- in fact, did you know that in the Bible there is never a single recorded word that Joseph spoke? We know he spoke, but there is no recorded word in the Bible of what Joseph said. And then somebody, just for fun, decided to take their church hymnal and go through it and they found five songs, five references by name, to Mary and not a single reference in any song to Joseph. But he's in this story. And in the verses that I just read to you, there are eight verses that tell the story. I read to you eight versus. The first two verses deal with what happens before the dream, then there are four verses that tell what happened during the dream, and then the last two verses tell what happened after the dream when Joseph woke up. And there are three words that sum it all up. There is confusion, there is clarity, and finally there is compliance. It begins with confusion. Joseph is just plain confused at the news that the girl that he loves and wants to marry suddenly turns up pregnant. It broke his heart. We are told this, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother, Mary, was betrothed-- I'll explain that in a moment-- to Joseph, before they came together-- that is in marital, physical union-- she, Mary, was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, or a just man, not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. In two verses Joseph goes from excitement to bewilderment. From planning a wedding to filing for divorce. We don't know when Joseph got the news. We don't know how the news was presented about Mary, but his world came crashing down the moment he got the news. Now, in those days, there were two levels of a relationship before marriage. There were two stages. The first stage was called, in Hebrew, the kiddushin, which was the engagement, the betrothal. Typically it lasted a year. And then that was followed by the crescendo, the event itself, the chuppah, which was the wedding ceremony, the party. So there was a year engagement followed by a wedding. When couples were engaged or betrothed in those days, they couldn't decide to break it off unless they got a divorce. They were legally married in simply signing the promise, the contract, usually arranged by parents, not by the couple, and you couldn't break it up unless you got a formal divorce. The other catch was, there was no physical contact during that one year of betrothal or engagement. They rarely saw each other. They were too busy working, planning the wedding. No physical contact at all. Joseph was excited about that. Until he gets the news. Because he immediately thinks, and rightly so, wait a minute, that's not my baby. And purity was, in those days, highly regarded-- and, by the way, it still is by God. Sexual purity was highly regarded as something to be aspired to by every couple. So Joseph is confused. And we know what Joseph did. We typically call him a carpenter. He was a craftsman. I can just hear what His buddies must have said when they found out the news. Listen, I worked around builders, and I can just imagine they said, yeah, Joseph, you had nothing to do with it. Right. We believe you, buddy. Or they might have said something-- you ought to just dump her. She's a loser. If she would do something like that before a wedding, you could never ever trust her again. It was a sad day for Joseph. I'm sure even this man's man cried. Now, Mary had an advantage. She was told by the angel Gabriel what this was all about. The angel appeared to her and said, you're going to have a child. And she asked the right question. She goes, wait a minute, how can these things be? I've never been with a man in my life. This is impossible. And so Gabriel gives the explanation. Not much of one, not a long one, but sufficient. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the highest will overshadow you so that that which is born will be the son of the highest, the Son of God. Now, Joseph didn't have that visit. Mary did. So Joseph hears the news. My girlfriend's pregnant. He panics. He decides, I need to put her away, give her a divorce privately. Now, when I read this I go, oh, Joseph. Hold on, buddy. Just wait until-- you need to read Luke, chapter one, man. You're still in Matthew 1. Just give it a little bit of time. Luke one's coming up. Of course, they didn't have the Bible back then. He was just living this out. He hears the news, and in verse 19 it says, being a just man, not wanting to make a public example of her, he was minded to put her away privately. Now let me explain that Joseph had three options. Option number one, he could have exposed her publicly, and in the Old Testament, years before this, that would have meant public stoning. Public shaming and public stoning. Death in public. That had long been not practiced, but it would still be very shameful to expose her publicly. The second thing he could have done was a private divorce. This is what he opted for. That is where you take two witnesses, bring a certificate, something you write down, ending the relationship, presenting that to the bride to be or the bride that used to be with two witnesses, and it's over. The third thing Joseph could have done is just said, I'm going to bite the bullet and I'm going to marry this girl. He couldn't get his head around that one, so he opted for number two. Of course, today there would be a fourth option, unfortunately. A guy would hand a girl $200 and say go get an abortion. But Joseph, it says, was a righteous man. He was a just man. And though he cared about his own personal life, he also cared about Mary. He'd loved her deeply and he cared about her reputation. So in that quandary, at the lowest point in his life, he goes, I'm going to give her a private divorce. This boy needs a dream. This boy needs to be put down, put under anesthesia by a divine surgeon. And that's what happens in the next few verses. We go from confusion to clarity. That's what the dream brings while he thought about these things, I'm sure very emotionally, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Now, I love this. He gets a personal pep talk by an angel in a dream. But there are a few components to this short little dream of Joseph. First component was recollection. The angel wants Joseph to remember a promise that happened and who Joseph was. Listen to what he says. Joseph, son of David-- stop right there. Reminding Joseph that he was of the lineage of the house, the royal house of King David and that God made a promise to David that somebody would be born from his lineage that would rule the world one day. He wants to remind Joseph, you're part of that picture. You will provide for the child that is not really your child, the legal right to the throne of David. So there is first that recollection. The second component is an exhortation. The angel says, do not be afraid. Or literally, stop. Stop being afraid. You know, sometimes you have to tell a person who's freaking out, stop. And so the angel does this exhortation. Don't be afraid. You know, when I first asked my wife to marry me, I was so scared just to ask her. I was so scared, I still to this day don't really remember how it all happened. I remember being at her dad's house, I remember standing up, I remember saying words that she tells me made no sense at all. She goes, you were talking about street lights and them turning green and then red and driving a car and going left and going right, and I had no idea what you were saying, and suddenly it dawned on me, she said. Oh goodness, he's going to ask me to marry him. This I do remember. I remember when she said, honey, I said yes. I said, what? I said yes. You just asked me to marry you, and I said yes. And then I said this. Now, wait a minute. And I walked away, just like this. I said, wait a minute. Uh, we've got to talk about this. This is-- this is big stuff here. And she thought at that moment, he's-- I mean, this is the worst proposal in the world. I was just so frightened of what I was getting into. I think some single guys are. Joseph was afraid of what this would mean for Mary and what this would mean for him. This was news he just did not expect. And so there's now an explanation. That's the next component. The angel says this, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. I gotta tell you, Joseph had no idea what that meant. He didn't get it. He didn't understand that. He was just going, oh. OK. In other words, Joseph, you can't figure this out, but God did this. This is a God thing. But, listen, to this day I can't fully explain to you the virgin birth. I believe it, but I can't explain it. Larry King, years ago, who used to be an interviewer on CNN, you may remember, he was once asked, Larry, if you could interview anybody, any person from history, who would you interview, and what would you ask that person. He said, I'd interview Jesus Christ and I'd ask him one question. Were you really born of a virgin? Because if the answer is yes, he said, for me that changes everything. You may know, Larry King is Jewish. And if he discovered that Jesus was indeed born of a virgin as his prophet Isaiah predicted he would be, that changes his whole view of history and the future. So there is that explanation that that is indeed the case. Followed by another component, instruction. Listen to what the angel says. She, Mary, will bring forth a son. You will give him the name Jesus. He will save his people from their sins. You get those 1, 2, 3. She's going to have the baby, you're going to name the baby, the baby's going to save the world. How's that for a solution to our ills? She's going to have the baby, you're going to name the baby, baby is going to save the world. You got the easy part, here, dude. You don't even have to think of a name. Here's the name. That's followed by a clarification. Matthew said, all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying-- quoting Isaiah-- "behold, a virgin shall be with child." 900 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a prophet said, a virgin is going to have a child and call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, God with us. In other words, Joseph, this is all part of God's plan. He predicted this from the beginning. It's going down exactly like he said. Now, why a dream? Well, the dream is going to help Joseph understand not only the situation but it's going to help Joseph understand what Mary has been going through these past several months. Remember, when Mary was told that she was pregnant she goes away for several months, down to Judea, to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Then she comes back, great with child by this time, no doubt. So she's been carrying the information in her head and Joseph thought, that sounds crazy. You say, how'd you get pregnant? God did it. That sounds nuts. Well, that didn't sound any more nuts than, an angel appeared to me in a dream and said, God did it. So now it's going to help Joseph understand what she's been wrestling with. So we begin with confusion and then go to clarification. It's clarified in the dream, and the third is compliance. The last two verses tell us what he did after the dream. 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, did not have physical, normal marital relations with her until she brought forth her first born son, and he called his name Jesus. Joseph woke up, Joseph obeyed. And you know why he did? Because that dream was such a relief to him, giving him the necessary information. He woke up from that dream-- what a good dream that was. He woke up refreshed, going, oh, man I'm so humbled that I get to be a part of this incredible plan that God has had from eternity past. Takes Mary, who's probably in maternity clothes at this time, finds a rabbi, they get married, they go through the marital ceremony. Something quiet, no doubt. And he says to Mary, I'm not going to touch you until after you have this baby. I'm not going to have any physical relations with you. I don't want anybody even having a rumor that I had anything at all to do with the birth of this baby. So he backed off until after Jesus was born. But listen to that little phrase that says-- it says, Joseph, being aroused from his sleep. That is, Joseph woke up from the dream. You know, that is always the problem when you have a good dream, it's waking up. I don't know if you've ever had a dream where when you wake up, the alarm goes off, and you go, man, I want to push snooze. I need 10 more minutes. I need to finish that dream. Have you ever done that? It's like, it's so good I want to see how the story ends. I've done that. And a few occasions I've gotten right back into it. And it's cool when that happens. But Joseph had this great dream and he woke up from it. It's over now. Listen, the dream was easy. What's going to follow is going to be hard. For Joseph, the easiest part of this whole thing was the dream. The reality that's going to be his future is going to be difficult because now he's going to take that pregnant girl to Bethlehem because of a mandated census. That's going to be hard on her and on him. Then, because of a threat from Herod, the Grinch, they're going to have to leave and flee to Egypt where they'll be protected by God. And then he's going to move that family back up to Nazareth. And by that time, people have heard the story and they have figured out the time, the dates, and tongues are wagging and gossip is flying. And Joseph and Mary and Jesus will have to live with that for years to come. But he obeys. He obeys. The dream was the easy part. The reality would be the hardest part. But I want you to think about this. The hardest part is the best part, because that baby will grow up from the manger, say some very controversial things, but always with the view of going to a cross where he will be mistreated, spat upon, beaten up, hung on a cross, and left to die. And anybody who has some of this background would look at the cross and go, oh no, how could this happen? This is horrible. This ruins the plan. I mean, there was an angel and a dream, and now this? This is the end of the plan. No. This was the plan from the beginning. You will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sin. That's what he's doing right now on that Roman cross. You see, that prediction, way back in Genesis, that the head of the serpent is going to bruise the heel of the Messiah, but the heel of the Messiah will crush the head of Satan, the serpent. That took place on the cross. The easy part was the dream. What followed was the hardest part, but the hardest part is the best part. Because of what it meant for you and for me. Jesus on the cross would crush that serpent so that nobody has to wake up on Christmas and have that snake bothering him ever again. It's done with. It's over with. Now, Joseph woke up physically. But you might say he also woke up spiritually. When he woke up from that dream it was as if Joseph said, I get it now. I understand. I don't understand it all, but I get what's happening. It is our prayer that not will you just enjoy a Christmas presentation and hear a few words about Jesus and feel good inside, but it's our hope that you'll wake up from whatever sleep you've had to the reality of life itself, that Jesus came for you. That he's alive and he loves you. That he has a plan for you. That you will wake up and you will let him save you. Because that's why he came, to save people from their sin. I remember the night I said yes to Jesus, and he saved me from my sin. Last week I saw people come forward at a church service. Jesus saved them from their sin. And on Christmas Eve I'm going to give you an opportunity, as we sing this final song, I'm going to pray with you, and then we're all going to stand up and I'm going to give you an invitation to come and make Jesus the savior of your life. Father, we want to just bow for a moment in prayer. We want to thank you for your plan. It wasn't willy-nilly. It wasn't just some myth or some favored tale that God passed down and then things added to. We have the record of scripture that shows the hundreds of predictions made about who that child was, what he would do, when he would do it, where it would take place, how would happen. It's unfolded in our midst. It's not a dream, it's a reality. It's a reality in time and space. It happened in history. And life change can happen in our history, and this could be the time for many of us. Because I believe that people are here tonight with family members maybe invited, maybe for the first time. Maybe they've been here many times, but their hearts are broken. They're hurting. Christmas is not what they expected this year. And it's funny how every year we just sort of try to reconstruct a feeling of Christmas that we had when we were young. The truth is, we approach this season, many of us, with broken hearts, hurting hearts. Things have happened to us during the year that have rendered us in great pain, and walking with a limp. You are here for us. You are here for anyone who fits that description. You are here to save and to change and to invade a life and bring transformation. And I pray that you would. In Jesus' name, Amen. Would you stand please, to your feet? I'm going to give you an opportunity. We don't do this to embarrass you. You're going to find out. We do this to celebrate with you. If you are willing, in this family of believers gathered, to say yes to Jesus-- maybe you have never, ever in your life, personally turned to Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You've been wondering about the meaning of life. You've wondered if there would ever be anything better than what you've already experienced. You have this nagging emptiness, some of us, in our hearts, in our lives. We want that filled. Others of you, far from that. You've been to church your whole life. Sadly you have looked to church or religion to fill that empty spot. It never will. It never can. Only Jesus, the person, can because he is alive. He is God. He died for you. He was raised to glory for you. His blood is enough payment for your sins. And if you give him your life, he'll come in and change you forever. But you have to do that. Then some of you may remember making some kind of pledge or you sang some song, maybe you even threw a pine cone in a fire at a camp one time and thought, oh, that feels so good. But the truth is, tonight, you're not walking with Jesus. You're not following him, and you need to come back home to him. As we sing this final song I'm just going to ask you, no matter where you're standing, balcony, middle of an aisle, way in the back, right up front, family room, over-flow, I'm going to ask you to get up from where you're standing, find the nearest possibility, aisle, and stand right up. I'm going to lead you in a word of prayer to say yes to Jesus on this Christmas Eve, to receive him as Lord and Savior into your heart, to make you a brand new person. As we sing this song, you get up and come. We'll wait for you. (SINGING) Oh, come to the alter. The Father's arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Oh come to the alter. The Father's arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. We're just about over but, you know, I know what it's like to wrestle with this decision. I know what it's like to listen and to evaluate and then say, another time, another time. So I want to give you the opportunity. This is why you were created. You were put on this earth to know God, to have a relationship with God. The only way a person can have a relationship with God is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Not through any religion, not through any church thing. In fact, I'll just say it. Religion is one of the biggest barriers between humanity and God. Always has been. It makes people think they're OK with God just because they get religious or attend a service or light a candle or get on their knees or say a prayer. And that won't make you right with God. Only Jesus, the person, Jesus, who died for you can make you right with God. So I don't want to get you religious. I want you to be saved. He came to save people from their sin. You're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to probably open a present or two and, you know what? You'll forget about him probably the next day. A present can't change you. A gift can't change you. But there's a gift that God gave, and that can change you. He, Jesus. For God so loved the world that he gave-- that's the gift. That's the gift you need to receive, if you haven't personally done that yet. You get up and come. It's Christmas Eve. It's your time to get up and make a decision for Jesus.