you You say, preacher, what's the big deal about the virgin birth? The virgin birth is the key to the fact that I am born again and washed in the blood. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, He had sinful flesh just like I do, and His sacrifice in my place would have been worth absolutely nothing. The Bible says good men will give their lives for other good men. So Jesus, if He was born of an earthly mother and father like you and I, Him laying down His life for His friends, we would have just celebrated, marked His grave like we do our veterans in this precious country, and gone on with it. But Jesus was born of a virgin. He did not have an earthly father. He did not have tainted, sinful blood. He was born sinless and spotless. That's why His sacrifice on the cross paid the price for my sins. In your Bible, their name meant something. And so, for the angel to say to Joseph, his name will be Jesus, and here's why it will be Jesus. He's going to save his people from their sins. That was not strange or unusual to Joseph at all. A name should have had a meaning, and the children were taught what the meaning of their name was early in their life, and then they were instructed, this is who you're supposed to be. And so this was not unusual to Joseph at all. But notice that name, Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. After the lady sang, they started with his birth, and Natalie testified before the song, and she said, the only thing in this song that's about the season that we are currently in is the very first line, but she's in all the rest of it. Just walks us through His life and ends up taking Him to the cross and then to the grave from which He arose. The world does not have a problem with baby Jesus in a manger. That doesn't offend anybody. Everybody in this church knows I'm a Waffle House connoisseur. scattered, smothered, chunked and topped. If you can go to Waffle House and listen to God and Sinners Reconciled. If you can go to Sports Authority or Cabela's or wherever you ladies like to shop, and it's blaring over the loudspeakers, they start earlier and earlier every year. So the first cool breeze that blows through in September, everybody breaks out Christmas music. And so for the last three months, you could be anywhere and they would say, God and sinners reconciled. Have you ever thought about how many people were sitting at Waffle House or walking through Cabela's and had no idea what they were listening to or what it even meant? And I am here to tell you when they see a manger, that's why we lay that crown of thorns there. It's not because we're morbid, it's because the fact that he came as an innocent child would mean nothing for me. It was his death on the cross that paid the penalty for my sins. And this world is not offended by baby Jesus. You can sing away in a manger, you can put the children on the platform and dress them up and let them look cute and pretty, and that's not going to offend anybody. But when you read the last line of that verse, He shall save His people from their sins, people start checking out on you. They start getting off the bus. And church, I'm here to tell you we love you. If you hadn't figured that out, I'm sorry. I don't know what else we could have done. I guess some red carpet. You're loved here. But we're not just here to feel tingly and bubbly. We're here to tell, if we're saved, we're here to remind each other Jesus died for my sins. And if you've never heard that message or you've heard it and it's never penetrated your heart, we're here to tell you today he shall save his people from their sins. I've preached to church members. One of the precious ladies, you just watched sing on that platform. Several years ago, her mother walked this aisle. She said, Pastor, I've never been born again. I thought she was coming to pray for her grandchildren. She said, I've never been saved. Brother Youngblood, I didn't preach anything to try to confuse anybody. I preached Jesus. She said, Pastor, I've never been born again. I said, what are you talking about? She said, I've talked to pastors over the years, and if I ever told them I had doubts, and they would say, you're a good person, you must be saved. I am here to tell you, church, that hell will be full of good people. If the devil can blind you with being a good person, he'd rather do that than blinding you with drugs and alcohol. If you're messed up on drugs and alcohol, you know your life's a mess. But if you're blinded with morality and goodness and decency, you don't know what shape you're in. And he shall save his people from their sins. Let me draw your attention to three very simple points. Look at verse number 21 again. And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Look at verse 22. Now all this was done that it might be, if you're looking at your Bible, would you say that next word? Fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophets, saying, The very simple truth that I want you to leave here with this morning, look at that word fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet 700 years before Jesus was ever born. God promised and He said, I'm going to send a son, he's going to be born of a virgin. It will take you just a minute, but I would be doing you a disservice and an injustice. to not let you see that promise. Would you turn to the book of Isaiah? It's a large book. It's in the middle of your Bible. It's not very hard to find. Would you go to verse number 7? Isaiah chapter 7. How many of you would agree with me that we're living in a day where a man or a woman will make a promise to you and it doesn't mean very much? I've got to ask you a very personal question. Does anything stab your heart any deeper than for somebody to make a promise that they've never kept? That'll kill you. And I'm here to lift up Jesus this morning, and I want to show you the promise that He made. Look in Isaiah chapter 7. If you're there, would you say amen? Look at verse 14. Church, this is 700 years before Jesus was born. That's amazing. Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Immanuel." Seven hundred years later, God fulfilled that promise. And listen to me, church. Your Old Testament is, here's the way we say it around here, slap full. Y'all can translate that to the young ladies from Alaska, okay? Slap full, that doesn't mean we hit anybody, okay? That's not what that means. Your Old Testament is full of promise after promise after promise after promise. A, that God would send His Son, and B, that that Son would be born of a virgin. Let me tell you about another one. That same book you're in, Isaiah, if you go to chapter 53, here's what the Bible says, a root, out of dry ground. Roots don't grow out of dry ground. And God said, my son is going to be a root out of dry ground. What was he promising? The virgin birth. He said, preacher, what's the big deal about the virgin birth? The virgin birth is the key to the fact that I am born again and washed in the blood. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, he had sinful flesh just like I do. And his sacrifice in my place would have been worth absolutely nothing. The Bible says good men will give their lives for other good men. So Jesus, if He was born of an earthly mother and father like you and I, Him laying down His life for His friends, we would have just celebrated, marked His grave like we do our veterans in this precious country and gone on with it. But Jesus was born of a virgin. He did not have an earthly father. He did not have tainted, sinful blood. He was born sinless and spotless. That's why His sacrifice on the cross paid the price for my sins. The first thing I want you to see is the promise and you can rest assured when God makes a promise, He keeps His word. Amen? Look back in the text, please, in Matthew chapter 1. There's a promise. Listen to me carefully. We got a problem. Here's the problem in verse number 21. He shall save his people, those last three words are the problem, from their sins. You say, Brother Raines, why is that a problem? Look at the preacher you're gonna pass out when I tell you this. You wanna know why that's a problem? We like sin. We're sinners. I was reminded of this last night. My wife and I, our church, my home church, divided the community up into sections and gave us sheets and said, these are your addresses. These are the ones we want you to visit. And lo and behold, we got the road that we lived on. You better be living a life. I'm going to stop and meddle. I've quit preaching and gone to meddling. We better be living lives where we can witness on the street we live on. Say amen. That was pretty good. Now, if we'll all just live it, that'll be the next step. Help me there. They gave us the street we lived on. We went to Scarlet's house. Scarlet came to the door. Well, hey, Mr. Raines. Hey, Miss Chris. We had met over the years and so we was kind of acquainted and she said, how y'all doing good? How you doing good? Scarlett, we hadn't invited you to church in a while. It wasn't the first time, say amen. But we said we hadn't been in a while and we're just re-canvassing the area and wanted you to know you'd come. She said, I've been thinking about church. Oh good, Scarlett, that's awesome. You ought to be thinking about church. She said, have you been thinking about Jesus? She said, well, not so much. And we got to talking, and I said, Scarlet, Jesus died on the cross to save you from your sins. She said, I've got a whole bunch of sins. She said, and they kind of weigh on me. She said, I feel guilty every now and then. So I read her some more scripture and told her what Jesus could do. And Alan Michaels, she went, she just kept bowing down, kind of like that weight of sin was, and all at once she went, some of that sin's pretty fun. I said, Scarlett, we stayed. We didn't just walk off and leave her. I said, the Holy Spirit's going to have to get you to a point where you want Jesus more than you want your sin. Listen to the preacher. A free ticket to heaven, nobody's ever turned that down. But save His people from their sins? Brother Youngblood, am I right? I don't think it's any different in the villages of Alaska. Save His people from their sins? I'm not ready for that. I used to be a jail chaplain. And they'd say, I'd say, do you want Jesus to have 100% of you or 99? They said 99 sounds pretty good. They said, cause there's still some things I wanna do. Listen, I said, do you reckon, I told him my wife's name was Chris. I said, does Chris want 99% of me or 100? I said, does she want me at the house 364 days out of the year or 365? I said, what if I tell her, honey, I'll be faithful to you. I'll be the best husband you've ever seen. I'll put the toilet seat down. I'll be good. I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of you. I'll provide for you. But one night a year is mine. They go, chaplain, you're crazy. She ain't gonna give you one night a year to go wherever you want to and be who Why do we expect Jesus to do that? Jesus, I want you to have most of me, but not all. If Chris ain't going to put up with that, listen to me, a holy God isn't either. He shall save His people from their sins. Do you know what the name Jesus means? Deliverer. Savior he'll set you free and when we say he died and he died in your place. There's people say amen That's awesome. My sacrifice wouldn't be acceptable to God, but his was and that's a good thing But then when we say he wants to deliver you from their sins Here's the expression we would use in today's culture. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. I They want somebody to pay their sin debt, but they don't want Him to deliver them from their sins. And Matthew 1, 21 and 22 says, He came to save His people from their sins. Listen to me. Here's how deceptive sin is. I've read it, and I believe it's documented. There's a native Indian tribe in that part of the world, and here's how they hunt wolves. They dip a knife, a long sharp knife in blood and they let it freeze. They dip it in blood and let it freeze. They dip it in blood and they let it freeze. And when it's 26 below zero, don't take it long to freeze. And they dip it and it freezes. They dip it and it freezes. They put the knife down in the ice and snow leaving the blade up. And that scent of the blood attracts a wolf, that they need the pelt from the wolf. And he licks that ice, and he gets a hint of the taste, and he likes it. And all the while, that ice is numbing his tongue. Do you want to know why some people are filling their lives with pills, drinks, same sex, opposite sex, pornography? Do you want to know why, boys? They're numb in their mind. They're no longer sensitive to sin the way they once were. And there he sits. He likes it. I'm not a wolf. Would anybody deny that to the wolf it tastes good? Would anybody deny that sin is pleasurable for a season? Hebrews chapter 11 says there's pleasure in sin for a season. So he licks it. But here's the problem. He eventually gets to the blade. And he cuts his own tongue. You say, preacher, that's gross. That's morbid. Calvary was pretty morbid. Sin is morbid. It took a morbid price to pay for my morbid sins. And he licks it, Josh, and he gets... You know what the next taste is? It's not frozen blood, it's his own. And it's warm. Anybody ever taken Satan's bait and ended up... You thought you were going to dabble right here, and the next thing you knew, he had you out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, drowning and fighting for your life. Anybody done that? Y'all know there are. There's church members that have been set free from that, and they remind us early and often of what Jesus set them free from. So by that time, he's got warm blood. It's not cold and icy, and it's his own. And at that point, he's too far gone. He goes absolutely insane and literally destroys his own life. I've got to ask you a question. Is anybody you love or you yourself, God forbid, do you know anybody that's destroying their own life? Nobody's doing it to them. They're doing it to their self. Is there anything sadder on the planet? It's one thing when somebody inflicts it upon me, but when I do it to myself, I don't know of anything worse. Self-destructive. Y'all know what I'm talking about. And before it's over, he has literally destroyed himself. And too weak to even get away from the instrument that destroyed him. And he lays right down. They don't have to go hunt him and see where to get to, like tracking a deer. He's right there. Why? Why Elijah? Why Seth? There's pleasure in sin for a season. He did not know when he started that, that he was numbing himself to the very thing that was going to destroy him. The promise. The problem. Go with me to John chapter 9. John chapter 9. The promise. The problem. Now look at verse number 40. Jesus has just healed a blind man. Blind from birth. Blind from birth. Everybody in this room spiritually was blind from birth. One of our men, when he stands up and requests prayer for family or co-workers or neighbors, the church knows every time he stands up and requests prayer for them, here's what he says, ask the Lord to remove the scales from their eyes. Look at verse number 40. Some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said unto him, said unto Jesus, are we blind also? 41. Jesus said, if you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, we see, therefore your sin remaineth. You're going to have to stay with me on this last point, because that verse, the Word of God is perfect. The Bible says He wrote some things that are a little bit hard to be understood. That last verse, I'm saying this with all respect, that last verse is written just a little bit in riddle format. You gotta think it through and ask yourself exactly what he's saying. And the Pharisees came to Jesus, Seth, and they said, are we blind too? They could see, they walked up to him. They said, are we blind? He said, you say you can see, therefore you're blind. He said, if you'd admit you've got a problem, we'd get to the root of it and you'd walk away from here. Not just seeing physically, but seeing spiritually. You follow me? The lady who testified right before I preached said she got saved at 52. She's been thanking the Lord for that for the last three years. But here's what's so interesting. She told us sometime after she got saved, she said, I was raised in and around church, but it was all just facts floating around in my head. There was no relationship with Jesus Christ. Listen to me, facts floating around in your head are not gonna get you into heaven. You don't stop at the gate and take an entrance exam. You don't stop at the gate and answer St. Peter. St. Peter's not at the gate, by the way. You don't stop at the gate and answer 10 questions to see if you get in. You'll determine whether or not you're, quote, getting in when you do what the second song was, when you get washed in the blood of the Lamb. So here's where somebody is this morning. I wish there was a dozen of you that would call on Jesus this morning. But here's where we are in verse number 40 and verse number 41. I'm alright, I can see just fine, preacher. He said, you're still blind. As long as we bow up in the back and say, I'm okay, I'm doing fine. He said, you're going to remain blind. This is so amazing to me. What does it take for them to get their sight back, admit they're blind? Why is that all it takes? Because that's the hardest thing to do. I have a message I preach on bitterness. The church families heard me preach it. Here's the truth of the matter. In that message, I share a personal experience with bitterness. And all it took for the Lord to take that bitterness out of my life was for me to fall on my knees and say two words, I'm bitter. The minute I got honest with God, the sin problem was gone. And y'all know me, I wanted to talk about it. Jesus, can we talk a little while about my bitterness? He said, no, all I was waiting on for you to do was get honest. You say, preacher, what do I need to do to get saved? Tell him you're blind. Tell Him your way is not working, you're stumbling around in your sin, your self-destructive behavior, because you've never acknowledged that He is Lord, He is sovereign, He is King, He is the one and only who can pay the penalty for your sins. You're still trying to do it yourself. I told you I was a jail chaplain. I've worked in that ministry. The Lord has allowed me to work with young people in education for 25 years. I had a Hispanic ministry and that was just so many lessons the Lord taught me. Brother Eric, most of the people I've dealt with one-on-one about their soul, we'd walk away from that conversation and they'd say, I'm going to do better. I'm going to straighten this out and then I'll come to Jesus. You can straighten one thing out and two others will blow up. When are you going to be ready to admit to Jesus you're blind? You're lost in your sins and He is the one and only Savior that can pay the price. When are you going to accept what He did and quit trying to add to it? You say, preacher, does that mean that what I do and don't do doesn't matter? No, let me tell you what that means. The minute you get saved and the Holy Ghost moves inside of you, you will be so head over heels in love with Jesus, you can't do enough for Him. Their preacher won't have to threaten you. Their preacher won't have to chase you down and say, where have you been? My daddy's been saved 50 plus years. Let me tell you something, when Jesus saves you, you can't get enough of Jesus. You wanna learn, you wanna grow. Church, visitors, friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, I've got a question for you. Has he saved you from your sins? Has he saved you from your sins? Are you still blind? There's probably not anybody in here who's heard the gospel for the first time. What are you going to do about it? Do you want Jesus more than you want your sin? Do you want Him to have 100%? Are you through with the 98 and 99 stuff? It's hard to let go. It's hard to... I surrender. That's hard. It will be the best step you've ever taken to absolutely 100% turn your life over to Jesus. We're going to stand. When we do, if the Holy Spirit has troubled your heart, one of the phrases used this morning was conviction. Do you know what the definition of conviction is? Convinced. Thoroughly convinced, I'm lost, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, and Jesus is the only one. As we sing, if we can take God's Word and point you to the Lord, let us do that.