Why Jesus Came - Christmas

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

If you have your Bibles, would you turn to Luke chapter 4?

Luke 4 · chapter mention

And I'm not going to be in Romans today because I don't want to disembobulate our church with our studies going together.

We'll be back in Romans next week, coming into some very interesting passages in Romans chapter 1 that deal with the wrath of God.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Very interesting study.

I think it'll be exciting.

But Jesus, the question here, and this is kind of what I decided to do today because of the abbreviated nature of the play and all, was to talk about why Christmas.

I mean, why did Jesus come?

And, you know, it kind of goes without saying that that's sometimes overlooked.

And I was looking back over all my Christmas messages that I've done through the years, and I've never asked the question and done it in 25 years, 26 years of being a pastor.

Why Christmas?

Why did Jesus come?

So I'm going to give you what I think is the best summation of why Jesus came to the earth and why we even celebrate Christmas.

And that's Luke 4.18.

Luke 4.18.

I'm just going to, because of time, I'm just going to look at the very first part of Luke 4.18.

So you could put Luke 4.18A.

And what we have here, let me give you a little background, is that Jesus has been a carpenter for 30 years.

Excuse me.

Yes, he's been a carpenter for 30 years.

So he's been on the earth for 30 years.

But he hasn't done anything but be a carpenter with his father Joseph.

Then he steps out and gets baptized.

After he gets baptized, he makes this proclamation about the purpose of his coming.

And I guess you could call this the mission statement of Jesus.

This is his vision statement.

This is his mission statement.

I've taught on this many times in the past in different settings and in different locales.

Luke 4.18.

It's probably one of my favorite passages.

In my opinion, this is the purpose of the church.

This is what the local church is supposed to be about, too.

He's quoting, though, he's quoting Isaiah 700 years before.

So he's fulfilling a prophetic word given to Isaiah, making this statement.

So Jesus announces the purpose of his coming.

This is why Jesus came.

Jesus said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel, or some translations say the good tidings, because gospel means good tidings, good news to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives.

Now, this is the scripture being fulfilled by Jesus.

Jesus explaining what his purpose was and why he came.

So we've got a little manger scene over here.

You can see that.

And we love to keep Jesus as a little baby.

And it's a real popular time of the year to think of the baby Jesus in the manger, and we should, and it's great, and we're going to have a great play up here with a bunch of kids.

It's going to be great.

And I love all that.

But actually, if you read what he's saying here in Luke 4.18, he's proclaiming that he's a warrior.

That he's a warrior.

John says that isn't it true about Jesus that he came to destroy the works of the devil.

And so Jesus came to actually do something that would change the world.

And he was going to do it on an individual as well as a corporate level, this aspect of preaching the gospel of the poor, healing the broken heart, and proclaiming liberty to the captivists.

So this guy is a freedom fighter.

In whatever nation or whatever individual where people are captured by the true gospel of Jesus Christ, people get radically saved and radically changed.

That's just the nature of Christianity.

That's the nature of Christ.

So on a college campus, when I met Christ radically changed.

On my gymnastics team, when the guys became Christians, they were radically changed.

My coach hated my guts.

And I didn't like him either that much.

So that was okay.

We were on even ground.

But he didn't like it because my coach was a partier, man.

He loved to party with the team.

They loved to get drunk together and do all kinds of womanizing together.

And then I come along, I get saved, I start leading guys to the Lord.

They don't want to do that anymore.

And oh man, I was in hot water for sure, but I didn't lose my scholarship because he needed me.

And I knew that, so I just kept on preaching the gospel.

So the first point here is to preach the gospel, the good tidings to the poor.

That's why Jesus came.

That's the number one reason that Jesus came was that good news would be preached to the poor.

And this doesn't mean just the physically poor, the economically poor, but it's being preached to the spiritually poor.

So in other words, if people don't know they're spiritually poor, you're wasting your time.

It's a waste of time to share the gospel.

Unless you're convinced that through preaching the gospel to the rich, to the wealthy internally, they'll start to realize that they're poor.

And that has value.

But generally speaking, there's enough people out there that know that they are poor enough and they're humble enough to hear the gospel that they'll affirm what you're saying and they'll give their heart to Christ.

And so Jesus came to preach the gospel of great joy, good tidings of great joy to the poor.

And he wants to adopt us.

He wants to take us into his family.

He wants to give us a new family, a new purpose for living.

And I've known people, I remember one lady named Lisa years ago came out of a home where there was just tons of drug addicts, and the whole house was just full of drug addicts, and she got adopted.

Later in life, she got adopted into a family.

An older family adopted her in and changed her life.

And when Christ comes, when we accept Christ, when we give our hearts to him, we get adopted into the family.

We get adopted in a new way into a family.

And it's a healthy family.

And oftentimes it's the church.

It's through the church that we experience that adoption, but you're actually adopted into God's family.

And so Jesus said, for God did not send his own son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

So Jesus was announced at his birth, not to the Roman Senate, not to the Emperor Caesar Augustus, not to King Herod, but to shepherds, to regular people, to middle class or lower middle, considered lower middle class in Israel at that time.

The interesting about shepherds is that at one point they were very esteemed in Jewish culture, especially during the time of David, but then later had come into hard times and were considered kind of looked down upon because the cities were developing.

So people were coming to the city, so the shepherds were overlooked.

That's who that's who the angels came to.

And then when Jesus began to preach the gospel, the first people he went to were the sinners.

He went to those that were prostitutes and those that were tax collectors.

And if you've been watching The Chosen, you know, that that movie about Jesus that's been on TV and everything, that gives a pretty good idea of just a bunch of regular guys, really nothing special about them, but they are, there's something about their heart that Jesus sees and then he reaches into.

So if I were to draw a circle here, I draw a circle, and I were to put a cross in the middle representing Christ, and then I put dots all around the circle.

If you're taking notes, just you should jot this down.

This is a good point.

Okay?

That if you draw a circle, you have a cross in the middle, this represents Christ and the ways of Christ.

Then you start putting dots all around at different distances from the cross.

Now, with those little dots, put an arrow.

And on the ones that are closest to Christ, put the arrow away from the cross.

Then the dots that are the most distant from Christ, draw those with an arrow toward Christ.

You might know where I'm going with this.

What I'm about to explain is there's a difference between your outward behavior and your inward heart.

So if we were to look at the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Jewish religious leaders at that time, we find a group of people that morally and ethically were very close to proximity to the morals and ethics of Christ.

So they're near Christ morally.

I mean, heck, the Pharisees had memorized the Torah.

So many Pharisees had had literally memorized word for word Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

They knew it all by heart.

But their hearts are not acclimated toward Christ.

They're away from Christ.

They have no interest in Christ's message, the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings.

Then out on the outskirts are prostitutes, tax collectors, swindlers, liars, cheaters, sexually immoral, morally way off, away from Christ.

But something in their heart drew them to the message of the good tidings.

That's who Jesus was interested in.

And that's always been what I'm interested in.

And that's what you should be interested in.

Who are those that are bankrupt in their heart enough to know that they need a Savior?

You don't look at the outward life, you look at the inward heart.

That's what Christ would focus on.

That's what he means that he came to preach the good tidings, the good news to those who know they're poor.

Now everybody's poor, but most people don't know they're poor.

And so when Jesus came, he's looking for those who kind of know they're poor.

They know something's not right.

They know they need more.

They're looking for more.

That's who Jesus went to.

He didn't care what their moral life looked like.

That would take care of itself if he got a hold of their heart.

And so Jesus came, first of all, to preach good news to the poor.

Secondly, Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted.

He has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted.

If there's anything we know today, is that people are brokenhearted.

There are probably more people brokenhearted today than ever in the history of our nation.

It seems as though money and financial stability hasn't healed our hearts very well.

Sin breaks our heart.

Sin leaves in its wake tremendous devastation.

Ultimately, it will break your heart as you experience the consequences of sin.

So, you know, we can control whether we sin or not, but when we do sin, we can't control the consequences of our sin.

That's when things get out of control.

And so our hearts get broken.

And sin always promises so much, but delivers so little.

I was in California years ago with an athletic team that I was competing with in Fountain Valley, California.

And I was staying with this guy.

They put me in a house with one of the athletes, and he had a roommate.

So he and I were hanging out together, and they had this massive garden in the back.

And you can do that in California.

And it was a big, beautiful garden.

And so we were always out there picking squash or tomatoes, whatever.

And um he's very, very, had been very successful real estate guy, kind of millionaire level at one time, lost everything.

And he said, What is that right there?

And I said, Well, that's um escrement from a dog.

And he goes, Well, if we could, if we could pour chocolate over that, that's what sin is.

He said, It looks really enticing on the outside, and it tastes really sweet when you first bite into it, but then as you get into it, you realize it's excrement.

And I've never, I mean, what is this, 45 years later or whatever?

I still remember that.

And I can tell you, from time to time, there's temptations that come our way, and it might be a might be a good image for all of us to see sin as chocolate-covered excrement.

Okay?

But that's what it is.

And it breaks your heart.

And next week we're gonna get into Romans 1.

And the next week we're gonna be in Romans 1 again, and we're gonna and you're gonna see the wrath of God, how much God hates sin, but how many of us, right, we're drawn into it.

Because it's chocolate covered, and so we go after it.

And it destroys your heart.

And when you don't have a heart that's on fire, you become duplicious.

You be it you become divided.

And a divided heart is is the worst place to be where you're not sure of yourself.

You you can't dive all the way into sin because you're a Christian, but you can't dive all the way into your Christianity because you got so much sin.

And so it's a really bad place to be, and it breaks our hearts, it breaks the hearts of others, and so sin never performs really well, but we think it does.

So Christ came for that.

Christ came, he came to bring joy, good tidings, man.

But then he also came to heal our brokenhearted, our broken hearts.

And even some of you here today might have a broken heart.

It might be a relationship that you're in that is breaking your heart, or it's a betrayal that you've been through, or there's jealousy or envy happening in your family.

I mean, this can be the worst time of year.

Christmas can be the worst time of year because the family gets together.

And um and there's all this stuff, right?

There's all this stuff underneath the surface that's never really been dealt with.

Jesus comes to heal that.

Will you surrender that this year?

Don't carry that anymore.

Don't carry that brokenheartedness.

Take time today when you're alone.

Go up somewhere, go you know, into a room or something, and just say, Lord, I am devastated by this.

And it really, really hurts.

And be honest with him and share your broken heart with him.

But remember the first part, he comes to bring you great joy, he comes to bring glad tidings.

So receive his joy.

God, I need your joy in my life, the joy of the Lord becoming our strength.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

So Christ came to bring joy to the brokenhearted, and he wants to do that in our lives.

In Psalm 34, 18, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and he saves the crushed in spirit.

Psalm 147, 3.

He heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds.

I think you know, you can have a physical injury and you can go see a doctor, and sometimes with supplements, sometimes with surgery, whatever, you can get better.

But how many of us are carrying a broken heart?

That's hard to heal.

That's tough to heal.

Only Jesus can do that.

Only Jesus can fully heal a broken heart.

Will you give your heart to him?

If you're in that place in your life, make this the best Christmas, the most marvelous Christmas, the most awesome Christmas you've ever had by surrendering your broken heart to him.

Well, Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted and proclaim liberty to the captives.

Sin and Satan are evil taskmasters.

He comes to break off that emotional and that mental trauma in our life and to set us free.

He comes to set us free in a whole new way.

So turn in your Bibles.

If you have your Bibles, look at Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

So go to the right from Luke.

Go to Galatians 5, 1.

Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again to a yoke of bondage.

So the struggle that we have is we get set free, we become, we're saved, we're gonna be doing baptisms.

Um at the beginning of the year, we're gonna have what we do every year.

We all come together in this in the church here to kind of set the tone for the whole year, 16th, 17th, and 18th of January.

And on the 18th, we're gonna do baptisms there, which is awesome.

Most of you in this room have probably been baptized.

But the reality is that sometimes we need a fresh baptism to break off the yoke of slavery that we've now gone back to in our lives.

And that's why he's saying it here.

Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made you free.

Do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Don't you wish that all the sin would just like go away and just be done with?

And the reality is it comes back.

I mean, we we're kind of, you know, we kind of go back to that.

And we have that tendency if we don't keep that fire in our heart.

That's why PB and J is so important, the prayer, Bible, and journal.

The PB and J is so huge in our life because that's where we keep our freedom.

This is how we we keep the freedom that we have, is by reading the book on freedom.

That liberty that we've been given, it's ours.

So Jesus came to proclaim that freedom.

And are you truly free today?

Are you walking in freedom day?

I want to challenge you that if you're not, you can.

You can walk in that freedom in a fresh, new, powerful, dynamic way in your life.

And it's really, really exciting.

And I'm not walking in freedom in every area of my life either.

Liz Liz came up yesterday.

I was up in my office, supposed to be my day off, but I was studying a bunch of stuff and I was reading.

And how many of you have grandchildren?

Any of you in this room have grandchildren?

Okay.

Well, when the grandchildren come, sometimes you have to go hide to um do stuff.

So um, so I was hiding up there, and she came up and she said, all seriousness aside, she said, I just sense that 2023 is really gonna be hard.

And that there's gonna be a lot of demonic activity and they're coming after you.

Well.

That's encouraging.

Thanks, Liz.

I really appreciate that.

They're coming after you and they're coming after the church.

And if you're not spiritually ready, we're going to get blown out of the saddle.

And she was specifically talking about prayer and fasting.

So I know for me personally, I've got to get in shape again.

I've got to get in shape in a fresh, new way on a whole different level in this arena of freedom, walking in freedom.

And not exposing myself to stuff out there that can taint the zeal and the passion and the fire that all of us need to have.

So I want to challenge you.

That's why PB and J is so important.

That's why having blessed taint allies, having relationships is so important, is because in those relationships it's going to keep you strong because all hell could break loose in America in 23.

I mean, it's I was with my uh sons and daughters, a few of them were over at the house the day before, Friday.

And this is the kind of conversations we have with the whole family.

How many of you know who the Nephilim are?

All right.

So that's the kind of conversations we have.

Just small little topics like who are the Nephilim, where do they come from?

Are they still on the earth?

Those kind of things.

Small topics, right?

Um, so sometimes we talk about Georgia football, but nobody's interested in as much as I am, so I have nobody to talk to.

I just I wait to see Pastor Al and we talk about it.

But um, yeah, there you go, dogs.

Um, but but no, we talk about things like the Nephilim and demonization and um the five key families that control the earth, things like that.

So we were talking about all that, and again it occurred to me, and you're gonna hear me talk about this as we go into the new year, that the demonic level, the malevolent level of the demonic, is increasing so rapidly right now on the earth.

I mean, it is affecting universities, it's affecting our high schools.

I mean, we're talking about evil, massive evil is coming in.

Stuff that you would go, what?

I mean, even 10 years ago, if you'd have told me that they're now manufacturing a womb that they can put in men who want to have babies, they'd have said, Are you kidding me?

These are idiots.

This is demonic, folks.

The whole trans thing?

Mutilating little kids, and parents are okay with that?

Or parents are not okay with that, but it's okay for them to do it and not let the parents know.

And I could go on and on with the information that I'm studying right now as we go into Romans 1, the last part, because I'm gonna share a lot of this stuff.

And then if you have any idea, if you say anything having to do with a concern about it, you're a conspiracy theorist.

And I said it's because it, and sorry, whatever your different theological or political backgrounds, it's because of Biden.

And the reason I say that is not because it's literally directly from Biden.

It's just that leadership matters, men and women.

Leadership really matters.

And so, and so God was behind that.

I really believe.

God ordained Biden being president, it's judgment on our nation.

Because we're so disobedient and we've fallen away so deeply.

That's our responsibility.

This is on our watch.

That we need to repent and cry out for a kingdom revolution, a Jesus revolution again.

So the theme in 2023 is when leaders lead from Judges 5.

And you'll hear more about that in the days ahead.

So I'm going through my slow study.

If you guys follow my blog, I've been talking about my slow study, so I'm going through my slow study of the Torahs I've been in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and number time now in Deuteronomy.

But on one of those days when it was just, I just felt God leading me to Judges, I'm reading through Judges, and here's this lady named Deborah judging under a tree in Israel, and she gets this idea.

I don't think we should be slaves to the Midianites anymore.

So funny, I was telling Liz this year, I said, the Mennonites.

She said, the Mennonites?

So the Midianites, okay?

The Midianites.

So she tells Barak, who's a general, you're gonna lead the charge.

And then Barack goes, Well, I'm not going if you're not going.

Really brave warrior, right?

So then Deborah says, Okay, fine.

But I'm getting all the credit and all the glory for it.

Well, then if you follow the story, you should look at it when you get home.

Look at Judges 5, it's pretty cool.

The leader of the Midianites runs for his life in the battle, and this another lady comes out of a tent and says, Oh, come, hide here.

And then she drives a stake into his temple, in his head, into the ground.

So then she goes into this song.

It's called the Song of Deborah.

So what I just gave you is actually Judges 4.

Now, Judges 5 starts off this way: when leaders lead, and then the whole song is about what happens, powerful things happen when godly leaders lead.

Well, folks, when bad leaders lead, when satanic leaders lead, it brings bad things to other people.

So Christ knew that.

He comes when Caesar Augustus is the leader over Rome.

And this is what he came to do.

He came to set the captives free.

And that's our responsibility as believers, and that's our responsibility as the road.

No matter what the leadership we're in, and the movement, the demonic darkness that's coming, we're called to set the captives free.

You're called to set the captives free.

I'm called to set the captives free.

That's why that baby was born.

It was to set the captives free.

So don't be discouraged.

Learn to fight.

Learn to fight in the spirit.

Put on your big boy pants this year.

Get in shape spiritually, and let's make an impact in this culture.

Let's love more than anybody else loves.

Let's pray like nobody else prays.

Let's be kind like nobody else is kind.

Let's be bold in our love for the good tidings of Jesus Christ.

It's called Humeida Prison in Sal José de Campos in Brazil, formerly a government prison.

It is now operated by Prison Fellowship Brazil as an alternative prison without armed guards or high-tech security.

Instead, it is run on the Christian principles of love of God and respect for men.

Humeida Prison has only two full-time staff.

The rest of the work is done by the 730 inmates, serving time for everything from murder and assault to robbery and drug-related crimes.

Every man is assigned another inmate to whom he is accountable.

In addition, each prisoner is assigned a volunteer mentor from the outside who works with him during his term and after his release.

Prisoners take classes on character development and are encouraged to participate in educational and Bible programs.

Yumaida prison has an astonishing record.

Its recidivism is 4%.

That means those who go back to prison is only 4% compared to 75% for the rest of Brazil.

When asked what makes this prison so unique, there's a lot of things that could be said.

But what is said by the prisoners is interesting.

They said it's solitary confinement.

So what is solitary confinement at Humeida prison?

Well, you walk down a long concrete corridor, and the solitary confinement is not used for prisoners anymore.

It only has one prisoner in it.

And that prisoner is always in it.

So when you open up the door, is a crucifix beautifully carved of Jesus hanging on the cross, carved by the men at Humeda Prison.

And the prisoners say he's doing time for the rest of us.

Jesus came to set the captives free.

And he's doing time for you.

So you can walk in the glad tidings of Christ.

That's what Christmas is all about.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.