An introduction to the message focusing on the topic of Jesus and the speaker's personal connection to the subject. Exploring the prophetic declarations about Jesus from the book of Isaiah and the significance of the name 'Jesus' as the Savior. Discussing the incarnation of Christ, the anticipation of his coming, and the visit of the wise men bearing gifts.

Introduction to the Message - An introduction to the message focusing on the topic of Jesus and the speaker's personal connection to the subject. The Prophets' Declarations - Exploring the prophetic declarations about Jesus from the book of Isaiah and the significance of the name 'Jesus' as the Savior. The Incarnation and Wise Men - Discussing the incarnation of Christ, the anticipation of his coming, and the visit of the wise men bearing gifts.

Personal reflection on Jesus as the Savior and the impact of his sacrifice on the speaker's life. Exploring the transfer of righteousness that occurs when accepting Jesus as Savior and the impact of Jesus' righteousness on the speaker's life. Reflecting on the seeking nature of God and the personal experiences of being sought after by God, encouraging others to recognize God's pursuit. Illustrating the relentless pursuit of God through the story of the speaker's grandfather's eventual acceptance of Jesus, emphasizing the saving grace of Jesus.

Jesus as Savior - Personal reflection on Jesus as the Savior and the impact of his sacrifice on the speaker's life. The Transfer of Righteousness - Exploring the transfer of righteousness that occurs when accepting Jesus as Savior and the impact of Jesus' righteousness on the speaker's life. The Seeking God - Reflecting on the seeking nature of God and the personal experiences of being sought after by God, encouraging others to recognize God's pursuit. The Hound of Heaven - Illustrating the relentless pursuit of God through the story of the speaker's grandfather's eventual acceptance of Jesus, emphasizing the saving grace of Jesus.

- The speaker discusses the coming of Jesus into the world and the joy of talking about Him
- He acknowledges the difficulty of doing justice to the topic of Jesus and expresses a sense of inadequacy
- The message focuses on the declaration that Jesus will save his people from their sins
- The speaker references the prophecies and predictions of Jesus's coming in the Old Testament
- He discusses the significance of Jesus being called Immanuel, meaning "God is with us"
- The passage from Isaiah is highlighted, emphasizing the divine nature of Jesus and his role as the Savior

- The piece discusses the birth of Jesus and the significance of the prophecy
- It highlights the attributes of Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords
- The role of the angels, wise men, and the gifts they brought to Jesus are also discussed
- The symbolism of the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh is explained

- The speaker emphasizes the personal nature of Jesus as Savior
- Jesus came to seek and save the lost, including the speaker
- The speaker accepted Jesus as Savior at a young age
- The importance of Jesus' death on the cross is emphasized
- A verse from 2 Corinthians is used to explain the significance of Jesus taking on our sins and making us righteous before God

- Jesus became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God
- When we accept Jesus, the righteousness of God is transferred to us
- God seeks after us and wants us to come to Him
- We are invited to come to Jesus and accept Him as our Savior
- The seeking and saving nature of God is demonstrated in the story of the 99 sheep
- We should encourage others to come to Jesus, as He continues to seek and save those who are lost

The speaker discusses the significance of Jesus coming into the world and the joy of talking about Him. He acknowledges the difficulty of doing justice to the topic of Jesus and emphasizes Jesus as the Savior who will save his people from their sins. The piece also highlights the birth of Jesus, his divine nature, and his role as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The speaker emphasizes the personal nature of Jesus as Savior and the importance of Jesus' death on the cross. He encourages others to come to Jesus and accept Him as their Savior, as God continues to seek and save those who are lost.

This is the fourth part, looking at the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus.

Now, what's really fun for me about this, Shama back there might remember it, she's sitting next to Katie, that when we were, all the kids were growing up in our house, sometimes at supper time, after the meal, which is probably not a good time to do it because you're then full, but the father of the house would drone on and on about biblical things, and the kids' minds were probably often a thousand miles away, and when all of a sudden the father of the house would stop his droning and ask a question the kids learned that you had like a 50-50 chance of being right if you answered Jesus.

So that was just the safest way to respond.

What I have to talk about today is Jesus.

And I do this with joy, with excitement, and it is, in a certain sense, 1 of the easiest messages to prepare.

At the same time, I have this huge sense of inadequacy.

It's how do you convey, how do you do it?

How do you talk about Jesus in a way that does him justice.

I went over it, I tried to think about it.

I have, like the content that I was thinking about to put into this message, we would have been here until the evening service.

And I still wouldn't be covering the subject or doing justice to it.

So I'm going to do my best and I'm sure for many of us that know and love Jesus, as I am talking today, you'll be thinking, he should mention this, he should mention this, he should talk about this.

And that's just how it is, because we love Jesus and we love to talk about him.

So to quickly, well, first of all, the verse that's kind of the theme verse is, you will call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.

Joseph was instructed, this is what he was to call this child when the child was born.

It was a declaration and Jesus really at its core means God saves.

And Jesus was coming into the world to save sinners.

So, there's the declaration, you will call his name Jesus.

If we scroll back in our series, we will remember speaking about the prophetic inauguration of Christ, all the thoughts, and Chris went through that where we read some of the scriptures that had to do with Christ, the predictions of his coming, or the prophecies that spoke of his coming, and how the nation of Israel longed for their Messiah to come.

And then we had Keith talk to us about Jesus's incarnation, and that time of freedom, joy, of new life that he now offers.

You remember that Keith took us through some of the tracing down the line of Mary and of Joseph, also looked at that anticipation or that waiting.

I had the chance to review Keith's slides afterwards.

He sent them to me for me to actually have a look at, and Keith, in his slides, had enough for a whole series.

So, and I should give a heads up to his family because I've already asked Keith to turn that into a whole series for next Christmas because it was amazing what was packed into there.

And then Andrew, he took us through the Christ's royal enthronement, the establishment of his kingdom, and many of us got to follow along on some of these by going through the little purple booklet that we got that we could in fact enjoy in preparation for the Christmas series.

Well, let's remember quickly what the prophets said, and what the angels said, what the wise men said, and then, of course, what God the Father himself says as to the Lord Jesus.

So in the prophet Isaiah, we've read these verses already, but I want to just go back briefly over them again.

Isaiah is 1 of the prophets that wrote back in the Old Testament, and he wrote hundreds of years, probably 500 or 600 years before Christ came.

And 2 of the verses, his book, the book of Isaiah, is just loaded with prophecies.

He is also the prophet in the Old Testament that gives you some of the clearest gospel messages or gospel verses in the whole Old Testament, is in the book of Isaiah.

I actually, in my preparation for this message, I started reading some of them in Isaiah, and like time was going by and I was just like getting more and more immersed.

I had to sort of say, wait a second, if you've got a whole message to prepare, you can't just immerse yourself in this.

But the prophet Isaiah is amazing, and these are 2 of them.

The first 1 from Isaiah chapter 7, it says, the Lord himself will give you this sign.

Look, the virgin will conceive a child, she will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel, which means God is with us.

1 of the most incredible, most amazing signs, but it speaks back to it, reflects back on who Jesus is.

And so it was in it was in keeping with this.

It was part of the whole plan that he would not have an earthly, biological father, but that in fact, he would have, he would be divinely, that life would be given divinely by God himself.

Mary, it is very touching, and it was mentioned by 1 of the earlier speakers, I can't remember which 1 now, that Mary was, when she was told that she would be the mother of the Messiah, she didn't question it in terms of was it true.

God, the source of life, planted that seed in her and it is amazing.

It just, and it fits so well with the whole gospel message.

So, she will give birth to a son and call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

This is the amazing, incredible truth that we celebrate on Christmas, that God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, the 1 that is the author of life, the 1 that the heavens are the works of his fingers, that he chose to come and be 1 of us in the person of the Son of God.

He actually, Scripture says his delights are with the sons of men.

He actually chose to become a human being to demonstrate, to show to us who God is.

He had sent prophets, He had sent those that spoke of Him back down through history.

You remember in Hebrews chapter 1, many of us know that passage, God who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, in these last days he has spoken unto us in the person of the Son.

Instead of speaking through others, now God was here in the person of the Son.

And then the second 1 from Isaiah, this child, for a child is born to us, a son is given to us.

The government will rest on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, and Prince of Peace.

This is written hundreds and hundreds of years before Christ came, but watch the wording, For a child is born to us, a son is given to us." Notice that.

He was born in Bethlehem as had been prophesied.

He was born somewhere between 5 and 7 pounds probably.

For God so loved the world that he gave his 1 and only Son.

Because Jesus is God the Son, He forever existed.

He was forever at the side of God the Father.

This is not the beginning of God the Son.

He is part of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

So the scripture, to be 100% accurate, it says, a child is born, a son is given.

That's what happened in Bethlehem so long ago.

The government will rest upon his shoulders, and he will be called, and then it gives us these things.

First of all, the government will rest on his shoulders.

When we think of government, we always think of the wisdom that is needed.

There are so many pressures, there are so many conflicting things.

You picture anyone in a position of high office, and they've got challenges even if they're always trying to do the right thing.

We also know that governments rise and fall.

But, Scripture says of the increase of his government, there will be no end.

He is the 1 that controls and reigns over everything.

No matter what you are struggling with, no matter what you are facing, The 1 who is king of kings and lord of lords, he is never in a position where he says, oh shoot, what do I do now?

It sounds kind of super simple, but it's like so amazing in the most complex, difficult things of our lives.

This is the 1 who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And for us who come to know him, he is that wonderful counselor.

He is that 1 we can always go to for wisdom.

We find the wisdom that is so good for our lives in his word, and we also find it as we commune with him.

He is mighty God, and we have spoken of that.

I love, it has given me great comfort over years in my life to read the verse in Hebrews that says, our fathers disciplined us as they thought best, but he for our profit." Every 1 of us sitting in this room that is a father knows that we've screwed up.

In our family, I'll reference our family probably a few times today because we were just together with them all yesterday.

Jessica was an amazingly easy child to raise.

I punished her once in her growing up, and guess what?

It was for something that her sister had done.

Our fathers disciplined us as they thought best.

You have an everlasting Father and He never makes a mistake.

He always deals with us with wisdom and with love.

And the Lord Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

In our earlier service this morning we were speaking of the peace that only Jesus can bring.

Jesus will bring, when he comes back to set up his kingdom, he will bring peace to this earth.

But now he can and does bring peace in our hearts as we trust in him.

That's just a little glimpse of what the prophets foretold back in the Old Testament in the Bible.

The angels said, the Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David.

You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth lying in a manger.

Suddenly the angel was joined by a vast host of others, the armies of heaven, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.

I was sharing in the earlier service as I meditated on this verse, it jumped out at me that I pictured this moment in time, all the prophecies had spoken of this time when Christ would come into the world.

The angels must have wondered how could this be.

They knew the Lord Jesus is the Son of God.

They knew Him as the 1 that sustained all things, the 1 who had absolute power and authority and control.

You can imagine the mystery for the angelic hosts to ponder this.

They're out doing what the angels are doing.

They're about coming alongside of mankind.

And all of a sudden there's a call that goes out.

If you've been in a hospital, all of a sudden you hear code something, and I don't know what the code is, but there's certain codes that when they get, they go over the PA, all of a sudden, all the professionals, whatever, drop whatever they're doing, and they're running to room 263 or whatever it is where that code is.

There was a code that went out through the Angelic Host.

Drop whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter, I'm God, I've got it.

You're supposed to be right there, right then, to be part of that group worshipping, because Christ is coming into the world.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod.

About that time, some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, where is the newborn King of the Jews?

We saw his star as it rose and we have come to worship him.

And the star that they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem.

They entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary.

Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

If you go back to Isaiah 60, you see that the gold and the frankincense was already foretold, that in fact this is what they would be bringing.

We suspect that gold, gold seems to symbolize in scripture often kingliness, rich riches, it also symbolizes purity.

You notice it in the in the Ark and in the Tabernacle, you have things overlaid with gold or covered with gold, especially in the holiest.

It is a symbol of that purity and that holiness and that which characterizes a king.

The frankincense in the offerings that were presented to God, there was pure frankincense.

Frankincense has to do with a smell, with something that fills the room.

There is something of worship in frankincense, and myrrh is something which speaks to suffering and death.

Myrrh was used in the embalming that would take place or the preparation of bodies for burial.

You have these 3 things, and Scripture doesn't actually expand on them for us, but by looking at Scripture and looking at other places where it's mentioned, you get these ideas of what the symbolism was there.

These wise men, in our tradition in the West, we think of the 3 wise men.

In some of the other Christian traditions, there are actually a dozen wise men, so don't get too hung up on the 3.

We know that there were, that the 3 gifts are mentioned.

We also note, probably it didn't happen actually in the stable the same night that the birth was happening and that the shepherds came.

This appears to have happened actually some time later, probably when Jesus was between 1 and 2 years old, but the important part of this is that these wise men see a baby or a young child and they bow down and worship.

We had some young children in our family bash yesterday.

None of them caused, in the remotest part of my thoughts, the thought to bow down and worship.

And picture it, just grasp it, that these wise men travel, follow a star, and they bow down in worship.

Wise men and wise women still bow down in worship to Jesus.

And then we have the Father himself at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 3, a voice from heaven that said, this is my dearly beloved Son who brings me great joy.

The Father declares himself who this 1 is, the Lord Jesus.

I want to now take this and make it really personal.

I want to talk to you about my Savior, the Lord Jesus.

When we speak of Christmas, When we speak of Christmas, when we sing the songs together, we can talk about it as if it is a belief, as if it is a religion, as if it is something that we come to know and come to appreciate, and that we respect in our family traditions.

But the story of the cross, the story of Jesus, is a very personal story.

If we keep it only as a tradition, we have lost, we have missed the meaning and the reality of who Jesus is.

There is a hymn that I just love and I want to walk through it as part of our of this message today.

This is what it says and trust me I won't be singing this just so that you can relax.

Jesus my Savior to Bethlehem came, laid in a manger to sorrow and shame.

Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

When Jesus came into the world 2,000 years ago, when he was born into that manger, He knew that in 1956, a guy named David would be born in a hospital in Toronto, and that he would need a savior.

He knew that I would grow up sinning as I went.

He knew that everything in my heart would naturally rebel against God.

He knew that I would want to kill my brothers many times.

I knew I was gonna have trouble with this.

It's when it's, to talk about it generally is okay.

When you talk about it personally, it has, it gets you.

That he came 2,000 years ago, but he knew that I was gonna need a savior.

He came to show me that God, who created me, loves me.

And that he wants to have a relationship with me.

The son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

But what's most important to me is that he came to save me.

Like I like you guys, I love you guys, but what's really important is he came to save me.

When I was just a young boy, 6 or 7 years old, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.

I realized that He had died for me, that it wasn't just for everybody, but it was actually for me.

And I believed in my heart that he died for me on Calvary's Cross.

And when I did, my sins were washed away and I became 1 of his children.

I became someone that was redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.

That is what you and I have in common, who know and love and follow Jesus.

And if you don't yet know Jesus as your Savior, the Lord Jesus came to this earth 2,000 years ago as a baby, seeking for you.

He came because he loves you and he wants you to know also the forgiveness of sins, to know that you have a living loving Savior.

The next verse, the lower part of what's on the slide, it says, Jesus my Savior on Calvary's tree paid the great debt and my soul he set free.

You see, there was a transaction that had to happen.

Jesus came and as he lived his life here, he showed us what God was really like.

At 1 point he is asked, show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.

And he answers and says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

He basically was explaining that he was, he had in his life, he had illustrated what God was like.

So, on the cross though, there was something very different because you see Jesus could have lived, he could have lived his life, shown us the heart of God, and then gone back to heaven.

But, if he had done that, you and I would still be without a Savior.

We would learn that God loves us, but we would have no way to in fact go and be with God.

So those of us that know and follow Jesus, we actually see the most important event is not the birth of Jesus.

Because the birth of Jesus, while it's awesome and it fulfilled a whole lot of prophecies, it does not save us.

It is when on the cross he paid the debt and my soul he set free.

In Scripture, there are many, many verses that help us to understand this, that help us to kind of get...

Capture this, or grasp what it really was all about.

If you've got your Bible, just turn to...

It's in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and right at the end of the chapter, verse 21.

If you got it on your phone you can look it up there, but this verse is amazing for how it says it so clearly.

God made God made him, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

There is, I think, the most concise explanation of the transaction or the event of Calvary's cross in terms of what actually happened there.

God made him, made the Lord Jesus, who had no sin.

So Jesus was holy, he was pure, he never sinned in his whole life, he was perfect.

But God took our sin and put it on the Lord Jesus.

Back in Isaiah it says that, all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to our own way, and Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of us all." So there on Calvary's cross, our sins were put on the Lord Jesus.

He who knew no sin, or had no sin, became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

So there is a transfer of righteousness that happens now when we accept Jesus as our Savior, when we believe in Him.

The righteousness of God is transferred to us, and He becomes our righteousness.

So when God looks at me now, the guy that grew up with all the hatred and all the anger and all the bad stuff in my heart that any of us have, God looks at me and he says, he is righteous.

But it's because the righteousness of Jesus has been transferred onto me.

That's what the transaction that is made possible in me because of what happened at Calvary's Cross.

And so as we have in this hymn, he paid the great debt and my soul he set free.

Oh it was wonderful, how could it be, dying for me.

He died for you too, but what's most important for me is that he died for me on Calvary's cross, and that's why I know and love and follow Jesus.

The next verse in the in the hymn says, Jesus my Savior, The same as of old, while I was wandering in darkness and cold, gently and long did he plead with my soul, calling for me, for me.

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