In this sermon, Steve Hopkins discusses the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ and its connection to the holiday of Christmas. He emphasizes the importance of using the Christmas season as an opportunity to share the good news of Christ with others, despite the ongoing attempts to bury the message. Hopkins highlights the threat that Jesus' birth poses to the enemies of God and explains the titles and names of Christ from Scripture that reveal his true identity and purpose. He urges believers to take advantage of the holiday to proclaim the gospel and educate others about the person and work of Jesus.

Good afternoon again. If you would, stand with me for the reading of the Word of the Lord and turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Matthew, the second chapter, where we'll be reading verses one through three. Before we read, you may be thinking, well, why in the world two weeks before, two Sundays before Christmas is Mr. Hopkins talking about the birth of Christ. It's because this message is really a message encouraging evangelism to use this time of year when so many have their thoughts upon a holiday that has the name of Christ stamped on it, to use that opportunity to share the good news of Christ and who he is.

And so with that, let's read together Matthew chapter 2 verses 1 through 3. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in 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. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him." Let's pray. Father, we come before you once again humbling ourselves, thanking you God for who you are God and for all that you've done for us Lord, especially in the giving of your Son to come to earth, to take flesh, to be born of a virgin, to live a perfect life, to go to a cruel Roman cross, to bear our sins, and to deal with the justice of God in our place, that we might be reconciled to you God.

We praise and thank you for this Lord. We ask Lord that you would give the Spirit once again to them that ask in accord with Your holy Word to work in the hearts and the lives of Your people and in the hearts and the lives of those who do not yet know You. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Let's be seated.

So two weeks and a day from today, on December 25th, tens of millions of Christians around the world will join together as one in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. In its long war against God, the world has been trying, unsuccessfully now, for 2,000 years, to make people forget that it ever happened, to make people forget that he ever came into the world, to make people to forget his name, his person, and his work. Satan, the prince of this world, works overtime to bury the news of it. His minions all over the world are a lockstep in the pursuit of stifling it. Yet the glad tidings of great joy that the Son of God has come to earth that, as we read in our text this afternoon, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

That message continues to circle the globe year after year, and we should thank God for it. We should thank God for the season, and we should thank God for the opportunity afforded by the season to share Jesus with the dead and dying world. That Jesus was born in Bethlehem is a disturbing message to the enemies of God and the gospel. Herod, you'll remember, was so disturbed by the news of Jesus' birth and the possibility of a rival king that he would launch a murderous rampage against the city of Bethlehem and her children in an attempt to catch Jesus in the net and destroy him. But of course, he failed.

And every attempt of men to silence him and every attempt of men to kill him has failed. Until God's plan for the redemption of mankind ushered Jesus to a Roman cross to deal with divine justice in the place of sinners. Three days later Jesus would rise from the dead, his mission accomplished, but the long war against God goes on. The long war against God continues to go on. The world and its prince, the devil, want the good news of the coming of the Son of God into the world to be crushed.

They want everyone to forget who Jesus is. They want everyone to forget what Jesus has done. 1 Timothy chapter 1 in verse 15 tells us the purpose for which Christ came into the world. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy that Jesus Christ, the Christ came into the world to save sinners, to save sinners. And brothers and sisters, that is a message that a world at war with God does not want proclaimed.

And thus the long war against God involves a long war against the proclamation of the account of the coming of the Son of God into the world. The wicked hated the message then and the wicked hate that message now. Every year on December 25th we read of more attacks on Christians around the world and Christmas services around the world. Every year on December 25th, we read of new attacks on Christians in churches who are celebrating the birth of Christ. Inevitably, we'll wake up to similar news this year if history continues to repeat itself.

And the enemies of Christianity who understand the power of the day and the power of the message launch their attacks against Jesus Christ and his people. We read of these attacks on Christians in churches who are celebrating the birth of Christ and we understand that the wicked get it. Does everybody understand that? The wicked get it. Those who hate God, they get it.

They get it. The Muslims get it. The communists get it. Churches are meeting all around the world on the 25th of December and the communists get it and the wicked get it and the haters of God get it, and those who want to wipe the memory of Jesus Christ and what he has done from the face of the world, they get it. They understand this, and they want it stopped.

They want the message stopped. They don't want anyone to hear the beginning of the good news. The beginning of the good news is that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. And even though churches have seen murderous attacks on them year after year on the anniversary of the celebration of the birth of Christ, we still see them meeting. We still see them meeting.

Why do they keep meeting? Why do they keep coming together on this day in nations where Muslims are coming in and planting bombs and blowing up their wives and children? Why? Why? They know, as we know, the scripture says, the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, the Church of Corinth, in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 1, they know that if our earthly house is destroyed, If our earthly house of this tabernacle is demolished, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, a house that is eternal in the heavens.

That Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea is a threat to man's doctrine of man, to man's understanding of anthropology. That Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea as a threat to man's doctrine of man, that man is the measure of all things, not God. That's a threat. That Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, as our text says this afternoon, not only put King Herod on notice, but it put all earthly rulers on notice that there is a king who was born who is the king over all earthly kings and the Lord over all earthly lords. The message that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea continues to be as disturbing to wicked God-haters of today as it was to King Herod in the days of Jesus' infancy.

It isn't a message that they want to hear. It isn't a message that they want anyone to hear. Yet at the same time, It's the message that stirs the hopes of every true child of God. It's the message that lifts us out of ourselves in praise to God. It's the message that lifts the hearts of the faithful to thanksgiving and wonder and joyful praise to the glory of God for sending his only begotten Son into the world to save sinners like us.

Amen? Within 300 years of King Herod's failed attack on the Christ child, the message of the birth of the Savior of the world will prevail to such an extent in Rome, remember where these things are unfolding, to such an extent in Rome that pagan festival days will be overthrown and replaced with God-honoring Christian holy days. By the way, holy day simply means a day that is set apart. The word holy means to set something apart. Take it from here and set it over there.

Just means to set apart. And eventually the word holy day became the modern English word holiday. And so when the wicked, when the evil out there that hate God and don't want the message of Christ proclaimed, when they use the word happy holidays without knowing it, they're saying happy holy day set apart unto God. But instead of the veneration of pagan deities at Rome, the message of the entrance of the Son of God into the world would begin to be celebrated, and the proclamation of the person and the work of Jesus Christ will then triumphantly be victorious and triumph victoriously over Rome's pagan holidays set apart to their pagan gods. As the Gospel first preached in Jerusalem and Judea spreads just as Jesus said to the uttermost parts of the world.

I did a message recently on Augustine in Romans chapter 8. Augustine, you remember from that message, was a bishop of Hippo in Africa. Augustine, also known as Saint Augustine, was one of the heroes of the Reformers. He understood what we understand about the gospel of Jesus Christ, And he lived in the 300s and in the 400s, you know, 300 some odd years after the birth of Christ, born in the 300s. And Augustine would deliver a Christmas message each year at his church on December 25th.

And in Sermon 184 he wrote, the birthday of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, on which the truth sprang forth from the earth, and the procession of the day from day, day to day, extended even unto our time, began and has with the return of its anniversary, year after year, dawned upon us today as deserving a special celebration. Let us therefore be glad and rejoice, for the faith of Christians hold fast to the joy which the lowliness of such sublimity has offered us, a joy far removed from the wicked, since God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to the little ones." End quote. Augustine tells us that a day set apart to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ was handed down to those of his day year after year. And we have to remember that Augustine was as far in time removed from the birth of Christ as we are from the pilgrim voyage of the Mayflower. And so he understood the near history.

He knew what was going on, right? He wasn't making this stuff up, just like we don't make up what happened about the pilgrims coming here to the new world. He's as far removed from the birth of Christ as we are from the planting of the colony at Plymouth. So, we can assume he was acquainted with the recent history of the church under his day when he says, look, this was handed down to us year after year after year after year to this modern time in the 300s. And we still celebrate Christ's birth on this day.

For 16 or 1700 years now since Augustine, St. Augustine, wherever the message of the gospel has been received, we know that converts to Christ have continued to set apart a day each year to celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior. But the world, oh the world, oh the world, in its long war against God, continues, continues like Herod to send out its troops against Christ. And the world will continue in its futile attempts to extinguish every remembrance of Christ and his entrance into the world from the minds of men until the day of Jesus' return. You can count on that.

In our day and time, we've seen an ongoing attempt for many decades now to bury the message, to bury the message that Jesus was born at Bethlehem of Judea, and to disassociate December 25th from any connection to his name. But they're having a kind of a hard time with it because his name is still stamped on the holiday. Well you could put an X there, call it Xmas, and try to separate it out, but everywhere you go it's still Christmas. Holy days, that is days set apart to honor God and give thanks to Him and to celebrate Christ's birth and Christ's resurrection from the dead have been co-opted in our time. We talked about that in the message on Thanksgiving, right?

It's been co-opted. They just, they canceled Thanksgiving. They co-opted Christmas, all right? And the attention of the masses has been diverted in large part to things like turkeys and bunnies and Santas, right? It's been diverted.

I remember, this may be offensive to some, I hope it isn't, but it's history. I remember someone asked one of my grandchildren in a store one day what she was hoping Santa would bring her for Christmas, to which she responded, Santa Claus is bad. He tries to make children forget about Jesus out of the mouth of babes. I'm so grateful that though the CBS executives back in 1965 attempted to cancel the airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, The program made it onto the airwaves anyways and was viewed by 15 million households at that time and continued to be aired year after year for 35 years until CBS sold it to ABC, sold the rights to it. Children sat, and I was one of them, and watched as the cartoon character Linus quoted a lengthy passage from the Bible about the birth of Jesus, and then proclaimed, that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

And little kids all over America and the English-speaking world are sitting there going oh okay that's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown if he's still I said it must be true you know and look here's Charlie Brown walking he doesn't care what these all did the he doesn't care what the crowd thinks anymore. I love the little cartoon. He doesn't care. He's like, I'm not gonna let this commercial whatever destroy my Christmas. And he walks off, and he has bounce in his step.

He's joyful. He finally realizes this is what it's all about. It's about a baby who is the Son of God being born at Bethlehem of Judea, who came into the world to save sinners. The world, of course, has been pretty successful at bringing paganism back to the forefront with regards to December 25th, but the world hasn't been able to erase Jesus from the minds of the majority of people as December 25th approaches each year. The name of Christ is still stamped on Christmas.

They can't seem to get rid of that. Maybe one day they will. And it's still stamped on the minds of most people in nations where the gospel once flourished, as in our nation. The problem is that most people are not familiar with the person and the work of the Christ whose name is stamped on the day. That's the problem.

They don't really know much about him, and that's where we come in. It's our job to to tell them. It's our job to proclaim him both his person and his work. In our day and time, we've seen an ongoing attempt for many decades now to bury the message, as I said, that Jesus was born at Bethlehem of Judea and to disassociate December 25th from any connection to His name. And although the world has been able to completely pull it off, they have succeeded in bringing paganism back to the forefront of the day.

The problem is that the people of the world, they just don't know who this Jesus is. They don't know who this Christ is, whose name is stamped on the holiday. So brothers and sisters, we've been given a great gift. In our nation, there's still the day, And we can use the day to proclaim Christ to a world that knows very little about Him. And it's my contention that we should be taking every opportunity afforded us in this season each year to re-educate a post-Christian in what some believe to be a pre-Christian nation and world and proclaim the Christ of the Bible, whose name is still stamped on the holiday.

Our neighbors, our unbelieving relatives, our coworkers, unbelieving coworkers at work, they need to hear that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, and they need to hear that he came into the world to save sinners, And they need to be told what Jesus did to save us. They need to be told that he came from heaven to earth and took flesh, that he was born of a virgin named Mary, that he lived a perfect life that none of us could live, that he willingly went to a cruel Roman cross, where he willingly bore the sins of his people and endured the wrath of God that was due us and died in our place, and that he rose again from the dead on the third day. We need to be thanking God for the great gift of a holy day that has Jesus name still stamped on it and the opportunity it affords us to break the ice with unbelievers and strike up a conversation with them about our Savior and the Savior of the world. Communist and Muslim dominated nations don't have the day on their national calendars.

Communist controlled, Muslim controlled nations don't have the day on their national calendars. We still do. But we may not one day if we throw the opportunity away that God has given us. I thank God that the wicked have not successfully eradicated every connection with Christmas from the birth of Christ in the minds of our neighbors. And again, I think we should take every opportunity afforded us in the season each year to remind a dark world, a dark world, a very dark world in which we live, to remind our neighbors, our unbelieving relatives, and our coworkers out in the world that Jesus is the light of the world.

That he is the alone Savior of the world. And that apart from Him, as the nihilists all around us insist, life is meaningless. Nihilists are those, you know, who say there is no meaning to life. There's no purpose in life. We need to tell them even if someone once told us.

We need to tell them even if someone once told us. We need to tell them, even as someone once told us, that someone once tell you about Jesus, we need to tell them. We need to tell them that apart from life in Christ, yes, life is meaningless. The nihilists are correct that life is meaningless, but only that life is meaningless apart from Christ. We need to be telling them that apart from life in Christ there is only darkness and the misery of sin and a coming night of horror and judgment for sin that will never end for all those who are outside of Christ.

Praise God. Christ came into the world and praise God he came into the world to save sinners. One of the things that I think is helpful as I close here, when we set out to proclaim the biblical Jesus to a world that is not familiar with Him, is to share His titles and His names from Scripture. Because the titles of Christ say much about who he is and what he came to do. I was listening to a program by Dr.

Sproul, and he was talking about being in a lecture when he was in seminary, and he was talking about this man that came in. He didn't mention who he was. I really wanted to look up the message to see if it was online somewhere, but he said the guy came in and he stood there and all he did for 45 minutes was read the titles and names of Christ from Genesis to Revelation. And there are so many, I was just looking up many for the message today. And there are so many that it would take 45 minutes to read them all.

It's all about Jesus. This book, the Bible, is all about Christ. It's all pointing to Him. It's all about Him. But I want to encourage you to use the next two weeks to proclaim the Jesus of the Bible, the true Christ, the one and only mediator between God and man, and use some of these titles and names of Christ in Scripture that tell us so much about the person and work of that babe born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago in a stable.

And use this gift that God has given us, that His name is still stamped on the day. Use that as a way to engage people in conversation about Jesus Christ, the true Christ, who He is and what he has done. And use these titles and names of Scripture. Tell them that he is the Son of God, that he is the Son of the Living God, that he is the only begotten of the Father, full of truth and grace, That he is the Son of the Blessed, that he is God's dear Son, that he is the mighty God, that he is the everlasting God, that he is God blessed forever, that he is God manifest in the flesh, that he is Emmanuel, God with us, that he is the Son of the highest, that he is equal to God, that He is the great I Am, that He is Jehovah, God of hosts, that He is the Lord of glory, that He is the one who is without sin, that He is He who died for our sins, That He is the resurrection and the life. That He is the Almighty who is and who was and who is to come.

That He is one with the Father and one with the Holy Spirit. That He is the Alpha and the Omega, that He is the beginning and the end, that He is the first and the last, that He is the Fulfiller of the whole law of God, that He is the fulfillment of every Jewish festival, that He is our Passover sacrifice for us. He is our unleavened bread. He is the firstfruits from the dead. He is our Pentecost.

He is the builder of the new temple. He is the light of the world that will never go out. Tell Him that He is eternal life, that He is He that liveth, the Word, the Word made flesh, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, the Word that is God, the Word of life, the image of the invisible God, the expressed image of His person, the wisdom of God, the power of God, the Son of God, Son of David, Son of man. Tell them that He is He by whom all things were made and He by whom all things consist. And tell them this, tell them that 2,000 years ago Herod's troops brought weeping and Rama trying to destroy him, but they failed.

And tell them that the world's message and methods bring only the same, misery and suffering and eventually death eternal but that in him in Christ the Christ whose name is stamped on the day who was born in Bethlehem of Judea his life and peace and everlasting joy. And tell them that he is the only Savior of the world, but don't forget to tell them that he is your Savior personally as well. And that we are all sinners who have revolted against God and broken His commands and are thus worthy of eternal destruction and everlasting wrath. But that through Him, through faith in Him, all who repent of their sins and trust in His name shall be accepted of God and have life everlasting in the presence of God in His favor forever. And that this, through Him, this Christ, this babe that was born in Bethlehem.

This is Him. This is the babe that was born in Bethlehem of Judea. And He is the reason Christians all over the world celebrate His birth on December 25th. Amen. Let's pray.

Father, we are so blessed, God, to have this opportunity that so many other nations don't have. Lord, to have a day still on the calendar with Jesus' name stamped on it, with the name of Christ stamped on it, and an open door for the gospel and, Lord, the freedom to share it. Oh, God, how blessed we are. Help us, Lord, not to throw these things away. Oh, help us not to throw them away, but to use them for your glory and in the advancement of the kingdom of your son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for we ask it in his holy name amen you