As Far as the Curse is Found

Good morning to each one, and welcome in Jesus Christ. Could we put the screen up? I might need the board. It's a lovely season of the birth of Christ.

We call it Christmas, and I do want to preach the gospel from Luke chapter 2, which is the birth of Christ. I believe that everyone here is familiar with the birth of Christ, and I want to focus on one specific area there of that. So let's read the scriptures there, where the angels came to the shepherds.

This is Mary had brought forth her firstborn son there in the stable, and laid him in the feed trough. And then we'll begin in verse 8 of Luke chapter 2 in reading. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And lo the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were very afraid. And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord, and this shall be a sign to you.

You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. And it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord has made known unto us.

And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them. We have the beautiful story of the birth of Christ.

And in this part is where the angels of God showed up to declare the birth of Jesus. That must have been an amazing thing for the angels to see Jesus that one part or entity of the Godhead to take upon flesh and to be born of a earthly fleshly woman and then to be laid there in a manger like that wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Jews were a people who were looking for a Savior.

And I believe that in a lot of their minds they were expecting something glorious, something kingly. Maybe they were thinking of Solomon's kingdom and how rich and wealthy all of that would be and how that this coming King would probably be born in something like that where it's very royal. It's a beautiful place where God would choose to have his son come to the earth.

But that's not the way it was. And this is a part of the good news. I want to focus on preaching the gospel.

I'd like to begin with a story of what what God has worked in my heart in the last three months or four months now. I went to Greece in the beginning of September and spent about three weeks there. And then before Marianne and Janelle came.

And I asked Amos, good to have you here Amos and family, I asked Amos what he wants me to do when I got there. And he didn't give me a job. He just said we just want you to just be.

Just be here. Which is a bit a challenge for me. I like to be doing things.

But I took him up on it and we and I spent a lot of time just being there, supporting them. We had some things to work through. And I spent a lot of time in the Word of God.

I found a book on prayer which talked about praying the Psalms. And I began to pray through the Psalms. I'm still praying through the Psalms.

And it's been a real blessing to me. So often when you go to pray you end up saying the same old things. The same old thing about the same old things.

Hello. And in five minutes you're done saying the same old things, right? Well if you take the Psalms, the Word of God, and you begin to pray the Word of God back to God, it's not boring. It's not, you don't have a lack of words to say.

And the Spirit of God then takes the Word of God and begins to make applications to your own life and to your own heart. And you begin to, as you open yourself to the Spirit in this way, the Spirit can guide your praying specifically using God's Word. I was in one of the Psalms one day and the Spirit specifically led me to pray for the coast guards there in Greece who were pushing back, illegally pushing back a lot of refugees.

And I just prayed for them. It's just been a real joy. And during this time I'm spending a lot of time alone.

My wife is not there to bother me or anything. But God was working in my life through that. And then I, then after three weeks I went to Athens, the mainland, and there I met Marianne and Janelle, they came.

We had a couple days planned for a retreat from all I-58 staff workers getting together. And the board got together a couple, two days ahead of that time. And so we had that planned.

And so I met Marianne and Janelle there at our son Eric's apartment. We spent the couple days there hanging out with him. That was very good.

And then sitting there in their apartment one evening and I found a book on his bookshelf and I took the book and thought, well, I can do a little bit of reading here. And it was a novel. I'm not necessarily against novels, but this one seemed really weird.

I mean, it's, I had a really hard time with it. And I had, I had purposed one of the things that Jesus says in John, I think it's 17, 16 or 17. He says, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by thy truth.

And so as a, as, as a man of God, I need to sanctify myself so that others also may be sanctified by the truth. Keeping myself pure, keeping myself holy by God's grace and purposing to not do specific things that might defile. Right? I want to keep myself and just reading this book, it felt defiling to me.

So I'm not going to read this thing. So I closed it and I put it on back on the shelf and found out later, one of the, one of our staff members, they were asking which, what book it was. And when they told him that, Oh, they said, that's my favorite book.

Okay. Not mine. Then I pulled another book off the shelf and that was a book on preaching, which, uh, Eric had been taking these, uh, Bible college classes for about two years.

And through that they had gone through some, he bought numerous books. And one of them was a book on preaching the gospel. So I pulled that book off and I began to read it and God got a hold of my heart.

In that book, the writer was saying that we should be preaching the gospel in every message. Every time that we preach, we should be preaching the gospel. In other words, the gospel should always be included in every one of our messages.

And he went on to say how that the gospel is, is in every chapter, every story, every character. The gospel is Jesus. The good news is Jesus.

And that we should be, we should be proclaiming this glorious good news of Jesus Christ and his victory over death, sin and hell. And, but that by that, that's how people get saved. And I have felt like I had missed it.

How, how is it that I've been preaching the preaching for more than 30 years? And I felt like I had missed it. Lord, how did I miss this all important factor of preaching the gospel in every message? We went out to a beach there. It was still warm and I found myself walking up and down that beach, crying out to God about this issue.

Because I realized I felt like I had missed it. And then I found myself on my knees there in our bedroom, crying out to God in the evening. And I realized that I cannot make myself get it.

I can't make myself just get it. I must have revelation about this. I must have a revelation about this glorious gospel or other.

If I don't have that revelation, it's just going to be human efforts to try to make it, to try to understand, to try to somehow reach out there and grab it out of the eternal realm and bring it down to the temporal world. And he was saying that in this book, he was saying that we should be able to see the gospel. We should be able to see Christ in every chapter, in every passage, in every story, and in every character.

And I turned over and I opened up to the story of Noah and his drunkenness. Where Noah begins to be a farmer and he makes wine and he ends up drunken and he lays in his tent naked. And one of his sons comes in and sees him and he goes out and tells his other brothers about it, evidently, mockingly.

Those two brothers take a robe and they put it on themselves backwards. They go back into the tent and they drop it on their father, who's in his drunken stupor, laying in the tent, and then they go back out again. And they did not see his father's nakedness.

And when Noah wakes up, he realizes what has happened and he curses that son. And he blesses the other two sons. And I'm reading that and before I went to bed that evening, I read the story and I'm like, how could you ever see the gospel in a story like that? And I cried out to God.

I said, God, I can't do this. I've got to have revelation. And I went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up and I read the story again. And somehow the Spirit of God began to open the story that there's a possibility that the gospel could be preached from that story. And I felt like God was doing something, like I felt like God did something in my heart.

And I began to see in every passage and in every scripture, in every chapter, in every character, I began to see the gospel in a whole new way. I was excited. And then we went to our I-58 retreat, the long-term staff retreat.

And a couple of girls who do the office work, they'd helped plan this thing out. I guess Amos had helped too. But the theme, guess what theme they had chosen for that week? The gospel.

And somehow God had done that work in my heart and prepared me and it came together in a very beautiful way. And the gospel was preached that weekend. It was beautiful.

What does it mean to preach the gospel? I guess these things are to write up here. Is that right? When we look at this word, look at this scripture here in Luke chapter 2 again, where it's in verse 10, and the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. A literal translation there is, I evangelize to you great joy.

I bring you good tidings of great joy. I evangelize to you a great joy. The word there is evangelizo or something like that.

And when we, when you have the word for angel, the word for angel in the Greek is something like angelos. Okay. Angelos simply means messenger.

Angel is often, we see it as angel, but it really means a messenger from God or a messenger. So a messenger is what this is. This is basically a messenger.

And then when you have, if you put in front of this angelos, if you put in front of this, the Y O O, it's you angelos. You means good. And so you angelos is the word we have for evangelize or in German it's evangelium.

You is good. Good message brought to you by a messenger. That's the picture there.

And so the angels came and they said, we evangelize to you great joy. You angelos, these messengers brought a message of great joy. This is what they're saying.

And so the word preach, sometimes the word preach is you angelos. Sometimes it, it means to declare, but many times this word preach means you angelos. And so when we preach the gospel, we are evangelizing or you angelos, something like that.

I'm not very good at Greek. This guy's Greek could do much better than me probably. The scripture that Abner shared this morning, like Paul says, well, it is me.

If I do not you angelos, if I do not share this gospel, scriptures begin to come alive. When we have revelations, scriptures begin to come alive. And I was so excited.

Now, look at what happened to these shepherds, the shepherds who were out there, they, you might say they were of the lowest of the cast. Basically. Do you remember that when Jacob and his family moved to Egypt, that Jacob said to the King that they would, that they are shepherds.

To be a shepherd in Egypt was an abomination. It was so low. That's one of my thoughts.

But so the gospel message is given to those who are at a low place. The gospel message, the power of the gospel message is when there's, when someone is at the bottom and then the power of God can come in. And really it's only, we really become, we only become a partaker of this when we are at the bottom.

This is the message. So many times we hear messages preached and I had to think about this and I realized I probably have missed it many times. You might have someone who can preach a really good message, very interesting, or, you know, people get blessed by it.

But one thing that we must be careful about is that if we, if we don't, is that so often we as preachers, we preach what should be, what we should be doing. We preach to the congregation what they should be doing and the congregation goes home with the idea and the mindset, now I must do. That's not the gospel.

I remember being in Bible school where there was probably four to six hundred young people there. And the young people were in the Bible school for a whole week and all week long, they're hearing lots of really good messages. And on the last evening, the preacher gets up and he, he wants to send them home with a blessing and he tells them how that they've heard so many good things and now they need to go home and do them.

Give it all you got, do the best you can. And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, no, that's not the gospel. I can pretty much guarantee that those young people went home with all the zeal and all the unction that they could muster up to try to do it.

And they will fall flat on their faces because they can't do it. This is the gospel, the gospel is simply you can't do it. But through Christ, Jesus does it in you and through you.

This is the gospel. Look what happens when, what, who's the gospel for? Look at what these angels said. I bring you good times of great joy, which shall be to all people, all people.

I was still looking for a title this morning. I was saying that joy to the world. And this stood out to me, he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

I like the title of this message, as far as the curse is found. This is the gospel message. And this message shall be preached, evangelizo, as far as the curse is found, which is how far? All the way around the world.

This curse, the curse of sin has been found in every heart, in every human being, in every soul, as far as all over this world, every single child, every person is born under this curse. And this curse is found in every one of our hearts and lives. And this is where the gospel must be preached.

Every place. Notice what the shepherds did. Verse 17, when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying, which was told them concerning this child.

Now, if you would have been there and if you would have had that sudden appearance of the angels, of the angel coming there and giving you this message, and then when then this, the heavens open up and the glory of God appears and there's multitudes of angels there in heaven, singing and glorifying God. What would you do with that message? What would you do with that experience? Would you tell anybody? You could tell everybody. They went and they did what? They made known abroad the saying, which was told them concerning this child.

They became evangelists. They became the messengers taking this message out to others. That's what the, that's what the shepherds did.

And also when, when they brought Jesus to the temple there, let's keep reading, when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of purification, according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Does anybody know the time there? Her days of purification, according to the law of Moses.

Does anybody know that? Eight days, 80 days, eight days. So according to the law of Moses, she was to be seven days in her purification, right? Which is the normal time. But then it says it's to be another period, another time.

Anyone know? 40 total, 33 more days. So 40 days. So this would be at the 41st day.

After the 40th day, they would have taken him to the temple. And when the days of purification, according to the law of Moses were accomplished 40 days, they brought him to Jerusalem. And at this time, they were still somewhere in the region of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

They lived in Nazareth, which was in the northern part of Israel. But Jerusalem and Bethlehem are down in the southern part of Israel. And so he was born in Bethlehem there.

And now in 40 days, they take him to the temple there. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. And to offer a sacrifice, according to that which is paid, said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

The wealthy people would bring a sheep and one pigeon. The poor people just brought two pigeons. And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

The same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. For the Holy Ghost was upon him. It was revealed to him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

Think about that. Here's Simeon, old man, loves the Lord. And the Holy Ghost had told him, you will not die before you see the Lord's Christ.

What would it be like to live in that tension? Growing older, knowing that God had said you're going to see the Christ before you die. Where's he going to see the Christ? Maybe in the temple. I think there's an old testament scripture says he will come to the temple suddenly.

Right? Malachi maybe. And he came by the spirit in the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms and blessed God and said, now Lord, Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace according to thy words.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou has prepared before the face of all people. This thing about the birth of Christ his death, his burial, his resurrection has been done in front of all nations. There's a Psalm that was, I was looking at a Psalm last week where it says that God made his salvation known to all peoples, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of that people Israel and Joseph and his brother marveled at those things, which were spoken of him and Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary, his mother, behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign, which shall be spoken against.

Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. There's so much more in this that could be studied. This is a prophecy by him.

Now there was also an old woman, a woman of great age there, Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Fenua of the tribe of Asser. She was of a great age and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity. She was a widow of about four score and four years, which departed not from the temple, but serve God with fasting prayer day and night.

And coming in that instant, she gave thanks likewise unto the Lord and spake of him to all them that look for redemption in Jerusalem. Here's this woman of a great age and she's there in the temple. Somehow she is aware of what's happening over here.

She's listening to, she sees this couple with their newborn baby, and then she sees his old man, Simeon. She hears what he says, and she sees this whole thing unfold. And then what does she do with that? She becomes an evangelist.

She then goes and speaks of him to all that look for redemption in Jerusalem. How old was she? Any thoughts? Anyone study that? She lived seven years from her virginity with her husband, and then she is a widow of 84 years. How old is she? What do you think? Is she 84 years old? 104? How old are you, grandma? You're 100 of great age.

And she was in the temple. And when she sees this scene unfolding, she then goes and speaks to all those that were looking for redemption. She became an evangelist, likewise.

This is the good news. I also thought about, it seems to me that we don't really have a very good picture of what it means to proclaim the good news. Imagine with me, there's a verse in Psalms that says something like, Thy God reigns.

Your God reigns. In so many of the Old Testament battles, it had to do with the God of the people. Battles were won and lost according to the power of their gods.

When God was for his people, they would win. When God withdrew his presence from his people, they would lose their battles. And the enemies would come in, and especially they would mock Israel.

And when they came around the walls of Jerusalem, they mocked them and were saying, your God is not going to be able to save you. There's no God that has delivered any other nation from my hand, this guy is saying. All these other nations have fallen because my God is greater than their gods, and your God is not greater than my God.

And he's mocking the Jews and their God. But because of that mockery, God actually came through and delivered them from that king at that time. There's this, in Greece, they have what they call the marathon.

I don't know the story very well, but the marathon now today is a 25 mile race, right? Well, there's a road that is called Marathon Road there from one city to the other. I don't know what battle it was, but this one man, he ran those 25 miles to bring the good news that they had won the battle. He brought it back to the city, to Athens, to tell the people that the battle was won.

And as soon as he had told the news, he died. He falls over and he dies. There's more to the story there, but today they have that, there's still the Marathon Road there.

And once a year in Greece, they run that marathon race. They will shut the road down for traffic and their people will come from all over the world to run the Greek marathon. It's still part of what they do.

They didn't have cell phones back there, but they had runners and these runners would bring the news of the battle back home. If they lost the war, the enemy would come in and plunder their cities. If they won the war, they would have the victory and they would be in peace.

And when the runner came in, so one picture I get is a runner comes back in the spiritual realm when we look at the cross and we look at how Jesus won the victory over Satan, death, and hell. If the runner came back with the news of the victory, what would he say? He would say, your God reigns. Your God won the victory.

And that's the gospel. That's the gospel message. And that message needs to go as far as the curse is found.

Turn with me now to Psalms 107. This is an example of the gospel message. In this chapter, we have four very clear stories of what I, this is the gospel in a sense.

And what is the gospel? The gospel simply, the good news simply is that when you are at the bottom and you cry out to God, then he delivers. That's the good news. And that's the good news for every single one of us.

Isn't that how you got saved? How did you get saved? You got saved when you came to the bottom, when you were at the end of yourself, and then you cried out to the Lord and he delivered you. Isn't that the gospel? Isn't that how you got saved? Is that only for when we get saved? Or is that the way we should live? That if I find myself in any trouble of any kind, anywhere, when I come to, when I'm at the bottom and I have nowhere else to go, I can look up and I say, help, save me. And the Lord comes through and delivers.

That's the picture. Let's look at these stories here. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemies, and gathered them out of the lands, from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. They found no city to dwell in.

Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. The bottom. When someone faints, they lay over like they're dead.

Right? There's no more strength left. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. And then what did they do? Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses, and led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.

O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men. When they fainted, then they cried to the Lord. He delivered them.

God, this is the, this is the story. The Old Testament story is over and over and over. When God's people were at the end of themselves, they cried out to God and he delivered them.

Again, and again, and again. Over and over. This is the story of the Old Testament.

And it's the story of the New Testament. And it's the story of your life and my life. Amen? He led them forth by the right way.

Verse 8, 9. For he satisfied the longing soul, filled the hungry soul with goodness. The next story. Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron.

Why? Because they rebelled against the words of God and contemned the counsel of the Most High. That's why they're sitting in darkness. That's why they're in the shadow of death.

That's why they are afflicted and bound up in iron. God has so designed sin that sin brings, sin has consequences and those consequences become realities in our life of bondage and darkness and shadows of death. That's what sin does.

Sin brings us to the place where we are unable to free ourselves. We cannot break through the gates and the bars. We cannot help ourselves.

We're done. Therefore he brought down their heart with labor. They fell down and there was none to help.

Is there anyone here today that is at that place? Maybe there's a specific area in your life that you are stuck and you don't know what to do. That's okay. Just acknowledge it.

Recognize it and then do something. Cry out to God. Look what happens.

There was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble. He saved them out of their distresses and he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and he break their bands in sunder.

He delivers them. This is the good news. This is the gospel.

No you don't need to try harder. You don't need to go and do better. That does not help.

That does not avail. But you can cry out and the Lord delights to come and deliver you in your specific situation that you are facing today. This is the good news.

He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bands in sunder. Oh oh I wish men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. For he has broken the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron and sunder.

That's what he has done. The next story. Fools because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted.

Their soul abhors all manner of meat and they draw near to the gates of death. Someone has talked mentioned this that we realize that sometimes there's there's people who are so distressed and so in such a difficult place that they they don't eat anymore. What's that word? There's another word for it.

Anorexic. That's what this looks like right? They abhor all kind of food. They don't want to eat anymore.

Then they draw near to the gates of death. Because of transgression, because of their iniquities, they are afflicted. Their soul abhors all kinds of food and they draw near to the gates of death.

Then you see where they're at. You have this you have this this going down to the bottom right? And it's down there at the bottom that they cry out. Then they cry out unto the Lord in their trouble and he saves them out of their distresses.

He sent his word and healed them. Delivered them from their destruction. All that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and his wonderful works to the children of men.

Let them sacrifice to sacrifice the thanksgiving and declare his works with rejoicing. Here we are. Declare his works with rejoicing.

Evangelizing. Preaching the gospel. This is the message.

Another story. They that go down to the sea in ships that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

For he commands and raises the stormy wind which lifted up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven. They go down again to the depths.

Their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are at their wit's end. They do not know what to do anymore.

They're at their wit's end. They're done. It won't help to try to row any harder.

It won't help to do anything else anymore. They are completely done. This is the good news.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble. He brings them out of their distresses. He makes the storm a calm so that the waves thereof are still.

Then are they glad because they be quiet. So he brings them into their desired haven. Has anyone here that's ever been on the on the ocean in a storm like that? Have you ever been at wit's end in the ocean like that? Anyone here? We're not many sailors here.

Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him. Here we are evangelizing.

Also in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders. And then there's a few more verses there but this is a basic picture I want you to get. This gospel must be preached in all the earth.

Then the end shall come. But if I do not exercise this in my own life, it probably won't be a very good reality for me to take that story and tell others. If I can get through by pushing harder, by working longer hours, or by just by my own strength keep pushing through.

If I can do that I will not have a clear testimony. I will not have a gospel to preach. But if I can and this is just the beauty this thing just came so clear to me.

I was there on my knees there in Athens Greece that evening and it was so clear. I will not be able to make myself see it. I will it it will not help me to try to somehow harder just so that I can do this so I can get this picture.

And I was not and I knew that but it's at that point that I cried out to the Lord and he heard me and he did something. There was not a big flash no nothing like that but there's something there was a revelation began to flow out of my heart and I love it. And so for today is there anyone here that the Spirit of the Lord is speaking to you about this? You might be facing a certain area in your life that you don't know what to do.

You might be at your wits end with it. The good news is that that's actually a good place to be. It's okay to be at that place not to stay there but it's okay to be there because when you're at that place then the Lord delivers.

Then you cry out the Lord delivers. This and this is we're looking at the birth of Christ in this beautiful picture here but the end of the story that the bigger part of the story has to do with his crucifixion his death where he took upon himself our sins our problems our distresses any of those things and he paid the price for that. He shed his blood gave his life died in my stead took my place on the cross and through faith in that finished work I enter in and become a partaker of the divine nature of God.

This is the good news so much of our background so much of our teaching when we teach our children to do better to do good we want them to try harder right and then when we come to the salvation issue that same old thing kind of kicks in I need to do I need to try harder maybe that's how I can get saved. I want to say that if you're here today and you know that you are not saved let me recommend to you the gospel. The good news is that you cannot save yourself.

It won't help to try harder. It won't help to try and do better but simply confess that you are in need of Jesus. I am like the sinner like the tax collector God be merciful to me a sinner I am a sinner and when we at that time in that place acknowledge that then is when God comes through and we cry out to him God I am done I'm at my wits end I cannot do it help this is the good news then he delivers them out of all their distresses would you like to have deliverance this morning for that issue that you're fighting with that issue you've been working with would you like to have deliverance in that specific thing today this is the nature of God this is the this is who God is he comes and he meets those people when they're at the bottom