G'day, Dave here.

Merry Christmas and welcome to Stories of a

Faithful God.

The birth of a new king can be a time of great joy and celebration, a time of hope, looking

forward to the future prosperity of a kingdom.

But it can also be a time of fear and anger, especially when there's a rival to the throne.

At Jesus birth, we see both songs of joy are sung not because of an uncertain hope, but a

guaranteed hope, a delight in the fulfilment of promises of who this child is and what

he'll do.

But it's also a time of fear and anger.

King Herod and in fact, all of Jerusalem are worried about this new arrival.

Herod is so worried, he kills every infant boy in Bethlehem just to rid himself of this rival

king.

There's a sense in which if you want to fight against this king, King Jesus, you should

tremble in fear.

But if you understand the joy of coming under his rule, then his arrival is the greatest

news in all the world.

To delve into why Jesus coming is so good, I'm going to do things a little differently today.

Instead of one bigger story, I'm going to tell three shorter stories.

Each one looks at what God said about the coming of Jesus in the time of different Old

Testament kings.

Each highlights how Christ's kingship is different to those kings and the astounding

blessing we have if and when we are in his kingdom.

And so, without further ado, I present to you this Christmas edition of Stories of a

Faithful God.

The first king we're going to consider is King David.

He lives around about a thousand bc, and he's just reached a high point, not just in his

life and career, but in the nation of Israel.

God had promised to give them a land, the land of Canaan.

He'd promised to make them into a vast people.

And he'd promised to bless them and bless the

world through them.

I think it's fair to say it hasn't been a smooth ride.

Not because God hasn't been faithful to his promises, but because the people keep

rejecting and disobeying Him.

They wanted the blessings.

They just haven't always wanted God.

And it's led to wars and divisions and evil.

They haven't been able to enjoy peace and rest in the land.

Any progress they have made has been by the grace of God.

But now God's put a king on the throne of Israel who actually wants to serve God.

He isn't perfect.

He certainly sins, although his biggest and

most obvious sins are still to come.

But in general, he wants to Trust and obey the true and living God.

He's made Jerusalem his capital city.

That's where he has his palace and his throne.

But he knows that his kingship is subordinate to the kingship of God.

God's the overall King of Israel.

And so to show that David's brought the

representation of God's throne on earth, the Ark of the Covenant, up to Jerusalem in 2

Samuel or 2 Samuel chapter 6, David's brought the Ark into the city with great fanfare and

rejoicing.

David went along in front dancing before the Lord.

The ark's never really had a permanent resting place in the land, which shows the turmoil

that Israel's been through.

Now though, finally it's coming to a place of rest which points to how Israel is also at

rest.

In fact, chapter seven starts with a great

statement of rest.

King David's in his palace at rest from all all his enemies.

It's a picture of safety and security.

God's blessed them with that rest in the peace and security.

Though there's something troubling King David so verse 1 of 2 Samuel 7 says this.

When the king had settled into his palace and the Lord had given him rest on every side from

all his enemies, the king said to the prophet Nathan, look, I'm living in a cedar house

while the Ark of God sits inside tent curtains.

This tent or tabernacle, as one great preacher said, tabernacle is a four syllable word that

just means tent, which is a four letter word that I can actually spell.

This tent has been constructed hundreds of years before at Mount Sinai.

It acts as a mobile temple.

It's a way of God saying, wherever you go,

Israel, I'll go with you.

It's a source of great comfort and joy.

God's been with them as they've wandered in

the wilderness for 40 years he's been with them in the years it's taken to conquer the

land.

He's always been with them and been their God.

But now David's thinking, we've reached the high point.

We've settled in the land.

We have a permanent capital city.

I as the king have been able to build a permanent palace, a real home.

We don't need a mobile home for God anymore.

And I certainly don't want to outshine God's

home with my home.

It's time to build a beautiful permanent

temple or house on earth for God as he shares this plan with the prophet Nathan.

It sounds logical, it sounds godly even.

It sounds like David has a great concern for

the honour and glory of God.

And so, without actually consulting God, Nathan, the prophet says in verse three, go

and do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you.

Unfortunately, Nathan's jumped the gun.

He should have waited to actually hear back

from God.

That's why you have prophets, right?

They're not simply advisors.

They're there to bring the word of God, not

their own word.

And rather surprisingly, God's not entirely on board with David's plan to build him a temple.

It's not that God's angry with David as such, it's just that David's plans and God's plans

don't align.

David should have been more careful to find out what God wants before making this plan.

So that night, God sends a message to Nathan to pass on to David.

The first part of the message is God saying, ah, David, I don't actually need or want a

temple.

If I did, don't you think I would have

commanded someone to build one?

In verse five, God says to Nathan, go to my servant David and say, this is what the Lord

says, and are you to build me a house to dwell in?

From the time I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until today, I have not dwelt in a

house.

Instead, I have been moving around with a tent as my dwelling.

In all my journeys with all the Israelites, have I ever spoken a word to one of the tribal

leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people?

Israel asking, why haven't you built me a house of cedar?

It's so easy for people to come up with grandiose plans.

And we can justify them by saying, of course God is so great, he deserves nothing less than

this.

But God was fine with the tent.

Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that

just because we have great plans and God's great, that God needs what we think he needs.

Rather than David making God look great with a great temple, God's actually going to make

David and his people great.

What he says next is wonderful, but also kind of strange.

At one level, it's a reiteration of promises God's given before.

At least about Israel.

They seem like promises he's already kept.

And yet they look to a future fulfilment, a future new land, a future peace from all their

enemies.

God says in verse 8, this is what the Lord of armies, I took you from the pasture from

tending the flock to be ruler over my people, Israel.

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have destroyed all your enemies before

you.

I will make a great name for you like that of the greatest on the earth.

I will designate a place for my people Israel, and plant them so that they may live there and

not be disturbed again.

Evildoers will not continue to oppress them as they have done ever since the day I ordered

judges to be over.

My people Israel, I will give you rest from

all your enemies.

Do you feel the strangeness of the promise?

The chapter started with David and therefore Israel at peace with all their enemies, safe

in the land God promised.

And yet God's talking about a future place and a future peace, a peace that'll last forever.

And it'll come at a time when David will have a name like that of the greatest on the earth.

It's weird, but it's wonderful.

God's like, you think you're blessed now? You ain't seen nothing yet.

But as if that's not enough, God goes on.

It's like, but wait, there's more.

David's wanted to build a temple, a house for God.

The word house can be used in a couple of ways, both in English and in Hebrew.

Normally it's used for that place where you live, and that's what David had wanted to

build for God.

But the other way to use it is to describe a royal family dynasty.

The current British royal family are the House of Windsor.

They've had other houses in England, like the House of Tudor and the House of Stuart.

Kings and queens tend to get worried about their house in this sense.

They want their family line to continue.

They want a long running dynasty.

Dynasties don't tend to last very long.

Historically though, a really strong one is

about 300 years.

Even when you have a wise ruler, eventually

they die and one of their descendants eventually messes it up.

David's wanted to build a house for God, but instead God's going to build a house for

David, a dynasty for him, A house that doesn't get messed up, a house that'll last forever.

God says to David in verse 12, when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will

raise up after you your descendant who will come from your body, and I will establish his

kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his

kingdom forever.

I will be his father and he will be my son.

When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals.

But my faithful love will never leave him, as it did when I removed it from Saul, whom I

removed from before you.

Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established

forever.

The rest of Israel's history can be viewed through the lens of looking for this son of

David.

With biblical prophecy, though, there's often more than one layer of meaning.

At one level, it's David's son, Solomon.

He builds the temple.

He ushers in a new age of peace.

His reign is the high point, in fact, of

Israel's whole Old Testament history.

At another level, it's every descendant of David who ascends the throne when the kingdom

divides into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

The north goes through multiple houses and dynasties.

I think the shortest one lasts for about seven days.

But in the south, in Judah, it's just one dynasty, the house of David.

It still has problems.

The good kings still die and can never bring

about enough reform.

And bad kings are really bad.

But the house continues at least until after a few hundred years.

Even that comes to an end when Babylon conquers Judah.

God sends Babylon as a punishment for Judah's sins, especially the sins of the kings of

Judah.

What they need is a king who never does evil and who'll never die.

Someone who can rule perfectly forever, never to be replaced by a fool.

A king who can usher in an eternal age of peace and security in a new, safe land.

A son of David who can be the true son of God.

It's not for nothing that both Matthew and Luke include the family tree of Jesus.

Matthew, right at the start of his gospel.

It doesn't make it onto Christmas cards very much, but they're so keen to show that Jesus

really is a descendant of David.

In Luke's gospel from chapter one, verse 31, the angel says to Mary, now listen, you will

conceive and give birth to a son and, and you will name him Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.

He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.

Mark begins his gospel, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

When he says son of God, he's not exactly making a statement about Jesus divinity.

He's saying Jesus is the king that God promised to send.

In David's line, it just so happens that the son of God who God promised to raise up really

is God, the son, the perfect king, the king who will rule forever, the king who will take

his people, all who put their trust in him, to a new land, a new creation, with a new

Jerusalem with where there'll be no more enemies.

Because Jesus has defeated our ultimate enemies.

Sin, the very thing that got in the way of Israel enjoying the land that God had given

them, and death, the defeater of all our hopes.

Jesus has defeated them both.

He's the ultimate warrior king who defends his

people.

No wonder there was so much joy at the first Christmas, because Jesus had arrived to be

that king.

Our next king comes a couple of hundred years after King David.

He's the King of Judah, meaning he's a descendant of David.

He can claim the title of Son of David and even Son of God, but unlike David, he has no

desire to trust and obey God.

In fact, he's pretty horrible.

His name is Ahaz, and this is how he is

introduced in 2 Kings 16 from verse 1.

In the 17th year of Pekah, son of Remaliah, Ahaz son of Jotham, became king of Judah.

Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem.

He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like his ancestor David, but

walked in the ways of the kings of Israel.

He even sacrificed his son in the fire,

imitating the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the

Israelites.

He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills and under every green

tree.

That's not the sort of resume you really want for a king of God's people.

He's evil like the Canaanites had been evil, sacrificing and serving false gods, even

sacrificing his own son.

Sometimes people get a bit worried about God giving the land of Canaan to the Israelites

when there were already Canaanites there.

It sounds a little bit like colonialism, but

you've got to remember the Canaanites were really evil and God was using the Israelites

to bring judgment on them.

God even delayed a few hundred years until their evil had reached its fullest extent.

How terrible then, that a king of Judah is imitating the very things they were destroyed

for.

What makes the passage we're about to look at so remarkable then, is that it's a passage

about God's mercy and salvation for Ahaz and his people.

The passage is in Isaiah.

I know lots of people say Isaiah.

Please forgive me if my pronunciation of names and book titles hurts your ears.

Hopefully you still know what I mean.

The passage happens in the middle of a political and military crisis.

It's a time when the empire of Assyria is getting bigger and bigger, swallowing up

smaller nations.

If you're a King of a smaller nation.

You've basically got three One, keep your head down and hope Assyria won't notice you.

Two, submit to Assyria before they conquer you, hoping that you'll get better terms.

Or three, join an alliance with other kingdoms in the hope that you can then match them in

battle, even their terms of engagement.

So what do you do if you go for option three? You do your calculations.

Figure you need your country and these two other ones.

You approach one king and he's like, yeah, great idea, I'm on board.

You approach the third king and he says, no, he doesn't want any part of it, but you really

need his army.

Well, in this situation, the two countries who are on board gang up, invade the third country

and try to install a new puppet king who'll get on board with the plan.

King Ahaz of Judah is the king who said no.

The other two kings are the king of Israel and the king of Aram, which is Syria.

And when news reaches Jerusalem that these kings are on their way, Ahaz and his people

freak out.

Isaiah 72 says, when it became known to the

house of David that Aram had occupied Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the hearts of his people

trembled like trees of a forest shaking in the wind.

This is where you start to see the grace of God.

God sends the prophet Isaiah to meet King Ahaz.

Interestingly, God tells Isaiah to take his son along.

Sons and their names are an important part of this story.

Isaiah's son's name is Sheer Jashub.

It's a name that means a remnant will return.

It's a name of hope.

It's a reminder from God that when it seems

like all hope is lost, the people of God will never exist again.

A remnant will return.

It's a God given hope.

And hope is exactly what Ahaz needs at the

moment.

God gives him this message in verse four.

He says, calm down and be quiet.

Don't be afraid or cowardly because of these two smouldering sticks, the fierce anger of

Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.

For Aram, along with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah has plotted harm against you.

They say, let's go up against Judah, terrorize it and conquer it for ourselves.

Then we can install Tabeel's son as king in it.

This is what the Lord God says.

It will not happen, it will not occur.

He tells Ahaz to stand firm in his faith and that these countries that are threatening him

will be destroyed.

Then God tells Ahaz to ask him for a sign.

This is more of God's mercy.

He's offering to show Ahaz a sign that he'll

do what he said he'll do.

He's going the extra mile to put Ahaz's heart

at peace.

Ahaz responds with what sounds like a really righteous answer.

He says in verse 12, I will not ask, I will not test the Lord.

Normally that's a really good thing.

Asking God for a sign is evidence of

faithlessness.

God's word is enough.

Trust him and don't ask for signs.

But occasionally, in his kindness, God offers a sign.

And at that point, you don't say no to God.

Ahaz sounds like he's being really godly, but.

But he's actually testing God's patience by

not asking for a sign here.

And you hear the frustration as Isaiah replies

in verse 13, listen, House of David, is it not enough for you to try the patience of men?

Will you also try the patience of my God?

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.

The virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel.

By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating

curds and honey.

For before the boy grows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two

kings you dread will be abandoned.

The Lord will bring on you, your people, and

your father's house.

Such a time as has never been seen since Ephraim separated from Judah.

He will bring the king of Assyria.

The word virgin there can also mean young woman.

It isn't necessarily a virgin birth being spoken about here.

This young woman will have a son who will be called Emmanuel.

Emmanuel means God with us.

God saying to Ahaz, I will be with you and your people.

I will be on your side.

Don't panic.

Don't be afraid of these big scary armies.

I'll fight for you by bringing the Assyrian

army to fight them.

In fact, Assyria'll come so powerfully, it'll be like a rushing flood.

In chapter eight, verse seven, we're told the Lord will certainly bring against them the

mighty rushing water of the Euphrates River.

The king of Assyria and all his glory.

It will overflow its channels and spill over

all its banks.

It will pour into Judah, flood over it and

sweep through, reaching up to the neck.

And its flooded banks will fill your entire land.

Immanuel.

So Assyria will enter Judah, but only up to the neck, and then recede because God is with

them, their enemies will be destroyed.

Though Isaiah goes away and he has a son.

And God tells him to give this name to the boy Mahashalal Hashbaz.

You don't see that one too often in the baby books these days.

It's a name that means speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the spoil.

It's another name that points to God's promise.

That's how quickly Assyria will invade.

Speeding to the plunder, hurrying to the

spoil.

And God's people will be saved because God is

with them.

In verse nine, the people of God sing, Band together, peoples, and be broken.

Pay attention, all you distant lands.

Prepare for war and be broken.

Prepare for war and be broken.

Devise a plan, it will fail.

Make a prediction.

It will not happen.

For God is with us.

Like at so many other times in the Bible, Ahaz is being told not to fear because God is with

his people.

No matter how big and scary and powerful the opposition is, they can't beat God.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

And so the people of God are going to be saved.

And yet they still have this horrible, horrible king, the king who's leading the way

in evil.

A king who, if he leads the people down this

path, will lead them to destruction.

Just like the Canaanites were destroyed.

They need a better king, a greater king, a king who'll lead them in godliness and

righteousness.

God says through Isaiah that that is what's going to happen.

The nation will be destroyed.

They'll end up in darkness and despair.

Both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah will get what they

deserve for their evil and sin.

And yet, wonderfully, amazingly, God gives hope.

Because a new king will come.

A king not like Ahaz, not evil like so many of Israel's kings, but a true king, a king of

wisdom and power, a king of love who'll win victory over the enemies of God's people.

Isaiah says in chapter nine, verse two, the people walking in darkness have seen a great

light.

A light has dawned on those living in the land

of darkness.

You have enlarged the nation and increased its

joy.

The people have rejoiced before you, as they rejoice at harvest time and as they rejoice

when dividing spoils.

For you have shattered their oppressive yoke

and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor, just as you did on the day of

Midian.

For every trampling boot of battle and the bloodied garments of war will be burned as

fuel for the fire.

For a child will be born for Us.

A son will be given to us, and the government

will be on his shoulders.

He will be named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty

God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

The dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with

justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.

Many years later, a young woman, who's not just a young woman, she's a virgin, becomes

pregnant.

And so God says, this child shall be called Emmanuel.

God with us this time.

It's not just that God's working for his

people.

He's actually there in the flesh.

God with us, a better king than Ahaz, a perfect king.

A king who will bring light and joy and salvation.

Jesus, whose name means God, Saves.

His dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with

justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

This is the king we need, a king who it's a joy to submit to, a king who won't lead us to

death and destruction, but to life.

The last king we'll be looking at comes during the reign of a king we've met in our Daniel

series, King Belshazzar.

You may remember that Belshazzar was a fool.

God had been really patient with his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, teaching him with

a bunch of different lessons.

The last lesson Nebuchadnezzar had to learn was about where greatness comes from and who's

truly great.

To teach that, God had stripped Nebuchadnezzar of his greatness and sent him insane.

He had to live like an animal out in the field with the dew falling on him, eating grass, his

hair and nails growing so long he started to even look like an animal.

One of the things we didn't talk about in that chapter is how sin makes us more like animals.

Humans are made in the image of God.

And so when we turn away from God, it

dehumanizes us.

We become more wild, less wise, less able to think clearly.

For Nebuchadnezzar, God gave him back his mind and he acknowledged God as the truly great

one.

Now this was public knowledge.

Nebuchadnezzar made it public knowledge by

writing a public letter about it.

You can imagine his press officer saying, do

you really want to do that?

It's not so great for your image.

But Nebuchadnezzar had become more concerned with God's image than his own.

Lots of people, I assume, ignored his message.

But if anyone should have listened, if anyone

should have learned the lesson, surely it'd be the kings who came after him.

But like I said before, King Belshazzar is a fool.

He refuses to accept and learn the lesson.

He's more concerned with his own power and his

own prestige and the prestige of his kingdom rather than the prestige of God.

And so, in the first year of King Belshazzar's reign, God sends a vision to Daniel.

It's a vision of four kingdoms like Belshazzar's.

And they're represented by beasts, wild beasts, violent and bloodthirsty, lusting

after power, trampling their enemies, because this is what the kingdoms and countries of

humans are like.

They're beastly.

There's a lot of detail in Daniel chapter seven we won't go into, but let me give you

the flavour of these beastly kingdoms in verse two.

Daniel says, in my vision at night, I was watching, and suddenly the four winds of

heaven stirred up the great sea.

Four huge beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other.

The first was like a lion, but had eagle's wings.

I continued watching until its wings were torn off.

It was lifted up from the ground, set on its feet like a man and given a human mind.

Suddenly another beast appeared, a second one that looked like a bear.

It was raised up on one side with three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.

It was told, get up, gorge yourself on flesh.

After this, while I was watching, suddenly another beast appeared.

It was like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back.

It had four heads and it was given dominion.

After this, while I was watching in the night visions, suddenly a fourth beast appeared,

frightening and dreadful and incredibly strong, with large iron teeth.

It devoured and crushed and it trampled with its feet whatever was left.

It was different from all the beasts before it, and it had 10 horns.

This is a terrifying picture of wild, monstrous violence.

People have spent lots of time and energy arguing over who the various kingdoms and

kings are in this vision.

Much more important, though, is the contrast between these beastly kingdoms and who else we

see in this vision after the four beasts.

Daniel sees a vision of God in all his power

and glory.

He's called the Ancient of Days.

He doesn't rise and fall like human kingdoms.

He's been around forever.

He's wearing white, which in biblical times

isn't so much a symbol of peace, but of victory.

These raging beasts have lusted after power and crushed their enemies and gnawed the bones

of their victims.

But their power is nothing compared to God's supremacy.

Listen to the strength in this image, Daniel tells us in verse nine, as I kept watching,

Thrones were set in place and the Ancient of Days took his seat.

His clothing was white like snow and the hair of his head like the whitest wool.

His throne was flaming fire.

Its wheels were blazing fire.

A river of fire was flowing, coming out from his presence.

Thousands upon Thousands served him.

10,000 times 10,000 stood before him.

The court was convened and the books were opened.

The true king, the great king who rules all thrones and wields all power, has arrived for

judgment.

As scary as the beastly human powers may seem, they must submit to the heavenly court.

The fourth beast, the strangest and most terrifying one, is put to death.

God allows the other three a stay of execution, an extension of life.

But it's only for a time.

Now, though, a new king and a new kingdom is about to arrive.

We've seen four beastly kingdoms fallen from their exalted place as God's image bearers,

living like animals, not humans.

They show the evil, ravenous nature of sinful

countries.

But when this new one appears, what does he look like?

He looks like a human, a son of man.

Not beastly, not like an animal, but a king

and kingdom that fulfils what humanity is meant to be.

This human is strange though, because Daniel says he sees him coming with the clouds of

heaven.

Throughout the Bible, the one who comes in clouds is God.

At Mount Sinai, he descended on the mountain in a cloud.

He led the people through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud.

This is God's thing.

But here we have a human, a son of man, coming

with the clouds.

He approaches the Ancient of Days and with the same authority that God used to judge the evil

nations.

Now God authorizes amazing power for this new

king.

I'll read what Daniel sees from verse 13.

He says, I continued watching in the night

visions, and suddenly one, like a son of man, was coming with the clouds of heaven.

He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him.

He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom so that those of every people, nation and

language should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away.

And his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.

How different is this king to the beasts that came before?

They're beastly.

He's truly human.

They grasp after power.

But the Son of Man is given his dominion.

They fight to slaughter people.

But the Son of man is given authority over all

people.

Their time is limited, but the Son of Man will rule his kingdom forever.

So who is this godlike human who's granted power and dominion initially at least not who

you might think?

Daniel asks someone, and he's told that it's the holy ones of the Most High who receive the

kingdom.

God's people.

Anyone who trusts him gets a share in his dominion.

But of course, we can only have that through the true Son of Man, the one perfect human,

the only one who never turned his back on God, but lived perfectly, showing the image of God

perfectly, glorifying God perfectly.

Because he is the perfect Son of God, God the Son.

the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?

I am, said Jesus.

And you will see the Son of Man seated at the

right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

And after his resurrection, when God's declared him innocent by raising him back to

on earth.

He's been given the authority that Daniel saw in his vision.

His kingdom is the only kingdom worth being in.

It's the kingdom that'll last forever, the kingdom that sits perfectly in line with God's

plan for the world.

As we hear the Christmas story, it's easy to just think about baby Jesus, the newborn,

lying in a manger, not speaking, not doing anything, just there.

If that was all it was, then the amount of joy that surrounds the scene wouldn't make any

sense.

The joy comes from knowing who the child is.

He is the Son of David, come to save his people from their enemies, to establish a

kingdom that'll last forever, with a new land of peace and justice and righteousness.

A king who doesn't rule with an evil heart and evil actions, but the true Son of God, who

rules in line with God's good purposes.

He doesn't act like a wild beast.

He is the true human.

He's the human who's the perfect image of the living God, because he is God, the Son.

He is God with us.

Thank you once again for tuning in.

I hope this podcast is really helpful for you.

Please get in touch through the website faithfulgod.net to tell me how you're finding

it.

As the new year begins and you think about what ministries to donate to, please consider

this one.

You can donate@faithforgod.net as well.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

Keep trusting Jesus.

Bye for now.