THE KING HAS COME | OLD PROMISES FULFILLED | ERIK DAVIS | NOVEMBER 28

Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast

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Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.

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Good morning. Nice response. Cool. So a couple of days ago, on Friday or Thursday, Friday, I was showing my sermon to Marilyn. If you don't know this Marilyn King, I actually live in her basement. It's actually kind of nice, me and her look after the dog together. And it's great. It's actually been a really great time. But I was showing her my sermon because she was unable to be here today. And she was inspired after listening to it and was like, I'm going to put something together. And so the sheets that were on your chairs, she just kind of took all the scriptures that I was using and put them onto a sheet and put through some images on there and made it look kind of nice and printed it off and be like, here, give this out. And I'm like, oh, that's so kind of you, Marilyn. Thank you. So these sheets put together are brought to you by Marilyn, who's not even here today. So anyway, I thought it was really nice of her. Anyway, a few I'm going to read opening Scripture right away. It's actually on your sheet. The top there, Luke 20 414, it says this he said to them, Jesus, Jesus is talking here.

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This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. So everything that was just to explain a little bit, even though it's pretty self explanatory, I guess, but everything was already foretold about who Jesus is, including our Christmas story. And you can find that through the prophets, through the law of Moses, and through the Psalms. A few months ago, I did a sermon on Psalm 22 and we talked about it is finished. And we talked about how that was when Jesus said it is finished on the cross. That was actually a look back into the psalms in Psalm 22. And he was actually then referencing the entirety of Psalm 22 and what he was doing on the cross to finish. He was completing a prophecy found in Psalm 22. So you can find prophecy in the Psalms, but also in the prophets, in the law of Moses. And today I'm going to look at a place in the law of Moses. And I'm going to look at some places in prophets where we can find that it was actually foretold of Jesus is coming, and it just matches up ever so nicely.

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So today we're going to look at look back in this Advent season because we're talking about Jesus, we're going to be talking about his birth, and we're going to talk about the beginning stages of his life and what that looks like and how we can have a posture towards Christmas this season. So the New Testament opens up in the Book of Matthew with a genealogy. I didn't put that in there because it's a whole bunch of names. And if you would like to know these names, you can go to Matthew, chapter one, verse one, and you can start reading all of the names found at the beginning of Matthew all the way. The first 17 verses are this genealogy. And for one thing that I learned when I was kind of going through this is I was like, oh, what? I found out that genealogy has kind of the same root word, the Hebrew root, root word that the word Genesis does. So in fact, the first 17 verses of Matthew isn't just like a list of names. So you can see Jesus great great great granddad for no reason at all. What Matthew is immediately doing here is he's saying, this is the genesis of Jesus.

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This is the beginnings, the origins of Jesus. And so we're starting right away the very first chapter of the New Testament, matthew with, okay, the genesis of Jesus. And it's interesting, you can see famous if you look through the names, you'll see different names in there that you've recognized through the Old Testament. I know Rahab's in there. I know Solomon's in there, david's in there. There's a lot of names in there that kind of bring us back to the stories that are shared through the Old Testament. And so Matthew immediately is telling us, hey, this is actually a continued story. We're not starting something completely new here. This is a continuation of the story of God. And then after the first 17 verses, it continues into verse 18, which I have right on your sheet if you want to follow along. And I'm going to read through the Scripture and I'm going to stop and kind of explain a little bit. But this is the beginnings of Jesus. Verse 18 says, this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. Came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

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Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in his mind to divorce her quietly. Flip open your Bible. I don't know about you. I was told to start in the New Testament when I picked up my Bible. So actually the first thing I read when I read the Bible for the first time on my own was, well, I mean, I guess I read Genesis, the first two chapters and I got bored. But then I was told, maybe start in the New Testament, learn about Jesus first. So I get there and you're opening up this book, and the first thing we're learning is that Joseph wants to divorce Mary. This is the beginnings of who Jesus is. The story of Jesus starts off with a genealogy and goes straight into Joseph wanting to quietly divorce Mary. What I want you to do through this story is I want to invite you into Mary's shoes. So, Mary, I did a little bit of research on this. No one actually knows how old Mary was. I've heard people say different things and the youngest I've seen is Mary was twelve or 13.

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That seems a little bit young, but a few people have said that. And the oldest I've seen is 17. So what we do know for sure is Mary was a teenager, youngest twelve at the oldest, 17. Now, I don't know about you guys, but some of you might have teenagers in this room. Some of you guys might remember being a teenager. Now, I don't know about you, but being divorced at 16 seems a little rough. But that's seemingly what's happening here. Anyway, put yourself in Mary's shoes as I go through the scripture. What are you feeling? What are you experiencing? Because here's the thing. We actually don't know much about how Mary processed all of this. And I'm going to keep going. It's going to get rough. You've read the story, you'll know that. It's a bit of a roller coaster, but we do know if we look into a Luke 146 to 55, notice that the Magnificent, or Mary song, you can see how she prayed. You can see that her prayers are worded in a way of putting such trust in God through all of her circumstances. She uses phrases like how her soul magnifies the Lord.

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And then this is I read one verse from that Luke section. I read it and I was and she says, generations after her will see her as blessed. And I read that in light of reading this section here. And I'm like, Whoa, that is some strong faith because let me continue, just continue in verse 20. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, Joseph in a dream and said, joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to his son, and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, the Virgin will conceive and give birth to his son, and they will call him Emmanuel. First Old Testament. Another Old Testament reference. Emmanuel means God. With verse 24 continues when Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate the marriage until she gave birth to his son.

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He gave him the name Jesus. It continues in chapter two. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the time of King Herod, magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. So this is the story of the wiseman, these are the magi, the people who came bringing bearing gifts to Jesus, and a whole sermon series can be unpacked out of just that alone. This idea that God using astrologers to point out where Jesus is anyway, I'm just going to leave it at that. Interesting. I'm not condoning anything, but I'm just like what I think comes out of this is God is using someone and we know that they might be a little bit different than regular people. Anyway, when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had come together, all the people's, chief priests and teachers of Allah, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, in Judea. They replied, for this is what the prophet has written.

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But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, where out of you will come a ruler will shepherd my people Israel. This is another prophecy referring to Micah five. This is a prophecy that directly fits in line with who Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Check. In the line of Judah. Check. We could see that through the genesis of Jesus. The first 17 verses, check out of this a baby will become a ruler. Check. Yes. Will shepherd Israel. So this is all things that are just being foretold and what Matthew is doing is being like just so you know it's coming. Yeah. And this book that is for telling the coming of Jesus was written half a millennium before he showed up. This is a story that was being written generations before Jesus was born, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I bet you maybe someone in this room who took like a 23 and me might be able to tell me who their 500 years removed grandparents are. But that's a big chunk of time. And then the next few verses talk about how Herod tricks these magi or wise men to search for the child and to report back to him.

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So these magi, these wise men, they found him, they gave gold, frankincense and merck, but then they received a dream from God to not report back to Herod. So they went back another way. So God was with them the whole time. And by the way, just so you know, this is actually a couple of years after Jesus is born. I think one thing that I knew that I was like surprised of and maybe you guys know this, maybe it's common knowledge, but when I look at the nativity scene, I see little baby infant Jesus. I forget that when the wiseman showed up, jesus is practically a toddler. And also there probably wasn't three wise men. There was three gifts. We know that. There was gold, frankincense and myrrh, but there's probably actually a whole caravan of people, like a traveling group of they made a scene, I'm sure. Yeah. This isn't just three wise men, this is a group of people. So anyway, this group of people, when they the wise men or magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, get up, take the child and mother and escape to Egypt.

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Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. Verse 14 it says, he got up. Joseph got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt where he stayed until the death of Herod. So let's go back to Mary. You're a young teenage woman. You are told if we bring it to today's time that the government is trying to murder your kid. Really put yourself into the feelings and the experience of this woman. The government is trying to kill your newborn kid. So what do you do? You run. And I don't have kids, so I can't say that I know from experience, but I can know from witnessing and being a part of different families and seeing that it can't be easy to take a toddler and run across the country away from the government. And yet Mary says in her song pounded luke, the generations will see her as blessed. This is the prayer of Mary. Despite, despite all that's going on, how is this a blessing? How is any of this, how could any of this could be considered a blessing?

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If this was me, I would be terrified. I don't know how I would handle it. They don't have cars, they have a bunch of money. I guess because they were given all of this stuff from these wise men. But the fear I couldn't imagine living then I would certainly be questioning the goodness of God. I just know me. If all of this is happening, it's like Joseph's, like, I want to divorce you. Okay. Just kidding. Okay. Now we're going to go here and we're going to have a baby. But we're going to have to have a baby in like pretty much a cave or something or a place that's not really a good place to have a kid. And then we find that we have to be running away from the government. We're essentially vigilantes trying to run away from all of these things. And I would be questioning the goodness of God, but Mary does not. In fact, she takes it as blessing. And that's a little attention here. And here we find in what I think is the pinnacle of Matthew two and the origin story of Christ. The writer of Matthew corrects the course and says, no, my plan is here.

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What's happening here fits into a larger story, and actually Matthew invites us into that larger story. And here's what I want to ask. Have you ever heard of a story where God let's remove thinking about Jesus. Have you ever heard of a story in the Old Testament where God raises up a deliverer and then an insecure, power hungry king tries to use violence and oppression to combat God's presence? Moses. Matthew says this in verse 15. The second half of verse 15, it says, and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet. Out of Jesus three, out of Egypt I called my son, which is actually directly referencing Hosea eleven. And one thing that is often what we forget is Matthew or any of the New Testament writers specifically assume that you actually know your whole Bible very well, that when a sentence is said, you'll be like, oh yeah, of course he's meaning exactly that. But today, if you don't actually know that, if you don't know the Old Testament like the back of your hand, like a lot of the good Jewish people at the time did, you might not immediately pick up on the reference.

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So I did some research, and here's the reference. So out of Egypt I called my son. I'm not going to read you all of Jose eleven. We don't have time. But I'll read you the first few verses. It says, When I, Israel with a child loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the balls and they burned incense to images. It was I, God, who taught ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms, but they did not realize it was I who yielded them. This is the prophet Hosea, reflecting on the past while pointing towards the future. Let me continue reading here. It says verse 16. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said in the prophet of Jeremiah was fulfilled. Another prophecy. A voice is heard in Rama, weeping in great morning, rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because there are no more.

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Matthew wants us to see something here. He's pulling two stories together. Is this the first time a selfish I've asked this question before. Is this the first time a selfish, powerful human has tried to thwart God's purposes? No. Has that happened in the Old Testament several times? Yes. Has it happened in the New Testament? Yes. Is that happening today? Yes. You want to see? This is the pattern of Israel is continuing even in this story. Matthew is choosing a pattern here that recreates the Exodus story. He starts with the genesis of Jesus and then paints a picture of a recreation of the story of Israel from here. And here's how it's played out. So there's the journey to Egypt as played out in both the beginning of Exodus and Matthew. The Israel journeys. So do marry Joseph Jesus. Then an oppressive king tries to kill babies. Found in Exodus, found in Matthew beginning of Jesus, God's son, called out of Egypt as highlighted and connected in Hosea eleven, connecting the two stories in Matthew two. And even if you want to continue this trend, you'll see that the Israelites then spent 40 years in the desert.

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Well, straight before going to Jesus ministry, jesus spent 40 days in the desert. This is a story that Matthew was trying to say, like, this is actually like, this is not unfamiliar. And any Jewish person reading this would be like, Holy smokes, this is the same story. We've read this before we know this. Mary a smart Jewish girl who knew her scriptures probably better than you or I probably saw it too. And there's that knowledge and dedication to God that likely got her through this. Essentially, herod had become the new pharaoh. Amongst the most horrific circumstances. Is God surprised by the evil of Herod? Herod is trying to kill babies. I can't think of many more evil things you could possibly do. Is God surprise? No, we've seen this story before. Did God okay the evil of Herod, though? Let me ask that question just because God was not surprised, did God think it was okay for this evil to come across? What do you think? No, he didn't stop it. God is not surprised, though, because he has given us as human the choice whether to follow what is good or what is not.

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And he leaves that to the hands of humanity. Yes, he intervenes from time to time, but for the most part, he is not surprised when evil occurs. Not surprised, but nor does he condone it, nor is it okay. In the midst of this terror, Matthew reminds us that God is still here. Yes, this is an evil experience. But despite that, God is still working his redemptive purposes this Christmas, even tease. And here's something we can reflect on. When money may feel tight, when tragedy seems to occur, when evil happens in your life, does God think that that is okay? I don't know. I don't think so. Does he condone it? I don't think so. But he's not surprised by it. And he walks with us through it. This Christmas will reflect on the truth that God, as Emanuel God, with us, is with us through it and not surprised by the evils of this world. That's what I have for you guys today. So let me pray. Let's take a stand and I'll pray for you guys. God, we know that there are hard things in this world. We know that tragedy occurs. We know that different people are going through really tough circumstances.

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And it can be confusing to why it doesn't seem that you don't intervene. But this story tells us that you are not surprised by all everything that goes around and that despite all that, you are still here loving us. So may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace this Christmas Eve. In thanks, guys.