The Promise of Love

Baby Dedication

Introduction of Dedication: Pastor Dave (5min)

Dedication of Marqus Aegon T. Señara (10min) Marqus A-GONE - SIN-ERA

-Introduction of Parents Gladys Joy Tampus

-Introduction of God Parents

Brown Family

-The Main Event: Introduction of the Child

Marqus Aegon T. Señara

-Parents Scripture Reading

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. y 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. [1]

Proverbs 22:6

6 Start children off on the way they should go,

and even when they are old they will not turn from it. [2]

Matthew 7:13-14

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. [3]

Charge / Dedication Questions:

Dear friends, you have brought these children whom God has given you to be dedicated to God and to His service. By this act you testify to your faith in the Jesus Christ, and also your desire that your children shall receive the benefits of consecration to God, and of the prayers of the church, and may early learn to know and follow the will of God; and therefore may live a Christian life.

In order for this to happen, it will be your duty as parents to teach your children early the fear of the Lord; to watch over their education, that they may not be led astray by false teachings or doctrines, to direct their minds to the Holy Scriptures as expressing the will and authority of God for all people, and to direct their feet to the sanctuary, to restrain them from evil associates and habits; and, as much as you are able, to bring them up in the Lord's discipline and instruction. Will you endeavor to do so, by the help of the Lord?

(Then the parents or guardians shall answer:)

“We will.”

(Then the minister shall ask the parents or guardians the name of each child to be dedicated, take each child in arms, lay a hand upon the child's head, and say:)

Marqus Aegon T. Señara,on behalf of your parents and of this congregation, I dedicate you unto the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

-Prayer for Baby (Pastor Dave)

Intro:

A king that loves

The scripture that was read today is a reminder that Israel way back a long time ago was looking for an anointed king

The christmas story asks us what king will we follow

The Bible is littered with stories of Bad kings…

King Saul was supposed to wait for Samuel to make a sacrifice to the lord and instead of waiting he took matters into his own hands and then he profaned what was holy…He lost his kingdom in that moment

King Ahaz sacrificed his own son

King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had a particular talent for murder and steeling

King Solomon starts out good then his heart gets turned away because of his many foreign wives

His son king Rehoboam oppressed Israel, his own people

Even in the books that are not in the bible…The inter-testament period…400 years between old and new testament…Israel suffered from Bad kings again

They had one Greek overlord who would come in and take over the priesthood and in an act of abomination would slaughter a pig on the alter…

It’s almost as if what they say is true, Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely true

Even Israel’s greatest king…King David…Would have moments of absolute corruption and depravity …

So Israel later in their history must be thinking…We are this empire…This kingdom that has survived for thousands of years…But is this it for us?

I mean this has happened to many societies in history

Carthage…One of the worlds most advanced societies at the time…. would collapse in 146BC…

The Persian Empire would collapse

The Jewish people would see all around them that empires would rise and fall and they had to be just wondering…

Will we ever make it? Will we make it as a people? Will we make it as a society?

Israel at this point was divided into a north kingdom and a southern kingdom and Judah in the south had just seen the Assyrian people cart off the northern kingdom to exile

So in a time of uncertanty

In a time of are we going to make it?

…The prophet Micah would write this:

Micah 5:2–5a (NIV)

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,

though you are small among the clans of Judah,

out of you will come for me

one who will be ruler over Israel,

whose origins are from of old,

from ancient times.”

Therefore Israel will be abandoned

until the time when she who is in labor bears a son,

and the rest of his brothers return

to join the Israelites.

He will stand and shepherd his flock

in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they will live securely, for then his greatness

will reach to the ends of the earth.

And he will be our peace

This prophesy is saying hey there will be a ruler who will come

and its not just any ruler...

This is the ancient of days

and he will be a good king

Israel has this litany of bad kings

Kings who were corrupt…Kings who lead israel astray! Kings who brought evil into the house of Israel!

This king will be a good shepherd of Israel

And this is a big deal because the reason why that Israel is getting punished the way it is is primarily due to bad shepherds of israel

This king that is coming will be so great that his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth! are you kidding me this is insane!

And he…This king will be our peace

I mean to the listeners of Micah who are looking at Assyria and Babylon these Mega violent nations who are basically surrounding them…

Israel is a society who is headed toward the verge of collapse

This just had to be a startling claim!

That the ancient of days…Himself will come…He will love us…He will be our king

So Micah dies…The people go into exile but all the while they are hanging on to this claim…

that one day a good king will come…The ancient of days…the one who will be our peace

about 700 years later Matthew would write this down

Matthew 2:1–6 NIV

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: “ ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

There is so much to break down on this…

First and foremost: In the time of King Herod…

Which…By the way…Is just another in the litany of bad kings…of Israel! we will get to him in a second…

But Matthew wants you to see that Jesus is born into a world where there is already a king!

Then it says:

Magi from the east…We know the story of the three wisemen bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh…

But who are these guys? Because they are actually not mentioned elsewhere in the bible…

They would have been somewhat common in the ancient world…

They are most likely priest from Persia who practice something called Zoroastrianism….Which was a rare monotheistic religion that believed that God was good and that there was evil in the world that needed dealing with…

That Good will ultimately triumph over evil

So you have to imagine Herod’s position…

You have these probably Zoroastrian priests coming to meet you wanting to know where the true king is…And if you are Herod then you are thinking….I am the true king!

They want to go worship him because they have this belief that Good will defeat evil

There is a good king coming…

To Herod’s Ears this must have been so scary and shocking

So you’ve got Micah’s prophesy…Now you have these wisemen coming…Now I want to spend a few minutes breaking down just how revolutionary this moment is to all of history…This is absolutely a turning point

In order to understand the birth of Jesus…Christmas you really need to understand King Herod

Because Jesus was born as “king of the Jews” But there was already, very much a king of the Jews.

I want to tell you a story that I hope will revolutionize your view of Christmas:

Herod

In 40BC the Romans installed Herod as the “King of the Jews” over Israel.

See Israel has always been a strategic sliver of land…The Roman’s biggest fear was a group to the east called the Parthians…

The Parthians army was the only ones to really give Rome a run for their money so they needed a king in Israel who would be strong with the military but who would deal with these really strange Jewish people…

And the Jews were super hard to govern…To the Romans they had all of these crazy laws and they were always rebelling against Rome…So the Romans needed a leader in Israel who would scare everyone into compliance

So the person they chose was King Herod…and he is an absolute Psychopath

First off there is a movie that just came out on Netflix called “Mary” that just scratches the surface on what a total and complete psychopath the man was…Anthony Hopkins plays Herod…But just so you know there is a ton of extra biblical stories used to make the film…But worth a watch…

In 40 (BCE) so that Rome would have a buffer from the entire Middle East they installed this leader Herod as the “king of the Jews.”

Since the Jews didn’t see him as the rightful king, they had to give him a legion of armies so that he could conquer Israel. It took Herod 3 years to conquer Israel. That three-year campaign ended with one of the most atrocious brutal things ever done.

It ended in Jerusalem, the walls were breeched and the Romans massacred the people…this is how Herod king of the Jews came to power.

Herod was a Psycho, he was crazy and he would do anything to stay in power.

Herod had ten wives, (His favorite wife was Merriam was the second of his ten wives. Herod would leave on trips to Rome and his standing order always was that if Herod did not come back alive then to kill Merriam because he knew that it would be her behind the murder.

Merriam actually declared Herod unfit to sit on the throne and basically attempted a coup and made herself queen of Israel…>The move Backfired and Herod killed her, and not only did he kill her but he killed her father, her mother, his three favorite sons…. he drowned the high priests in his family swimming pool…

There were a couple of military leaders who questioned the wisdom of Herod killing his favorite sons. They were killed along with 300 of their fellow officers, and family members.

Listen to how insane this is:

Herod was so worried about whether or not there would be mourning on the day of his death that he invited the politically and socially elite into a stadium in Jericho and had orders to have archers open fire and slaughter everyone simply so that there would be mourning on the day of his death, even if it wasn’t for him…

Luckily for them, Herod’s daughter and son who were in charge of this event did not allow the archers to open fire…

Psycho may not be a strong enough word for him…

So not only did he do all of this stuff but he had secret police, informers, neighbors would inform on neighbors…It would have felt like living in a communist country under Herod

He also had such a big ego and he was such a brown-noser to Cesar, that he totally impoverished the jewish people because he had to pay for all of the things that he was building…

He built an entire city in tribute to Cesar and named it Caesarea

He built monuments and temples and everything he did for Cesar. The largest port in the world was in Athens, Herod decided that that is not big enough and builds a port in Caesarea that is twice as large as the one in Athens, they were pouring concrete underwater which was cutting edge technology. The entire city was covered in marble

Herod built temples and fortresses

There was this rock Plateau called Masada, it is commonly believed that Masada is where David hid when he was on the run from King Saul

Masada means fortress

So what Herod does is he says, “if your greatest king David had to live here in poverty and in hiding, I’m going to live here in luxury,” and he had this massive fortress built, he had a cistern that held 10.5million gallons of water. This was all in the middle of the dessert…

And do you want to know how he paid for it? Taxes!

Some scholars estimated that between 80 to 90 percent of what you made went out the door to the temple, the priesthood, to Cesar and to Herod.

They couldn’t stand this guy…He was an abomination!

Herod built this stadium so far we’ve unearthed 390,000 seats, The rose bowl has 90,000 seats…The Golden one center has 17,000 seats…this was 390,000!

He tried to win back the Jews by rebuilding the temple, they used 2.3 million stones weighing thousands of tons each… and it was this huge glorious temple…In 2007 the quarry from where these stones were cut was excavated

Even though the temple was glorious Herod wanted a Roman Empirical Eagle on the top of it to show that the power of Rome…This caused a revolt where 20,000 people were eventually crucified

One day disciples are walking with Jesus and they say, wow isn’t this temple great and Jesus says, I tell you one stone will not stand on the other”…That was a huge statement. I mean this thing was a marvel

Herod decided that he wanted a fortress if the people ever revolted against him. He called it the Herodium

Herod decided he wanted it on top of a mountain, the problem was that the mountain that was there was not in the right spot. So Herod used jewish slave labor to dig up the mountain and had it moved just about 100 yards to the exact spot where he wanted his fortress. I have stood on top of this mountain fortress, it is massive.

So the interesting thing is that Jesus standing on the Mount of Olives would have seen this, so when he says if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can tell a mountain to go and toss itself in the sea.

As if to say Herod did this through bruit force, I’m telling you that you can even greater things through faith

Now Herod would die before Jesus was ever an adult but all the way though the ministry of Jesus he would critique Herod and his buildings and accomplishments

Almost as if to say, you think this is power?

You think that is what the king looks like?

Let’s continue the story

Matthew 2:13–16 NIV

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: “Out of Egypt I 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.

Do you see how this is just totally consistent with Herod’s rule and reign

Herod rules with fear and force and Jesus rules through sacrificial love

I think the question becomes…

Which kingdom do you give yourself to?

Which king has your heart

Is it the Herod’s of this world? I mean they can do spectacular stuff…

They can build big buildings

They are spectacular

they can bring political stability…I mean a few people will need to die

They can bring military power to the land

The Herods of this world get a lot done and what matters for them is that they have your allegiance

I don’t think it is any mistake that the messiah is born into a situation where you have Herod on the throne

I think God wanted to set this contrast up almost to ask….which king gets your heart?

Which king gets your allegiance?

Micah gives us more hints about what this true king will look like:

Micah 7:18–20 NIV

Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. You will be faithful to Jacob, and show love to Abraham, as you pledged on oath to our ancestors in days long ago.

Micah 7 is an absolute contrast to a king like Herod

Because in the king

The coming king is a king that loves

and how is his love shown?

What does Micah 7 say?

Characteristics of the Good king (Micah 7:18-20)

The king forgives

Where Herod holds grudges, Jesus forgives

The king delights in mercy

Herod delighted in Cruelty

The king hurls our iniquities into the depths

Herod has a secret police and networks of informants who are searching for your iniquities

The King reigns in faithful love

He is faithful to Jacob…

that word faithful means to give a hand or to deliver

The King keeps his promises

And show love to Abraham…

The last trait of this coming king is that he is going to love

Christmas is one of the most remarkable events to ever happen on earth

The the ancient of days steps out of heaven in opposition and in defiance to the Herods of this world

The kings that feed off your love and adoration

But the ancient of days, the almighty didn't come so that you could heap affection on him and tell him how great he is….

Jesus comes to reveal his own love

See the story of christmas is there to force a choice.

Which king will you choose?

The king who takes lives to keep a grip on power?

Or the king who gives his life so that lost people can be found?

Which king will you give your heart to?

Which king will you give your allegiance to?

The Herods of this world? or the ancient of days who stepped out of heaven

And maybe you’re here this morning and you need to make a choice