Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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A Savior is Born

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Luke 2

You can all open to Luke chapter 2. Luke 2. I remember interviewing Michael Card, who many of you know is a songwriter. He’s also an author. He’s written a number of books, one of them on, he’s writing a series of commentaries on the Gospels and he wrote one on Luke. And we’re talking about the richness of the Word. And part of the problem with Scripture is there’s so much there. There’s so, I mean, if you really wanted to pull it all out, you could, he could just write a thousand pages on the book of Luke, but at some point you have to stop. We refer to it as the embarrassment of riches. There is so much in the Word to pull out. The problem is not just what do you say, it’s what do you not say, because there’s so much to say, so much good stuff in Scripture. Let of Luke chapter 2, verse 8. This is called is called the angelic announcement of Jesus’ birth. It says, now there were in the same country that is surrounding Bethlehem, shepherds living out in the fields keeping keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, do not be afraid for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which it shall be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of the Lord, a Savior who was Christ the Lord. And this will be assigned to you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger, and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and good will toward men. The good news, the glad tidings, and by the way, the word gospel that we use literally translated means good news or glad tidings, that’s what the gospel means. That’s what the gospel is. Because the gospel is that the is born to us, or was born to us a savior who is, Jesus Christ, the Lord. And so today I want to talk about what do we mean when we say Jesus is the Savior?s the Savior. What are we really saying?

What Savior Means

So I want to look at a few things. First, when, when we talk about

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All Have Sinned

that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Look at Romans 3 for a moment. If you haven’t read the book of Romans lately I encourage you to do so because there’s the fullest exposition of the gospel or the glad tidings given in the scripture. Romans 3 Paul argues here all men, Jew and Gentile, have violated God’s

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They know if they’re wrong, yet they choose to do wrong, and they try to excuse or justify themselves. And Paul says in Romans chapter 3 verse 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it says those who are under the law, that every mouth, notice every, may be stopped in all the world. Notice where all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no one, or no flesh, mind reads, no one, no person, no man, no woman, no child, no one, doesn’t matter if it’s the pope, it doesn’t matter if it’s the imam, it doesn’t matter who it is, every person, every holy person is fallen before God. Everyone has sinned, everyone. Notice Lee goes on to Notice we goes on to say in verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So when we talk about the lost, we’re talking about every person apart from Jesus Christ. And they are not only all lost, but the Bible says that they are all lost equally. Now, what I mean is this, we tend to look through a human lens and we think of some people as good and some people as bad. Right? Like you think of me and you think he’s really good. Right? No. Okay. Some are good, some are bad. Some are better, some are worse. But according to scripture, yeah, God sees grades of goodness. But when it comes to our standing before God, every person is equally fallen. They’re equally fallen because it says that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are all guilty before God. Now somebody might be more guilty than others, but we’re all guilty. And so that’s why the gospel says that even one sin condemns. One. Because God’s standard is perfection.

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the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind and soul. Jesus said that’s the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. He says all of the law is summed up in that. All of it. Now anybody who takes the time to really contemplate their life must come to the conclusion that they have violated both of those commandments. Right? I mean, loving God with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, all of your strength, all the time. Well, of course we have violated that. Every one of us. Every one of us. So we are all lost. We’ve all violated the law of God. And the result of that is not good. Because what scripture says is that as a result of sin, we lose communion with God. Now when I say we, I mean the human race. I mean man in his natural state. As a result of the fall, men were cut off from communion with God. They were, originally Adam was in fellowship with God. He walked with God in the garden, And then sin enters and communion is broken. And you know the account there in Genesis, what happens, he hides, he covers himself. He covers himself, there’s a break in the relationship. There is now alienation between God and a man. And there’s a loss of life, spiritual life, and then ultimately, natural life. The original warning to man was that in the day that you eat the fruit thereof, you shall what? You shall die. So there was spiritual death, that is the break in the communion with fellowship with God, And then the result of that in the physical realm was natural death. And as a result of that, there was a loss of holiness. Man was not infected, if you will, with sin. Sin was now in him. He was fallen. And so now he has desires and passions which are contrary to the law of God. This is what the Bible calls the flesh, or sin. not sins, plural, but sin. And with the loss of holiness, there’s always a loss of happiness. So a man loses joy, he loses contentment, he loses really the things that are ultimately important in life, the things that we all want. A sense of well-being, he loses all of this. So the scripture says that man is now alienated in his fallen condition, alienated from God, and under God’s wrath. Now I know this is very unpopular to say these things today because we have a certain image of God that we want to foster. But I want you to look at John 3, because I want you to see what Jesus said.

You Must Be Born Again

Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, who was a teacher in Israel. In John 3 verse 1 it says, there was a man

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second time into his mother’s womb and be born. Jesus answered, Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water and of spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Not which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Therefore do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. And then he goes on and he says in verse 16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned. Well that’s good news, amen.

But he who does not believe is condemned already. He’s condemned. Why? Because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation. That light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light. Why? Because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deed should be exposed. But he who, who does the truth, comes to the light, that his deeds might be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. So, the fallen man standing before God is he’s not standing in God’s favor.

Now this doesn’t mean God doesn’t love all people. And actually God does love all people. As a matter of fact, that’s why Jesus came, because God loves all people. The original angelic announcement was good tidings of great joy to all people. All people. God loves all people. But the fact that God loves someone doesn’t mean that that person is standing in God’s favor. Because unless they come to the light, Jesus says they’re condemned. But it’s not because God doesn’t love them. God does love them. We’ll talk more about that in a moment. So men, in their natural condition, have lost the favor of God and they are subject then also to both spiritual and physical death. In Romans 6 23 it says the wages of sin is what? Death. Very simple verse, the wages of sin is death.

But one of the most important concepts, it really, in scriptures in the Bible, because let me tell you what human religion does. And I was raised in a religion that taught this, the wages of sin is church. No, the wages of sin is communion. The wages of sin is confession.

The wages of sin is the rosary. The wages of sin is, and you fill in the blank. In other words, you paid for your, you paid the wages. There’s certain things you do, and those are the wages and you pay the wages and your sins will be taken care of. But the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Now the question you have to ask yourself is do you want to pay the wages? No. You don’t want to pay the wages. We meaning the human heart, including my own, we are in devising ways to substitute some form of human payment for the real payment. It’s because we want to be able to claim some kind of credit for our own salvation. We don’t really want to admit that we’re utterly lost.

Now we’ll admit we’re lost. The problem is the utterly part. Because you see, if you say to me, I’m lost, like, okay, yeah, I’m lost, I’ll fix that, I’ll find my way back, I can do this, I can perform this religious deed or this kind act or I can do this thing, and I can work for my salvation and I can repair this. But when The scripture refers to mankind as lost. It’s not saying that man is lost and he can find his way back. In Isaiah 53 it says, all we like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way. And so when we’re lost, do you ever have a phone conversation with somebody you call them? You say, hey, I’m driving, I’m trying to find someone, I’m lost. Well, let’s say, where are you? I don’t know because I’m lost. But see, in the spiritual realm, we’re like, oh, I know where I am. I can fix this. But that’s not what the Bible says. We are really lost. Apart from Jesus, we’re not only lost, we’re utterly lost. And this is why the gospel offends people. You know, when I got saved, it was like, I was like how come people, how come when I share the gospel with people, they don’t all just jump up and down and say praise God and accept Jesus. And it puzzled me for a long time. Now the irony is I heard the gospel for a long time and I didn’t accept Jesus. And the scripture answer for that, I mean you’re telling people the best news in the world. The God who created you, brought you into existence so that you can have a relationship with him which is full of love, joy, peace, contentment. You can’t even- you can’t even feel in all the words to describe the blessedness of knowing God. And it’s going to last forever. Amen. So you You think, why not? Yeah, embrace that.

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then you’re found, but not until that point. As long as we’re working to gain favor and we’re working to enter, we’re not understanding the most fundamental principle of the gospel that we are utterly lost and we need to be saved. Jesus Christ is

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He Saves Utterly

You do not add to the work of Jesus Christ. He saves you and He saves you utterly because you are lost utterly. We read a couple scriptures out of Ephesians. Go to Ephesians 2 real quick. Ephesians 2 in verse 11, Paul says, therefore remember, that this is after saying in earlier in chapter 2 that were saved by grace and not by works. He says this over and over essentially. Then he says in verse 11, therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of Promised, having no hope and without God in the world. We were afar off. If you will. Ephesians 4 verse 17 This I say therefore in testifying the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness. He’s describing the natural man. He’s describing the human heart, the fallen condition there. Don’t walk like that he’s saying. But some of you used to walk that way. Okay? So man’s condition apart from Jesus Christ is, it’s not good. not good at all. He’s really lost. But Jesus came to save. Amen. The glad tidings announced that first, that first Christmas, if you will, was that there was going to be born to us a Savior, a Savior who is Jesus Christ the R. So when we call Jesus the Savior, what are we really saying? We’re saying that Jesus Christ redeems us, saves us from all of the consequences of sin. Jesus saves us from all of the, the consequences of sin. Jesus removes the wrath of God and restores us to God’s favor. He restores us to God’s favor. The big Bible word is justification and what this means is that we are now pardoned and we stand in grace before God, not based upon our works solely because of the work of Jesus Christ. When we come together and we pray and we sing, we can enter into the very presence of God, because our sins and the guilt of our sins have been removed from us. Do you understand that? That you can enter into the very presence of God, where you’re thinking, but I’m unworthy. Well in yourself you are. If you’re looking at your works, you are. But if you’re looking at what Jesus Christ has done for you, and what Jesus Christ has given to you through His work, and if you see that because of the Gospel you’ve been clothed with the robes of righteousness, that you’re now a child of God, you can come into God’s presence and you are worthy because of the work of Jesus. Not because of your work. The thing that keeps the Christian out of God’s presence is them still leaning on their own goodness. We’re never good enough. That’s not the gospel. The gospel isn’t, God will make you better so you can be worthy. That is not the gospel. The Gospel is that God gives to you, the Theological Word is that God imputes to you the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. The righteousness of Jesus is given to you. It’s accredited to you. It’s put in your bank account, if you will. And so when you go to God, you go to Him because of the merit and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Not your own, because we don’t have any. So Jesus saves us, He restores us to favor with God, He removes the curse and He removes the condemnation. If you are a Christian and if you are in Jesus Christ, you are not guilty before God.

You’re not. Now I’m not saying you won’t feel guilty if you’re living in sin. You will feel guilty because you will be convicted in your conscience. And if the Holy Spirit of God dwells on you, He will convict you of that sin. But that’s not the guilt I’m talking about. I’m talking about the guilt that says you are condemned. The child of God is not condemned. The child of God is accepted by the Father. Jesus, through His work, His death, burial, and resurrection, He has also abolished death. death. He has removed spiritual death from his people and he will ultimately remove physical death.

That’s one of the reasons Jesus came back from the dead, to demonstrate his power over sin and his power over death. Jesus conquered death through his resurrection. Amen. Jesus restores communion with God. He restores communion with God. The Bible word for this is reconciliation. Reconciliation is a really awesome word. We hear it a lot today. We hear it in the context of racial reconciliation, don’t we? And the idea is that people who are enemies, people who are hostile to one another, are now brought together. And in Scripture, because of sin, man turned away from God. And actually man became hostile to God in his sin. And yet Jesus works reconciliation and he being both God and man, if you will takes the hand of God and takes the hand of man and he brings them together and there’s now reconciliation. There’s now friendship restored between us and God. And we have communion with God now if we’re in Jesus Christ. He gives new life. Jesus here in John 3, we looked at it, talks about birth.

The big word is regeneration, to be born again. This is where God gives us His very life into our soul. And so we’re born anew, we’re made completely new. He provides holiness and therefore happiness to the believer. This is the work of sanctification and redemption. Jesus Christ saves from all sin.

That’s what he does. Jesus Christ came to save us from the past sin, if you will.

Jesus Christ removes the guilt from the believer. He removes the spiritual death, he imparts his spirit to the believer, the believer is born again, the believer is reconciled to God. And the believer can look forward to the future when they’re going to be fully redeemed, right?

And fully glorified in heaven, and that is our future hope, not hope like, oh I hope I get there, but hope expectation, right? in heaven we will see the removal, complete removal of the very presence of sin. There will be no sin in heaven. It’s going to be awesome. Right? So he saved us from the past, the guilt of sin. He saved us in the future from the very presence of sin. But I think what we Christians need to hear is that Jesus Christ saves us now in the present from the power of sin. Jesus Christ, if he is your Savior, if you’ve trusted him to take care of the guilt of your sin, if you believe that Jesus Christ is someday going to deliver you from the very presence of sin, then Jesus Christ now can save you from the power of sin. Now. Now. I think some of us have this weird thing we do where we think Jesus, yeah, Jesus is my Savior, so I’m not going to hell. good. Jesus saved me. It’s true. But Jesus wants to save you now. And Jesus Christ is sufficient for every condition and every situation and every problem that the believer confronts in this life. Everyone. Are you here? Yes. Every situation. Jesus can save you from many of your problems. Now, hear me now. Because I think a lot of Christians, there’s a gospel out there which says because Jesus Christ saves you, you don’t have problems. That’s That’s not what the scripture teaches. You can’t have a victory if you don’t have a battle. So the gospel isn’t that Jesus saves you so therefore you don’t have problems and that’s why you’re happy because everything goes swimmingly. That’s not the gospel. The gospel is that in the battle, Jesus Christ can give you the victory.

That’s the gospel. In fact, not only will you have battles, Jesus will lead you into battle.

It says we wrestle not with flesh and blood. When we talk about spiritual warfare, some of us think it’s way out there in the cloud somewhere. You know where it is? your heart. It’s in your mind. I just read the past month, I’ve read about two megachurch pastors that committed suicide, other ones committing adultery. How does this happen? Because somewhere in here they’re losing the battle. Somewhere in the heart the enemy is gaining ground. That’s what’s happening. So the spiritual battle that’s going on is a battle that is waged every day and the battle front is your heart and your mind. And Jesus Christ, because he’s defeated Satan on the cross, he’s already defeated him because Jesus said right before he went to the cross. He says, now is the judgment of this world. Now is the prince of this world cast out. Now.

Victory in Christ

When Jesus Christ has the victory over Satan.

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He has the victory over sin. He has the victory over death. That means that you, in your current situation whatever that might be can give you victory he can do that for you because he is sufficient Jesus doesn’t save us and meaning he gives us a ticket to heaven and we gotta just kind of go through this I’m going oh crap this is It’s hard. Oh, man. Really? Really? Now, don’t get me wrong. The more, the more you’re used

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of God and the more you want to be used of God, the narrower the way gets. And Jesus Jesus said this, Jesus said, broad is the way, easy, enjoyable is the way to destruction, narrow is the way, and hard is the way to life. So I’m not saying that Christian life is easy, I’m telling you just the opposite, I’m telling you, you’ve got battles to fight, And some of you haven’t begun to experience the warfare.

And I think, well, that’s not good news. Man, I was happy until I came to this church.

The good news is that the narrow way leads to life.

And there’s somebody walking on the narrow way, and his name is Jesus Christ. And that’s where you meet Jesus. You meet him on the narrow way. You don’t meet him on the broader way. He’s not walking toward destruction. He’s on the narrow way. And for every difficulty and conflict we encounter, we must understand that Jesus Christ is the Savior.

Saved in the Situation

He may not save you out of the situation, and many times that is not his intention. He will save you through the situation. He will save you in the situation. He will give

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When Scripture says we wrestle, of course it’s using literally that metaphor, that analogy, whatever you want to call it. And when you’re on top wrestling, you’re winning, right? You want to be on top. You don’t want to be on the bottom. But it doesn’t mean you’re not fighting. It just means you’re fighting from the top. You’re not fighting from the bottom. You’re fighting from the top because you’re winning. But you’re fighting. And that’s what the Christian life is. It is a fight. It’s a battle. But you can win. And if you think you want to get to that place where there’s no fight anymore, you’re not understanding the calling. never get to the place where we don’t fight, but we can get to the place where when we fight we’re on top and we’re winning. Okay, we’re winning and we win because Jesus already won. He already won. Jesus Christ has the power to give you victory over sin in your life. Every sin. Jesus Christ has power to heal your marriage. Jesus has power to restore your family. Jesus Christ has power to fix your financial problems. Jesus Christ has power to do anything and everything necessary for your sanctification. One person believes that. It’s true. Now that

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doesn’t mean you are always going to get what you want. Because I’d be like, oh man, I’m going to go get the lottery ticket today. Jesus is going to make me rich.

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as Christians when we’re hurting and there’s a place for weeping. It’s real. I’m not talking about victory means you put on a happy face. I don’t mean that because I don’t think victory means that you don’t fight and you don’t hurt.

When you’re fighting, you get bruises. You get cuts. It can be rough. But I’m telling you friend if you know Jesus Christ, if you really know Him, you need not lose. You need not lose because Jesus is your Savior.

So whatever your situation is, whatever your need is, bring it to Jesus Christ.

Bring yourself to Jesus Christ. And let Jesus Christ empower you, comfort you, instruct you, guide you, do all of the things that He does as your Savior. Then you can be like Daniel and his friends when they’re getting ready to be thrown in the fire. They’re like, you know, God’s able to deliver us from this. But if not, that’s okay. But if not, that’s okay. If Jesus isn’t saving us now, I’m not sure why relent you would believe He’s going to save you then. You know what I mean? He saves those then who believe in Him now. Now we believe in Him now. Whatever we’re facing. We believe in Jesus now. We believe that Jesus is sufficient now for me, for my challenges, my battles.

Jesus is sufficient for me, whatever my situation is. And maybe Jesus will change your situation if you pray that he fixes it. He does things like that. But maybe he won’t change your situation. But you know what he’s going to change? He’s going to change you. He’s going to change you. And he’s going to allow you to walk through these situations in a way ultimately that honors him and glorifies him. And brings him praise. He can give you the victory because He can save you now. Now. He is a very present help in time of need, the Word of God says. He is a sufficient Savior for all of our situations. Let’s stand. Spower has him pray. Let’s take a moment as we pray. I don’t know everyone here, maybe you came in today because somebody invited you and you don’t know Christ. Jesus Christ and he died for you. He rose from the dead for you. and he’s inviting you into a relationship with him and with God. The scripture says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Means you can be forgiven, restored to a relationship with God. You can have new life. You can have all your past sins wiped away. You can really start over. brand new, like a newborn baby.

As you learn to walk with God you’ll experience tremendous love, joy, peace. It won’t always be easy but it will be rewarding. And then you have a future hope that you will spend eternity with God in bliss and happiness.

But the invitation to come to Jesus isn’t just for the visitor, it’s for all of us. Whatever you’re confronting, whatever battles you’re fighting, bring not only your troubles to Jesus, but bring yourself to Jesus.

Even though you’ve been a Christian for years, you still need to pray this simple prayer. Jesus save me. Save me from my own sin. Save me from my own ignorance. Save me from my own folly. Fill me with your presence. Fill me with your power. Fill me with your spirit. me with your wisdom. Jesus, you are sufficient for every need that I have. Change me, Lord.

Don’t change my situation. Change me. Save me.

Closing Prayer

Dear Lord Jesus, I pray that each of us walk in the gospel. We’d walk in the gospel. That we would walk in the reality that you are our Savior today and every day. Today and every day. Today and in every situation.

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We thank you Lord Jesus. I pray in your name, amen.