All right, well, good evening. Everyone is doing well. Let's get started. You can take your Bible to Genesis 40, and I think Mark 6. Genesis 40, I'm sorry. We're only going to be there for a brief time, but we'll just make mention of a couple of things here. If you saw the bulletin today, you've got a couple of different things in there on the back of the bulletin about all of the confusion that typically surrounds Christmastime. And basically, if I can sort of paraphrase it, we need to cut through all of that and just focus on what the Bible actually tells us, and that we're living in between when he came the first time and when he's coming back again. And that's really kind of the heart of it. And then there is also sort of an insert there in the bulletin about basically a story of the Lord Jesus pleading with his people to not forget him on his birthday, so to speak. And I know a lot goes into that. It's just sort of a season that, on the one hand, is supposed to be very joyous and is. And it's fun and festive and decorative. And ideally, it's celebrating something very wonderful. We just heard about the importance of the virgin birth. And yet, like other things, it just has a lot of baggage, unfortunately, that culture and society and paganism and all kinds of other stuff have lumped onto it, and it's very hard to get away from some of that. But let's go ahead and open in a word of prayer, and then we'll just look at a few things here in the scriptures this evening. Heavenly Father, Lord, we do thank you for this day, and Lord, once again, for the opportunity to come together. to gather as your people. Lord, I thank you for each one that's here tonight, and I pray that you give them something from the word of God in these next moments that we meet with you. Lord, we love you. We thank you for your word. Thank you for loving us, for coming as a babe, Lord, and taking on all the difficulties that this life and the flesh on this cursed earth entails, but that you did it sinlessly and perfectly and then died in our place, Lord, that we might be made whole and redeemed. Lord, we thank you for that. And we pray your blessings now in Jesus name. Amen. So talk about birthdays a little bit. Uh, you know, we like to sing about to people with their birthdays on Sunday mornings. And of course, this time of the year is at least, uh, the banner is that it's the Lord's birthday, right? Whether we get into the details of that, which we're not going to tonight, I tend to agree that December 25th is probably not the Lord's birthday, but we'll save the details of that for another time. And somewhere amongst all the tradition and the Catholicism and Coca-Cola and everybody else that has chimed in somewhere along the way on the meaning of Christmas, there are some things in the scriptures that are worth paying attention to. I do want to draw your attention real quick to something in Genesis chapter 40 And this is toward the end of the chapter here is where Joseph has interpreted the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners there in Egypt of the butler and the baker. And in verse 20 says, and it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast and all his servants and he lifted up the head of the chief butler. and of the chief baker among his servants. And of course, if you recall that story, the butler is restored to his butlership and the chief baker is hanged. He loses his head in that event. But this is the first. mention of a birthday in the Bible. Now, not the first birth, but it's the first time birthday is mentioned as the way we would typically use the word birthday, meaning a celebration representing someone's birth. And that's the first time it's used here. And even secular history, if you will, references this as the first time birthdays as a celebration or a party come up anywhere in human history. It's right here. Jump over to Mark chapter 6. Mark 6. I feel like I'm still breaking this Bible and I don't know when it's going to feel broken eventually, but pages will start turning a little easier, I guess. Mark chapter 6. And here is the only other time that a birthday, again, in the sense of a celebration or a party, if you will, is mentioned in the Bible. And here, Herod has just heard about the ministry of Christ. In verse 14, Herod heard of him. Speaking of Jesus, for his name was spread abroad, and he said, John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show themselves in him. Now, there are three Herods in the Bible, and this one's probably the least wicked of the three. But you can tell there's a guilty conscience at work here, right? He hears about the works of Jesus Christ and his first thought is, oh, this is John the Baptist come back from the dead. I'm in for it now. I mean, this is kind of like what we would think of a modern day, you know, I'm going to come back and haunt you the rest of your life if you do X, Y, and Z, right? And that's kind of what's going through his head because he, You know, was told by John the Baptist that he was not to have his brother's wife. And now he took some interest in what John the Baptist had to say. His wife wanted nothing to do with him. She wanted him dead. Bible says she couldn't just outright kill him, but she waited until a certain time. And then her daughter danced before Herod. And, you know, there was probably all the other typical stuff that went on in these kinds of parties. And he made a very silly promise to give her up to half of his kingdom. And she was before instructed by her mom to ask for the head of John the Baptist and a charger. You know, we would use the term like, I'll have your head on a platter. Where do you think that comes from? It comes from the Bible. I mean, you have to really be against somebody that just their death isn't good enough. I've got to have their head here in front of me so that I can like gloat in this victory. But when did this happen? Verse 21, and when a convenient day was come that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords. So birthdays as a festive celebration don't really have a lot of good grounding, you might say, in the Bible. These are the only two that are called that, per se. In Jewish custom, they don't typically make a lot to do about birthdays until you get to the 13th birthday, which you're probably familiar of as a a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah if it's a girl. And even then, yes, it is a sort of a party or celebration like we might think of, but what they're really celebrating is that the parents are now saying, these are children of the covenant and I am no longer responsible for their sin before God. It's a big weight lifted off of the parents when we celebrate this 13th birthday, if you will. But a Jewish bar mitzvah so birthdays just in in general have kind of an interesting history when it comes to the scripture when it even comes to Jewish tradition from Talmudic tradition and so forth. Go over to Second Kings chapter 19. Second Kings 19. So not only those two birthdays in that sense really recorded in scripture there are other things about birth. Here in 2 Kings chapter 19, Assyria has basically laid siege to Jerusalem and we're In chapter 19, we're picking up with King Hezekiah. This guy, Rabshakee, who represents the king of Assyria has basically come and made all these blasphemous statements and said, you people should just basically lay down, turn yourselves over. You have no chance. And if King Hezekiah is telling you to follow God, he's all wet behind the ears. You know, we've been conquering people who've had gods for some time. You're no different. We're just going to come in here and conquer you as well. And Hezekiah, And in Kings 19 verse 1, it says, And they said unto him, thus saith Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble and of rebuke and blasphemy for the children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth. Another little side interesting thing about this chapter is it's almost identical to Isaiah chapter 37. The whole chapters are almost exactly word for word the same. There's just a couple little differences in there which is kind of interesting. But here Hezekiah as he sends his leaders to the prophet Isaiah and he says we are in a serious fix here. He said, it's the children have come to the birth as like the child is ready to be brought forth, which is normally a big expectant time for people, right? New life is coming in, but he says there isn't strength to deliver. And what that I think would typically mean is it looks like mom and baby are both gonna die. The child isn't gonna be brought forth and the mom doesn't have the strength to bear the child. Children are coming to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth. Go over to Ecclesiastes chapter seven, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes chapter seven. Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse one says, a good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of one's birth. Verse two, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. Well, that's one of those you've got to take on faith, isn't it? I mean, you don't just naturally say, oh yeah, I'd much rather go mourn than eat. That doesn't happen that way. You got to take that on faith. He says, but it's better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting for that. Now, here's a case where in English grammar you would normally, you know, refer to the most previous noun to know what this is referring to. But you have to take this as a whole. He said here says that is the end of all men. What the feasting? That would be the most recent noun, but no, he doesn't mean feasting is the end of all men. He means this thing I'm telling you that is better, that going into the house of mourning is better because that is the end of all men. That's why it's better. And the living will lay it to his heart. That is, while you're still drawing breath, You need to think about the fact that going to the house of mourning is better, at least in the sense of being more important, maybe not more enjoyable on a case-by-case basis, than going to the house of feasting. Why? Because you aren't going to feast forever, but one day you're going to be the subject of the house of mourning. Sorrow, verse three, is better than laughter. That's kind of counterintuitive, isn't it? For by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Right? Always feasting and revelry and, you know, laughing it up. Now, humor is not bad and enjoying things is not bad. Even feasting is not bad. But he's pointing out here that when it comes to eternal things, there's some important stuff that needs to be considered. And we tend to play up birthdays, but funerals oftentimes end up a formality, or we want to push them out of our minds. But here the writer of Ecclesiastes is saying, well, while you're still living, you do well to consider that that's everyone's end. what goes on in the house of mourning. And you should think about that. I was mentioning to my Sunday school class this morning that I did this crazy thing this last week, and I listened to a Joel Osteen sermon. And I'm not going to give you all the details of why I did, but suffice it to say, I had never listened to actually listen to one before. I've heard people talk about them, kind of like drugs. I've never tried them, but I know enough to know I don't need to try them, that they're wrong. It's kind of how I looked at a Joel Osteen sermon. But I had the occasion, so I just started listening to it. And long story short, the main take home message that I got from it, not the point of his message, but the point of listening to his message is he likes to take pieces of Bible truth and pump them all up, but always leave out anything negative. So, Christianity is great. Now, sin and the cross and hell and on the need for all that, eh, not so much. Doesn't usually fit into the flow of his positive message. And people get a steady diet of that. You know, the spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, right? Well, he's just the sugar. No medicine to be had anywhere. And that doesn't make for much of a diet. And here, the Bible is saying it's better to go into the house of mourning than the house of feasting. There's another side to that coin that can't be ignored if you have any sense. Otherwise, the Bible says you're acting foolishly, foolishly. You need to consider that you have a date of death coming, and we need to keep those things in mind. Go to Job while you're here close by. Back a little bit to Job chapter 3. Job of course is lamenting his situation in life and who among us have not done that from time to time. Job chapter 3 verse 1. After this opened Job his mouth and cursed his day and Job spake and said let the day perish wherein I was born and the night in which it was said there is a man child conceived. Job is lamenting his birth. lamenting his birth. Again, births are a joyous time. There's something we look forward to new life being brought into the world. But with that new life comes a huge responsibility. Understand every person that was born is going to live forever. There's no going back. And they spend that forever after a really, really, really short period of time on this earth. And even that varies. They spend it forever either with God or separated from God. That's a massive responsibility. And here Job is saying, yeah, my situation is so bad, it'd be better off if I just hadn't been born to begin with. And if a person rejects God, That's a true statement. It definitely would be better off for them if they had never been born. But that bridge is already crossed. And while you're in the land of the living, the Bible says, take heed to that fact. Think about it. Go down to verse, I think 16, verse 16. It says, or as an hidden, untimely birth, it had not been. He's talking about himself again, as infants which never saw light. I think that's kind of interesting because he's talking about the unborn before he was given birth, right? And what does he call himself? The unviable tissue mass? No, what does he say he was before he was born? An infant. Yeah, you don't refer to an unviable tissue mass as an infant. That's a person. a person there. I think you all know where I'm going with that. Go back to Ecclesiastes real quick, chapter six. You know, the abortion crowd likes to, this latest thing, of course, this case coming back to the Supreme Court and everything, it's all about viability. Is it a viable, you know, human life? Well, it's a human life. You say, well, it's not viable. Well, you know, you're not viable naked at the North Pole. When has that ever been the question? We have people that live within our society that need constant care, or they die. So are they still viable? Just because something has to care for them? That child is, we all came from our mother's womb in that sense. None of us were viable at one point, but no one calls that into question now. Ecclesiastes chapter six, verse three, if a man beget a hundred children and live many years so that the days of his years be many and his soul be not filled with good and also that he have no burial. I say that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity and departeth in darkness and his name shall be covered with darkness. So here he's saying again is this person that is in this case is again better off if he were dead. Better that he had worse than an untimely birth in this case. So there are some births in the Bible. Go over to Matthew chapter one. Birthdays or births in a sense in the Bible. But there are a couple that are definitely worth paying attention to. One of them is mentioned in Matthew chapter one. And if you're familiar at all with this, this is of course, starting in this chapter is the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I find this interesting. This starts off book of the generations of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then it lists a bunch of so-and-so, we got so-and-so, we got so-and-so, we got so-and-so, we got so-and-so, right? All the way down to the time of Christ. It's essentially just a long list of heritage, but he throws in a couple little tidbits about some people along the way, and I don't know exactly why. But you look, for example, in verse 6, Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon, of her, if you have a King James Bible, you'll see in italics, that had been the wife of Uriah. Now, Just sort of tongue-in-cheek here, OK, David is, what, 900 and some years before this is written, right? And humanly speaking, I mean, he already dealt with the backlash of this sin in his life, right? And it cost thousands of other people's lives because of it. And I don't know how this all played out, but he's now been in heaven or with the Lord this time. Does he see the New Testament as it's being written? And here Matthew is laying out the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And he's just mentioning people like one after another, begat, begat, begat, begat, begat. And then David, you know, who stole this other person's wife and begat Solomon. Why does that have to go in there? You got you got to wonder. I mean, I know the Lord has has a purpose for it. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But it is interesting what little things happen to be mentioned. I know that shows up there in italics in your Bible. But you go down through this genealogy. And you get to verse 18. It says now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. You know, there's like a break here, pause. Everything is normal, so to speak, up to this point. Nothing too shocking. You expect people to have a lineage. The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. When as his mother Mary was a spouse to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. That's significant, as Pastor just mentioned. This is a key central doctrine of biblical Christianity, that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. Go over to John chapter one. Now, of course, Matthew presents the Lord Jesus Christ predominantly as a king, at least that's the central theme sort of around which everything flows in the gospels. In Matthew, he's presented as a king, and so a king has to have a kingly line. It shows his lineage through his father, Joseph, and his right to the throne. The next gospel is Mark. How does Mark present the Lord Jesus Christ? Predominantly as a servant. Does a servant need a lineage? Does he have to trace his bloodline back anywhere to be a servant? No, and Mark doesn't include a genealogy. Then we get to Luke, who presents Jesus Christ as essentially a pedigreed, perfect man. And now we have his human bloodline through Mary, because a perfect man should have a pedigree. And then we come to John, where we essentially don't get a genealogy, because John presents Christ as the Son of God, and the Son of God doesn't have a genealogy in that sense. John chapter one. And verse one, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. It's interesting. That's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's in the beginning with God. That's the beginning of the story. The gospels start by telling you how Christ came into being or into his ministry about his birth. And John starts off and says, he's the word and he was with God and he was God. Now, in your Bible there, Word is capitalized, capital W. It's only capitalized like that seven times in the Bible, four of which are all right here in John chapter one. You just read three of them in that first verse. The Word was with God and the Word was God. So interesting, the Word. There's obviously a connection to the scripture. But how does the words do that? This one quote I found, this is from a professor at MIT, and I just thought it was interesting. He's not a believer. He says, words are completely unknown in animals. We have no idea how they evolved, when they evolved, where they came from, or how they got here. We don't even know really how they work. We have no understanding of how each person has words innately part of their human nature. Now, I understand that he's confused, but I think he's pointing out something. He's pointing out something about human beings. We just have language. There is no idea behind how language evolved. It's just that words are a part of who we are as people. and there is no scientific, if you will, or evolutionary explanation for them. And you look at, he's not the only one, you get all these philosophers trying to explain how they came from, and I bored myself for a little while reading some of what they had to say, and it becomes mind-numbing very quickly. And these philosophers are like a bunch of people out there shining their flashlight in the sky, trying to point out a star to you. Like, their flashlight's really, you know, giving you some focus on things that are that far away. The Word though, verse 14 in that same chapter, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Word of God made flesh. So how does that work? I don't know. I don't know. First John, he says that which our eyes have seen and we have handled of the Word of God, talking about Jesus Christ in the flesh, and again, capital W, Word, Word. Chapter 5 of 1 John, three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the capital W, Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one, possibly the clearest verse on the Trinity in the Bible, 1 John 5, 7. We say God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. Yeah. And that Son is also called the Word. In fact, Revelation 19 says his name is called the Word of God. Isn't that something? God spoke the universe into existence and creation. And yet it also says that he made all things by Jesus Christ. Wow. First Timothy 3.16, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. That's a mystery, all right. It's a glorious mystery, though, that the creator who spoke the universe in existence, who is called the very Word of God, that's the one that people are at least trying in their feeble way to represent in these manger scenes and whose birthday we're supposed to be celebrating. But boy, you got to get past all of the fanfare. Sure, if he didn't come in the manger, he couldn't have died on the cross, but do not leave the story there. That babe was something incredible, absolutely incredible. Hebrews 1.3 says, he is the brightness of his glory, the expressed image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power. There is some way in which God, his very voice, his words, these scriptures and his son are all intermeshed in a way that I think is just even beyond our thinking. Flip over to chapter three real quick and we're done. There's one other birth that I think we do well to be mindful of. I think most of you here would already know what this is, just like the last one. John chapter three and verse three, and Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. This is, we might call it a rebirth or a new birth. But it is a birth that we absolutely have to be conscientious of. We absolutely have to consider. It is because that word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, it is because of that virgin birth and his perfect sinless life and death in our place that we can be born again. And we need a new birth. A new birth is not just a reformation of our old ways. It's not just turning over a new leaf. You understand not only what God did in coming as a virgin and as a virgin birth, but what it allows in us. It can only be likened to or called something as incredible as new birth. He doesn't just make a few tweaks because you weren't quite as good as you needed to be. He said, no, it's new birth. John chapter 1 and verse 12, that as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. This new birth. is contingent on something. It's contingent on you believing what God said about his son, that other birth that we need to keep in mind of his son, that birth. and his life and death and resurrection give us the opportunity through faith to become the sons of God, to be reborn a new creature. That's incredible. It's incredible. I hope just as we were done for tonight, but as your Christmas celebrations and whatever they may be, your gatherings as a family, just your meditations throughout this time. There's presents, there's food, there's all that stuff that we like. At least allow it to simmer in the back of your mind, all that God has done for us, what this means. and what it provided for us through Christ's life, his birth, his life, his death and burial and resurrection. And that through his word, through believing in him, we then can have new life and new birth. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you again for this day. Thank you, Father, for the scriptures and Lord, the understanding of who you are, Even though we wrestle with some of these things, Lord, and some of them are surely beyond us, Lord, we receive them by faith. Thank you for the word of God, the word that we can have in our lap, Lord, and learn about you. And Lord, the word of God that came as a babe and died as our savior, who's risen and who's coming again. And we look forward to that day. Lord, we love you and we commit the rest of this time to you this evening. In Jesus name, amen.