Harlow, R E: The Life Of Christ 01 ~ The Birth Of Christ

A missionary gave a Buddhist a little book to read containing the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When the missionary came back a little while later, he said to the man, did you read the book I gave you? He said, yes, I did. What he said, did you understand? He said, yes, it's wonderful. What he said, what did you read in the book? What he said, I read about a man who, born in this world, lived his life and died. Then he was reincarnated and came again the second time into this world, lived a life again and died. And then the third time this happened, and he lived and died, and the fourth time, he said, we Buddhists understand that perfectly. That's one of the doctrines of the Buddhist, uh, religion, that when you die, it's not the end of everything. You're going to be born again into this world, either up the scale or down the scale. It's a satanic attempt to take the keen edge off the sword of the spirit, which says it is appointed to men once to die, and after that the judgment. In our culture, men are not afraid of death. That is to say, judging by driving habits and smoking and drinking habits, people are not afraid of death. It's almost a defiance of God, because God's word says plainly after this, uh, the judgment. But why are there four gospels? My great and good friend, Mr. John Smart, back from this very platform, years ago, before a lot of you were here, said that a man was seen walking down the street with four women. Naturally, you say, who is he? Well, the first one says, he's my husband. Second one says, he's my father. Third one says, he's my son. And the fourth one, he's my brother. Now, which one's right? Of course, they all could be right. This one man could sustain this different relationship to each one of these four women. Mr. Smart used that as a little illustration of the four Gospels. In the four Gospels, we have our Lord Jesus Christ portrayed in four different and wonderful ways. It's our purpose in these three Sundays, six messages, to take up the life of Christ from the four Gospels. So we start off with the birth of the king. A king is born. Now, I suppose the, the pulpits of this city will be reverberating with sermons on the birth of Christ two weeks hence. So for once, let's get ahead of the Joneses. I don't mind the Joneses trying to keep up with us. Actually, by the time Christmas comes, we'll be up to the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's not our purpose to celebrate, uh, days and years and months and seasons, but, uh, the person. And the work of our Lord Jesus Christ is ever precious to all who know him, and we just want you to come to know him and to love him as well. There are differences in the four gospels, but they supplement each other. They do not contradict. And, uh, it has been said that the first gospel, Matthew, portrays Christ as the king, the second one as a servant. Now, one of the basic, uh, characteristics of all good liter- literature is each work must be a unit in itself. How can you possibly emphasize at the same time a man is king and a man is a servant. The Holy Spirit decided to choose two different men, to use two different men for these diverse purposes. Matthew does emphasize, to some extent, Christ is king, Mark as servant, Luke as the son of man, John as the son of God. I would like to ask you, how far can we trust this simple rule? How far does it apply? Can all differences be explained in this basis? Uh, are we to consider this, uh, an inspired, uh, method of interpretation? Well, it isn't inspired, no, but it's helpful. Someone has furthermore said that the first gospel is written to the Jews, the second to the Romans, the third to the Greeks, and the fourth gospel of John to the church or to the whole world. Some pastors emphasize one and some the other. I would like to suggest, uh, that there are reasons for the variations in the four Gospels. One is they are supplemental. The four Gospels supplement each other. For example, the inscription over our Lord Jesus Christ. In each of the Gospels, something is said about an inscription put over his head when he was crucified. They're all different. Four different records of that inscription, which is right. Aha, you'll say. Something wrong with the Bible. And people with a very shallow type of mind jump at this sort of thing, mostly because they want to, not because they thought it through. And when you think it through, you will see that they, that the four gospels add up. You put the all of them together, the inscription said probably this, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. But no one gospel gives all that inscription. But you add them up, and that's what you get. This gospel is supplemental. They do not contradict. Then I've already suggested another reason for the variations, namely, each gospel, each author records what was characteristic of his particular purpose. Matthew as king, Mark as servant, etc. And this isn't to deny the inspiration of these men. Inspiration doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit mechanically used a, a human body as a kind of a typewriter, and the man began to write with his, uh, quill or brush, whatever it was, on a piece of parchment, and he had no control of himself. That's not inspiration. That's not God's way. God's way is to control, but not to supersede human individuality. For instance, in the Old Testament, what great differences there are between, let us say, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jeremiah the weeping prophet. I don't know if Isaiah ever said it to you in his life. Isaiah was a strong character. And there are great differences in the four, in the four gospels as well. Very precious to think of the character of each man and how he, uh, the Spirit of God allowed that personality to show forth to some extent, at the same time controlling everything, so that not one word is contrary to the will of the Spirit. Then you will see, as we go along in the four gospels, or sometimes only two or three of them, a beautiful spiritual buildup. In other words, Matthew says one thing, Luke adds a little bit more to it spiritually, Mark something else again, and you get a climax, a spiritual build up. But I cannot deny that there might be still difficulties remaining. We're not here to pretend we know all the answers to the Bible. Now, elders, kindly don't lead me away just yet, but I think that should be faced. Young people are presented with the difficulties in the Bible, they can't explain them, and so therefore they're told the Bible isn't to be believed, not to be trusted. Now that's entirely erroneous. You can trust people without knowing all about them. For instance, you trust your wife. What husband here of, say, six months standing or more thinks he understands his wife perfectly? You don't understand electricity. If you do, you're the only one I ever heard of that did. The greatest scientists wonder what electricity basically is. But, uh, you go over and push the button, and the room's flooded with light. You can believe the Bible. It isn't full of difficulties and problems, contradictions at all. There are very few places where, uh, spiritual research will not reveal an answer. But, uh, if you still have difficulties, don't reject the, the whole thing. Now you take the opening verses of each of the four gospels. Matthew starts off, uh, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. He's introducing the king. Mark starts off simply by saying the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Ma- Mark calls him the Son of God, but his gospel is about the servant of God. And so he doesn't say a word about his birth, his background, his genealogy. Who cares about the genealogy of a servant? Someone comes around to shovel the snow off your la- off your, uh, sidewalk or cut your lawn, they'll be doing, uh, the snow shoveling pretty soon now. Unless you have to do it yourself. But you don't ask that young fellow and say, uh, just a minute, so where were you born? Uh, do you come from one of the best families? Uh, who are your ancestors? The boy'd probably pick up a shovel and go on to the next place. You look at his muscles. If he's got muscles, get to work. One dollar, please. Or five, as the case might be. So Mark the servant doesn't describe these things in detail, but it's very, very precious. The very first verse. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Spirit of God gonna guard the deity of Christ. Even in the gospel, it puts him, you might say, in his humblest position, the servant of Jehovah, the servant of all. Luke starts off in the manner of a Greek writing to the Greeks, a formal opening, such as many Greek books are, uh, introduced with. Uh, many having sat in hand to put down in order the things which are most surely believed among his most noble theophilus, I also thought I would, uh, help you to understand the things which you have heard, and much longer than that. John, on the other hand, that beautiful, poetical verse, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You could preach three weeks on that verse alone. Now, uh, people have said those who don't like the Bible, those who feel the edge of the spirit driving into their hearts, those who try to prove that there are errors and difficulties in the Bible, one of their favorite, uh, ways, uh, of getting around these things is saying that, uh, that the gospel was written long after Christ lived in this world. And it's quite typical of human nature that when a great man has been off the scene for years or even centuries, a great body of legends build up around him, and he becomes somebody far greater than what he actually was. A notable case is Muhammad the Prophet. And when he was here in this world, he was a very earthy sort of a fellow, indeed, very human. But, uh, after he'd been gone, his disciples started to build up a great body of, uh, legend about him, and he became the, the greatest of all men and the purpose of all creation and pre-existent himself as well. Is that true of Christ? Well, one way of exploding this is when were the gospels written? And the gospel which emphasized the deity of Christ more than anything else is the fourth gospel. And, uh, they put this on to the third or fourth century, hundreds of years later, and people began to think he was the Son of God, until someone with a pick and shovel, digging around in the sand in Egypt or someplace, E- Egypt, I think, found, amongst other things, a piece of papyrus about the size of my hand, called the Rylands papyrus. And when scientists began to look at that thing and study it, they found that the writing, lo and behold, it was a part of the Gospel of John, and they proved conclusively, everybody agreed, that it couldn't have been written more than about one hundred and thirty five A D. In other words, about thirty or forty years after the time John himself passed away, this was written, copied by somebody, and already recognized as scripture. So that little idea went down the grain. And then another thing. Of the four gospels, Matthew says he's king, John says he's the son of God, right? The two middle ones put Christ in a kind of a humble position. Luke, he's the, he's the Son of Man, and Mark, he's a servant of Jehovah. Now, if this was false, which of those four men would paint him in the highest possible way, those who knew him or those who didn't know him, according to this theory? Obviously, those who didn't know him would build him up and give him a greater exalted position. As a matter of fact, it's just the opposite. Matthew and John were his apostles, they were with him. And they described him as the king of kings and as the son of God. Mark and Luke, on the other hand, so far as we know, quite probably, never saw him. Luke almost certainly, and Mark definitely wasn't one of his near disciples in any case, but they wrote of him in the lower level, all led by the spirit of God. Now, uh, this is an important consideration because we want to see in the four gospels a portrayal of the greatest personality that ever walked on this planet, the Lord Jesus Christ. What was he like? The first thing we read about him is that he had a long background, and in the first chapter of Matthew's gospel, we find that the genealogy, all the forebears of Christ, the fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, all the way back to the time of Abraham. Now, something similar is found in Luke, because Luke portrays him in that way too. Servants don't have to tell you where they come from, and the Son of God, the emphasis is not on his human lineage, but on his divine origin or existence, pre-existence. So Matthew and Luke tell us about his ancestors. Matthew gives us forty two names, beginning at Abraham and going down to Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who was called Christ. Luke, on the other hand, gives us forty names, going back from Christ to Adam, the son of man. The list there goes all the way back to Adam. And I might say that from Christ to Abraham and Luke, you have twenty four names instead of... you have forty names, I should say, instead of forty— instead of, uh, uh twenty four. And the consequence is, when you boil this down, you find that Matthew obviously has omitted some of these names for good reasons. But, uh, in Matthew's gospel, it says that Joseph was the Harry of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. The gospel says that Christ was the son, as was supposed, of Joseph, the son of Heli and Septon, and all the other names back again. Now, how could he be, how could Joseph be the son of two different men? Is that in Luke's gospel, Christ is courted as the descendant of Mary's line and not of Joseph's at all. Joseph is the son-in-law of Heli. Son and son-in-law are identical in the Bible. David called, uh, David was called Saul's son. Saul said, is that thy son David? He's really a son-in-law. And, uh, Ruth was called the daughter of Naomi, really her daughter-in-law, just one word for both of these. So, uh, it's really the son-in-law. And one of the most important verses in the Old Testament is in Jeremiah chapter twenty two where the sons of Solomon are washed out. God promised David that his sons, that his son would reign in the throne of David forever and ever. And, uh, Solomon followed in his footsteps, and he reigned, and his, uh, son Rehoboam, et cetera, all the way down the line, mainly just traced in the book of all the way down to Christ. But in Jeremiah, because of the wickedness, Solomon's son, that whole thing is cut off. Holy Spirit of God. In Jeremiah chapter twenty two and verse thirty, said, write this man childless. No son of his shall ever sit upon the throne. Well, what about your promises, O God? Of God were not going to be satisfied. God chose instead of that Nathan, another son of David, didn't reign as king, but through him was born Jesus after the flesh, because Mary was evidently a descendant of David through, uh, Nathan. Now it's wonderful how God can deal with the sins and the back, uh, sliding and the wickedness of men, and yet fulfill his purpose and glorify his name throughout it all. One day, an angel named of Gabriel came to Zechariah, a priest of Israel, as he was burning incense. He told him his elderly wife would have a son, his name would be called John, the forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ. And a few months later, perhaps six months later, Gabriel, the angel, appeared again to Mary, a damsel of Nazareth, and he told her that she was going to have a son. She was just a young woman, but she wasn't married. So she said, how shall these things be? The angel explained that the Holy Spirit of God would come upon her, and that holy child which is to be born of her would be called the Son of the Most High. And, uh, after a while, an angel, an unnamed angel, appeared to Joseph, the betrothed husband of, uh, Mary. Why did God choose the angel Gabriel? Why not Michael the Archangel? God's choices are sovereign, and this is what the scripture says. So when Mary first got the message she was going to have a child by the Holy Spirit, she went to visit her relative, uh, Elizabeth, uh, the wife of John, and, uh, she got confirmation because Elizabeth, uh, uh, endorsed this what she had heard from the angel. And finally, Mary went back to Nazareth, and it was plain to the vulgar people of that wicked town that something's going to happen. And Joseph himself was deeply disturbed, because he was a righteous man. And the law of God says an unfaithful woman is to be stoned to death, or at least the engagement have to be broken. She should be put away privately. As he meditated on these things, those who are busy and amused and occupied with the things of this world morning, noon, and night, think of this. If Joseph made a snap decision, no doubt the purpose of God would have been carried out some other way. What a, but what a loss to him. He meditated on these things, and then an angel appeared to him, said, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy betrothed wife, because that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. So he did. He retained that separation connection with his wife-to-be until the first child was born of the Lord Jesus. But in the meantime, God had other strings to pull, shall I say? And, uh, hundreds of miles away in the political capital of the world, the city of Rome, God, at this very time, laid it on the heart of the great emperor Augustus to declare that everybody in his empire should be recorded in the books, uh, of the record. And so Joseph packed up, although the birth of the child was quite near. He had to go down to Bethlehem, no small journey on donkey back in the heat of the day. And, uh, when they got there, she, Mary was ready to be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. Now God is on the throne, and God is controlling everything. God had other people ready for this, and he sent an angel to the shep- shepherds outside of Bethlehem, and uh, they told the shepherds what was going to happen, or what had happened. So the angel, suddenly a whole group of angels, the host, the heavenly host appeared, and they went off to find the, uh, the child Jesus. Doesn't that say they worshiped him? They were Jews. They had a strong resistance against worship- against worshiping anything or even holding any idol or any representation at all. I think it's remarkable that the Spirit of God has chosen to portray the Lord Jesus Christ by words, by written words. Now, he could have chosen an artist. He could have given Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John artistic ability to paint or portray Christ, or shall I say, the ability of a sculptor to, uh, portray Christ in physical form. He could have done that, you know that. The Greeks were expert at sculpture. Some of the most beautiful works of sculpture in the world today come from the Greek period, even before the time of our Lord. Greeks came up to Jerusalem. They said to Philip and Nathaniel, sirs, we would see Jesus. And Christ was moved when they were brought to him. He could have said, which of you gentlemen is expert with chisel and hammer? I would like a s- a statue of myself for posterity. Could he say that? You say it was too late then. He was a, on a just a few days from his death. Do you think the Holy Spirit of God couldn't have brought those men up a year before, if necessary? God has chosen to portray Christ with words. Now, even if I didn't know a good reason for that, I would still bow to it. I think it's very important. People have tried to portray Christ in various ways, mostly an effeminate looking person. What Christ looked like, we haven't got the faintest idea, but we do know that this was the will of the Spirit. And there were certain people ready to respond to this announcement, this advent. On the eighth day after he was born, we're over in Luke's gospel now, he was circumcised according to the law of Moses. And, uh, a number of days later, about a month later, Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem for the purification. It says in the scripture, in the authorized version, in any case, their purification. Now, Christ needed no purification. There was no defilement whatsoever upon that holy child. Mary, however, was purified. Indeed, in the Old Testament, it says the firstborn was to be dedicated to Jehovah, and that's what they did in Jerusalem. He was dedicated, presented to the Lord, and Mary, a sacrifice was given for Mary, two turtle doves or two young pigeons, according to Leviticus, uh, chapter twelve. There are other people there. One was an old man, name of Simeon. The scripture says he was inspired by the Lord. The Spirit of God came upon him, and he praised the Lord. And Anna, another elderly person, and she spoke of all that came in the temple about Christ. This is saying about the same thing. If you're filled with the Spirit, you speak about Christ. If you're speaking about Christ, glorifying him, then this is the work of the Spirit. Then something else happened at a great distance, and uh, some uh, astronomers, or if you prefer astrologers, they're called wise men in scripture, or magi. They live hundreds of miles away, ever so much further than from Nazareth to Bethlehem, three or 4 or 5 times as far. They came around in a great circle-shaped route from Babylon, from the east. They saw a star. God gave them that revelation. And, uh, as long as they followed the star, they did. But when they got to the country, they assumed that the king were naturally born in the great city, so they went to Jerusalem, and they announced rather naively, they said, where is he that is born king of the Jews, for we've seen the star in the east and come to worship him. Well, Herod got a hold of this. Naturally, everybody reports to the king, and so he called the scribes and the Pharisees, and they gave a correct answer. These men were expert in the letter of the, of the scripture. They knew the answer right away, Bethlehem of Judea, because it's written, and thou, Bethlehem Judah, though thou be the least among the thousands of Israel, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, shall be ruler of my people, uh, Israel. So they got that, they got the right answer from the scribes, not from Herod. And they went to Bethlehem. The scripture led them, and then they saw the star again. They came to the place, to a house by now. You know that Christ was laid in a manger when he was first born, but later he was in a house. By the time the magi got there, he was in the house, and the scripture says that they fell down and worshipped, uh, him. Five hundred ninety million people in the world evidently think that they should have worshipped her. They put more importance in their everyday worship and religion on the mother of Jesus than on the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The scripture very plainly says, Catholic Bible and every other Bible, they worshipped him, not them, not her, there's quite a difference. They worshipped, uh, him. The shepherds didn't, it's isn't so recorded, but the wise men from the east, the Gentiles came, and they worshipped him. Incidentally, they left gifts, three different kinds of gifts, and say one left frankincense, and one myrrh, and one gold. Uh, the general idea that the three wise men, three kings from the East, we three kings from the Orient are, et cetera, is entirely mythical. We don't know how many there were. I could say there were thirty and I have as much scripture as anyone saying there were three. Uh, they brought three, there were at least two, there was called a plural, probably at least three. They brought these gifts, but notice that they brought these things to the Lord Jesus Christ, and about that time the Lord laid it upon the heart of Joseph to get out to escape wicked Herod, King Herod. And this was, these gifts were probably valuable on the journey. Maybe the Lord provided in that way. That's, that's his way of doing things. So they went down to Egypt, and, uh, the wise men were led this time by a dream, and they went back another way because Herod would have been after them. When Herod found out he'd been tricked by them, he decided to destroy all the children, that cruel, bloodthirsty, irresponsible person. Kill all the children, two years and under in Bethlehem. So there was weeping, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah. Now the prophecy of, uh, Hosea is fulfilled here. Out of Egypt have I called my son. The prophecy of Jeremiah, there'd be great weeping and lamentation, and the women wouldn't be comforted because their children had been destroyed. And yet another verse is found here in Matthew chapter two, as if it were a prophecy. It says it was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. So they went to live in Nazareth. Now Luke skips over all this. Luke goes right from Jerusalem to Nazareth, to their own city. That's where Joseph, uh, uh, came from. Well, Joseph stayed with a little family in Egypt until another angel came in a dream and said, you can go back now because they that sought the young child's life are dead. Notice how God is on the throne. People oppose him, he lets them do it. He wants his own to escape sometimes, sometimes to stand up and be counted. But in the end, they die, and his purposes go right out. So Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, came back again to the land. Even so, Joseph wouldn't go to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. They went back to Nazareth. To fulfill the words spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. Now, uh, we have the beginning here of the scriptural record about our Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest personality that ever lived. Isn't that a wonderful way that God chose to bring his son into this world? He wasn't born in the sense that he came into existence at that. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And all four gospels emphasize the supremacy, the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were confronted with a personal problem. We wanted to think of some gospel, or which of the four gospels would, which would be best to present to Muslims, you see. Muslims hate the idea that Christ is the Son of God. Now you can hit them over the head first of all, obviously I want to tell you about Jesus the Son of God, but the man will probably close his ears, spit, and walk away or something. If you can get some way to tell him about Christ and lead him on to the truth of his deity, then you might catch his ear for a little while. We wonder which of the four gospels don't start off with the deity of Christ. In Matthew's go- gospel, it says that, uh, his name shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. Mark starts right off, the beginning of the gospel, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And, uh, John, of course, in the beginning was the Word, the Word is with God, and the Word was God, and the Word dwelt among us and became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory. John chapter one. everyone in the first gospel. And we thought of Luke, we turned to Luke, and Luke also describes him as to his deeds in the very first gospel. Well, praise the Lord. We couldn't get a very suitable gospel for the Moslem, but we do have the emphasis on the deity of Christ. And the big question for you this morning is, what think you of Christ? Christmas time, a time to give presents, to make merry with your family. We can't ask you to, uh, make it a sacred day. There's no scripture for that. But listen, the greatest thing ever happened in the history of mankind, when the Son of God came here, what did they do to him? A bigger question, what will you do? If a man came from Mars, a little green figure with horns or something, say, he knocked on your door and he said, take me to your leader, what would you do? Sensible, sober, scientific men are listening constantly, trying to decipher something from the great mass of radio communication that comes from outer space, and mostly incoherent. They wish they could get some kind of an intelligent message. Oh, it'd be wonderful if we could learn from other, uh, civilizations how to conduct affairs of our own planet. Listen, they listen to anybody except the Son of God. How do you explain that? An enemy has done it, that's how. We present to you this morning God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the question is this: what think you of Christ? Whose son is he? What will you do with Jesus?