Advent | The Preserved Redeemer

All right. Oh, come, let us adore him.

Man, I love that song. It's a beautiful thing when the

church gathers to sing. So good morning.

My name is Alan. It is always a joy and an honor

each and every week to get to sing with you, to get to hear

you sing. And today it's an honor to get

to bring the word of the Lord to you.

So be encouraged this morning. It's Christmas time and we did a

sermon series. It's been several years ago now

called the loveliest place on earth.

So be encouraged this morning. That's where you're at the House

of the Lord. We are here, the loveliest place

on earth, getting to sing to the king of all kings.

We're going to continue our journey this morning in Matthew.

So if you've got your Bibles, which I hope you do, let's go

ahead and you can turn to Matthew chapter 2.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

We're also on the third week of Advent, and so we're going to be

seeing the theme this morning of love.

So we think about Advent or the coming of Christ, you know, the

returning. It can be really easy.

Nick mentioned it earlier with this.

It's such a nice warm experience and we sing these great songs

about the birth of the Lord, which all these things are true.

We get to typically experience this this this nice Christmas

story. Anybody watch that movie like 12

times already yet couple nobody. Well, I haven't either.

Oh, she has. All right, we'd go One of my

favorite movies. I haven't seen it yet.

And all these things are true that they fill us with joy.

They fill us with warmth, they fill us with peace.

And that they're things that we can say to one another.

Hallelujah. If you remember back a year or

so ago, we talked about this word Hallelujah where it's just

like, hey, you join me in praising the Lord together.

Christmas is absolutely a time that we get to do that with one

another. There's no doubt about it.

But it's not just sentimental. And that's not the only thing

about Christmas. And so this morning, as we get

through this story here in Matthew chapter 2, we're going

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

to see that it's it's not just a story that makes us feel good or

not just a story that makes us have warm and warm in this fuzzy

feeling. This is a story that's really

full of danger from the very beginning.

It's a story that's full of suffering.

It's a story that's full of grief.

And it's a story that at times from our earthly perspective is

has a lot of uncertainty in it, very uncertain story as it

unfolds. And if you've been with us in

Sunday school, we've been talking about the Old Testament

and it shows us this tale, very true tale of how the enemy tries

and has tried and has tried and will keep trying to stop the

lineage of Christ. We see that throughout every

time, but yet over and over and over and over and over again, we

see that Almighty God's plan is not thwarted.

It can't be stopped. It's not going to be trampled

on, and we know that it prevails.

Amen. So Matthew starts what we talked

about a few weeks ago in Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

He shows us the he records the genealogy and Kyle expounded

upon it greatly. This is not something that we

just skip over. He read all the names perfectly.

He pronounced them all right. I hope you took notes.

I can't even listen to him say I'm right and repeat them

correctly. But the lineage came to pass for

a very specific reason. Like it's it's in here for a

very specific reason. It's it's got a purpose and it

shows that Christ our Savior was born.

Matthew goes on. So it shows the lineage of how

Christ was coming or who he was coming through.

This is to fulfill what Old Testament has said.

And then in verse 25, we see that Christ is born and we can

say Hallelujah together, but it takes as long as one verse, the

very next verse that we see the next enemy emerge.

This has been happening time and time in the Old Testament.

And now the very next verse after Christ is born, the next

enemy, King Herod, comes on the scene.

And before Christ even speaks a word, the world is already set

to stop him yet again. So today we're going to see that

God and his sovereign love will protect and preserve the

Redeemer Christ, and that nothing's going to stop him from

fulfilling his mission. So if you will please stand with

me, we're going to get into the text We're in Matthew chapter 2

Matthew 2:13–18

verses 13 through 18 says this. Now when they had departed,

behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream

and said, arise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt

and remain there until I tell you.

For Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.

And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and

departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet

out of Egypt. I called my son.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise

men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children

in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or

under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the

wise men. Then was fulfilled what was

spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard, and Rama

reaping, weeping and loud lamentation.

Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be comforted,

because they are no more. This is the word of the Lord,

Amen. Let's pray.

Lord, I ask you this morning to speak through Your word.

Use me to clearly speak Your word.

Allow us to see your love and your never ending mercy towards

us. Help us to trust you in complete

obedience as we see demonstrated here by Joseph and Mary.

God, we submit to your word today.

Again, lead and guide and teach us in the name of Jesus, Amen.

I mean, you may be seated. Thank you.

All right, so again, when we think of Advent, we like to

think of that warm feeling, and that's good.

But today's Scripture is going to remind us that immediately

love comes into a violent world. Jesus doesn't come in to a world

that's simply sitting in a field with this Manger and there's

these nice animals around. It comes into a very dangerous

place that is set to destroy him.

The Scripture says immediately so in an earthly sense this is a

great phrase from Kyle and I stole it.

Thank you and a greatly hit in an earthly sense before Christ

was our Redeemer. He was a refugee.

He's fleeing from his very birth from the first few years of his

birth we see that in the midst of darkness God's light shines

his preserving love and this is the love that's active.

This is a love that's sovereign. This is a love that's

unstoppable and this leads us to the main point of today's

message. So if you've got your little

handouts, bulletins that I just learned about a few months ago,

and I love them, we've been doing them for years and they're

great, Here's the main theme of it.

God's sovereign love preserves the Redeemer through suffering

so that his saving purposes can never be destroyed.

Repeat that God's sovereign love preserves the Redeemer through

suffering so that his saving purposes can never be destroyed.

I got 2 points that we're going to get into.

The first one, God protects his Son in the midst of hostility.

This is verses 13 through 15 that we're going to focus on

that. I'm trying to give some time to

write. I'll, I'll write really slow.

And so I'm like writing it down. All right.

So love is more than just a feeling.

It's more than just a noun. Any kids in here?

Me and my kids were talking about this the other day because

I don't know what a noun and a verb is.

Apparently they're learning it in school.

So kids, what's a noun? Sherry answered.

Thank you, Sherry, person, place or thing.

All right, what's a verb? Ellie goes.

I don't know. That's how I felt when you were

asking me about that the other day.

So verb because have some action, right?

Love is a verb here. So love is not just this thing

that we'd simply just have a feeling.

Love it acts, love protects, love guides.

And we're going to see here that love provides.

So remember last week we saw the wise men and they've traveled a

great distance to see Jesus. And by the time they get there,

I mean, this could have taken them, you know, up to about two

years or so. By the time they get to Jesus,

he's not just in a field anymore.

They're in a house that says that when they enter in the

house, so they enter in a house where Mary, Joseph and Jesus are

staying, they go in and they fall down immediately and they

worship King Jesus. Now, before they leave, there's

kind of a remember context. So Herod had had sent them and

said, go find the child and come back and tell me.

So they find the child, they follow the star.

And when they go into the house, they fall down to worship.

And before they leave in a dream, they're warned about

Herod not to go back. And so they go back to their

country, but they go back a different way, right?

So, so they bypass, they bypass Herod's plot here.

He wanted to find out exactly where, where Jesus is.

So they get back another way. So let's reread verses 13

through 15 together. Says Now when they departed

again, this is the wise men. After the wise men had departed,

behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream,

and said, Arise, take the child and his mother, and flee to

Egypt, and there remain until I tell you, for Herod is about to

search for the child to destroy him.

And he rose of Joseph rose, and he took the child and his mother

by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the

death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the

Lord had spoken by the prophet out of Egypt.

I called my son. So before we get just too far

into this, there's, there's something that I, I, I want to

address because I, I think it's fun.

I've got the ESV here and right above verse 13, it says the

flight to Egypt. So this is often called

something similar. Mary and Joseph when they when

they take Jesus, the flight to Egypt.

So I want to tell you, Matthew's the only place that records

this. Luke doesn't record this.

And if you just get interested in rabbit holes like I do

sometimes and you start searching for it, you might find

all kinds of stories on the flight to Egypt.

There's actually some not really debate, but there's some critics

that would say because Luke doesn't mention this, that that

this didn't even happen. And then you've got the whole

other side of some church tradition that puts so much

weight on this flight to Egypt. There's all kinds of stories out

there. So what we're going to focus on

today is just what the Bible says.

We want to go through what the Bible says.

And, and I mentioned that just because I like to go down some

rabbit holes and I feel like I would be doing an injustice to

not let you be aware of that. There are there.

Well, I want to show a picture, Josh, you have that picture.

So there, there's all kinds of that's kind of dark.

This is from Rembrandt. So in church tradition, the this

this flight to Egypt, What we know about it is really just

from extra biblical books at all.

But I want you to get some emotion of it.

When they flee, Joseph is got a toddler baby and they're told to

leave and travel about 90 miles or so to Egypt and they end up

going even farther than that. And so when you can, I would

pull this picture up just a really pretty it shows kind of

the danger. You can kind of see the very top

of there. It shows a picture of like

Bethlehem with some of the lights on it.

They're down by a river. They've got a fire.

You can see little baby Jesus kind of warming by the fire and,

and Joseph and Mary, you're just sitting there.

But I show that because there's so many renderings of this and I

want you to see kind of the danger that goes in this.

They are fleeing for their lives and the only place that we get

some of these these these traditions, if you will, from a

book called Pseudo Matthew. It's one of the main ones.

Pseudo just means fake or false. It is by no means a biblical

account. We're going to get into a little

bit later with with Herod, how we know some historical things

and some of these historical things are great.

But today we're just going to focus mainly on just what the

Scripture says about it. But I feel like I'll be doing

you injustice not to at least mention that there are lots of

stories out there that are not from our biblical text of what

happened on this flight to Egypt.

We just simply don't know. So I wanted to at least bring

that out. John 2125 says if all of the

things that Jesus done were recorded in detail, I suppose

the world itself could not contain all of the books that

were written. So we don't know all of the

things that Joseph and Mary did when they flee, but we know that

they go at least 90 miles and then they go down into Egypt and

they're there for a few years as refugees.

Essentially, they're fleeing. Joseph is is is waiting on more

instruction from the Lord. That makes sense.

I don't want to confuse everybody with that, but I

wanted to at least bring it up. It's interesting.

It's interesting to me. OK, so again, I say all of that.

We don't believe. We don't believe the Bible

because the world gives us evidence to believe the Bible.

We believe the Bible because it's true.

And so what's cool is that when you look into evidence, so it's

always going to prove that the Bible's true, happens time and

time again. So historical things I just

think are really cool. So we believe the Bible because

it's the Word of God. So what we see in this scripture

is immediate obedience from Joseph after the Lord appears to

him. They just have a really cool

experience with having the birth of Christ, and everything should

be made great. This is the Messiah, and now

they're fleeing for their lives. They've got a toddler, as I

mentioned, they're going about 90 miles, probably much farther.

Joseph's not told how long they'll be there.

Joseph's not told exactly from what we see in Scripture, where

to go, exactly how to get there. He's not told what they're going

to be doing while they're there, but he knows that it's not

permanent and he knows that this is not the end because God has

told him, wait until I tell you to come back.

Joseph's going to have to be on guard knowing that whenever the

signals given, they're going to have to make the journey back.

This is life threatening for me. They're they're not just moving.

They're not just going on a different chapter.

They're fleeing from their lives from a king that wants to

destroy Jesus. So Joseph by faith takes Mary

and Jesus and they depart by night headed to Egypt, just like

we've seen with so many other Old Testament patriarchs, by

faith, Joseph hears from the Lord and acts and praise the

Lord for it. So as Christians, at least for

me, that sentence kind of kicked me right in the teeth.

Yeah, right. Right in the teeth.

A lot of times I like to try to figure things out for myself and

I like to try to be logical with things and make them make sense.

But when God speaks, we're to move and Joseph does that.

Few weeks ago, I had the privilege to to preach on Sunday

night. And one of the things that we

discussed was that this simple trusting in the Lord, that

that's not always that simple, but we talked about trusting in

the Lord. And we, we saw that in Matthew

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6, Jesus addresses this and Christ tells us what to seek

and, and it's the Kingdom of God.

He says seek the Kingdom of God. And he's telling us this in a

response to worry and in a response to anxiety and a

response to fear, in a response with our own controlling.

And he tells us that God will provide for us just like he

provides for the birds. He knows we need these things so

to trust him, to seek Him, and we ought to do the same.

This is something that we just should do.

We're actually commanded to do these things as believers.

We're commanded to seek the Kingdom of God in obedience.

So Jasper mentioned a minute ago, we're a church here that we

focus, we firmly believe on focusing on families and living

as God has made the family to live.

And we see that played out here in verse 14, verse 14, it says,

and he rose again. Joseph rose after being being

told this and he took the child and his mother by night and he

departed. He didn't, he didn't argue with

the Lord. He got up and he did it.

And so Joseph leads his family, though he doesn't have the

answers. He rises and he takes them to

safety again by way of danger. He takes them to safety by way

of danger and they go with them. So, so this kick me in the teeth

and and this kind of specifically for men.

Men, we are to lead our families even in the midst of danger.

We are to love our wives. We are to lead them in a way

that honors Christ. So again, specifically for men

here, our wants and our desires come second to that which help

us love her. That's something that our money

can't do. It's something that your home

can't do. It's something that your job

can't do, your stuff can't do. God has designed marriage this

way. He has designed it that husbands

are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave

himself up for her. That's Ephesians 525.

Joseph does this. We see a clear picture of this

here in verse 14. But obedience takes practice.

We also talked about that a few weeks ago.

Even peace takes practice. These are things that we have to

practice. We can begin today by doing our

best to obey the Lord and all things.

Real simple thing that we can start obeying Him is simply by

getting in His Word daily, reading His Word, moving on.

We also see the hostility of the world to Christ played out here

in Herod in these first few verses.

Now here's a really bad guy. We're going to get to a little

bit more of the historical context of Herod in a second.

But when he first hears about Christ, what we saw last week,

once he's born, Herod wants him dead immediately.

Herod is a king, and he's used to getting his way, and he wants

to get his way. And when he thinks there might

be another king that might be greater, that people might like

more, he wants the child destroyed and killed

immediately. So when they don't return, we're

going to see in the next few verses that here it's going to

lose it. He's going to lose it when he

realizes that he's tricked. But verse 15, it kind of jumps

ahead of of the timeline just a little bit.

And it just tells us that that he's dead, that he dies.

And but then the next verse is very important.

We see that as this wickedness unfolds and here it dies,

Matthew continues to show his audience and us the importance

of why these events are happening.

So the events themselves are bad.

But the, the, the behind and the why that they're happening is

what Matthew's really getting to.

So he doesn't record all of the stuff of, of them fleeing to

Egypt and what they're doing. But what he's doing, he tells us

they go and then he tells us why they had to go.

And this is actually to fulfill prophecy.

And he quotes that the last part of Hosea 11 chapter or Hosea

Hosea 11 · chapter mention

Chapter 11 verse one, the whole verse says when Israel was a

child, I loved him. And then he quotes this part and

out of Egypt I called my son and he had said this was to fulfill

what the Lord has spoken by the prophet.

So Matthew is is he wants you to be persuaded and he wants his

audience to be persuaded that Christ is the one to come.

This baby that was born is the Redeemer.

He is the one that we can rely on.

Amen. Matthew clearly tells us of this

event, fleeing to Egypt and returning home.

It all happens to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the

prophets. So nothing in the Bible is

written in there. Nothing is just kind of written

as filler. There are things that I'll say

that might be filler. There are things that that other

books might have that that the main stories here and then they

just tell you a bunch of fluff so they can get to the the meat

of it. The Bible's not like that.

These are are written so that we may believe.

John tells us that as well. So God's Providence, he keeps

Christ, which is the Redeemer. He keeps him safe even through

these trials. And Matthew's trying to help us

understand that it's not just a little hardship.

This would have been very tough. But I want you to know that

God's Providence will also keep you in Christ.

Maybe through danger, you may not be safe in it, but he will

keep you. He will hold you fast through

these trials of life. There's this idea in some

Christian circles of this prosperity that that we are

called to have health and wealth and favor and all good things

that everything will just work out great for us.

And, and church, I've got to say that's a that's a blatant lie

and an attack on the God of the Bible.

We don't see that. We may want to see that sounds

great, but it's a lie, so don't fall for it.

We see this from Jesus from the very, very moment He is born.

He is in peril. Do not, do not fall for it.

You're not promised those things.

You're promised much greater things than that.

Don't hold of these things that can slip away.

You're not even promised tomorrow, and neither am I.

Again, going back to Matthew chapter 6, Jesus says that we

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

can't even do the simple task of adding one hour to our lives.

He calls that simple and that is impossible for us.

James chapter 1 tells us to count it all joy when you meet

James 1 · chapter mention

trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of

your faith produces steadfastness, and we are to let

steadfastness have its full effect, that we may be perfect

and complete, blacking in nothing.

Trials will come. Christ will hold you fast.

We are to trust the Lord at all times, for we know that he who

began the good work will see it to completion in Christ Jesus.

Blame him .2. God judges his enemies and

comforts his people. This is verses 16 through 18.

Let's read that again together. Then Herod, when he saw that he

had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent

and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that

region who were two years old or younger or under, according to

the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Then was then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet

Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Rama,

weeping and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children.

She refused to be comforted because they are no more.

So Herod realizes that he's been tricked.

He's not happy about it. We already know that.

But now we're going to get to see just a horrific evil take

place. Remember I mentioned earlier,

part of the reason I mentioned some of these extra biblical

accounts in these historical accounts is because we know not

just from this, we know from history, Herod was a bad guy.

And that kind of helps us put into place, it helps me.

And so I hope it helps you. If I can visualize and see where

these things are happening at in the Bible so that they, they,

they become real to me. If I can visualize and if I can

see it, it helps me understand it.

So King Herod is a real guy. And he's also known in history

as Herod the Great. He actually done some really

great things. He's a master builder and he

helped start the restoration project on the Temple Mount for

Jerusalem, for the the temple in Jerusalem.

He he's also a stone cold murderer.

So he's helped restore temple things in Jerusalem.

He's rebuilt cities or started to like Jericho.

Remember, Jericho is much different city by this time, but

same place from Old Testament Antiochnicopoulos, Athens.

Think of what you might think of when you hear of old school

Athens. He would have been a part of

helping to build all of that. Caesar and some kids you might

have learned in history, Caesar and the sky, Mark Antony, all

that. So Herod is involved with them

like that. These are all real things that

happen if that helps put a place mark in your brain for it.

He also murdered his wife and several of his children and his

relatives and done this time and time again when he didn't get

his way. He was known for issuing mass

murders when he didn't get his way just to make a point.

This is a bad guy. And so when his rage and

jealousy of there being another king starts taking over, we see

just kind of the unfathomable, the unthinkable.

He knows that based on that, the time frame that the wise men

came around the age that he thinks Jesus is.

So he sends an order to kill all male children under the age of 2

in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding regions.

He figured, you know, not sure exactly where they were.

They tricked me. So I'm just going to do it for

everybody. That'll that'll do it, which is

awful. He does this to ensure his

victory, that that's what he's thinking.

I'm going to ensure. I'm going to make sure that the

king, that the seed, he doesn't know that part, but that the

seed is destroyed. That's what I'm going to do.

God has this plan, but I'm going to take it out.

Doesn't work. Most scholars would agree,

though, that Bethlehem is, it was a pretty small place at that

time. So I don't know how many, what

number of kids you've got in your brain, but it was probably

not in the thousands. Probably more like 30.

Could be more. As a small village.

Oh, little town of Bethlehem, you know, we sing that song.

This is a small town. But nonetheless, one death is

too many, right? This is an evil.

This is an evil, evil man. He planned on stopping nothing,

nothing until Jesus was dead. But even evil, even the worst of

all evil, cannot derail God's plan of redemption.

Can't do it and it won't do it. In this tragedy, we see God's

hand at work. Verse 17 reads.

This was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

So it's important to know as we read things like this, God is

not just reacting to King Herod. God's not sitting there going,

Oh no, what are we going to do now?

King Herod's trying to take him out.

What's an escape plan? God has known this.

God knows this full well. What's happening?

Again, his plan will not be changed.

This is actually being done for a purpose.

It was actually foretold about 600 years prior to that.

And so Matthew, again, he wants you to believe these things.

He's saying that this happened so that the Scripture could be

fulfilled, so that what Jeremiah prophesied is actually coming

true. Jeremiah 3115 is almost word for

word what we see there in Matthew chapter 218.

Jeremiah, this is being used as a way to show great grief from

the exile. Yes.

And if you've been in Sunday school, remember the exile.

So Israel, the Israelites are God's chosen people.

God has brought them up and he has called them a holy people, a

set apart people, people that are to live differently.

And then when the exile happens, essentially the nation of

Israel, the northern and southern kingdoms are now

disbanded. They've been taken over.

And it looks like all is lost, like it looks, it looks hopeless

from just an earthly standpoint, right?

We're kind of tracking. So with Jesus being born too,

and now he's immediately having to be exiled, He's having to

leave, He's fleeing for their life.

It can be easy for us to see that it is hopeless, but this is

not hopeless. There's good news.

And Matthew is, is, is showing us this fulfills Scripture and

he's showing us how these things relate.

And Rachel, he mentions Rachel here, Rachel weeping for her

children. If you remember, she was the

mother of Joseph. So we're going way back in the

Old Testament here that Joseph played a huge role in leading

the people out of Egypt. Her weeping is is a picture

again that that looks like all hope is lost.

God's chosen people, the ones that were called to be to be

different. It seems as if God's promise has

failed if you take it just there.

But praise the Lord, the Scripture doesn't stop in those

things. They show us how God's plan

continues to move. Matthew helps us see that this

is fulfilled in Christ. Even though there is deep grief,

there is hope. Jeremiah 3117, just a few verses

after that actually state this. It says there is hope for your

future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to

their own country. This is all fulfilled in Christ.

God's word and promises have not failed.

Paul addresses this in Romans. He's like, does this mean that

that the the word of God has failed because these things

happen to the Israelites? He says by no means, by no

means. Matthew goes to great lengths

and I, and I hope I'm trying to do that as well to show you that

these things are true and that you can believe and trust in

them. Prophecies fulfilled.

The scriptures are being fulfilled in Christ Jesus.

Not only do they not fail, but they prevail every single time.

God is active and his people, us can rest assured and be

comforted in them. His enemies can rest assured

that they will experience His wrath.

These are two truths. So I've got some things maybe to

ask yourself. Ask yourself, do I trust God?

As I read through these things like like Joseph just getting up

and fling again, it kind of kicks me in the teeth.

So I pray that you believe these things, but also pray that you

trust in the Lord in these things, that they're true and

that you can trust and obey them.

Obey the things that God has spoken to us to do as

Christians. We're not just to simply read

this and go. I think that's true.

We're to live it out as the church.

We are to look different and be set apart from the world.

We are to be different. Read a book with Colin Jasper

and Steven James I think years ago and it just talked about

moving to the right, which is weird because I'm going to the

left for me, but I think this is to the right for y'all.

Moving to the right, it really just meaning as as believers,

our lives should look different and and the world should see us

growing closer to Christ as we move along.

There may be valleys, but we are to seek him.

We are to seek his Kingdom above all things.

Our lives should look like this. If they don't, that's the

question, do I trust God? Do you obey God?

We're in the Christmas season. There's a lot of naughty or

nice, right? We hear these things obeying God

is not just about being good. That's that's the wrong that's

the wrong part of the question. It's not about going well and

have I been have I been good enough this year?

Have I have I not been good enough this year?

Maybe I just need to do better next year.

Obedience is seeking his Kingdom first.

So we're to seek the Kingdom of God practical ways for that.

Our prayer every day, pray to the Lord to ask for help.

Ask him to help your unbelief. The scriptures say that getting

in your word daily, reading his word, remembering him.

We, we, we, we take the Lord's Supper each and every week and

we remember what the Lord has done.

We remember who he says he is. We do that with the Saints, with

you all consistently. These are these are practical

ways for you to seek the Kingdom of God in your life.

We can believe that only he will keep and preserve you.

There is none else. So believers, I ask you to take

hold of that truth. If you've been expecting things

maybe to turn around, maybe it's been a tough time in your life.

We all go through things. Things are tough.

If you've been expecting things to turn around just so life can

get better, a challenge that you're missing the point of it.

Your life is not your own, and if you're a believer, we are to

recognize that there is no better.

There's no better life apart from Christ.

Doesn't matter if things started to turn around or not.

We serve Christ. So all of us are to lead in the

ways of Christ. We're to stand firm on His

promises that He will see us through.

We're also to stand firm on His promises that what He sees you

through will probably not. Be easy ground, most likely, but

he will see you through that there's an enemy waiting to

attack. But we serve the God of Angel

armies in whom there is no injustice to be found.

And so rest assured in that this morning, take hold of it.

Take it to your workplace. Take it to your family

gatherings, take it to your neighbors.

Remember that this is an action verb, this love.

This is something that that we can see if no one knows who you

serve, it begs you to ask the question to yourself, who do I

serve? Because it's it should be

obvious when it's Christ to serve Christ, he's trustworthy.

Although sorrow is real, it's not final.

And we can stand firm on that. And then finally this morning,

if you're an unbeliever here, or maybe, maybe maybe you're

someone that does believe these things and you say, you know

what? I believe this is real, but

you've yet to put your complete faith in it.

Maybe you're pondering, maybe you've got questions.

That's that's OK. We want to help you through

these questions. So I implore you to trust and

follow Jesus. I implore you to ask some of

these questions. Continue to read.

Matthew is a great book that shows us how the Lord fulfills

his word. He shows us this is what the Old

Testament said. Here is what Christ does.

This fulfills that. Therefore, trust Christ.

So read it and be persuaded, be persuaded that Jesus is the

Messiah. He is who he said he is.

He is the Redeemer. He's the one that we celebrate

the birth of this time of year because we believe these things

wholeheartedly. He is the Holy One of God, and

through Him and Him alone can your sins be forgiven.

We'll later see in the book of His death, burial, and

resurrection, and that only through Him can we have eternal

life to spend with God. So Christmas time isn't just

about spending time with our loved ones.

It's about the story of the preserved Redeemer guarded by

God's sovereign love so that He would one day give His life for

you. So if you're pondering on those

things, know that you're even worse than you think you are and

you need a Savior. You don't need to do better.

You don't need to make the nice list.

You need to be made new. Your heart is stone and you need

a new heart. And that is only offered in

Christ. Nothing stops him in the Old

Testament. Nothing thwart Scott's plan.

Herod doesn't do it here. It won't happen in the future.

Christ will prevail, so rest in his care that God's sovereign

love preserves the Redeemer through suffering so that his

saving purposes can never be destroyed.

It will preserve you. If you've got questions, I ask

that you ask me, you can ask Kyle, James, Steve, Jasper, turn

to anybody that's a member here. We want you to believe these

things because we think they matter greatly.

Most important thing, let's pray and then we'll take a moment to

reflect. God, I pray for your love to

abound. I thank you for your word.

And I pray that you help us see all of your promises that have

been fulfilled, that help us see hold your, your truth and your

mercy. We need you, Lord, we need a

Redeemer, and I'm grateful that you have given us your word to

show us that. Help us to stand firm and

believe that you will preserve us in your love until the end.

I continue to remind us in daily of your goodness.

So we're going to take just a moment and just reflect.

To the Lord. Father, we are grateful this

morning, grateful for your word. I'm grateful, as Alan has shown

us, that you provide and your provision and you preserve us.

You lead us. And God, we're so grateful for

again, this the story of Jesus, his birth and his life.

And we see you at work through it all.

We got to pray that you help us to take what we've heard this

morning and to meditate on it and apply it to our lives.

To be obedient as Joseph was, to trust in you and have faith in

the midst of trials, in the midst of dangers, that we put

our trust and hope in you alone. When we celebrate the life of

Jesus, the birth, and of course, the mission that he came to

accomplish, we're so thankful. Or that you saw fit to send him

to say this. And so it's with full faith and

trust in Christ alone we worship you today.

We ask all this in Jesus name, Amen.