The Promise of the King (Isaiah 11:1-10)

Well, we are going to start out in Isaiah chapter 11.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

So if you can turn there, that would be great.

You may be aware that Isaiah is not John.

They are different books.

Normally we've been going verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the Gospel of John, but we're taking a quick detour in this season, and we're going to start out in Isaiah, and we're going to do a whole lot of hopping.

So, but let's start out in Isaiah chapter 11.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

No judgment whatsoever.

By a show of hands, how many of you have read the entire book of Isaiah before?

That's actually way more than I thought.

It is big and weird.

So that's a rough combination.

So I'm pretty, you know, as opposed to like small and weird, we have some books that are like, ooh, I'm avoiding that one because I want nothing to do with Obadiah.

But Isaiah specifically, big and weird.

So we're gonna start in chapter 11, verse 1.

If you are able, please stand with me for the reading of God's word.

Isaiah 11, starting in verse 1.

Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

His delight will be in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, he will not execute justice by what he hears with his ears, but he will judge the poor righteously and execute justice for the oppressed of the land.

He will strike the land with a scepter from his mouth, and he will kill the wicked with a command from his lips.

Righteousness will be a belt around his hips, faithfulness will be a belt around his waist.

The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf, the young lion, the fattened calf will be together, a child will lead them, the cow and the bear will graze, their young ones will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like cattle.

An infant will play beside the cobra's pit, and a toddler will put his hand into a snake's den.

They will not harm or destroy each other on my holy mountain.

For the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.

On that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for today, and I thank you for your word.

I ask that you would be glorified, that you would fill me with your spirit to rightly teach your word, that you would fill the hearers with your spirit to rightly discern, and to listen to your voice alone, and that they would be led by you.

And I ask that this would be just a blessing and that you would be glorified in your name.

Amen.

Go ahead and have a seat.

Okay.

We have a test.

If I say Christmas is three days away, how many of you hear that and are excited?

Okay.

How many of you hear that and are filled with so much anxiety and potential dread?

Okay?

How many of you have a little bit of a mixture of both?

Okay, cool.

So, yes, that is normal and especially what it is cut.

My day job, when I'm not Batman, is to, I work in retail.

I manage uh merchandisers and retail environments, so I am in targets, I am in Walmarts, I am in grocery stores.

Every day this month, pushing out an obscene amount of product, trying to get everything done.

And so I get to see all the fun spectrum of the adventure of the human experiment with that.

My favorite one so far was a couple days ago, I was at the Target here, actually, and was pushing out pallets and pallets of product.

And I had a pallet parked in a corner that made things a little bit tight, but not too bad.

And I'm working, I'm in my own world.

And I see I in my peripheral vision, I see a lady coming up to this, and she's like, Are you kidding me?

And I'm like, I'm trying not to do the slow head turn, but I kind of like look over, and she looked, we made eye contact.

She's like, I am so sorry.

I was talking to my son who was throwing a football up in the air, but it totally looked like I was about to get like the full wrap of angry customer.

And I'm so grateful I didn't because I was I was not about having that that day.

So with that in mind, it is really hard to grab hold of and maintain that grip of what is important in this season.

And I want to be careful when I say that because the things that we do through this season, the celebrations, the different events, the songs, the movies, and everything are great and are fun.

There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

So it's not an either or.

But it can be very, very difficult to remember in the midst of all the craziness and the tracking the Amazon delivery thing and going, no, PM means something different to you than it does to me.

I try to figure out what that means.

It's really hard to remember why we celebrate Christmas and what matters.

So today, the goal is to mainly get a sweet, encouraging reminder of the cool stuff that led up to the birth of Jesus, our Savior.

Odds are very high, you will not learn anything new today.

It'd be weird if you didn't.

So, but it is mainly just to stir up by way of reminder the coolness of our Savior's birth.

So, having that said, I apologize in advance because uh we had two options today.

We could either go through all of these passages together and explore every possible iteration of the sound of pages flipping, or I could have a million slides.

And I went with option B for you, because I care about you.

So you can sit there and you can bathe in that and not have to worry about that.

But please check up on me.

There's only one passage that I shortened for the sake of the slide because oh my gosh.

But the uh the rest of it, with that in mind, I'm gonna have it up there so you don't need to follow along, but please write them down so you can check up on it later.

Cool?

Cool.

Okay.

We started out in Isaiah just as a cool uh that's the middle ground of our whole journey here, the kind of the middle point, but it's a big chunk that encapsulates Jesus' first and second coming all into one, but the prophecy and the promise of his coming.

We'll get to that.

So tuck that passage away and we will start our journey.

So if we are looking at things that point to Jesus' birth, a good place to start would be at the very beginning.

It's a very good place to start.

And so we're gonna look first at Genesis 3.15.

What just happened in Genesis 3.15?

Well, the fall of mankind, disobedience to God, and here we have the Lord addressing the serpent.

I'll put hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.

That's not really predicted.

You don't put that on your Christmas card and send it up.

Typically, people would be like, okay, but what on earth is going on here?

So uh Adam and Eve just sinned, just disobeyed God directly.

The one thing they had one job.

Don't eat of the tree, knowledge of good and evil, and they did.

And then he is addressing here the serpent and setting up this enmity between the serpent symbolizing Satan, sin, death, and mankind through Adam and Eve.

And it says between your offspring and her offspring, and he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.

So this is our very first prophecy that is a bit of an obscure one, but pointing to the person who will come to address an attack, the seed of the serpent, the uh sin, death, will be a person.

The seed of Adam and Eve.

Cool thing, side for sided foot.

He's giving us this before he even addresses Adam and Eve.

So there is a little bit of a promise put in there before he even turns to them and goes, here's the consequences of your action, which is pretty cool.

Sets up what he plans to do.

Now, uh, some scholars believe that when they have a child, Adam and Eve, and the first one is named Cain, which basically means acquired, gotten, she's like, Cool, I got him.

We have the Savior.

Not so much, for those of you who know the story, because he then promptly decides to murder his son.

So of the four people on earth, one murders the other.

Not a good batting average.

And so with that, she uh many believe that even she understood this to be something that was pointing to the atonement that would be coming.

And she kind of jumped the gun a little bit on that.

So, what does that have to do with Jesus?

The point of this is narrowing down from the broadest terms down to the hyperspecific.

And so, from the broadest terms, Jesus, the Savior, will be coming as a human.

So, we see in Luke chapter 3, we have two different genealogies of Jesus: Luke 3, Matthew 1.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

And so in the Luke 1, it actually traces him all the way back to Adam.

So we get that genealogy.

Who here loves to read genealogies?

We don't have any liars in the room.

That's a good sign.

So, yes, I shortened it here as he began his ministry.

Jesus was about 30 years old, and was thought to be the son of Joseph, son of Haly, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.

So come, he is Luke in his gospel is tracing us all the way back to Adam.

And then we see a bit of an obscure one in Romans chapter 5, 18 through 21.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

So then, as through one trespass there's condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is right justification leading to life for everyone.

For just as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

The law came along to multiply the trespasses, but where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Whole lot of words here, but it is more or less boiling down the idea that we're contrasting Adam, through whom sin came to all humans, and then the man, Jesus, through whom salvation is offered to all.

That is the contrast there between the two.

So these two passages are pointing to the fulfillment of Jesus as the Savior would be a person.

That's really low level.

Do you know how many people there have been on earth in human history?

I have no idea.

A lot, more than four.

And with that, okay, that doesn't help us out a lot, but we know that they should have been looking for a person from the very, very beginning to bring about salvation.

Even immediately following man's fall, God promises victory through the offspring of the woman.

Okay, let's jump forward a little bit.

We're gonna go to Genesis 12.

3.

God speaking to Abraham.

I will bless those who bless you.

I will curse anyone who curses you with uh will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.

We just jumped ahead to roughly 2,000 BC.

I don't know exactly.

We don't know exactly how much that is.

People argue over things that happened 50 years ago.

We're not, we can't get that exact date.

But ultimately, we are going to Abraham.

And all of you good Bible scholars are like, Abraham, yes, important person.

But at the time it was Abraham, really unimportant person.

He and his wife could not have children in an era where children is actually the continuation of your species, but also the uh workers and the continuation of that.

And so ultimately he had no future, he had no hope.

And God comes to him and says, I will bless those who bless you, of course, anyone who treats you with contempt.

All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.

And I'm sure that at that point Abraham thought, Cool, I'm gonna be a blessing.

Yeah, I guess, but ultimately this points forward to the ultimate blessing of all the people on the earth coming through the Savior.

What does that look like?

Well, if we're continuing on in Matthew 1, it worked.

Uh we see an account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

So here we have in the Matthew account of his genealogy, we're going back to Abraham specifically.

And then in Galatians 3.16, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to say seed.

He doesn't say, and to seeds, as though referring to many, but referring to one and to your seed, who is Christ.

So I'm sure that Abraham, when he heard that, thought, cool, I'm gonna be a huge blessing, great.

And God's like, well, uh, yes, but through your lineage ultimately will come the one who will be a blessing for all nations, who will actually bring about salvation.

Uh, the means to that, which is really, really cool because we went from people, this the savior is coming through people somewhere, somehow throughout history.

Now we've narrowed it down to the lineage of Abraham, which is still big.

We're talking a long time ago, and that's a huge spread with that.

But ultimately, through the line of Abraham and his family is ultimately where the Savior would be coming through to be a blessing to all people on earth, ultimately to be bringing about salvation to them.

And again, the cool thing here is that in Abram, Abraham's life here, when he's giving this message, he has no future.

He has no hope.

He's a nobody.

He's living in dad's house, he's living in, you know, he's still living in dad's basement, and the there is no future with that.

And God says, right after we get in Genesis 10, another huge genealogical thing with a bunch of names about how the earth is being filled with people and all these different kinds, and then we go, and now we're gonna focus on the guy who doesn't have any kids.

And God brings about that.

He brings about the promise through two people who specifically cannot have children, which is cool.

The theme that we're gonna see through this is the Lord is going to bring about his purposes of salvation, specifically and intentionally, through things that do not make any sense.

They're not the ways that we would do things.

It's his big flex in showing how he can accomplish what humankind cannot, which is salvation.

So we had gone from mankind down to the family of Abraham.

And let's continue forward.

So first we're gonna have Isaiah 11, 1 through 10, which we read this morning.

So when we look at that, for those of you who have your Bible open, we saw a in verse 1, a shoot growing from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots bearing fruit.

The spirit resting upon him, him judging righteously, him bringing about righteousness.

And then in verse 10, on that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious.

We also see in Jeremiah 23, 5 and 6, look, the days are coming.

This is the Lord's declaration, when I will raise up a righteous branch for David.

He will reign wisely as king and administer justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days, Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely.

This is the name he will be called.

The Lord is our righteousness.

Both of these passages are talking about from Jesse and specifically from David will come the Savior, the one bringing about righteousness, the one bringing about salvation.

What have we gotten to at this point in time?

Isaiah is prophesying roughly 730 BC.

That's a long time ago.

That's a very long time ago.

So, 730 years before the birth of Christ, we see him, them at least saying, look for the salvation to come through the lineage of David and Jesse, who is David's dad.

Nobody appreciates this joke, but do you know who David's mom was?

Jesse's girl?

Okay.

Um I keep telling it to my family until they laugh, knowing that someday it's gonna be a so with that in mind, we also have the Jeremiah passage there, which comes from around 580 BC.

So, what is going on during these times?

Bad things are happening when these promises are being given.

Around 730 BC is right before the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.

So we had them enter the promised land, we had them multiply, we had the time of the judges, which we don't want to talk about, and then we have the uh kingdoms of David, Saul, Solomon, divided kingdom, northern kingdom, Samaria, Israel, southern kingdom, Judah.

And in 721 BC, uh Samaria is taken captive by Assyria.

So part of this judgment is ultimately they're taken and uprooted and taken out of the land.

The southern kingdom keeps on kicking a little while longer, but then at 587, 586 BC, Babylon is going to take them and take them into captivity.

So, right before these two massive upheavals and times of intense judgment, the Lord is bringing about this concentration of prophets in these two time periods.

Here you have Isaiah, you have Hosea, you have Micah, right before the northern kingdom's fall, giving hope and warning altogether.

And then right before the southern kingdom's fall, you have Jeremiah, you have Ezekiel, you have Daniel among others, right before that, again, providing warning, but also providing hope.

And here they're saying ultimately that there is going to be through Jesse, through David, somebody who will come and deliver the Lord's righteousness and justice and to all to the nations in that.

And so, when we keep looking at that, we see number one, Matthew 1.1, we have that account of the genealogy of Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham, specifically mentioning Jesus is of the lineage of David.

And then in Luke 2, 4, Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David.

So Joseph threw the family of David.

And then ultimately Romans 15, 12 pins this passage of Isaiah 11:10 to specifically be talking about Jesus, when uh Paul says, again, Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will appear, the one who rules, rises to rule the Gentiles, the Gentiles will hope in him.

Isaiah 11:10

Him referring to Jesus.

So at this time of Israel's upheaval, when things looked bleak, or about to look bleak at least, there are still these moments of hope in saying the Messiah, the Savior, will be coming.

Just a side note, a little housekeeping.

Messiah is Hebrew, Christ is Greek, they mean the same thing, which is the Savior.

So when I'm using these words, all the same thing.

The Messiah, the Christ, the Savior, all the same person, Jesus.

What's the church answer?

Jesus.

Thank you.

So Pastor bailed me out.

Um so having that said, right before these times of ultimate darkness here, you have more narrowing.

We've gone from there is going to be hope.

All the way back at Genesis at the fall, there is still hope to be had because there will be victory over sin and death.

Through a human.

And then to Abraham.

Through your lineage, all the nations of the earth will be blessed, ultimately through your seed.

So this the Savior who's coming will also be the seed of Abraham, despite Abraham being barren at the time of that promise and the child being born.

That.

Continuing down, it's gonna be through David and his family, which on both sides of that sounds a little crazy because beforehand nobody cared who Jesse was or who David was.

His dad, when they were coming to anoint the king, didn't even want to bring him in the house.

He was like, Yeah, well I got this other guy, he's tending the sheep.

We don't talk about David much.

He's I have all these other cool sons who were very kingly, but David, mm-mm.

So he wasn't even liked by his own dad.

Hurtful.

And then after the fact, we had the established kingdom, and then we had division, and then we had downfall and destruction.

And so the Lord is bringing this to pass despite a broken kingdom and an ultimate exile, to where the entire nation of Israel, to which is David, which is Israel's Abraham's family, was taken captive.

They're not even in the land anymore.

But then the Lord is faithful to bring them back later under Cyrus the Persian king, and then they have the establishment of their own place, but then they have upheaval in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, where you have back and forth and back and forth between the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid empires, Ptolemaic being Egypt, Seleucid being Babylon, and Israel is passed back and forth and back and forth between the two because it's the road between the two.

You can't go this way because it's desert.

So you go that way up and around.

And so they basically just became a bargaining chip that was passed back and forth between those two kingdoms until you had the Maccabean Revolt, which looked like really cool for the Israelites, except the Maccabees were priests, Levites.

And so it doesn't quite fit the prophecy here.

And then ultimately things are looking good and they're established.

No one saw Rome coming.

And so ultimately Rome takes over and establishes that, and so they are in a subjugated state at that point in time, and yet there's still hope and there's still promises being given that one day there would be salvation.

This is what we've been talking about through the whole Gospel of John.

The idea of Jesus coming as salvation, not as the Israelites expected to take over and to overthrow Rome and to set up the kingdom, but rather to bring about salvation for those who would believe in him.

Alright.

Our next narrowing, we're going to go to Micah.

Show of hands, how many of you read the entire book of Micah?

Okay, that's impressive also, because that.

Yeah.

There are some of the prophets that I call the grumpy ones.

I kind of put Micah in that category, but with that in mind, we have a very prominent one in Micah 5.2 here.

Bethlehem, Ephrath, you are small among the clans of Judah, but one will come to you from you to be a ruler over Israel for me.

His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

So we're getting a lot more specific here.

We went from the Savior who's coming to bring about the restoration that was broken by the fall of mankind, all the way back with Adam and Eve.

It's got to be a person.

It's going to be of the family of Abraham for all nations, though.

It's going to be through the line of David.

And now here, Micah is saying it's going to be happening through Bethlehem.

This is Ben talking.

This is not like scripture, but I kind of wonder if Micah is writing this.

And people will be like, hey, what does that mean?

He's like, I don't know.

He took God told me to do it.

And he just keeps moving forward because it's like that's a weird thing to say, especially when Micah is writing around 7:30 BC.

Because although that is from, that's where David is from, it is not a significant or important place.

We know Bethlehem because of the song, the little town of Bethlehem, and because of the story.

But nobody cares about Bethlehem.

In the same way that if you think of somebody prominent, nobody really cares about their hometown, except the people in their hometown, and they give them a billboard or maybe a water tower.

And that's with their name on it or their signature.

That was a weird one.

But when we traveled from California to when we moved to northwest Arkansas, it was weird to drive through places and be like, that's a big signature on the water tower up there.

They're really proud of the people that came from that town.

Anyway, having that said, Bethlehem is insignificant, especially around the time of Jesus.

There is nothing important happening in Bethlehem.

It is not happening in Bethlehem.

And that is the crazy thing about this, is that the Lord narrows it down to him saying, the ruler is going to come from this little nothing town.

Which, by the way, 730 BC, I'm gonna do some math for you.

730 BC is after 1000 BC.

I'm sorry, it was when David was born.

So this prophecy of the ruler coming from Bethlehem is away after David.

David's in the rearview mirror.

So it's not pointing to him, it's pointing ahead to something else.

What is it pointing to?

Well, let's take a look.

Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

We see in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered.

This first registration took place while Corinneus was governing Syria.

So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town.

Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David to be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant.

So what just happened there?

Corinius, the governor, the Roman governor of the area.

And again, a little bit of quick background with that.

You have Herod the Great, and then Herod dies, and there's a tetrarchy, and his sons take over different little chunks, but Judea is such an absolute massive pain that they end up taking that son of Herod, kicking them out, and putting Roman governors there instead.

Basically, it's like, we cannot trust you to handle this adequately.

It's gonna we're gonna handle with that.

So that's why Quirinius is here.

And Quirinius decides to have a census.

I'm sure in all of your jobs you've never experienced when one person in the corner office has a really good idea that affects everybody.

But that's what happens here, and it establishes the crazy tradition of traveling around Christmas.

And everyone had to go to their hometown.

So that's why Joseph had to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Mary's pregnant with Jesus.

We'll get to that in a moment.

Pregnant with Jesus.

She's engaged to Joseph.

And where are they?

Where are they from?

Nazareth.

They're in the town of Nazareth.

They are not in Bethlehem.

And so we see that the Lord's like, I'm gonna take Quirinus here.

I'm gonna give him a crazy idea.

I'm gonna make him have a census.

And what is that gonna do?

It's gonna make Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem from Nazareth, right to where he needed to be, where he would not otherwise have been.

Nobody wanted this except Quirinus, apparently.

And yet, then we have Jesus born in Bethlehem.

And you maybe look at that and you go, like, well, okay, but that Micah passage is pretty obscure.

That's that's a weird one.

How do we know that that was referring to the Messiah's birth?

Well, they tell us.

Uh, that's the nice thing.

In Matthew 2, 3 through 6, we see when King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed.

All Jerusalem with them.

He assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Christ would be born.

Well, in Bethlehem of Judea, they told him, because this is what was written by the prophet.

And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because of you, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

So there's rumblings of the Messiah being born, and Herod turns to his wise people, the chief priests and the scribes, and they're like, He's like, Where is the where's the Messiah supposed to be born?

They're like, Well, he's supposed to be born in Bethlehem.

So this was a commonly understood thing in their time that that's where the Messiah would come.

We also see in John chapter 7 that the people trying to figure out Jesus, trying to make sense of him, were like, Hey, doesn't the scriptures say that the Messiah comes from David's offspring and from the town of Bethlehem where David lived?

John 7 · chapter mention

So there was no misunderstanding here that at least that the Messiah was supposed to come, was supposed to be born in Bethlehem.

Nothing town, little place there.

They probably have, okay, they probably have a dollar general, but they haven't yet gotten a Walmart.

That's basically the extent of their size.

Once they get the Walmart, they lose their small town status, and then every all the locals are grouchy.

So with that in mind, we've gone from the fall of humanity and the entrance of sin and separation from God.

And before God even addresses them, he says, Don't worry, there's going to be from the seed of woman someone who comes to crush the head of the serpent.

Humankind.

And then he comes to Baron, Abraham, and Sarah and says, Out of you, your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed, which we understand to see ultimately coming through with the Messiah.

Even though he doesn't have a child, he doesn't have seed.

The Lord brings that about.

And then narrowing down even further through the broken lineage of David.

Right before they're taken captive.

You'll be coming through the Jesse and through David through that lineage, narrowing down.

And now it's going to be Bethlehem.

Look for the Messiah in Bethlehem.

And then, I mean, just equivalency.

That would be kind of like saying, look for the Messiah in Greenfield.

And it would be like, okay, well, there's a gas station there.

There's Starbucks now.

But beyond that, okay.

He's gonna go even further, just in his ultimate flex in this, going further.

We're gonna see this prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14.

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.

See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel.

Okay.

Again, around 730 BC, Isaiah giving this prophecy that there is going to be an Emmanuel, God with us, born of a virgin.

I was gonna do a biology lesson, but I forgot my whiteboard.

No, we're not doing that.

Oh goodness.

So a virgin conceiving is not normal.

Is contrary to normal.

Is contrary to possible.

And yet the Lord's like, this is how I'm gonna do that.

So that's what's cool in this, is we have gone from all the way to the Savior is going to be born as a human.

All the way down to he is going to be born of a virgin.

That has happened exactly one time in human history.

And that is what's crazy about this.

When we see what this looks like, we continue in Luke 1, and I've abbreviated this a little bit, but I'll read the whole thing.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a woman named Joseph of the house of David.

The virgin's name was Mary.

And the angel came to her and said, Greetings, favored woman, the Lord is with you.

But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this would be.

Then the angel told her, Don't be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Now listen, you will conceive and give birth to a son.

You will name him Jesus.

He will be great, will be called son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

So in Nazareth, Mary sitting there doing what Mary does, and an angel comes to her, says, You are going to bear the Savior of the world.

And she's like, Problem?

Biologically, don't see how that's going to happen.

And God's like, Well, the Holy Spirit will overshadow you, it's going to happen in this way.

And that's what we see here.

In the next Matthew 1, 22 through 23, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.

See, the virgin will come pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel, which has translated God with us.

So we have gone so far in our journey from the Savior being a person to of the family of Abraham, of the family of David, of the in the town of Bethlehem, to will be born of a virgin.

Down to, we've gone from all of human history down to one point in human history, if you believe what the scriptures say, which is cool because all of this we see him subverting what we would do.

Subverting our plans, our processes, our expectations, and going down to the absurd all the way through.

He's going to start with giving his promises right at the worst time in human history, the down at the separation between God and man.

And then he's going to come to two elderly people who can't have children and tell them that the Savior will come through them.

And then he's going to come and he's going to tell his prophets ultimately that it's going to come through a broken kingly line, right before they are taken captive and removed from the land altogether.

And then he's going to say, it's also going to be in the most insignificant little town in our area that he is born.

And I'm going to make it so that I am going to have a Roman governor who almost certainly does not follow or respect me put it in his heart to bring the parents to Bethlehem when they don't even live there.

And then it's going to be, by the way, I'm going to have supernatural conception of this child.

It's cool to see through this whole process that the Lord is intentionally subverting what is normal and natural in order to bring that about.

And that can do one of two things in us.

If you're somebody who has put their faith in Jesus, they should stir us up in awe and wonder of the Lord's goodness and that he does this.

Because the Lord's doing this to restore us to him.

All that this does is bring about a restoration of a rebellious people who didn't want to obey.

It ain't for him, it's for us.

And it shows his glory.

But it should stir us up in awe and should just encourage us in this season and fill us with hope that the Lord, not only does the Lord care about us and love us, but he brings about what seems impossible.

And that's comforting.

However, for those of us who have not put our faith in Jesus, it's easy to go this and go, You're crazy.

And that's the ultimately a lot of this, you can't go through these in an apologetic sense and expect it to be an open and shut case in that.

It just doesn't work that way.

Because ultimately, the answer to this is, well, I don't believe the scripture, so thanks for the TED talk.

But ultimately, it requires faith, no matter what.

And so I'm not I am not reading through these things, giving this information going, well, this is clearly and obviously a rock solid encounter of what the Messiah is with that.

By the way, virgin birth, that's normal, and all these different situations.

It requires faith, which is cool.

Because faith is something that comes from belief, which comes from the stirring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and persuasion and acceptance of that by Him.

And that's cool because the smartest person and the least smartest person, see what I did there, uh both, they all of them have access to this Savior through faith.

It is not about putting the puzzle pieces together.

The puzzle pieces here, all it does is either stir, it stirs up what's inside of us, whether that is faith and uh excitement and joy, or further skepticism.

And so my job is not to convince anybody today of what they do not already believe, or to make sure that you understand this and grasp this further because it is an open and shut kind of thing or whatever.

But ultimately, my hope in all of this information is just to recenter on how big God is.

He did things and worked things through all of this if we believe scripture, which I do, in a way that makes no sense.

In a way that we wouldn't do, in a way that we couldn't subvert.

We could not take these levers and pull them to make them happen.

We would just mess it up.

So, uh, how many of you really liked it when you're, if you have kids, when your five-year-old is like, can I help you make dinner?

Yes, it's cute and it's nice, but at the same time, you're like, this just doubled my time.

And but so with that in mind, it's not like we're making this happen, which is cool, but I also understand that all this information does is going to bring out what's already inside of us.

So, having that said, all of the waiting and looking ahead that culminates in Jesus, the fulfillment of the promises through Scripture.

And the time gap between the first passage we read, Isaiah, and the birth of Jesus, is the same distance as between today and 1290 AD.

That's a long time ago.

That's the end of the Crusades, a long time ago.

That's Marco Polo a long time ago.

Marco, thank you.

And that's how far of a time period it was between those two things.

So, where I leave us today, 1 Timothy 2, 5 and 6, there is one God, one mediator between God and humanity, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.

This is what we celebrate.

This is why we're here.

This is our hope.

Speaking of which, Romans 15, 12 through 13.

And again, Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will appear.

We've heard this before.

The one who rises to rule the Gentiles.

The Gentiles will hope in him, and now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So that's my hope today, that we would overflow with hope.

Not by our own stirring up, not by our reclaiming the Christmas season, not by our moving from a big city to a small town and finding love, but rather by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It is not our job to uh to white knuckle and believe this is gonna be what our hope is, or rather, it's what the Lord does in our hearts and stirs up in that, and we can stir up one another in that hope amidst the craziness of the season, amidst the travel, amidst the shopping and all those things.

We have the opportunity to remind one another and let the Holy Spirit work through that.

And so, with that in mind, that's our hope today.

What would cause us to overflow with hope?

It's the power of the Holy Spirit.

What would cause us to be filled with joy and peace?

God, as we believe.

That's our job.

Our job is belief.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for today.

I thank you for your goodness.

I thank you for your faithfulness.

I thank you for your holiness.

Lord, I thank you for the way that you subverted the natural to bring about salvation.

Not for anything that would add to you as you are complete as God, but rather to restore us to you.

I thank you for the promise you made for that process before even addressing the consequences of mankind's sin.

I thank you for bringing that about through places where there was no hope and you bringing hope into them.

I thank you for the way that you do that.

That when there is desolation, you bring about hope, not because of a promised result, but because of your presence, because of your goodness and your faithfulness.

And so for those of us who know you, Lord, I ask that by your spirit, you would stir us up in hope.

That you would stir us up to be rejoicing in you, to celebrate all the things and enjoy all the things and just to take delight in them and to remember the reason for why we celebrate that.

And for those who don't know you, Lord, I just asked that by your spirit you would work on their hearts, that you would speak to them and desire, that you would uh work on them to desire to know more about you, to wrestle with skepticism, so that they would work on that with you.

I think that you are the only one who can do that.

And I asked, Lord, just by that your spirit would move either way, and that ultimately that we would rejoice in you.

I thank you for Jesus, that he came, that he lived a sinless life for us, that he died on our behalf, taking our sin upon him, so that we could take his righteousness upon us, that our price would be paid through his death, that it would be shown as accepted through his resurrection, and that it indicates the new life that we have in you through that life.

I thank you for your goodness and your faithfulness.

Amen.