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Ghana National Association of Adventist Students-University of Ghana, Legon campus

Eric Walsh

Now Behold the Child

Matthew chapter 2 verse 1 says, Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, where is he that was born King of the Jews?

For we have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him.

A message this Sabbath is entitled, Now behold the child.

Father God, we thank you Lord for this time of the year when people actually remember that Jesus was born, not just in a manger, that he was born Messiah and King.

Father God, as we go into this study today I ask in a special way that you give all of us alertness and patience.

So I'm asking Lord that you be with me as your word is spoken.

But be with all of us Lord that these truths would be anchored into our hearts.

Our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name.

We're gonna start in the Book of Luke and again this is more of a study today than anything else so you may want to take some notes and the reason this is this is born out of a conversation I had last weekend with 1 of my good good friends actually relative who has no longer really believing in God he now actually is saying he not sure Jesus ever existed and definitely says if Jesus did exist he did not come to save the world.

He challenged me on any extra biblical sources to show that Jesus ever existed and we had a very long, very heated discussion.

So our sermon this Sabbath really I want to anchor for you 1 of the most fundamental things as a Christian you need to understand.

That is the reality of who Christ is and also the efforts that the enemy has gone to to try and erase Christ from off of historical memory.

So 2 things And so we'll start by just reading the Christmas story.

We'll read a couple of the different versions of the Christmas story.

This isn't a hootin' and hollerin' sermon.

This is, this is grass, this is, this is foundation.

It is necessary because I realize many people go to church their whole lives and come out of the other side of church and still are not sure of Christ.

So forget the Sabbath or the state of the dead or whether or not you should wear jewelry or women's ordination or any of that stuff, they don't know that Christ is real.

And if there's ever a time of the year to remind us of the reality of Christ it is this Christmas season.

So, and it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus.

So, 1 of the main protagonists in our story today is going to be this gentleman, Caesar Augustus.

You're gonna learn a lot about him today.

He was powerful enough to just say, look, I need more money to build some stuff.

And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.

So in order to be taxed, where the records, it wasn't like today where they have computers.

You had to go back home to your hometown where the written records were of who you were and your ability and family's ability to be taxed.

So Joseph, another main character in the story, also went up to Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, into the city of who?

David, Bethlehem, because he was of the house of the lineage of who?

Alright so the Bible makes sure to explain to you that Jesus is, it's hard to call him a stepfather or adopted father but his earthly father was of the lineage of David.

The Bible does this because 1 of the signs Isaiah gives that who the Messiah is going to be is that 1 he would be of the lineage of David and I'll show you some text on that later on.

In fact, that was 1 of the great signs because it would have been difficult.

There weren't a lot of people in Bethlehem.

Today there are no Christians or Jews in Bethlehem pretty much at all today.

We'll come back to the timing of when he was born later.

So verse 5 it says, verse 5 says, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife being great with child and so it was that while they were there the days were accomplished that she should be delivered the Bible says and she brought forth her firstborn son.

And she wrapped him, the Bible says, in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end.

Remember, we did a sermon on the 10 virgins?

And we talked about the fact that they had to be engaged for like a year first.

That gave the man time to buy the house and set things up in order to move the wife in.

They were engaged, but when they were engaged, that was, you were kind of like, as if you were married, but you didn't have the benefits of being married.

So during that time, Mary comes to Joseph and says, listen, I'm pregnant.

Now, Joseph is a decent man, so he could have her stoned if he thought she was with someone else.

He just says he's gonna put her away what?

Now what's interesting is the word swaddling clothes means that they were just they were so poor it was just strips of cloth that they wrapped Jesus up in to keep him warm.

In a manger, which means he was born where the animals lived.

And it was because the last part of verse 7 there wasn't even room in the hotels in Bethlehem to keep them.

In the story there's 2 things you get out of this.

1 of them is that the world was in great despair.

Do you remember in Daniel chapter 2 how the Roman Empire is described?

Because when the Romans came in and if you look at the way it's described even as a beast, it crushed.

Rome was 1 of the most terrible empires to ever exist in the world.

When they came in, they destroyed, and they ruled with an iron fist, literally.

They had conquered much of the world, so many of the world had to give up their gods and accept the gods of Rome.

And what you're gonna find out as we go through the talk today is if you accepted any other God, the Romans viewed you as a heretic and any other God besides their God, like Jupiter and all those gods, you were viewed as a heretic and that you were blaspheming.

That's going to be important when they go to attack the Christians later on.

The third bullet says the Pax Romana, which means the peace of Rome was established by Caesar, the Caesar that I'm going to introduce you to in a second, that re-established the empire.

That was Augustus Caesar and in fact, Augustus Caesar began to be worshipped.

Now what's important is, he was the grandson of Julius Caesar and they changed his name from Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian to Augustus Caesar.

So they changed his name to the exalted Caesar.

Normally when they were gonna worship a Caesar they waited till he died, then they deified him and they worshiped him.

Augustus Caesar was worshipped while he was still alive.

In fact, when you look at some of the things that he says about himself it almost sounds like he's trying to describe Jesus and he reigned in Rome from 27 BC to 14 AD which means he was definitely the Caesar at the time of the birth of Christ.

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Now Behold the Child

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