SPEAKER_01: Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_01: You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, choir and congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love that song?
SPEAKER_00: That is my favorite Christmas hymn.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to tell you what my favorite Christmas song is because it wouldn't bless you, but that is my favorite Christmas hymn, right?
SPEAKER_00: We love music at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: We love eating at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: We love all the things at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: We really love talking about Jesus at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it is an incredible thing to think about Christmas and music and how music is so inextricably linked in Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: And all of these people are singing about the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: People who don't know Jesus, don't know anything about, they're still singing about the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God's done this incredible thing to tie music into Christmas time to point out Jesus and call people to him.
SPEAKER_00: We had a fun thing the last two weeks we've been watching.
SPEAKER_00: In preparation for the Christmas program last week, we had some professionals come in and do some maintenance and some long deferred maintenance on the organ.
SPEAKER_00: We were tuning the organ, repairing some pipes, doing some things like that.
SPEAKER_00: And in that journey, Dave and Jacob and a couple guys, they they posted a little video on Instagram of the lady tuning the organ.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have seen that?
SPEAKER_00: Look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: That has gone viral around the world.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, as of this morning, over 168,000 people around the world have watched the World Famous Now, First Baptist organ.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Brother Richard, our world famous organ master, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: On all of the hits on all of our social media platforms, it's over 175,000 people who are watching the First Baptist Church organ be uh be tuned.
SPEAKER_00: Is that incredible?
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden we see all these other things hitting and moving and all that kind of a deal.
SPEAKER_00: It's just awesome what God does at Christmas time and how music creates those times, which is the perfect reason, it's the perfect time why it's so good for us to start this journey of Discover Jesus, because right now, Jesus is on everybody's mind and heart.
SPEAKER_00: It is in all of their Spotify and Pandora playlists, it's on television, it's in the movies, it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is everywhere, and so it is the perfect time for us to start this series, uh, Discover Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what we're going to do is we're going to start today, and we're going to walk through the life and history of Jesus and the Gospels from now until the crucifixion and the resurrection on Easter Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll walk through this and we'll do a number of things, and so we're very excited about this opportunity, about sharing and walking through this journey together.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're also going to start in conjunction with this kind of a fun new thing.
SPEAKER_00: Every month, uh, I'll have a pastor's suggested reading book for you.
SPEAKER_00: This month, we're going to start with one as a similar title, Discover Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is written by Loveworth Finding and the folks who are in Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Adrian Rogers' ministry and what they've done.
SPEAKER_00: This is a fascinating book.
SPEAKER_00: They've taken all messages and time all throughout the length of scripture and how Jesus is all throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Prophecies, birth, death, resurrection, revelation.
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible tool.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great devotional guide for you to kind of read during the holidays.
SPEAKER_00: It's also a great book to give to someone who may not know Jesus or maybe have been far away from him.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see copies of it out in the uh the library area right off the lobby, and we have the links on there where you can buy it from Amazon or wherever you do that.
SPEAKER_00: So we just have a couple copies out there for you to check it out, but I encourage you to read that.
SPEAKER_00: And then next month we have an apologetics book about Scripture and the Gospels and Jesus that we'll so each month we'll have a book that we'll add to just suggest to kind of go along with some of the things we're doing in the Discover Jesus series.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we go about this series and we begin this, you have to begin with this question.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Now, to some folks who've been in church for a long time, that seems like a very simple question.
SPEAKER_00: But what I'd like to do is change your paradigm and your understanding because of the world that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: For some folks, it may seem like a simple question, but what we need to understand is it is a fundamental question.
SPEAKER_00: This is literally the most important question that anyone will ever deal with in their lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: A fundamental learning of the actual truth of who Jesus is, because again, not just Christmas time, our culture is searching, and all of a sudden, we're in a time now where everyone is putting out things about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the examples of things you may have seen, they come on television, Instagram, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: You may have seen the TV commercial series called Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And that is a group of people who are believers and they're trying to introduce Jesus to a lost world.
SPEAKER_00: You also have the Catholic Church has put out a series of commercials where uh it's called Hollow, and they have an app that's a prayer deal, and you may have seen that.
SPEAKER_00: And they're making no bones about calling people to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's a recent one I just saw from the actor who plays Jesus in the TV series The Chosen.
SPEAKER_00: And he's at a uh family gathering, clearly a family gathering, and he stops and tells people, hey, listen, Christmas is about Jesus, so enjoy all that.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't want you to, you may have seen that.
SPEAKER_00: And then it's interesting to have him because he's playing Jesus in this series, The Chosen.
SPEAKER_00: We're multiple seasons in now.
SPEAKER_00: They show the kickoff to the new seasons in movie theaters.
SPEAKER_00: People are talking about it.
SPEAKER_00: People come ask me all the time as a pastor what I think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Is it biblically accurate?
SPEAKER_00: Did that really happen?
SPEAKER_00: All those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Fox Nation is now started a faith uh lane in their uh channel and their um complement of channels, and they have a G uh a movie about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're advertising.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, Crown of Thorns.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is represented in another series on Fox Nation that's been done by Martin Scorsese about the saints who are recognized as saints in the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: And John the Baptist is one of those, and there are portrayals and images of Jesus in that.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you turn, there are people who are presenting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying, This is Jesus, or they're calling you to learn about a Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole line of liberal theologians in our culture today who are attacking the historicity of Jesus or the historicity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: You also will recognize in our culture that as generations are moving forward and are aging, we have generations now, uh generation uh Gen Z, what they call, and the one that comes after that, they in all kinds of surveys about culture describe themselves as spiritual, as searching, as having a spiritual consciousness, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it means they're searching, but you are also dealing with generations that are multiple generations of unchurched culture and people who are not in church.
SPEAKER_00: So now you have people who have validated the idea of spirituality but don't understand the fundamental truth of Jesus Christ, and that there really is nothing spiritual outside of the truth of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus came, lived a sinless life, died on the cross, rose again, conquering death and sin to accomplish the gospel and to offer us salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Bible sales are up in younger generations.
SPEAKER_00: They are searching and asking questions.
SPEAKER_00: So there is no better time for us to step into this fundamental question of who is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no better time than at Christmas time to begin that, because literally, fundamentally, Christmas and Easter are inextricably linked.
SPEAKER_00: Without Christmas, there literally is no Easter.
SPEAKER_00: And without Easter, there is no reason for Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: They are the chapter one and the final chapter of the same book and story.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is identified as the promised Messiah from the Old Testament, who was identified as the Messiah, who was born after being conceived miraculously by a virgin girl named Mary.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is then born as a human, lives a sinless life, and then voluntarily allows himself to be executed on the cross so that he can go and die a human death to pay the price for human sin.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus rose again on the third day, what we celebrate is Easter, conquering death and sin, and that is who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: And Easter and Christmas are wedded together as the first and last chapter of the same book and the same truth.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot understand who Jesus is outside of the bookends of Christmas and Easter.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot understand a moment in the life of Jesus without understanding the fundamental truth of Christmas and Easter.
SPEAKER_00: And they all define the purpose of Jesus and the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You get these questions all the time about, yeah, there's enough, if you've read enough books and studied enough history, you understand that most historical scholars will acknowledge, at least, that there was a historical man named Jesus who lived in the times of Bible times and did a number of things described in the Gospels and had a whole conflict surrounding him about dying and whether he resurrected or not.
SPEAKER_00: That is basically an incontrovertible fact of history.
SPEAKER_00: But then you have people step back from that and they try to shade that and then describe and discuss Jesus as a moral teacher, as a rabbi, as a, you know, whatever, and all this other stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's why we have to understand that who is Jesus is not a simple question, it is a fundamental question.
SPEAKER_00: It is the foundation of the gospel for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, what I want to do is show you from Scripture some incredible parallels that God has built into Christmas and Easter that show they are one in the same in the sense of they are the first chapter and the last chapter of the same journey.
SPEAKER_00: They are inextricably linked.
SPEAKER_00: God worked miraculously and sovereignly in the details of both Christmas and of Easter, what we would refer to as Easter, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He put his thumbprint on both of those events and created incredible similarities so that we would understand we are dealing with one journey: the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus as the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot separate them.
SPEAKER_00: They both identify Jesus as the Savior and answer the question, who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: For the scripture passage that I want to give you today, this is a little bit normal, different than what I normally do.
SPEAKER_00: We will normally turn in our Bibles to a specific passage and work that one.
SPEAKER_00: But today I want you to turn to John 3.16.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to see from Jesus' words who he says that he is.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to see from this scripture and some others that I will show you today from God's Word, that Christmas and Easter are the same journey, and they are the bookends of describing the person of Jesus and answering the question, who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Here in this story, a man comes and he is asking a very existential, fundamental question.
SPEAKER_00: How do I inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: What happens to us when we die?
SPEAKER_00: How do I understand eternity?
SPEAKER_00: What does all this mean?
SPEAKER_00: He comes and he asks Jesus that question, and Jesus states very clearly who he is and the purpose of God in who he made Jesus to be.
SPEAKER_00: We know this verse, it is familiar, but again, do not let the simplicity of the verse distract us from the fundamental nature of the verse.
SPEAKER_00: For God loved the world in this way.
SPEAKER_00: The version that many of us memorized as children says, for God so loved the world.
SPEAKER_00: He gave his one and only Son.
SPEAKER_00: That is the miraculous birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The process of how Jesus was born so that he could be our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: He gave his one and only Son, Christmas, so that everyone who believes in Jesus will not perish, but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Easter, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was given and sent to us in a particular and specific way.
SPEAKER_00: He was miraculously conceived by a virgin in response to prophecy, so that he would not have the sin nature of man, but he was born so he would be a human being and a man, because a human being is required to pay the price for human beings' sin.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus became a human miraculously through the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: He gave his one and only Son.
SPEAKER_00: If you think about what the angels spoke to the shepherds in the field in Luke chapter 2, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior.
SPEAKER_00: He gave his one and only Son.
SPEAKER_00: So that everyone who believes in him, the purpose of salvation, will not perish but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: His death had no sin attached to it, so his death could serve as a substitute for ours.
SPEAKER_00: It is literally Jesus, because of the purposes of God for the gospel, taking our punishment on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The punishment for sin.
SPEAKER_00: He rose again, offering salvation and life to those who would place their faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus says it this way because he is answering the question how do I inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: You inherit it by trusting in the gospel and the purpose of God in the person of Jesus Christ as defined equally by Christmas and by Easter.
SPEAKER_00: So let me give you some parallels this morning to help you see and help us create the framework to answer this fundamental question of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Now, God's clear purpose for Jesus is defined in so many ways in making these two events the same.
SPEAKER_00: But the most fundamental picture of this is Old Testament prophecies that are given both for his birth and for his death and tie them together.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you think, well, the thing that matters is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of people die.
SPEAKER_00: Humans die.
SPEAKER_00: That's the result of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was different because of how he was conceived and born and the purpose that his life was given.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was different because he lived a sinless life, and he lived a sinless life because he was born in a miraculous way without the sin nature of man.
SPEAKER_00: And this has been the case from the very beginning of Scripture and of recorded human history.
SPEAKER_00: You know the story of creation in the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve sinned when they broke the one rule that God had given them.
SPEAKER_00: Then in Genesis chapter 3, God comes into the garden and they have to face God.
SPEAKER_00: They have sinned against him.
SPEAKER_00: There is shame, there is guilt, they're blaming each other, they're struggling with all this because now sin has entered the world and they don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: God has told them, in the day you eat of that fruit and you violate my rules, you will surely die.
SPEAKER_00: And death began in their bodies in that day.
SPEAKER_00: But from the very moment of sin and its judgment, God stepped in with a promise of Jesus who would come as our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And in that promise, just like in the statement of Jesus in John 3.16, there is Christmas and there is Easter.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that when he begins to address Adam and Eve, he explains to Eve, this was your sin and this will be the result of it.
SPEAKER_00: Adam, this is your sin, and this will be the result of it.
SPEAKER_00: And then he curses Satan in the form of a serpent, and he gives this prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, I will put hostility between you, Satan, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.
SPEAKER_00: He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
SPEAKER_00: There in that prophecy is a very clear picture of what would unfold throughout the course of human growth and scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He makes reference to between your seed and her seed.
SPEAKER_00: And the picture of seed there is using the biological idea of conception, man and woman, trying to be elegant with kids around the room.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are with me?
SPEAKER_00: Nod your heads.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have gone to sleep already.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are shocked that we would talk about this in church, right?
SPEAKER_00: But it's a clear picture that God gives.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he says is he turns that on its head between your seed, Satan, and her seed.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how biology works.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the role of the wife, the mother, the lady, the woman in conception.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus makes it very clear, he will be her seed.
SPEAKER_00: And what is God doing there?
SPEAKER_00: He is projecting that there will be a very miraculous birth that turns on its head the idea of sin and how it comes through man.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible makes it clear in the book of Romans, this theology.
SPEAKER_00: It says, by one man, Adam, sin entered into the world.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says there was another, a second Adam, another person through whom salvation enters into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that happens because of the miraculous virgin conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit with Mary.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see that prophecy, and then he gives a clear prophecy of Easter.
SPEAKER_00: He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
SPEAKER_00: There is a beautiful poetic word picture there.
SPEAKER_00: Striking someone's heel is a damaging blow, but it is not fatal.
SPEAKER_00: Striking someone's head is fatal.
SPEAKER_00: And what he makes clear is Satan, yes, you will harm Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You will injure him.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the cross.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus was sent to the cross, but there was a purpose in that.
SPEAKER_00: God placed the sins of the world on him, and there he died for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And he rose again, conquering death and sin.
SPEAKER_00: And evil and sin and Satan and all of that was given a mortal blow that will ultimately destroy him for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Sin and Satan will be separated from God and cast into what we refer to as hell.
SPEAKER_00: And those who know Jesus as their Savior, who have accepted this salvation, they will spend an eternity redeemed with their Savior Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: This has been God's plan from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, he then identifies the person of Jesus, the events that would occur in prophetic writings that are fulfilled in the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's what's amazing about it.
SPEAKER_00: There are two aspects of truth in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: The first is what was written, and the second is that it's factually accurate and true.
SPEAKER_00: And in both of those instances, we have historical evidence and records that both of those are true.
SPEAKER_00: We know that these are actually the words that the Holy Spirit instructed authors to write.
SPEAKER_00: There is no question that these are the words of God as given through the men who wrote Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And then you also have the fact that what they wrote is true.
SPEAKER_00: And both of them are incredibly miraculous and powerful.
SPEAKER_00: For example, let me give you two prophecies of the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 7, 14, you don't have to turn there because I'm going to need to pick up speed here.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to just hear the words of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: This is a prophecy from Isaiah given from God through the prophet Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.
SPEAKER_00: He is talking to his people and say, You will understand what I am identifying and what I am doing because of this.
SPEAKER_00: The virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: And this scripture is quoted to Joseph when he is told to place his faith in accepting Mary as his wife.
SPEAKER_00: God is identifying that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there is no serious discussion historically with which whether these are actually the words of Isaiah or not.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many copies of Scripture, there are so many copies of the scrolls that are repeating these things.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many of these that are made and that line up that they prove historically, without a doubt, that these are the words of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: After the Dead Sea Scrolls, you may have heard that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll spend some time later talking about that.
SPEAKER_00: But just for a moment, when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, a shepherd boy in hills in Israel discovered an incredible cache of scriptures and scrolls that were written from the Old Testament that are accurate in incredible detail with multiple copies, and they prove to us that they are, these are the words of Isaiah as God told him to speak.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, any criticism of the existence or the accuracy of Scripture that existed up to that point was done away with in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
SPEAKER_00: I've had the privilege of being in Israel, and I was at a museum called the Shrine of the Book, which puts out all of the scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls and lots of those other scrolls, and I have literally stood with a Hebrew scholar from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis and looked at the pristine, clear, historical scroll of Isaiah and seen it read.
SPEAKER_00: There is no question that this is what Isaiah wrote.
SPEAKER_00: And then there is no question in the veracity of the eyewitnesses involved in the writing of the books of Luke and Matthew, that Jesus was born in exact factual detail according to the prophecies of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Micah also gives a prophecy of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: And so God takes great pains to say, this is what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Savior I'm sending.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to understand specifically, Jesus is the one that I'm identifying as the Messiah and what happened.
SPEAKER_00: You also have very clear, specific prophecies in that nature that are given at his death.
SPEAKER_00: Again, from Isaiah 53.
SPEAKER_00: I stood over the scroll and watched a Hebrew scholar read from Isaiah 53, the words of Isaiah, as he describes in incredible detail the crucifixion of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22 is one of my favorite song pictures in all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 22, you have an unpacking there of the prophecy of Jesus on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And even though at the time that was written, they had never even conceived of something like crucifixion, it describes in incredible detail the medical reality of what happens on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It describes Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross casting lots for his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: It is such a clear picture of the crucifixion that Jesus quotes from Psalm 22 on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: God took time in both Christmas and Easter to identify through prophecy and to accomplish those prophecies so we would understand the Savior was sent at Christmas and accomplished salvation at Easter.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you some other examples.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the circumstances, the situation of both events.
SPEAKER_00: God gives both of them incredibly specific parallels.
SPEAKER_00: In both moments, God uses a sovereign hand of God to orchestrate events through a pagan hostile government to accomplish the timing and place in which he gives the birth and the death of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says in the book of Luke, you know the story, in the time when the Quirinius was governor of Syria, all the land went out to be taxed, everyone to the city of his heritage.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph and Mary lived in another city.
SPEAKER_00: And God orchestrated through the actions of a hostile government an event that brought them to Bethlehem to accomplish the specific prophecies of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, in the death of Jesus, the same thing happened.
SPEAKER_00: God utilized the Roman government and Pontius Pilate and his role with Herod and the Pharisees and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And you had Roman soldiers nail Jesus to a cross.
SPEAKER_00: God uses people and events and governments which would normally not be in favor of accomplishing the gospel, and he puts his thumbprint on those to show that he is the one accomplishing that event.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas and Easter.
SPEAKER_00: Another issue about the situation of both events.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them happened in very ignoble circumstances, right?
SPEAKER_00: You have the King of Kings, the King of the Jews, all of that, Jesus who he is.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the Bible tells us that Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger because there was no place for him where he was.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was crucified amongst criminals with a crown of thorns as a matter of ridicule to him jammed on his head.
SPEAKER_00: All of that is the work of God illustrating that Jesus came for a purpose, and that was to die for sins, and to die for sins for all of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: You had Jesus in a borrowed manger in a borrowed stable at Christmas, and you have Jesus' body buried in a borrowed tomb after his death.
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible the pictures of that.
SPEAKER_00: Another issue that relates to the situation of both events.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was surrounded by strangers.
SPEAKER_00: There are prophecies that relate to this, both his birth and his death.
SPEAKER_00: The only people who came to celebrate the birth of Jesus at the time of that birth were shepherds who they had never met, who were wandering out in the fields keeping their flocks by night.
SPEAKER_00: The angels send them in, and here the people that greet Jesus after his birth are strangers.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when our daughter Mavery was born.
SPEAKER_00: We have kind of a weird little family trait in our family deal.
SPEAKER_00: Our son Grant was born on December 29th.
SPEAKER_00: Maver was born January the 3rd.
SPEAKER_00: Janet was born January the 12th.
SPEAKER_00: And I was born in January.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you when.
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you, and I was born on January the 20th, which actually is inauguration day.
SPEAKER_00: So we're all in that kind of time frame, and we're reminiscing, and then our grandson Killian was born on December 1st.
SPEAKER_00: So we're all right in this little period of time.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember when Mavery was born, everybody we knew came into the hospital.
SPEAKER_00: All these people came in the hospital.
SPEAKER_00: Janet's like, do you not get any privacy as the birth mother?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why are all these people coming into my room, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so when a child is born in that family, everybody surrounds them, all these people that know them, all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But yet God had sent them to Bethlehem to accomplish the purpose, and there was no one but strangers.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus died on the cross, his followers walked away.
SPEAKER_00: Peter denied him before he went to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It was Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross with crowds of strangers around who didn't know who he was, jeering at him.
SPEAKER_00: He was even hung between two strangers who were criminals and were convicted properly, even though Jesus was improperly accused and prosecuted and found guilty of crimes he did not commit so he could die on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is surrounded by strangers at his birth, and he is surrounded by strangers at his death.
SPEAKER_00: Next parallel.
SPEAKER_00: At Easter, he's the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And both of those are bookends of the same story, inextricably linked.
SPEAKER_00: You have a clear identification of the Savior through some miracles of nature that are involved in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You have the virgin conception and the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That is a picture of life.
SPEAKER_00: It is a definition that God is the author of life.
SPEAKER_00: It is a definition that Jesus is coming to bring life on the cross when Jesus was crucified and that he was buried.
SPEAKER_00: And when he rose again, the Bible says clearly in Matthew 27 that when Jesus rose again, that there were saints who were buried in Jerusalem who were resurrected and brought back to life to give identification and affirmation to the story and the picture of Jesus being resurrected as the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Physical events around the birth and around the crucifixion were similar.
SPEAKER_00: At the time of Jesus' birth, we all know the Bethlehem star, and they followed the star, and the wise men followed the star, and you have the star that identifies miraculously Jesus as a Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Secular historians of the day have affirmed that event occurred with a star miraculously in Israel at that time.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, nature spoke of the damage that was done and the injury to Jesus as Satan bruised his heel on the cross as he paid the price for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that in the moment that Jesus, as he was hanging on the cross, darkness entered in.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of the afternoon, the skies went black.
SPEAKER_00: The earth shook with earthquakes, identifying the heartbreak that the Son of God had died on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Nature and miracles speak and identify in Christmas and Easter Jesus as the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: You see another parallel, an identification of Jesus as the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Objective witnesses who are not involved, not Mary, not Joseph, not the apostles, people who are objective, people who are watching this unfold, people who did not understand what was happening, but they are confronted with the birth and the death of Jesus and the miracles of nature and the impact of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And the shepherds come and they visit this baby because angels told them they see Mary, they see the prophecies fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them probably remember things they were taught as Jewish boys, and they understand God has sent a savior.
SPEAKER_00: And they go out and they give testimony and tell everyone they can find that God has sent the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: After watching Jesus die on the cross, a Roman centurion, a man who was a commander, he was a leader in the Roman army.
SPEAKER_00: He had people under him.
SPEAKER_00: He was in charge, most likely, of that area and the crucifixion detail.
SPEAKER_00: He was a man who had undoubtedly watched thousands of crucifixions, and he had never seen anyone die the way Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: He watches Jesus die on the cross, asking God to forgive them, telling the man on a cross, you will be with me today in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: He sees the way that Jesus allows himself to be crucified for us.
SPEAKER_00: He's watched thousands of people die on the cross, raising themselves up, trying to catch a breath, falling down, trying, and he watches them suffocate.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, the Bible says, He watches Jesus cry out with a loud voice to let everyone know I am not dead and I am not out of oxygen.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says he gave up his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And that Roman centurion watching that, a pagan man who was over the crucifixion of Jesus, knelt before the cross and says, Truly, this man is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: There were supernatural heralds.
SPEAKER_00: Supernatural proclamations of Jesus as Savior.
SPEAKER_00: At the birth of Jesus, angels show up as we sung about today.
SPEAKER_00: They show up and they proclaim very specifically, without any kind of hesitation, the absolute factual truth, what God is doing, He is accomplishing His prophecy and His promise of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Today in the city of David, a Savior was born for you.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the Messiah, the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They make extremely clear what Christmas is about.
SPEAKER_00: It is about the provision of salvation under the purpose and grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then at the time of Jesus' death on the cross, there are clear supernatural actions.
SPEAKER_00: But there is another place where God steps in and makes clear supernaturally that he has accomplished salvation.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 27, beginning in verse 50, the Bible says this Jesus shouted again with a loud voice, and he gave up his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 51 then says, goes into this description.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the next screen, Matthew 27, the Bible says this.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the curtain of the sanctuary, and now he is talking about in the temple, the way the temple was constructed is along the same lines as the construction of the tabernacle in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There was a part outside of the, there was a part inside the building, but it was an open part.
SPEAKER_00: Priests would go in, they would do their ministry, they would do it all these things, and there was a huge curtain that hung that separated the main part of the temple from what was called the Holy of Holies, and there the Ark of the Covenant reside.
SPEAKER_00: There was the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: The temple and the tabernacle were pictures of Jesus that he would come to be the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: The curtain was a picture of that sin separated us from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Only the high priest went behind this curtain once a year, and only then would he go in to deliver the sacrifice of the people for their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He would have to go through a cleansing process that made sure that his life was pure and complete and he had confessed all his sins.
SPEAKER_00: Because if he went behind the veil in the presence of God, he would drop dead because of sin in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: It was such a risk that God had told them when they built the high priest's robes, you hang bells along the bottom of his robe.
SPEAKER_00: So as he walked, you would hear them dingle, dangle, you would hear them jingle all of those bells.
SPEAKER_00: And if you heard a thud and no more bells, you knew there was a problem with the high priest.
SPEAKER_00: And if he did that, no one could go in and get them.
SPEAKER_00: So God instructed them to tie a cord around his ankle.
SPEAKER_00: So if he entered into the presence of God and died because of his sin, they could drag his body out under the curtain.
SPEAKER_00: The curtain showed a clear separation.
SPEAKER_00: That sin separates us from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says that in the moment when Jesus gave up his spirit, the curtain of the sanctuary of the Holy of Holies was split in two from top to bottom.
SPEAKER_00: It is a clear picture that God stepped into the temple and he grabbed it at the top and he ripped it in half.
SPEAKER_00: To understand what a miracle and a spiritual statement this is, you have to understand that the curtain was huge and it was higher than anyone could reach standing on the floor, and its thickness was almost as thick as my hand.
SPEAKER_00: This is a clear statement of a miracle where God steps in and he rips the veil and he says, salvation is accomplished, your sins have been paid for, and it was my son who paid the price for your sins on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And he was supernaturally heralded at Christmas and at Easter as the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a simple question, but it's a fundamental question.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: In today's world where we talk about living out your own truth and stuff like that, people are tempted to ask the question this way.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus to you?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you, it really doesn't matter who you think he is.
SPEAKER_00: He is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the promised and planned purposefully the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He was ordained from the beginning of time, and he was identified, the prophecy of him, from the beginning of human time, to be the Savior who takes away the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: As we step into this question of who is Jesus, as we define from Scripture who is Jesus, we are going to the Scripture because the Scripture tells us who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: The question for us is not who is Jesus to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's who is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: At Christmas and at Easter, God made it clear who he is.
SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
SPEAKER_00: That whosoever believes in him will never perish but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: The second question that you must ask is what will you do with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Will you trust him as your Savior?
SPEAKER_00: If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, the whole purpose of God identifying all of this so clearly and doing all of these things and putting his thumbprint on the circumstances and the prophecies and the events and the facts and making these statements and the angels and the curtain and all that stuff, the reason God did all of that is because he loves you and he wants you to know whoever believes in him will never perish but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: Because he came for you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to this study.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about unpacking the life and the person and miracles of Jesus and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But the most fundamental reason I'm excited about this is this is the clearest way that I can ever walk through with folks.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus, will you trust him?
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus will you give your life to him?
SPEAKER_00: Will you believe in him as your Savior?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray in just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: And then our people are gonna stand and we're gonna sing an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, I'm gonna invite you to come.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: We've answered that question.
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do with him?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we want to answer.
SPEAKER_00: Bow with me.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for today.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for the incredible effort, planning, design, intentionality, purposefulness with which you planned salvation and you identified our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: You explained it to us before he came.
SPEAKER_00: You showed him to us at Christmas, and you showed him to us at Easter, and you accomplished salvation for us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that this morning, in just my ramblings or struggling trying to get these facts in, that in all of that, if there's someone who's never really answered the question, what am I going to do with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: that this morning you can encourage them, reveal yourself to them, and show them that Jesus is the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray, whether it's by television, online, or here in the room, if there's someone who needs to be saved this morning, they'll give their life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray as we begin this study, you'll prepare us as a church to be ready to see, have our faith built and strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, have us impassioned to help people answer this question: who is Jesus who need to meet him?
SPEAKER_00: Give us the freedom to respond to you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray in all God's people's head.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.