Thank you so much for that. What a blessing. Probably one of the first. I've learned as a small boy in Sunday school was the old rugged cross, and so it has a special place in my heart. And I trust it'll be a blessing to you all your days. Great song. Mr. George Benner wrote that song. Preacher from Youngstown, Ohio, and wrote that. And it's really what we consider like an American hymn. It's had its roots here in America, written by an American, and a hymn that's traveled around the world. A lot of the songs we sing. Again, a lot of American authors out there, Miss Fanny Crosby and so many others, but that one, for some reason, has that, been given that label as an American hymn, and it's a good song, good hymn, and great truths to it. Well, it is Christmas, and now we did start a series of messages on the Sermon on the Mount. I'm sorry, the Olivet Discourse. Wrong sermon. The Olivet Discourse. And we are going to put that on hold because it is the Christmas time. It's December. We want to turn our attention towards things, truth of Christmas. And so if you're here in January, we'll pick up where we left off. So I don't want you to get upset, but I've been praying about this and battling all morning asking Lord about all this. And we feel a little Lord to, uh, preach this this morning, as we'll look at themes and things surrounding Christmas on Sunday mornings for the next few weeks, leading all the way up to Christmas Eve. There's a lot to say about the birth of our Savior, and we want to cover all these truths. Now, again, a lot of things you're going to hear today, maybe in the weeks you know, Because they're fundamentals. We have to repeat fundamentals. They're truths that need to be emphasized all the time. Because, again, without these truths, we would not have Christianity. This is what separates Christianity from all the other religions or faiths of the world. And I want you to start off this morning in the book of Jude. Find, if you will, the small book of Jude just before the book of the Revelation. Find, if you will, the tiny book of Jude. There's only one chapter to it. And so just 25 verses, very powerful here. Jude is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. His real name is Judas, but he goes by Jude for obvious reasons. And you always want to disassociate yourself with somebody who has a bad name. And so, Jude, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, remember Joseph and Mary were engaged to be married. She was found with child. They did not come together. They did not have a husband-wife relationship until after the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and after the birth of our Savior. Then they would continue or begin a normal husband-wife relationship, and they had several children together. And one of them is James, and this one we see here is Jude, two men who wrote scripture, were the half-brother of our Savior. And Jude writes very simply, he says in verse number three, Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Father, bless the time, bless the hour now. We're thankful this day for your goodness and mercy. We ask for the God that your work can move in a special way in hearts and lives. Help our children both downstairs and next door in the classrooms. Help each teacher as they teach and may the spirit of God be upon them and be upon these children, Lord, that they'll hear, they'll understand, and learn to love you and to know you. And help us as adults. In this time, that Lord, you'll speak to our hearts, that we would cast off the cares of the world for just a few moments to listen to what you, the blessed spirit of God, has to say, that we may be encouraged, edified, and challenged, convicted, and drawn closer to our Savior. Blessed now this time, we ask and pray this in Jesus' name, amen. As Jude writes, he says, I gave it all diligence to write unto you concerning the common salvation. It's an interesting phrase because, my friend, there is only one salvation. There's only one plan of salvation. There's only one method of salvation. It's a common salvation. It's the same salvation that applies to, we talk about an American hymn. Well, the American hymn is speaking about the same salvation that is available. And the reason that the old rugged cross can be sung in America, as well as on the other side of the world, because it's talking about the one theme, the one message. It's the cross of Jesus Christ is death. and burial and resurrection. And through that cross, sinners have salvation. Sinners can be redeemed. It's a common salvation. But he tells us that we are to earnestly contend for the faith. In other words, we are not to compromise. We're not to surrender what we know to be true and what is right and what God would have us to tell other people. We want to present this morning a fundamental Bible truth that, again, everybody must believe if they want to be saved. It's what we would call an indispensable truth, a truth that cannot be denied. It's a truth that cannot be ignored. You know, we can ignore a lot of things in our life, and sometimes it can be dangerous to ignore certain things. Our body may be in pain, and we may be suffering. We simply say, I choose to ignore this, and it could be serious if we choose to ignore it. It could be some form of disease that may eventually take our life, going unchecked. And too often the not many people have ignored something in their life and only to suffer later on the results of it. I mean there's a problem in our marriage and we let that, we ignore it and hopefully it'll clear itself up instead of addressing it and dealing with it and fixing the problem. Well, in Scripture, there's things that are indispensable truths, things that we must look at and say, well, what am I doing with this truth that God is presenting? Have I accepted this truth? Have I believed this truth? And the truth of the virgin birth, my friend, is a truth that if a man denies it, he really, he damns his own soul. He will go off into a Christless eternity. There are several undeniable truths in Scripture. We often say I'm a Baptist, and for many reasons we label ourselves a Baptist, which we don't have time for. We are an independent Baptist church, meaning that we are not connected to a hierarchy somewhere. You may have a Southern Baptist church, which is connected to the Southern Baptist Convention. American Baptist Association, the General Association of Regular Baptists, you can have the Conservative Baptist Movement, all these different movements where they have a headquarters. You can have the Presbyterian Church, which holds its allegiance to the Presbytery, or the Lutheran Church, which holds its, which is in connection with the Lutheran Synod or the Methodist Church, which has the Methodist headquarters, or Roman Catholicism, which has its headquarters in Rome, and all these churches will look to their headquarters, so to speak. Well, we're an independent church because we don't have a headquarters. Our headquarters is Jesus Christ, and we are holding ourselves to the Word of God. And as a body of believers, you are to make sure that the preacher, which is me, and Pastor Jorge, do what is right, and we preach what is right. And if not, you bounce us down the front stairs, because you don't want error in the church. But take it easy. fake hips and one knee, so I'd fall apart like a Lego as I go down the stairs. So you want to make sure that the truth is being presented here. Again, there are several things that are undeniable. So as an independent church, we believe these things. Now, some people say, are you a fundamentalist? And that word fundamentalist has various meanings depending on how you want to use it. When we say we're fundamentalists, we're not crazy or believe in wacky things, but we're simply saying we believe in things that are fundamental for Christianity to function. And I often use the illustration of your car. Again, you can have your car, but you have things in your car that are necessary to make that car run. You need your engine, you need your transmission, and whether you have heated seats or not, that's up to you. Those are a wonderful thing, amen? And I don't have heated seats. I did one time in a car we had. I enjoyed it for one month before they gave up the ghost. Heated seats are wonderful because they don't, you don't look to them because they keep you so much warm, but because they just really feel really good on your lower back. Amen? Can a brother get an amen? It's like, just stay in the car all day if you have that thing. And because if you're old like me, your back lets you know that it's there. every second of the day. And especially when you go to bend over, it's like, oh man, I'm at this point in life that I really need that what fell on the floor, amen? I'm at the point now where the ice cube falls, I just kick it under the refrigerator, amen? Because I ain't going down there anymore. We don't need that ice cube. There are fundamentals. The virgin birth is a fundamental. You cannot be a Christian and deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and we'll see why. We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. The deity of Jesus Christ means that Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh. We believe that. We believe in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died on Calvary's cross for us. He took my place. It's called the vicarious death and suffering of Jesus Christ. We believe that. We believe in his blood atonement. that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed on Calvary's cross as an atonement, a payment for our sin. And without the shedding of blood, there is no remission, the Bible says. We must put faith in the blood of Christ. I can't see it. We don't have to go to Jerusalem. We don't have to walk up Calvary's and Golgotha's Hill and be there. But we know by faith that his blood was shed. And we believe that God says that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. And so we must believe in the blood atonement. We believe in a bodily resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the fundamental. It's what separates us from everybody else. Our Savior died, but rose again. He's alive forevermore. And since He's alive, He is there to declare that He paid salvation's debt. And that any sinner can come and be freely forgiven and have salvation. We believe in that bodily resurrection, not a ghostly resurrection, but a physical bodily resurrection. These are Bible truths. They are the bedrock of our faith. We believe those. And so if those are fundamentals, then I guess I am a fundamentalist because I believe all those things to be true. Now these truths have been attacked by the modernists and liberals throughout the centuries, yet they still stand. These truths are still in our Bible. They have not gone anywhere. They have withstood all of the attacks that have come against them. Those men have come and gone, but the Bible still stands. As a Christian, as a Bible believer, I believe in a supernatural Christianity. You ask people if they believe in the supernatural, most people get ghosty and, you know, I had somebody sign me up, they made me, I don't know how this stuff works, but people just make you, hey, I signed you up, now you're a, you're a, you can, you're a, on Facebook, you can, you're a member of the Gettysburg ghost page. Like, I don't want to be a member of the Gettysburg ghost page. Because they don't believe in ghosts. They don't believe soldiers are running around Gettysburg. And anything you see on camera, you know, look at this. You see this? And I'm looking at the picture. No, I don't see nothing. I see it, man. I'm like, you know, you zoom in or you, you know. No, you know, it's a blur. It's a, it was raining and there's a spot on their camera. And then the next thing they see, they think they see General Lee running across the field there. And it's not, okay. So understand something that we don't, we believe in the supernatural, but we don't get crazy about it that, you know, grandma's up in the attic and she's trying to send you Morse code. We don't believe in those things, but we do believe in biblical. supernatural things. The fact that Jesus Christ was born in a supernatural manner. It's something that only God can do. It's not a normal natural birth. Something miraculous took place with that birth. We believe that He lived a supernatural life. His life was without sin. He was born without sin. He lived without sin. He performed supernatural miracles, and did supernatural things in that way, by healing the sick, and raising the dead, and casting out demons, and all those things were supernatural. We believe in those things. But we also believe he died a supernatural death. His death was different from everybody else's death, because his death was, again, substitutionary. He died for us. He took mankind's place. and we believe in a supernatural resurrection. My friend, he rose from the grave. He's alive forevermore. Maddie was here, Maddie and Hannah left, went Friday night, but what we're gonna do on Friday, we tossed around a few ideas, and one thing we ended up doing, which fascinates me, we went on a little history tour. We went over to Snake Hill. You all know Snake Hill out there in the Meadowlands. It's called Laurel Hill is the official name of it. We all call it Snake Hill out there. Well, again, a long story, but there was a cemetery out there, Potter's Field, that used to belong to the hospitals and all the things that were out there. Long story short, a lot of people were buried out there, and the Jersey Turnpike just removed the stones and covered them up. And then they had a long court battle, and they exhumed those bodies, many of them, over 4,000 people were exhumed over there at Snake Hill and reburied in a cemetery up in Hackensack. I don't understand why Hudson County residents were buried up in Bergen County. I guess they're moving uptown one way or another. But they got up there, and they were Well, my friend, it's a very sad, long story which I don't have time for on what took place with those people and how they died and how they were forgotten and what the Hudson County did to them and what the New Jersey Turnpike Authority did. Can you imagine corruption in Hudson County? I'm shocked. I'm just shocked that all this corruption in our county, that's unbelievable. We shouldn't be because, again, our own senator is going to prison, but that's another story. Those people died and we went to visit their graves where they were reburied. They're still dead. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He's alive and we believe in a supernatural return. Our Savior is returning again. That's a Bible truth. We believe in the literal second coming of Jesus Christ. And so we hold these Fundamentals, these truths to our heart, because again, those are what makes Christianity, Christianity. And what goes on in society today is we try to strip away all these things and say, well, we're embarrassed of that, we don't believe in that, and well, that's iffy. And by the time you strip everything away, well, we're just like everybody else. There's nothing left that separates Christianity from the other religions of the world. But these things cannot be stripped away because God declares them to be so. And if we go to our Bibles in Matthew's gospel, chapter number one, we see Matthew is declaring these things to be true and expressing it to be true and letting us know why they are true. Matthew's Gospel, chapter number one. Again, people want to argue, when was Jesus born? Again, was Jesus born in December? Was Jesus, was he born in the springtime, people say. I got one guy telling me he's born in September and he sends out Christmas cards in September. And if you send him a Christmas card in December, he'll mail it back to you. So I feel like just, anyway, sending him back a bunch of cards just to see what he'll do with it, amen? If I could afford the stamps, I'd send him 30 Christmas cards. Now again, that's arguing over minutia. Exactly when Jesus was born, and again, I've read a lot of things, and some people say, well, if you do this, you do this, and you do this, it's probably born in December. Sounds good. That's not a fundamental, though. Not a fundamental. I'm not going to die on that hill that Jesus was born, and it was definitely December 25th. I'm not going to die on that hill, but I am going to die on the virgin birth. I am going to fight for that one. And I want you to notice the Bible says in verse number 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. In other words, Matthew is going to let us know exactly how the birth of Jesus Christ happened, what took place, and all the events surrounding it. Because that's important to know that. That's important to celebrate it. People say, well, these decorations, preacher, they're all pagan decorations. Well, listen, everything's pagan. The days of our weeks are pagan days. The month is pagan. Every month, the name of each month is a pagan month. You know, it goes on from... from August, which goes after Caesar Augustus, and on and on, these names, so don't get crazy with all of a sudden now you're Mr. I don't wanna celebrate pagan, because everything has some roots in paganism, by the way, or things that are not Christian, but we still can enjoy certain things, because there's certainly nothing wrong with them. They go with the season, and what blooms in a season, what looks good in a season. The fall decorations would not look good up here with these decorations. It would just kind of like, what in the world? You people, decoration committee go crazy or something? So we got rid of those pumpkins last night and put out a southern Mexican flower to celebrate a winter holiday. Man, that's how we roll in America. And so we do that because it reminds us of Christmas. I'm told these things are poisonous and that the cats should not eat them. So Joe, be careful. Amen? Don't want to kill that cat of yours. Don't bring one home. Amen? If anybody, you have a cat and they're looking, never mind. Now, he says in verse number 18, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Again, a lot of detail in there. Matthew is letting us know that they were espoused, they were engaged, and they had not come together, they had not consummated their relationship, but she was found with child of the Holy Ghost, and Joseph, her husband being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, the son of David, fear not to take of thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. I want you to know that in those verses I read, there's a thousand sermons right there. the truths that must be declared and they are declared and will be declared that again Mary was a pure person had not known a man and God in a vision appeared to Joseph letting him know that his wife was faithful and that God was doing something miraculous here with her and through her and that she is going to bring forth a son his name is going to be Jesus for he shall Save his people from their sin. Again, my friend, his name is Jesus. He is the Messiah, the anointed one, and his business is saving people. My friend, Jesus Christ is in the saving business. If you're here today, you do not know Christ. Christ wants to save you. It's not that you say, I preach, you don't know what I've done. I don't know what you've done. I don't really don't care what you've done. All I know is that Jesus Christ is able to reach down and reach you no matter how far you've gone down. The hand of God is able to reach that. If you read your Bible, you'll find Jesus Christ, every story in our gospel, Jesus Christ gives us the worst example of people, letting us know he's able to reach the most vilest of people, whether it's a woman at a well, whether it's the adulterous woman, whether it's the demoniac, whether it's his Ikea, no matter who they are, no matter how corrupt they have been, no matter how bad they have been, God is able to reach down and save them, and pull them out of the sin, and raise them up, and clean them, and make them a child of God. That's His business, is saving people. That's why He came to save people from what? Their sins. My friend, the greatest problem you and I have is the problem of sin. We have a lot of remedies on TV. I saw years ago about a guy losing his hair. I don't know if they still sell this, but I thought this is the craziest thing. If you're losing your hair, it's a can of spray paint. You basically spray the back of your head, and it makes you look like you have hair. Remember that commercial years ago? You can't sleep at 2 o'clock in the morning, so you're watching this, and there's a guy selling you spray paint. You start looking in the mirror. It is getting thin back there, but I'm not spray painting the back of my head, amen? That's not my greatest problem, amen? Going bald doesn't concern me too much. It's going gray. It's going loose. It's just going, but it's just part of life. I'm not going to spray paint my head or get weaves or anything else. It is what it is. That's not my greatest need. My greatest need is my sin problem because sin will take me to an eternal hell. I need that sin removed. So how do I get my sin removed? Well, I go to Jesus Christ. Bible also lets us know in verse number 22, Again, more wonderful truth. The Bible letting us know that this is a fulfillment of what God said in the Old Testament. You know, the Old Testament is still the Word of God. We may not understand all of it, you may have questions about it, but God put it there for a reason. And as we talked about, Matthew's Gospel is always going back and quoting the Old Testament to prove that Christ is the Messiah. Christ is the Savior. Why? How is he the Messiah? Well, didn't you read this in the Bible? Didn't you see this in the Scripture? Didn't the Bible say this? And constantly pointing back to what the Bible says and how Jesus fulfilled that. And one thing that Jesus, my friend, could not do on his own, you know, we get older, we can always cook the books, we can make something, but you cannot fulfill this before you're born. He was born of a virgin. That was a fulfillment from Isaiah chapter number 7 and verse number 14. His name shall be Immanuel. That word virgin is a Hebrew word, Alma, and it means What the word means a pure woman, somebody who has not had a physical relationship, but according to the revised standard version, they have changed that word to another word, which means a young woman. And so you read a revised standard version, it'll say, and behold, a young woman shall conceive. My friend, there's a difference between a young woman and a virgin. And by using the word virgin, letting us know the great detail of it all. A woman can be a young woman, but doesn't necessarily have to be a virgin. So don't let people change your Bible. These words mean things. And so if somebody goes in and starts monkeying with words and changing words, there's a reason for that. They're trying to take away something. And don't let anybody take away one brick out of your wall of faith. Not one thing, not one piece should ever be surrendered. Because this is what keeps us together. When we were kids, my mom bought us for a game. It was called Don't Break the Ice. You had a guy sitting on a chair on a plastic piece. He had a little plastic hammer. And you had to break these blocks. And if you're old like me, you remember that game? And you had to break a block out with the whole thing without the guy in the chair. Collapsing. Anybody know what I'm talking about? You're all staring at me like I'm nuts. Thank you, Roy. I'm going to interview a few of you, like you're old. And so we'd play that game and knock out a plastic block. And then somebody else would knock out a plastic block. And then somebody else. And it came down to whether, you know, it doesn't matter. No matter what block you knock out, this poor guy in the chair is going in the tank. It's just how it was. Well, my friend, that's like people with their Christianity. Well, maybe that's not true, and you knock a piece out. And maybe that's not true, and we knock a piece out. And maybe this isn't, you saw the guy on TV, and he seems to be very smart, and maybe that's not true, and we surrender, next thing you know, We wonder why our faith has collapsed because we surrendered it piece by piece, one brick by brick. We gave it away and we surrendered it all when God says that not one jot or tittle shall pass till all things be fulfilled. That this word, my friend, is God's word. It's preserved. It's kept forever. Heaven and earth shall pass away, Jesus said, but his word shall abide forever. And so when some modernist comes along and tries to rewrite it, we say, no, thank you, sir. We're not buying that. We're not selling that. And we're not accepting that. Every now and then you may cook something, and you may not have the proper ingredient. And you go into your cabinet, hmm, I need this. What's a good substitute? There's never a good substitute for what you need, by the way. You need that ingredient. What's a good substitute for cinnamon? Well, they'll give you other things because there's nothing like cinnamon. If it needs cinnamon, it means you stop and run to the grocery store or go on Amazon Prime hoping three hours ago I can show up and get it and have what you need. You need cinnamon, or you need this. There's no really good substitutes for anything. You need the real thing. We need the scriptures. Not something like the scriptures, but the scriptures. The Bible declares and Luke declares and Matthew all declare the purity of Mary. Not only does Matthew talk about here how she was a virgin, but Luke's gospel says that it was to a virgin in Luke 1.27, a spouse to a man whose name was Joseph, the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. So there in that verse, Luke describes her, and two times he uses that word, letting us know who Mary was, because it's important for us to believe in that fundamental. that Mary was pure, that at the birth of Christ there was no man involved, that Jesus Christ would be born without his sin nature like you and I are born. It's supernatural. So again, in Isaiah where he says that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, here in Matthew's gospel he says his name is Emmanuel, God with us. Now my friend, we call him Jesus Christ. We call him Jesus. We call him Lord. Nowhere else in the scripture do we ever read somebody calling him Emmanuel. We find that phrase here in one time. Because again, Emmanuel means God with us. Who is this person who has arrived? Who is this one that we are celebrating? Is it just another child? Is it just another human being? We have lots of babies in our church. Praise the Lord for babies in the church. I went downstairs yesterday and both diaper pails were overflowing, amen? That's not a pleasant thing, but it's a wonderful thing, amen, to know that the diaper pails are filled and babies are being fed and we have babies in the church. It's a good thing. And that's why we have a sign-up sheet for somebody here to clean out the diaper pails, amen? And we have a diaper pail next door. Thank God for diaper pails. Thank God for babies. Your babies are all wonderful, but there's no baby Like this baby. This is a special baby. We all think your kid is special. I was talking to somebody recently, nobody who belongs to church, but their kid is years in advance of every other child their age. Their kid is seven months old, but their child is light years ahead of every other baby. My kid is doing things the doctor says that other kids don't do. Yeah, he's doing calculus, we get it. He's just wonderful. I looked at the kid, the kid's sitting there drooling, biting on a pencil, but he's all that. And I get that. We all want to think our kids are something, amen? We all think our kids are superior until you find them in their bedroom and they got the baby powder blowing it all over the bedroom and somehow they morph back to being human again. But this baby is a special baby. He's supernatural in the sense he's Emmanuel. God is now with us. My friend, God has arrived. God is going to fix the situation. God is going to take care of something that nobody else has been able to take care of, and that's taking care of man's sin. So again, as we think of Jesus Christ and who he is and his supernatural birth, we know who he is, that he is Emmanuel. God is with us. God is now taken upon flesh. according to what John chapter 1 tells us. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1.14, and the Word was made flesh, and it dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Word is now made flesh. My friend, we see in our Bible, the purpose of our Bible, and why we have these scriptures, and why they're important, because again, our soul hangs on its validity. Is this book right? Because if it's not right, then what about my soul? What about my eternal soul, and what's going to happen to it? I ran across a man many years ago in Carnegie Avenue, he was handing out literature, it was religious literature, and I was reading his literature, and he was of a different faith and had a lot of strange views, and I said, I gotta find this guy, because I found the paper on the ground, so I hunted him down on the avenue and found out, and I approached him and began to talk with him about his faith, and he was letting me know that the Bible was not the final authority. According to him, his church and the church he attended was the final authority. That his church had the authority and the right to change scripture. That his church superseded anything that the scriptures had to say. We had a wonderful conversation there on the avenue until he called me demon-possessed and ran away from me. It's always pleasant on Carney Ave, amen? But my friend, understand something. No church is the final authority, and no church has any business changing scripture. Scripture is the final authority, and every church is to conform to it, and its truth, and its teachings. We line up with what the Bible says. Why do you believe that? Because the Bible says. This is why I believe it. The Bible says God says in his word. And Matthew and Luke and all the other New Testament writers are constantly telling you, no, this is true. Why? Because the Bible says in the Old Testament, have you not read? And Jesus, when he met with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he was discussing his resurrection to them while they did not know who he was, what did he do? He began in Moses and expounded the scriptures and began to show him, show them himself. In other words, Jesus was using the scriptures to prove who he was and what he did and what had happened. The scriptures are to be believed because they are trustworthy and reliable and can be trusted. They have been proven. Matthew 1.21 says, Again, Christ did not have a human father. As we understand through all the scriptures, Joseph, verse number 18, did not know Mary. Matthew and Luke each record the fact of the virgin birth. Their records are independent of each other, which is an extra guarantee of their work. Again, Matthew, hey Luke, what do you got? I got this, what do you got? Yeah, let's put that down together. No, they're independent of each other as they record the scriptures as given to them by the Holy Spirit of God. The efforts of critics to show them to be contradictory is in vain because these books complement each other. They tell the same story and are letting us know. They let us know in Matthew that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost. As it says in verse number 18, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Luke's Gospel 135 says, Matthew tells about the appearance to Joseph. Luke tells us about the appearance to Mary, but in both appearances we're told that this is an act of the Holy Spirit of God. Matthew lets us know that she was a virgin, and so does Luke let us know that she was a virgin. In fact, Mary, I read the verse Luke 127, but Mary also says this, how shall this be, seeing what? I know not a man. Even Mary herself is like, how is it possible for me to have a baby if I don't have, not with my husband. We know that they were betrothed. Matthew lets us know in 1.18 that when they were espoused to Joseph. Again, in Bible days, an engagement was as good as a marriage. But you had not come together yet. You were engaged, but legally married. You were waiting for the wedding day to come. When the groom would come, and unbeknownst to the bride, she didn't know when her wedding day was. It was really up to when he had enough money to come and claim her. But they were engaged. If that's the case, my wife would still be waiting. I didn't have a dime when I married her. Not much has changed in these 35 years, but we're still happily married. And understand something. So Joseph and Mary are engaged, legally married, but they have not come together to live together as husband and wife yet. That wedding day had not arrived, but they were espoused. And it says there that, again, Joseph, was espoused, not only in Matthew's gospel, but Luke's gospel says she was espoused. We know that Joseph was the house and lineage of David. According to Matthew 1.16, we see his lineage. And Jacob begat Joseph, her husband, Mary, of whom was born Jesus Christ, and we give the generations there. And Luke's gospel tells us that, again, that Joseph was of the house and lineage of David. We know from both scriptures declared that he was born in Bethlehem. He was declared to be Savior. On and on these lists go. Again, the Bible, Matthew and Luke, complimenting us, letting us know about the birth and the importance of it and all that took place. Matthew's narrative is told throughout from the standpoint of Joseph, and Luke's tells that from the standpoint of Mary. The language of both narratives, again, is so unmistakable, And so conclusive that to accept these Gospels, one must accept the virgin birth because both Gospels along with the Old Testament all tell us about the virgin birth. So I must accept this because the Bible keeps putting this out there in front and letting me know. I learned as a kid in school that when the teacher said, you need to pay attention to this because this will be important. This might be on the test. That's when I woke up and got my pen out. This is going to be on the test. Let me make a note on this. And if it wasn't on the test, I would really get. It's going to be on the test. You maybe memorized this. It's not on the test. When God tells you something once, it's important. If God says it twice, three times, four times, you really need to sit up and pay attention because he's really trying to get a point across to you. He's letting you know something's really important. Jesus would say, verily, verily. And my friend, when Jesus would say verily, verily, that's when you pay attention because he's letting you know something, a truth is about to come forward. Something that you really need to pay attention to is about to be said. So I need to sit up, verily, verily, well, he's saying something really important right now. Let me pay attention. There can be no halfway position here. There can be no, well, I like this, I don't like that. No, I must believe this. The virgin birth must be absolutely accepted or the gospel's totally rejected. You can't have just, I like this story, but I don't like this. No, this is the whole thing. the so-called modernist who rejects the virgin birth, yet they allege Matthew and Luke are the only two writers who mention, are the same people who say, I don't believe in the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke, yet they love the Sermon on the Mount. Both men write the Sermon on the Mount. The same men gave us the virgin birth. They gave us the Sermon on the Mount. People love the Sermon on the Mount. If that's truth, then so is this. You can't cherry pick either one of them. They're both truth. Again, we must believe in the virgin birth. Christmas, my friend, is about Christ and coming to earth, but if this foundation If this truth is denied, then everything we're about to do afterwards really doesn't matter. Because we don't have a sinless Savior. He's just like us. You see the angels, and the shepherds, and the birth in the manger. It's all pretty, but it's meaningless if there's no virgin birth. And then we'll come into spring season and we'll celebrate, we'll talk about the upper room and we'll talk about the triumphal entry and we'll mention the arrest and trial and crucifixion and the burial and the resurrection. You understand, they're all meaningless. They mean nothing if there is no foundation with the virgin birth. It is the bedrock on which everything else stands. The only reason we can celebrate the resurrection and the joy is because our Savior was virgin born. He was not like us. He was different. He was unique. He was sinless, therefore able to pay my sin debt and be crucified, buried, and rise again. This is what separates us, and this is what makes it all supernatural, the wonderful truth of it all. And it's the wonderful truth we proclaim this Christmas season, that our Savior came in a unique way. Why did He come? Because He knew I would need a Savior. It's personal. I need a Savior. And He died to save me, so that I may have the gift of eternal life, and He wants me to be with Him. That's why God went through this whole process, to redeem fallen man, so that man can dwell with God. The fact that God wants to dwell with me is something I still struggle with. Why in the world does God want to be with me? Because He loves me, amen? I don't know why, but He does. I got some people trying to figure out how God has survived all these years without them. I know people like that, but I'm still trying to figure out why he wants anything to do with me. Simply say that he loves me, and he loves you. And he came so that you might be saved. Let's stand together for prayer. Father in heaven, we do thank you for your goodness, your mercy, and great salvation that we have through Christ. Father, we pray now that as we think about this Christmas season, we think of all that is about to take place and all that we'll celebrate. We know, Lord, the world commercializes it and it's been covered over, glossed over with all the things that the world brings to try to take away from our Savior, from a Santa Claus to elves and so much other foolishness, but Lord, we know the reason we're here, the reason the world celebrates is because we're celebrating a birth, the birth of a virgin-born Savior, Emmanuel, who is now with us, who came to die on Calvary's cross to pay man's sin debt so that man might be redeemed and brought back to God. Thank you for this wonderful gift and a reminder of this season, of a truth we celebrate all year long. Bless this time and hour now, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.