Sermon Transcript:

What an exciting time of the year, right? I

always tell pastors. I said, it's I've

had to get a couple people preached for Christmas Eve at some of the different churches around town, because pastors have different things going on. And I let them know, it's a pretty easy topic, the birth of Christ. You know, you you know what to preach on the Christmas Eve. You know, we like to put up nativity scenes. We see em all over the place. Some of you put em up at your at your houses, and we look at that and we go, wow. You know, it's really neat. And but you want, I wanted to us to think about the elements or the people that were involved in what made the Nativity so special to the world.

Nativity scenes are the best. They are the primitive surroundings. What it could have been like when Jesus was born,

no hospital, no doctors, no medications, no anesthesia, and more than that, not even a bed, no indoor space for the Lord, the Savior of the world. That's what nativity means. See, when you really think about it, God didn't actually need all those things to make the Savior of the world happen to be King of the universe. Amen. He just needed himself. He came to live among us. There's really something that draws us to a new baby. I've seen some new babies that are here, less than a year old. And it's just like something, it draws our attention. It's like it's new life, something's happening. But this was no ordinary baby that was born. This was the savior of the world, the King of kings and the Lord of lords that came to show us and give us new life. He has a wonderful plan for you and for me, and every day that we walk on this earth, we get to draw near to Him. And it started all with this new birth, because it meant new life. I'm going to read from Luke chapter one. We call it the the Christmas story.

It's very familiar most times people read it, even in their homes on Christmas Eve. But I wanted us to actually go through and just look at a couple things, the angel, the virgin and the spirit, and then we're going to look at three other things on Christmas Eve that kind of complete this two part series. So would you stand with me as we read from God's Word? This will be Luke chapter one. I'll be reading from the New International Version. I'm going to read verses 26 through 38

I'm if you have your Bible, you follow along with whatever version you read from.

It says in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The Virgin. Name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be, but the angel said to her, these are always beautiful words when God says, Don't be afraid.

You have found Mary. You found favor with God. You're going to conceive and give birth to a son,

and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High the Lord God will give him the throne his of his father, David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever, and his kingdom will never end.

How will this be? Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin, and the angel said, I'm glad you asked that question.

The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the holy one will be born, will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age. And she who was said to be unable to conceive, is in her sixth month, for no word from God will ever fail. I am the Lord's servant. Mary answered, may your word be to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her God, we receive your Word this morning. We're thankful for the birth. Help us, Lord, see and hear and taste that you are good in Jesus name, I pray amen. You may have a seat. Let's talk about the angel. That's my first point, the angel. People are fascinated with angels today. They call it angelology, the study of angels. Angels are depicted in everything from jewelry to Christmas decorations to movies to television shows. Many Christians also believe they have the authority to command angels to do their bidding for them,

while others believe they can command them and even Satan. In the name of Jesus, I just want to put your mind and your heart at ease. You have no authority to do those things. Jesus is the one that has the authority to do those things. You can say all those magic words that you want. But in the end, if it's not done in Jesus name, you have no authority, nowhere in.

Scripture, does it teach us to give command angels, to the angels or the demons? There is no instance in Scripture. There are no passages where man has control over the work of angels. Angels are here for God's pleasure.

We do not know how they are beings or higher ranks, and Jesus made himself actually lower than the angels, but he did that in order to be born and suffer as a man. Hebrews two nine says this. This is Hebrews two nine. Now, if you're wondering this morning, Imma go through a lot of text. I've always say this every week. But if you want my notes, I'm happy to share them with you, because it's hard to keep up in a 3540 minute session. I get that, I do a lot of study and throw them down. I go, Oh, they're going to get it. And then I read through, and I go, man, it's a lot of stuff. Catch me on the way out. Hey, say pastor, Can you text me your PDF? I'll send it to you. You can have all the notes you want. Hebrews two nine says this, but we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. Now, aren't you excited that Jesus actually went to the cross and died for our sins? He tasted what it felt like to physically die? So you may have done this sometime in your Christian life, or said that Satan, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus with well intended purpose,

but nowhere does the Bible call us to rebuke Satan. You know what it tells us to do? James 47 says, Submit yourself, then to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. We're to resist Satan. We do not tell him what to do, because he's already a fallen angel. He has no authority on this planet. He can mess with you, and he can do things, and you will think you're being attacked. But let me tell you, when it comes to eternal life, he has zero authority in your life. Jesus has all the authority. Remember, he's a fallen angel. He's under the authority of God, not man. We give satan way too much credit

for saying he did this, and he did that. He's not doing anything. He's just messing with us, tormenting us, whispering in our ears. You see, the fact is, he cannot be omnipresent. Satan can only be in one place at one time. He's not God. That's why he has legions of demons working for him. They have to be all over the place so that they'll do what he says. If we get James four seven right, if we'll do the right thing and flee the devil and cling to God, everything will be alright, not perfect. We live in a fallen world. Things happen. Good people have bad things happen to them. Christians get cancer. Christians get different things. It happens to us because this world is full of sin and depravity. See, there are different categories for the angelic world. We have unfallen angels, who are that have stayed faithful to God. They've not fallen. And then we have Satan, who took 1/3 of the angels with him when he despised God. Of the unfallen angels, I want to point out two of the nine different categories a whole bunch of categories. Best one to point out two, there's an archangel, and then there's one that's called a messenger Angel. Now in verse 26 of our text, the angel Gabriel was a messenger angel. He was not in charge, but he came and he called and he said he appeared to Daniel Zechariah and to Mary. So in three different instances,

the angel Gabriel appears to three different people. So I'm going to get those verses for you, Daniel, chapter 815, and 16. While I Daniel was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there stood before me one who looked like a man, and I heard a man's voice from uliah Calling Gabriel tell this man the meaning of this vision. The purpose of his visit was to explain the vision to Daniel. If you've ever gone through a prophetic book like the book of Daniel, this is very interesting book, but very difficult sometimes to understand the symbolic language Luke, chapter one, verse 19, the angel said to him, Look, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I've been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. Gabriel's purpose to Zechariah was to let him know that his prayers have been heard. Isn't that a beautiful thing when you know that God has heard your prayers? That's what Gabriel was doing in verse 26 of our text, in the sixth month of Isabel's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town of Galilee. The purpose of Gabriel's visit was to announce this birth of the Savior of the coming King. In verses 26 through 28 of our text, the angel wasn't just flying around looking for something to do. This angel was sent by God, amen. He was sent by God, commanded by God, to go and make an announcement. He was there for a specific place, a specific person and a specific purpose. You see, if the angel came to me and said these things, I don't know that, I would have known what to do. I'm grateful that Mary knew what to say. She asked the question, How could this be? It's impossible. I'm still a virgin. Why?

Mary. What was the significance of Mary? According to most church historians, Mary was around 15 or 16 years old.

Now, I know some of you have a 15 or 16 year old daughter in here, and could you imagine, Daddy, I'm pregnant.

Some of us have been there. It happens. But this was different.

You see in Jewish customs, you could be betrothed at the age of 12 to whoever you were going to marry. This is a point in spiritual maturity when angel came to Mary. God was looking for somebody that was pure, somebody that was innocent, but somebody that was mature, and their faith in God, and he chose Mary. Now you say, Well, why? Why Mary?

We don't know all the ins and out. Matter of fact, there's only a few scriptures that talk about Mary. In our text, the angel said, you're highly favored, and the Lord is with you.

Now, some of you use that terminology when you speak to people. How you doing? Highly favored and right? You guys know that one highly blessed and and favored by God, right? I think that's great. I think we all are. But really that text was meant for Mary and she, the angel was telling her First Peter, chapter one, verses 10 through 12, says this. Now I want you to think about what angels see when somebody comes to Jesus, Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke this great grace was to come to you. They searched intently with the greatest care, trying to find out a time and circumstance to which the Spirit of Christ was in them and was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow, it was revealed to them that they would not be serving themselves but you when they spoke of these things that had been that had been told by those who had preached the gospel to you, and the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, listen what the last verse or the last line says, even angels long to look into these things.

You see when somebody comes to faith in Christ, and that may have been you recently, you've you've come to the altar and you've asked Jesus to be the Lord of your life. The angels are watching down going, what is going on at Life Church? What's going on in that person's life? Because even they don't understand salvation, because they were created to do what God asked them to do, they were never created to be saved. To You and I, because of the fall, because we have sin in our life, we've been created to be saved by a savior. The birth of Christ came to do that for us. And even the angels go, wow. How is this possible that somebody could go from being a sinful person over here to being a holy person? And the angels are going, they don't understand it, because they could never be saved. They're created beings. Salvation is for humankind. Angels weren't created to be say, to be saved. We were we. This is fascinating. A person can go being totally separated from God to being united with God. Now you may be here today,

this Christmas time, and you're here and you're a guest, and you've said, I'm going to go to church because it's Christmas, and I think I ought to do my not my duty right, and you're here with family, maybe, but you may have never totally committed your life to Christ. You may be saying, I don't really want to do that, because I'd have to give up so much. Pastor, well,

let me explain salvation to you.

You don't have to give up anything. The

only thing you have to do is surrender yourself and you let God take away those other things from you. You see, as you start reading the Scripture, are you going to go on Wednesday, you start going to Christianity, or, I'm sorry, new life, 101, and you start going there, and you start learning about what it means to walk with Christ. You'll understand it's not you that gives up things, that's God that asks you to do his purpose. And those other things become lesser and lesser in the light. They become dimmer and dimmer in your life, because you say, I don't need that in my life. What I need is more of Jesus. You see, unlike the angels, who can fall from grace, a truly transformed, a truly saved, a truly purpose filled person, can never fall from grace. We're saved by grace so that we could know for sure that we have a relationship with God. Don't you want that this Christmas, this Christmas time,

have you taken for granted the saving grace that Jesus has brought you and the love of Jesus? Do you want to know about the amazing grace that He has for you? He has it you can give them your life today, and know what it feels like to be saved, and angels can be watching over your salvation. Going, wow. Look at what's going on. Look at what God is doing here on this planet. My second point is the Virgin. The doctrine of the virgin birth is crucially important for the first nativity. Crucially important. Isaiah 714 says this, this is Old Testament. If you know anything about the Bible, we have what we call the Old Testament, the 39 books. And then we have the 27 books of the New Testament. In the Old Testament,

they were prophesizing about the coming Messiah. Well, now we have the Messiah. And so we want to go back to what the prophets, prophets talked about.

About this coming Messiah. So this was hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, Isaiah, 714, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Isn't that something hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, they already prophesized that he would be born of a virgin. Let's look at how the Scripture describes that event in verse, 35 and 3434 and 35 our text, Mary's response to the question, how will this be? How will this be? Gabriel says, The Holy Spirit will come upon you

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

That means the Holy Spirit is going to reside and take up residence inside of you so that he can guide you through this earth. And that's what happened with Mary. And so the angel tells in Matthew, chapter one, verse 20, the angel encourages Joseph to not fear marrying Mary to Mary. Mary with these words. And he says, what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. So here's Joseph, the one that was betrothed to Mary that was going to get married to her. And he's like, I didn't touch her.

I didn't do anything to her. How is she going to be pregnant? And Gabriel want or the angel wanted to make sure that Joseph was assured that, hey, this is from God. This is from the Holy Spirit. You have to worry about that. Matthew 118 Matthew states that the Virgin was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Galatians four, four also teaches the verdant birth God sent His Son born of a woman. So we have all of these text, these, these proof texts, to prove that what we believe. Since all we have, while we have all this evidence describing the coming baby Jesus. Jesus being born of a virgin, and God Himself orchestrated this plan, and this is what happened. This

is what we want to think about our faith, and our faith, how it comes about. Mary was young, but mature, but rebel to many of you are young and mature and able to receive that kind of faith when God comes upon. You see, I've been asked a lot of times,

because I've been here since September, people ask me, What's Life Church like? What's going on there at Life Church? I said, Man, it's exciting. There's a lot of young people, right? There's a lot of young people at Life Church, and I go, and they go, what about the older people? Don't we need the older people to help them in their walk and everything? I said, Absolutely, we do. But I said, Listen, I started a church in Del Rio with a few people in our living room, and most of our growth was with pointing somethings that were in the military, and they were Air Force pilots, and they were young, but well educated, but intelligent, but also this. They were mature in their faith. And I see that about life churches, like there's young people here, but they're mature in their faith. They're seeking God. They're saying, I want more of who Jesus is. And so that's how I describe that's what happened to Mary. Is like God chose her because she was mature in her faith, yet innocent, yet pure. And I see that in this church, they're choosing, you guys are choosing to be at church study in the Bible.

That is who God is looking for in his kingdom. You're not looking for just because you're older or just because you know this. He's looking for people that are ready to go, that are seeking God, that can have a relationship with him. He said, Keep doing what you're doing. Keep seeking God first in your life. Keep asking the hard questions. How will this be? I tell you this all the time. When you leave from a church service, always ask yourself, so what?

Who cares? Unless you can apply it to your life and figure out, what does that mean for me? When you leave this place, are you ready for God to use you in a mighty way? Mary was ready, but are you ready? Are you ready to receive his message? Because that's what the spirit of Christmas is all about. It's about the working power of the Holy Spirit in your life, God speaking to you, and not through an angel, because we don't need angels to speak to us. Now, we have the word of God. We have God Himself. We have the Holy Spirit. We have Jesus on the cross. We have our pastors, we have teachers, we have all of these people speaking truth into our lives

from the power on high. He said, Don't you want that for your life? And lastly, the third thing is the spirit. It is certainly clear that Jesus birth was a result of the Holy Spirit working within Mary's body. I call that the immaterial,

or the the material. Excuse me, working with the immaterial of the Spirit. So we have the material, the physical. Mary working with the immaterial, the Holy Spirit, working together. And of course, she could not have impregnated herself. I just some people, you know, how's that possible? Pastor, you know, you get those young people that they're just so into the details of everything, they almost want zero faith sometimes. And I go the way it's possible is because it was foretold in the in the past. It came to be in.

In the in the present, and as you see, people's lives change, and that's how we know that Jesus is real. Take myself, for instance, growing up here as a non believer, as not really understanding who God was, and coming to a relationship with Christ totally transformed, coming to to faith in Christ and God using me to spread His word around this globe. And I just go, how's I always go, how. How could this be? Just like Mary said, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, it can only be because of the power of the Holy Spirit that's who guides us and lead us. It's a miracle of the Incarnation. He uses us as a vessel, and this time he used Mary. Denying a physical connection between Mary and Jesus would imply that Jesus was never human, and that's not the case. Scripture teaches us that Jesus was fully human with a physical body just like ours, that he received from Mary at the same time, Jesus was fully God with an eternal, sinless nature that he received from God. That's what makes him unique. Over all of these things that people say they want to believe in. Nobody is like Jesus. There's only one Jesus, amen, and he was fully God and fully man at the same time. Try to wrap your mind around that one. I've been studying theology a long time, and it's still difficult.

We have to believe it by faith. See John 114, we read that earlier, the Word became flesh, the word of God became flesh in Jesus, and he made his dwelling among us. He lived among us. We've seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. First, Timothy, 316,

beyond all question. This is the mystery with from which true godliness springs. Its great he appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by the angels, was preached among the nations, who was believed in on the world, and was taken up into glory. And that's one verse that explains the whole system of who God is. Hebrews 214, through 17,

since the children have flesh and blood, he too, shared in their humanity, so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, and that is the devil. And he frees all of those, all of those who lives were were held in slavery from the fear of death. For surely, it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason, he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God and all that make atonement for the sins of the people. Atonement means he replaced your penalty with his glory. He took the place of our of our self on the cross. Hebrews 726, such a high priest truly meets our need, one who is holy, blameless and pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Jesus was not born in sin. That is, he had no sin nature. Sin. Nature is passed down from generation to generation, through the father. This did not happen with Christ. He was born of the Holy Spirit. Romans, 512, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and through death. Death through sin and in the way death came to all people because all have sinned. Romans 517, For if by trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in the life through that one man, Jesus, the Christ, Romans, 519, for just as through the disobedience of the one man, he's talking about Adam, and there were many made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man Jesus, that many will be made righteous. You see, the power of one is real. In the Bible, there was one man, Adam. He committed a sin with his wife Eve, of course, but it was Adam who was entrusted to take care of Eve. And through that one sin, we all become sinners. And yet, through the one man Jesus, we all become saints, if we truly believe.

You see, the virgin birth circumvented the transmission of sin nature and allowed the eternal God to become a perfect man. That's why we believe in what we believe. Have you believed in the name of Jesus today? Have you believed the virgin birth? Have you believed that the Holy Spirit has the power to bring life into your,

life into your because of his name? Do you think that you

think of the first nativity as a cute little story of the baby Jesus? I love the baby Jesus. Don't you love the baby Jesus?

But baby Jesus grew up to be a man.

Grew up to be a priest, a high priest. He grew up to be somebody that taught disciples how to follow him. He.

Grew up to circumvent the religious status that was going on at the time that still continues to this day, people are more religious than they are in a relationship with Jesus. They have a religion, a relationship with a religion instead of a relationship with Jesus. And I think that was myself, and I know that many of you here could be in the same category, you have a relationship with the religion and not Jesus. You see, you think going to church or doing the right thing is going to get you saved, but it's not those are tools that help you come to Christ, but it's Jesus alone on the cross because of the power of the Holy Spirit. Today, for the first time, would you ask Jesus to be the king of your life, since he stepped out from heaven and stepped onto this earth and said, I want you to come to me for salvation, and the angels will be watching and going, Wow, look at God and what he's doing in this person's life. You see, if you leave Christ out of Christmas, all you have is an expensive party.

Year after year, there's a lot of expensive parties going on, and no Jesus involved. And yet we call it Christmas. When somebody says Happy Holidays to you, look right in their eyes and say Merry Christmas right back at them, you see, because it's not a holiday without Christ, there is no celebration without the baby Jesus.

I like the baby Jesus, but I like the Jesus that went to the cross and said, I'll spread my arms out and shed my blood so that you can come to me and have eternal life. He said, be saved today in the name of Jesus, we're going to sing a song that you know as a Christmas song, Silent Night.

But during this song, I want to give you opportunity to respond to the gospel, to respond to whatever God has placed on your heart, to say, You know what? Christmas 2024, is going to be different from my family. I'm going to make Jesus the King of our family, the king of my life. I want to be a person that leads my family to Christ. It can be different this year. It doesn't have to be the same. Gift giving is great, but it's better when we give it with Jesus's name attached to it. Amen, Would you pray with me,

father? We're grateful for this time that we can come and celebrate the Virgin, birth, the nativity, all the things that were surrounding the elements that made you come into this world for a purpose, Lord, we thank you God

for saving us. God, this morning, I know there are some here that have never said yes to you

in a personal way. Now they know about Jesus, but they don't know you. And for that more more so is that you don't know them. You see, they're going to come a day where we're going to stand before a holy God and we're going to give an account for the life that we live,

not because of the things that we've done, but before the because of the purpose that we had, because of you. So I pray this morning, God, if there are those here that need to respond

to the living gospel of Jesus, Christ, would you bring them to their knees, Lord, that they would confess to you as their King and their Savior? And so God, also, there are here, some here that may have been disconnected from from you. God, I pray that this Christmas season, they would reconnect with you. God. God, whatever you want to do, we're not in charge. We know you are. And so we release this time to you Lord, so that we can have an open dialog with the Holy Spirit in Christ's name. I pray you.