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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Wise Men Still Seek Him

If you remember that, the season as far as I'm concerned is always more joyous.

If you start thinking about presents and the expenses of the holiday, it can quite, actually get quite depressing.

So we are going to focus on why we celebrate this holiday.

There are many who, as Adventists, they kind of worry about Christmas.

Because factually, it's unlikely that Christ was born in December.

The shepherds would not have been out in the field.

That would probably have happened more in the spring.

It is true that many Pagan artifacts and issues have been attached to the holiday.

But it would not be wise to ignore the significance of the birth of Christ, especially at a time when the entire world focuses on it.

This is 1 time of the year when secular artists who sing the devil's music all year will actually sing a hymn that praises the Lord Jesus Christ.

And if you think of it that way, this is the time of the year when evangelism is probably at its easiest point.

Someone at work asked this week, we were debating whether we should send all of our clinics Thanksgiving.

And someone said, no, Christmas is a Catholic holiday.

So we can't do it because everyone who works here is not Catholic.

I said, no, actually, Christmas is a Christian holiday.

Many people of pretty much all denominations celebrate Christmas in some form or the other.

I say, but in America, even people who don't believe in God celebrate Christmas.

Nobody wants to give up on getting gifts and stuff.

So it is an opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and to speak truth in a time when people need hope.

Hopelessness is at a high right now, church.

The pandemic fatigue is truly setting in.

1 of the reasons you see the numbers spiking across the country, there are a lot of reasons.

1 of them is people have just kind of given up and they're going back to what keeps them comfortable and happy.

The church must always have an answer in these times of difficulty.

A scripture reading today comes from Matthew chapter 2.

I want to read the first 2 verses and we're going to go through a bit of a contextualization of the first advent and look at how that relates to the second advent, in a sense, by the time this is all over.

And hopefully gain relevance around this holiday and this season.

Matthew 2, verses 1 and 2 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 is born King of the Jews.

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

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

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, Now Behold the Child.

Father God, We thank you for this opportunity to study your word, to study the history and the truth of the first advent of Jesus Christ.

Lord, I pray that the Holy Spirit would just now lead.

Pour out your Holy ghost in double and triple portion.

Have the person of the Holy Spirit be with us now.

Lord, once again I ask that you just make me a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord, but upon that nail I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard now, Father.

Instead, Father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

This is what Rome, the empire of Rome, looked like at the time of Jesus.

So there are 2 maps overlaid, 1 on top of the other.

You can see all the way out here to Britannica, the purple.

The Roman Empire eventually included even Rome, Armenia, and beyond.

You will notice that all of Spain, Galia is France, and of course all of Italy, were all a part of the Roman Empire.

There were many battles with, at the time were called the German, the German, not the Vandals, the Vandals were actually 1 of the tribes but they called them Brutes and all kinds of things.

But They fought with the Germans a lot, the Roman Empire did.

And you can see that it stretched into Africa and all over the world.

When Christ was born, he was born into a very, very powerful empire.

He was born under a time when they ruled with an iron fist.

Daniel, in his vision, when he saw the statue, the part of the body that Nebuchadnezzar saw that represented the Roman Empire was the legs of iron.

And if you think about it, there are 2 things about that truth.

1 of them is iron is the strongest metal in the statue.

And the legs are the strongest muscles in the body, the largest, I should say, collection.

So collectively, the strongest muscles in the body.

When you think about it, prophetically, what Daniel was telling us, Christ would be born into, which is then reflected in Revelation chapter 12, is that Christ would be born into a kingdom that was more powerful and oppressive than Babylon, Medo-Persia, or Greece.

When Jesus was born, the world was plunged into spiritual darkness.

The pagan ways of the Romans had followed the pagan ways of all the other previous empires.

In fact, the gods of the time, Jupiter and Neptune and Venus and all of the rest of them, were literally people with the attributes and faults of people given the status of gods.

In other words, when men looked to these deities for direction, what they found were lying, conniving, cheating, stealing beings to look up to.

So the image of God from that had been brought low.

But on the other hand, those who were supposed to have the truth, the Jews who had now not heard from a prophet in over 400 years, from the end of the book of Malachi to the birth of Christ, over 400 years, there was silence, not a prophet was heard.

Men like Isaiah and Jeremiah had gone through persecution, and so there was a silence of the Word of God for over 400 years.

And in that time, the 1 group of people on the planet with the truth had lowered God to being a maniacal, tyrannical, obsessive, and hard God that you should fear and tremble and obey because you wanted to avoid punishment.

As you looked at the whole thing, it was terrible as Idolatry and revelry took over.

The world was looking simply for wealth and an excuse to party at this time.

It was a time of great depression, and only a select few actually lived decent lives under the harrowing power of the Romans.

In fact, some argue that the families of the senates of Rome were literally only 3 to 600 families in all of this vast empire who had a good life.

The spirit of prophecy in the book of The Desire of Ages on page 36 says this, the deception of sin had reached its height, this is at the time of Christ's birth, all the agencies for depraving the souls of men had been put in operation.

The Son of God, looking upon the world, beheld suffering and misery.

With pity, he saw how men had become victims of satanic cruelty.

He looked with compassion upon those who were being corrupted, murdered, and lost.

Satanic agencies were incorporated with men.

The bodies of human beings made for the dwelling place of God had become the habitation of demons.

The senses, the nerves, the passions, the organs of men were worked by supernatural agencies in the indulgence of the vilest lust.

The very stamp of demons was impressed upon the countenances of men.

Human faces reflected the expression of the legions of evil with which they were possessed.

Such was the prospect, look at this, such was the prospect upon which the world's Redeemer looked.

What a spectacle for infinite purity to behold.

Before Christ came to earth he sat in the heavenly realm looking down on a planet so debased.

In fact, the spirit of prophecy tells us that it had been 2, 000 years since the world was in such condition.

What I want you to get from what I'm telling you is when you when you hear the story of the birth of Christ Do not think that Jesus just randomly decided to plop down on earth at a certain time.

It was prophetic and it was intentional Christ saw that he had more time to go in and save the world before, like the Antediluvians, it reached a point of no return.

The Roman Empire was such a beautiful, brilliant place.

I've been to Rome, and I have to say that when I visit Rome, I am still in awe of the architecture and complexity of what they designed and built.

It was a phenomenal and amazing empire when you think of its achievements on those levels.

But of course, it was also very spiritually dark.

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Wise Men Still Seek Him

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