Substance of the Message

Introduction: The Setting and Summary of the Morning Message

0:04 This sermon was preached on Sunday evening, December 20th, 1981, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now may I encourage you to turn with me in your Bibles this evening to the portion that we began to consider this morning, the second chapter of Luke's Gospel, Luke's Gospel, Chapter 2. And I read in your hearing verses 1 through 20, and I will not read that entire passage again tonight, but simply read verses 9 through 13. And an angel of the Lord stood by them, that is, the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

1:23 And this is the sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavens, a heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased. Now, as I have already indicated, this morning was the beginning of a study in this very pivotal portion of the Word of God. And for the benefit of any who were not with us, I shall try to reduce into about five minutes, about 50 to 55 minutes. And I feel it necessary to give even a summary of the introduction. I began this morning by asserting that there is not a shred of evidence in the Bible that our Lord was born on December 25th.

2:25 Furthermore, there is not one indication that the Bible lays upon individual Christians or upon the church corporate any responsibility to give any special remembrance of any so-called day of Christ's birth. But it's equally clear that in the providence of God there is an established relationship between the day designated by men and traditionally called Christmas and the great biblical realities of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore this season, though not mandated by Scripture, forms a very natural, normal, launching pad to consider some solid scriptural truth with respect to the enfleshment of the living God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in our study this morning, we examined the setting of what I have called the central part of this passage, namely the good news of the angel which was read in your hearing tonight. And the setting is one in which, attention is drawn to the particular people to whom the angel came, namely humble shepherds on a Judean hillside. The place was outside the city of Jerusalem.

3:54 The circumstances are described in the first nine verses, the more remote circumstances pertaining to Joseph and Mary and the firstborn of Mary in this place where animals, were sheltered, and the more immediate circumstances of the presence of the angel and this outshining of the divine glory, this brilliant light, a manifestation of the glory and the peculiar presence of God himself. And then we began to consider, having looked at the setting of the good news of the angel, the substance of that good news. And we had time only to draw out, one dimension of the substance of the good news of the angel, namely that it was good news announcing the fact that a unique person has been born in a specific place to accomplish a glorious task. And that's the essential teaching of verse 11. There is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. The unique person is the Lord of glory himself, Jehovah incarnate.

Good News Designed to Remove All Dread of God

5:16 The place, the city of David, validating that he was the true and promised Savior, and his great task is the task of deliverer, Savior, from the bondage, from the power, and from the guilt of sin. Now then, we want to move on, and in our study tonight, draw out, three other aspects of the substance of the good news of the angel. Then, God willing, next Lord's Day morning, we'll consider the sequel to the good news of the angel. Having seen that the good news is, first of all, an announcement of the fact that a unique person has been born in a specific place to accomplish a glorious task, notice, in the second place, that the substance of the angel's gospel is this. It is good news designed to remove all dread of God. It is good news designed to remove all dread of God. Look at the opening words of the message of the angel in verse 10.

6:34 And the angel said unto them, unto these very shepherds, who were afraid with mega-fear, as we saw this morning, who no doubt trembled before this awesome manifestation of the presence of God and of his angel, the angel said to these shepherds in that state of fear, be not afraid, or more literally, stop being afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. In other words, the angel says, what I bring to you in the way of an announcement from God is good news of great joy to cancel out the reality of your great fear. And so the angel makes it plain at the outset that his good news is calculated, is designed to remove all dread of God. Now this reaction of God to the good news of the angel is not only to cancel out the reality of your great fear. This reaction of dread, this great fear which the shepherds experienced was very natural.

7:47 The world of spiritual reality, God himself in this strange and supernatural manifestation of his glory in that bright light was drawing near, not to sinless beings, but to shepherds who were sinners. And whenever God drew near to man in this kind of a peculiar manifestation of his presence, it always created a sense of dread. Now before man sinned, there was awe and reverence of God, but there was no dread of God. And there's a difference between those two things. When Adam was placed in the garden, made in the image of God, created in fellowship and communion with God, Adam knew what it was to reverence God and to stand in awe of God, but there was no conflict between that reverence and awe of God and the most intimate, joyful nearness to God. But you'll remember in the Genesis record that no sooner does Adam sin, than his heart is filled with the joy of God. His heart is filled with a dread of God, which caused two things,

9:12 a paralysis and an aversion. For we read in Genesis 3 and verse 9 that the Lord God called unto the man and said unto him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the voice in the garden and I was afraid. And what did he do, gripped by that fear?

9:38 We read, Back in verse 8, that when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, instead of running to meet Him, to hold joyful communion with Him, in that which was apparently to be a visible manifestation of God, it says, the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So instead of standing in awe of God, standing upright with countenance uplifted and filled with holy joy, in approaching to God, doing the bidding of God with delight, we find the man and the woman paralyzed here, manifesting an aversion to God. And from that moment on, sin has always created in man this dread of God which produces a paralysis in any desire to approach Him and a dread to approach that God. And as long as man thinks of God only in terms of the one who is the avenger, the discoverer, the punisher of his sin,

10:57 man can only know fear and dread as he contemplates such a God. And so the angel comes and says in essence to these shepherds, you need not be afraid. Yes, I am an angel. I have come from the presence of God.

11:17 And as all good angels, I have come to bring the word and do the bidding of my God. But I am not sent on a message of judgment. I am not sent with a word of terror. I am not sent on a mission of destruction.

11:33 Shepherds, stop being afraid. I bring a message which is calculated. To neutralize your great dread with great joy. And that message centers, as we have seen, in the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ who has come not to judge the world, not to condemn the world in the language of John 3, but has come that the world through Him might be saved.

12:08 The God who could have saved, who has summoned these shepherds into His presence to give an account for their sins, the God who could have charged them with all of their iniquities and only intensified their dread and their fear, is the God who sent His angels saying, stop being afraid. The good news I bring is designed to cancel all of that dread of God that is the outgrowth of human sinfulness. One has expressed it beautifully in the lines of the hymn in this way. Till God in human flesh I see, my thoughts no comfort find. The holy, just, and sacred three are terrors to my mind. But if Emmanuel's face appear, my hope, my joy begins. His name forbids my slavish fears.

13:15 His grace removes my sin. You see what the writer of these lines acknowledged? That when he contemplates God in the unity of Trinity and Trinity in unity, when he thinks of God as the God who is a consuming fire, when he thinks of Him as the God who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all, the God who will by no means clear the guilty, whose piercing eye searches the depth of every heart and the secret recesses of every life. This poet said, my thoughts found comfort, the holy, just, and sacred three were terrors to my mind. But when he contemplated the message of the angel, if Emmanuel's face appear, my hope, my joy begins. His name forbids my slavish fear. Unto you is born, not a judge, but a savior.

14:23 Shepherds, stop. Be. There is born to you a savior. And oh, what a wonderful thing to reflect upon the gospel according to that angel.

14:38 The gospel that announces not only the fact that a unique person has been born in this specific place to accomplish a glorious task, but a gospel which proclaims that this very message and all that God has done in His Son is designed to remove that slavish fear that has torment. You see, you can never commune with God while you dread God. While you think God to be harsh and hard, and all judgment, and all wrath, and drawn to a consuming fire. The scripture asks that question to the prophet. Who among us can dwell with everlasting burning? When you see an awesome sight that produces dread, you know what it is to be paralyzed, and to feel inwardly that desire to draw back. And that's all man can feel in the presence of God if there were no mediator.

15:49 If there were no one, to take away the guilt, no one whom God has approved and appointed to remove our sins. But the glory of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ has come to do that very thing. He said, I am the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

16:16 But then the reverse of that is true. He is able to save to the uttermost, all who come unto God by him. Peter can say he gave himself for us, the just for the unjust, that he might bring to God. Now let me press this upon your conscience.

16:38 My unconverted friend, boy, girl, man or woman, when you think of God, what emotional reaction do you have in your own heart? Now not when you think of the God you'd like to make, the God in whose presence you can still feel comfortable with your sins. Not the God you'd like to make, whose one big glob of unprincipled love, who has no justice, no righteousness, no hatred for sin, who'll never judge sinners and send his creatures to hell. That God is an idol, the construction of man's own fancies.

17:15 But when you think of the God of the Bible, who is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity, the God whom the Bible describes as a consuming fire, the God who will bring every secret work into judgment. My friend, what kind of thoughts do you have? Well, if you are still in your sins, uncleansed, unpardoned, unforgiven, you can only have thoughts of dread. You can only have inward paralysis and aversion that the shepherds felt they were sore oppressed.

17:50 That fear will never be overcome until God by the Spirit through the Word is pleased to give you a sight of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. And you see in the Lord Jesus the One who shed His own precious blood, and in that blood shedding the fury and wrath of God was vented upon His own beloved Son, so that having been exhausted upon Him on behalf of all for whom He came, you can draw near to this God and say in the intimate language, the passage of Scripture, Abba, Father. When you hear His voice speaking in the Scriptures instead of running from Him, you can say, that's the voice of my Beloved. My Beloved is mine and I am His. And your soul runs to meet Him. O God, Thou art my God, earnestly will I seek Thee.

18:54 My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Away with all these who say there is nothing but legal religion in the Old Testament. That's David writing under the Old Covenant, and yet all of that slavish dread of God was gone, and he panted and thirsted and hungered and longed and yearned after God, for he knew Him to be a God reconciled on the grounds of the work of another. Well, we must hasten on now to see that there is a third element in the substance of this Gospel brought by the angel, and it is this.

Good News Intended for All Mankind

19:36 It is good news intended for all mankind. Do you see that? It is good news intended, suited for all. Notice the progression in the language of Scripture.

19:57 It starts with this very personal word to the shepherds, whether there were two, three, or twenty of them. There's a plural number. That's all we know. And the emphasis is very pointed and clear in the text.

20:14 First of all, we read in verse 10, And the angel said unto them, Stop being afraid, for behold, I bring to you, you shepherds, good tidings of great joy. This message is brought to you. To you shepherds, personally. But notice, it's a message suited for others as well.

20:42 Of great joy which shall be to all the peoples. And most likely in this context, that construction refers to all the peoples of Israel. It is a message suited not just for you shepherds. A message of good news which comes not just to you in the peculiarities of your station in life and your present circumstances, but a message of good news to all of the people of Israel.

21:11 But not only to all of the people of Israel. For we read further in the passage in the latter part of verse 13, And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, verse 14, Glory in the highest, and on earth peace among men. And there the generic term for mankind, mankind is used. And on earth among men, all things of men, Jew and Gentile.

21:43 And to show that this is not pressing the issue beyond what is warranted, we read further in this very chapter, when the old man Simeon holds the infant Jesus in his arms. In verse 27, He came in the spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought the child Jesus that they might do concerning him after the custom of the law, he received him in his arms and blessed God and said, Now let thy servant depart, Lord, according to thy word, in peace. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Having seen the Savior, he saw God's salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. Here is the expansive biblical universalism. Not that all men will ultimately be saved, no, but that the good news that a Savior has come, suitable to the needs of all sinners, that Savior has come, and the message concerning him is to be proclaimed indiscriminately to all men. And so we see the progression

23:05 from this very endearing personal application. To you, shepherds, is the good news. The angel says, looking into the face of these trembling shepherds, Stop being afraid, you shepherds who tremble. You think of God and you are filled with dread.

23:25 You are paralyzed. There is an aversion. Stop being afraid. To you is this message sent.

23:32 A Savior has been born. Do not grovel in your fear. A Savior has been born. But it's good news of great joy, not only to you shepherds, but to all the people.

23:47 Think of your fellow Israelites in the vast spectrum of their need, from the lowest to the highest, from those most besotten in their sins to those most outwardly refined, respectable and religious. Oh, shepherds, hear me. To you is this good news. Yes, but it's good news to all the peoples.

24:11 And yes, it is good news even to the far reaches of the hordes of the Gentiles. So from that individualism to that expansive universalism, the substance of the good news of the angel is this. It is good news suitable to and intended for all mankind. What a good gospel!

24:37 What a wonderful gospel preacher this angel was. He was no hyper-Calvinist. He was no narrow-hearted, shriveled-up man who tried to find a justification to preach a constricted gospel. He came to shepherds and says, It's to you, and it's to all the people.

25:00 And it is to all men was the affirmation of the angelic hosts. And I say again, what a wonderful privilege to preach such a gospel. This is the true message of this passage. It is not a message that we should focus our attention upon those narrow-hearted innkeepers who wouldn't let the Lord Jesus be born in a decent birthplace.

25:25 We'll see in a few moments that God was in all of that. And whether they were hard-hearted or just frustrated, overcrowded innkeepers who made that decision, we'll see that it was arranged of God. No, that's not the issue of the passage. The issue of the passage is not to be found in the sentimental scene of the shepherds bent over the feeding trough.

25:48 Here is the message, my friend. It is good news, suitable and intended and proclaimed.

25:58 We no longer dread God. Is this word of salvation sent? That's the way Paul preached among the Gentiles. He wasn't afraid to say to men, To you this word of salvation is sent.

26:14 And as the old preacher said, and I like the terminology, Christ is yours if you will have Him. There is but one thing in existence between you and the Savior, and that's your own refusal to have Him. You will not come to Him that you might have life. He comes to you in this glorious message.

26:41 To you is this word of salvation sent. And God knew the full spectrum of what human sin would be. And God knows in this very day in which we live, and if anything is calculated to put hope in a preacher's heart, it's this, that He can say to this generation, with its burnouts who've blown their minds on drugs, those besotten with drink, those filled with materialism, those dejected in disillusion, because they've tried everything and they're not empty, those benumbed with sensuality, those held in the chains of hedonism, God says this generation, this marvelous message of good news, that Christ has come to you is a message of great joy and to all the peoples and to all men. It matters not what your sin has been, where sin abounds. Grace does much more abound. But then there is a fourth marvelous dimension of this wonderful gospel sermon preached by the angel.

Good News Confirmed by an Unlikely Sign

28:00 The substance of the angel's good news. Not only that announcement about this unique person born in a specific place to accomplish a glorious task. Not only good news that is designed to remove the pride of God. Good news suitable to and offered to all men.

28:25 But oh, notice this fourth thing. And this has puzzled me for years and I think maybe I have a little Biblical light on it so I can at least preach around it tonight. It was good news confirmed by an unlikely sign. It was good news confirmed by an unlikely sign.

28:47 Look at verse 12. And this is not a sign, but this is the sign unto you. You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. Our closest thing, we'd say a receiving blanket.

29:05 Only it wasn't one piece of cloth, but it was narrower pieces of cloth like a wide ace bandage with no elasticity in it. You shall find a babe wrapped in a receiving blanket and lying in a manger. And this is the sign unto you. See, this is part of the angel's message.

29:30 So he's saying, my good news, my gospel is one that is confirmed by an unlikely sign. Now in the Biblical usage, a sign is usually a supernatural activity or event which has two great purposes. Follow closely now. Number one, to verify a claim or a message.

29:57 When Moses went with the message of God's delivering purpose into Pharaoh's presence, God gave him power to perform what? Signs and wonders to validate that he was a messenger from God. You remember it is said of our Lord. He was a man approved of God among you by signs and wonders and many mighty works.

30:23 So a sign is a supernatural activity or event. First of all, given to verify a claim or a message or a messenger. And secondly, to disclose the nature and the purpose of God. The signs upon Egypt were judgment signs.

30:45 God was saying, let my people go or I'll judge you. They were not mercy signs, you see. At other times, the signs God showed were mercy signs. You think of some of those marvelous signs and miracles under Elijah and Elisha in which God is showing that amidst national judgments he is still merciful to those who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

31:10 And you see that in the Lord Jesus. Most of his signs, not all of them, but almost all of them were mercy signs. The heart and purpose and goodwill of God were disclosed when he healed all to him regardless of what their needs were. The scripture says he healed them all.

31:31 God was showing that his heart was large in compassion and pity towards men. Now then, come back to our passage. In this situation, the angel tells the shepherds that this will be the sign unto them they shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Now you see how this was a sign in those two ways?

32:01 First of all, it verified or validated the message of the angel. How can any human being know that in the city of Bethlehem there was a babe in these peculiar circumstances? Well, you see, the angels are validating the fact that they stand in the presence of God, were given access to the very councils of God, so they validated the message by giving information that only God could have conveyed to them. This is the sign.

32:45 And when you go and find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes in this most unlikely place, lying in a cattle's feeding trough, you will know that the message I have brought to you is indeed the message of God. But in a grander and more glorious sense, this sign was intended to disclose the nature and the purpose of God. This is the sign. In other words, there is something in this entire complex of circumstances that reveals the purpose of God.

33:29 The very divine method by which God will rescue sinners in the person of His own beloved Son. Now think for a moment of how this must have struck the natural mind even of these shepherds. The angel has just finished saying, There is born to you this day in the city of David, identifying him with the one whose goings forth hath been from of old, even from everlasting. Micah 5, 2.

34:07 This one who is God's anointed, the Lord. This is Jehovah, the very end of God. Old born, eternity, El Gabor. He has come.

34:37 You're going to see the inflection. And while the mind, the words come, and this shall be the sign, you'll find a babe wrapped like any other newborn, lying in a feeding trough. In a feeding trough.

35:10 Wrapped in a receiving blanket. Can you imagine what this must have meant to them? A babe. Just an ordinary babe.

35:23 The epitome of dependantness, helplessness, ignorance, vul- And furthermore, a babe lying in a feeding trough. It would have been enough if he had said just a babe. Lying in a jewel-studded bassinet in a castle somewhere. Or even a babe lying in whatever kind of crude wooden crib would be made for any babe of a peasant family in Judea.

36:00 But a babe lying in a cattle feeding trough. And this is the sign. Not only the validation of my message, but the revelation of the very method of Almighty God. The mighty God in redeeming his people.

The Shepherds' Response and God's Method of Redemption

36:23 Now, there's not a shred of evidence in the passage that this was a stumbling block to these shepherds. For as we shall see, God willing, in our study next week, after the confirmation of the angelic host, what did they do? There's no reasoning. Look at verse 15.

36:38 When the angels went back into heaven, what did they do? It doesn't say they said one to another. Now let us sit down and try to figure this out. How can mighty God, be a babe?

36:52 Can the Lord of Glory be in a feeding trough? It doesn't make sense. It transcends our powers. Let's figure this out.

37:02 No, no. It didn't seem to bother them at all. They just said to one another, let's hasten on over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass. They believed it.

37:14 Why? Well, ultimately because God had worked faith in their hearts, yes. But remember, there's every reason to believe that God has worked faith in their hearts. These were those of the number of Israel who were waiting for the Lord's Christ to come.

37:31 They knew their Hebrew history. And they knew that this was so much like God. The God who from the human side delivers His nation from the might of Pharaoh by the instrumentality of the stick in the hand of a shepherd named Moses. What is that in thy hand?

37:52 Moses said, a stick. A rod. Throw it down. Becomes a snake.

37:57 Just an ordinary stick. Became the symbol of God's deliverance. You remember when God was going to take the first big city in the promised land? What did He do?

38:12 He said, we'll take this one by marching and having a good shout. That'll do for me, God says. So around the city they go. Seven days, on the seventh day, seven times.

38:23 They shout a shout, and what's God do? Blow the walls down. I mean, you don't conquer mighty walled cities by walking around them and hollering. But God does.

38:37 And there's this big old giant strutting all around. Remember him? Who's Jehovah? Bad-mouthing Jehovah.

38:45 But you know who I am? Goliath, man. Look at me. He'd make the biggest tight end in pro football look like a little skinny runt who needed to take the Charles Atlas course.

38:58 Take it up with the local Norfolk. Take it up with the local Norfolk. Yeah, that's right. He's strutting around.

39:05 And God says, all right, big shot. I'm going to show you who you are and show you who I am. So what's he do? He takes a stripling, a young man, and a little stone out of a brook.

39:17 That's the way God works. And there's the host of the Midianites. And Gideon goes out against them. And God says, you've got too many.

39:28 30,000 against, what was it, 150,000. Even the odds then were overwhelming. God says, too many. Too many?

39:34 God says, yeah, too many. He whittled them down, whittled them down. 300. Then he sends them out against these mighty warriors of all the stupid things with clay pitchers in their hands and lights and trumpets.

39:46 If they didn't look like a bunch of fools, no one ever did. Where are you guys going? Oh, we're going out to rout the Midianites. Rout the Midianites?

39:55 Where's your spears? What in the world's wrong with you guys? They're not a bunch of patsies. And God says, that'll do for me.

40:03 Pitchers, candles, and trumpets. That's all I need. You trace that through the Scriptures. It is the divine method to take the weak things of the world and the things which are not to bring to naught the things that are that no flesh should glory before God.

40:28 And the Scripture says of our blessed Lord, though he was crucified through weakness, he lives by the power of God. And the weakness of God is strong and the foolishness of God is wiser than men. You see what God was doing? God was stamping there upon the very incident of the birth of Christ the method by which the redemption of his people would be accomplished.

41:02 By the income in weakness. This is Jesus of Abel lying in a cattle trough who is Christ the Lord. And rather than be smart, Alex, and debate with God, and go to the local honchos of the intellectual club for some approval, the shepherds believed God. And as we see at the end of the narrative, the fruit of their faith was joy unspeakable and full of glory.

The Stumbling Block of Christ's Humility and the Call to Faith

41:42 And oh, my friend, as I seek to bring this home to the court of your conscience, if you're ever to be saved, you've got to come to that place. Come to the place where it's no stumbling block to you to be told when you look upon an immolated, bruised, blood-caked form but of the lowest in that immolated, blood-caked form, the only that you can ever enter heaven. That it's the Lord there upon that cross

42:35 and that in the death of that one who because he is God and man there is an infinite worth to that which he rendered unto God a worth answers to all the demands of God with respect to you and to any come unto God by that Savior. This shall be the sign unto you. You shall find just a baby, just a baby. And wasn't that the stumbling block later on?

43:14 He said, who is this? Oh, we know him. My kids used to play with him. That's the carpenter's son.

43:20 Jesus of Nazareth. You see this whole idea that the babe was there and there was a halo around his head and little cherubs floating around. I'm not knocking Christian art, but I hate anything that teaches heresy whether by mouth or by the artist's brush. All he saw was a babe.

43:41 Not a babe with a halo. A babe surrounded by cherubs. Just a babe. And there was nothing to the eye but a babe.

43:56 Don't you ever sing that verse. The poor babe awakes but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. That's rubbish. When a cow went woo and Jesus woke up, he cried as lustily as your little brother or sister ever cried.

44:14 He woke up Joseph and Mary just like any crying baby wakes up its mom and its daddy when it hollers loud enough. Just a babe. He had to have his diapers changed. That's right.

44:29 The one who spoke the world into being out of the womb of nothing from the human side is dependent for his very life upon the milk that comes from a little Hebrew maid's breast. Think of it. Think of it. Does that become a stumbling block to you?

44:53 Is that a scandal to you? Does that offend your sense of propriety? Then, my friend, the price you'll pay for your pride is the damnation of your soul. For God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

45:11 And it's only when you come, as it were, baffled with holy bafflement before such scenes and say, O God, surely as the heavens are high above the earth, so are your thoughts above my thoughts and your ways beyond my ways. What but infinite wisdom could have conceived a way of redemption that says, Christ the Lord obeyed in a cattle trough, Christ the Lord dying upon a cross.

45:51 But that's God's method. And if you will come in humility and say, O God, I cannot figure it all out, but I see it is announced in your word. It is attested a well-credited testimony. You bore witness with signs and wonders and gifts of the Spirit upon your apostles who preached it.

46:13 And, O Lord, I will embrace that testimony by your grace. I'll subject all carnal reasoning and human pride and all thinking of how it should be done. And, O Lord, I want more than anything to have this dread of you gone. I know it's a little preview of the last day.

46:34 I know it's a little preview of the day of judgment when I'll stand in dread before you and I won't be able to fill my mind with other distracting objects and concerns. And, O God, I want with all my heart to look you in the face and be able to say, My Father, and to know my sins are forgiven. My friend, you'll never be able to do that until you accept the testimony of God concerning His Son, that there in Bethlehem's feeding trough is God's answer to every problem arising from your sin. O, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

47:16 Repent of your sins. Repent of your pride and self-centeredness and self-will. And give yourself up to Him who is God's anointed, God's final prophet, God's final priest, God's final and ultimate King. This, then, I say, is the good news according to the Christmas angel.

Prayer for Embrace of the Gospel and Conversion

47:42 May God enable us to embrace it with all of our hearts. Our Father, we read in Your Word that I had not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things You have prepared for those that love You. But we thank You that You have revealed them unto us by the Spirit. How we bless You for these words of that angel spoken two thousand years ago, and yet coming to us this night with freshness, good news to our trembling hearts, quelling our fears, removing our doubts, bringing us joy unspeakable and full of glory. Oh, Father, do refresh the hearts of Your people in the contemplation of how You have visited them in mercy in the enfleshment of Your beloved Son. May that each one who knows You may love You the more,

49:10 having contemplated afresh this day the great mystery of the Incarnation. And, O Lord, we do long and yearn with some degree of earnest desire that boys and girls and men and women who sit here tonight still wedded to their sins, still filled with that paralyzing aversion to You because of their sins. We long to see them drawing near and worshiping You and loving You and serving You. O Lord, draw them to Yourself through Your beloved Son.

49:47 May they give up all of those hard thoughts about You, and may Your mercy conquer them. Oh, may Your mercy subdue them. May Your mercy in Christ draw them. Lord, hear our prayer, and let that great day reveal that this day Your Word was not preached in vain.

50:11 Hear our plea. Be with all of Your people across the face of the entire earth, and in the midst of all of the open wounds and sores of this world's need, may this message be preached with renewed vigor and power and unction from the Holy Ghost, so that in this troubled world the Word again may come with power. Be not afraid. Here is good news.

50:45 O Lord, hear our cry and answer us for the glory of Your beloved Son. Amen.