So we're in Luke chapter 2, and my message is, I'll be home for Christmas. 115 million Americans will travel over the holidays in 2024, says Triple A. So everybody wants to go home for the holidays. Isn't it true? Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays. Cause no matter how far away you roam, if you want to be happy in a million ways, for the holidays you can't be home. How many of you remember Perry Como? Let's see. There's not a hand that went up that is under 50 years old, right? Perry Como was just like a Christmas tradition. I mean, you had to watch Perry Como. I'd never seen him in color until I got this clip. But it was, I know that's not his real name either, you know, because I think when his people came over on the boat, they changed the names, right? But Como. And he'd sit there with that microphone, Mr. Microphone, and he'd sing these songs. And it would just warm the heart, and you knew Christmas was right around the corner. But everybody wanted to be home for Christmas. How true that is. I am dreaming tonight of a place I love Even more than I usually do And although I know it's a long, long path I promise you for Christmas. You can count on me. There's no storm and there's no cold that presents on me. I'll be home for Christmas You've fallen in love with me. Hi, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Stagg. I'd like to wish all your friends a Merry Christmas. Oh, thank you! Oh my gosh. One, two, three. It's a cat! It's a cat! It's a cat! Okay. I got it. Did you get it in there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I did. This is a big box! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! Here he comes! One more time. Is that the plane that daddy's on? That's the plane that he's on? Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Yeah, everybody wants to be home for Christmas. There's 160,000 troops that won't be home for Christmas. Well, they defend us to do what we're doing here this morning, so we're so grateful for their sacrifice. It was about 10 years ago and I got a word that my neighbor, I had grown up in Wilkinsburg on Laketon Road and then we moved from there when I was in junior high school, moved to Churchill, about two miles down the road here. And our next door neighbor's They were very friendly, good people, and we knew them all those years and lived there for many, many years. And then, you know, after my parents died, I ended up moving into my parents' house and lived there for those many years after. And my next-door neighbor was always the same. So I've known this fellow for so long. And found out that he had contracted esophageal cancer. And so I went out to visit him. and to see him, and he was in a bad way. They had done radiation therapy and he couldn't speak, could hardly eat, but the prognosis was that he would survive for quite a while because they had eliminated the immediate spots, so they were predicting that he had at least a year or maybe more It was close to Christmas when I saw him and went out to see him and he was in a rehabilitation health south at that point and came in to see him and wanted to lead him to the Lord so that was my object and Went in to talk with him. Of course. He couldn't talk back in some cases. That's helpful So But I could tell that he was He was just happy to see me and kind of a tear formed in his eye and I said I heard what calamity had befallen you and I just came to pray with you and talk to you about Jesus. I led him to the Lord, I think. You know, when I say led somebody to the Lord, that's all hopeful, you know. The Lord does the work probably way ahead of me and is already dealing with somebody's heart. That's how I look at it. And maybe I just come in and do some of the finishing touches and want to make sure that the person understands the way to heaven. So I present that to them. And he was very positive about it. And he was just shaking his head. He couldn't really respond, but he could hear everything I was saying and certainly understood it. So I went back for the next few days and weeks just before Christmas and kept ministering to him. And he was always ministering to the Word. His face would light up, you know, and he was glad to see me and he would take my hand and would hold on to it and so on. And I know he wanted to say something to me. He was trying to say something to me and I couldn't make it out. He was mouthing it. It was very frustrating when you can't talk and you want to say something. I mean, for women, that would be the end of their life. But guys can put up with a little bit. But I know he was trying to say something and he was forming it with his mouth. and I desperately wanted to find out what he was saying because he's trying to communicate something very important to me and I couldn't tell what it was. And he kept mouthing, home, home, home. I said, home. Oh, I said, he wants to go home. He wants to be with his family. Christmas is coming. Everybody wants to be with their family at Christmas. And so I said to him, Walt, you know, I said, Walt, maybe, you know, well listen, we're going to pray and hope that you can go home. Go home. I know you want to be with your family and they're all going to be gathered together and a couple of them were out of state and they would be coming in and so forth. Home. He kept saying home like that. And I said, you know, we'll pray that that happens, Walt. And he's going home. Home. Home. And I said, well, you want to go home, Walt? And he said, I want to go home. He put his finger up in the air. I want to go home. I want to go home and be with the Lord. That's what he meant. Home to be with Jesus. I think it was just before Christmas that he went home. He went home on Christmas. Beautiful. I told the story at the funeral, and of course the family broke up in tears when I told them that, but I said this is what Walt wanted more than anything is to be at home with Jesus, at home in heaven. Get his voice back, get his youth back. I mean, who wouldn't want to be there on Christmas morning? There's another story I tell, and dear Shelly Grant, Poor Shelly, she had a lot of health issues. She was in her forties and they were doing all kinds of work with her with the breathing and she had COPD. So they had her on oxygen constantly and they were doing everything they could. Her daughter was a nurse who worked at Mercy Hospital and so she got really good care but The daughter met me out in the hall after one of my visits with Shelly and said there's nothing more they can do apart from putting a trach in where they cut your throat and they put you on a tube. And that usually, you might last a year at the most. You get an infection, you get pneumonia. It's a bad, it's a hard way to live. Shelly didn't want that, so it was just a matter of dying. Shelly was with us from the beginning, in the early years of the church in the 70s, and we would pick her up in East McKeesport on a bus. She would come on the bus with Captain George, and there's a picture of her. and so we ministered to her for many many years and so the closing time was coming for her and she knew that she was dying and there wasn't anything more and so I went to see her she ended up in a nursing facility out in Baldwin and I went out to see her just before Christmas and I brought her a little present you know she She loves stuffed animals, so I brought her a stuffed animal with a helium balloon and brought it out to her, and her mother was there when I gave it to her, and she was just thrilled. I took a picture of her, you know, she was smiling and so happy and so on. And then we got to talking, and she said, Pastor, what's it like to die? And I said, well Shelly I said I don't know I never died and she laughed a little bit I said the Bible tells us that when you know Jesus and Shelly grew up really knowing Jesus knew all about salvation I didn't think I needed to assure her about salvation it was the process what was it going to feel like to die and I said well I'm groping for some way of explaining it that she could understand and I gave her the passages of the scripture you know that the power of resurrection when Jesus said I'm the resurrection and the life he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die that's what Jesus said you never really die And of course, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Jesus will be with you, I said. And that's how it'll be. And then I tried to explain Psalm 1611, thou wilt show me the path of life, and in thy presence is fullness of joy. And I said, that's what it's like to die. I don't know if I was explaining it very well. And then I looked over and on the windowsill she had a little toy that she had received a few months before from somebody and here we were, you know, now in a pretty dreary time of the year like right now and it's cloudy out and gloomy and we're looking out the window and We weren't even sure if Shelly was going to make it to Christmas. And so I'm looking out there trying to find a way to explain what's it like to die? And I looked over on the window and there was this little pumpkin man. And I said, well, there's that little pumpkin man. I'm wondering, what's he doing there anyway? And I'm trying to think of a great illustration. And just about that time, the sun began to shine. And it was shining through that window. And as it began to shine through that window, that little pumpkin man began to move. And I said, Shelly, that's what it's like to die. it's all gloomy, it's dark until you die and then the sunlight comes and God shines his light upon you and you're gonna be jumping for joy when you get to heaven and it's all gonna be terrific! I'll be home for Christmas. She died in January and so she made it to Christmas but What's it like to die and go home and be with the Lord for Christmas? Well, two of our best men just did that, right? There they are, Rick and Russ. Russ has been there for a month, so he could show Rick around. That's what I figured. And they're having a great time up there. Now, you know, you think I'm just fantasizing, but this is the truth. These people are more alive than they ever were on earth. They now know the benefits of what it is to trust in Jesus. And they're both going to spend Christmas with the Lord. It's only befitting, after all, it is his birthday. I'm still amazed at people that tell me at Christmastime, well, we can't come to church, it's Christmas. I'm like, what did you just say? It's his birthday. No, we got a lot of relatives coming. We've got a big party planned. Okay, well, don't invite Jesus for sure. At any rate, well, Rick and Russ are going to have a great, the best Christmas they ever had, as a matter of fact. And you say, well, what are they going to eat up there? I don't know what they're going to eat up there. Some people, that's all they worry about. What are we going to eat when we get there? There's so much to see when you get to heaven, not to mention loved ones that are already there. That's going to be terrific, isn't it? I can't wait to see my mom and my dad again. You know, they were my greatest supporters. They truly were. They were right, you know, from the beginning supporting. My dad was a tough guy, though, and kind of hard, rough around the edges, military guy, principal of a school, and somewhat perfectionistic. And boy, I was far from perfect, that's for sure. But boy, it was a great wonder when my dad got saved and everything changed and boy, he was just my, he would come out the door after church and say, best sermon he ever heard. And I'd actually believe him. I think it was. He actually made me think, he said, that's not just because you're my son. I thought, I think he's right. Boy, I can't wait to see him again in heaven. It's going to be a great day also for those that we led to the Lord. In the case of my dad, that was certainly the situation. I think he'll be thanking me for that. I'll thank him for giving me this special privilege of life itself. My dad and my mom. Oh, it's going to be a great day. What a wonderful Christmas day it will be for Rick and Russ in heaven. So, and we'll be joining them before too long. Oh, yes. It won't be long for everybody in this room. I don't know what you have growing in you. I don't know what it is. but something's gonna take us out of here. I don't know what it is with me. You say, but I'm pretty young, Pastor, and I'm, you know, you're gonna beat everything I know that, and I hope that's the case. And normally it is if you're young, but nobody knows the date of your death. You have an expiration date, and you could go ahead and look on the bottom of your foot, but it's not printed there. It is appointed unto man, wants to die. After that, the judgment, but thank God for Jesus. Well, back to the message, I'll be home for Christmas. You say, what's this got to do with the Bible? Everything. What's it got to do with the Christmas story in Luke 2? You had us to go to Luke chapter 2. Well, I think you know the story pretty well by now, because after all, everybody watches Charlie Brown's Christmas, right? And mine sets everybody straight. as to what Christmas is about. It's not about a Christmas tree and Santa Claus, it's about the birth of the Savior, that Jesus came into the world and he recites the verses of the angel of the Lord, shone round about them, the glory of the Lord shone round about them, they were sore afraid. The angel said, I bring the good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people unto you as born this day in the city of David a Savior. That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. But how did it begin? It begins with two very humble people, Mary and Joseph, and they have to make a journey. I'm pretty convinced that everything that we do in tradition with the Christmas, you know, gift giving, where did that come from? It came from the wise men that came to give a gift. And Christmas is celebrated by gift giving. That somebody makes a sacrifice and makes a gift. By the way, the wise men had to make a long journey to get to Bethlehem, but they did it. And of course, Mary and Joseph also had to make a very long journey to get to Bethlehem. They had to. They were compelled by Caesar Augustus to get to Bethlehem. Why? Well, here it tells us. All went to be taxed. Everyone into his own city and Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth little I don't know podunk town. How's that sound right? I Don't know how many people they estimate in the hundreds The city of Nazareth. It was nothing. It was a no-count city, right? And God said, those are the kind of people I want to use. And we're going to go to Bethlehem, which was also very, it's a tiny city. Philip Brooks wrote, oh, little town of Bethlehem. It was a little place. Any of you here born in little places? I was born in Rankin, Pennsylvania. Anybody know where Rankin is, right? I was born in Rankin. Well, of course, Simcoes know where Rankin is, right? Anybody here born in a small town? Anybody got small towns? Bobby, where were you born? Penn Hills? Okay. Cindy? Homewood? Nobody else was born. I guess everybody's a bit metropolitan city people here. You were born in Trafford? actually Columbia Hospital, okay well yeah I mean you have to be in a hospital yeah that's a good idea, but I mean when you were brought home you were brought home to Trafford right? Sure, so little places little places but everybody wants to go home for Christmas I think the tradition started with Mary and Joseph they had to go home because actually home for Joseph and Mary was Bethlehem the city of David Now, we don't like reading genealogies. It's kind of like reading the dictionary or the phone book, right? A lot of things that might not make a whole lot of sense to us. We've got all this list of names and genealogies. Luke's gospel has them, Matthew's gospel has them. They seem to actually be differing, but all lead back to two genealogies, one of Joseph's and one of Mary's. Matthew's account is Joseph's, Luke's account is Mary. Both of them lead back to the lineage of King David. They had royal blood in them, even though at this point in time, a thousand years later, They were pretty much peasants, humble people. So it shows you what happens with time. Who was the king? Who was the king of the Jews? Nobody from David's line. Who was it? It was an Idumean. He wasn't even really a full-pledged Jew. King Herod, he was there because of politics, that's all. But there they were traveling that distance from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth onto Judea into the city of David, which is called Bethlehem. because he was at the house and the lineage of David. Joseph said, I've got to go home for Christmas. I'll be home for Christmas. Oh, they were there, but it wasn't easy. And there he was with Mary, his espoused wife. who was great with child. So, great with child, she's nine months ready to deliver. And suddenly, they have to go on this arduous journey. It wasn't easy, folks. We think of the hard things we've been through in life, but really, folks, we all know, don't we, we that have lived in this America, beautiful, opulent place, We could be the poorest person in the room here, but I'm telling you what, you're rich compared to most of the citizens of the third world. We need to stop complaining. We've had a lot. We've been given a lot. These people are poor. And they can feel the poverty. And life is hard for poor people. And they've got to make this journey now. Hard enough to make it. Now we've got to make it with a pregnant woman. The Bible doesn't say she came on a donkey. But how else did you get there, if you think about it? It wouldn't have been an easy journey at all. There's a picture of the topography of the Holy Land. I find it interesting. As you can see, it's rocky and yet it's desert at the same time. It is a strange topography. You really can't find it anywhere else but the Middle East. So it's desert and yet it's mountainous. And so you can see it's a difficult road to get to Bethlehem. I call it inhospitable topography. But they had to come. They had to get to their home. Micah's prophecy in chapter 5 is very clear about it. But thou Bethlehem Ephrata. It had to be, there were two Bethlehems. And so the prophets very explicit Ephrata. Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is, to be the ruler in Israel, whose going forth hath been from of old, and from everlasting." Oh yeah, 500 years before Jesus is born. The city of his birth is predicted. There's no book like the Bible, folks. People talk about Nostradamus and so on. Have you read any of his prophecies? I mean, they're so abstract it could be applied to anything. Not this. There's specificity. When God gives a, he says, look, the Son of God is gonna be born in a city, and that city is not just Bethlehem, but Bethlehem Ephrata. So he gives all the specifics. And if you look at Daniel chapter 9, you even find out when. Well, back to the account, you have it there in the first passages of Luke chapter 2. There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And then we see y'all went to be taxed in the next verses following there that made Joseph and Mary have to go all the way to Bethlehem while she was nine months pregnant. When Caesar gives a law, it's going to happen. Now, of course, the taxing didn't happen until a bit after this. It was a census to take the taxing. That was the whole idea of this and get everybody marked down to make sure who you are and registered and genealogically in order and then we're going to begin taxing you. Caesar Augustus, he had an ego problem. He thought himself to be God. In fact, the worship of Augustus as a God, and this is what we call apotheosis when you deify a man. Don't ever make this mistake. If you go to the Capitol and the Rotunda in Washington, and you look up into what's called the oculus, which is the inversion of the dome, and you look up, you will see this painting, a mural, of various Greek gods and goddesses. And you will also find George Washington at the helm in a deified position. Don't make a god out of a man. Big time mistake. But people do it. People think that a man will be their savior. A man cannot be your savior. You see, people tell me, they go to Rome. My doctor was just telling me, he's going to Rome. I said, oh, you're going to go to, what are you going to do in Rome? And so forth. Oh, we're going to see the Vatican and all the fine arts and so forth. I said, you know what a sleepwalking nun is? He said, no. I said, that's a Roman Catholic. But I said, he likes my jokes, so we joke a little. See, Melrose, you even laughed, and you haven't heard that one, right? It's all in the telling. So I said, oh, you're going to see, oh, yeah, the fine arts and so forth. They said, oh, you're going to see all the gold. I mean, there's more gold there than you'll find anywhere in the world. This is the richest palace that a person has ever lived in, because they make a god out of a man, a pope, as though he's God on Earth, and he is not God on Earth. You say, well, he's got the three-tiered tiara. He's got gold encrusted with gold. They don't have one. They have about 15 different tiaras that he can wear and so forth. And written across it in gold, almost bas-relief, gold printed across is the Latin expression for the vicarious Christ. In other words, in the place of Christ. He's not in the place of Christ. No man is. Augustus Caesar. So the worship of Augustus as a god gradually gained popularity. And particularly among the upper classes of Roman society, the Senate, in an effort to legitimize his rule, bestowed upon him the title Diva Filius, meaning Son of the Divine. This not only emphasized Augustus' connection to the gods, but also positioned him as a link between the human and divine realms. And so when Caesar says, you're coming and you're going to be written down in the city of your birth, we're taking a census and we're going to be taxing you because of it. You just do what he says. So, that was Caesar, Augustus Caesar, the living God. Of course, he had his hand out at the same time. Friend Romans, countryman, give me your cash, right? And that seems to be what, there it goes, and leaves us with nothing. We all hate taxes, don't we? Don't you hate taxes? Aren't you tired of paying taxes? They got taxes on everything, and then they go, and they waste money, you can't believe it. At a recent, you know, you have a few senators that are, Senator Holling, and he's a strong conservative and a fiscal conservative. The president really isn't president-elect. Trump is not a fiscal conservative, but Holling is. And he brought a bag and before a subcommittee that was investigating this crazy expenditure that goes on in the military, he had up this bag of bolts, nuts and bolts. You know, we were doing the playground a little while ago, right? And Johnny Carson, where is he? He was helping me. I thought I saw him. Yeah, remember we had these bags of bolts, we had a table all out there. And we had all these bolts, right? Jim Sweeney was there, right Jim? We had all these bolts. And they gave us instructions, and with thumbnails this big. And you still couldn't make out where the bolts would go. They were bags and bags and bags of bolts. We got it all together, thank the Lord. But I'm still nervous because I have a bag of bolts left. And there's probably a hundred nuts and bolts in there. I don't know where they could have gone. At any rate, he holds a bag up like this. And he says at the subcommittee who was in charge of expenditures for the military, he said, how much do you think this bag of bolts cost the United States taxpayer? And he said, I have no idea, sir. He said, $90,000. See, this is craziness. And that's got to change. But I hope it does. I don't know. There's a lot to clean up. There's a lot to clean up. It's going to require someone maybe like Elon Musk to come in and say, hey, cut the waste. Cut the waste. Get this out of here. But that's what government has been for all these centuries, really. It's all about paying their luxurious lifestyles. You know, the senators all get free haircuts. $250 haircuts. Can you imagine that? Now, I get a free haircut, but my wife is my barber. And she's a good barber, too, by the way, and I need a little haircut, by the way, but usually don't trust barbers because they talk behind your back. At any rate, did you hear that one, Melrose? She's complaining at the funeral that I tell the same stale jokes. I got some new ones. Come to the praise dinner. All right, well just, you know, I've given you this before. I think it's interesting. You all have history. Well, okay, you'll learn it anyway. So you have Augustus Caesar from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D. So you can see he's the ruling Caesar at the birth of Christ. The ruling king of the Jews, who is not a Jew, is King Herod. He married into the priesthood family of John Hicaranus. And that's how he ends up as a, getting political power and favor with Rome. And he ingratiated himself to Julius Caesar and then later to Augustus. And so he was established as the king of the Jews, but he really wasn't the king. Well, we know who the king of the Jews was. He was born in Bethlehem. So he's an imposter. He rose from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C., and he, of course, is responsible for building the elaborate temple in Jerusalem. It was built with the Greco-Roman architecture, as a matter of fact. And it was supplied by an aqueduct that was built by Rome to supply. And this city became a great attraction. And so the Roman government was making money and taxing the people that were coming in there. It was a tourist attraction. And so there was a lot of cash being made by the priesthood that was corrupt, and certainly by the Roman government. Herod dies in 4 BC, and he is replaced by what's called a tetrarchy. The tetrarchy consisted of the four sons of Herod the Great. Archelaus takes the prized jewel of Jerusalem, and Antipas takes the northern territories, including Nazareth and Galilean areas of the Sea of Galilee. Philip and Lysanias and they get smaller territories. Cyrenius comes in at 6 AD and actually institutes the tax or actually implements the tax and that's why he's included here in the text. Then of course we learned of another governor that comes. They all deposed. Hercules was a weakling. and so Rome didn't want a weakling in charge of Jerusalem so they basically depose him they exile him and they put a a procurator in place, a governor and the governor was Cyrenius and then after Cyrenius there were two others and then Pontius Pilate himself who becomes the procurator in 26 AD and he's the one that as you well know is the one that passes the death sentence on our Savior. Alright And of course there are high priests that are involved who are corrupt men of the Sadducean party and they are Caiaphas and Annas. So that's how it all works. We'll have a test next week, so you make sure you have your notes prepared, right? Wonderful history here. So, and that's how this all came about. We have this division of territory that I've already mentioned to you, and that these four sons take control of that. Archelaus is deposed, and Cyreneus becomes their successor. the procurator. So the census is taken and then the taxing actually begins in six. All right, back to the text. And so she brought forth her firstborn son. They got to Bethlehem. They got to Joseph's true home, the house of bread, Bethlehem. So anytime you hear Beth, Beth in the Hebrew means a home, Bethlehem. So it's the home of bread. And I think that it's appropriate. Jesus, after all, is the bread of life, isn't he? And he'd be born here in this very humble place. So she brought forth her firstborn. Simon wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them. in the inn. I want to emphasize this. No room in the inn. So what was this inn? And why was there no room? Well, the census demanded that everybody come to this place. So all of the Davidic lineage had to come and converge at the same time on Bethlehem. So there's no room in the inn. Now, I know you think there was an innkeeper, but there really wasn't an innkeeper in the account. You can look in Luke 2 here. You're not going to find him. But he's always in the children's play on Christmas Eve. And you've got to have the innkeeper coming out and saying, there's no room. But there's no indication of that at all. There just wasn't any room, that's all. So what were they going to do about it? So we know that they had to be taken to a makeshift place. But what was this inn anyway? Well, there is some speculation that this was an ancient inn. It was called the Inn of Kim Ham. The Inn of Kimham is mentioned, actually. So we'll get to the account here, but I find this interesting that it survived all the way up to the time that Jesus would be born. So it probably had to be rebuilt several times. If we go way, way back, in your Bible you have a beautiful account, four chapters. It's not long. Anybody could read it in about 15 minutes, and it's Ruth. I almost called it the Gospel of Ruth, but it is the Gospel of Ruth. It's the story of the lineage. It's a beautiful story about this Moabitess who is a Gentile, but she marries a Jew. The Jewish man dies. She's left a widow along with her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law, and they're all at the same time their husbands died. And so they were bereft of support. And they travel to Bethlehem. Of course, it's only Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. And Naomi says, I don't know why you're coming with me. You can't find a man that will marry you here. You need to stay with your people. But no, Ruth said, your people will be my people. Your home, Bethlehem, will be my home. And your God will be my God. Best choice you could have ever made. And so she converts. And here she is found in the lineage The genealogy, you'll find it there in Matthew's account. Ruth is mentioned there. So here she is a Moabitess, but she's found in the line of blessing. She becomes the great-grandmother of David. So Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David. So there's the story at the end of how the lineage finally led to King David and would finally lead to the son of David, Jesus Christ, our Savior. So this Inn at Kimham was actually the house of Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David. Now no doubt they had to make some renovations as time went on. We're talking about a thousand years. But the location wouldn't have changed. And one of the sacred acts of the Jews, even under bondage, was to have meets and boundaries to their properties. Well, you do as well. You have deeds, don't you? And when you bought your house, They gave you a deed and the deed has meets and bounds. And those are all the places where you say, here's the line of our property and so forth. Now, many of you have had boundary issues with your neighbors, right? Because your neighbor's dog keeps coming over and leaving special presents for you in your yard. And you're saying, Stay on your side. Well, they think that that is our side and you get into arguments, go to court and everything else, you better have a deed and with it the bounds of your property. The boundary. Well, especially in the days of Israel they had to do it and they used landmarks. And one of the laws of God was an abomination to remove the ancient landmarks. Don't move the landmarks. Well, of course, the greater principle of that is you and I have some landmarks in the Bible, the rights and wrongs, the sins that the Bible speaks about, the meets and bounds. Don't move those ancient landmarks, my friend. Don't move them. And the modernists are all trying to move the boundaries and say, there's nothing wrong with this, there's no sin in that, and so on. And little by little, you don't have any moral authority any longer. Meats and bounds. Well, they had the house of the inn at Kimhin. And this place was the house of David, the house of Obed and Boaz. So it's an interesting side light to the story here. The coming home, the ancient home. It meant so much. I don't know if any of you are traveling back home. Maybe some of you are. Or maybe some of you, you're the home. And the family comes to your house. You know, we sing at Thanksgiving, over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go. Something-a-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba And the weather people will be telling you how terrible it's going to be, I'm telling you. Didn't they say this morning, ice, freezing rain, stay in your house, don't go out. I don't know what we would do without them, honestly. The media helps us in so many ways. There's wind advisories now. There's cloudy day advisories. They tell you what to wear. Put your galoshes on. Thank you, Mommy, for helping me. Don't go out, it's too cold and so forth. I don't know what we'd do without them, really. We depend on them to tell us what to do next. You can live without them. You know ABC's being sued or was sued by President Trump. Good for him, right? And I think he got Was it $15 million? I think he got $15 million from that liar, George Stephanopoulos. What is he but a Democrat hack? He worked in the White House with the Clintons and then he becomes an unbiased journalist. And people listen to this guy. Can you believe it? I hope this is the end of him and that he gets the boot. But they'll just, they'll have somebody else next. We don't need their help. You don't need their help. You don't need their fear mongering. At any rate. you're gonna get home for Christmas one way or the other. It could be snowing outside, 10 feet of snow, you're gonna make your way and you're gonna get on your sleigh, right? Well, look how many songs are about the sleigh ride, right? And over the river and through the woods and home for the holidays and I'll be home for Christmas. It's all, I think, Really nothing more than a replication of what Mary and Joseph did that Christmas, that first Christmas. A long and arduous journey. Listen, it was a difficult way to go. I think it was so difficult. They had to cross probably the Jordan River. Oh, I'm passing by all this. You guys can read it for yourselves. But Barsilea is how we ended up with the end of Kimham. But I can give you this some other time. But there's what it probably looked like. So we end up with Jesus here. They finally get to Bethlehem. They would have had to have come. Well, it depends. There's two routes that they could have taken. How many of you have GPS on your phone, right? Well, I'm glad for it, really. I had GPS before they even invented it. God positions satellite. In other words, God puts me where I'm supposed to be. That's how I looked at it. But now we have this GPS. I don't know, she's got a pleasant voice. Until you make a wrong turn. And she starts this, you know, stuff. Now I know streets here. I've been ministering for 50 years. I know, I think I've been on every street in Pittsburgh. And I also think I know the fastest way to get to every place. But every once in a while I put the GPS on because I want to check to see if there's traffic or something, you know, something that might be disturbing my advancement. And so I put the GPS on and she's telling me to go the parkway. I don't trust the parkway. Because something can change all of a sudden on there and she doesn't know about it. I just have been on it too many times. So I don't go the parkway. So here I am going the alternate route down Penn Avenue or something and here she is screaming at me. Make a left turn here. Make a left turn. I go past the left turn. Make another left turn. Make a right turn. And she insists on guiding me the wrong way. Now you say, but you're going the long route. I'm going the long route, but I know it's probably at the end going to be shorter. There's more miles involved, but it'll probably be shorter in time. Well, Mary and Joseph had two options. There weren't a lot of roads in those days. but they could use the direct route all the way from Nazareth straight down through Samaria to Bethlehem, 90 miles as the crow flies, right? So the problem with that one though is if you were a conscientious Jew, you didn't want to go through Samaria. Why? Well, because Samaritans and Jews didn't get along. It was kind of bad blood. I don't know, I don't think this is happening anymore, but back there in the 80s and 90s in the jail, these guys were talking about being Crips and Blood. I said, what are you talking about? They're in a gang, and there's Crips and Blood. I don't know what the Crips meant, and the Bloods, and man, you couldn't put them in the same cell together, that's for sure. There was just a hatred. And because they were different gangs, I suppose. I don't know if that's still happening or not. I have such outdated illustrations. I remember preaching at the jail once and I was talking about, oh, you guys are all out there, and you know, you're jonesing. And they look at each other like this. And I said, you know jonesing. And I said, you know, you have an itch for the drug. Oh, you mean phenin. I said, phenin? I didn't know what they were talking about, right? I gotta find out what the new lingo is. I gotta get on the inside of this, right? So there's the short way, 90 miles, but you have to go through Samaria, crypts and blood. It doesn't work, right? So if they were conscientious, they'd have to take the long route, which meant fording the Jordan River twice with a pregnant woman. Didn't sound like the best, but perhaps that was the way they went. I think they did for this reason. The road that they would be on was called the King's Highway. This was the birth of the king, wasn't it? Why not take the King's Highway? Yeah, there was some difficulty involved in it, but in many ways, even though it was a longer journey, 120 miles, it was probably safer and was probably a better road. So perhaps that's what Joseph did. If I was in his boots, I think that's what I'd do as well. Yeah, we got to get across the Jordan, but there were fording places. And some of those places is where John the Baptist baptized. It was a place called Eon, for instance, and he would baptize there. There was much water, but there was also shallow places where you could actually get in and you could dip somebody under the water and baptize them. So I think he probably took this longer route. It would take longer, and he was probably wondering every inch of the journey, are we going to make it or not? Are we going to make it? Well, it was March, and it was time for Laura to be born. And we went to church on a Sunday night. and we were waiting to see what was going to happen. My wife was due, and I think it was the 18th. She was supposed to come on the 18th. I'm pretty sure it was the due date. And so here we are. It's time. So it's two o'clock in the morning. My wife wakes me up, you know, the water broke. Now I'm a young father, never went through this before. And I'm all excited, you know, and so forth. And I put my pants on, and I put my shirt on. Wait a minute, I've got to reverse. And so I ran outside. I said, I've got to start the car, go outside, and there's a foot of snow. And I have a Ford Pinto. We won't get into that. I said, boy, here we go. Scraped off all the snow. I had it warmed up and so forth, and I'm bringing her out carefully, you know, bring her out and put her in the car. Parkway probably, you know, it was terrible, slow. We're moving through. I'm thinking, oh, we're going to have the baby right here in the car. I don't know how to do this, right? Got down there. It must have taken 40 minutes to get down there. and got down to McGee Hospital, I think just in time, I figured, you know, got her out of the car, got her in, you know, I'm all nervous, and I said, my baby's about to have a mother. I said, my mother's about to have, I mean, my wife's about to have, you know. Finally, we got her into the labor suite, right? And 20 hours later, the baby was born. At any rate, we made it. But, you know, I'm wondering where Joseph was thinking and, you know, his heart probably was pacing. Right? Beating hard. I've got to get her there. Got to get her there. We've got to make it. And they get there and there's no room. No reservations. And they're put out. Where would they go? Where could they go? And Luke gives us this shred of a detail and that is that there was no room in the inn. And so they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and they laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. And so that's where we're going to kind of stop and we'll come back tonight and pick up the details of this message. I'll be home for Christmas. Lord, Well, Lord, I pray that everybody in this room has the hope of being with you one day for Christmas. Not that we want it for this Christmas, but we're going to be glad one day to celebrate with you in heaven, to celebrate what you did, Lord. And how can we even describe it, Lord? that you, the eternal, the divine, the immortal God, donned the mantle of humanity, humbled yourself, and was birthed, came through the birth canal, came through all of that. This you did to save us. We marvel at it. We rejoice over this. Your mission was accomplished. You said, I came to seek and to save that which was lost. The angel said it that night, unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord, the Savior, Jesus, my Savior, Jesus, your Savior. So we love you, Lord. We thank you for saving us. Thank you for going to the cross, enduring that terrible pain, dying, and then in great victory, rising from the dead. Thank you, Lord, for giving us the gift of eternal life. Bring that blessing to these in this room, Lord, if there's any amongst us unsaved, that now they would give their heart to you, Lord. And oh, Lord, we pray for our family. We have people in our family that are not saved, no interest in the things of eternity, living for the world, Help them, Lord, to see. Help them to understand. May they see Christ in us, Lord. Help us, forgive us, Lord, for our many and grievous faults, Lord. For the things that they see in our life, Lord, that doesn't bespeak Christian living, help us, Lord, to be different. People are watching us, and you called us to be a light in the darkness. Help us to do that, Lord. That's why we've come to church today, Lord, to learn and to be different, to be resolved to leave this place differently. Now, Lord, we'll be meeting with our families. We'll be home for Christmas. And I pray, Lord, that we can be a witness where we are and that the people that are in our families that are not saved would see Christ in us. Help us to be a good and bold witness, Lord. Lord, it's easy for us to offend. Help us to love. Help us to have great compassion and mercies. To demonstrate by a gentle spirit the indwelling Holy Ghost that's in us. We need your help in this matter. Now let us stand as we close our service and that this morning you have any divine business to We invite you to accept the plan of salvation that God has laid forth from the foundations of the earth. And the first point of that plan is that all have sinned. As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. So begin by confessing your sin before God, that you have sinned against him. You can't even recollect all of the times that you've offended him. He has the record and that record needs to be expunged. Secondly, it's important to know that God will punish sin. If it goes without atonement, we will pay the ultimate price. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that eternal price is hellfire and brimstone. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. But Jesus paid the price and made the atonement on the cross. God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. When Jesus died, he said it is finished. He made an end to our damnation and our debt that we owed to him, paid by his own blood. and justifies us before a holy God. On the third day, in triumph, Jesus rises from the dead. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. So call upon him today. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Into my heart. Into my heart. Come into my heart. Come into my heart Lord Jesus Come into my heart Lord Jesus