The Mysteries of Christ’s Birth (Selected Scriptures)

• Today on grace to you. >> Whether Jesus is a precious stone or a stumbling stone depends completely on how you respond to him. If you believe in him, he is a precious stone. If you reject him, he is a crushing stone. What in the world makes us so embarrassed about the gospel? I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
• If you would open your Bible to the Gospel of Matthew and the 11th chapter, Matthew 11:es 1-6. When Jesus had finished giving instructions to his 12 disciples, he departed from there to teach and preach in their cities. Now when John, that’s John the Baptist, while imprisoned heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the expected one or shall we look for someone else?” How could he possibly even ask that question? Well, he did.
• He wasn’t sure. He was confused about the very one whom he had introduced as the lamb of God. The very one about whom he said, “He must increase and I must decrease.” The Old Testament is a mosaic of prophecies about the Messiah. And they are diverse and they are enigmatic. They are paradoxical. They sometimes appear contradictory.
• So much so that even John the Baptist, the greatest again who ever lived, therefore the greatest prophet, struggled to understand whether Christ was in fact the Messiah. On the one hand, they allow us to wonder like John did just exactly is Jesus the Messiah? But on the other hand, they give us absolute unequivocal proof that he is that he is.
• Now, let’s pick up the story with John the Baptist in Luke 3. In Luke 3 and see what was going on with John’s confusion. Luke 3 begins in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ireia and Trackchonitis and Lasanius was tetrarch of Abalene in the high priesthood of Annis and Caiaphas. The word of God came to John.
• That’s very important because what John says was direct revelation from God. The word of God came to John the son of Zachcharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.