as you open your body up to Matthew
chapter 1. I don't think I knew her, but
she was a woman from the area. She knew who I was, and I was
one of the local preachers. And this was the night sometime, and she said,
what's your church doing for Ascension Sunday? And I said,
well, nothing special. And she said, well. There is
no gospel without the ascension. And I said, well, that's true.
That's true. But there's no gospel without
all the rest of it either. You see, there's nothing that
our Lord did from the time he was a single cell in the womb
of his mother until he sat down and provided him with God. There
was nothing he did. It was not necessary. And it's almost impossible not to
say something about his birth, especially when Christmas Day
falls on Sunday. And so we take special note on
this day of one aspect. This is what we use to provide
the content for our message. Angel talking to Joseph. It's
been discovered that the woman that he is engaged to is pregnant. And Joseph, being a righteous
man, said, didn't want to put her to shame. I thought that
was kind of interesting. You know, most people who think
they're righteous, They think they're so righteous
that they have a right to point out the sins of others and make
spectacle of them. But here it says Joseph, being
a righteous man, pretends he was a believing man. Because
nobody's righteous in his own words. The Bible says Abraham
believed in God, and so righteousness was credited to him. And that's
the only way that anybody is righteous in the sight of God,
if God simply credits righteousness to him, a righteousness that
they never did. But it's credited to them as
though they did it. And so Joseph was a believing
man, a righteous man, and he didn't want to expose Mary to
public distress, but he didn't feel it was appropriate to go
through with the marriage, seeing that, at least as he understood
it, she was credited by another man. And so an angel visits him. And Mary already knew what was
going on, because the angel came to her before God conceived his
son within her womb. So she knew about the haircut.
So the next angel comes back, talks to Joseph, and says, you
know, I was straightened this out for you. And he said, don't
be afraid to marry this woman, because what is in her is from
God. And he says, the angel says in
verse 21, she will give birth to a son. And you are to give
him the name Jesus. Now Mary was going to give birth
to this son. The prophet said, unto us a son
is born. The child is born. The son is
a giver. And she would give birth, and that was the custom of the
day. It was the father that did the
naming. Well, the angel tells Joseph,
this boy's name's already been chosen. His father chose it for
him. And that is his real father. And while you're the legal father
here on earth, you're going to name him, but we're going to
tell you what to name him. And he said, you shall call his
name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Now, the name Jesus is the English
language's best attempt to say the Greek version of the Hebrew
name. In Hebrew, I don't know exactly
how it's pronounced. I think it's actually changed a little
over the years. But it is more of the same with the name that
Moses' right-hand man had, Joshua. Same name. And it is a combination
of the shortened version of God's name, Jehovah. Sometimes they
just made a short version, Yah. And then the word for salvation.
And they put those two words together and come up with the
name or something to the effect of Yahshua or Joshua. Now, he
would be called that. Our Lord, the child born, the
son given, was going to be given that name Jehovah is salvation
for this very reason. He is Jehovah who is our salvation. God sent his son to the world.
Mary and Joseph, back then, they didn't have those sovereign angels,
whatever they called them, and they couldn't determine the gender
of a baby until it was born. But God knew. He told the angel,
that's a son, you tell him the son's coming. And there wasn't
going to be any doubt about what his name was. The angel didn't
say, if you think it's a good idea, we in heaven would prefer
the name Jesus. on whether the Lord would accomplish
what he was sent to do. It didn't say, you will call
his name Jesus, because he's going to try to save everybody.
Our Lord Jesus Christ never tried anything. Now you and I tried. And you know why we called it
trying? Because we don't know if we're going to get it done.
We may try, but we'll discover it's beyond our ability to get
it done. Nearly everyone, when they're young, tries to become
a rich man. How many of us actually become
this way? I realize we're Americans, compared
to the rest of the world, we're rich. But compared to the American
idea of what economics are, probably none of us achieve what we try
to do. Why? Well, we don't have much
strength. We don't have much agility. So
all these people said, well, would you do this? We go, well,
we'll try to. But there is one fine thing with the Lord Jesus
Christ. It says, you'll call his name Jesus, for he will save
his people from their sins. So when our Lord came into this
world, conceived within the womb of Mary, she was no trier. She was not going to get a participation. What were his, if not absolute
last words, very nearly his last words on the cross? It was not,
well, I gave it my best. Well, I tried. He said, it is
finished. And that word translated finished
is other places translated perfected, accomplished, You don't say that about something
that has any doubt of success. I don't know where to declare
absolute success in a mission that he was sent to, even if
it was hanging on a cross. No wonder the gospel's a mystery
to an actual man. No wonder it's an absolute miracle
that that one thief to his right looked at the Lord Jesus Christ
there, beaten and bruised. I mean, he shouldn't have lied
that way. He should relate to the cross
the way they treated him. But there he is hanging on a
cross. And this thief looks over and says, remember me when you
come into your kingdom. Now why in the world would anybody
look at a crucified, beaten, polarized man and think he's
a king coming into a kingdom? Not even the Lord's mother could
put it together in her mind. You see, the understanding of
the gospel does not come by just opening up the Bible and learning
the doctrines. We start there. That's all we can do. We teach
our children. I teach anybody who will come
here and sit and listen. I teach them the doctrines, the
basic truths of the gospel. But I cannot make anybody believe.
When you think about it, the claims we make about the Lord
Jesus Christ, and more importantly, the claims he made about himself,
are simply outrageous. Here's a man, a man that looks
like you and me. Nobody can tell from looking
at him that there was anything special about him, but he is out of the burning bush, and
Moses said, what's your name? I gotta tell him you sent me.
And God says, you tell him, I am Sitchin. I am that I am. That's my name. That's who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. He's not a half God. He's not
part God. He's not a combination. You know,
a little bit God and a little bit man put together into one
person. He is all God and he's all man. Does that make any sense? Of course not. What's more, we're talking about
the eternal, infinite God being expressed in time and space. And we cannot look up to him
such as that. But he is God. He's the God that
spoke and was and commanded and stood firm. He's the God that
spoke to Noah and said, build an ark. He's the God that's shutting
in the ark. He's the God that preserved him
from the flood. He's the God that brought him out of the ark.
He is the God that called Abraham out of Ur and Chaldeas. He's
the God that told the same Abraham, you take your son upon a mountain,
and you sacrifice him to me. Since Abraham is about to be
carried out, this same God spoke to Abraham and said, stop, Abraham,
don't lay your head on your son. I will provide my own sacrifice,
and the one who said it, He's the one that spoke to Moses
on the mount, and gave him the law, complete with its commandments
and all its religious observances and its civil rules for the nation
of Israel, to preserve it until such time as this one should
appear, and bring the past, all that had been prophesied and
pictured and promised, But remember, the one who was
born there is the one the Old Testament says is from old, even
from everlasting. I imagine somebody recorded the
day of his birth in Stuttgart. You shall call his name Jesus
because he will save his people from their sins. A few major
points to bring in. And I started by saying that
everything our Lord did because of what he did before
that and what he's going to do after that. And so here, as we
look at this event about to take place, the birth of the Lord
Jesus Christ, we find in the angel's declaration a basic outline
of the entire business of the Salvation of Sinners. You will
call his name Jesus, Jehovah my Savior. what the major terms of that
statement are. Do you know the whole of the
gospel? First thing I notice is this.
The Bible says the Lord Jesus Christ has a people. The angel
did not say he shall come to the earth and he shall make a
gigantic effort in an attempt to save everybody. It says he
will save his people. He has a people. Who are they?
Now keep your Place there Matthew chapter 1, and look over at John
chapter 17. The Lord Jesus Christ has a people. Now it all guaranteed, since
he is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and the Bible
says that the earth is the Lord and everything in it. That means
that Christ owns the earth and he owns everything in it, including
everybody in it. So there is a sense in which
everybody belongs to the Lord. But that's a different thing
being called His people. In modern English, we use the
word people to, it's just a plural form of person. We think we have
one person or we have many people. But actually the word people
indicates a group. a group defined by a particular
characteristic. That's why they speak of the
people of Germany, or the people of Holland, or the people of
England. Now it's not talking there about all the individuals
that live there, it's talking about the entire population seen
as a group. So when it says he shall save
his people, he's talking about a group of individuals who are
joined together as one people under this particular characteristic,
they belong to Him. They are His people. The Apostle
Peter says you are a holy nation, a chosen generation, a people,
a people. Well, if he's got people, where
do you get them? Look over at John chapter 17, in verse 2, our Lord's praying
to his Father. He says, for you granted him,
and he's speaking of himself there in the third person. So he granted, he could have
said, you granted me authority over all people that he might
give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now look down at Psalm verse 6. I have revealed you to those
whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them
to me, and they have obeyed your word. So Christ has He got them as a gift. They are
in some places called his bride. And the bride is given to him.
In other places, they're referred to as his children. But they're
given to him. They were the fathers. How did
they become the fathers? Well, the father who ordains
everything, who rules sovereignly over all, it says of him in Ephesians
chapter 1, beginning in verse 3, praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places according as He, the Father,
has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Now Him, everybody belongs to God by the right of Him being
the creator of everyone. But there is a people whom He
chose according to His own will, by His grace, and He chose them
in Christ shows them, and gave them to Christ, and blessed them
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And every bit of this was done
before the first star twinkled in the sky. Now, we didn't know about it
until we were born into the world. And the Holy Spirit came to us
through the preaching of the gospel, revealed Christ to us,
and revealed the good news to us. We don't know about the things
that He's done. Jesus Christ is called the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world. I know it must also
happen in the world, but it happened in that eternal, timeless, tasteless
existence of God before He ever said that there The people chosen by God, given
to the Son, can be blessed with all spiritual blessings in the
Son. He shall save His people. Turn back to John chapter 6. Now what the angel said to Joseph,
you shall call his name Jesus. And there's a reason for that. He is actually going to save
his people from their sins. And so here we see our Lord saying
the same thing about himself. In verse 39 he says, this is
the will of him who sent me. That's his father. God sent his
son into the world. The will of him who sent me,
that I shall lose none of all that he has given me As our Lord Jesus Christ is describing
the work that's been committed to Him, there's nothing of doubt
about it. There's nothing of possibility
about it. It is every bit certainty. This is the will of the Father
that sent Him. This is the commission that was
given to our Lord Jesus Christ. That of all that the Father gave
to Him, committed to His hands, all of it, He won't lose one.
Not one. Yet the role, if we can use that
word, the role of those chosen and given to Christ, in quote,
that role shall be perfectly matched by the role of those
who raised from the dead and who turn to life. Either that or Lord Jesus Christ
is a faithful man. Either every word put into his hands to say
by the Father, shall actually be saved and be raised from the
last day, or Christ has failed in the work that is obligated
to do. Another one thing I know
about the Lord Jesus Christ, and the prophet put it this way,
he shall not fail. Oh, those were blessed words. Brethren, you and I fail all
the time, don't we? Do you know why this is because the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ takes our salvation completely out of our hands and
puts it in the hands of Christ. It takes our souls out of our
care and puts them in the care of Christ. I say this. I don't know how
I say it. I say it. It's important that
the scriptures say this. If God were to have left any
aspect of our salvation in our hands, We would have failed at
it. If you want to give humanity another
name, this is it. This would be it. Failure. Do
you honestly believe that? Left to yourself. Left to myself. Humanity, left to itself. Nothing
but failure in those things pertaining to God. We cannot be righteous
as he believed. We can't forget what he did.
We can't forget what he did. He can't do any of it. And so if in the scheme of salvation,
God were to have left any aspect of it in our hands, salvation
would have been a utter failure. What's the old saying? The shame
is always as strong as it leaks water. If you are a link in the
shame of your salvation, There is no person, there is
not a power, there is not a being that can in a way separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. of God's sovereign control of
election, the doctrines of sovereign control of salvation, doctrines
like election and predestination, which are both clearly taught
in the scriptures, they are often hated and rejected by many who
profess to be Christians. They say it would be unjust for
God to choose someone. The first reason is this. He's
God. He's allowed to do anything he
wants to do. He is not in subjection to a
law of justice. He is the law of justice. And if God does it, it's right,
simply for the fact that he did it. And that's what Paul tells
us in Romans chapter 9. He said, therefore, he'll be
merciful to whom he'll be merciful and whom he will be merciful.
And he said, but I hear you say me. Well, why does God find fault
for who has resisted his will? We're all just doing what we
were made to do. How can he find fault with us?
And Paul doesn't try to make some fancy philosophical or theological
argument about it. He just says, nay, but, oh, man,
who are you to make an accusation against what God has done? And
he goes on to say, it says, shall I defend nay, say to him who
made it, why does he make me like this? Does the clay have
authority over the potter to say, you shouldn't have made
me this kind of pot? Paul uses this illustration
to say that the potter had to buy it out of the same clay to
make a pot for noble purposes. And then
another one for non-noble purposes. Doesn't the potter have the right
to reach into a bag of clay and form a pot that's beautiful and
set upon the mantle? And all he does is sit there
and do beautiful. Jamie, put some flowers in the sun. But
he makes a beautiful pot. And why does he do so? He does
so for the potter does that for his own glory. Because he'll
say, I made that. I made that. But the same potter
can reach into the same bag of clay Moreover, understand this, that
none of us have a claim on God's salvation. Remember, we're predators. So none of us can say God must
do something good for us. So if none of us can make any
claim on God that he has to do us good, to nobody, everybody, or any
member of the public. We are all criminals in God's
kingdom. It is the very nature of being
a criminal that you have no just claim on the goodness of the
judge. If he shows you any good, He shall save his people. He came to save you. Now he didn't
come to save you from low self-esteem. I guarantee you, from God's viewpoint,
nobody here is suffering from low self-esteem. We are all esteeming
ourselves much higher than we should. So the Lord Jesus Christ
didn't come to save us from low esteem. He did not come to save
us from difficulties in this natural life we're presently
living. He did not come to save us from financial distress, He
did not come to make sure we had a home on earth. He came
for this purpose. We were sinners under a righteous
judgment of eternal death. Because we were sinners. And
he came to save us from that. Save us from our sins. One of the reasons it's difficult for
people to, or to get people to accept, receive, believe the
gospel of God, that in order to do so, they have to admit
they're sinners in need of salvation. And no natural man will do that.
We all admit we've done something wrong, won't we? My nature, every one of us thinks
we have some redeeming quality. Something I hear people say, He sees us going to our jobs,
taking care of our families, and says it's a sin. He sees
us treating our neighbor decently. And he said, that's it. Now, again, actually, it's been
over 30 years since the first time I preached to this group.
And I believe that, as much as it's within me anyway, I have
preached the gospel consistently. He would look in my heart and
see how much pride I was there because I'm a Christian. He said,
Pastor, you got pride in your heart for being a Christian?
Yeah. If he doesn't do the whole thing,
if he isn't the one who does it, if he isn't the one that
sees it through to the end, he'll fail and he'll be lost. He shall save his people from
their sins. He shall save them from their
sins, no matter how gross and grotesque they are. He shall
save them from their sins, no matter how many of them there
are. He shall save them from their sins, no matter how often
they repeat them. People say, well, once God saves
you, you won't sin anymore. You won't sin as much. I beg
your pardon. If that's the truth, I've never
paid anybody to God's favor. I've never seen anybody stop
sinning. They may bury it, but they don't stop it. Our flesh
remains unchained by the work of salvation in this life. And
that flesh is, that old flesh is just as rotten and corrupt
and cragged and not hanging as it ever was. And he puts within his people
a spiritual nation And that nature believes God, and that nature
loves God, and that nature wants to obey God. But any of you who
believe will confess to this. All that wanton doesn't get it
done, does it? It stays us from our sins by
putting them all away. There's no question mark on it. This is no endeavor on the part of Christ. This is an
accomplishment on the part of Christ. Now what should that
want to give us? The knowledge that he hasn't Now this, everyone who needs
it. He that cometh to me, I will
no wise cast out. You know something? That's a
wonderful truth. She had doubted it by itself. It's a wonderful
truth. But she missed something even
more wonderful when she read out the first part of that verse. his people, how can I know if
I'm one of his people? If you come to him, you're one
of his people. You say, well, what warrant do
I have to come to him? Don't I have to first know I'm
one of his people before I come to him? No. Generally, in Scripture,
when you find a word that says, now, if you've been chosen, come
to me. He says this, look to me, all
you's of the earth, and be safe, for I am God, and you're well.
Here's your warrant for coming to Him. He says, I am God. And
so long as He is God, you have a warrant to come to Him for
His salvation. If you are His, you will come. And if you come, He will not
turn you away. And the Spirit that is already
created in you that loves Him and believes in Him and wants
to praise Him, it will be joined with that newly resurrected body
in you, mind, soul, God, praise God, and obey God. Indeed, and not until then shall
it be brought to pass what was written by Paul, he that began
a good work in you shall bring it to perfection until the day
of Christ. But know this, all you who trust
the Savior, She's going to get this job done. She's already
done everything necessary to assure it. And right now, that
day that was born in Bethlehem, to see that the right hand of
God, with absolute sovereign authority over everything and
ruling everything, will bring her back to salvation. Heavenly Father, bless your work
for only you can make it happen. Here, if you'd be that close
to me.