This is a one person play. The pastor (or other minister) comes to the stage as one of the shepherds who was in the field with the sheep the night the angel(s) appeared. It chronicles that event and his experience seeing the baby Jesus in the manger.
When Jesus was born, He was carried out of the cave by Mary or Joseph, but when He rose again, He carried us out, out of our spiritual death, and gave us new life. Through the birth of His only begotten Son, God was preparing to manifest His saving grace in you and me.
We need to stand up and speak up for what is right. We need the Holy Spirit to empower us as witnesses of Jesus in a world where a small segment of society, which has been given the megaphone of the media, will try to shout us down. When we come out of an upper room experience after a powerful Sunday morning worship service, we need to go out speaking the wonderful works of God. We need to take it to the streets without fear or intimidation because we have not been given “a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
In response to the cries of the people, God did indeed raise up another judge, and again this was an unlikely candidate. God chose Deborah, who was “a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth.” She “was judging Israel at that time” (v. 4). She is the only judge in the Bible who was also a prophet, and she is the only judge who was a woman. Indeed, in the entire Bible, she is the only woman described as being in a leadership role in Israel.
These people could not control Jesus, and they could not corrupt Jesus, so they decided that they had to kill Jesus. They were suffering from JDS, commonly known as Jesus Derangement Syndrome, and they were triggered by His presence and His speech. To carry out their nefarious plan of murder they bribed Judas with thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus. They would do whatever was necessary to end the ministry and even the life of Jesus.
WILL THE STONES CRY OUT? By Mark E. Hardgrove, PhD Luke 19:29-44, NKJV 29 And it came to pass, when He drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mountain called Olivet, that He sent two of His disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village opposite you, where as you enter you will find a colt tied,...
Doctor Luke did his homework, and the Holy Spirit ensured the validity of what he wrote.
We can have complete confidence in the texts of the Christian Bible. The events recorded in both Luke and Matthew’s Gospels, regarding the conception, birth, and nativity of Jesus Christ are absolutely true. God really did become one of us, putting on the robes of human flesh, yet without sin. God’s only begotten Son was Mary’s firstborn Son, and He was born in the little town of Bethlehem, just as the Prophet Micah said He would.
As the Christmas season begins, let’s look at eight prophecies concerning the birth and early years of the Messiah. We’ll look first at the prophecies in the Old Testament and then the New Testament fulfillment, remembering the astronomical improbability that these could have been fulfilled by chance alone. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of more than 300 prophecies.
In our text, we see a couple – Zacharias and his wife, Elizabeth – who came from the priestly lineage of their forefather Aaron. They were righteous, they walked in God’s commands and ordinances, and they were blameless ... but they were barren. They had no children, but even with the prospect of children quickly fading, they never stopped serving the Lord, and they had never stopped praying for their miracle.
