This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. Ask any parent and they will tell you that having a baby changes your world. But few of us have taken the time and had the opportunity perhaps to really thought about how having a baby, a little baby impacts those around you. I mean, how could the birth of Christ and what would have been like to impact an innkeeper that night? Or a guest staying in the inn and who could have anticipated how this entire town of Bethlehem would have been impacted by a decree from King Herod that every boy around two years and younger would be killed in an attempt to squash out a rival to the throne of King Herod? Well, if you have a Bible with you, you can turn to Matthew chapter 2. I'm going to pick up in the reading right after where the Brohark family had been reading about the Magi. Or you're familiar with the story. How these Magi had come and offered these gifts. But here's the rest of the story that doesn't appear in most Christmas messages. Matthew 2, verse 13, it's also printed and inserted in your bulletin if you'd like to follow along. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet that out of Egypt, I've called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious. And he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity, who were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. A voice is heard in Rayma, weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead. That's God's holy and inspired word. Now put yourself in that position. I mean if you're Mary and you're having a brand new baby, right Allison? It's pretty exciting. There's a long anticipated child and his arrival. If you're somebody like the end keeper as we saw here portrayed, it can be kind of an interruption or even an annoyance at the time. If you're the one that's there at the time. If you're like King Herod in this story here, it could lead to a murderous jealous plot. If you're somebody like just a guest in the end, it could be lead to wondrous curiosity. Or perhaps if you like to magi, it was an incredible journey of anticipation. They probably traveled for at least months to come from their land to find this newborn child who was to be a king. Or if you're a father like portrayed in this who had been there after this decree of Herod, you could have been thinking why in the world God would you do something like this? Because the entire city lost all the baby boys in one night. Let me ask you this, this holiday season, how does the birth of Christ affect you? Now all of you sitting in this room have been able to celebrate more than one Christmas. Okay except for Calvin. Everybody here probably has had at least one to some of you have had a lot of Christmases to celebrate. I won't point you out, you know who you are. But you've had many opportunities to celebrate many different Christmases and what has been the impact of this child's coming to you in your life. And what is it having here in 2008 in your life here right now? What is the impact? Well I want to propose to you this morning, it's affected you in one of three ways. And every single one of you made one of these choices. So as you look you'd like to fall along inside your bulletin, there's an outline in there and you can do that if you like. Number one, the arrival of a king. The arrival of a king. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. And as a kid growing up there, we're in the south, football, rains as it should. And we would always get up kids on the street, we'd have pick up football games all the time because it was just what you did as a kid out there and we had to blast doing it. Well me and a bunch of my guys, we'd always be out there. And I always like most kids, I always wanted to play quarterback. Because of course I was the most qualified to play quarterback. But there was also this little guy named Sean, Sean O'Brien. And Sean was about two or three years younger than the rest of us. And we were nice to Sean, he was a nice kid. And of course he'd always come up and say, hey can I play too? And you know the drill, all of us have been through this in some sport in some situation where you're picking teams or whatever else. And guess what? You got it. Sean was always the last one to be picked. And you know what? Really nobody cared who got Sean because Sean was really a non-factor. But Sean, like anybody else, any other kid always wanted to play quarterback. But it was just like, that's okay Sean. You can come be on our team, you can be on the other team. We like Sean, whatever else. But Sean was a quarterback to ignore. Sean was a quarterback to ignore. Because Sean just really wanted to be on a team. And because every one of us knew we weren't going to give Sean a shot. They do it anyway. So he was on the team but he was ignored. You know that you viewed Jesus Christ as a king, he'd ignore him. You know you viewed Jesus Christ as a king if you ignore him. And after all, this is generally what our culture does, isn't it? This time of year. This is kind of how we handle it. Take a picture, take a look at this picture. Just found this on the internet there. Now it took me a little while but I eventually found Jesus in this picture. Now good luck on your own, especially from your position and with this resolution for what you're looking at here. But he is there and you can't find him. You know what? He's sort of in the blitz of Christmas season. He is pretty much drowned out at the least and at the most simply ignored by so many of us, especially in this country, in this culture. Christmas carols will be on the radio like crazy this month. The name of Jesus will probably be heard over the airwaves more than any other time in the course of the year. In fact, people will even find themselves humming or singing along and delightfully choosing to sing songs that talk about this newborn baby, a kin named Jesus, where the other 11 months out of the year, they'd be offended. It would not even put their station on a station that was singing about the same thing. Isn't it amazing? They'll watch Christmas specials and shows that talk about it. They'll even choose to maybe like you to come to a service here that's going to talk about Jesus. And you know what? It is a Christmas season and it seems like a right appropriate thing to do. But you know what? It's not much more than Sean. He's on the team but you have every intention, just to ignore him. Because he's a king to be ignored. And I thought I'd be answering to see what are the top Christmas songs from iTunes currently right now to see how Jesus is doing in the Christmas caroling songs about him. I was looking for any song that really directly talks about the birth of Christ. Number one song, all I want for Christmas is you, Araya Carey. Probably some of you have already downloaded that. He got a couple of TSO songs. This is a good song. I have to admit that. But you have to go all the way down to number 14 on the current playlist to find a song about the... Well, I'm sorry. That's Blue Christmas by Elvis, who is another king. Sorry. You have to go all the way down to number 15. It's number 15. O'Connell, come and manual. The first true Christmas hymn that's mentioned on there for download. It's got to get to number 15. Guess what number two is? Number two is place number 31. Do you hear what I hear? Which is barely a song that really even talks about Christ. Jesus is a king to ignore by many of us. It's a choice that is often made. You know, I've got a football here somewhere. We're not footballing up. Tray, I think it's back over there. Do you see it behind the thing?
Oh, glad I caught that. That looked really bad. I hadn't caught it. Yeah, Auburn fans can catch footballs and you need to be quiet. You know what we would do with Sean? You know, because we were compassionate. We were pretty much nice kids. You know, at some point in the game, we would say, all right, especially if the closeness of the game was out of place. One team was wiping out the other one or whatever else. If our team was on top, we'd say, hey, Sean, give it a shot. We tossed him a bone. Okay, give me my ball back. We would basically tell him, hey, take a shot at it. And don't fumble. You know, we would basically, as a courtesy, toss him a ball. Give it a shot. We felt better after doing it. Sean felt a little bit better after doing it. And that is so often what the choice is if you view Jesus as a king. Toss him a bone. I mean, maybe honestly, some of you, some of you are only here to get your toss him a bone. Maybe some of you even don't even think about him except for this time of year. It's kind of toss him a bone, perhaps. How do you view him? Do you view him as a king? Well, if you don't view the birth of Christ as the arrival of a king, then you number two might view him as the arrival of a king. Jonathan was a quarterback. Jonathan actually was a quarterback. Jonathan was another kid we used to play with. And the reason why Jonathan was a quarterback is because he actually played quarterback for a little league football team. He actually had the jerseys to prove it. You know, he'd come out and his little league jerseys even had 10 or 12 or he had the proof that he was. There's nobody that was going to question that. Nobody could doubt that because he had the proof. The only problem was if Jonathan was in the game or playing on that particular day and he lived on my street, so he often did. Jonathan was a threat to me. So Jonathan wasn't in quarterback to ignore because you couldn't ignore him. Jonathan was a quarterback to eliminate. He was a quarterback to eliminate. Let me tell you my strategy. One, play a football game when Jonathan's not home. Because, the politician has been eliminated. Now, the second strategy, if Jonathan was home and Jonathan was out, of course, he was often out there was make sure that you're not on the same team with Jonathan. Because that could pose a problem. There would be tension about who was going to be quarterback at the time. Thirdly, if you happen to get on the same team with Jonathan, you had to make sure you really got first in line to say, I'm up for quarterback and make sure you do it well. So there'd be no reason for the other rest of the teammates to want to replace you with him. But he was a quarterback to eliminate in my mind. Very different than it was with Sean. I didn't like Jonathan. Let me just say it right out there. Didn't like him at all. Because he was a threat. First, he could expose me as not the best quarterback. He took a few shots, had a few good passes, threw a touchdown pass, or just threw it better, where I had a few really bad passes. He could make me look like not the best quarterback. The second way he was a threat to me, which was even worse than that, is he could demonstrate that I'm actually not that he's just better, but I'm really actually bad as a quarterback. That would be bad, too. But the reason why I wanted to eliminate Jonathan was because I felt threatened by Jonathan, if I was very honest about it. You know you view Jesus as a king if you feel the need to eliminate him. If you feel the need to eliminate him. After all, in this story we just read, this is what King Herod did. Oh, he didn't view Jesus as a king, because he would just laugh that one off. He said, yeah, right, he's a king. He felt threatened by him. And he did what King's often did in those days. He wiped out the competition, tried to eliminate it. And it is often what some in our culture and our society choose to do today as well. Take a look at these billboards and signs. Now maybe you haven't seen this around, but in Washington, D.C., if you live up there, there's a whole campaign out there. You can see that top one there across buses and if you get on the bus, as you can see, you have these inside, where they've been advertising. A whole web page you can go up there and go to. Guess what groups behind this? You probably won't be surprised if I tell you it's a atheist group. A group that's chosen to eliminate God, eliminate Jesus Christ, even though it is his birthday. And just be good for goodness sake. It's the option that's been chosen by some. Another one I thought was interesting is in Discovery Magazine. Discovery Magazine, this is December's issue. And you might have seen this. It's also been covered on the news and different things like that. In this magazine, there's actually an article in here that talks about the universe. And it says a universe built for us. And here's what the amazing thing is that they've been finding out is that as you look at the universe, scientists are coming to the conclusion that everything about our universe seems, as though it's been specifically intentionally, perhaps, made to support human life. Here's some of the pictures from it. From this magazine article. Because if the balance and the sun was slightly different in the source, its chemical reaction, life wouldn't exist on this planet as we knew it. If certain other elements were slightly altered, if gravity was slightly more or slightly less than it is now, life, as we know, it cannot exist. But yet everything in our universe appears to be just perfect like it has to be for life to exist. And many scientists have looked at that and said, look, I've got to say this is a case for God. This is a case for God, legitimately a creator God. But as you can guess, there's a whole other group of scientists who have come up with another theory of what might happen. And that's what these pictures dictate here. They, one of the ideas, if you don't want to believe in a creator God, you've got to believe in this, a multi-universe. Not a universe, multi-universe. You've got to believe there's been so many different universes, so many different tries to get it right that we just happen to live in the one that got it right. So there was this, look at the top picture, there was this explosion. And by the way, the number of universes is 10 to the 500th power. It's the number of universes that have to have happened. If you look at these bottom pictures here, you can see that through time, there are different things that have evolved or whatever else. And you get, if you look at the far picture on the right, the one that sticks up at the very end, that over these multiple different tries, there's been one universe that succeeded in being just perfectly aligned and designed to support human life like we know and experience it. Let me give you a picture of what 10 to the 500 number of universes means. I think they'd be real hard for this. One of the guys in our church that did some figuring on this. Do you know the number of atoms in a drop of water is 10 to the 21st power. The number of atoms in our sun in our solar system is 10 to the 56th power. The number of atoms in our universe is estimated at 10 to the 79th power. That's just our universe. If every atom in a billion of our universes were actually a complete universe in itself, there would be a total number of atoms of 10 to the 167th power. You get a picture of this? We're not even halfway of looking at 10 to the 500 power. Now you tell me, which is a greater leap of faith? 10 to the 500 power by chance? Are that God has specifically designed and created the universe to sustain life for you? It's a question of faith either way. You're going to have to just choose which way you want to go. But some will clearly choose to eliminate God. And why would they do that same way? Reason King Herod. King Herod chose to eliminate the king because the Messiah being born would expose Herod as not the true king. He knew all about the prophecies of Messiah. The Magi had come and said, look, there's something big going on here. He had lots of reasons to decide that, to come to that conclusion. And he knew that this Messiah king would be a threat to him and his throne. He knew that Jesus Christ would be worthy of even Herod himself to bow his knee and serve in worship. Oh, Herod knew what was at stake. Jesus is a threat to some scientists and some people here today too. Clusion could expose somebody, could expose their own need to have to acknowledge that there is a Creator God. It could expose the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, really is the rightful king and worthy of worship and worthy of service. And if that is a threat to you, you will eliminate Him unless you've already chosen earlier to ignore Him. How about you? Are you eliminating Him? Well, you have a choice. Number one, you could view Jesus' birth as the arrival of a king. You could view Jesus' birth as arrival of a king. Or you could view Jesus' birth as the arrival of the king, capital K. You have a choice. I told you about Sean, I told you about Jonathan. Steve was the quarterback. I like Steve a lot. Both Steve, much more than Jonathan, was a huge threat to my ability to play quarterback. Huge threat. In fact, he was the biggest threat in the whole city of Atlanta that I had to play quarterback. He was definitely the better quarterback. He had the strongest arm. He had the most accuracy. Nobody would debate that, especially me through it all. But there was a reason why Steve wasn't viewed by me as a threat. And this is why. Next slide. Next slide. Sorry. There he is. I didn't tell you a whole story. Steve Barkowski. Graduate University, California. First round draft pick. Overwater Peyton, who was number two. Steve Barkowski, 1975. Serve of the Falcons from 1975 to 1985. 1986, he went to Los Angeles Rams, while there were still Los Angeles Rams. 1975, he was working in the year for the Falcons. I was part of FCA in high school and we decided that we would try to get Steve Barkowski, who was a known Christian at the time to come and speak to our FCA meeting. And Steve said, yeah, I don't mind coming. In fact, I'll give it a little earlier. We'll bring this football and we can toss it around. I was like, are you serious? The quarterback. The quarterback. And the response was to yield to Steve. You know what happened when Steve came? We were doing a little pickup game before the FCA meeting. My usual thing would have been, all right, let's pick teams here. I'll be quarterback of this team. Let's line up here. You can do that team and let's line up. Let's get it going. Here is my response. Steve. Here. Take it. Honestly, I didn't want to throw the ball in front of Steve. It's like, let's just watch this guy in motion. And I'll be a receiver. In fact, you should be quarterbacked both times. I'd love to have a chance to be on a defensive side and see a ball come through. You yield to the quarterback when it's Steve Barkowski. You will know you view Jesus Christ as the king when you yield to him. Just like knowing about Steve Barkowski. Knowing that he was the quarterback in the highest level of play at that particular time. Knowing that I'd seen him play on TV and watched him for the Falcons lead the team to many victories. Knowing that I had actually talked to him on the telephone and invited him to be the speaker or FCA meeting. And then actually had a chance to get to know him and meet him in person and speak to him and talk to him. It had a chance to actually go out and throw the ball with around with him with some of my buddies. It was easy to yield to Steve Barkowski. And here's the point. Knowing who Steve was and meeting him made it easy to yield. Do you know the king is my follow-up question? Have you looked closely at the universe that he has made for you? Have you read or heard about what he has done and the stories of the Bible tells us about? Do you know that Christmas is proof of how much God really wants to be with you? Have you been introduced and begun a relationship with him? Once you know him and meet him, you will find it easy to yield to him. Steve Barkowski chose to yield his own life in 1978. If you remember much about that, he had been replaced. Now it was no longer the starter, it was now number two. A player for the Falcons at quarterback. And let me read in Steve's own words him describing what happened at that point in his life. He says it was my fourth season and I should have been taking off improving to people while I was the number one draft choice. But I fell flat on my face. I was grateful enough to have guys on the team that called themselves Christians. And the plan of salvation had been shared with me earlier when I was in Chicago and they all started. Although at the time I heard with my ears, it didn't affect my heart. Not until three years later, riding home from the stadium that night in 1978. The Lord reminded me of his salvation for me. I raced home, fell on my knees and finally listened with my heart. I became a Christian at that point and it was evident because God changed my life. Steve came to the point where he knew and he met the king. So as we wrap up here and as the band prepares to play this next song, I want you to think, what kind of king did your life welcome? What kind of king this Christmas season are you welcoming in your heart? Listen to this song and invite him into your life this morning if that's what you'd like to do. So we bow your heads and pray with me. Father, I thank you that you are the king. And that even though we've all done it from time to time, if not living this way, we have chosen to ignore you often. When we feel threatened, we choose to eliminate you. But God, we're honest. Many of us know that we've come to understand that you really are the king. Worthy to be yielded to and not a joy can yield to because of who you are and what you've done. And for those that might be here this morning, it might be ready or for the first time, putting it all together here, just seeing what's at stake. Would you give them the faith and the courage? To reach out, God invites you. And if that is your desire to this morning to make Jesus Christ the king of your life, let me invite you to pray silently in your heart after me. Lord Jesus Christ, I know that you created me for your glory and honor. I confess that I have revelled against you. I have sinned against you by choosing to live my life for my own glory and honor. I confess that I have revelled against you and now I receive your gift of forgiveness. I ask that you come into my life, forgive me of my sins, cleanse me from all on righteousness and make me a child of yours. So now I take control of my life. I acknowledge that you are the king and I acknowledge that you are my king. If that was your prayer here this morning, let me just pray for you and say, God, I pray for hearts that might have made that their own prayer this morning that you will come and that you will do just like you promised, that for those that receive you, to as many as received you, you give them the right to become children of God, but you let their assurance be known that they have been forgiven, that they are now your child, that they are now part of your kingdom. And for those that are on that journey that aren't quite there or aren't quite ready yet, or so I haven't decided if this is what they want to do, God would you come in and draw them to yourself. Would you move them closer to you? And Father, would you strengthen your people here? Would you strengthen your church? Would you allow us to have an impact on our community here? And God come now and work in our lives. We give you the joy and we give you the praise, God because you are the king. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.