Christmas Journey

Open your Bibles with me, if you will, to Luke, the second chapter, and in your notes you'll see three specific texts.

We're going to look at a lot of scripture this morning.

But Luke chapter 2, Micah chapter 5, and then Matthew chapter 2 as well.

Luke 2 · chapter mention Micah 5 · chapter mention Matthew 2 · chapter mention

You can hold the Micah and the Matthew chapters, and we'll get to those in just a few moments.

In the days before anti-discrimination laws, there was a young woman named Miss Rosenberg who was traveling through Cape Cod, Massachusetts, found herself caught in a winter snowstorm, a blizzard, and so decided to pull off and rest that night and not try to drive through the storm.

She found a hotel at the very first exit, walked in and requested a room, and the clerk working there put the appropriate paperwork on the counter and she filled it out.

But when he came back and he read her name, his face went blank.

And he said, Ma'am, I'm sorry to tell you, but we're out of rooms for tonight.

And she said, Well, sir, the sign outside says vacancy.

And he stammered and stuttered and they argued for a few minutes until finally he said, Look, ma'am, the truth is we don't take Jews here.

You're gonna have to find another hotel.

Well, she said, I'll have you know that I've converted to your religion.

And he said, Well, then let me give you a test.

Tell me about the birth of Jesus.

She said, Born in Bethlehem.

He said, Tell me more.

She said, His earthly father was Joseph, born of the Virgin Mary.

And he said, Where did they lay him first?

And she said, in a manger.

And he said, Why did they lay him in a manger?

And by this time she had had enough.

And she said, because the doofus at the counter refused to give a nice Jewish girl a room for the night.

You know, it does pay to get the story straight, doesn't it?

A little girl who goes to church where a friend of mine pastors a couple of years back on Christmas Sunday drew a picture in Sunday school.

And her teacher that morning said it was the most unique Christmas picture that she'd ever seen.

And so the little girl brought the picture home to her mother and said, Mommy, look at my picture.

And her mommy looked at the picture and said, Well, honey, it's obviously Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus.

But why are they on an airplane?

And she said, Mommy, that's the flight to Egypt.

Or mommy said, Well, who is this mean-looking guy in the front?

And she said, Mommy, that's Pontius the pilot.

And she said, Well, who's this great big guy sitting behind Joseph and Mary?

And she said, Mommy, that's round John Virgin.

I suppose all of us are somewhere in the process of getting the story straight.

Of learning more and more and more about Jesus.

Peter tells us, 2 Peter, he says, I want you to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The knowledge of Jesus is something that you and I can grow in.

And if Jesus has his way with us during our entire lives on the earth, every day is marked by moments of revelation, moments of increased knowledge, moments of understanding the full significance of who Jesus is for us and for the world.

And so this morning I want to talk with you about the Christmas journey.

And what I want to do is, I want to talk with you about the three places in the Bible where Jesus came from and the significance of each one of those for us today.

We're going to start in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And the first is this He came from Nazareth, beginning in verse 1.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.

And so all went to be registered, every one to his own city.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.

And so it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now it's said of Caesar Augustus that he was one of the greatest leaders who've ever lived in all of human history.

Caesar Augustus, when he arrived in Rome, Rome was in bricks.

And by the time he died, Rome was in marble.

And one of the things that's noted about Caesar Augustus is that he had a brilliant financial mind.

And many of the financial principles that he established for the Roman Empire are still in practice around the world today.

And so as he began to think about setting taxation in place for the Roman Empire, it only stood to reason.

He wanted to know who everybody was and where everybody came from.

And so he sends out a decree.

I want everyone to go back right now to your hometown and fill out a form.

And so Joseph and Mary get this letter in the mail and made their plans to go to Bethlehem, but I want you to hear me very clearly.

It was not their plan to go to Bethlehem.

By this time, they are within a week or two at the most of having this baby.

If their plan was to go to Bethlehem, they would have left three or four months previous.

They're going to have this baby in Nazareth.

By this time, relatives are arriving.

They're getting the baby's room ready.

The house is getting ready.

The relatives are going to stay for a few months to help with the first child.

You know how this deal goes.

And all of a sudden, they get a letter in the mail.

I want you to go right now to Bethlehem and fill out a form.

Their plan was not to leave Nazareth.

So what does God do?

God has a pagan ruler issue a decree that gets the Son of God from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that prophecy can be fulfilled.

God has a pagan ruler involved in the fulfillment of prophecy of the Son of God.

Friends, do not miss who is really in control of your life and my life.

Because God is willing to go to all sorts of extremes.

God is willing to make you all sorts of miserable.

He's willing to use all sorts of miserable people to fulfill his purposes in your life.

Because he would rather you be uncomfortable than miss out on the blessing of being in his will.

That's part of our Christmas story.

I want you to understand that the word Nazareth actually comes from a word that means set apart for a purpose.

You and I know that Jesus was set apart for a very specific purpose, God's purpose.

But do you know that you have been created for a very specific purpose as well?

And you find that purpose as you near yourself to the Lord Jesus.

Jesus then begins to fulfill his purposes in you.

He will set you apart for your purposes.

You know, I have, I've known friends, people in the past who, and I think all of us, because of the religious environment in which we live, we tend to attribute all of our losses, all of our inconveniences, all of the downturns in our life to the devil.

And I've actually known people who have rebuked the devil for things that God has done.

Do not so quickly assume that every inconvenience is from the devil.

Because the fulfillment of God's will in your life is so precious to him that he is willing to inconvenience you to fulfill it.

And sometimes, if not most of the time, when you and I encounter some severe inconvenience, what's really happening is God is moving you closer to the fulfillment of his purpose for you.

Don't miss that part of the Christmas story.

It's one of the messages of Jesus.

He came from Nazareth.

The Bible says, secondly, he also came from Bethlehem.

And we could read about this in the New Testament as well, but I want us to read about this in the prophet Micah, Micah chapter 5, beginning in verse 2, I want you to know that Micah prophesied 700 years before the birth of Jesus.

Micah 5 · chapter mention

This is a prophetic word through the prophet Micah by the power of the Holy Spirit.

He says in verse 2, but you, Bethlehem Ephrata, 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 of old from everlasting.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor has given birth, then the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel, and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall abide, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.

This one shall be our peace.

Now I want you to know that the word Bethlehem literally means in Hebrew, it's a combination of two Hebrew words.

The word Beth, which means house, and the word Lahim, which means bread.

And so Bethlehem literally in Hebrew means house of bread.

Now that's little more than an interesting fact until you and I come to the Gospel of John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

For Jesus says in verse 32 that he is the true bread from heaven.

He says in verse 33 that he is the bread of God.

He says in verse 35, I am the bread of life.

And he says in verse 41, I am the bread which came down from heaven.

And then he says in verse 47, Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life.

I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If any one eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

Now, nine times in this text alone, Jesus refers to himself as the bread of God.

If you continue reading through the end of the chapter, it is eleven times in John 6 alone.

It is no accident from God's perspective that the bread of life was born in the house of bread.

Here's what God's saying.

That from the house which produces bread comes the only bread that can give real life, and that is eternal life.

Now, here's why this is significant.

Because every person who's ever lived on the earth was created by God with eternal life in the heart.

Now, people go in search, it makes us hungry.

If people go in search for eternal life, we call it experiencing fulfillment.

Or we call it finding ourselves.

What it really is, is what was encoded by God, Jesus says, before the creation of the world.

God put it there.

And it's called in the scriptures eternal life.

Now let me tell you what eternal life is in the Bible.

Eternal life in Scripture is not married.

It's not measured by length.

Doesn't need to be.

It's eternal.

Eternal life in God's Word is always measured by its richness, by its depth, by its quality, by its fullness.

That's why everybody's looking for it.

Now that appetite causes one person to go search to satisfy this thing in one place, and another person to go search to satisfy it somewhere else.

But inside we are all looking for the same thing: eternal life.

And at the core, here's what it is: it is the quest to love and to be loved, to have meaning and purpose in life, and to be satisfied with who we are.

Now, since Jesus is the bread of life, our search for fulfillment will never be satisfied until we find it through Jesus Christ.

It will never be satisfied until we find it through Jesus.

Now we think we can satisfy it with money, with a promotion, with a raise, with a new relationship, with a new house, with a new whatever.

All that does is make you more hungry.

And here's the reason for that.

Since we're created as eternal beings, all of the things that we try to satisfy our appetite with are temporary in nature.

Temporary things cannot satisfy eternal beings.

They're of different substances.

It simply doesn't work.

Only that which is eternal can satisfy that which is eternal.

And so let me give you what I believe are eight natural appetites that God gave to us.

And I want to talk about appetites for a minute.

He gave us an appetite for God, for himself.

He gave us an appetite for pleasure.

He gave us an appetite for food, an appetite for companionship, an appetite for sex, an appetite for authority and power.

And by the way, all of these are in God's word.

An appetite for work and an appetite for wisdom and knowledge.

Now, each one of these appetites are good because God gave them to us.

But he gave them to us to fulfill his purposes.

Now you need to understand that your appetite is a lot like fire.

Fire is a very good thing when it's contained and controlled.

It actually is a good thing.

It helps people.

But if it ever gets out of control, it kills.

Your appetite is exactly the same way.

It's intended by God to be contained and controlled.

If it ever gets out of control, it'll eat you alive.

And so our appetite for companionship can never be satisfied by pornography or prostitution.

Our appetite for authority and power can never be used to hurt people, because Jesus said the second commandment is this: to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

The appetite for authority and power will always be used to bless people, never to hurt people.

That's the way God uses his rulership and authority in our lives to bless us.

And all of us know that sex can certainly be misused.

In fact, Ecclesiastes 7.26 says this: says that sex can become a snare that is worse even than death.

Any God-given appetite can be used sinfully.

The truth is, your deepest hunger will only be satisfied in Jesus.

And you're on a dead-end trail until you find him.

He's the bread of life.

And history is full of wealthy, successful people whose very own testimony is this.

I had everything on earth, yet I was miserable.

I want to be clear about this one thing before we move on.

Your revelation and understanding of who God is the most important thought that you will ever have.

And God preordained the earth in such a way that everything on the earth will fail without him.

Jesus really is everything that we need.

That's the significance of Bethlehem.

But finally, the Bible says that he came from Egypt.

More precisely, he came out of Egypt.

And this is what Matthew chapter 2 says, beginning in verse 11.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Talking about the three wise men, Matthew says this on coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary.

And they bowed down and worshipped him.

And they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

And when they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.

Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.

And so he got up, took the mother, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son.

Now, it's telling that God did not send Joseph and Mary and Jesus, Jesus, to Edom or to Moab or to Damascus or any one of a thousand other places they could have gone to be safe.

He sent them to Egypt.

Because to anyone Jewish, Egypt represents one thing.

Slavery.

God wanted to be able to say, for all of history, out of Egypt, I called my son.

And the message of Christmas is this that for as long as the birth of Jesus is remembered on the earth, God wants people to remember that Jesus came to accomplish God's desire for all people to walk in freedom.

Jesus came to set people free, and everything that Jesus does for you and me is translated to us in terms of freedom.

Freedom from sin, freedom from slavery, freedom from bondage, captivity, fear, freedom from sickness.

Everything Jesus does for us comes to us in terms of freedom.

And so I want to give you quickly four types of slavery I believe Egypt represents for us today.

The first kind is bondage.

Israel was in bondage simply because of a family relationship.

It wasn't anything that they'd done wrong.

Their forebears were slaves.

They were born in Egypt.

Therefore they were slaves.

And I believe that most of the time for us, what this represents for us is generational iniquity.

Exodus chapter 20 verse 5 says that the iniquities of the fathers are passed on to three and four generations.

Exodus 20:5

Here's what this means for you and me.

You and I have no idea what our great grandpa were into.

The willful rebellion that they chose.

But the Bible says that all of their iniquity can be passed on to us.

And the truth is you and I innocently have issues things that we're dealing with that we didn't ask for.

That's what bondage is.

The second kind of slavery is captivity.

Sin.

Captivity always comes about by our own choosing.

Now let me let me be clear about the difference between bondage and captivity.

Bondage is like being taken hostage.

You just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Captivity always comes about because you made a willful choice to sin against God.

And so Romans 616 says this do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness.

You are the slave of the one you obey.

And when you continue into sin, you and I literally are building a fort for the enemy to live in.

We're building thought patterns and behavior and habits that the Bible calls a stronghold.

And that's what captivity is the third kind of slavery is sickness.

Sickness.

And doctors use all sorts of terminology to talk about sickness.

It's terminal it's chronic it's one of those things that just happens.

But let's be clear about what the Bible says about sickness.

Isaiah 53 says that Jesus came to heal the sick now the church in the modern age today we draw a huge distinction between salvation and healing the Bible simply doesn't do that.

The same blood that saves us the Bible says also heals us.

And I'm amazed at how many of God's people today have faith for salvation but not faith for healing.

Let's be clear Jesus took up our infirmities He took up our infirmities.

Isaiah 53 in verse 1 says this who has believed I report if you've got a bad report let's get another report let's get the report of heaven let's let the blood of Jesus weigh in on that sickness.

Alright?

Sickness is a kind of slavery.

And the fourth kind of slavery is fear.

The most common command in all of Scripture is this do not be afraid.

Do not fear and I believe that anytime God gives us a command he will never do so without also empowering us to obey it.

If you're a person who struggles with fear hear me very carefully you have a choice today.

You have a choice Jesus can set you free from fear.

Now regardless of what kind of bondage or captivity that you find yourself in today I want to tell you very clearly that there is no place that Jesus is unwilling to go to redeem you.

There is no place on the earth that is too low for the love of God to find you.

And you may have come here today to hear a nice sermon about little baby Jesus.

But God knew that what you really needed was a revelation of his love and of his power for you.

And that's why you're here today.

Jesus is not ashamed of people who are enslaved to something.

People may be but Jesus is not ashamed of you today.

In fact in Exodus 4 22 the first time that God ever called Israel my son was at their absolute lowest point.

Friends you cannot be too low for God to extend the hand of love to you and to say let me redeem you today let me redeem you.

So you may find yourself today at an extremely low point.

It may be your fault it may be somebody else's fault.

Jesus says I'm here to redeem you right now I want to be real clear about this as we close that what has been established in heaven must also be established in your life or all the power of Jesus has no effect to redeem you.

What has been established in heaven which is all the power over the enemy must also be established in your life or all the power of heaven has no effect to redeem and to save you.

You can be saved and on your way to heaven but miserable because of some addiction some sinonic oppression the power of Jesus over all darkness is available to you right now.

Jesus has been to Egypt by coming out of Egypt he has the right and the authority to bring all those out of Egypt of everything that Egypt represents for you and me.

He has the right and the authority to do that.

And so right now he extends his hand of love to you will you lay hold of it right now?

Bow your heads and close your eyes and we're going to pray.

And at the end of this prayer we're going to stand up the altar ministry team is going to come forward and there will be men and women down here that we know, that we have trained, that we trust, and they will pray with you.

And if you have any need, any need, whether it's related to the word of the Lord or not this morning, if you have any need, I want to encourage you to come forward and be prayed for.

Will you lift up your heart to the Lord today?

His heart is so tender towards you.

His love has never failed you through all of your years of rebellion of making a way for yourself the love of God surrounded you.

The love of God protected you the love of God brought you to this place.

And it was a revelation of Jesus that surrounded you the entire way sometimes because of the hassles of life Jesus is so hard to see I want to tell you this morning that Jesus Christ is more than a sweet little Christmas story.

He is the power of God unto salvation or healing.

He is the redeemer of whatever it is that troubles us.

So Jesus we lift up our hearts to you right now we give all glory and all honor to you that you created the world and then you gave up your place in heaven came to live here you were born in obscurity you didn't give yourself any advantage over any other person.

You came as a human being wrapped in flesh we thank you that today you intercede at the right hand of the Father for us right now.

Jesus thank you for not giving up on us we give you all the praise all the glory all the adoration from our hearts right now because you're worthy to receive our worship in our lives in Jesus' name.

Amen