-Transcript-
00:27 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:30 Welcome to the cafe. Hopefully you’re doing great, having a wonderful day, a wonderful week. Got you a cup of joe or some hot tea in this cold weather.
00:37 Amen. We are diving back in. This is the second part of a three-part series on Adoring Jesus Christ.
00:45 This is about adoration. And here in the second part, and you really, if you haven’t tuned into the first one, that’s okay.
00:52 We are talking about, I am talking about, I’m preaching about, I shouldn’t say talking, I’m preaching about how lowly Jesus was as he came in his earthly ministry and how that was God’s poetic plan and how he endured much suffering on our behalf so that we could be saved.
01:07 And that’s kind of where I’m starting here. And I thank you so much for listening. What we’ll do is we’ll dive in here and then I’ll touch base at the end and make sure to remind you to tune in for the third part, all right? So we’ll just dive right in here.
01:22 Think about the time. Now, if you’ve ever had a child or been pregnant, or if you’ve ever been with someone that is pregnant, you know, the more pregnant they get, the less likely you really want to venture out and do anything. Amen.
01:36 I know that when my wife was pregnant, we didn’t go a lot of places the more pregnant she got because, you know, hey, that baby could be born any minute.
01:44 And it says here in Luke 2:5, to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. She was ready to have that child.
01:51 They knew that. And yet they went because they had to. Amen.
01:55 I could see Joseph telling Mary, look, I know you’re about to have this child, but you know, tax season’s coming up.
02:03 We don’t, you know, we don’t want to have a problem with the authorities. You know, we don’t want to get penalized.
02:08 And so let’s just go there and do this and hopefully we’ll come back and have this child. But God had other plans.
02:12 And part of it, I believe, is his divine will for us to understand that we are precious to him, that he, God, the father in his royalty and his majesty has not forgot about the lowly people out there, the everyday folks out there, those that don’t have a whole lot.
02:32 God’s saying, I’m speaking to you here today. And maybe God in his wisdom knew that those that don’t have a whole lot are the ones that are the most willing to listen to him.
02:41 You know, the Bible says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to go to heaven.
02:47 Why? Because they trust their riches. The riches become their God. And some, I’ve heard some people try to like explain that away and say, oh, well, that’s not really it.
02:55 And if you, you know, the needle is really actually a doorway. And I believe a camel through a needle is easier than a rich person going to heaven.
03:02 If you know people that often have wealth, it’s very hard for them to believe because they don’t, they turn to their money to solve their problems.
03:10 Now, not everyone. Matter of fact, Nicodemus was probably pretty wealthy himself. Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy.
03:16 That’s where Jesus was buried in that tomb. So there are wealthy people in the Bible that are used by God that I believe were saved by God. Only God knows.
03:24 There’s kings in the Bible that are saved by God, like King David. Yet it is so hard to have that material wealth and still turn to God and be dependent on God and obedient to God and forsake trusting in your wealth. It’s very hard.
03:38 But for a poor person, for a person that has no means, it’s not that hard in the sense that you got to trust God, amen. You think of the poor farmer and they’re waiting for the rain, right?
03:51 They’re waiting for the rain or they’re waiting for the sunshine and they’re trusting God for their subsidence. They’re trusting God for their livelihood.
04:00 They have no plan B, amen. They are literally going to their prayer closet and giving it to God. They’re putting their faith in God.
04:07 And I believe all of this, this whole setup of where Jesus was born points to a loving God and a loving God that is, again, not lost in his majesty and his eternal riches and glory, that those that are of a low estate, that those that are poor, those are the ones that will believe his gospel, amen.
04:22 So we should adore his humble beginnings. We should adore his modest roots, Jesus Christ’s modest roots.
04:40 We should adore his miraculous birth, the fact that Joseph didn’t leave Mary, the fact that Joseph wasn’t the father in the sense, in the most purest sense, that God himself is the father and that Jesus had to be both fully man and fully God.
04:46 And he had to be both, and I’ll get to why he had to be both. Let me just say this.
04:57 He was born of a virgin, as we understand. So he’s born of a virgin. Why is that so important? Because God the father is his father, right? And so he’s fully God, God the father is his father, and yet he’s fully man, he’s fully human because he’s born there.
05:03 God chose him to be born. Could God have sent him down as an angel? Yes. Could God have sent him down at five years old or 15 years old or 30 years old? Yes.
05:11 But God chose him to be born of Mary. And in that, he then had the perfect DNA, literally perfect DNA, to both be God and be perfect and do miracles and all the rest and never sin, as well as be man and bear the sin of all mankind on the cross at Calvary. This is a love story like no other.
05:31 And this is straight from the hand of an almighty God to a lowly, needy people like us. See, God wanted Jesus Christ, as we understand, this is the father’s will, that God wanted Jesus Christ, the son, to come here and bear the sin for all mankind, bear the sin for all mankind.
05:49 So people, again, you walk by the manger, you look at the baby and say, oh, look, it’s baby Jesus.
05:58 Oh, trust the Lord. Oh, praise God. There’s Jesus.
06:03 But do we understand why he came? He came to die. He didn’t just come to die. He came to die for you.
06:09 He came to die for me. He came to die for the sins of all humanity. So we should adore that birth.
06:13 We should adore that birth, that it happened, amen, and that it happened for all, amen, and especially for those that would believe, amen.
06:22 And oftentimes that’s those that have that need, that realize their need, amen. We have to understand our need.
06:27 And secondly, we should adore his sufferings on earth, that he came to die, that he came to suffer. Think of Jesus in all comfort, in heaven, in all perfection. And you’re saying maybe, oh, are you saying that Jesus lived before his earthly ministry? Yes.
06:43 I think it’s John 1. John 1 tells us that Jesus was there at the beginning, amen, that all things are made by him and without him nothing is made. Jesus made the earth. Jesus was from the beginning.
06:53 Jesus was in the arms of God. It was God’s daily delight, amen. It’s all in the Bible.
06:59 It’s all in the word. And yet he came to earth to suffer, and not just suffer to be known as someone that suffered, but to suffer for us as our mediator, as our mediator,
07:09 1 Timothy 2:5, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. There is one God and one mediator.
07:18 He’s the only one between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. So we understand that the only way to be saved is through Jesus Christ who is our mediator.
07:28 He came here on our behalf, Acts 4:12, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.
07:41 And so you have to believe the Bible is the word of God, and you have to believe that it is true. And if you believe these things, then you have to understand there is no other way to be saved.
07:54 And there are denominations or groups out there that say that our works can save us.
07:59 There’s other religions that say that we could be reincarnated into something, or we could sacrifice ourselves for someone. But our Christian religion and Jesus Christ specifically,
08:11 and specifically his birth signified there is only one way to heaven, and that is by Jesus Christ, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.
08:21 And so we look at the birth, and we look at his suffering on earth, and we realize that’s for us.
08:27 That is our path to be saved. That is our vehicle to be saved. How do you get from here to there? How can I get from heaven, or how can I get from earth to heaven?
08:33 How can I get from not being right with God to being right with God? It’s only by Jesus Christ, amen.
08:43 And so we adore him for doing that, because without him, we would not have a path to salvation.
08:48 You look at God in heaven, if you look at him, God told Moses, if you look at him, you’ll die. But if you were able to look upon him, he’s too holy. Our sin would not be allowed in his presence, and we would die because he’s too holy.
08:58 That’s what the Bible tells us. So we face death because God’s holiness is too great. We have sin in our life because of what happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit.
09:12 Remember, they were beguiled, they were tricked by the devil there in the Garden of Eden.
09:22 They eat of that forbidden fruit, sin enters the picture, death enters the picture. All of a sudden, sin comes from generation to generation, and now man is in trouble.
09:26 There’s no way for man to be saved. Before sin entered the picture, before they ate of that forbidden fruit, as I understand it, there was no death. There was no sin.
09:34 There was no problem. There was no curse. The curse entered when sin entered, when a man disobeyed God.
09:42 And when that happened, judgment then follows. A holy, righteous God requires judgment. In fact, he requires a sacrifice, and that sacrifice has to be sinless and spotless and perfect.
09:51 The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin. And so we have Jesus Christ to thank for coming to earth to be our mediator, to save us when we couldn’t save ourselves. Because we can’t save ourselves because we all have sin.
10:08 The Bible says in Romans that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I believe it’s Romans 3:23. So we have this advocate in Jesus. Some people have called Jesus a lawyer.
10:19 That’s one way to describe it, that we have a lawyer, but think of the most perfect lawyer. Think of the lawyer being of the same as the judge, amen, because Jesus and God are one, amen.
10:27 So we have a lawyer that is also a judge, and that judge and that lawyer says, you’re not guilty when you take upon the salvation that I have provided at the cross of Calvary.
10:37 So we have an advocate in Jesus. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
10:44 And we see that Jesus did this for us in obedience, an act of obedience that we should adore because we’ve never seen it before.
10:53 We’ll never see it again. He was obedient even unto death. We should adore God’s gift for us, the mediator for man.
11:01 If you want to be thankful for something today, be thankful for Jesus Christ. Adore the son. Despite satanic opposition, remember Satan tempted him in the devil, or yes, Satan tempted him in the desert.
11:14 Satan is the devil. He tempted him in the desert. He faced opposition.
11:21 He faced unbelieving men. He faced ridicule. He faced all sorts of problems and obstacles.
11:27 He even was let down by his own disciples over and over again, and yet he kept on.
11:36 He was obedient for you and for me because Jesus Christ understood that he is the mediator, that his death on the cross brought life to all that would believe. And this is another thing to adore.
11:49 Adore the simplicity of God’s plan. When we believe on Jesus, that’s it. There’s nothing more to it.
11:55 You know, when we believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we understand what he did on the cross, that he took our sin onto his shoulders, and that he gave us his righteousness in return.
12:07 As he bled there on the cross, as he died, and as he was buried three days, and as he rose again miraculously from the grave, we see that picture there as salvation. And we should adore Jesus Christ for such a simple gospel.
12:21 It’s so simple. The picture of the gospel most clear is in the Bibles, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel -which I preached unto you, which also you received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
12:42 For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
12:50 We see here in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 a very clear picture of the Bible, of the gospel that is in the Bible, excuse me, a very clear picture in four verses. And really, I mean, it’s almost two verses, verse three and four,
13:06 for I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, because Paul received it from Christ, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
13:20 He died for our sins, he was buried, and he rose again, amen? And that is also given as prophecy in the Old Testament, and that’s why it’s saying according to the Scriptures, amen.
13:31 We thank God for 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, and all the Scriptures that point to Jesus Christ.
13:43 And for time’s sake, we have to wrap it up today, but don’t worry, we’re going to wrap up this message tomorrow or the next time this KJV Cafe airs on your local radio station. We’re going to wrap it up.
13:51 We’re going to wrap it up in part three, and we’re going to look at how adoring Jesus comes from his birth and from his earthly ministry and from his exalted place in heaven for all eternity, and how good God is.
14:03 Let me tell you, every single day we could use a reminder to go ahead and just adore Jesus Christ. Just adore him.
14:09 All of these troubles and heartaches in this world should make us the more adore Jesus for paying that ultimate price so that we could be in heaven with him for an eternity.
14:17 Praise Jesus Christ. So tune in next time.
14:24 Visit us online on YouTube if you want to see the whole episode.
14:27 Thank you so much. Take care. God bless. Amen.