First Advent Sunday: Coordinates of the Messiah - Christmas

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Well, when you're out on the on a hike, many of you take a GPS with you.

When I was hunting deer a couple weeks ago, I was hunting elk before that.

I took a GPS with me.

And a couple weeks ago I shot a deer and marked it on this app that I have.

And it gives me coordinates.

And I can see the coordinates of exactly where I was standing, right where that deer was at.

If I was to leave and need to come back, I could find it through those coordinates.

And I could send that to any of you.

And some six and a half hours away, way up in the northwestern part of the state, two miles from the Wyoming border, you could find that exact location on those coordinates.

NASA uses coordinates through satellites, whereas if they were off by even a half of or a tenth of a percentage point, they would be off by tens and hundreds of thousands of miles.

That's how important they are.

And it's believed by historians and scholars that Jesus fulfilled 465 coordinates, 465 prophecies of the coming Messiah.

And these are documented starting a thousand years before Christ and up to 500 years before Christ.

So a thousand years before Christ, up to 500 years before Christ, 465 documented prophecies in the Old Testament.

And this is about who this Messiah would be, when he would be born, where he would be born, what the fulfillment of that would look like, and even down to what his mother would be like.

And so turn in your Bibles to this cryptic, often neglected verse, Galatians 4-4.

And yet it's such an important verse in understanding the coming of Christ.

And I'm going to call it the coordinates of the Messiah on the first Christmas, or the way many of you have probably typically heard is prophecies about the coming Messiah, prophecies about Christ.

Galatians 4-4, Paul writes these words.

But when the fullness of his time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

So the Greek meaning here is when everything was right.

We might say in our modern vernacular, you know, when the stars had all lined up.

But it meant politically, culturally, prophetically, spiritually, everything lined up for this perfect moment.

The coordinates came together.

But from the 12th century, came and wrote 13 principles of Judaism that he said you must believe to be a real Jew.

But one of the key principles was this, and I quote him the Jews must believe in the coming of the Messiah, awaiting him every day with unwavering faith.

And so the idea of prophecy is not unique to Christianity.

It is unique to Judaism, and then we took those prophecies of Judaism into Christianity.

Now here's what's interesting as a side note of all the religions of the world, and the leaders of those religions, and even the prophetic or prophet-like, or even in some cases, like deified leaders of those religions, there's no prophecies.

There's no use of prophecy because there are no prophecies of those individuals.

They just pop up in history like there is with the Messiah, Jesus.

Rambam continues: whoever does not believe in him, the Messiah, or does not await his coming, denies not only the other prophets, but also the Torah and Moses, our teacher, for the Torah attests to his coming.

So it's a very huge, massive part of the Jewish faith that we then inherited as Jesus' followers, was this idea of prophecy a thousand years before Christ came.

Now, this is the first Sunday of Advent.

Now, the first Sunday of Advent is a mainline church, traditional, historical church term.

You may not have come out of a church where they talked about the first Sunday or the second Sunday of Advent, but I grew up Lutheran and my dad's here this morning.

Dad, would you stand?

He's over here.

He's a Lutheran pastor for over 40 years.

He's 89.

89.

He'll be 90 years old in January.

And he finished, just to tell you the kind of guy he is, he finished the Appalachian Trail 2,200 miles when he was 71.

So this guy gets around, you know?

And he's still here with us today, and what a blessing he is.

And so I grew up in a Lutheran home where we had an Advent wreath, and that's what's hanging from the ceiling, and I brought that into the road, and we have a candle lit.

So there's one candle for each Sunday leading up to Advent, with the middle candle being lit on Christmas Eve.

And so this is part of the traditional historical church to anticipate the expectation of the coming of Christ in these four weeks.

But there's been an expectation of the coming Messiah for thousands of years.

Now the Jews are still waiting, those who haven't accepted Christ.

But this messianic nature of Christianity is unique to Christianity.

And the reason I'm calling it the coordinates of Jesus or the coordinates of the Messiah at the first Christmas is because how incredibly unique it is.

So out of 400, now listen closely, out of 465 prophecies of the Messiah fulfilled in one man, Jesus Christ, there are 300 main prophecies.

Out of the 300 main prophecies, there's 70 key prophecies.

Out of the 70 key prophecies, there's 265 ramifications of the 70.

Does that make sense?

If you're not writing this down, you've already forgotten about it.

But I think it's important to understand because of what I'm going to say next.

So there's 465 prophecies.

There's 300 key main prophecies.

There's 70 key prophecies, and there's 265 ramifications of the 70 key prophecies in one man.

All fulfilled in one man in human history that we now know as Jesus of Nazareth.

That is a miracle.

Now it's a miracle on the level of one out of ten to the 21st power.

One out of ten to the 21st power.

Well, what it means is if we took silver dollars and we had a truckload of silver dollars, a really big truckload, and we poured them over the entire state of Texas, two feet deep.

Two feet deep over the entire state of Texas, silver dollars, and we took one silver dollar and we put an X on that one silver dollar, and somewhere in Texas, we dropped the silver dollar and we took a blindfolded man, dropped him somewhere in Texas, and on his first pick, he picks the silver dollar with the X on it is the probability of one man fulfilling just eight of the 300 prophecies.

Pretty amazing, right?

That's the Messiah we serve.

Scientific, historical evidence to back up his deity.

Now, Jesus, speaking of this, look in now, if you were in Galatians 4, look to the left, go to Luke 24.

There's these two guys, evidently followers of Jesus, that still go unidentified in Scripture.

We call it the road to Emmaus.

Jesus is resurrected.

He is making himself known to different groups of disciples.

And in Luke 24, he makes himself known.

And when he makes himself known, he describes it this way to these two disciples.

This is Jesus speaking.

This is in the red in your Bible.

If you have the kind of Bible that has the red for Jesus, Luke 24, 25, he says, O foolish ones, slow of heart to believe.

Now let's just stop there.

That's the problem with some of you.

I mean, that's your biggest problem, is that you're slow to believe.

And it's nothing new to you.

It's been happening all through history.

And the reason the majority of you are here this morning is because you're not that way.

So if you are that way, I pray that by the time we're done today, it could be said, oh smart one.

Oh, wise one, who is quick to believe.

But Jesus says to these two disciples, now, this is, in my opinion, this is really unfair.

I mean, they just saw him crucified.

He didn't do any miracles to come off the tree.

He gets dead, he's buried.

They don't know that he's risen from the grave.

But he says to them, Oh, foolish ones, slow to believe.

And here we are now 2,000 years removed, and how much we know.

So I think it's a reminder to me and to all of us how quickly we can fall into lack of faith.

He says, to believe in all the prophets that have spoken, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory.

Now look at verse 27, should underline it.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them and all of the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Can you imagine Jesus teaching this sermon?

That Jesus teaching about himself, all the things about himself, that probably took hours.

Then in verse 44 of the same chapter, he said to them, after he reveals himself to the other apostles, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all these things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.

So Jesus, even talking about himself, says that God has given you coordinates.

So let's look at the coordinates of the Messiah here this morning.

And I'm just going to look at eight.

And because of lack of time, I'm going to go rather quickly through these.

But I want to look at kind of the purpose of the Messiah, the purpose of Christmas, what Jesus did, who he was, his descendant, his lineage, as well as where he'd be born.

So Genesis 3.15, some of this was covered well by Brian for the kids.

Genesis 3.15, after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, there's this first prophecy about the Messiah to come.

And it's spoken of this day that would come in the future that the mistake that Adam and Eve made will be rectified by this Messiah.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

So here's what I believe is the first cordon of the Messiah in Scripture, and that is Jesus will come from a seed of a woman.

That's really important.

Come from the seed of a woman.

No other place in Scripture is procreation seen as a seed not from a man, but from a woman.

And the reference here is the virgin birth, that the Holy Spirit would be the seed coming through the virgin birth of the Messiah, Jesus.

Now, in many liberal circles, theologically liberal circles, there has been debate about the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary, and they take the word virgin and they say, well, it can also mean a young woman.

What these guys don't understand and obviously don't believe is how important that is in the first prophecy of Jesus that he be born of a virgin because the first prophetic word was that it would be her seed.

That the seed of the Messiah would be her seed.

Isaiah 7.14 backs this up.

In a later prophecy, where Isaiah prophesies, the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, the virgin, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, meaning God with us.

So the first coordinate, this is really important, is that Jesus would be born with a virgin mother.

Second coordinate of the Messiah is the very second half of the same verse.

He shall bruise your head.

And we just saw the Play-Doh snake get his head smashed.

And I remember last year, I believe I remember Brian, Pastor Brian had a plastic snake and he just smashed it to smithereen.

I don't know which one I like better, but he did a good job.

But that's that's what happened.

Can you imagine?

The first and second prophetic word is that Jesus would be born a man from a virgin, and right off the bat says of him, he will crush the head of the enemy.

Isn't that good news?

The Satan's head has been crushed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So this is the descendant, a seed, one individual from a woman, born of a virgin, the seed from the Holy Spirit, and he will injure, he will displace the head of Satan.

In Galatians 4, 4, we just read.

Now I want to read the next verse.

You don't need to turn there.

Let me read the next verse connected to verse 4.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.

So the prophetic word is that this Jesus that was to come, this Messiah that was to come, would be born of a virgin, born a human being, born a Jew, crush the head of Satan, and that we would then be adopted as sons and daughters of his through the Messiah.

Third coordinate of the Messiah.

Third coordinate of the Messiah, Jesus will be a descendant from Abraham.

Genesis 22, 15 through 18.

Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself, I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, meaning he had not given up, he had willing to give up his son Isaac, and have not withheld your son, your only son.

Verse 17.

Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.

And your descendants, your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.

Now Noah had three sons.

All of humanity can be traced back to the three sons of Noah.

But two-thirds of the entire population of all of the descendants of all of humanity of all time is eliminated when it was out of Shem that Abraham came.

So we have a man born of a virgin who would be a Jew, who would crush the head of Satan, they would be from the line of Shem, which would be to be the line of Abraham, and out of Abraham, not just the Jews would hear, but we just read the prophecy in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.

And so many of them were here today.

We're here today as Gentiles because of this prophetic word 3,000 years ago, of how the Messiah would come.

So a seed of Abraham.

Abraham had eight children and two by Sarah.

But the messianic prophecies can be narrowed down even more.

He will come from the line of Isaac, only from the line of Isaac.

So the fourth coordinate of the Messiah is Jesus will be a descendant from Isaac.

So he will be born of a virgin.

He'll be born a Jew.

He'll be a human being.

He will crush the head of Satan.

He'll come from the line of Shem, come from the line of Abraham, and now come from the line of Isaac.

Genesis 21, 12.

But God said to Abraham, Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad, or because of your bondwoman, whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice, for in Isaac your seed shall be called.

So a human male of the descendant of Abraham, more specifically coming from Isaac.

Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau.

But the Messiah would come from Jacob, eliminating another 50% of the line of Isaac.

Now Jacob had 12 sons, and the prophecy is that the Messiah will only come from one tribe, eliminating 11 of the 12 tribes, and that's the tribe of Judah.

Are you following me?

So we've gone from coming from a virgin, the seed of a woman, a human being, will be born.

He'll be born that will crush the head of Satan.

He will come from the line of Shem.

He'll come from the line of Abraham.

He'll come from the line of Isaac.

He'll come from the line now of Judah.

Fifth coordinate.

Genesis 49, 10.

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

So this is one of the most famous passages in Judaism as a sign that this scepter, this idea of kingship.

He's going to be some kind of a ruler.

So seed from a woman, a human being, born and crushed the head of Satan, he'll be a descendant of Shem, a descendant of Abraham, specifically from the seed of Isaac, and a king from the tribe of Judah.

Sixth coordinate of the Messiah.

Jesus will come from the branch of Jesse.

Isaiah 11:1.

Isaiah 11:1

There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

So out of Jesse, Jesse had eight sons, but the Messiah will come from one of them, and that that branch growing out of the roots of Jesse will come from the line of David.

And we could just look all through scripture at the references to David, and even Jesus refers to himself as the son of David.

So the seventh coordinate of the Messiah is Jesus will bring an eternal kingdom upon the throne of David.

You see what's going on here?

This is impossible that one person could fulfill all of this, even a thousand years before he was born, it was prophesied.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it upon with judgment and justice, from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

So here's what's amazing here.

It says here, in order to establish with judgment and justice, from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord will do this.

So, so God's Son, never up for re-election, his increasing government will continue to cover the globe.

And so today, men and women, two and a half billion people, some say three billion, worship Christ.

Here's what's interesting from a missiological perspective.

One of my master's degrees is in missiology.

And here's what you learn if you study Islam, people in Islam dress.

The same, eat the same food, and most of them live in the same part of the world.

Same with Hinduism, same with Shintoism, same with Judaism.

Judaism is slightly different, and Taoism.

Only in Christianity, only in Christianity, men and women, is there no particular ethnicity.

There's no particular language.

There's no particular dress.

There's no particular part of the world that you have to live in.

Matter of fact, if you and I got in a plane right now and we flew into New Delhi, India, and we got at and we just had to make a few phone calls, we would align ourselves with a group of Christians, they would open up their home to you, you would go to their church, it would be just like family, like you have here.

With Indian believers.

But when you went into their worship service, they would worship different than you.

When you go to lunch, you'd have curry.

When you hang out and you pray in their prayer meetings, you'd pray differently.

They pray differently.

Because God is the only universal God found in Christianity.

Only in Christ, truly, do we have a universal religion that affects and doesn't try to influence or overtake the culture of people, but overtakes it with the kingdom of God.

And so I say that because you don't have to vote a certain way, you don't have to always think exactly the same to be a Jesus follower.

And even in America, as eclectic as we are and as pluralistic as we are, the reality is the unity that we have is found in a manger that grew to be a man who gave his life for the sins of the world.

And so it's through that that we hang together at Christmas.

And every one of you in this room celebrate Christmas slightly different than others, and that's okay.

Some of you worship Christ in a different way, and that's okay.

And some of you have different creeds, maybe from your historical church background, that you say others don't.

They don't even know those creeds.

But we are united in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that's what Christmas is all about.

Amen.

The eighth coordinate is Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

Talk about narrowing it down.

Narrowing it down to exactly where Jesus would be born.

It was in Bethlehem.

Micah 5, 2.

But you Bethlehem, Ephratha, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting to everlasting.

Very, very powerful prophetic word.

The idea that this God that was coming, this ruler that was coming, has been everlasting from of old.

That he's eternal, that he's always been there.

And he's going to be birthed in Bethlehem Ephratha.

Well, why Ephratha?

Because there were two Bethlehem at the time.

That's how specific the prophecy is.

It would be this particular part of Bethlehem.

It'd be Bethlehem, Ephratha, is where the Messiah would come.

And the Jews at that time really, really understood this.

As a matter of fact, when Herod, when the wise men came, they told Herod they were looking for the king of the Jews.

He then brought together, if you read that in scripture, he brought together the prophetic scholars of the time, said, where will this king of the Jews, this Messiah be born?

And what did they say?

They said it would be in Bethlehem.

And so he went to Bethlehem.

So the coordinates of the Messiah, born of a seed of a woman, from a virgin, a human being, a Jew, who had crushed the power of Satan, descendant of Abraham, descendant of Isaac, from the tribe of Judah, from the branch of Jesse, from the lion of David, born in Bethlehem, Ephratha.

No other religion in the world has such specific prophecy that grounds our faith in science, archaeology, and history.

This Christmas, don't miss that.

You have a faith that can stand the test of any investigation.

You can challenge any atheist or agnostic on just the prophecies alone.

And if they want to say, Well, I don't believe in the Bible, that's fine.

But the historicity of the Bible itself is amazing.

That's a whole nother huge volume we could cover hours on end about the historicity and the authenticity and the reality and the genuineness of this book, this Bible, that communists have tried to press out of all of the schools, that America has tried to press out of the schools.

And yet when men and women come and encounter the living Christ made known through the scriptures, a kingdom of God revolution always starts.

And people are scared of that.

They don't like that.

And that's why we're here.

We're here at the road for a kingdom of God revolution.

And if you've never put your faith in Christ, this would be a good time to do it.

To ground your newfound faith in the scientific knowledge, the historical knowledge, the archaeological knowledge, the biblical knowledge that Jesus Christ really came.

He really fulfilled prophecy, and he really lives today.

Because you know, the greatest miracle is not any of this.

The greatest miracle is not any of this.

The greatest miracle is you guys.

That Christ came into your life.

And he gave you a new heart.

And he gave you a new spirit.

And that you're a new creation in Christ.

And that the old has passed away and only new things are coming.

That when you follow him, he gives you faith that you didn't have.

That when you follow him, he gives you courage where you had fear.

He gives you hope where you had despair.

That's only through Jesus Christ.

That's a miracle.

That's amazing.

Isn't that amazing with everything that the media and satanic and demonic stuff that's out there trying to erode and steal our way of faith, how unsuccessful it really is?

I mean, it's amazing to me looking on Google and looking on Facebook, how many sports figures, how many Hollywood figures, how many rock stars, how many country western stars are coming out about their faith in Jesus Christ.

I mean, I haven't seen anything like it in my time.

There's something happened.

And I think COVID is the overreach of the demonic powers that are trying to control us.

And what has it done?

It's risen up courage and faith in the church in a whole new way.

I thank God for COVID.

I thank God for COVID.

COVID's the best thing that's happened in our country because it really is separating the sheep from the goats.

And it makes us courageous.

So men and women be full of courage this Christmas.

Don't let any of this stuff get in the way of the faith that God's put in you in the man and the woman that He's called you to be.

You raise a great family.

You say to your kids, we're not going to bow down.

We're not going to try to fit in.

We're going to stand up.

We're Christians.

We follow Jesus.

We don't follow the dictates of what they tell us to do if it goes against our faith.

We're going to stand strong and we're going to stand strong together because we're the road.

The road at Chapel Wills.

We stand together and we watch each other's back.

But at any time at Christmas, the tendency is to forget about those around us who it's not such a great Christmas.

Maybe for them, this is the hardest time of year.

And I want to say to you don't leave today without getting prayer from our ministry team.

Because some of you come and it's the most difficult time of year.

You don't have great memories of Christmas when you were growing up, and you don't you don't have great memories of the church.

Maybe you were never part of a church.

Maybe your experience of the church was very negative.

And then some of you in this room have never really truly put your faith fully in Jesus Christ.

You may have been baptized as an infant, you may have gone through a catechism class or a confirmation class, but you've not really become an authentic Jesus follower.

And I want to challenge you to do that.

Join the team, put the jersey on.

Become a Jesus follower.

Become an authentic, wholehearted Jesus follower.

Not religion, but a vital, dynamic, personal, growing, powerful relationship with Jesus Christ.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.