Jesus Enters The Race
Luke 2:21-24
October 8, 2017

Some things have now become obvious to us
In our study of Luke’s gospel.

1) God is sending the Savior
• We heard Gabriel announce to Zacharias how his son would make the way for
this coming Savior.
• We heard Gabriel announce to Mary how her Son would be named Jesus
• We heard Zacharias prophesy how God was sending the “horn of salvation” to
provide “salvation from our enemies”
• We heard the angel announce to the shepherds that “today in the city of David
there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”

The point is rather obvious, God is sending the Savior.

Also obvious:
2) God is sending this Savior to those who are hungering for righteousness.

In fact, we could say that God is sending this Savior to those
Who fit all of those beatitudes we read about in Matthew 5.

Those who are poor in spirit, who mourn over sin, who are submissive to God, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are pure in heart.

This is obvious because in all the commotion that has occurred
And in all the people who have been included in this process,
NOTICEABLY ABSENT are those chief priests, Pharisees and Sadducees.

God is revealing this to outcasts, to the forgottens;
People like an old barren couple and a 13 year old Jewish virgin
And a group of lowly shepherds.

And more than just announcing these realities,
Luke is relentlessly driving them home to us.

And in doing so, Luke is also BUILDING OUR CHRISTOLOGY.
That is to say, he is reinforcing our theology on exactly who Jesus is.

Now LUKE DOESN’T do this by
Laying down some theological dissertation like Paul might.

LUKE DOES THIS by simply giving you the facts of history
And allowing you to ponder all that occurred.

And if you are willing (as Mary did) to “ponder all these things”
And consider what is actually happening here,
Then you will see exactly who Christ is and what He came to do.
Luke is giving history, but it is history with a point.

THIS MORNING,
Luke does it again by mentioning what no other gospel writer included.

Luke is going to reveal to you the facts about Jesus’ circumcision,
Mary’s purification, and Mary’s atonement.

And granted it can seem like these are just simple insignificant facts. After all, this was the norm for every other baby born as well.

And that is part of the point.
Luke is revealing in this point that
Jesus came just like every other male baby came.

He is not only born into the same world,
But He is also born into the same set of circumstances.

I called this sermon: “Jesus Enters The Race”

It is in part inspired by what the writer of Hebrew said.
Hebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

You remember that text where the writer of Hebrews
Is encouraging the Hebrews to continue running their race.
Don’t shrink back, don’t give up, just keep running.

Chapter 11 then was an entire chapter of faithful examples,
But in chapter 12 the writer holds up the ultimate example who is Jesus.

And of Jesus’ race the writer says this:
Namely that Jesus is “the author and perfecter of faith”
• And then the writer says that as such He ran His race
• With endurance and perfection and perfectly completed it,
• Even though it required such agonizing obstacles as the cross.

In calling Jesus “the author and perfecter of faith”
The writer is reminding his Jewish audience that
Jesus was not some sort of renegade rogue desperado type individual.

Jesus didn’t just come and wreak havoc.
When Jesus came He ran absolutely according to the rules.

In fact, He had to, or else He would have been disqualified.
When Jesus came to this earth to save sinners by entering their race,
He did not have the luxury of changing the rules to suit Himself.
The people He came to save were in a specific set of circumstances,
If He was to save them,
He had to enter those exact same circumstances.

It’s hard to save a person drowning if you’re not willing to get in the water.

Well humanity was drowning to say the least.
• Humanity was drowning in sin.
• Sin which was a part of our very human nature,
• And sin which was continually exposed to us through the Law of God.

Jesus had to enter both if He was to be able to save.

Now LUKE DOESN’T EXPLAIN all that in his text this morning,
But he is the only one who GIVES YOU THE HISTORY which solidifies it.

If you are willing to PONDER THIS a little this morning
You’ll gain a better understanding of exactly what Christ came to do.

There are three things I want you to see:
#1 JESUS’ CIRCUMCISION
Luke 2:21

We just read about the birth of Jesus
And that heavenly announcement to the shepherds.

Now Luke fast-forwards a week and says, “when eight days had passed, before His circumcision…”

My Bible has a margin note which also translates that verse,
“when eight days had passed, so as to circumcise Him…”

The obvious point is that Jesus was circumcised on the eight day,
Just as God had commanded.

Now that may SEEM LIKE AN INSIGNIFICANT FACT since it was common
That all Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day.

But let’s talk about circumcision a little here.

Certainly you are aware of where it came from.
Genesis 17:9-14 “God said further to Abraham, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. “This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. “And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. “And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, a servant who is born in the house or who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your descendants. “A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. “But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”

If you are familiar with the timeline of Genesis then you know
• God reveals His selection of Abraham in chapter 12.
• God saves Abraham in chapter 15 and actually enters into a covenant with him there.
• And then when we get to chapter 17 we get this sign of the covenant revealed which is circumcision.

God commanded that the foreskin be removed
From every male who was part of the covenant.

It may indeed seem like a strange sign, but it was perfectly fitting.

• It was in Adam that humanity fell into sin and suffered the curse, and then it was from Adam that the sin nature had passed down through all of his descendants.

• Through procreation humanity is literally conceived in iniquity and born in sin. It is spiritually genetic human condition.

Circumcision then was a sign of purification from that sin
By removing the foreskin of the procreative organ
And signifying the necessity of purification from Adam.

It was a PICTURE of the cleansing of sin,
And the REQUIRED sign of the covenant.

Now Israel understood the command
But they often failed to understand the significance or what it meant.

It was a physical sign which represented a spiritual reality.

Jeremiah said:
Jeremiah 4:4 “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD And remove the foreskins of your heart, Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Or else My wrath will go forth like fire And burn with none to quench it, Because of the evil of your deeds.”

Paul reiterated in Romans:
Romans 2:28-29 “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”

Obviously then the physical act was about a spiritual reality.
And if your heart didn’t match then the sign was pointless.

It is similar to something like baptism or the Lord’s Supper today. If you participate in the ordinance, but your heart is wrong then it is really quite pointless.
Water baptism to a person who has not been spiritually resurrected is nothing more than a bath.

Circumcision then was a sign which signified the purification of sinners.

In Romans 4 Paul also said that it was a “seal” (speaking of the faith and circumcision of Abraham and the righteousness when God credited to him, Paul asks:)

Romans 4:10-11 “How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them,”

So Paul said that was both a “sign” and a “seal”
The sign we understand, what does the seal mean?

The requirement of God for Abraham’s justification was faith;
That was made clear in Genesis 15.

But we also know that faith is always accompanied by obedience.
In fact, if you don’t have obedience then you don’t have faith.

So God, in response to Abraham’s faith, commanded circumcision.
Abraham proved his faith was genuine by obeying the command.

Thus, circumcision solidified or “sealed” his faith as genuine faith.

In fact if a person would not participate in circumcision and thus prove their faith genuine then they were to be cut off from God’s people.

Genesis 17:14 “But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”

SO, circumcision then was a sign of the necessary cleansing from sin
And an indicator that a person’s faith was genuine.

THAT WE UNDERSTAND.

So why were people circumcising their babies?
Shouldn’t it have been like baptism where a person gets circumcised after they demonstrate faith?

Well, that’s not what was commanded.
Leviticus 12:1-3 “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: ‘When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean. ‘On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.”

God commanded that male children be circumcised at 8 days of age.
This was a pledge of them entering covenant with God.

It was to enter that Mosaic covenant
And to agree to come under God’s Law.

NOW PLEASE UNDERSTAND that just because a child was circumcised did not automatically make them pleasing

If their faith never solidified then they were nothing more than religious hypocrites like Jesus came to expose.

But a parent took their child, commended them to God,
Acknowledged the sinful condition of that child, circumcised him, And pledged that this child would be under God’s covenant of Law

Now, just for a little theology understanding, this is the same basis for why other denominations practice pedo-baptism (infant baptism).
They bring their children to the Lord acknowledging that child’s sinful condition
And devoting them to the covenant of God.

We don’t do that for one simple reason.
It’s not commanded in Scripture, nor is it ever practiced in Scripture,
So we don’t see the purpose.

We also no longer command circumcision because we are not (and have never been) under the old covenant of Law, but are under the new covenant of grace in which Christ has fulfilled the Law and imputed His righteousness to us.

This is why Paul was so emphatic in telling the Gentiles in Galatia not to receive circumcision. They had already found Christ, they didn’t need the Law.

BUT I HOPE YOU BETTER UNDERSTAND THE REASON AND PURPOSE BEHIND CIRCUMCION.

BUT ALL OF THAT BEGS A REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION:
WHY WAS JESUS CIRCUMCISED?
• Are we to assume that He was born in sin and therefore needed to have His flesh cleansed?
• Are we saying that Jesus inherited that sin nature from Adam?

NO, in fact that is the very significance of the virgin birth,
That Jesus did not descend from Adam,
But was instead conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus did not inherit a sin nature.
Remember Gabriel called Him “the holy child” (1:35)?

While the sign of circumcision was fitting for every other Jew,
It did not fit the character or nature of this Jew.
He was already holy.

SO WHY DO IT?
Jesus was NOT circumcised because He needed cleansing,
Or because He needed the Law as a means of pleasing God.
Jesus was circumcised in order that
He might enter the race that the rest of Israel was running.

Jesus came under the Law
Because those He came to save were under the Law.

Jesus is fully God. That Law is His Law.
He wasn’t subject to it unless He made Himself subject to it.

And on this day, Jesus subjected Himself to that very thing.
He entered the race by coming under God’s Law.

And when He did, all of those commands, all of those ordinances,
All of those requirements became legally binding upon Him.

By entering the covenant Jesus was now legally bound
To perfectly fulfill all of God’s holy Law.
And He did it so that He might save those who were under the Law.

He jumped in the water because those He came to save were in the water.

Here we had the nation of Israel
Which did nothing but fall and fail under God’s holy Law.

In fact, later in the book of Acts,
• When you have Gentiles being saved (who were never under the Law)
• You have Jews who are confused.
• These Jews want the Gentiles to also come under the Law just like they were.

But Peter challenges that and in
His response reveals an important reality about the Law.
Acts 15:8-11 “And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. “Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? “But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”

Did you hear what Peter called the Law?
“a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear”

All Israel had come under the Law and all Israel was failing terribly.
They needed a Savior.

They didn’t need a Savior who would stand outside the Law and offer advice, they needed a Savior who would enter the race and provide deliverance.

That is exactly what Jesus did.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

Jesus came under the Law that He might perfectly fulfill the Law
That He might impute His perfect holy righteousness
To those who could not fulfill it on their own.

We’ve heard the story of those Moravian missionaries
• Who heard of an island that was completely owned by an atheist slave owner
who said no missionary would ever be allowed to his island.
• So two young Moravians sold themselves as slaves to the land owner that they
might go and witness to the slaves of that island.

We find stories like that almost unbelievable,
But what Jesus did was greater than even that.

For He left a far greater place and a far higher status
To enter a predicament that was far worse.

That also explains exactly what He was given the name that He was given.

“His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.”

Of course you remember that:
Luke 1:31 “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.”

Perhaps more telling is what the angel said to Joseph after Mary’s conception.
Matthew 1:18-25 “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.” And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.”

The name Jesus means “Yahweh Saves”

And If He is to be the Savior then He has to enter the battle.
That battle was against sin
And the absolute inability to satisfy God’s righteous requirements.

Jesus came and entered that race.

You see that in His circumcision.
#2 MARY’S PURIFICATION
Luke 2:22

Here Luke again mentions a rather routine fact.
“And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed…”

We read it a moment ago.
Leviticus 12:2-5 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: ‘When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean. ‘On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. ‘Then she shall remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are completed. ‘But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days.”

• After a woman gave birth she was ceremonially unclean for 7 days.
• The child was then circumcised and the woman’s uncleanness continued. (33 days for a boy, 66 days for a girl)

During this time a woman was unclean.

Certainly there were health related issues involved from the Lord that served as a protective and healing time for the woman,
But ultimately it was a reminder of the fallen nature of humanity.

God is holy, man is not.
And a woman who had undergone childbirth is unclean before God.

What does all this have to do with Jesus?
• He was born of a woman.
• The woman who bore Him was unclean like any other woman.

That again speaks of the condition through which He entered this race.
He was human.

He was a human being, who entered this race
Like every other human being entered.

Consider the writer of Hebrews:
Hebrews 10:1-10 “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE. “THEN I SAID, ‘BEHOLD, I HAVE COME (IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME) TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'” After saying above, “SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them” (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, “BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

The writer reminded that although God had provided for a sacrificial system of bulls and goats, None of those sacrifices ever effectively satisfied God.
• God wanted righteousness.
• God wanted obedience.
• And this would never be accomplished by a bull.

A human had to do it.
So God prepared for Christ a human body.

A body that was born of a woman in the very same way
That every other human body entered this world.

Through all the struggle, through all the pain, through all the uncleanness that was associated with child birth;
Christ entered the world.

He was a human born of a woman.

Romans 8:1-4 “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

He was born “in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin”

If He was going to satisfy the requirement of God on behalf of humanity,
Then He had to be a human who perfectly obeyed God’s commands.

Jesus didn’t avoid either obligation.
He became a human and He came under the Law.

Luke reminds you of that by simply reminding you that Mary gave birth to Him just like any other woman gave birth to their children.

Jesus’ Circumcision, Mary’s Purification
#3 MARY’S ATONEMENT
Luke 2:22b-24

We read that after Mary’s purification was completed:
“they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called Holy to the Lord”),
It also says that Joseph and Mary came
“to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

So what is happening here?
It begins with this prescribed dedication of Jesus and what that indicates.

The command of God was as follows:
Numbers 3:13 “For all the firstborn are Mine; on the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I sanctified to Myself all the firstborn in Israel, from man to beast. They shall be Mine; I am the LORD.”

Numbers 8:17 “For every firstborn among the sons of Israel is Mine, among the men and among the animals; on the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for Myself.”

• God reminded Israel how when in Egypt He killed all the firstborn of the Egyptians, both of their children and their livestock.

• However God spared Israel and therefore God revealed that in exchange all the firstborn belonged to Him.

• In regard to your children, God had agreed to take the entire tribe of Levi instead of the firstborn of every family, but for that process the price of redemption must be paid.

Of ever clean animal, you sacrificed it to the Lord.
Of every unclean animal and of your first born child
You paid the price of redemption.
The price was 5 shekels.

The simply point being was that Israel had a debt to pay before God.
He had been merciful in sparing the firstborn, and thus they had to be redeemed.

MARY AND JOSEPH HAD A DEBT TO PAY.
(yes Mary was a sinner, and yes Mary needed atonement)

What I also want you to understand
Is that it was a debt too big for them to pay.

We know that because Mary and Joseph presented “A pair of turtledoves”

Leviticus 12:6-8 “When the days of her purification are completed, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting a one year old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. ‘Then he shall offer it before the LORD and make atonement for her, and she shall be cleansed from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, whether a male or a female. ‘But if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, the one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean.'”

Without going into detail Luke reveals the poverty of Joseph and Mary.
They couldn’t even afford the normal price of redemption or atonement.

Now, thus far Luke hasn’t described a thing.
• He has given no theology…
• He has given no doctrine…
• He has only given history as it occurred…

But if you are willing to ponder these things and consider them
Then you can see the obvious point Luke is making.

We have here a people who are in way over their heads.
A people who have a debt which they cannot pay.

And we aren’t just talking about the price of redemption.
We are talking about the entire requirement of the Law.

They can’t obey any of it, they can’t afford any of it.
They are unclean, and unable.

But born to them is a Savior.
Born of a woman, born under the Law
And born that He might satisfy God and redeem them all.

Paul said it like this to the Galatians:
Galatians 4:3-7 “So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.”

Paul speaks of people who were literally held in bondage under the Law.
• They were under that yoke which Peter said they had been unable to bear.
• They were slaves to say the least.
• They were unacceptable and unclean and they had a debt which they could
not pay off.

And to this predicament entered a Savior.
He entered the very prison and slavery where they were held.

He entered through an unworthy woman
And He entered into an impossible covenant.

All that He might redeem and turn slaves into sons.

The angel had it right when he said, “I bring you good news of great joy”

A Savior is coming.
• He will clothe himself in your very predicament.
• He will be human in every sense of the word.
• He will be under the Law and its heavy requirement.

But this One will perfectly obey it
And then, as He takes the wrath which we deserve,
He will impute this perfectly earned righteousness
To all those who trust in Him.

Jesus entered the race.
• He is not a Savior from the sidelines barking advice from the stands.
• He took it on that He might save.

Hebrews 2:14-18 “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.”

The Necessity of Faith – Part 2
Hebrews 11:1-7 (4-7)
October 1, 2017

Last time we met we started looking at this 3rd Sola,
Which is the understanding that we are justified through faith alone.

And again, just to make sure that we are clear, it is important to understand that this was THE CHIEF ISSUE of the Reformation.

If you lose this one, you lose them all.

If you add anything to the requirement of faith for justification
Then you instantly lose grace alone and Christ alone,
And of course then by necessity you lose the glory of God alone.

If I must do anything (however insignificant) to achieve salvation then:
• We cannot say it was pure grace…
• We cannot say Jesus did it all…
• And God cannot receive all the glory…

Since my actions and efforts are clearly part of the process.

But ultimately the main reason we believe
That man is justified by faith alone
Is because that is the undeniable message of Scripture.

That being said, we have begun looking at this wonderful doctrine.

And we have started simply with the basics.
We are looking now at what we are calling “The Necessity of Faith”

Of course that is made obvious to us because in verse 6 of our text we read:
(6) “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

I don’t really know how much clearer you can make it than that.

What we are seeking to do is
Understand why the writer of Hebrews came to that conclusion.

And to do that we are looking at these first 7 seven verses of Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 is a chapter which serves as an illustration.
The writer is encouraging his audience to walk by faith and not to shrink back.

And in order to encourage them,
He takes them on a tour through this faith hall of fame
Where his audience can learn how important faith is to their walk.
What we want to see is the necessity of faith
And this we find in the first 7 verses.

We started this last week by looking at our first point.
#1 THE NATURE OF FAITH
Hebrews 11:1-5

That is to say, we must understand what this faith is.

I told you that Reformed Thought has identified this with 3 Latin words.
• NOTITIA – (Notes) the actual gospel information
• ASCENSU – (Ascent) the cognitive intellectual belief that the information is true.
• FIDUCIA – (Trust) the leaning upon that truth and making decisions upon it as true.

These mark the difference between a profession of faith and actual faith.
These mark the difference between faith and “saving” faith.

For while many make a profession of faith,
Not all who make that profession are saved.

We are not saved by making a profession of faith.
We are saved when we give God genuine faith.

There is a difference.

Now Reformed thought sought to define this faith, and as helpful as that is, we still desire to LOOK TO SCRIPTURE for the ultimate definition.

And we saw last week that:
(1) “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

• We learned that it all starts with man hoping for something he does not actually see.
• And then that person has to come to a decision as to whether or not he will believe it, even though he doesn’t see it.
• Because he must make this decision, he runs a test (the word “conviction” actually means “to prove with a test”)
• And we found that all he can possibly test is the character of God. (A promise is only as good as the one who makes it)
• The believer comes to the conviction that God is trustworthy and therefore chooses to believe what he does not see.
• This faith then results in “assurance” that his hopes will be fulfilled.

And if assurance was the only consequence that alone would be worth it,
But what we found is that this type of faith actually comes
With an even greater consequence than just assurance.

(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval.”
And let that sink in for a moment.

It was way back in the book of Job that Eliphaz asked:
Job 4:17 “Can mankind be just before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?”

Job later said:
Job 9:2 “In truth I know that this is so; But how can a man be in the right before God?”

Bildad also asked:
Job 25:4 “How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman?”

We are talking about sinful humans who have wronged God
and fallen short of His perfect righteous standard…
Then what can these sinful humans do in order to gain God’s approval?

What can they do to make it all right between them and God?

And here the writer of Hebrews reveals that answer: FAITH
(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval.”

And after making this statement the writer is about to illustrate his point.

This is where we LEFT OFF LAST WEEK,
But the writer is about to give us two examples:
Abel and Enoch – let’s look at them.

(4) “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.”

Certainly you remember the story of Cain and Abel.
Adam and Eve had blown it in the garden and after being removed
The Bible says that they had two boys.

Cain was the oldest, Abel the second.

What is clear (though unexplained) is that Cain and Abel both realized
The need for acceptance from God.
So we find the boys doing is going before God with an offering.

Genesis 4:3-7 “So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

I have no intention of preaching this text again, you can go back to our Genesis study.
But the basics here are important.
• There was no Law yet
• There was no command yet

Neither of these boys could have possibly known that
God required blood or that God required a first fruit
(those are the common explanations as to why God accepted Abel, but not Cain)

No, the explanation is made in Hebrews 11.
Namely that Abel brought faith and Cain did not.

Abel’s offering was through faith
That made his offering better than Cain’s
Which was merely an attempt to appease God through his works.

• One boy came trusting God,
• The other came seeking to appease God through his works.
• God was pleased with the one who brought faith.
• God did not accept the one who brought works.

Perhaps that helps you understand then why Cain was so angry.
He had worked hard for that produce, he had battled the sin curse directly to bring fruit from the ground.

Imagine the time it took to clear the land, break the soil, prepare the soil, plant the seed, care for the field, and harvest that crop.
When God said it wasn’t enough, Cain was livid.

The frustration of Cain is the frustration of every person in religion
Who works tirelessly and vigorously at some religious routine
In order to make God pleased.
How frustrated they will be when they find it is not enough.

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

That was certainly the frustration of the Pharisees who tithe mint and dill and cumin; who broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments; who give and pray and fast like clockwork.

Imagine their frustration with Jesus, who told them that despite all their labor they weren’t good enough to inherit eternal life.

It’s no wonder they killed Jesus.

That is all the frustration of Cain.
He tried to bring works and God would not accept him.

But Abel brought faith.
And when he brought faith to God,
Scripture says, “he obtained the testimony that he was righteous”

Scripture says that God testified “about his gifts”

Which is what Genesis said, “the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering.”

God didn’t just accept the gift, God accepted Abel.
Abel brought faith and God declared him righteous.

And then the writer says, “and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.”

That is to say that
You can still learn about salvation from the life of Abel.

Leaving Abel, let’s move on now to the second example: ENOCH.

(5) “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; And he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”

There are those two all-important phrases again.
“he obtained the witness”
“he was pleasing to God”

Enoch was a lot like Abel.
He offered God faith and God was pleased with him because of it.

But as I said it is important to understand
The relationship of their faith and their works.

Abel’s faith was that he “offered to God a better sacrifice”
What was Enoch’s faith?

TURN TO: GENESIS 5
Chapter 5 is a very important chapter in Moses’ preaching.

Moses is making an unmistakable point.
“The wages of sin is death”

The chapter details 9 generations from Adam
And about 8 of them Moses emphatically says “and he died”

But in glaring contrast Moses introduces Enoch.
Who of the 9 was the only one who did not die.
In fact, instead of death the Bible simply says that (24) “God took him.”
Enoch was raptured.

The obvious question:
WHAT DID ENOCH DO THAT ALLOWED HIM TO ESCAPE DEATH?
No one was escaping death, why Enoch?

(24) “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”

The writer of Hebrews described it like this:
“he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”

• Enoch lived a life that was devoted to God.
• Enoch lived in a pleasing manner.

Do you have any specifics?
Jude 14-15 “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

Enoch was a preacher of righteousness and judgment.
He was clearly one who spoke against the corruption of his culture
And chose instead to seek God.

• Enoch sought God
• Enoch walked after God
• Enoch trusted God

AND HE DID THIS IN THE MIDST OF A CULTURE THAT DID NOT.

And Scripture says “he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”

That is what faith does.
Faith pleases God.

It actually allowed Enoch to skip death.
• Now that doesn’t mean if you will just have faith that you won’t die.
• We just covered Abel who died for his faith and said that it was worth it.

Keep your eye on the proper reward.
• The reward is not ease in this life.
• The reward is not some temporary pay off.
• The reward of faith is that God is pleased and He declares the people of faith to be righteous.

This righteousness allows them to dwell with God forever.

THAT IS THE NATURE OF FAITH.
• What it is – a conviction that leads to assurance.
• What it does – pleases God.

But the nature of faith is not the only thing the writer wants you to understand here.
#2 THE NECESSITY OF FAITH
Hebrews 11:6-7

After making the statement that Enoch, became pleasing to God
The writer wants you to understand what a big deal this was.

“And without faith it is impossible to please Him”

Please let that sink in for a moment.
Think of all the things that you could offer God.
Think of all the things people in pagan religions offered their gods.
• Bring Him an animal sacrifice…
• Bring Him even your firstborn…
• Bring Him your crops…

Or perhaps it’s a specific behavior.
• Maybe you could take a vow of poverty.
• Maybe you could take a vow of chastity.
• Maybe you could treat your body severely with markings and cuts.
• Maybe you could make some sort of difficult voyage in God’s name.
• Maybe you could go on some sort of mission.
• Maybe you could fly an airplane into a building.

• Maybe you could go to church every Sunday.
• Maybe you could read your Bible daily.
• Maybe you could be baptized.

• Maybe you could fight for your country.
• Maybe you could adopt orphans.
• Maybe you could give to charity.
• Maybe you could cure cancer.
• Maybe you could feed the hungry or clothe the naked.

Surely if you did those things God would be pleased with you.

And the answer is “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”
None of those things please God if they are not united in faith.

Listen to what Paul said about Israel.
(hands down the most religious people ever)
Romans 9:30-33 “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”

All God wanted was faith and all they offered was works.
(Go back to the illustration of Cain and Abel)

Listen to Paul in Romans 8:
Romans 8:5-8 “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

I’ve often made the statement (and received very confusing looks)
That people like the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses
Whose religion is based upon doing good works to your neighbor
Have NEVER done anything that pleased God.

I know Mormons especially have great commercials. They do good to their fellow man, they are moral, they vote conservative, etc.

And people see the good and say, “Surely God is pleased with that.”
NO!!!!! “without faith it is impossible to please Him”

Their work is nothing more than the work of Cain,
Or the work of a Pharisee.

Regardless of whether you think they are good works or bad works,
In the end they are all merely works of the flesh,
“and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

In fact Paul said “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God”

What does that mean?

It means it resents God’s unachievable standard
And it resents God’s proclamation that salvation is only achievable through grace and faith.

Go again to that story of the Prodigal.
Do you see the hatred of that older brother?
• He demanded that pleasing the father come through merit and when the father opted for it to come through grace, the older brother was livid!

Ever hear someone say, “I don’t want your charity! I can do this on my own! I don’t want any help!”?

Do you know what that is? It’s pride
(and incidentally our world praises such pride)
But until that pride is broken you won’t come to Christ.

He only accepts broken beggars.
Those with no spiritual worth who come
And ALL THEY HAVE TO OFFER IS FAITH.

But that is the only person God accepts.

If you don’t come to God in faith you will not please Him.
Why?

“for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

What the writer lists there is
The most absolute and basic principles of faith that there are.

• To believe that God “is”
• To believe that God “is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

And I do want to speak to that a moment.
Today sometimes faith gets a little misconstrued in our culture.

Our “name it and claim it” friends
Have done a great disservice to what faith actually is.

They seem to think that faith is when you tell God what you want
And you believe He’ll give you what you want until He finally does.

• They see faith as some sort of magic formula that somehow strong-arms God
into giving you what you want.
• They seem to think that God wants you to claim the impossible and put Him to
the test until He does it.

That is not what the writer mentions.
According to Hebrews God simply wants you to believe that “He is”

• Like when the world is clamoring that God is not real.
• Or like when your circumstances feel like God is absent.
• Or like when you’re having difficulty seeing His presence in your pain.

At those moments God is simply asking you to believe “that He is”
You know the “conviction of things not seen”

And then God wants you to believe that in following and seeking Him that there is a reward; “that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

• He’s not asking you to name your reward.
• He’s not asking you to claim your reward.
• And remember that most in this chapter never saw an earthly reward.

He’s asking you to trust that the reward He has for you will be worth it.
You know the “assurance of things hoped for.”

The writer here is NOT telling these suffering Hebrews
That they need to rise up and claim a victory
And believe that God will deliver them from peril.

He is telling them that in the middle of their peril,
When it feels like God is absent or silent,
That they still need to believe that He is God
And that trusting Him will be worth it.

That is faith.
That is what God requires.
In fact, if you don’t offer Him that, you won’t be able to please Him at all.

And you will never become and heir of the righteousness you need.
Believe that God is and that God is a rewarder.

AND TO FURTHER EMPHASIZE THAT TRUTH
The writer gives yet another illustration.

Enter the man we know as NOAH.
(7) “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”

Noah was also a key figure in Moses account of Genesis.
• Moses used Abel to demonstrate how to avoid God’s displeasure.
• Moses used Enoch to demonstrate how to avoid death.
• Moses uses Noah to demonstrate how to avoid destruction.

And again the answer is “By faith”

In Noah’s day God had finally had enough.
Genesis 6:5-8 “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”

So the whole world is so corrupt that God has decided to destroy them all,
And yet one man was found to be pleasing to God.

Moses was obviously putting a magnifying glass on Noah.
You are supposed to read that and ask, “Why was Noah so pleasing?”

Genesis 6:9 “These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.”

There it is again.
That’s the same thing Enoch did (walked with God) (i.e. TRUSTED GOD)
Apparently Moses is making a point.

• Abel, Enoch, and Noah all lived in a day of sin.
• Abel, Enoch, and Noah all faced scorn from those around them.
• And yet, Abel, Enoch, and Noah still believed that God was real and if they would reject their culture and strive to please God that they would be rewarded for it.

They didn’t know how, they just believed.
And God was pleased with this simple faith.

And if you want to see Noah’s faith, it is really quite remarkable.

The writer says that he was “warned by God about things not yet seen”

In short, Noah had never heard of a global killer.
Noah had never seen rain.

But God said it was going to happen.
Genesis 6:11-14, 17 “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch…”Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish.”

God told Noah the earth was wicked and He was going to flood it
And Noah should build a boat.

Genesis 6:22 “Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.”

The writer of Hebrews said that Noah “prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world”

And incidentally the word there means that Noah “cautiously prepared that ark”
He was meticulous and careful
In short, he really believed he would need it.

It took Noah 100 years to build that ark.
Do you think he caught a little flak from the corrupt work around him?
• “Hey Noah, how much rain did you get last night? Bahahah”
• “Hey Noah, seen the forecast lately?”

But Noah kept right on building and the decision proved wise
For Noah saved his family from the flood.
But listen to the writer.
The reward of Noah’s faith was NOT that he didn’t drown.

The reward of his faith was that he “became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”

Sure God saved Noah from the flood,
But even more than that God saved Noah from sin.
God declared Noah righteous.

AND THIS IS THE POINT OF THE WRITER OF HEBREWS.

GOD REQUIRES FAITH.
• He requires you to believe He’s there even when you don’t see Him.
• He requires you to believe serving Him will be worth it even when you don’t see how.

We see that the writer of Hebrews came to the conclusion
That faith is necessary because he could not find a single Old Testament character who ever pleased God without it.

Today we have more revelation and we understand that
The specific faith God wants
Is for you and me to trust in the saving work of His Son Jesus.

John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

And that is what the writer wants these Hebrews to understand.

YOU MUST HAVE FAITH
• Not so that the hardships will stop.
• But so that God will be pleased with you.

And that is really the first step of our journey.
I simply want you to understand THE NECESSITY OF FAITH.
• It is not as though it is optional or that you can come to God with any other thing or in any other way.

• You must have this genuine saving faith that is convinced of what it does not see and sure of what it hopes for.

Now from there we will move on
To another very important point about faith which is:
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FAITH.

That is, I want you to see how good it works.

The Birth of Jesus Christ
Luke 2:1-20
October 1, 2017

This morning we look at an event that is in so many ways
Absolutely beyond human comprehension.

I’ll be honest, that the title alone blows my mind if I stop and ponder on it at all.

And I should also say that pondering this reality
Is actually one of Luke’s more subtle points.

We just read it in our opening reading,
But after Jesus is born and the shepherds visit and the crowd is amazed,
Luke is adamant to make sure you see Mary’s response.

(19) “But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.”

“pondering” in the Greek is SUNBALLO
It is a word that literally means “to throw together”

It speaks of putting pieces of information together to consider their meaning.
It can be used of conversation or discussion

You simply have Mary “pondering” all of this.

She knows who this child is.
• At this point, she knows better than anyone.
• She is aware of that angelic announcement about Him coming to be reign over
the house of Jacob.

She is aware of the sacrifice involved.
• Certainly having pondered her own personal cost, she must have pondered the
personal cost to her child.

Mary is simply trying to take it all in and enjoy this unbelievable reality.

LUKE GIVES US THAT ON PURPOSE.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with the fact that crowd “wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.”

Certainly there is nothing wrong with the fact that “the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.”

I think amazement and worship are more than fitting responses.

But so is the response of deep contemplation and “pondering”

And before we get into the text, I think that is called for here a little.

Listen, Luke isn’t flashy.
• He is a historian.
• He’s not writing a novel whereby he throws in extra frills in order to hold your attention.

Luke is just giving you the facts straight up.
It’s your job to ponder the significance of what is happening here.

He wants you to know “the exact truth”, it’s your job to chew on it.

Honestly, what is most startling to me about this account of Jesus’ birth
IS HOW ORDINARY IT IS.
I realize the angelic appearing adds some flare, but before that.

• When all you read is about a poor, young Jewish couple, having to travel at the
worst possible time to go and pay taxes.

• And then when the get there, she goes into labor, only she has to deliver
among the animals because all the inns are full.

And then the awesome climactic statement of the story goes like this.
(7) “And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

• Luke doesn’t embellish…
• Luke doesn’t dramatize it…
• He doesn’t even write more than two sentences…
• He treats it just like any other natural birth which has occurred billions of times.

As I said, Luke is a historian.
The pondering is really up to you.

And so before we look at the text,
I just want to make sure we are all ready for this event.

As I sat and pondered I felt like there are at least 2 things
That you and I really need to consider in order to help us
Grab the enormity of this understated event.

The first is:
THE HELPLESS HUMAN CONDITION
Most of the time when the word helpless is used regarding man,
People settle on the reality that man can’t save himself.

Well, that is obviously true, but man is far more helpless than that.

Apart from God man doesn’t even know he needs saving.
He has no knowledge of God and in fact
He can’t obtain it unless God chooses to reveal it.

• Man is here trapped inside time and space, God is transcendent, eternal, exalted above the heavens.

• Man can’t even know Him unless God chooses through revelation to make Himself known.

The problem is that when God did make Himself known,
Man only realized that they could not please Him
Regardless of their efforts.

Read the Law of God.
• “You shall be holy, as I am holy”
• “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind”
• “Love your neighbor as yourself”

Every one of those commands is absolutely impossible.

And thus the closest man ever got to God was the outside of that veil.
• No amount of effort…
• No amount of sacrifices…
• No amount of offerings…

Could ever bring down the veil,
And there was nothing man could do about it.

Man was totally helpless.
And by reason of his sinfulness, was actually at enmity with God.

I think Paul summed it up the best in Ephesians 2
Ephesians 2:1-3 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

Dead in spirit – Desiring sin – Doomed to suffer
HELPLESS

You should really ponder that a while
To help you understand the significance of what is happening here.

We are offensive to God and there is nothing that we can do about it.
We cannot get to Him, and even if we could
We could not appease Him apart from our own death.

The other thing to consider is:
THE LOFTY POSITION OF CHRIST

It had become abundantly clear to man that the only way to be saved
Is if God chose to come and save us.
We certainly couldn’t get to him.

But the cost involved in that decision is unthinkable.

Here is Christ – “very nature God” –
• Exalted above the heavens,
• Continually receiving the glory of the angels
• Doing whatever He pleases.
• Perfectly glorified and perfectly honored.

Asking Him to come into this cesspool is a stretch to say the least.
• Imagine the cost…
• Imagine the hardship…
• Imagine the humiliation…

Again Paul put it pretty good when he wrote:
Philippians 2:6-8 “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

THINK ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

We can sum up the circumstances like this:
Regardless of his efforts man can’t draw near to God,
And because of the humiliation God shouldn’t draw near to man.

Now read verse 7:
(7) “And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

That verse takes on a whole new meaning doesn’t it?

Holy, Infinite, Eternal, Transcendent, Sovereign God
Lowered Himself to the insignificance and humiliation
Of an infant born in a barn.

I’m reminded of the Christmas song Leo has sung a time or two
“How many kings stepped down from their thrones, how many Lords have abandoned their homes, how many greats have become the least for me? And how many gods have poured out their hearts to romance a world that is torn all apart, how many fathers gave up their sons for me?”

There is no doubt that Luke understated the reality.
But when you ponder the reality, it is mind blowing.

IN FACT: It IS actually UNBELIEVABLE.
And that explains why Luke wrote it the way he did.

Luke is writing to an audience that would have a hard time believing
That the God of the universe would relinquish His glory
And subject Himself to humanity.
Luke knows that the story he is telling is going to be subject to
The crowd doubling over, slapping their knee, and saying,
“Bahahaha, you almost had me going there for a second Luke! No way!”

Honestly, that’s the most logical response to the story Luke is telling.
He knows this story is going to come across a little far-fetched.

And that’s why Luke is the perfect person to tell this story.

In fact, Luke is the only person to tell this story.

• Matthew skips from the angelic announcement to Joseph until Jesus is about a
year old and the wise men visit.

• Mark and John don’t discuss it at all.

Only Luke, the historian, takes this story to the world.
And he does so just as a perfect historian would.

He gives you the story,
And then he brings for the witnesses to testify to the truth of it.

It’s written very much with the intent of verifying the facts.

Let’s look at Luke’s account.
#1 THE BIRTH OF JESUS
Luke 2:1-7

I think Luke is actually pretty crafty here:

If this were Matthew, he would have started out by reading from the prophet Micah.

In fact, Matthew quotes Micah in his gospel.
Micah 5:1-5 “Now muster yourselves in troops, daughter of troops; They have laid siege against us; With a rod they will smite the judge of Israel on the cheek. “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity.” Therefore He will give them up until the time When she who is in labor has borne a child. Then the remainder of His brethren Will return to the sons of Israel. And He will arise and shepherd His flock In the strength of the LORD, In the majesty of the name of the LORD His God. And they will remain, Because at that time He will be great To the ends of the earth. This One will be our peace. When the Assyrian invades our land, When he tramples on our citadels, Then we will raise against him Seven shepherds and eight leaders of men.”

That was the Old Testament prophecy that revealed to us
Precisely where the Christ child would be born.

Certainly that is important!
But instead of using the O.T. as an outline and then plugging in stories to fit it, Luke just lays out the story and lets you ponder it.
Luke is subtle, he doesn’t start with an Old Testament prophecy,
Luke starts with a historical event.

Luke puts this story in the context of life.
(1-3) “Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.”

Luke opens his story by calling to mind an event
That the whole world was aware of.

It was the decree from Caesar that the entire Roman Empire be counted
In order that they might be taxed.

He also reveals that “this was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

The indication here is that this is
The first time that the Jews were forced to participate in this census.

And so there was a great migration occurring.
“everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.”

The point being, this wasn’t optional. You had to go.
• It didn’t matter if you had crops in the field…
• It didn’t matter if you had sheep in the pasture…
• It didn’t matter if you had a child in the womb…

So…
(4-5) “Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child.”

Now we have a word for what is occurring here.
It is called PROVIDENCE and it occurs continually throughout history.
• We saw Pharaoh send Abram back to the Promised Land after the famine…
• We saw Nebuchadnezzar determined to destroy Jerusalem…
• We saw Cyrus moved to send the Jews home…

It was and is and always will be God’s sovereign hand behind the scenes
Moving the hearts of men to accomplish His perfect purposes.

Now I’m not saying that Mary and Joseph would have disobeyed God, had He commanded them to go and have this baby in Bethlehem (nothing about them indicates that they were rebellious) but I do know that this census secured the fulfillment of that promise.
God used the desires of Caesar to fulfill the prophet Micah.
This couple is in Bethlehem.

And…
(6-7) “While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

And with that brief statement we have even more prophecy fulfilled.
(Again Luke doesn’t mention it, but if you’ll ponder it, you’ll see)

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.”

Isaiah 9:6 “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

Here among the animals God has entered humanity.
The Holy One became flesh and dwelt among us.

And He was born in absolute HUMILITY
• He had to be wrapped in cloths just like any other baby.
• He was laid down for rest just like any other baby.
• He came in totally humility.

He also came in total OBSCURITY.
• The world which would totally reject Him on the cross reveals its true colors by even rejecting Him at His birth.
• Born among animals and laid in a manger.

We have here the mystery of the incarnation.
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Hebrews 10:5 “Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME;”

• This child has come to live among us.
• This child has come to live a perfectly holy life.
• This child has come to one day bear our sin on the cross.
• This child has come to rise from the dead.
• This child has come to ascend and be a faithful high priest.
• This child has come to return and rule.
It is a big deal!

But as I told you, Luke is a historian,
And he knows that far-fetched tales
Get easily dismissed without a little proof.
So after giving the account of Jesus’ birth, Luke moves on.
#2 THE WITNESSES
Luke 2:8-20

When Matthew spoke of the birth of Jesus, he also had proof of his birth.
• Matthew pointed to the arrival of the magi from east.
• They came for one reason only, they saw a star which guided them.
• That star could have only come from one place.

Luke, however, uses a different witness, he uses shepherds.

Now, let me tell you why shepherds were actually a tremendous witness.

First of all, shepherds were somewhat of an OUTCAST.
One writer called them “The cowboys of ancient Israel”
• In order to protect the sheep, you had to live with the sheep.
• When you live with the sheep, you smell like the sheep.
• What is more, you don’t get a whole lot of social interaction.
• Shepherds were dirty, and distant.
• Some even considered them unclean and irreverent since most of the Sabbath
day requirements were neglected by them being that sheep don’t honor
the Sabbath.

But all of that merely emphasizes the main point.
SHEPHERDS PUT SHEEP ABOVE EVERYTHING.

Above their relationships…
Above their hygiene…
Above their comfort…
Above their reputation…

Shepherds were committed to shepherding.

Remember David recounting his shepherding days?
1 Samuel 17:34-35 “But David said to Saul, “Your servant was tending his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him.”

A hunting male lion – is separated and angry.
If the lion steals one my sheep, I am relieved.
Not a shepherd in Israel, they go after the lion, just as David did.

And at the very least bring part of the sheep home.
Amos 3:12 “Just as the shepherd snatches from the lion’s mouth a couple of legs or a piece of an ear, So will the sons of Israel dwelling in Samaria be snatched away — With the corner of a bed and the cover of a couch!”

They do this in order to prove that
They did everything possible to protect the sheep.

Now, knowing what you know about shepherds…
What are the odds that a group of shepherds just decide to leave their sheep in the fields to come see a baby that is born among animals and laying in a manger?

You got it…
There is no way shepherds are going, unless…

That is what makes these shepherds
Such a perfect material witness for Luke.

Let’s look at what happened.
(8-11) “In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

These shepherds are out focusing on the sheep,
And a sight appears that I promise they were not prepared for.
“an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them”

To say they were “terribly frightened”
Is probably another understatement by Luke.

But the angel quickly calmed their fears by revealing that he was not there on a death mission.
“Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

This is not a moment for trembling, this is a moment for rejoicing.

Why?
Because a “Savior” has been born.

Who is this Savior?
“Christ the Lord”
• “Christ” is a title referencing Him as the Messiah.
• “Lord” is a title revealing His deity.

And primarily He is coming to save.

And in order to explain why these shepherds left their sheep:
(12-14) “This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

Now you realize why God determined to have all those inns full.
God was going to use that manger as the sign of His Son.

And just in case the shepherds are tempted to disregard this one angel, the entire sky lights up with “a multitude of the heavenly host”

Look, earth may have failed to grasp the significance of this event,
But heaven didn’t.
The angels of heaven knew exactly how big this was.

God has just become flesh and is dwelling among man.

This means “Glory to God in the highest”

There’s you a SOLI DEO GLORIA passage!
You certainly aren’t going to give glory to men for His arrival.
God has done this.

Men don’t get glory, men get “peace”
“And on earth peace among me with whom He is pleased.”

• That DOESN’T MEAN that God is pleased with men and that is why He is giving them peace.
• IT MEANS that God’s peace is available to all the men that He is actually pleased with.

And that only happens through this Christ who has just entered the world.

It is actually one of the misconceptions of the Christmas season.
We sing of peace on earth, and goodwill toward men
And people think the goal of Christmas is that we all learn to get along.

That is not at all what the angels were referring to.
Jesus Himself said “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

The peace here is peace with God,
And it is available to all those
Whom this Child makes pleasing to Him.

That is why He is called “a Savior”

And I must say that even that is a term that is now in need of defense.
• Not so many years ago people were content to see Jesus as “a Savior”.
• Many would balk at the notion of “Lord”, but “Savior” was an acceptable title.

But now we have hit the age of post-modernism
Where nobody thinks anybody is even wrong anymore.
And to an arrogant culture like ours,
The very notion of even needing “a Savior” is offensive to most.

• A Savior implies that I am in trouble…
• A Savior implies that I need help…
• And our culture is even rejecting that.

And that is what we’ve been talking about regarding
The necessity of John the Baptist the last few weeks.

• John came to reveal why people needed a Savior.
• John came to confront the arrogant who thought they were fine in their present
condition.

Because those who think they are fine
Reject the very notion of even needing to be saved at all.

I think that is another reason
Why these angels appeared to the shepherds
As opposed to the religious leaders of the day.

These shepherds were foul, dirty, and rejected
(Just like nearly every other person Luke has highlighted so far)
But they knew they needed a Savior.

And that is made abundantly clear in verse 15.
(15-17) “When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.” So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. When they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child.”

What could make a shepherd abandon his sheep?
And there you have your answer; SALVATION

They received news of a Savior.

And when these angels reported of a Savior to them they certainly DIDN’T REPLY, “Get out of here and find someone who needs it!”

They ran to find the Savior,
And they told everybody about what they had just seen.
They were the best possible eye-witnesses a historian could ask for.

AND SO HERE LUKE HAS REVEALED:
• God’s Son had just been born.
• The Holy Creator of the universe just stepped into time,
• The Sovereign King of Heaven has just taken the form of an infant.
GOD IS WITH US.

And the responses?
(18-20) “And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.”

The people on this day responded with:
• Amazement (that’s what “wondered” means)
• Pondering
• Praising

But I guess the question for us is:
HOW WILL WE RESPOND?

Luke simply gives “the exact truth”,
What you do with it is beyond Luke’s control.

I’d like to think that we would also be amazed,
And would ponder this truth and praise God and run to the Savior,
But just know that is not always what happens.

John 1:9-13 “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

John 3:16-21 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

• As I said, Luke isn’t fancy…
• He’s simply a writer of truth…
Pondering and responding is your job.

If you’re looking for a model to follow in your response,
LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THESE SHEPHERDS
Who allowed for nothing to be more important than seeing the Savior.

The Necessity of Faith – Part 1
Hebrews 11:1-7
September 24, 2017

Well, it’s once again time to jump off the dock into the deep end.
Tonight we’re going to begin our look at the 3rd of the 5 SOLAS
Which have come to sum up the Protestant Reformation.

And that doctrine is SOLA FIDE
Namely that we believe that justification comes THROUGH FAITH ALONE.

And of course this 3rd SOLA stands upon the previous two.

We find our basis for this doctrine in SOLA SCRIPTURA
• We don’t follow tradition…
• We don’t follow counsels…
• We don’t yield to experience…
• We don’t bend to logic…

We turn to Scripture Alone, and it is here
Where this doctrine of justification by faith alone comes to us.

This doctrine also stands upon the concept of SOLA GRATIA
• We believe that God saved us apart from any worth or merit or effort of our own.
• We believe salvation to be a monergistic effort by God apart from any contribution on our part.

And if that is true, then salvation can only be by faith alone.

If you add any work to the requirement of faith,
Then obviously salvation can’t be simply by grace,
But rather is becomes an earned reality.

Which of course was Paul’s point in Romans 4
Romans 4:4-5 “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,”

Salvation can only be by grace alone if it is also through faith alone.

The second you add to the requirement of faith
Is the second you lose the reality of grace.
Incidentally, as we will see later, by adding to the requirement of faith
You also lose the sufficiency of Christ.

This was Paul’s very point to the Galatians
Who, in Paul’s mind, had lost the gospel
Because they had lost the idea of salvation through faith alone.

Galatians 5:4 “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.”

Paul was NOT teaching that genuine believers can lose their salvation,
Rather he was talking theologically
About the effects of rejecting the true gospel.

And when you retreat from salvation through faith alone,
Then you also immediately lose the sufficiency of Christ
And the reality of grace.

If you strip the gospel of Faith alone
Then you also strip it of Christ alone and Grace alone.

In short, you lose the gospel and you lose the very possibility of salvation

Obviously then, the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone
IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE.

Luther is quoted as saying:
“The doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls.”

In other words, if you lose this doctrine, you lose the church.
Certainly this is because you lose Christ, you lose grace,
And therefore you lose redemption.

Justification through Faith Alone is a vitally important issue.
It was the main issue of the Protestant Reformation
And it remains the central issue of gospel defense in every debate since.

TONIGHT we begin to look at it, and I don’t mind telling you, I expect that it will take us many weeks to work through.

I think it is important that we begin with A DEFINITION OF THE TERM.

We are talking about FAITH, so the obvious question would be:
WHAT IS FAITH?

If you look it up in the dictionary you may run across definitions like this:
“Complete trust or confidence; firm belief, especially without logical proof”

If you look at the Greek word often translated “faith” in the scripture, it is the word PISTIS which simply means “conviction of the truth of anything; belief”

And of course the Bible defines this term itself:
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The key words of that phrase being “assurance” and “conviction”.
It is simply to believe something to be true,
And often times a belief in something that isn’t actually seen.
And so we are simply talking about belief.

Historic reformed thought has sought to define this issue better,
They have settled over 3 words
That seemed to best portray what they believe is being referred to.

1) NOTITIA – The Latin word for Data or Information (Notes).
It refers to WHAT you believe.
And the idea is that a person must have
The basic information of the elements of the gospel.

A person must know about the person of Christ
And about His substitutionary death.

This is summed up in Paul’s question in Romans 10 when he asks, “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?”

So a person needs the basic data or information of the gospel.

2) ASCENSU – Which is where we get our word for “ascent”,

Meaning they must ascent to the truth that they have heard.

• It is intellectual or cognitive ascent.
• It is to believe that the data is true.
• It is to agree that what you heard about Christ really happened.

Reformed thought has agreed that
You must hear the truth and believe that it is in fact the truth.

Now it is also important to understand that
Reformed thought has also agreed that these first two elements
By themselves do not qualify you to be a Christian,
They merely qualify you to be a demon.

James said it best:
James 2:19 “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.”

The demons certainly have the data
And they certainly know the data is accurate.

They have NOTITIA and they have ASCENSU

3) FIDUCIA – Which means “trust”.

As R.C. Sproul put it, it is to “get it into the bloodstream”
It is not a mere intellectual ascent, or a simple profession,
But is in fact a life based upon that truth.

• It involves the full placement of hope upon it.
• It doesn’t just know it is true, it banks upon it being true.

The main idea is to distinguish between
Faith and a mere profession of faith.

And this is an important distinction,
For it is one that has been lost in many cases.

Over the years there have been many in Evangelical Christianity
Who have adopted what can be called “Decisional Evangelism”.

Which basically is a process by which
We seek to get men to “make a decision” for Christ.

And as we talked about in our conversations of grace,
It really has become a process filled with manipulation and gimmicks.

My dad used to teach a Sunday School class in Wichita Falls, and in that class he had a man who would often make these boisterous claims that if you could just give him 15 minutes in someone’s home he could get them to make a decision for Christ.

By which I must admit if I had to listen to him for 15 minutes, I’d be about willing to consent to just about anything too.

The problem is that there is a great difference between
Faith and merely a profession of faith.

For, while everyone who has faith must profess that faith,
Not everyone who professes faith actually has it.

Listen to Jesus:
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

Or listen to Paul when he writes to Titus:
Titus 1:16 “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”

I think you get the idea, In fact many of you (like myself) have testimony of how many years you spent with only a profession of faith and no actual faith to support it.

When we talk about being justified by faith,
We are not saying that man is justified by a profession of faith,
We are saying that man is justified by faith.
This is also why we often times qualify this statement
By referring to faith as “saving faith”.

We seek to distinguish between those who actually trust Christ
And those who merely have an intellectual agreement with Him.
Both have faith, only one has faith that saves.

We are saying that saving faith is when a person
Has the facts of the gospel, intellectually agrees with those facts,
And then places his/her trust upon them as true.

And our Scriptural belief is that
When a human being places this faith in the work of Christ
That God grants this person salvation apart from any other work.

NOW THAT IS WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

But there are several areas that I think need to be discussed.

And we are going to begin this study with the first 7 verses of Hebrews 11.
We are talking about THE NECESSITY OF FAITH

(Read Hebrews 11:1-7)

You know the context.
• The Hebrews were a group of Jews who had professed faith in Jesus and they had done so at great cost.
• They had been imprisoned, they had their property seized, they faced public humiliation, etc.
• However, instead of getting better, things have gotten worse.
• And some of them are contemplating denouncing Jesus and returning to Judaism.

The point of the whole book is why they shouldn’t.
The writer is now writing to them asking them to exercise their faith.

Hebrews 10:36-39 “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. FOR YET IN A VERY LITTLE WHILE, HE WHO IS COMING WILL COME, AND WILL NOT DELAY. BUT MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH; AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”

You have to endure, you have to have faith.

Chapter 11 then is the writer’s great illustration.

He just talked about the importance of faith
And now he will give some unmistakable examples of that faith.

I don’t plan for us to cover this entire chapter, but I do want to make sure you understand some of the MAIN THEMES of the chapter..

One of the most obvious is the theme of “FAITH & WORKS”
Every single person listed in this chapter
Has works that validate their faith.

There is no doubting the validity of their faith
Because what they did clearly backs it up.

“Abel offered” “Noah built” “Abraham obeyed” “Jacob blessed” “Moses refused” and so on and so forth.

None of them try to show you faith without works.
Their faith is evident by their works
And that is an obvious theme throughout the chapter.

Another obvious theme is that of “SEEN VS. UNSEEN”

The writer will start by saying, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”

So obviously believing without seeing is important.
And that’s good because most of the people in this chapter
Never saw what they believed.

• (7) Noah was warned “about things not yet seen”
• (8) Abraham was called to move “not knowing where he was going”

And yet while these people couldn’t see how it was going to work,
The writer always focuses on what they did see.

• (13) The saw the promises “having seen them and having welcomed them
from a distance”
• (23) Moses parents could see that Moses “was a beautiful child”
• (26) Moses was “looking to the reward”
• (27) Moses was “seeing Him who is unseen”

The contrast is obvious throughout the chapter.
These men didn’t see with human eyes, they saw with eyes of faith.

And the other major theme he continually brings up is “RECEIVED VS. NOT RECEIVED”

He continually makes the point that these people received the promises,
But they did not receive what was promised.

(13) “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

(39) “And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised,”

That means that these people believed,
Not based on God’s performance, but based on God’s promise.

That’s big.
Their faith endured even when things
Weren’t working out as they had hoped.

Now, they may not have received what was promised,
But because of their unwavering faith, they did receive God’s favor

• All throughout the first 7 verses we see those who “obtained” a good
testimony from God.
• We see Noah who “became an heir of the righteousness which is
according to faith”
• We see in (16) “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a
heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their
God; for He has prepared a city for them.”

AND SO YOU GET THE POINT.

The faith of these people might not have changed their circumstances,
But it did change their lives & it changed the way God thought about them

And that leads us to the text we are looking at tonight where we learn about THE NECESSITY OF FAITH.

And we say that faith is necessary,
Because it is the only thing God accepts.
And it is through this faith that we obtain God’s favor.

So let’s look at these 7 verses
(two points)
#1 THE NATURE OF FAITH
Hebrews 11:1-5

What you will find here are two basic theological truths about faith
And then two basic illustrations to support each truth.

The first truth is very simply WHAT FAITH IS
(which we talked about some, but let’s see the Bible’s explanation)

(1) “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

This verse reveals both a CAUSE and an EFFECT of faith.

First, we recognize the constant in both statements
And that is that there is something that is only “hoped for”
And that is because it is “not seen”

I mean, if you had it, you wouldn’t be hoping for it.
Romans 8:24 “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?”

So we are dealing with a person who has a hope,
But a hope that is thus far unrealized.

It would be like our hope of eternal life.
It would be like Abraham’s hope for the Promised Land.
It is hoped for, but not yet fully realized.

What the writer is telling us is that there is a certain way
God desires for us to respond to our unrealized hope.

THAT RESPONSE IS FAITH.
Why?

• Because faith “is the assurance of things hoped for”
• And faith is “the conviction of things not seen”

Now what you need to realize is that
The writer here speaks of these two realities,
But he does so in reverse order of the way they occur a person’s life.

Let me explain.
The obvious FIRST STEP is that man hopes for what he does not see.
At this point he has to make a decision in his heart.

He will either choose to believe that his hope will occur,
Or he will choose to believe that it will not.
Those are his only two options.

The person of faith obviously chooses to believe.

Now the Greek word for “conviction” is a word
That literally means “to prove with a test”

It carries the idea of a person testing something
In order to see if it will work or not.

And once the test is completed this person
Will be convinced one way or the other.

Obviously our person of faith has run his test
And is convinced that even though he can’t see something, it is still real.

He is convinced of things he can’t see.
He has “the conviction of things not seen.”

Paul said:
Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That statement reflects a person convinced of what he can’t see.

The question is what did he test that caused him to be so convinced?

And there is only one thing he could have tested and that is God.
(when we’re dealing with a promise, all we can test is the one who gives it)

God made the promise that it’s real even though he couldn’t see it.
So a person has to test and see if they think God is believable.

They have to determine IF they believe God can do what He said.
And IF they believe that God does keep His word.
(Testing God’s ability & Testing God’s integrity)

Incidentally Paul believed the answer was “yes” on both counts,
And that explains Paul’s conviction of things that he can’t see.

He told Timothy:
2 Timothy 1:12 “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”

It is also the conviction of Abraham:
Romans 4:18-22 “In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “SO SHALL YOUR DESCENDANTS BE.” Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore IT WAS ALSO CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

It is the same thing we are dealing with here.

God has made promises.
• Promises of an eternal home
• Promises of forgiveness through Christ
• Promises of security in Jesus

But at the very core, they are still just promises from God.
You have to decide whether or not you find God to be dependable.

The men of faith said He was.
Paul said He was.
So they had “the conviction of things not seen.”

They believed God’s word and were convinced it was true,
Even though they couldn’t see it.

And the ILLUSTRATION that the writer would use is found in verse 3.
“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

The Jews he was writing to certainly believed that
God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing.
They believed God spoke the world into creation.

Why would they believe that?
• Were they present at creation?
• Did they see nothing become something?

No, but God said that is what happened (Genesis 1)
And every Jew this writer was writing to fully believed it.

They had no visual proof they could see,
But simply because they had believed God’s word,
They had a “conviction of things not seen.”

(that’s a basic illustration of the faith the writer is talking about)

This conviction then led to “the assurance of things hoped for”

Conviction comes first and then assurance.
The word for “assurance” here literally means “a standing under”
It is a word used of a “support” or something “steady”
It would be like a beam or the trusses that hold up this roof.

Hence it is a word that spoke of assurance and ultimately security.

Because we are convinced that God does things;
(Even things that we can’t see,)
We have an assurance that He will also do the things we hope for.

So…
• A man hopes but does not see
• He chooses to believe anyway based upon God’s character and promises
• That conviction then becomes an assurance that steadies him and guides him
and protects him.

It is like the writer said at the end of chapter 10.
We are “those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”

THAT IS WHAT FAITH IS.
It is choosing to believe what you can’t see
Simply because you trust the One who told you it’s there.
It is then having assurance that you will receive what you hope for
Regardless of how bleak the circumstances may appear.

John MacArthur described it like this, “Faith is living in a hope that is so real that it gives absolute assurance.”
(Hebrews commentary, pg. 287)

SO FAITH STARTS AS CONVICTION AND ENDS UP AS ASSURANCE.

And honestly, that alone makes it a pretty good thing.
Assurance is a wonderful reality.

BUT THAT ISN’T EVEN THE MAIN BENEFIT OF FAITH.
You see what it is,
The writer also wants you to understand WHAT IT DOES

(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval”

“gained approval” translates MARTUREO
And it literally means “to be well testified of”

It’s a word the writer uses several times.

For Abel the same word is translated in verse 4 as, “obtained the testimony”
For Enoch the same word is translated in verse 5 as, “obtained the witness”

And the point the writer is making is that when men gave faith to God,
They received His approval.
It is the doctrine of “Justification by Faith”

(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval.”
It was by faith that the men of old received a good testimony from God.

In short, man was and is and always will be justified by faith alone.
Romans 3:19-24 “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;”

Romans 3:25 “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;”

Romans 4:1-5 “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,”

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Galatians 3:6-9 “Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”

We are talking about SOLA FIDE – “faith alone”
It is what God desires
It is what God expects
It is the only currency God accepts

When man gives this faith described in verse 1 to God,
God responds by declaring that person righteous.

This reality has been a universal and timeless reality.
It is true of those who lived in the Old Testament
And it is certainly true of those who lived in New Testament times.

And the writer makes that truth inescapably clear.
(2) “For by it the men of old gained approval.”

Now next the writer will give you a couple of examples,
Which we can’t do justice to in our time tonight.

What I want you to understand tonight before we go home is that
No one was ever saved (not in the Old Testament, not in the New Testament) any other way than by faith.

It’s not as though in the Old Testament God saved people by works
And in the New Testament He switched to faith.

That was never the case.
It was always faith.

“For by it the men of old gained approval.”

This is so repeatedly made clear in the number of times which God rebukes Israel for their pathetic sacrifices and tells them to stop bringing them.

We read those texts over and over and over from the prophets; “bring your worthless sacrifices no longer”.

Now why would God command those sacrifices and then tell them they were worthless and to quit bringing them?

Because they weren’t bringing them in faith.

Listen to Paul:
Romans 9:30-33 “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”

Listen to the writer of Hebrews:
Hebrews 4:1-2 “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”

Faith is all that God has ever accepted,
And if you try to go through some action without it,
It will not be acceptable to God.

Our point is that FAITH IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
And we’ll continue on with this next time.

What Is God Doing? – Part 2
Luke 1:57-80
September 24, 2017

It is a little regrettable how the time fell for our study of this particular text.
With our Disciple Now falling last weekend, it has caused us to have to wait two weeks to finish this text, and that is tough because it is a pretty complex passage.

This morning, let’s see if we can’t quickly get our minds back into focus
So that we can accurately grasp the rest of this passage.

We have moved forward in Luke’s gospel.
• We’ve had the birth announcements
• We’ve had a baby shower

Now it’s time to see the birth of these two babies.
• The first is John the Baptist
• The second is Jesus the Christ

And when we broke down this text two weeks ago
We did so into two main points.

#1 THE QUESTION
Luke 1:57-66

While looking at the question we merely saw that
God had done a lot of peculiar things in and around the birth of John.

• It started with an angelic messenger (hadn’t happened in over 400 years)
• Next came the deafness and muteness of Zacharias
• Then came the near impossible pregnancy of Elizabeth
• Then came the bizarre naming of John
• Then came the miraculous healing of Zacharias

All of those things were uncommon to say the least,
And they all culminated in a social stir
That was sweeping across the country side.

In fact, we read in verse 66 the question:
(66) “All who heard them kept them in mind, saying, “What then will this child turn out to be?” For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him.”

In a specific sense the people wanted to know
The particulars about this new baby John.

But in reality the question was much larger than that.
Their question was: WHAT IS GOD DOING?

These people had just endured a PERIOD OF SILENCE
That had lasted over 400 years.

• No new revelation
• No angelic visions
• No prophetic announcements

The Old Testament closed with the promise of a coming Messiah and a forerunner to go before Him and then the people waited.

Now, we also noted that while the vast majority of Jews in that day
Had grown legalistic and apathetic in regard to the things of God,
THERE WAS A SMALL FAITHFUL REMNANT WHICH REMAINED.

• This remnant was those who feared the Lord.
• This remnant was the humble; those who were poor in spirit.
• Those who epitomized the attitude of that 106th Psalm we read.

Remember that Psalm?
It is where the Psalmist outlined the continual sinfulness and rebellion of Israel and then said:

Psalms 106:6 “We have sinned like our fathers, We have committed iniquity, we have behaved wickedly.”

That Psalm was written by a man
Who saw the continual rebellion of his ancestors.

But he also saw that regardless of the degree of their rebellion God never failed to show mercy when they humbled themselves before Him.

And this Psalmist, understanding his own wickedness,
Is now pleading for that same mercy.

Psalms 106:47 “Save us, O LORD our God, And gather us from among the nations, To give thanks to Your holy name And glory in Your praise.”

And we said that this Psalm could have been the battle cry
For that faithful remnant that was currently living in Israel.

Here they were Jews, living under Roman oppression, enduring the silence of God, and waiting for the promised Messiah.
Psalms 106 had become the battle cry of this small faithful remnant.

We know that because it is from that Psalm that Zacharias quoted in his answer.

SO… you have hear a group of humble, God-fearing Jews, who are seeking God, and when they see the peculiar events surrounding the birth of John they can’t help but ask: WHAT IS GOD UP TO?

What is God doing?
Their anticipation is at an all-time high.

The Question
#2 THE ANSWER
Luke 1:67-80

And we started this portion, but we didn’t finish.
If you will remember, we talked about how
A person could give quite a detailed outline to this answer if he wanted to.

In Zacharias’ response we have
• A General Answer (to the question, “What is God doing?”)
• A Specific Answer (to the question, “What then will this child turn out to be?”)

We began looking at the general answer.

And in that general answer we noted that Zacharias changed tenses as he answered.
• He started in the past tense (67-71)
• He moved to the present tense (72-75)

Zacharias wanted the people to know that it wasn’t just what God was going to do, but that God had in fact already been at work.

“He has visited us”
• This of course references those two angelic messengers.

“He has…accomplished redemption for His people”
• This of course references the conception of the Christ and God’s intention to save His people from their sins.

“He…has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant – as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old – Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.”
• And again, Zacharias references that in sending this Christ Child, God is sending the One the prophets spoke of.

He is sending that powerful “horn” who will sit on David’s thrown,
And will deliver us from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Which of course was the plea of Psalms 106.

So the people wanted to know what God was doing, and the first thing Zacharias says is, “Let me tell you what He has already done!”
• He has visited us
• He has redeemed us
• He has raised up our Savior
• He has fulfilled His promises

In short, God has started the process of salvation!

And we saw all of that last time.
THIS MORNING we move forward as Zacharias has more to reveal.
We saw the past tense, now we move into the present.

NOW WE SEE WHAT GOD IS DOING.

(72-75) “To show mercy toward our fathers, And to remember His holy covenant, The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”

And again if we simply want to follow the verbs,
We can identify it pretty quickly.

He is:
• SHOWING (72) “To show mercy toward our fathers”
• REMEMBERING (72-73) “to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father.”
• GRANTING (74) “to grant us that we, being rescued…might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness”

Let’s look at the first.

(72) “To show mercy toward our fathers”

What Zacharias is referring to here are those promises
That God had made through the mouth of His prophets.

God had promised to raise up a horn of salvation
Who would save us from our enemies (Psalms 106)
And Zacharias recognized that that was a merciful promise.

WHY?
Because we read Psalm 106 and we saw how wicked Israel was.
We saw their rebellion.

Things like:
• Grumbling at the Red Sea
• The Rebellion of the Golden Calf
• The Complaining at the waters of Meribah
• The Moabite rebellion and affair
• The Refusal to enter the Promised Land
• The Refusal to cleanse the Promised Land

One thing I know is that
If God did decide to remember His covenant with the “fathers”
It wouldn’t be done out of obligation, it would be pure mercy.

And that is what Zacharias point out.
GOD WAS BEING MERCIFUL
God was Hosea, welcoming back His wayward wife Gomer.

And this mercy, was clearly seen in that second verb.
“And to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father,”

And surely you remember that promise.
It was THE promise as far as all Israel was concerned.

Genesis 12:2-3 “And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Genesis 13:14-16 “The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered.”

Genesis 14:19-20 “He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Genesis 15:5 “And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

And of course it was there that God struck a covenant with Abram.
• It was the promise that Abraham’s descendants would always be God’s chosen people.
• It was the promise that He would never leave them or forsake them, but would always be present to rescue and deliver them.

And now according to Zacharias, God was honoring that promise.
God was remaining faithful to His word.

He didn’t have to, but He chose to.
In His mercy, He was choosing to go ahead
And honor the promise He made to Abraham.

And the consequences of that promise are what is seen next.

(74-75) “To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies,
Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”

This is specifically what Zacharias sees being fulfilled.

For all those who had the desire to serve God in holiness,
They should rejoice, for God is granting that promise.

And I think that is important to understand.

I think this is one of the reasons Luke includes this passage
Where other gospel writers don’t.

AGAIN, Luke is all about revealing these “poor in spirit” people
As he reveals the type of people that God accepts
And the type of people that God uses.

DO YOU SEE THE DESIRE THESE “poor in spirit” PEOPLE HAVE?

Zacharias DIDN’T say: “Finally, One is coming who will grant that we can once again be the preeminent nation in the world! We can finally get out of this cesspool! Prosperity is on it’s way!”

That wasn’t what Zacharias wanted.
His economic state was not what grieved him most in life.

WHAT DID ZACHARIAS WANT?
He wanted to be able to better serve God.

Specifically, he wanted to be able to serve God “without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”

That is to say:
• He wanted to serve God CONFIDENTLY (without fear)
• He wanted to serve God PERFECTLY (in holiness and righteousness)
• He wanted to serve God ETERNALLY (all our days)

LUKE IS MAKING SURE YOU UNDERSTAND
THE HEART DESIRE OF THE POOR IN SPIRIT.

For all those who just wanted deliverance from Rome,
Jesus was not going to be what they wanted.

But for those whose sole desire was to “serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him” Jesus was going to be exactly what they wanted.

AND THAT IS A GREAT REMINDER TO US ALL.
In a world that tends to look upon Jesus as more of a cosmic genie who grants wishes and fulfills desires,
You certainly need to understand what He came to do.

He came to make men holy
That they might serve God without fear forever.

Think about it.
All they ever knew of God was fear.

Do you remember the picture on Sinai?
The earthquake, the fire, the smoke…

Do you remember what happened when someone touched the Ark of the Covenant?

Do you remember what happened if someone tried to enter inside the veil?

If you learned nothing of God in the O.T., you learned to fear Him.
It was a steady diet of you’d better not mess up or else!

And consider a priest like Zacharias.
Here was a man whose very livelihood was to serve God in His temple.

Do you think he had much fear involved when he would embark upon that service?

Do you think he had heard of Hophni and Phineas and how fire from the altar had devoured them?

Zacharias served the Lord, but I promise he didn’t do it without fear.
Because he was not acceptable to God as he was.

And yet, Zacharias knew that God was sending One
Who would make him holy and who would make him righteous
And who would make him acceptable
So that he could serve God without fear.

SO DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY THEY WERE EXCITED TO HAVE JESUS?
• It wasn’t so they could get rich…
• It wasn’t so they could get healed…
• It wasn’t so they could go to heaven…
• It wasn’t so they could have good days…

Zacharias was excited because God was sending the One
Who would equip him to serve God better.

Jesus makes us acceptable to the Father.
Jesus allows us to serve God perfectly.

Is that not what Paul said in Romans 12 after outlining for us the redemption that was found in Jesus?
Romans 12:1 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

Can you see that Zacharias was saying the same thing?
God has been merciful to us
God is making a way for us to serve Him better
So when these people ask what God is doing,
Zacharias first gives them a general answer.

He is sending the Savior who will allow us
To serve God without fear and in holiness, just like He said!

Now that was the general answer.
LET’S LOOK AT THE SPECIFIC ANSWER.

The specific question was:
(66) “What then will this child turn out to be?”

Well, here is the answer to that specific question.
(76-79) “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; For you will go on BEFORE THE LORD TO PREPARE HIS WAYS; To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins, Because of the tender mercy of our God, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, TO SHINE UPON THOSE WHO SIT IN DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH, To guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Now first, let me direct your attention to verses 78-79, because in those verses Zacharias once again speaks of the blessing of the coming Messiah.

Because of the mercy of God, “the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

There Zacharias gives us three people with 3 kinds of problems.

• We have IGNORANT PEOPLE who “sit in darkness” which is to say they don’t know.
• We have HOPELESS PEOPLE who sit in “the shadow of death” where there is no hope.
• We have LOST PEOPLE who don’t know where they are headed and who need someone to “guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And the Messiah is going to accomplish all of that.
• He is going to be truth to the ignorant.
• He is going to be hope to the hopeless.
• He is going to be direction to the lost.

In other words, He is going to be LIGHT

Now the other gospel writers certainly picked up on that analogy.
Matthew 4:12-16 “Now when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI, BY THE WAY OF THE SEA, BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES — “THE PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN DARKNESS SAW A GREAT LIGHT, AND THOSE WHO WERE SITTING IN THE LAND AND SHADOW OF DEATH, UPON THEM A LIGHT DAWNED.”

John 1:9 “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.”

John 8:12 “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

That is a popular analogy regarding Jesus.

But REMEMBER, Luke is seeking to show you how Jesus is the expected One by linking His coming to the Old Testament.

So when Luke talks about Jesus as the light, he refers to Him as “the Sunrise from on high”

Malachi 4:1-2 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”

Specifically, Jesus is that “sun of righteousness”
Who is coming to those “who fear My name”.

• For all of those people who walk in fear of God and have no peace because they know that they are unworthy to stand before Him.

• For all of those people who have wandered in the darkness seeking to know more of God in His silence.

• For all of those people who have seen the utter hopelessness in all their efforts and attempts to be pleasing.

Zacharias wants you to know that God is sending the One
Who will bring light into the darkness.

He will give you truth
He will give you hope
He will give you peace

And certainly everyone should be excited for the coming of such a one.

But again, the problem is that not everyone is ready for Him.

And that brings us to the purpose of this baby.
(76-77) “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; For you will go on BEFORE THE LORD TO PREPARE HIS WAYS; To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins,”

So now we finally get to the specific answer of the question.
• What is up with this child?
• What is God doing through him?

First look at who he is.
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High”

He is not called “a prophet”, but “the prophet”

He is a specific character in the plan,
Not just one of many whom God will use.

This is the one Malachi spoke of.
Malachi 4:5-6 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”

This is the one coming before that Savior.

And again, I remind you that the presence of John the Baptist overwhelmingly teaches us 1 thing.

YOU, AS YOU ARE, ARE NOT FIT TO APPROACH JESUS

It has been a reoccurring theme especially in contemporary Christian music to sort of play this card that you come to Jesus “just as you are”.

It is this idea that there is no change needed at all, you can just approach Jesus and He will accept you in whatever state.

I think I’d like to clarify that.
Because if that were true, then there was no need for John the Baptist.

Zacharias was clear here about the purpose of John.
“For you will go on BEFORE THE LORD, TO PREPARE HIS WAYS; To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins.”

John had to primary jobs.
1) To PREPARE the way for the Lord.
2) To PROCLAIM salvation through forgiveness.

Now, if people were already acceptable, “just as they are”,
• Then why did Malachi warn that no one would be able to endure His coming?
• And why did God send John the Baptist to “prepare His ways”?
• And why did people need to first repent?

Are you following me here?

Here is the reality, Jesus accepts sinners.
Even filthy, rotten, vile, unthinkable sinners
In fact, He has to, because that’s what everyone is.

He’s the only One who can transform sinners and makes them righteous.
So no amount of sin disqualifies a person
From being able to approach Jesus.

But let me emphatically tell you who is NOT acceptable to Jesus.
THOSE WHO LOVE THEIR SIN.

Sinners have always been welcome to Jesus,
Those who love their sin are not.

Do you remember the beatitudes?
Matthew 5:3-6 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

These were the type of people who were acceptable to Jesus.
• It wasn’t sinless people, it was people who mourned over their sin.
• It wasn’t righteous people, it was people who longed for righteousness.
• It wasn’t good people, it was submissive people.
• It wasn’t religious people, it was humble people.

What “come just as you are” means is that
You can come in your filthy sinful state
So long as you are humble, and meek, and you hate your sin
And you hunger for righteousness.

But those who refuse to come like that cannot come to Jesus.
In fact Malachi said they would not be able to endure His coming.

And that isn’t some isolated verse.
John 3:19-21 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

John 8:21 “Then He said again to them, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.”

The idea there is that they were unwilling to part with their sin in this life,
And in such a state they were not able to come to Jesus.

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

Religious works are not a substitute for humility and repentance.

Do you understand what we are saying?
You are welcome to come to Jesus,
But not if you want to keep your sin when you come.

That was the very purpose and reason for John the Baptist.

He came to “PREPARE HIS WAYS”
• That is, he came to expose the sin of the people and lead them to repentance
that they might be humble and ready for Christ.

He came to give them “the knowledge of salvation”
• That is, John pushed them to Jesus.

• John didn’t come to make you acceptable to God, only Jesus
could do that.
• John didn’t come to try and make Jesus acceptable to you.
• JOHN CAME TO MAKE SURE YOU WERE READY FOR JESUS.

He came to show you your sin and show you your condemnation.
He came to break your pride, and expose your darkness.

So that on the day when this Messiah would walk by
John could then emphatically say,
“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

And you would desire Him!

What is God doing?
What will this child grow up to be?

• God has visited us, He has accomplished redemption for us, He has raised up a Savior for us from the line of David just like He promised to all the descendants of Abraham.

• This Savior will make us righteous and holy and able to serve God without fear. He will be light in the midst of darkness and will give us hope and guide us to peace.

• And in order to make us ready for Him, God has first sent John, who will proclaim the truth, and confront our sin so that we will be ready for this coming Savior.

(80) “And the child continued to grow and to become strong in spirit, and he lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance to Israel.”

And with that friend let me encourage you.
Christ is the One who can equip you to serve God without fear,
But don’t assume you can come to Him will clinging to all your sin.

Repent of your sin, approach Him in humility,
And He will equip you to serve God.