A Journey To Bethlehem
Notes
Transcript
Intro: As we are drawing close to Christmas, I want us to take “A Journey To Bethlehem”. I want to go through the Scriptures and expose the significance of that journey that Joseph and Mary took over 2000 years ago, and consider the impact it has had on the world and hopefully in our lives as well.
To do this we will have to know the definition and the intent of the word “prophecy.”
Prophecy- Prophecy at its most basic definition is “a message from God.” A prediction foretelling what will take place in the future, near or distant. Predictive prophecy is that form of Bible prophecy foretelling what God is going to do. So to prophesy is to proclaim a message from God.
Intent- To reveal to the minds of men the intent of God concerning certain things, people, places and events of time.
The story of Jesus saturates the narrative of the Bible, and prophecies of His first advent are found throughout the Old Testament. One scholar, J. Barton Payne, has found as many as 574 verses in the Old Testament that somehow point to or describe or reference the coming Messiah.
Alfred Edersheim found 456 Old Testament verses referring to the Messiah or His times. Conservatively, Jesus fulfilled at least 300 prophecies in His earthly ministry.
The wonders connected with the prophecies concerning Jesus are the very detailed descriptions and precise fulfillment of each one. Jesus is the only Man in the history of the world where the details of His birth, life, death and resurrection are given centuries beforehand, happened just as they are predicted and can be confirmed as fact through biblical, secular and eye witness accounts.
So lets begin this journey by looking at four prophecies concerning the birth of Jesus.
1. The Seed and the Virgin Birth:
1. The Seed and the Virgin Birth:
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
These two prophesies foretell of the "virgin birth" of the Lord Jesus Christ. God had to perform a biological miracle to fulfill this amazing prophecy because it is scientifically impossible!
The key element to the virgin birth is found in [Gen. 3:15] the prophesy of "her Seed". This is a unique concept because the seed of humanity is found in man not woman.
Yet every prophesy concerning the birth of the Messiah has reference made to His mother and never an earthly father
1 “Listen, O coastlands, to Me, And take heed, you peoples from afar! The Lord has called Me from the womb; From the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name.
Isaiah 49:5 (NKJV)
5 “And now the Lord says, Who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, To bring Jacob back to Him,...
Jeremiah 31:22 (NKJV)
22 For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth— A woman shall encompass a man.”
9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
3 Therefore He shall give them up, Until the time that she who is in labor has given birth; Then the remnant of His brethren Shall return to the children of Israel.
Fulfillment;
31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.
32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.
33 And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.
The prophesy of the virgin birth was born out of God’s grace towards the judgment of Adam’s sin!
2. The Time of His Birth;
2. The Time of His Birth;
Time; a specific time in God’s eternal plan for salvation to come to men, a specific date
4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
There are two specific prophesies that give us the time of Jesus’ birth.
24 “Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
25 “Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times.
26 “And after the sixty-two 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. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined.
1 “Behold, I send My messenger, And 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.
These two prophesies determine that the Messiah [Jesus] had to come 483 years after a specific date given in Daniels time - a prophesy given almost 500 years before Jesus came to the temple in Jerusalem. When the calculations are made, 483 prophetic years from 444 BC causes us to arrive at AD 33, the year of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Step by step, Jesus matched the blueprint of prophecy. Our God is precise in all things!
Fulfillment;
1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem,
2 saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”
3. The Place of His Birth;
3. The Place of His Birth;
2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.”
Only the sovereign hand of God could orchestrate an event of this magnitude and have it fulfilled precisely as it is prophesied. As the time of Jesus’ birth drew near, Mary was actually living at the wrong place if her Son, the Messiah, was to be born in Bethlehem of Judea. She lived in Nazareth of Galilee.
Sir William Ramsey [archaeologist/Bible scholar] in 1923, discovered at Ankara Turkey, a Roman temple inscription that stated in the reign of Caesar Augustus there were three great tax collections. The second tax collection was ordered four years before the birth of Christ. The third, several years after His birth.
The second special tax was the one the Jews resented. This tax collection was protested by the Jews to the local governor, Quirinius. The protest was sent to Rome to settle the issue, but those were days of slow communication and travel [unlike our days of instant technology] and by the time it reached Rome and failed, the Jews had to submit to the enrollment and taxing. By the time the official tax collectors had worked their way eastward from Rome, and Mary and Joseph reached Bethlehem of Judea, the four years had elapsed and the exact time for Mary to give birth had come.
Fulfillment;
1 And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
2 This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.
3 So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.
4 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 of the house and lineage of David,
5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.
6 So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered.
7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Neither Mary nor Caesar nor the Roman tax collectors had anything to do with Jesus being born in Bethlehem. But God who rules the world had His hand on the cradle that changed the world, that He moved the people of the world, so that Jesus, the chosen Messiah, would be born in the right place, at the designated time to fulfill the infallible prophesy of God’s Word!
4. The Purpose of His Birth;
4. The Purpose of His Birth;
To save sinners! Just as the angel told Mary and Joseph
21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
We were born to live - Jesus was born to die! The sole purpose of the crib was the cross of Calvary!!
Psalm 22/Isaiah 53 are the prophesy of the Cross and Suffering of Christ!
Fulfillment;
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,
Close:
In Gen. 3:15, God made a promise of the coming Messiah who would crush the head of the serpent. Jesus Christ has fulfilled that prophesy at Calvary.
But in;
Revelation 22:20 (NKJV)
20 He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming quickly.” Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
Christmas is not just looking back at when Christ first came to Bethlehem as a babe in a manger, Christmas is all about opening the gift of God in Christ and getting prepared for His Second Coming!
Have you recieved the gift of salvation in Christ yet?