The Fountain Head!

There would have been no angels singing glory to God in the highest. Nobody would have been raised from the dead. Blind eyes would have remained closed, and we would be without a savior.

There wouldn’t have been a cross. The virgin birth was essential, essential. It’s the fountainhead of the miraculous works of redemption. Eight hundred years before Mary received the message, eight hundred years, a prophet spoke into the ear of a king. The kingdom was separated after Solomon, so we had King Saul. Saul, he was deposed and he died on the battlefield.

David arose to the occasion. David had a son, Solomon. Everything went fine. They built a temple. But after Solomon, the hearts of the people began to drift from the Lord, and the Lord allowed enemies to come. And the kingdom actually became divided. That which David ruled over became divided between north and south. And the north and south became enemies of each other. It was really a troubling time.

So the king of Judah, his name was Ahab, he came to understand that he was in big time trouble. And so he was looking for the Lord to give him a message, but the message was, just be quiet, just wait, I’m here to take care of you. But he dismissed that and wasn’t listening to it, and basically was saying, if I only had a sign, if I only had some kind of a sign.

So the Lord says, through the prophet Isaiah, chapter 7 and verse 14, I’ll give you a sign. I’ll give you a marker. I’ll give you a signature. I’ll give you my word. A virgin will conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. If you don’t understand the promises that were made to David, this verse won’t make sense to you. You see, the message came from the Lord to David, I’m establishing your throne, and your throne will last basically forever. And that doesn’t even kind of make sense to us if we don’t understand the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, because during the millennial reign, David, King David, wherever he’s buried, will come back to life and he will sit on the throne of Jerusalem. So here’s Ahab, he’s worried, he’s saying, we’re going to get wiped out, there’ll be none of us left, I can’t fight these armies that are coming at us.

And the Lord is saying, there’s going to be a virgin coming forth from your family, and it will be a miraculous thing she will conceive, and the one that will come forth from her shall be called God among us.

God has arrived, Emmanuel, 800 years in advance. It’s so wonderful to read the Gospels and to pair it up with all of the prophecies, all the promises about the Messiah who was coming, the very town that he was born in, right down to pretty well the calendar day that he was born.

The fact that visitors would come from other nations and the wise men, as they’re called, bring gifts. The fact that the king would come unhinged, his name was Herod, he would come unhinged because he would be fearful during the birthing time of Jesus. Herod was at the end of his days, he was not a well man.

And he feared that he wouldn’t die quietly, just on his own. And he was worried, you see, there were many empires at that time fighting and skirmishing with each other. And Herod, Rome wasn’t as strong at the time of the birthing of Christ, Herod, Rome wasn’t as strong as it had been. And it was being defeated by the Persians, who at that time were called the Parthians. And so there was great concern, there was great concern in Herod’s mind that other armies would come and ruin them because the Roman armies were not standing up against the enemies. They just weren’t managing.

And so when Herod heard that from these men from the east, when he heard from them that a king had just been born, he freaked out because this was going to be a challenge to his kingship. You see, he’d become known as the king of the Jews, although he wasn’t Jewish at all. He was a great, great, great, great, great grandson of Esau, who became Edom, who became the Amalekites, who became the enemies of Jacob. King Herod’s family line can be traced right back to Esau. And so here you had Ahab, who was in the Davidic line, and the Lord says, a virgin will conceive. You’re not going to get wiped out, and your great-grandfather David will succeed.

Your family’s not going to get worn out. Beautiful picture of what the Lord was going to do. When I was in public school, grade eight, I had a most wonderful teacher to look after our class.

And I’ve lost your attention for a moment, so I’m just going to go quiet and let this pass because it’s important that you don’t miss. I’m so glad they called for authorities. This is good. This is good. I just saw him. He’s trying to sit up. He’s lucid. He’s fine. He’s with us. So he’s in the good hands of those people in those yellow jackets. He’s coming back. I’ll take that.

So when I was in grade eight, I had a teacher that I feared. I feared because he was so strict, and he was so demanding of us, and he told us, if you will listen to me, and if you’ll learn what I’m teaching you today, no one will ever be able to correct you for your grammar. He made that boast. And every morning, five days a week, when we came into the class, he would write a sentence on the chalkboard, a fairly lengthy sentence. And I hated it because his eyes would be roaming over the class, and he’d look at me and say, Mr. Forrest, stand to your feet. You stood to your feet.

What’s the first word on the chalkboard? I said, the. Tell me about the. I’d have to say, well, he said I’d never have to forget. I would remember, but I’m not remembering very well. But it’s an article. It’s a mail article. It’s this, it’s that, it’s past tense, it’s present tense, it’s this, it’s this. And we had this whole list of things that we had to attach to that word. So when you came to a word like has, you know, has been, then it would be, you know, past tense, present tense, future tense.

So we learned to parse. That was the word. Anybody go through that in school? Okay, so you know what I’m talking about. I’ll stop babbling, stop babbling about it. So you learn how to parse a sentence, which means that you took every word, and you drilled down on it, and you studied it. So I’m going to bore you out of your mind this morning as I take you to parse the prediction, the prophecy about this little virgin and how she was going to conceive and bear a son. I call it the merry miracle. The merry miracle is that God is going to be among us. And the way that he began to be among us is he was tabernacled.

I’ve been talking about that word quite a bit, right? He would be tabernacled among us. In fact, I’ve got new wording that I picked up through my studies this week. God was willing to nest in the womb of a humble little common girl named Mary. John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word. We know what the Word is. The Word is the Bible, right? The Word. In the beginning was the Word, but it goes on to say, and the Word was God. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t like that. And by the way, I checked out their Bible this week.

I don’t have a copy, but I found it online. See those words? Was the Word, and the Word was God. They changed the last word, which is G-O-D. They changed it to lower, lower cap. So God, they would leave in there with a capital G. But when it came to the, and the Word was God, they added the letter A. And here’s how you would read their Bible. The Lord God was there, and also there was another little God, a little God. And yet the Lord God says, the Lord our God is one. And there’s none beside him. But they’ve actually changed the scripture.

This is why it’s so important that we can parse every verse and check it out. And where they got off with changing that verse in the Bible, it was to kind of comfort them and would fall in line with their thoughts. Now, then it goes on in the 14th verse, and the Word became human. The Word took upon the robe of flesh. The Word became flesh and lived, tabernacled, nested among us. We haven’t started parsing yet. We’re gonna go to that. So the Word, this is the first word of that prophecy, okay? Isaiah 7, this is the first word. Uh-oh, I’ve got it here, don’t worry.

First word is therefore, and it’s an adverb, okay? So this is the prophet saying, don’t you worry, God’s got it under control. And I’m gonna give you a prophecy. Therefore, therefore, the Lord, and that word Lord in the original Hebrew is spelled A-D-O-N-A-I, or you and I would think of it as Adonai.

One of my favorite songs, I can’t quote it all for you, but I think the song is called El Shaddai. How many are familiar with that? El Shaddai, El Shaddai. Well, this is another name, and when you sing that song, you’ll sing El Shaddai, Adonai. So that’s the one. Now, this is a word that the Hebrew, the Jewish people would use for God because they’re afraid to use the word Yahuwah, Jehovah. They look upon God’s name Jehovah as being so precious and so holy, so untouchable, and we are so removed from it, we dare not speak his name.

So they have other names for the Lord because Jehovah is the highest word. Some other names are Adonai, El Shaddai, Yahuwah, Elohim, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Shalom. All of these names give us an understanding of His dignity, of his power, and of his essence.

Every name unfolds another whole landscape for you to come to know God. Just to call him the Lord God is not enough. That tells you nothing. You need more. Wow. Oh, I’m a mess. Did you ever watch, it wasn’t Star Wars, it was that other movie with Captain Kirk? And it didn’t come true. What did they do? They stoned him. So, here’s the Lord saying, you don’t have to trust Isaiah for this. I’m telling you, Isaiah is not trying to say it nicely. You know, we can take a verse of the Bible and we can say, let me tell you what I believe this says. In the synagogue, it would be called the seat of Moses.

Or somebody wouldn’t tell you the word of God. They would say, well, I won’t read you the word of God. I’ll give you something else instead. This is my understanding of it. That’s man’s idea, and it’s not the word. It’s a description of the word. Here the Lord God himself is giving you this announcement. And why? Because God is being very bold about, I’m sending my only begotten son, and I’m going to do it in a way that’s miraculous. You’ll never believe it until it happens.

The Lord himself is giving you a promise. He will give, bestow, impart. He will grant a sign. And it’s not just for Ahaz, but it’s for all the people at that time, and it’s for you and I. There was a sign 800 years before. The Virgin Mary had a visit by an angel. The prophecy came forth. It will be, and I think it’s still coming, the sign, a signal, a banner. You see, the word sign, we can’t pronounce the Hebrew. All those funny little squiggly marks there, that’s literally Hebrew. And then in Hebrew, if you were to try and pronounce it, it’s O-W-T. We don’t go there. But then that word sign could mean any one of these.

So they don’t have a gazillion words, and that’s the way it was in Swahili, too, as I learned Swahili. They don’t have as many words. They have a word like you and I, love. But then we have lots of other words that we get out of the Bible, like agape, love, et cetera, et cetera. So here’s several words that could be actually written down as O-W-T, a distinguishing mark, a banner, a remembrance, a miraculous sign, a token, a miracle, or proof. The Lord himself is going to give you a proof that he’s with you, a proof that he is going to keep his promise to David, which is a promise to all of Israel, a sign.

Please notice with me, not a virgin, the virgin, the virgin, the virgin that God has chosen. When did God choose Mary? Well, the word of God tells us, 1 Peter 2, you were chosen before the foundation of the earth. You were chosen for your part in the redemptive plan. So how far back was Mary chosen? Chosen before creation, from well before. You know where it says, in the beginning God made? I want you to know that the word the is not, it throws us off. We think about the beginning. We started our service this morning because I have a clock in my office that’s slow. Someone came and rapped on my door and said, it’s six minutes after. I said, it’s time for us to begin.

So we actually began at six minutes after 11. That was the beginning. So when you read in the beginning God, the is not a good word to be there. It helps us to read. It’s not in the beginning, in beginning. The word, the word was with God and the word was God before the creation, before the beginning, in beginning God. And so here, in beginning, way back in what you and I know of as time, God selected the virgin. The virgin will be with child, that’s feminine, singular. I knew you’d want to know that.

And on our English, the virgin will be pregnant. Do you know who really stumbles over this? It’s the Jewish people themselves. They really stumble on this one. They struggle with it. But it’s in the Bible, what are they going to do? The virgin and will be with child, that’s still hara. Feminine, singular means she will be pregnant. And she will call, she will name, I’ve given you lots of stuff there. She will call him Emmanuel. Please note, singular and masculine.

So many times the Lord is referred to as him or as he. That’s the pronoun in front of the Lord God’s name. Pastor Dave, why do you even have to mention that? Because, who should be surprised, the gender of God in secular seminaries.

Those two words don’t even go together, do they? A secular seminary. But they’re there. And do you know that they don’t like to refer to God as him because one of their graduate students, a good friend of mine, doesn’t matter her gender, whoops, she said to me, and she attended our Bible college when I was there and she was in my class. And she was one of my favorite friends. And she married the president of our class. And April and I were best friends with her and her husband until she passed about five years ago.

But she went to a seminary, one of those dead cemeteries. And what she learned there was, don’t get excited about God being father, that maybe he’s God mother. And, you know, a movie came out about that to kind of fortify it. Wasn’t it called The Shed or something like that? Pardon? The Shack. And in The Shack, I haven’t read it. Apparently, it’s a movie. I don’t want to see it. I’m not interested. If you gave me a free book about Casper the Ghost, I would say, thank you very much. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t want to read that. You could say, here’s a book about Captain Kirk up in the, you know, in the universe. 

I’m not interested. And I’m not interested in anybody who would say God might be she. Not interested. Did you see it? No. Did you read it? I did not. You see, it goes along with the gender thing. And the whole gender thing has just, you know, God with us. Emmanuel, this is so important. This is the kernel. This is the seed. I’m going to tell you some things this morning I never saw before. I’ve never seen some of the things I’m going to tell you about. I’ve never preached this message before. Jesus Christ, you call him Emmanuel. Jesus Christ, the word Messiah, is what is significant.

The Christ is the Messiah. Jesus Christ, Messiah, the anointed one. These words help us to understand he’s the Christ. He’s the Messiah. He’s the anointed one. But he’s more than that.

He’s the cornerstone. He’s the firstborn of all creation. He’s the head of the church. He’s the holy one. He’s the judge. He’s the king of kings. He’s the Lord of Lords. He’s the light of the world. He’s the prince of priests. And he’s the son of God. He’s the son of man. He’s the word, the word of God, the alpha, the omega, the Emmanuel, the Lord of all, the true God, the word of life, the author and the perfecter of our faith, the bread of life and the bridegroom, the good shepherd, the high priest, the lamb of God, the mediator, the rock, the resurrection and the life, the savior, the true vine, the way, the truth and the life.

God be praised. These are all identification names for Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the glorious one. He used to sing a song.

How big is God? How big is God? How wide his vast domain. He’s big enough to rule the universe, yet small enough to live within my heart. All of those names speaking of who he is, and yet he chooses to live. Within our hearts, you say, David, you didn’t just discuss discover that this week. No, but I’m coming to it. The fountainhead.

Of our own redemption, an angel answers and says unto the little girl who says, how can this be? I’ve had no intimacy with a man. And the angel says the Holy Ghost. Shall come upon you.

And the power of the highest will overshadow you. There are people who struggle with how did the seed of God arrive in her womb? Don’t overthink that. Don’t go there. It says the Holy Ghost shall come upon. What happened in Genesis chapter one? The spirit of the Lord hovered over the earth. That is how the seed was planted in her womb.

The power of the highest will overshadow you. And therefore, that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the son of God. I’m probably going to from my own self do a deep study on just those three words, son of God. And you’d say, what can you learn from that? The Bible is so rich, it’s so deep. It’s so incredible. There’s lots to learn just from those words.

I’ve already stated without the merry miracle. There are no other miracles. Impossible. There had to be this miracle through this miracle, God reveals. His willingness to nest. In fallen human vessels. I told you last week that there was a pope. He went by the name of Pius. And in the eighteen hundreds, he got this thing that he claimed was, I guess he claimed that he got a revelation. And this was his revelation. Not only Jesus was holy from his birth, but his mother, Mary, was holy from her birth. And he named it the Immaculate Conception.

There are churches in our province, maybe not far from here, that will be called the Church of the of the Conception. And they mean the well, I remember I used to deliver bread when I was with my dad. There was a monastery in Hamilton. And it was called. It was for nuns, and it was called the Monastery of the. It was called the Monastery of the Conception. The Immaculate Conception, that was the Immaculate Conception. And I never knew what that meant at the time, but it means it’s suggesting what’s this, what this is so important. It means that when God chose her, he did not chose choose somebody like you and me, because we like David said, he said, I was I was crafted.

I was born. In sin, we don’t have to go very far on that, we all understand this born in sin. So the Pope Pius said, and the whole church believes it to this day. That church. That she was born in an immaculate way, that not only did Mary receive the child Jesus. But Mary herself was imposed upon her mother in an immaculate way. And I have a problem just with the theology of that. The marvel of the whole picture of God choosing. God choosing to be birthed through a woman that needed salvation.

Pastor Dave, are you sure she needed salvation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. Luke’s Gospel, Chapter one. Mary shows up at Elizabeth’s house. And Elizabeth immediately prophesies the mother of my Lord. And this should have been the most. This had to be the most wonderful news in Mary’s heart, because she now has somebody that believes her story and doesn’t have to work at it because God revealed it to Elizabeth. 

And what is Mary’s response? Years ago, when I passed at a church in London every Sunday, pretty well, not because I wanted them to, but because the people wanted to sing it. We used to sing what’s called the Magnificat. My voice is shot. Forgive me, I want to try it. Mary cries out, My soul doth magnify the Lord. My soul doth magnify the Lord. For he. No, I can’t do it.

I can’t sing it. My. They’re not hearing that over the Internet, so I’m going to help you. Thank you. Give it to us again. And I’m going to mouth up for the people on the Internet. I’m rejoicing in God, my savior, my savior. She does. And somebody said, no, no, no. She meant the savior of the world. That is where parsing comes important. It doesn’t say the savior of the world.

It says my savior. It is a definite, definite word. And you can’t change it. She said, I need a savior. Why did she need a savior? Because she was not birthed immaculately. And you say, Pastor, why are you getting so excited about it? Because if God would choose to live in her heart. As he manufactures and manages the universe, he’s small enough to live in my heart. I’ll give you a new password if you ever want to use it. You’re welcome. 

Dirty Dave. The word of God is pretty. Brutal, it says of every one of us, it says you’re sick in the head. It says the whole head is sick. It doesn’t mean your head is a big pimple. It means that our thinking is also wicked, twisted until redemption comes. A truly twisted person can’t even speak in lumberjack terms. They can’t get rid of lumberjack terms because their minds immediately go into all kinds of words that don’t belong in civilized society. The whole head is sick.

Our planning, our thinking, we need redemption. And the Lord chose to reveal himself. He chose as a bird would say, this is a good place to make a nest. It’s so fun. We do everything that we can to invite the birds into our neighborhood. And I put little, I made pathetic little shacks for the birds up in the trees. A couple of them got rejected. But to watch these birds come along and oftentimes it’s a male bird that comes along and he goes to her, he says, I found a place, I found a way. And so pretty soon you see the him and the her.

She goes in, comes out, he goes in, comes out. And and so fun, you see them whacking their beaks together and say, yeah, this is the place. This is the place. The Lord, the Lord looked at all. He considered the universe, he considered everything that he made. And of all the options that he had, he chose little Mary who needed a savior. And that means that he chooses you and he chooses me. And when you take when you take that that process away, just oh, no, no. She was absolutely perfect.

That kind of leaves me with what chance do I have? You see, the fact that the Lord chose this little woman who needed a savior is a beautiful light shines in our darkness and says. And he wants to be birthed in your heart. No, Mary. No fountainhead. No miracle. No heaven. No way to deal with the devil. Our arch enemy. No way to deal with bondage. No way to give us comfort. All hope is gone. Without the fountainhead.

I just received the word just hours ago from Walkerton, Ontario, where my brother, a retired pastor. Wrote about his son in law. He spoke to me a few weeks ago and said. We’re very 

concerned for Rich. Rich’s wife is my niece. And she’s got a very serious malady that has crippled her up and she’s in a wheelchair. But she had conceived and bore a daughter. And that daughter has a mature woman’s fabric and frame. But she has the mind of a 12 year old.

So a mother who’s confined to a wheelchair. And a daughter who needs comfort, comfort, comfort around the clock. And rich wasn’t feeling good. And so he went to the doctor and they started doing tests. And the doctor sat him down and said, Rich, I’ve got news. You have stage four cancer. You might last 60 days. And so I get a message last night from my brother. My brother pastored all of his days. We’re fairly close. So my heart goes out to him this morning. He said, Rich is sinking fast.

And by the way, they have another beautiful daughter who lives in Ottawa. She’s got some kind of a diabolical disease. She could die any moment. And then she has a daughter. That girl has a daughter who’s 28. And she’s got something that’s eating at her brain from the inside. Without the fountainhead, there’s no hope. Rich and his daughter, his wife, Tammy, are godly people. Godly, godly people. The enemy of our bodies can rob us of what we call physical life. But because of the virgin birth, nothing can rob us of our hope. Because that holy thing which shall be of thee shall be called the son of God.

Emmanuel, God has arrived. I’ll be getting a call probably within the next 60 days. Come to Walkerton, Rich has passed. There will be tears. Of course there will be tears. But no loss of hope. That funeral will be a time of celebration of a life well lived. And of a life that goes on. Because Jesus paid it all. Jesus, the son of God. Emmanuel is God with us. You’re never alone.

We have this treasure. She had a treasure. She was an earthen vessel. She was not perfect. We have this treasure. What treasure? The same treasure she had. When I was a little fellow, eight years of age, in a Sunday morning church, the pastor was led in this congregational song. Into my heart, into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. That’s who comes in when we open up our heart.

The treasure that was in that earthen vessel is the same treasure that you have living in you. You are a nest that God has chosen. You are a tabernacle, a place that God has chosen to live. And so much more when we come together. We’re not just individual tabernacles. But when we come together, I hugged you when you came through this door this morning. Right there, I hugged you. I threw my arms around. I said, I love you so much.

And she said, I love you too. You see, when all of these little tabernacles get together, there is something that holds us together in a beautiful way. There’s a pastor somewhere down in North Carolina. And he preached a sermon and I got a copy of it. And he had some scientists say to him, your body is composed of gazillions of cells. And they can, with a microscope, they can separate those and look at every little cell. But here’s the question. Here’s the question. Think about it, Bill. Here’s the question. Your person that I’m looking at right now is composed of billions of cells, okay? Kind of like little particles of dust, isn’t it? Like we’re all little particles of dust. And the scientist said, what do you think holds all of those cells together?

How come you walk down the street and a big wind comes?  It might take your hat or in the case of some of you, your wig or your toupee, but your body holds together. What is it that keeps your body together? And they have discovered there’s this marvelous something that every little cell is coated with. You wanna believe that we were frogs at one time or we were apes swinging from tree? That’s fine. You can never answer the wonderful, wonderful, powerful, glorious thing.

We are powerfully and wonderfully made. And there’s this little ingredient that’s around every cell and it’s called laminin, laminin. All your cells are glued together with laminin. When we come together as the Lord’s house, not particles of dust and not molecular cells, but as we come together and celebrate Jesus and as we hug one another, we’re the huggingest church and we’re proud of that. I put that little paper out today. We’re the church that’s known for, I should have added, somebody said, did you write this? I said, I did.

Midnight, no, I think it was more like three in the morning. The other morning I wrote it. So this is the church that’s known for what? We should be known also for, we give out free hugs. And what motivates us to do that? Because there’s this laminin, laminated, right? You know that word, laminated, glued together. So not only do we have this treasure and earth and vessels, watch this, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. This treasure that you have is why you’re so beautiful and wonderful.

It’s why the angels marvel when they look at you. When I look at you, I marvel too, but maybe for different reasons. But they marvel when they see us because they know what we look like to the devil. We look like lunch to him. And to the angels, we look like a pile of, but the Lord looks at us and says, I choose you. And he sends his son to the cross, not to prove something, but to redeem something. And that something is you. So we have this common thing. I dropped this one more little piece.

I’m getting thoughts, I’m getting thoughts. We’re all like little babies. We’re called sons and daughters of God. Now are we the sons of God. Okay, a son. What womb did we as sons emerge from? We all emerged from the same tomb with Jesus because when he went to the cross, he bore your sin and mine. When they buried him, we were buried with him, dying to sin, dying to self. And when he rose again, we rose again with him. And now as he lives in newness of life, because when you get to heaven, he still has nail scars.

Oh, I gotta stop. I gotta mention this. Do you know who Jack Hibb is? If I ever get a chance, I’m gonna have a chat with him. I say, Jack, you’re on your TV show said, this is in the last 48 hours. He said, somebody asked him, I’ve got a wooden leg. When I get to heaven, will I have my real leg back? And he said, well, of course you will. I take issue, Jack. Revelation 5, John says, I saw a lamb with the marks of death. I saw the lamb with the marks of death.

I’m not sure you’ll have a new leg. It’s such a silly thought, of course. But somebody says, well, I’d kind of like to have two legs when I get there. I’m just saying, we will be known as we are known. I’m the idiot who’s lost his hair, but still got hair growing out of his ears. And if you look in there, you can see daylight.

It won’t change much. You get to heaven, say, oh yeah, I remember him. Heaven’s gonna be wonderful. And we’re all bound for it. Well, if I could think of a wonderful song, I’d sing it for you. But then if I sing a song right now, you’ll lose your appetite. So we’re gonna lose it right now. Heavenly Father, thank you that we have a treasure and we are just earthen vessels. We would have otherwise been castaways.

And you chose me and you chose these, my friends, before you ever said, let there be light. You chose us. So of course, we choose you. Thank you for your mercy, your grace. And thank you for that little lady called Mary. Scared to death, surely she was. Not only would the power of the spirit be with her, but she was gonna live for 30 years with a reputation that was not good because nobody could figure out who Jesus’ father was. But we know and we rejoice in that. Thank you, Lord God, for your goodness.

We pray over our food today. Give thanks for it. In Jesus’ name.

Amen.