Jesus at the Center of Christmas
Predicted by Prophecy • Message 1
Bryan Jones
December 3, 2023
Prayer Series Wrap-Up
Last Sunday, we concluded our series Jesus at the Center of Prayer, where we dove into the Lord’s Prayer to follow Jesus’ example of how we should pray.
We had a good response to the How’s Your Prayer Life survey with people indicating their prayer life has increased from 6.3 out of 10 to 7.8 out of 10!
Here are a few of the ways your prayer lives have changed:
I am praying more! I love this series! I've been praying the Lord's Prayer since childhood, but I never realized what it really was saying... how much it was saying. Thank you.
I am intentionally sitting in my living room with Jesus, my Bible, study guide, a cup of coffee and I pray and I am writing down several things that I am grateful for. I am sitting and resting and asking to hear from God. I want more than anything to have Jesus at the center of my life.
This series was fantastic. Everyone I know said the same thing and got something different out of it than me. The devotions and the group videos I have used again if I want to go back a few weeks and relook at a Sunday sermon (lesson). I was at a place where I needed help getting back to where I needed to be and all of these things had helped me look at my life and adjust it to be more like Jesus. I am now back to talking to my Father not just praying for people and then moving on. We are talking more everyday. THANK YOU!
I'm bolder when praying with others these days.
Purposeful, daily prayer forces me to put everything around me into perspective. It makes me humble and thus I recognize that all I have and I am is because of God’s loving grace. It’s a wonderful reminder that I need His provision; His daily bread to fuel and guide me as I navigate the day. I have definitely grown closer to God through prayer and meditation on His word. Great series! God bless!
I used to think of prayer as rigorous and formal. This series has been instrumental and transformative for me in viewing (and using) prayer as a method to continue fostering a relationship with my Father, both talking and listening.
Through the devotionals, I have grown closer to God. The devotionals have added ways to communicate with God and added things to think about in prayer and increased the things I’m thankful for. I have really loved reading and growing closer to God.
Before we get too far away from the series, I want to stop for a moment to give you a few questions you can use in your daily time with God with any verse or passage you read.
“… Our Father in heaven…” Matthew 6:9b (NLT) - What do you want to say to me today as my Father?
“… may Your name be kept holy.” Matthew 6:9c (NLT) - What do you want to reveal to me about Your power today?
“May Your Kingdom come soon.” Matthew 6:10a (NLT) - Help me make Your priorities my priorities today.
“May Your will be done…” Matthew 6:10b (NLT) - Is there anything specific you want me to do with my time or the people I’m around today?
“Give us today the food we need,” Matthew 6:11 (NLT) - Help me to trust you will meet my needs instead of relying on myself.
“and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us” Matthew 6:12 (NLT) - Reveal to me anyone I need to forgive or ask for forgiveness.
“And don’t let us yield to temptation…” Matthew 6:13a (NLT) - Is there anywhere I’m vulnerable to temptation?
Introduction
Before we moved, I was going for a walk one day to spend time with God. My daughters begged to go with me. I told them, not right now, but when I get back, I’ll go for a walk with you. They made me promise I would take them, so I did. I went for my walk and enjoyed the time alone with God. I had forgotten all about my promise to the girls. Before I could reach the door to the house, they were standing there in excitement and anticipation of going for the walk together.
And my girls revealed something in that moment… I heard God say to me, your girls trust Me, do you trust Me? You see, my girls trusted me to keep the promise I made. I sometimes struggle to have the faith that God will keep the promises He makes to us in His Word.
Today, I want to show you that God is a trustworthy God you can build your faith on. We’re going to look at the prophecies of the promised Messiah. Today, I hope you will leave knowing that whatever God has said in His word you can bank on.
How can we know? Is there any proof? Is any evidence available? Are there clues?
God understands the skeptics among us; He knows that all of us need some proof, and some of us need a great amount of it. Jesus loves to meet us where we are.
Some people say we need blind faith, but I want to encourage you that you can base your faith on a firm foundation this morning. One of the ways you can know that is something we don’t talk a lot about—prophecy. What I mean are statements that were written about Jesus in the Old Testament before His birth.
What’s crazy to me is there have been approximately forty major claims by men to be the Jewish Messiah. But only one—Jesus of Nazareth—appeared to fulfill the prophecy to substantiate His claims…
The Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah were made at least 400 years before He was to appear. The Old Testament has over 300 prophecies of the coming messiah…
Peter W. Stoner wrote in a book, Science Speaks, published in 1976 by Moody Press that the probability of any man fulfilling eight of these prophecies is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. [1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000]
Stoner said that if you filled all of Texas knee-deep with silver dollars, marked one of the silver dollars and stirred them all up, then blindfold a man and tell him he can go wherever he wishes, but he’s allowed to pick only one silver dollar out of the mass of silver dollars covering the state, what are the chances of him picking up the marked silver dollar? The same chance that the prophets had of writing out just eight prophecies that would be fulfilled in Jesus.
Even when you look at some of the objections to Jesus, like:
The prophecies were written down after the time of Christ…
Now, some might argue that these prophecies were written down after the time of Christ so that it would look as though He had fulfilled ancient prophecies. But the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, was translated around 150-200 BC.
So that means that there was at least a 200-year gap between the prophecies being recorded and their fulfillment in Christ.
In addition, the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has substantially silenced critics who have claimed that the Old Testament books were altered by Christians.
So today, I want to show you just a handful of the prophecies fulfilled at the birth of Jesus!
Fulfilled Christmas prophecies:
Expected ancestry.
Prophecies: Genesis 18:18 (NLT)—God: “For Abraham will become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him.” (See also Genesis 17:7)
God made 2 promises to Abraham. One was to give him many descendants, creating a new nation through him. The other was that people would be blessed, a promise of the future Messiah.
There was a major problem, though, with this promise—Abraham was 100, and his wife was 90. You know what you’re thinking about when you’re that old? You’re not thinking about babies. You’re thinking about naps! You’re thinking about going out to Cracker Barrel for a nice dinner at 4 o’clock, and then by 5:30, you’re drinking your Ensure before bed…
Because Abraham couldn’t see a way to have a child with his wife, he took things into his own hands… But God had a different plan…. His plan was for the child to be conceived supernaturally. His covenant promise was fulfilled through Abraham’s son, Isaac.
Genesis 21:12 (TLB)—But God told Abraham, “…Isaac is the son through whom my promise will be fulfilled (See also Genesis 17:19; 22:18)
God was Fulfilling the first part of His promise His way. From Issac, Jacob is born, listen to this prophecy.
Numbers 24:17 (NLT)—Balaam: “I see him, but not in the present time. I perceive him, but far in the distant future. A star will rise from Jacob; a scepter will emerge from Israel.”
As you can see, the prophecy also takes on the aspect of a king, a ruler, which is interesting considering that the nation of Israel would not have a king for almost 1,000 years.
Fast forward… several (12) generations from Jacob, and you have David, who comes and rules. Another prophecy comes from David in…
Jeremiah 23:5-6 (NLT)
“For the time is coming,” says the LORD, “when I will place a righteous descendant on King David’s line. He will be a King who rules with wisdom. He will do what is just and right throughout the land. And this is His name: ‘The LORD Is Our Righteousness.’” (See also Isaiah 9:6-7.)
Fulfillment: Matthew 1:1-2,16 (NLT)—This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of King David and of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.
…Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. (See also Galatians 3:16; Hebrews 11:17; Acts 3:25; 13:23; Romans 1:2-3.)
Jesus of Nazareth was a direct descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and David, the king of Israel.
So, Genesis 18 is fulfilled…
Extraordinary conception.
Prophecy: Genesis 3:15 (NLT)— “And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike His heel.”
God made this statement to Satan after he successfully tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God. It is the first mention of the coming Savior who would descend from a human woman and defeat Satan.
Notice the term her offspring… every other time in the Bible it says his offspring… this is the only time in all the Bible it just refers to a woman… Why? Because there would be a virgin birth…
Fulfillment:
Galatians 4:4-5 (GNT)—But when the right time finally came, God sent His own Son. He came as the son of a human mother and lived under the Jewish Law,
Matthew 1:18 (NLT)—This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
Exact place of birth.
Prophecy: Micah 5:2 (NLT)—But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.
Fulfillment: Luke 2:1,3 (NLT)—At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. … All returned to their own towns to register for this census.
Where was Joseph’s hometown? It was Bethlehem, and so he went to Bethlehem.
Luke 2:4-6 (GNT)—Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to the town of Bethlehem in Judea, the birthplace of King David. Joseph went there because he was a descendant of David. He went to register with Mary, who was promised in marriage to him. She was pregnant, and while they were in Bethlehem, the time came for her to have her baby.
The only reason Joseph goes to Bethlehem is because of the census being taken by Caesar Augustus… because God was orchestrating the birth of the Messiah over hundreds of years through someone many considered one of the greatest powers ever to rule, but he was a pawn in God’s great story.
We only got through a fraction of the over 300 prophecies of Jesus from the Old Testament…
I wanted you to see the fulfillment of these prophecies, these promises show that you can trust God, just like my girls trusted me.
Some of you here today are struggling with something… and I want to show you five promises of God to encourage you in this season.
When you keep Jesus at the center of Christmas, you see how God is faithful.
It took centuries for some of these prophecies to be fulfilled. Don’t let delays create doubt. Let me give you five promises.
If you’re struggling with…
Uncertainty
in a decision. God promises us in
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)
Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.
Brokenhearted
Maybe you’re going through this season in pain and wonder if things will ever get better.
Psalm 34:18 (NLT) promises us that…
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.
Deeper Faith
Maybe you desire a deeper faith, to be able to slow down and enjoy the excitement of the return of our Messiah.
Jesus encourages us in
Matthew 7:7-11 (NLT)
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
“You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.”
Boldness
Or maybe you have that deeper faith but struggle to share it with others.
Jesus tells us in
Luke 12:12 (NLT)
“for the Holy Spirit will teach you at the time what needs to be said.”
Fear
Perhaps your struggle is with fear. I’ve mentioned before the number one commandment in the Bible is Fear Not. But saying that doesn’t necessarily make it any less of a struggle for us.
Jesus tells us in
Luke 12:32 (ESV)
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
We’ve created this handout for you to take home with these verses and more of God’s promises.
If you’re struggling in any of these areas and need one of these promises, I’d like you to hold the card up as a symbol that you’re standing on the promise as a firm foundation and will pray these promises.
Take this home as a reminder. Put it somewhere you will see it each day, and pray over these verses this week.
Let’s trust God with these struggles and claim His promises.
As we close in prayer, I encourage you to open your hands to receive these promises. I challenge you to pray a promise each night… stop praying generic prayers… pray the promises over your kid’s life… over your future works…
If God is saying it… He’s going to do it…