Before we open God's Word together to reflect upon the birth of our Messiah, let's bow our heads together and go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we are so very grateful for our salvation, grateful for our Savior, that we have such an incredible salvation based upon who He is, what He did for us on the cross. And that this was not something that just popped into history at some time, but one that you carefully planned for from eternity past. And not only did you prepare for this from eternity past, but from the beginning of the giving of the revelation of the Hebrew Scriptures through Moses, all through the period of the Old Testament, that you revealed many, many things, many prophecies, many specifics so that when He came, He would be recognized as the promised and prophesied Messiah, and that He would fulfill all of those in incredible detail. So Father, we pray that today as we look at this, we might be strengthened and encouraged in our faith, and perhaps if there's someone here or someone listening who hasn't quite made up their mind about trusting Christ Jesus of Nazareth as Savior, that the evidence of Scripture would be used by you to convict them of their need to trust in Him and Him alone for their eternal salvation. And we pray this in His name. Amen. We're in a Christmas special where two weeks ago I started off focusing our attention upon the Scriptures related to who Jesus is. Last week I started talking about the problem that we have, and that is that we are all unrighteous, Scripture says. Isaiah 64 says that all of us have committed sins, all of us have our unrighteousness is as filthy rags, and that none of us are good, Scripture says, no, not one. And because of that, there has to be a solution to this problem of a lack of righteousness. When it says all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, the word there translated righteousness is a word that is very, very central to modern Judaism. And it's the idea of good works, the idea of charity. And what the scriptures teach is that our good works are are, even the best that we have, are not good. They are unworthy. They cannot get us anywhere. And so we traced what the Bible teaches about how we receive righteousness, going back to Genesis 15-6, when Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And so that reminder in Genesis 15-6 of something that Abraham had already done prior to Genesis 12, is a basic statement that the only way to have righteousness is to believe the promise of God in relation to how he would defeat sin and Satan, pay the penalty for sin, and bring salvation to mankind. And we saw that in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, this is made very plain as you work your way Through the Old Testament, more and more detail is given as you go through time so that you can understand what the problem is and that the solution has always been the reckoning or imputation of God's righteousness to us. The New Testament, it is stated succinctly in relation to Christ that he who knew no sin was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be found in us. And so it is clear that we become righteous, not by what we do, but by what we believe. We believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that he died on the cross for our sins, and God counts that faith as righteousness. And on that basis, we are declared just. So today I'm continuing down that line, and we are going to title this message as How come nothing is projected? I don't know why. I didn't turn the projectors on. The title for the message is, What are the chances that the Messiah has come? And so we're going to begin by looking at some various prophecies that were made in the Old Testament and how they were fulfilled. Now, at the beginning, I want to address direct your attention to a passage I referred to last time in Luke chapter two, with the appearance of the angels and what they said to the shepherds in the field. The last thing they said in Luke 2.12 was, this will be the sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a manger. Now, that's an important statement. It's a sign. See, throughout the Old Testament, there are these signs that are given so that we can find out how to identify the coming Messiah. Later in the New Testament, in Galatians 4.4, the apostle Paul wrote that when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law. The fullness of time basically means that God had been working since the fall of man to bring the world to a position where they would be ready and prepared to be able to identify the Messiah. And not only that, but in a world where certain things had come to pass so that it would enable the efficient spread of the gospel throughout most of the known world at that time. So you had at that time the Roman Empire, which had reached a stage of prosperity and stability that was known as the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. And as a result of that, you had this enormous amount of territory, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, at least the southern parts of those two areas, where there was this peace and stability and the Romans had built highways, some of which you could still go on now, some of which are the foundation to modern highways. And so that enabled the apostles and the Apostle Paul afterward to be able to take the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. There was also preparation among the Jewish people. So that there was indeed a messianic hope that was taking place at that time. There were people who were looking for the Messiah. There were many who were not. Many had the idea of a false Messiah that was just a political deliverer. But there was an anticipation then that something had to take place. Much like we have today, you'll hear a lot of people thinking about all the crazy stuff going on in the world today. And they're thinking, you know, Jesus must be coming back very soon. Well, maybe, maybe not. But there was that anticipation of the Savior. And so when we ended looking last time at what was required for salvation, I concluded with this point, that the Messiah is Yeshua. Yeshua is the Hebrew name for Jesus of Nazareth who fulfilled many more than 100 messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. And so we're going to look at just eight of those this morning. I looked at this last year, we looked at 12, this year I'm only looking at eight. I think five of them are not ones that I looked at last year, but there's a couple, two or three that I did look at last year, but I'm gonna say some slightly different things about them this time. But I'll remind you that one of the prophecies I looked at last time goes back to the promise that God made to the serpent in Genesis chapter 3. He's not addressing the woman, he's not addressing the man, he's talking to the serpent. Because the serpent had been used by Satan, so he's really talking through the serpent to Satan and informing him of how he is going to be defeated and all of his desires to supplant God as the ruler of the universe. And so there's this promise in Genesis 3.15 where he says, I will put enmity, hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. So now that seems rather cryptic today, but when you trace through all of the genealogies, and that's what I'm referring to up here in this chart, the genealogy that traces the human race from Adam to Noah, and then the genealogies in Genesis 9 and 11 that trace the descent from Noah to Abraham, and then Genesis 12 through 50, we see the tracing of that line from Abraham to Judah. It's tracing the line of the seed of the woman, the descendant of the woman, and that through that line, the Messiah was come. It's talking about the fact that He's going to be true humanity. He will not be just a God or an angel that comes to earth, but would be a truly human who could therefore die on the cross for our sins. The last part of that verse says, He shall bruise you on the head. A head wound would be a fatal wound and a destructive wound. And then it says, bruise his heel. And even a heel strike from a viper can be fatal, but we know that there's life that came after that for the Savior. He rose from the dead. So in the seed of the woman, we trace this line that goes all the way as it's traced in the genealogies at the beginning of the gospels in Matthew chapter one and Luke chapter four, traces the lineage so that we can identify the coming of the Messiah, that He would be from the line of David, as stated in 2 Chronicles 17. And these would give that basis. So I want to start this morning with the prophecy of the virgin birth. The virgin birth is revealed in Isaiah 7, verse 14. In Isaiah 7.14 we read, therefore the Lord himself will give, and I translate this y'all because it's important to understand that in the Hebrew it's a plural you. It's not a singular you. He's not talking to Ahaz, the king. He is talking to the Davidic line that he represents. So he says, therefore, the Lord himself will give you all. Now, the background on this is that there is a threat to the line of David, because the king of the southern kingdom is not a believer. He is an idol worshiper, but he is the target of Satan. Satan wanted to destroy that line of David to prevent the coming of the Messiah. And so Satan influences the king of the northern kingdom of Israel and the king of Syria to enter into an alliance, a conspiracy, to defeat the armies of the southern kingdom and to kill Ahaz so that he cannot…it will end the line of the Messiah and they will put their own man on the throne of Judah. and God is giving him a promise that this won't happen. There will be a sign to the house of David that the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. Now this particular, wait a minute, for some reason I'm not, there it is. This particular sign would be distinctive. It's hinted at by that phrase, the seed of the woman in Genesis 3, because women don't have seed. The Greek that translated that was sperma. That's not what women have. They have an egg. So there's a hint there that something distinctive is gonna take place with the seed of the woman. And that is developed more in Isaiah 7.14. And when you look at this in the Hebrew, it doesn't say a virgin, there's an article there, it is the virgin. And even though there is some controversy by some who will say, well, the word in the Hebrew, the word Alma does not necessarily mean a virgin. But when the rabbis, 200 years before the virgin birth, 200 years before Jesus was born, were translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in Egypt, because most of the Jewish people couldn't read Hebrew anymore, but they knew Greek. When they translated it into Greek, they translated this word parthenos, which is the Greek word for virgin. And so they clearly understood that it was talking about an Alma was a young lady of marriageable age that had not yet been married. And in that culture, there was no such thing as premarital sex like there is today. And so it was understood that Alma referred to a virgin and that she would bear a son and his name would be Immanuel. Now that first word, I-M, is really a Hebrew prefix that indicates with, and the A-N-U, is also a, comes from a preposition, or excuse me, a pronoun, meaning us. And then the last two letters, L, the word for God. So if you read this, it means God with us. It is talking about the fact that this child born of a virgin would be true deity, undiminished deity. He would be God taking on flesh. So in this context, it is a promise to the house of David that the house of David would not be destroyed or defeated at this time, and that God indeed will fulfill his promises that he had made to David in the Davidic covenant, and so he is speaking directly to the house of David. Now this is fulfilled in the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew was the first gospel that was written. Liberal scholars want to say it was Mark, but I think they're wrong for any number of reasons that we don't have time to go into. But Matthew wrote early on. He wrote when, long before the temple was destroyed, he wrote when a lot of the Jewish people who had witnessed the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ were still in Jerusalem and still in the area where he had ministered. And so I believe that this was written before A.D. 40. Jesus is crucified in 33. So it's in that seven-year period that Matthew collects this and he writes it to the Jewish people to confirm the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messiah promised and prophesied from the Old Testament. And in Matthew 1, as he's conveying the information about the birth of Jesus, he writes, now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, that's a euphemism for having sexual relations, before they came together, So that means she is still a virgin. She was found with child of the Holy Spirit. And then in verse 20, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, because this was an offense for which he could divorce Mary if he discovered she was pregnant before they were actually married. And the angel says, Joseph, Son of David. See, emphasizing the fact that Joseph is the son of David. He is a descent, descendant of David, and he is in the line of David. Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Yeshua, Jesus, for he will save his people from their sin. And then Matthew comments on that, and he says, So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated God with us. So this is the first prophecy we're looking at, that the Messiah would come through a virgin birth. He was born in Bethlehem in the city of David. Again, that is reiterated in Luke's Gospel when he's talking about where Joseph and Mary went. It says to his hometown, which was Bethlehem, the city of David. Again, emphasizing that Davidic descent because Jesus had been promised to come through the line of David. The Messiah would come through the line of David. Micah 5.2, now Micah is written around 730 BC. The prophecy in Isaiah was written approximately the same time. So this is 730 years, seven centuries before Jesus is born. Okay, so if we were to go back seven centuries, we would be back approximately 100 years before the Protestant Reformation, before the discovery of of North America by Christopher Columbus. And that's a long period of time. So it's, but it's a prophecy from God that will come true. Now, remember that in the Old Testament, there were certain regulations and requirements that a prophet had to fulfill. And that was that anything that he prophesied had to come true precisely as he prophesied. He couldn't just get generally in the ballpark. He had to be right on the dot with every detail, or it was a capital offense, it was the death penalty. And the second test was that everything had to conform to what had already been revealed and accepted as Scripture, as the Word of God. So these prophecies are very specific. And in Micah 5 too, it is a prophecy that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Now there's a Bethlehem up north, in the area of Galilee, but this prophecy makes it very clear. It's Bethlehem that was founded by Ephrath. But you Bethlehem Ephratha, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, this was just a small village, just maybe a few hundred people that lived in Bethlehem at that time, that out of you shall come forth to me the one to be the ruler in Israel. So it tells us that this is where this Messiah will be born. That indicates it's a hint at humanity, physical birth. And then in the last line, he says, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting. So it identifies him as someone who is eternal, but he comes from Bethlehem. And so this is the promise. And then in Matthew chapter two, We're told of the fulfillment. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east, came to Jerusalem, saying, where's he who was born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled. No, he was scared to death. He was paranoid. That was one of Herod's traits. He was paranoid. And what did he do when he was paranoid? He killed people. He killed two or three of his sons, his ex-wives and wives, because he was afraid they were going to conspire to take the throne from him. He was scared to death of these Magi, because the Magi were a tribe of Medes, you know, the Medes and the Persians back in Daniel's time. They were a tribe of Medes. But by this time in the Parthian Empire, they were the group from which the inner council of the Parthian government was derived. They were the ones who would choose and anoint the next king of the Parthians. Now, when Herod was first appointed king and ruler over the Jews, there was a Parthian invasion, and he almost lost the kingdom. He barely escaped. He got down to Egypt, where Cleopatra helped him, and they got him a ship, and he was able to get to Rome, raise an army under the authority of the Caesar, and then went back and defeated the Parthian army. But for the rest of his life, he was scared to death of the Parthian. He was paranoid. So here are these Parthian kingmakers. are knocking on his door saying, where's the king of the Jews? And it wasn't him. So he's really concerned about this. But the point is, he wants to find out who and where this king would be born. So he calls together the chief priests and the scribes of the people and asked them where the Messiah was to be born. And they said to him, in Bethlehem of Judah. Judea. For thus it is written by the prophet, and then they quote from Micah 5.2, But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. And so you have the prophecy in Micah 5.2 and then the fulfillment in Matthew 2. Also in Luke 2, 1 through 4, there is the decree, the census that goes out, the requirement from Caesar Augustus for all the world to be registered, all the world referred to the Roman Empire. And so that's identified by Luke. And then we're told that Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem because he was at the house and lineage of David. And then the angel says to him, said to the shepherds, he goes to Bethlehem and that's where Jesus is going to be born. And then when he's born, the angel says to the shepherds, do not be afraid for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David, a savior. City of David is Bethlehem. And so once again, you see this connection, not only to the promise to David that the Messiah would come through him, but also that the Messiah would be born in the city of David, Bethlehem. And there's this sign that the babe would be found wrapped in swaddling claws, lying in a manger. Now, the third prophecy is more detailed. I'm gonna summarize it more quickly. It has to do with the timing of the Messiah's birth. The way you get to the Messiah's birth is by backing off of the final time of his death, but that's how you get there. So we know generally when the Messiah is gonna be born because of this prophecy in Daniel. Now Daniel's prophecy was written approximately 540 BC. We know that the Medes and the Persians came in defeated the Babylonians in about 538 BC. So it was just before that a year or two. So Daniel has prayed that God would restore the Jewish people back to the land as Jeremiah had prophesied that their captivity would be 70 years. Daniel was reading that prophecy, realized as he counted up the days and the years that this was time for them to go back. And an angel appears to him and says, 70 periods of seven, that's a literal translation of the Hebrew. Usually you read 70 weeks, but it's literally 70 periods of seven. So it's not talking about weeks, it's really talking about years. 70 times seven is 490 years, are determined for your people, that's Israel, Daniel's people, and for your holy city, that's Jerusalem. To do what? That in this 490-year period, which is a timeframe for Israel, God would bring to completion His plans for full atonement, to finish the transgression, that is, the transgression of Israel, all of their idolatry, rebellion, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. Now the end of the 490 years is when Jesus returns at the second coming. Why hasn't that happened yet? Well, if we read through the prophecy, we learn some of those details. In verse 25, Daniel is told, know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Now remember, when Daniel is under is basically in captivity. He's there in the Babylonian Empire when he hears this. It's not going to be but a couple of years and the Babylonians are defeated, and then the Median Persian Empire is going to come in. Now the Persians are going to put forth a decree for the Jews to go back to the land, but that's not the decree that this is talking about. That was just a decree to go home. This is talking about a decree that would specifically be for them to restore Jerusalem and build Jerusalem. And it has to do with rebuilding the fortifications and the walls. So we can date that to March 5, 444 B.C. And then it goes on to say, the time from this decree, which starts the clock running, until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven periods of seven, and 62 periods of seven. So we have to count that up. Seven periods plus 62 periods equals 69 periods of seven. So 69 times seven equals 483 years. 483 years times 360 days because when you look at the Jewish calendar, it was a lunar calendar based on a 360 day year. So this comes out to be 173,880 days. So from March 5th, 444 BC to Jesus's entry into Jerusalem six days before the cross was 173,880 days. From that decree from Artaxerxes to go back and rebuild the city, rebuild the walls and rebuild the defenses. So that gives us the idea of the timeline, approximately when the Messiah would come. In Daniel 9.26, it says, after the 62 weeks, so you had the seven plus 62, so after the 69th week, the pause button is hit. After, so this is after the 62 weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, that's the crucifixion, that was in 33, and then it goes on to say, And after 62 weeks Messiah shall be cut off but not for himself and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. That's almost 40 years later in AD 70. So you have a pause that lasts almost 40 years. So we're still in that pause because the pause will not start up again until Jesus until, and the prophecy goes on to say, until the Jews signed a treaty with the Antichrist. That's what starts that last 70th week. But we're not looking at all the details of that prophecy, so what we have is just the structure here, that there's 173,880 days, and then the Messiah is cut off after that. So actually that traces to the time what we call Palm Sunday when Jesus entered into Jerusalem and that was five or six days before he's arrested and the crucifixion. And then it says that the street shall be built again and the wall even in troublesome times. And Jerusalem has had nothing but troublesome times since. Fourth, he would be preceded by a forerunner. This was predicted around 450 years before Christ in the prophet Malachi, who says, behold, God says to him, behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. So the Messiah is gonna come, but there's going to be a forerunner who will set the stage, prepare for the coming of the Messiah. He will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple Even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts." In Matthew 11.7-10, Jesus is asked by John the Baptist, are you really the Messiah or not? So he was a little confused because there were some things that were going on that he didn't quite expect. And so Jesus is talking to the multitudes about about John, and he says, why did you go out to the Judean wilderness to see John? What were you looking for? What did you go out in the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed, those who wear soft clothing are in the king's houses. Why did you go out to see John the Baptist? To a prophet, this is verse nine, yes, I say to you, more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you." He's quoting Malachi. So John the Baptist is the one who fulfills Malachi, and the Gospel of Mark begins with this. In verse 2 of chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark, as it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. So what Mark does is he takes the passage from Malachi and then a prophecy in Isaiah 40 verse three puts them together. And this is a prophecy of what the forerunner would do when he came. Mark 1.4 says, John came baptizing in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance. for the remission of sin. So we have the virgin birth, and we have the timing of the birth, and we have the prediction of the forerunner. And fifth, we have something about his ministry, that he would give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, and the lame would walk. And this is predicted in Isaiah 35, five and six. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing, for waters shall burst forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. This is a prediction of what it will be like when Jesus is actually the Messiah and rules over the millennial kingdom from Jerusalem. But remember, in the first part of his ministries, he's offering the kingdom to the Jewish people, and they rejected it. But he gave certain, through some of his miracles, he was showing that he was the one who would eventually do this. In Matthew 11-2, the passage I just went to regarding John the Baptist, when John the Baptist heard what Jesus was doing, he sent two of his disciples, verse 3, said to Jesus, are you the coming one or do we look for another? In verse 4, Jesus answered and said, go and tell John the things which you hear and see. And then he quotes from Isaiah. The blind see and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. So from Matthew 4 to Matthew 11, Jesus had been performing these miracles to be a testimony that He is the promised and prophesied Messiah. Now, what will Messiah accomplish? This is stated clearly in prophecy as well. In Isaiah 53, a wonderful chapter predicting the suffering of the Messiah. And there it says that the Messiah will be a substitute for our sins. In verse 5 we read, but He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. Verse six says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. All through here it is this servant is going to die and suffer and die for the people. First Peter 2.24 and 25 tells us that he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we having died to sin might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed." That's a direct quote from Isaiah 53. For you were like sheep gone astray. Again, Isaiah 53. But have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. And Isaiah 53.10 says that He will make His soul an offering for sin. Again, that substitutionary idea. 1 Peter 3.18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. The seventh prophecy is that He's going to be rejected by His people. That's Isaiah 53.3. All of these Isaiah prophecies were approximately 740 years before Jesus was born. Isaiah 53.3 said, he is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. So how did the Jews respond to him and his offer of the kingship? Well, they rejected him, and then they had him arrested. Matthew 26, 47 says, and this is in the Garden of Gethsemane, while he was still speaking, Behold, Judas, one of the 12, with a great multitude, with swords and clubs, came from the chief priests and elders of the people to arrest Jesus. In verse 67, we're told, then they, that refers to Sanhedrin members, spat in his face and beat him, and others struck him with the palms of their hands. Matthew 27.2, it says, when they had bound him, they led him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate, the governor. And Matthew 27.22, Pilate said to him, what then shall I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah? They all said to him, let him be crucified. They're shouting, this is a mob. Then the governor said, why? What evil has he done? But they cried out all the more saying, let him be crucified. He was despised and rejected by men. The eighth one, by knowing about the Messiah and believing in him, he will make the many righteous. This is a profound statement in Isaiah 53, 11. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. That is, God will see and be satisfied with the suffering of the Messiah. by his knowledge, that is, knowing about him, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities." Now, that last phrase is really important because in Jewish tradition, they had to figure out some ways to interpret various passages that were so obviously talking about Jesus that they had to figure out how to reinterpret them. And so they would say, based on some earlier statements in Isaiah, that my servant is Israel. But in some places in Isaiah, the phrase my servant refers to Isaiah. In other places, it does refer to Israel, but it can't here. Because what it says is, my servant will bear their iniquities. If my servant is Israel, how can he bear their iniquities? Those are talking about two different entities. The one servant is not the same as the pronoun there. The one, the servant, is taking the place and bearing the iniquities of a different group. So it's clearly a distinction at that point. This was understood, this is a great quote, this was understood by the rabbis up until the period of about a thousand years after Christ. One writer, a rabbi, Moshe Cohen Ibn Crispin, wrote that this prophecy was about the Messiah. Arnold Fruchtenbaum writes this, he says, this remarkable prophecy in Isaiah was understood by the Babylonian Talmud, the Aramaic Targum, excuse me, the Talmud, the Aramaic Targums, and ancient rabbinical commentaries to refer to the Messiah. It's not changed until about 1000 or 1100 AD. Moshe Cohen, Ibn Crispin, wrote, this prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah who is to come and deliver Israel. See, for him, the Messiah hasn't come yet. In order that if anyone should arise claiming to be himself the Messiah, we may reflect and look to see whether we can observe in him any resemblance to the traits described here. And if there is a resemblance, then we may believe that he is the Messiah, our righteousness. Wow, what a statement. The eighth prophecy is that he would be crucified. It was prophesied a thousand years before Christ, approximately. It was prophesied by David, King David in Psalm 22, 16 to 18. He writes, for dogs have surrounded me, Dogs was often a pejorative, a racist term for Gentiles by Jews. They called them dogs. Surrounded by dogs, the congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. In 1000 BC, nobody knew about crucifixion yet. That was not taking place historically. It didn't come till about 300 years later under the Assyrian Empire. He says, I can count all my bones. They'd look and stare at me. This never happened with David. It is a prophecy. They divide my garments among them. This is what the Roman soldiers did. They cast lots for Jesus' garments. And for my clothing, they cast lots. So we conclude by asking this question. What are the chances? What's the mathematical probability of only eight of these, just eight of these coming true in one person? What's the mathematical probability? So Peter Stoner in a book that was peer-reviewed, a book entitled Science Speaks, writes that the chance that any man might have fulfilled all eight prophecies is one in 10 to the 17th power. That would be at one followed by 17 zeros. He gives an analogy that speaks to those of us in Texas. He says, we take 10 to the 17th silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. We have a hard time imagining how big Texas is. Some of us have driven from Beaumont to El Paso. And that takes about 14 or 15 hours. That is 16 hours. It's almost 900 miles or maybe a little over 900 miles. That's a long way. Or from the valley, go from Brownsville up to Dumas or Dalhart. It's huge. Now, we have a better idea of just thinking what it would be like if you were to fill up all of Harris County with silver dollars up to two feet deep. But we're talking about the whole state, two feet deep in silver dollars. And then you blindfold a man, and you've marked one of those silver dollars, and it's stirred into this whole pot somewhere in the state, and this blindfolded man has one chance to go out and pick that marked silver dollar. Those are the chances of only eight prophecies coming true in Jesus. Now, I went through 12 last year, I've added four or five new ones this year, but there were at least 100 prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus at the first coming. Fulfilling that is mathematically impossible, mathematically impossible for even 12 or 15 to be fulfilled in one person. And yet people want to say, no, you know, Jesus wasn't the Messiah. Something is going on here besides just reason. It is irrational to reject Jesus as Messiah. It's a spiritual problem. Some people want to know God, and they want to be obedient to God. Some people do not. They rebel at God. From the point of their birth, they don't want to know about God. I don't know what makes the difference. It's the exercise of their own individual responsible choices. But the evidence is clear that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that is the Messiah of Israel. And as such, he came to earth to die on the cross for our sin. Now, as we look at this, this is just a prelude to us understanding who Jesus was. This is part of the Lord's Table. We have traditionally been ending our Christmas Eve service by celebrating the Lord's Table. In the Lord's Table, there are two elements. There's the bread, which is unleavened bread, and there is the cup, which is, in our case, grape juice. In the time of Christ, it was red wine because that was what was served in a Passover meal, and that is what they were celebrating the night Jesus went to the cross. And as they went through the Passover meal, there would be a time when they would take the matzah, they were eating a full meal. They would take the matzah, the host would break the matzah and pass it out to the disciples. And this was a reminder of the fact that during the time that the Jews were slaves in Egypt, that they had to make bricks without mortar. It was also a reminder that when God finally redeemed them from slavery during that 10th plague, the plague of the death of the firstborn, that God said, be prepared to leave. You do not have time for the bread to rise, so you will not put leaven in it. But as Scripture unfolded and gave more information, we realized that leaven was a picture of sin, and that this bread was to be a representation of the humanity of Jesus. He said he was the bread of life. But the bread of life that he is referring to and the bread that he says represents his body is the matzah in a Passover meal that is without leaven, because it is picturing the fact that he was without sin, that scripture says, he who knew no sin was made sin for us. In Hebrews, we are told that he was tempted in all areas as we are yet without sin, because he was absolutely sinless and perfect. perfect righteousness, then he could go to the cross to die as a human being in our place because none of us could do it because we're already spiritually dead. The cup represents what he did on the cross. The bread is who he is as his qualification as the Lamb of God without spot or blemish. It is the work on the cross that is depicted in the sacrifices in the Old Testament. The original Passover, a lamb that had been evaluated, observed for four days to be without spot or blemish, was then sacrificed and his blood was applied to the doorposts and the lintel of the doors of the houses. And so those inside would be protected by the death of that animal. And so the death of the firstborn did not take place. And tradition says that not a single Jew died that night. But there was death from the household of Pharaoh all the way down to the deaths of the poorest people, including the firstborn of all of their domestic animals. And so as the Pharaoh was grieving over the death of his firstborn, he finally relented and told them to leave, told the Jewish people to leave, and so they were redeemed. That is the picture of our redemption, that because of what God did, through Jesus Christ the Messiah, the sinless humanity combined with undiminished deity, that He paid for our sins on the cross. And that's why we can't do anything to add to that or take away from it. All we can do is trust in Him. And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then our Lord said that we are to Remember him in the Lord's table. It doesn't say how frequently, whether it's weekly, monthly, three or four times a year, whatever he said, as often as you do this, do so in remembrance of me. Let's bow in prayer as we close our service this morning. Our gracious heavenly father, scripture teaches that all have sinned when Adam sinned, but in your grace and your mercy and your love, you provided a way for us to be redeemed from the penalty of sin by the sending of your son. At this time of the year and today and especially tomorrow, we remember our Lord's incarnation and his virgin birth. And we just are grateful to you for the provision that you made for us of your son. We thank you for the message today, detailing the prophecies. We know there were more than eight, but there were hundreds and we just are amazed at the astronomical odds that our Lord fulfilled all of those prophecies. We thank you that we were able to observe the Lord's table today as well. And we just pray that we would keep these things in mind today and tomorrow. And we ask these things, Father, in Christ's name, amen.