WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.759 him as her own son. So then Moses escapes the Egyptian king's infanticide by leaving his fellow 00:00:08.759 --> 00:00:16.899 Jews and living among the Egyptians. And similarly here, Jesus escapes King Herod's infanticide by 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:23.420 leaving his fellow Jews and he spends his infancy in Egypt. Matthew is drawing these parallels so 00:00:23.420 --> 00:00:27.760 we can see what Jesus was meant to be, who he was meant to be, what he was meant to do. 00:00:27.760 --> 00:00:35.039 After Moses grows up and becomes a man, he incurs Pharaoh's displeasure and the king tries to kill 00:00:35.039 --> 00:00:42.179 him again. And so Moses this time flees to Midian and then in Exodus 4, 19, the Lord God appears to 00:00:42.179 --> 00:00:48.700 Moses and tells him this, go back to Egypt for all the men who are seeking your life are dead. 00:00:50.060 --> 00:00:54.620 And Matthew makes an intentional connection to that verse as well in verse 20. If you look with me, 00:00:54.619 --> 00:01:00.119 Matthew chapter 2 verse 20, when the angel of the Lord appears in a dream to Joseph after Herod's 00:01:00.119 --> 00:01:04.840 death, he says something very similar, rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:12.859 for those who sought the child's life are dead. Just as Moses returned to God's people in order to lead 00:01:12.859 --> 00:01:19.519 them out of their captivity in Egypt, now Jesus returns to God's people in order to lead them out 00:01:19.519 --> 00:01:28.359 of their captivity and slavery to sin. When Moses was leading God's people out of slavery in Egypt, 00:01:28.840 --> 00:01:36.419 it was the final plague that finally made Pharaoh give up and to surrender. And the final plague 00:01:36.419 --> 00:01:43.659 involved every firstborn son and every firstborn male animal being struck dead by the angel of death. 00:01:43.659 --> 00:01:50.739 This was a fitting punishment for the Egyptians because in Exodus 4, 22, God calls Israel, his nation, 00:01:51.239 --> 00:01:58.859 my firstborn son. So when Pharaoh refuses to let God's people, his firstborn son go, 00:01:59.599 --> 00:02:06.099 it is their firstborn son who are struck. And the firstborn males, however, among the Israelites 00:02:06.099 --> 00:02:13.560 were spared because God's people had followed his instructions to kill an unblemished lamb and then 00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:20.120 to daub its blood on the doors so that when the angel of death was going by the town, the people 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:26.259 with the blood of the lamb on the door would be spared. So the lamb died as the substitute. 00:02:27.219 --> 00:02:33.120 The blood of the lamb covered the people of God and that is how they were able to survive the plague. 00:02:34.219 --> 00:02:40.879 And because of that event to commemorate it in Exodus 13, God ordained, he ordered that every firstborn 00:02:40.879 --> 00:02:47.740 male animal be sacrificed and also that every firstborn son be redeemed by paying a certain 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:54.780 price of redemption price. And this sacrifice of the Passover lamb and these ransom prices that 00:02:54.780 --> 00:03:00.960 they paid each for each male firstborn male, they foreshadowed the coming of Jesus because according 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:07.859 to John one 29, Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And first Corinthians 00:03:07.860 --> 00:03:16.120 5, 7 says, Christ is our Passover lamb who has been sacrificed. So Jesus is the lamb that the original 00:03:16.120 --> 00:03:22.940 Passover lamb was meant to point to. Jesus is the one whose death and whose shed blood now covers our 00:03:22.940 --> 00:03:29.720 sin and protects us and gives us eternal life. And that's why Jesus describes his mission this way in 00:03:29.719 --> 00:03:40.340 Mark 10 45 that he has come to give his life as a ransom for many. So Jesus is the price to redeem the 00:03:40.340 --> 00:03:50.800 slaves from their slavery for our freedom. Every human being is born into slavery to sin. Every single one of 00:03:50.800 --> 00:04:02.500 us once served a cruel master. Sin promises joy and fulfillment without God. Sin makes us its obedient 00:04:02.500 --> 00:04:10.180 slaves and therefore disobedient rebels to God. Sin lies to us that it can provide us with full and happy 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:18.680 life that we dream of when in reality it kills us. When only Jesus can offer us abundant life and pleasures 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:28.340 forevermore as Psalm 1611 says, but on our own, we could never escape sin's grasp. Sin enslaves people 00:04:28.340 --> 00:04:37.240 and the law of sin and death, the rule of sin applies to every country, every land and every city on earth. 00:04:40.660 --> 00:04:45.819 If you're a slave, you can, you can try to run for your freedom, but then you'd have to get to a place 00:04:45.819 --> 00:04:50.459 where there are no slaves where there are no slaves where you won't be considered a slave. Because if 00:04:50.459 --> 00:04:56.180 you're found in a place where the law is in place and you're still a slave, you'll be reduced back into 00:04:56.180 --> 00:05:03.159 your slavery no matter where you go. For us, there is no escape from sin's grasp. Everyone is a slave to 00:05:03.159 --> 00:05:10.180 sin. Everywhere you turn, every place on earth, the law of sin and death applies. 00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:18.439 So sin brings people crashing back to the reality of their enslavement. And we have no choice in the 00:05:18.439 --> 00:05:25.180 matter. That's what it means to be a slave. People can't help but sin. They can't help but live for 00:05:25.180 --> 00:05:35.019 themselves. They have no choice. They can't help but defy God. They're sinners. But thanks be to God, 00:05:35.019 --> 00:05:40.979 says Romans 6, 17, that you, it's speaking of Christians here, you who were once slaves of sin 00:05:40.979 --> 00:05:45.139 have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed 00:05:45.139 --> 00:05:52.620 and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness. And it says in Romans 8, 2, 00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:58.000 that for this law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:07.980 and death. Jesus is the new Moses that releases us from our slavery to sin. The cross of Christ is 00:06:07.980 --> 00:06:14.540 our emancipation proclamation because Jesus died for our sins in our place. And because he was raised 00:06:14.540 --> 00:06:20.079 from the dead, the law of sin and death no longer applies to those who have pledged allegiance to this 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:29.659 new king Jesus. So we serve a new master, a new Lord, a merciful King under the new law of the spirit 00:06:29.659 --> 00:06:38.539 of life. So Jesus is the new Moses, but he's also the new Israel. He's the deliverer of Israel, but he 00:06:38.539 --> 00:06:45.079 also represents the delivered Israel itself, the people of God. In verse 15, Matthew said that Jesus' 00:06:45.299 --> 00:06:49.959 sojourn in Egypt occurred to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt, 00:06:50.079 --> 00:06:56.899 I called my son. Matthew is there citing from Hosea 11, 1, where God recalls the time he 00:06:56.899 --> 00:07:04.199 led Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus. He calls him his son there. And that verse prophetically 00:07:04.199 --> 00:07:11.639 anticipated that Jesus, the divine son of God in human flesh would also be called out of Egypt. 00:07:11.979 --> 00:07:17.360 So Jesus was in Egypt for a time, but he was called out of Egypt. But there's more than that. As I mentioned 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:24.120 earlier, God refers to Israel as his firstborn son. And so Jesus is not only the new Moses who delivers 00:07:24.120 --> 00:07:30.319 them out of their slavery. He's the new Israel that represents them and he delivers them by doing in 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:37.399 their place what they could not do for themselves. I'll explain this further. Look at verses 16 to 18 00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:43.019 with me. It says, then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious and 00:07:43.019 --> 00:07:48.579 he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem. And in all that region who are two years old or under, 00:07:48.579 --> 00:07:53.659 according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by 00:07:53.659 --> 00:08:00.159 the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for 00:08:00.159 --> 00:08:06.979 her children. She refused to be comforted because they are no more. Herod had instructed, if you're 00:08:06.979 --> 00:08:12.479 with us earlier in the Advent series, Herod had instructed the wise men to inform him when they find 00:08:12.479 --> 00:08:18.039 the baby king that was born, the king of the Jews, so that he too might go and pay homage to him. 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:23.680 But in reality, he was plotting murder to try to kill Jesus so that he wouldn't have a threat to 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:29.340 his own throne. So Herod tried to trick the wise men, but ironically, Herod is the one that's tricked 00:08:29.340 --> 00:08:34.920 by the wise men here because with God's guidance, the wise men do not go back to Herod, but go by 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:42.220 another way to their own home. And so Herod is infuriated and he orders the massacre of the 00:08:42.220 --> 00:08:49.399 innocents. Earlier in verse seven, Herod had secretly asked the wise men exactly when the star 00:08:49.399 --> 00:08:54.820 announcing the birth of the king of the Jews had appeared. So that question was asked because he was 00:08:54.820 --> 00:08:59.940 trying to figure out how old the baby is. Because if he knows how old approximately the baby is, then he 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:07.899 could try to kill all babies around that age, male child, children that age to reduce risk. So Herod 00:09:07.899 --> 00:09:12.959 deduces that as long as he kills all the males in and around Bethlehem under the age of two, 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:19.899 then he'd be safe. He'd be killing off the full range. And Nazareth at the beginning of the first 00:09:19.899 --> 00:09:25.199 century was estimated to have around 500 residents. No one knows for sure, but that's an estimate. 00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:32.379 And so that means, you know, it probably included at least scores of infants and toddlers that were 00:09:32.379 --> 00:09:39.059 killed. That seems extraordinarily cruel, but for Herod, this was the norm and not the exception. 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:46.939 First century Roman Jewish historian, uh, Josephus records that I think that's a toy. Uh, 00:09:46.939 --> 00:09:52.460 Josephus records that Herod, uh, ruthlessly eliminated all members of the Hasmonean Royal family, 00:09:52.460 --> 00:09:58.080 which were, which was a rival family. He also killed in cold blood, his brother-in-law, 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:06.060 his mother-in-law and his favorite wife, Miriam. And his, and that's not enough. He also kills his 00:10:06.060 --> 00:10:12.700 three eldest sons on suspicion that they were plotting a takeover. So if Herod is kind of a 00:10:12.700 --> 00:10:20.100 man that can kill members of his own household off on suspicions alone, then he wouldn't have batted 00:10:20.100 --> 00:10:28.759 an eye in killing off children in a small village to whom he had no relation. If that meant killing 00:10:28.759 --> 00:10:35.620 a potential rival claimant to his throne. And so the quote in verse 18 is from Jeremiah 31 15, 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:42.740 and it speaks of Rachel, the wife of Jacob weeping and mourning her, the loss of her sons. Her sons 00:10:42.740 --> 00:10:47.320 made up the 12 tribes of Israel. So she's weeping for her children's figurative because Rachel was long 00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:53.620 gone by this time. And in the context of Jeremiah, the weeping is in reference to Israel's Babylonian 00:10:53.620 --> 00:11:01.080 exile when Israel was defeated and we're being sent, being shipped to Babylon as exiles. And so Rachel's 00:11:01.080 --> 00:11:06.060 weeping here because they are no more. They are in exile. They've been defeated. But interestingly, 00:11:06.060 --> 00:11:13.600 in that same passage in Jeremiah 31 verses 16 to 17, the Lord God himself tells Rachel to stop weeping 00:11:13.600 --> 00:11:19.779 because he will bring back her children from exile and restore them to their own country. 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:27.279 And then in verses 31 to 34, he promises to make a new covenant with them in the place of the old covenant 00:11:27.279 --> 00:11:33.659 that Israel had broken. This time God will write his law on his people's hearts so that he might be their 00:11:33.659 --> 00:11:38.759 God and they shall be his people so that they might truly know the Lord and he will forgive their iniquity 00:11:38.759 --> 00:11:47.179 and remember their sin no more. So that's the promise that Jeremiah is prophesied of. And that's 00:11:47.179 --> 00:11:52.559 the prophecy that now Matthew is referring back to when he quotes that verse about Rachel's weeping. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.980 Even though right now, Herod's murder of all the male children under two in Bethlehem was a cause for 00:11:59.980 --> 00:12:08.419 weeping. The fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 awaits the promise that the exiles will return. The promise that 00:12:08.419 --> 00:12:13.699 God will make a new covenant with his people and that he will forgive their iniquity and remember 00:12:13.699 --> 00:12:18.699 their sin no more because the sin, their sin and their iniquity was the reason for their defeat and 00:12:18.699 --> 00:12:25.019 the reason for their exile. So God provides the solution for their sins in Jesus. 00:12:27.399 --> 00:12:36.219 Apart from Jesus, we are perpetual exiles without a home. God is holy and just. He cannot condone sin. 00:12:36.220 --> 00:12:47.860 Habakkuk 1.13 says that God is a purer eyes than to see evil. He can't stand evil. He can't stand sin. 00:12:49.139 --> 00:12:56.879 So sinners must be punished. And as sinners, every single one of us is a sinner. We deserve to be 00:12:56.879 --> 00:13:05.480 separated from God forever. That's exile. To be separated from him. But God, by sending his son, 00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:12.820 Jesus, he made a way for us to be reconciled to him, restored to him again, because Jesus paid the 00:13:12.820 --> 00:13:20.759 price, the penalty for our sins, our wicked sins, our prideful sins, our selfish sins, the sins we 00:13:20.759 --> 00:13:27.759 committed out in the open, the sins we committed in secret, all are forgiven and no longer counted 00:13:27.759 --> 00:13:32.559 against those who have put their faith in Jesus alone for salvation. 00:13:35.159 --> 00:13:40.700 And when we put our faith in Jesus, we are born again by the spirit of God and have the law of God 00:13:40.700 --> 00:13:46.840 written on our hearts. That's how Jesus, as the son of God, saves us from our slavery and exile. 00:13:46.840 --> 00:13:54.060 And so finally, we see in verses 19 to 23, in addition to being the new Moses and the new Israel, 00:13:54.720 --> 00:14:00.660 that Jesus is the new David who inaugurates the kingdom of God. Please follow along with me as I 00:14:00.660 --> 00:14:06.460 read verses 19 to 23. It says, but when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to 00:14:06.460 --> 00:14:12.200 Joseph in Egypt saying, rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. For those who 00:14:12.200 --> 00:14:17.860 sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land 00:14:17.860 --> 00:14:22.920 of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of the father, Herod, 00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:28.800 he was afraid to go there. And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee and he 00:14:28.800 --> 00:14:33.920 went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, 00:14:33.920 --> 00:14:41.620 that he would be called a Nazarene. This is an interesting fulfillment. Jesus has survived and Herod, 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:46.639 who sought to kill him, has not. And so Joseph is instructed by God in a dream to return to the 00:14:46.639 --> 00:14:53.000 land of Israel. But after their return, they learned that Herod's son, Archelaus, was reigning over 00:14:53.000 --> 00:15:01.360 Judea, which their own original home was part of. After Herod's death, his kingdom was divided among 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:07.700 three of his sons. Judea and Samaria, which includes Jerusalem and Bethlehem, was under Archelaus. 00:15:07.700 --> 00:15:14.900 And Galilee, which includes Nazareth, was under the control of Herod Antipas. First century Jewish 00:15:14.900 --> 00:15:20.879 Roman historian Josephus that I quoted earlier notes that Archelaus began his reign over his 00:15:20.879 --> 00:15:29.100 kingdom by massacring 3,000 Passover celebrants. Okay, 3,000 Jews celebrating the Passover. So he 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:34.960 appears to have taken after his father. And in 6 AD, a delegation was sent to Rome from Judea and 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:40.600 Samaria to denounce Archelaus for his cruelty and tyranny. And eventually, even Rome couldn't stand 00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:47.240 him and they deposed him. And so Archelaus had a terrible reputation. So when Joseph learns that 00:15:47.240 --> 00:15:52.700 Archelaus is reigning in his area, he doesn't want anything to be, anything to do with him. And so he is, 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:57.780 after being confirmed by the dream that God sent him, warning him about him, he withdraws to the 00:15:57.779 --> 00:16:04.639 district of Galilee to live in a city called Nazareth. And in doing that, it fulfilled another prophecy. 00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:09.639 It says, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he will be called a 00:16:09.639 --> 00:16:18.740 Nazarene. Jesus, as the messianic king in the line of King David, was born in Bethlehem, as was prophesied 00:16:18.740 --> 00:16:27.240 in Micah 5, 2. But he will grow up in Nazareth. He will be called a Nazarene. But this fulfillment is a 00:16:27.240 --> 00:16:32.180 little bit different from other fulfillments of prophecy that we've seen so far in Matthew, 00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:39.120 because there's no quotation here, no citation of actual scripture. Instead of saying, referring to 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:46.580 a single prophet, here he refers to what was spoken by the prophets in the plural to indicate that more 00:16:46.580 --> 00:16:54.399 than one prophet has spoken of Jesus being a Nazarene. But that's curious because the city of Nazareth 00:16:54.399 --> 00:17:02.419 is not mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament. Most likely what Matthew is referring to is the 00:17:02.419 --> 00:17:11.319 prophecy that Messiah would be known as the branch of David. The name Nazareth comes from the Hebrew word 00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:19.879 netzer, which means the branch. It means, or it could be translated an offshoot, a sprout, or a root. 00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:27.500 And so Isaiah 11, 1 to 2 uses that word, that exact word to prophesy of the coming Messiah. It says, 00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:34.480 there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, 00:17:34.560 --> 00:17:39.940 and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And then there are many other scriptures that speak 00:17:39.940 --> 00:17:45.160 of Jesus being the branch, even though he might use synonyms for the word, not exactly the same word. 00:17:45.160 --> 00:17:52.340 So Isaiah 53, 2 prophesies that the Messiah will grow up like a young plant, like a root out of dry 00:17:52.340 --> 00:17:56.940 ground. He would appear out of nowhere, which is fitting because Nazareth is a town in the middle of 00:17:56.940 --> 00:18:03.740 nowhere. And this is particularly appropriate since Nazareth was a, like, of Nazareth, Nathaniel says in 00:18:03.740 --> 00:18:09.320 John 1, 46, can anything good come out of Nazareth? No one expected the Messiah to grow up in Nazareth. 00:18:09.319 --> 00:18:16.439 He was like a root coming out of dry ground. Jeremiah 23, 5 says, behold, the days are coming, 00:18:16.859 --> 00:18:22.720 declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and 00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:28.279 deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. Zechariah 6, 12, 00:18:28.379 --> 00:18:35.659 thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, the man whose name is the branch, he shall be called Nazarene, 00:18:35.660 --> 00:18:40.120 right? For he shall branch out from his place and he shall build a temple of the Lord. 00:18:41.259 --> 00:18:47.500 And even in the New Testament, after he's fulfilled these prophecies, Jesus says of himself in Revelation 00:18:47.500 --> 00:18:59.240 22, verse 16, I am the root and the descendant of David. Jesus is the prophesied messianic king 00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:06.880 descended from David. And the good news of Christmas is that the new David ushers in the kingdom of God. 00:19:07.059 --> 00:19:17.019 And he lets us, those who follow Jesus, be a part of it. My family, we didn't get a usual Christmas tree 00:19:17.019 --> 00:19:24.960 this year. We actually bought a live fir tree this year. And it's a small tree right now because 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:31.279 small trees are cheaper. And every year we expect to grow six inches or so, and it'll grow up with the 00:19:31.279 --> 00:19:36.880 kids. And hopefully by the time they're adults, it'll be too big for our house and we'll have to 00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:44.700 plant it in somebody's yard, whoever has a yard in our church. And I mentioned that because as I was 00:19:44.700 --> 00:19:52.640 shopping for it on this website, they sold some fir trees that are specially grafted on firma, they called 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:59.700 it. And those were more expensive. I looked in to see why. And these were fir trees that were grafted 00:19:59.700 --> 00:20:08.520 onto the rootstock of the plant, A.B.S. firma, which is a particularly hardy fir tree, resistant to 00:20:08.520 --> 00:20:15.700 disease and tolerant of warm and humid conditions. And so fir trees that are grafted onto the rootstock of 00:20:15.700 --> 00:20:24.720 this firma, A.B.S. firma, are more likely to survive, less likely to be ravaged by disease, 00:20:25.080 --> 00:20:27.920 and more resilient against heat. 00:20:30.559 --> 00:20:38.360 As sinners, by our very nature, we are prone to sin. We are like this disease-prone branches 00:20:38.359 --> 00:20:44.899 of a tree that are susceptible to pests and vulnerable to heat. We cannot survive on our own. 00:20:46.679 --> 00:20:56.019 We are destined for the furnace. But God has sent Jesus the branch, the root of David. And Paul 00:20:56.019 --> 00:21:02.819 writes in Romans 11 that those who put their faith in Jesus are grafted in to share in the nourishing 00:21:02.819 --> 00:21:09.259 of the root of this olive tree that is Jesus. It is only by being united with Jesus, by being grafted 00:21:09.259 --> 00:21:14.980 onto him, that we can be nourished by the Spirit of God and we can bear the fruit that is in keeping 00:21:14.980 --> 00:21:25.899 with salvation, with repentance and faith in Jesus. We can't make it on our own. We can't save ourselves. 00:21:25.900 --> 00:21:36.259 And you cannot be grafted onto Jesus while being rooted in your sinful ways. You cannot be grafted 00:21:36.259 --> 00:21:44.019 onto Jesus while following other gods. Jesus said in John 14 verse 6, I am the way and the truth 00:21:44.019 --> 00:21:52.200 and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me. No other religious teacher can lead us 00:21:52.200 --> 00:21:59.340 there and there is no other Messiah. But the good news that I get to declare to you this evening for 00:21:59.340 --> 00:22:09.860 Christmas is that Jesus has come. The branch of David has come. And if you repent of your sins 00:22:09.860 --> 00:22:17.400 and if you put your faith in him, you can be united with him. You can become part of the people of God, 00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:25.560 the branch, the vine, the olive tree of God, and flourish with him for all eternity. 00:22:26.800 --> 00:22:33.040 That's my prayer for you. And I hope that if you don't know Jesus, that you'll talk to some of us, 00:22:33.100 --> 00:22:39.560 talk to me, that you'll give your life to him. He's the king we worship. He's our savior. 00:22:39.559 --> 00:22:45.279 He's worthy of our lives. Let me pray for us now. 00:22:49.759 --> 00:22:57.679 God, we thank you that when we had no way, you made a way for us by sending Jesus. 00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:13.640 Lord, we are like that diseased branch attacked by pests, sick and withering. 00:23:16.519 --> 00:23:19.000 There's no hope for us sinners without you. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:33.180 We thank you for sending Jesus, son of God, as a baby 2,000 years ago. 00:23:35.420 --> 00:23:43.900 We pray that you would fill us with renewed wonder at the work you have done in Christ Jesus 00:23:43.900 --> 00:23:51.019 and through Christ Jesus that we might abound with joy and thanksgiving. 00:23:54.380 --> 00:23:58.800 Through all the busyness and distractions of the holiday season, 00:23:59.860 --> 00:24:06.720 we pray this evening that you would quiet our hearts to remember the reason for it all. 00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:15.420 It's in his precious name we pray. Amen.