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Have you heard this phrase? Jesus is the Reason for the Season? It is a great phrase, there would be no Christmas without Jesus. Today the world is trying its best to keep Jesus out of it. We now have sayings like Seasons Greetings, and Happy Holidays. The world is trying to group Jesus with everything else to dimmish His importance. Why? Because they don’t really think He is all that. BUT HE IS!
If we are to convince people that giving their lives to Jesus is the most important gift they could ever receive we should be able to prove Jesus is who He says He is. Most of mankind wants a convincing argument they can get their head around. They would like to know for sure.
This is one of main reasons the Old Testament is written. And why there were 400 years of silence before Jesus came. It all comes down to, believe it or not, science.
The science of probability attempts to determine the chance that a given event will occur. A professor at Westmont College, has calculated the probability of one man fulfilling the major prophecies made concerning Jesus. The estimates were worked out by twelve different classes representing some 600 university students. The students carefully weighed all the factors, discussed each prophecy at length, and examined the various circumstances which might indicate that men had conspired together to fulfill a particular prophecy. They made their estimates conservative enough so that there was finally unanimous agreement even among the most skeptical students. However, the professor then took their estimates, and made them even more conservative. He also encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair.
Finally, he submitted his figures for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation. Upon examination, they verified that his calculations were dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. For example, concerning Micah 5:2, where it states the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, the professor and his students determined the average population of BETHLEHEM from the time of Micah to the present; then they divided it by the average population of the earth during the same time period. They concluded that the chance of one man being born in Bethlehem was one in 300,000.
After examining only eight different prophecies, they conservatively estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight prophecies was one in 10 to the 17th power. To illustrate how large the number 10^17 is (a figure with 17 zeros), the professor gave this illustration: If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They’ll cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.
Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up the one silver dollar that has the special mark on it. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would’ve had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time.
But, of course, there are many more than eight prophecies. In another calculation, the professor used 48 prophecies and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is the incredible number of 1 in 10 to the 157th power. How large is 10^157? 10^157 contains 157 zeros!
That is just 48 of over 300 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
Now back to why the Old Testament took about 1000-1500 years to write.
First, the Old Testament was written before the modern printing press was even thought of. So copies were not readily available.
Second, if the Old Testament would have been written in say 100 hundred years or less, it would be very possible that many of the prophets would have interacted with one another and could have “gotten their story straight”.
The fact that most prophets never read each other’s works, and were not alive together is significant. The fact that there are 300 prophecies concerning one man, Jesus Christ that all are fulfilled in His life is amazing since these people were not contemporaries of each other.
What about the 400 years of silence from the writing of Malachi to Jesus’s birth. So that no one could use Jesus’s life or the time leading up to his birth to influence the fulfilling of the prophecies. The prophecies would be untainted and have to stand on their own without any help.
God did all of this, part of His plan to show a skeptical world that Jesus IS EXACTLY who He claimed to be. The Son of God who can save us.
Thus why we should celebrate Christmas, and not Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays. Jesus is truly the reason, because He came to save us all from our sins. He came for everyone! That gift Jesus came to give cannot and must not be undersold!
Jesus is God, and did all of this for you because He loves you and wants to spend eternity with you! He wanted to prove who He is beyond a shadow of a doubt!
Remember Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!
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Are you allowed to doubt God? That is an interesting question. I have an interesting answer. The answer is, "No". You can’t doubt God, and "Yes", you can doubt God.
How is that possible? I'm glad that you asked.
Of course, God prefers that you don’t doubt Him. He would love for you to just take Him at His word. However, He knows that you won’t. God always has your best interests in mind, but you often, and many times openly, wonder if that is true.
The verse starts out with, "And we know". Do we? Do you? This verse takes a lot of faith most of the time. It can also make you doubt, because it seems as if things don’t always work out for your good.
God wishes that you would not doubt, but He knows you will. He gives great grace. He also has a lot of patience with you and everyone. He allows you to question Him.
Then the devil goes to work and plays with your mind. You either feel bad for doubting God or you go to the other extreme and get mad at God and assume things that have not happened yet.
In both instances, you are then eventually ashamed and don’t know what to do, and this is where many give up on Jesus. Jesus never gives up on you. You give up on Him. Jesus does not want you to do that.
Romans 8:1 is a great verse. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."
Jesus has no intention of condemning you for not trusting in Him. He wants to take you in His arms and then show you. He wants to take time with you.
What you have to realize is, you will doubt, and God is not "OK" with it. However, He understands that you will doubt Him, and He has decided to look past your doubt and help you anyway with His love and mercy.
When you have doubts, what you have to do is go to God with them. Practice Matthew 18 with God. Don’t go to other people first, go directly to God, and see what happens. When we don’t practice Matthew 18 with the Lord, what do you think will happen? God says that no one knows His mind. So, why are you asking others what the Lord wants for you. Go to Him and see what happens.
God wants to answer your doubts and your questions. When you allow others to speak into your life about your doubts, it muddies the waters. You then go to God with the answer you want, instead of waiting to hear THE answer you need that He has for you.
God has no desire to confuse you or harm you, yet things will arise, and it will look like God is doing just that. You can wonder where God is in a particular situation of your life. You can even wonder why it is happening. Just take the time to go to Him and let Him explain it to you and allow peace to return to your life.
Will you doubt God at some point in life? Yes, you will. You will probably do it more than once. Does God want you to do that? No, but does God put up with that? Yes. He not only does so, but He is also there to respond personally and specifically to you.
Remember Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!
Are you tired of going through the same thing again and again in your life? Are you tired of not getting the answers you need in your life? If that is you, you are not alone. This has plagued every single person who has lived throughout all of time.
Have you ever thought that the church is great, but said, "I go, but I don’t get the answers there either. It seems like God has forgotten me or maybe does not care about me"? This is why so many people think that the church is irrelevant today, because they think that nothing happens there that impacts their lives.
God gave you the church to be a safe place for you to go to and get the answers that you need so that you can always move forward in life. However, today it seems as if the church is powerless.
The church is to be a powerful place of love, but in order to experience love, there is a requirement, vulnerability. To get what you really want, you have to be vulnerable. You have to be willing to put it all out there, and trust that the person who you are being vulnerable in front of will not hurt you.
You have to be vulnerable to experience love. Jesus gave you the church to be a safe place to be vulnerable. In the early church, they came, and they bore their souls. They opened up about life, issues, sin, doubts, and I am sure some were mad at God.
Then they went back to their weekly lives, but something was different. Yes, the same issues, people, and evil surrounded them, but now they knew none of it mattered, because Jesus was there with them in reality.
That is why the early church grew. Things happened, miraculous things happened, but only after the people opened up.
This is what you are looking for, and it is what everyone is looking for. This is what makes the church relevant. You will get things out of it for the very first time and will look forward to coming back and then sharing your faith. Actually, you won’t have to share it, it will just come out of you in your life, and people will notice and will ask you where they can get what you have. Then you will tell them where you got it and tell them that they can get it too.
It is to be a weekly experience, because new things happen, well, things that are new to us. However, nothing is new to God, and because of that, God has THE answer for everything waiting at His church, at the altar, where He is waiting for you.
Jesus is saying, "Come and get it". Will you? The devil will say that can’t happen, but Jesus is saying, yes it will! Trust God!
I will end this week with the popular saying, "Don’t knock it till you try it".
Remember, Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Many people have an amazing tradition of going around the table and saying thank you for something in the last year. I think that is amazing.
Question, do you ever thank Jesus for loving you and giving you eternal life? That is the only thing in the end that matters. Many of you will have people at your Thanksgiving table who don’t yet have a relationship with Jesus. Why not use this as an opportunity to show them how great Jesus is.
You don’t have to get too religious with this, and if you do, it will probably turn them off. Here is a suggestion.
“I am thankful for the past year for the family and friends that are in my life. I am also so thankful that Jesus calls me friend and that I have an amazing relationship with Him.”
For some reason, sharing Jesus seems hard and awkward. We can talk about everything else, politics, sports, news, our family, our kids, the latest gossip (However, Jesus does not want you to do that.), and so much more.
Find a way to bring Jesus into the conversation this Thanksgiving. Without Jesus, you would have no hope for a future, no matter what man does here on earth. It was paid for you by Jesus Himself, and we don’t have to do anything but accept Jesus.
Romans 10:9 explains that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
That is something to be truly thankful for. That no matter what you have done, God forgives you and wants, let me repeat that, wants, to be with you forever!
Thanking Jesus at your dinner table in a meaningful way could lead to some snickering and laughing, but it could also lead to a meaningful conversation that results in another person punching their ticket to heaven. The best way to show Jesus thanks for all that He has, and is still doing for you, is to share Him with others.
By the way, if you would like Jesus to do more for you, there is a simple way for that to happen. Keep sharing Jesus and Jesus will be sure that you are taken care of so that you can continue to do so!
Have a great Thanksgiving and Remember Jesus loves you, I love you, and you are awesome!