In this sermon, the speaker begins by discussing the accuracy of weather predictions and how they can be unreliable. He then introduces the topic of studying trilogies in the life of Jesus, specifically focusing on trilogies related to places. The speaker mentions that our speech and accent can reveal our origins, just as Jesus spoke as a Nazarene. The sermon then transitions to discussing the Annunciation, where Gabriel appeared to Mary in Nazareth and announced that she would conceive and give birth to a son.

A beautiful day, as our brother Woodhouse prophesied. I was thinking of him this afternoon, went out walking for a little while, and I thought, now, if the rest of his prognostications this week turn out the way today did, well, we'll have to confer on him some kind of a meteorological medal, won't we? And if it doesn't turn out that way, we won't say a word about it. We begin tonight the studies which were suggested to you this morning for our evening messages, and that is some of the trilogies of the life of the Lord Jesus. These have to be chosen arbitrarily. I take responsibility for that because we have a good number of them which you can easily remember as they group themselves together in threes throughout our Lord's life and experience. So tonight I wish to read with you, first of all, in the Gospel by Luke, chapter 1. One of the interesting trilogies that we have concern places, others concern people, others concern miracles, and so on. And the places we have a number of these trilogies, I want to consider with you this evening, as much as we may cover, the three major areas or cities of the life of our Lord, Bethlehem, his birth, Nazareth, his boyhood days, his early manhood, his youth, and then finally Jerusalem, his resurrection, his death rather, and resurrection. Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem. Then we have others of three cities. As I've suggested, we have those three cities in Galilee, and there you have the three provinces as well. We have Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. And you have the cities of Bethsaida and Chorazin and Capernaum, likened as our Lord did them with the Old Testament cities of Tyre and Sidon and Sodom. These groups jump at us out from the scriptures as we read them, and so I do hope that they will be both interesting and profitable in these evening gatherings. Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, and reading from verse 26. And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin as opposed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came unto her and said, Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee, blest art thou among women. When she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God, and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God. Chapter 2, verse 1, And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Sarinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, into the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Now turn the page to chapter 4, if you will, please. Chapter 4, containing another of our trilogies which we hope to look at, The Three Temptations of the Wilderness. And verse 14 says, And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. And they went out of fame with him through all the region about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. Now, there is a tremendous amount of material in connection with this trilogy, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. Bethlehem is mentioned 38 times, I believe it is, in the Scriptures, 30 times in the Old Testament and 8 times in the New. Nazareth is mentioned only 29 times, and that is exclusively in the New Testament. And then Jerusalem 764 times in all of the Scriptures, 640 in the Old Testament, 624 in the Old Testament and 140 in the New. And I just remembered, somebody told me coming into the meeting this evening, I must respect the author of this statement, the source of it, I speak too fast. And my wife always adds, and don't mutter. So I get instructions from one quarter and I get them from the other and I put them all together and I should be able to do something along this line. So if I'm speaking too quickly, please stand up, hold up your hand and protest. And I shall endeavor to put on my verbal brakes. Bethlehem. Christmas is not even a month behind us, and I know you had a special speaker here at that time, and we were all considering afresh the story of Bethlehem. It begins with Nazareth, as we notice tonight, in what is called the Annunciation, and then moves to Bethlehem for the birth of our Lord. I don't know how you are, but when these special seasons come around, special seasons of the year, I always pause a little in my activities, and I start to think about the import of these special occasions. And I expect that all of us had heard some messages concerning the Christmas season and the birth of our Lord as we celebrate it around the world at this time. The mystery of it never fades. The marvel of it is never dimmed. The wonder of what happened at Bethlehem, and how it happened, and for what cause it happened. Bethlehem without which there could have been no Calvary. Bethlehem that defies an exhaustive scrutiny. Bethlehem that presents dilemmas to us, along with some of the other theological dilemmas of our Bibles, and yet has a sweetness and a richness and a comfort and a glow to it that is undimmed with the passing of the years. It was, as you know, the place where they buried Rachel. It was the home of Ruth and Boaz. It was the home of David the king. It was the subject of the prophecy of Micah, chapter 5, that we also recall at the Christmas season. Thou, Bethlehem, a frat, art not the least among the thousands of Judah, for out of thee shall come a ruler whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity. Bethlehem, hallowed in memory and defiant in logic, and yet so sweet to us. It all started, of course, a way back in the days of Micah. Actually, it goes back to the days of Isaiah some 700 years before, when you remember King Asa was asked to charge God with a sign, for he would send a message of comfort to him. Asa said, I will not tempt the Lord my God. Gone by the prophet, Isaiah said, wilt thou weary thy God also? Therefore, the Lord shall give thee a sign. Then he went on to say, the virgin shall conceive. There is a definite article in the Hebrew, and a definite article as well in the Greek. So there was a specific vessel chosen and known by God 700 years before it happened that the virgin should conceive and bear a son. The mystery of this lies, of course, in the biological dilemma. We know what happened as we're reading about it tonight. We know the words of Gabriel. We have heard them year by year, as the years come and the years go. We have wondered at them, we have pondered over them. Sometimes we have left them and gone into the rest of the activities of the subsequent months of the year. And then as December rolls around, we come back to it again. It has a fascination for us. At least, I think it does. I know it does for me. It begins with Gabriel being sent by God to the city of Nazareth in what is known as the Annunciation. The Annunciation of Gabriel has defied logic ever since it was made. We reason this way, we reason that way, we come to no final conclusion about it. There we are told that a virgin was to conceive and bear a son. The words are specific. They're not to be glossed over. They're not to be cast aside, simply because we can't fully understand them. You say, well, why can't we understand them? Well, the best minds, theological minds of the last thousand years, if not almost two, have battled with this subject. Because, you see, the virgin was chosen. The virgin was a specific vessel God had in mind 700 years before he came onto the pages of history. The words of Gabriel are very concise. They're very direct. They cannot be smoothed over. They cannot be glossed away. And so he came to Mary in Nazareth and he made the Annunciation. Thou art highly favored of God. Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son. There it is. And he goes on to say further, because she questioned, she queried him, she said, How can this be, for I know not a man? And Gabriel said to her, Well, the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. There's the solution, rather. Therefore, that which shall be born of thee holy, or that which shall be begotten of thee shall be called holy, the Son of God. John tells us, 114, you remember the word became flesh. Paul tells us in Galatians chapter 4 what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Not a mysterious word. In the likeness of sinful flesh. He was not sinful flesh, but he came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was born of woman, says Paul. Born under law. He who in the early pages of history in the book of the Genesis made the woman in the first place, came of woman. He was the Eternal. The one whose words we were considering a little this morning. How shall we understand this? Well, because of the biological difficulty, knowing that the words of Scripture are true, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Knowing that while Mary was of the house and lineage of David, she was of the royal line, and Joseph likewise was, we say, but was she anything but human? No. Was she out of this sphere an unnatural vessel? No. Well, what was going to happen? She was going to have a firstborn son. And who would the firstborn son be? He'd be called the Son of God. And then, as we noticed this morning, he was to be the great and violet I Am. Mary said, how can this possibly be? He was not to come of human generation, as John chapter 1 again tells us. He was not born of the will of the flesh. He was not born of blood's quarrel. He came by supernatural intervention by the parts of the Spirit of God, but through the vessels of the Virgin. Well, now, what are we going to do with this problem? Because Mary was human as we are. She was flesh and blood as we are. There's a verse in Hebrews chapter 2, which you will recall, that says, because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, speaking of our Lord, he also in like manner partook of the faith. What does that mean? Well, may I suggest to you what it does not mean. It does not mean that Mary was a surrogate mother. For she wasn't. She was a natural mother. She was a human mother. It was her firstborn son that she brought forth. Yes, but. I know. The but derives with capital letters, underlines, in red, fiery scripts. But how can this be? Well, I insist that she was not a surrogate mother, because you know what a surrogate mother is. A surrogate mother does not conceive. A surrogate mother has introduced into her womb a fertilized ovum. That did not Mary receive. For the words are clear. He was born of woman. He was her firstborn son. She conceived. Now, later on, as you recall, when Joseph discovered something of the mystery and was very much perturbed about it, he didn't know what to do. He was a righteous man, and he wanted to act in keeping with the law of God, but he was a chosen vessel as well. And he was a man who loved his betrothed virgin. But she is with child. So because of his righteousness, and because of his love, combining the two things, he could see the only solution was to just quietly dismiss her. He would not treat her as a fornicator. And while he's in this dilemma, and he's not the only person who's been in a dilemma, as you know, about this matter, since that time, while he was in this dilemma, he didn't understand what this was all about. The angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream. Now, you've noticed that when God would communicate with Mary, he sent a personal angel. When he wished to communicate with Joseph, on four occasions, he did it in a dream. And I think that's significant, isn't it? Whether it was in Nazareth, whether it was in Bethlehem, or whether it was in Egypt. When Joseph received divine instructions as to what he was to do concerning his betrothed virgin, or his child, that was born in Bethlehem, going down into Egypt, coming back up out of Egypt. And then when they came into the problem, Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great, was ruling in the stead of his father, who had slain all the babes from two years old and under in the area of Bethlehem. Then they departed, being warned by God in a dream, by another way, as the wise men did before them, into Galilee, for he was to be called a Nazarene. That's a marvelous thing. I hope we may have time to consider that in some detail. Now then, what is the problem? The problem is this. Our Lord was always and only and exclusively God, whether it was pre-incarnation or post-incarnation. He did not cease to be who he was, but by virtue of what he became. He became what he was not, but he shall always henceforth be what he became. He was the son of man. He was born of woman, as the Scripture says. But then you have this biological problem, and some have sought to dismiss it by saying that Mary was a surrogate mother. I cannot believe it. I cannot accept it. I do not believe the Scripture allows us to entertain the suggestion that Mary was a surrogate mother, because she conceived, and no surrogate mother conceived. He was to be her son. He was to partake of flesh and blood in like manner as the children did. And then, of course, you say, but he was without sin. Yes. Yes. Peter said he did no sin. John said in him was no sin. Paul said he knew no sin. Our Lord himself said to his adversaries, which of you convince me of sin? He was sinless in every aspect, in every word. He never said something he had to retract. He never took a step he had to retrace. He never cherished or entertained a thought that he had to repent of. He was so unlike us, wasn't he? But he was one with us. And of the multiple mysteries of the New Testament, there are only two that are called great mysteries. Just two. And they have a very close affinity, the one with the other. 1 Timothy 3 and 16, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in flesh. He became one with the children. He became one in like manner as the children. He was born of an earthly mother. But he was born without sin. There's the problem. And so, way back in the Council of Chalcedon, was it? I think of 420 BC, I think that's correct, anyway, I know it was before my time. The fathers of the church came to the conclusion, which never was to be revoked or denied, that he was holy God. And he was holy man. Now, that being accepted, and never had been revoked or refuted down through the ensuing centuries, we have a problem. How are we going to solve this problem? How did the word become flesh? How was he born sinless? And you know, of course, that some have sought to solve this problem by conceding the immaculate conception of Mary, which will not stand the test of Scripture. For neither before nor afterwards were she in herself immaculate. Neither were her subsequent children, sons and daughters, born of an immaculate conception. Nevertheless, this one was born sinless. So what we can say, we may say, whether we feel we have an answer to the problem or not, and I suggest to you there has to be an answer, what we may say, of course, that our Lord was immaculately conceived. But Mary was the one who conceived him. And therein lies the mystery, doesn't it? And yet we rejoice in the fact that Bethlehem still, not only 700 years before, but all these years and millennia afterwards, still is the rock upon which we base our faith in the sinless one. What the law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, God turning his only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin. I am daring enough to disagree with the change of that expression, because we have, in some of our versions, we have that instead of for or concerning or surrounding the problem of sin, some have added for a sin offering. Some of these changes sound very nice, but they spoil the parallelism of the Scriptures at times. So he came in the likeness of sinful flesh, and he came concerning sin, for he was to be the great sin bearer, as we know. He was born in Bethlehem of Judea. The mystery of it, the wonder of it, remains with us still, doesn't it? But I say to you, it is the dead rock upon which we place our faith in this sinless failure. In this Son of Man, and he could not have been, nor called himself so lovingly as he did, the Son of Man. If he were not, my brethren, of Mary, for he was born of woman, as the Scripture says, he could not have been the Son of Man. He would have been one who had been inserted into the human family from without, but he never could have been the Son of Man. And have you noticed that our Lord is the only one that ever referred to himself as the Son of Man? Nobody ever addressed him as such. Nobody ever spoke to him directly calling him the Son of Man. And yet, 25 times in the Gospel by Luke, he called himself the Son of Man. He delighted in it. It was one of the favorite titles that our Lord used about himself. The only one that ever came close to it was Stephen. Do you remember when he was being accused before the council and was being stoned to death subsequently? He looked up into heaven and he said, I see Jesus. I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. And when he said that, you will understand the reaction of the council, the Sanhedrin, because you see, our Lord standing before Caiaphas at an earlier time, when Caiaphas charged him and said, Art thou the Son of the Blessed? Art thou the Christ? He said, Thou sayest that I am. And there's the I am again. And I say unto you, henceforth you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. And they knew he was referring back to Daniel chapter 7. They knew he was placing himself in the category of the Messiah. I guess I'm doing all right. Nobody stood up and protested yet. But I forgot. You see, I get into overdrive every once in a while. Doesn't use up as much gas in overdrive. At any rate, when our Lord said that, that's when they condemned him to death, when he claimed to be the Son of Man, the Christ, the Son of the Blessed. But he had to be born of a virgin in order to take that title. And he took it frequently, as I've already suggested to you. So Bethlehem is hallowed ground. Bethlehem is the place upon which our faith takes its initial step in the spotlessness, in the immaculate conception and life of our glorious Lord, and in his ability as the Son of Man not only to make purgation for sin, but also to come again in the clouds of heaven. Bethlehem, what a hallowed place it was. What a mysterious place it is, isn't it, as well? Well, you see, I only have 12 minutes left and I haven't even got to Nazareth yet. So I leave you at Bethlehem and we step out into Nazareth. I know what you're going to say to me. You're going to say to me, Brother Dave, you never gave us the answer. You didn't want the answer right away, though, did you? I've been puzzling over it for years and spending hours at night thinking about it, and it may be that I have come to a conclusion in my mind, but I'm sure you would rather think of it for a while before I just throw it at you, wouldn't you? Yes, yes. I try to be very understanding of my audience, you understand, and not take away any of their rights. Now then, let's move from Bethlehem to Nazareth. And I need not say to you that this is another mystery. Why should God have chosen when he gave up his Son that he should be called a Nazarene, as he was frequently? Several times he is called the Nazarene. And later on in the Acts, as you know, it was called the sect of the Nazarene at a later date. And our Lord was raised, as Luke chapter 4 says, he was brought up at Nazareth. And you remember where Nazareth was. It was in Galilee. And you remember what Galilee was, the province of rusticity, of these rather rough-speaking and crude laborers of the land and fishermen of the sea. Galilee was despised, as you know, by the Jews who were in Judea. So he became a Nazarene. He passed his boyhood days in Nazareth. He went through the period of his youth in Nazareth. He reached out into manhood in the full blaze of his manhood in Nazareth. And there was a marvel, there was a wonder, that he should come to a virgin in Bethlehem is certainly a very loving consideration. That he should be called a Nazarene, that he should be brought up in Nazareth is a mystery to us. Nathaniel put it right, you recall, when Philip sought him out in John chapter 1 and said, We have found him of whom the Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth. Nathaniel said, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Not only was Galilee discredited as a province, but in a discredited province, Nazareth was a very much more discredited city, as it's called. It's called their own city at times. And he came back, as we read in Luke chapter 4, back from the wilderness and he came to the place where he was brought up. Now when you go through and look at the 29 times in the New Testament that Nazareth is mentioned, every time you see a stigma attached to it, there is something unwelcome about it. Nathaniel couldn't understand at all how the prophet of Moses and other prophets could possibly come out of Nazareth. Slum city? Yes. A town of disrepute? Yes. A town that was discredited in the minds of the elite and the literate and the faithful of the Pharisees. Nazareth. But our Lord delighted to call himself Jesus of Nazareth. I went through these 29 times that Nazareth is mentioned in the New Testament, and I was delighted with some of the things I found. I was delighted with those who called him Jesus of Nazareth. There's a demonic in the synagogue in Capernaum early in the time of his ministry. We know thee who thou art, Jesus of Nazareth. Art thou come to tremendous before the time? We know those who spoke about him as Jesus of Nazareth. Some in a calling sort of way, and others in a despising sort of way, denigrating the fact that he was known as the Nazarene. Various ones, and then we read about them using this expression, that he was Jesus of Nazareth. And when you follow through the whole story, it adds up, it keeps mounting and getting bigger and bigger and bigger, this fact that he was to be called Jesus of Nazareth. Even when he came in the triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, you remember the whole city was moved and said, Who is this? And they said, This is the prophet of Nazareth. This is Jesus of Nazareth. Remember, Bartholomew is called in Jericho before he got up to Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and it comes up again. When he's in the high priest's house, she said to Peter, You also are with Jesus of Nazareth. Another man says, Anybody can tell that by the way he talks. Yes, that's right. Still works with us now, doesn't it? Your accent betrays you, doesn't it? My father and mother came from London, England many long years ago. Oh, 80 plus years ago. And my father was quite sure that after being in Canada all these years, he had lost all his English accent. But he always said Canada and Africa and China and some other things that betrayed him immediately. My Scottish mother-in-law came from Sterling. She thought she had no accent whatsoever. But it was Sterling was over everything she said she could always tell. We have our Newfoundlanders up in Canada. You have your Georgia crackers, don't you? Down here. And you have your North Carolina Tar Heels too. Our accents, our intonations, my grandchildren make fun of me because I say it again. And I say, How? And I say, Well, how's that? My granddaughter says, Well, it's not again. It's again. You did it again. There you go. You said it again. And I said, Tell me. She's 17. Tell me, how do you pronounce P-A-I-N? Pain, of course. How do you pronounce G-A-I-N? She says, Gain, of course. Yes. How do you pronounce R-A-I-N? That's rain. Oh, and G-I-N is gain? Yes. Well, how about A-G-A-I-N? How do you pronounce that again? I give up. Well, now, when our Lord spoke, he spoke as a Nazarene. He spoke as someone from Galilee. When Peter spoke in the court of the high priest, they knew he was with Jesus of Nazareth. Thy speech betrayeth thee. It's all right. Nothing wrong with it, really, is it? And you might as well hang on to your accent, because you won't get rid of it anyway. You can hide it at times, but if it bursts out somewhere, and I have to say again, and I have to say about, and I have to say how, and they make fun of me for that, too. Well, be it so. Our Lord delighted to be called Jesus of Nazareth. He did. He liked to call himself Jesus of Nazareth. And you remember, of course, that when he was in the house, the palace of the high priest, that's exactly how he was accused. And you recall when he was condemned to death, and Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. What did he say? This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. And the chief priests and scribes were upset about that, and they went to Pilate and they said, don't say he is the King of the Jews. Never mind this is Jesus of Nazareth. You can leave that if you like, because that's the stigma he always carried. But don't say the King of the Jews. Put, he said, I am the King of the Jews. I hope to have more to say about that when we come to consider the pillagy of his judges at the close of his life. But even then, something I noticed with complete delight not too long ago. Peter talks about him as Jesus of Nazareth to the people in Acts chapter 2. He talks about him as Jesus of Nazareth through the power of Jesus of Nazareth. This man is made whole before you all. And also when he's speaking to the Sanhedrin. Peter speaks about Jesus of Nazareth frequently. But here is something that interested me. I noticed when Paul is recounting his conversion in Acts chapter 26, or is it chapter 22? No, 26 to Agrippa. Paul is speaking and defending himself before Agrippa, and he says he was on the road to Damascus to call the believers to prison and to death. And he had also given his vote to many of them when they were put to death, being exceedingly mad against them, he said. I pursued them even to strange cities. And as I was going to Damascus with letters from the high priest, suddenly there was a bright light shone around me, and I fell to the ground. And I heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Remember he says about the others, he saw the light, heard a voice, but they saw no man. But Saul saw Jesus. And he said as he looked up into the brilliance of that light that blinded him for the rest of his days personally and for a few days physically, as he looked up to the light he said, Who art thou, Lord? Who is this splendid one who appears amidst the stars of heaven outshining the sun? Who is this one who has gone past the principalities and powers, who has been greeted by God, who has been acclaimed by angels? Who is this one to whom the Lord says, I will sit in my right hand until I make mine enemy's life what's due? Who is this one that appears in the light above the noonday sun? Who is he? Who art thou, Lord? What did he say? I'm Jesus. What a marvel that is, isn't it? The humility of this glorious person who is supreme conqueror over life and death and the power of the enemy, who is sovereign Lord for all the ages to come, when all nations shall bow in his presence. Who is this one now? Jesus of Nazareth. His humility bows our hearts. If we had been at all introduced to a position of a little more elevation than that which God has given to us now, as the poet said, so truly, you dress the man up with a little bit of authority and he plays such mad pranks before high heaven as would make the angels weep. Isn't that true? How unlike our Lord we are. How lifted up we are by a little bit of something or someone or some cause. Here he is in the glory, having been acclaimed sovereign of all for all the ages to come. Prince of Elders and Powers and Nations, an angel shall worship at his feet. Who is he? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus of Nazareth. Praise God, our Lord is the ever changeless I Am. And as he was, he is. And as we read of him here, so we shall see him there. His humility has not left him. His manhood he retained. His dignity is unlimited. His sovereignty is universal. And yet, he still calls himself Jesus of Nazareth. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank Thee for this glorious person, great as the mystery of godliness, Godless manifest in flesh. We thank Thee for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who took upon himself the form of a servant was made in the likeness of man, who became for us and for nations yet unborn the Son of Man, who shall sit upon the throne of his glory and that of his fathers and that of the holy angels, and as the Son of Man he shall rule from the river to the ends of the earth. Enhance, O Lord, our vision and our appreciation of this glorious Savior of ours as we close our gathering this evening in his name.