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1:22So just to make sure everybody's on the same page. There's the train. There's the train station. Station. And this is a train route. In fact, it's the route that I used to go when I would go to seminary. Every time I'd go up to seminary, I would jump on a train down in the San Diego area and I would go up through Solana Beach, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Anaheim, come to Los Angeles, change trains. I head out to Ventura and then get picked up by a seminary student who would take me to the seminary. And I really enjoyed that time studying and just taking in the beautiful landscape and just thinking. And it was always dark when I would get on in the morning. But each one of these train stations had unique features about it. Came to Anaheim, there's the big stadium there, and Santa Ana had its features. And San Juan Capistrano was one of the ones I enjoyed, just its uniqueness. They had a really great Mexican cookie place right outside the train station. And on one occasion, I remember having a scavenger hunt with my kids one morning. Do you guys remember that? The great Mexican cookie hunt, right? Well, it starts down in. San Diego. We're going around, kids were going around looking, following this map. It took us to the train station. We had to get on the train. We had to go all the way up into San Juan Capistrano. We had to get out and then go walk around and find this place. And I mean, it cookies as big as your hand and beautiful, painted, and everything.

3:21But each one of these had its unique little character. And what I'd like to do tonight is think along, get board another train, kind of like the gospel train. That same train station, by the way. You can see it there. I will call this the Joseph train station. That's where we begin, looking in Matthew. We get on the train station there, and we'll ride this train all the way into eternal glory. But we get on here at the Gospel of Matthew, giving us an announcement of the birth of Christ.

4:12Matthew chapter 1, verse 20, you're very familiar with these words. Joseph, the son of David, you remember he had Mary, he found out Mary had turned up pregnant. And Joseph is ready to put her away. And God says this. Sends an angel. He considered to put Mary away. But when he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. May very well be that's the date that we are celebrating Christmas on, is closer to his conception. But that is the incarnation, right? The conception.

5:12Now, all this took place. Well, he was supposed to, she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. What's conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. A complete different nature. God among us. Now, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us. And what Scripture does is it, coming from this point to the end of the canon of Scripture, we have the unpacking of what all this means, God with us, and what our response is. Response should be. It's all here. But the New Testament is going to draw that out for us. And so that's what I want to do this morning. Just looking at a few trainings. We'll stop at a few train stations along the way, if you want to put it in that term. We'll walk through the New Testament in a fashion that looks at this gospel train that takes us from this incarnation into eternal glory. We'll look at Simeon. We'll look at the Magi. We'll stop at the Disciple Station. We'll look at Peter. We'll look at the Lamb. We'll look at the Thomas station. We'll look at John. We'll look at the keys. We'll just run through this and then we'll come to eternal glory. Just a framework to move us through and to see these things and to understand that we must progress from the baby in the manger.

7:03You remember Simeon? Simeon in Luke chapter 2 picks up the baby Jesus as Mary and Joseph are bringing them into the temple and picks them up. He picks them up and takes them in his arms. And he says, For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all people. People, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people, Israel. My eyes, I can go now. My eyes have seen your salvation. So, if you think about this, if we think about the character of this event as recorded, Christ is clearly Savior, and we are to come to Him as such. He is Savior, the Savior that God has prepared. He is God among us, and He is the Savior among us.

8:11So, we must come to Him. We must take Him up in our arms by faith, right? Who He is. This is the appointed Savior. And all that goes with that, that God has seen the human plight. He understands our sin condition. He understands our predicament. And by coming to Jesus as Savior, we agree with God and the human predicament and the need for a Savior, and that God has sent Himself, has sent us a Savior. But we must go beyond that. That's elementary. That's the elementary parts. That's learning the ABCs. At the very beginning, right?

9:03Then we come to the worship of the Magi in Matthew chapter 2. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming to the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell to the ground and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to him the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You see, we must progress beyond him being Savior, that he is. But we must also see him as the one worthy of honor, worthy of our treasure store, worthy of our worship. Must advance. We're not to stay, little children. He has sent the Savior that we might be saved. He has sent the one to us who is also worthy of honor, worthy of our worship, worthy of all that our life's treasure has.

10:15He's the one worthy to lay it out for. But again, that's elementary. The opening pages. And many of us, many do not get this far. And yet, that is where we are to go. Let's keep going. Then we come to this disciple moment. We must go beyond him just being our Savior. We must go beyond him just being worthy of our honor. We must come to him as teacher. We must come to him as a student, wanting to learn from him. He needs to instruct us.

11:11We need to let his thoughts, his view, shape our view. Peter said it well in John 6, that remarkable chapter where multitudes were turning away from the ready to make him Messiah, and then all of a sudden turning away from him in mass and looking at his disciples, Jesus says, You too aren't going to go away, are you? Simon Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. You are our teacher.

11:54We think. We want to think your thoughts. We want to understand the world through your eyes. You are our teacher. We must come to him. We must progress. We must let him really instruct us. He's the teacher. And that instruction will take us, as it did Peter, to his great confession. In Mark 8:29, Jesus asked them, Who do you say I am? And he questions them with those probing questions, as Jesus often had to draw out from his disciples an answer to the question, Who do you say I am?

12:55And Peter said to them, You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are God's anointed one over humanity. That is you. My heart fully knows that. I have embraced it. You are the Christ. You are my Christ. He'll get to. But what a confession. I see who you are. He is Savior. He is the one worthy of our treasure, our worship, our finest affections. He is the teacher. He is the one to instruct us. And he is our Lord. He is our king. He is the one that God has placed over us to be the mind, to be the divine Lord, to be the king, so that we will think like him and act like him. He is to have absolute, total sway. Many do not make it here.

14:20We love to pick him up in our arms. But we're slow to bow down to him in everything. You are the Christ. That's who you are. Go to the next station. It's the Lamb. We must come to him as our substitute. This is what Peter and the rest of the disciples really had a hard time getting their mind around, even in that same context. Peter can say, You are. The Christ. Jesus can say, yes, and I'm going to go and I'm going to be crucified. Absolutely not, Lord. You're not going to do that. You're the Christ. You have absolute sway. But no, we're not going with you on that. And began to rebuke Jesus, right?

15:18Now he had to come to understand that the one who absolutely holds, is that God has appointed to hold sway over our mind and our thoughts is also the one that God has appointed to be our substitute. We're the ones who stood condemned. And if you do not know Christ, you stand condemned. You must stand in your own sins before a holy God. John the Baptist said it well, called it out in John chapter 1. The next day, he, John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming to him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then in John 19:16, so he then handed him over to them to be crucified.

16:22And then in 19:30, as Jesus breathed his last, it is finished. It is finished. The Lamb, the Christ, the King, the Lamb, the Substitute, the Savior. You must see your sovereign there on the cross. But it doesn't end there. We must see him as Savior. We must see him as the one worthy of our treasure, our worship. We must see him as our teacher and let him be our teacher and truly instruct us. We must see him as our Lord, our sovereign, our king. We must see him as our substitute.

17:22It is us who deserve to be upon that cross. It is he who went in our place. But then we must also understand that he is the resurrection and the life. He is our resurrection. He is our new beginning. He is our new birth. As he comes out, so do we. And he is our life. That is what life is about now. It's in this resurrection. Resurrection paradigm, union with Christ. It's a whole new order of living.

18:11John 20, 27, you remember Thomas said, I'm not going to believe until I see it with my own eyes and touch it, my own hands. Touch him. In John 20, 27, Jesus said to Thomas, Reach here with your finger. See my hands. Reach here with your hand. Put it into my side. And do not be unbelieving, but be believing. Jesus really is, as he said in John 11 at Lazarus' tomb, I am the resurrection. I am the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. Resurrection and life. This is the paradigm of humanity. This is what life is, union with Christ. Without Christ, there is no life. That is the paradigm. That is how he saves.

19:20Union. We need to go beyond that. And few venture this far to John. John, who put it all together and recorded it for us as he heard Jesus many times speak about friendship, all this Savior, the object of our worship, our teacher, our Messiah, our substitute, giving us, raising us from the dead with him, giving us new life. It's all because he sees us as his friends. Greater love has no one than this than one lay down his life for his friends.

20:16If you advance to this point in their walk in the gospel truths, we get to where we can articulate so much about the gospel and articulate so much about the truths of who Jesus is and what he has done. And yet we're slow to really take in what John communicates: that he actually is our friend. And he goes on in this context and says, yes, and you're my friends if you will do what I command. Who's the friend of God? The one who obeys Christ.

21:03Then we keep going. Revelation, the passage began preaching through this morning. The keys. We begin to see him in his glorified state. Revelation 1:17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man, and he placed his right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid. Sound familiar? The very thing he told Joseph, right? Don't be afraid. Come near. Don't be afraid. Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and I'm the living one, and I was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. And I have the keys of death and Hades. We must see him as the eternal judge. He is the one who holds the keys, death and Hades, with absolute authority over all the living, over all the dead. He is the one who is king and lord and the one, the sovereign over death and Hades, over the dead and the realm of the dead.

22:24Eternal judge. And this should give us encouragement for doing his will, no matter what the cost, because of who he is. Complete authority as the sovereign over every spiritual principality and being. And it is there that we begin to step into this eternal glory, and start beginning to see that this baby born in the manger is actually the substance of eternal glory and will be the one where all creation pours out their treasure eternally in honor to him.

23:28He is the one, he is the very substance of eternal glory. Usius, the substance. Revelation 22, 3, there will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and his bondservants will serve him, and they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Our glory will be reflecting his glory. He's the substance. Eternal glory. So, as we kind of just put it together, I'm going to bring the singers back up here pretty quickly. We started out there at the station, Joseph, the manger, to eternal glory through passages in the New Testament. But I just want to come back to Joseph.

24:39In Matthew 1:20, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

25:14It's all there. God has come to us. He is the one we are to come near. He is our Savior. It is God who is our Savior. It's all. There. We know that already. He is the one worthy of everything that we have. He is our teacher because he's God. He is our Messiah. He's God. He is our Savior, and there is no other. And only God who took up on flesh could be a God who dies and lay down his life for us.

26:05He had to take upon himself flesh so that he could lay it down. Well, as we summarize, coming back to Emmanuel that we've just been singing about, do not be afraid to come to him. It's a message to Joseph, right? Don't be afraid. Even at the end, don't be afraid to John. Don't be afraid to come to him as Savior, for that he is. The one worthy of your worship, for that he is. But don't stop there, right? Don't stop with him just being your Savior. Don't stop just one being worthy of your worship. Come to him as your teacher. Let him instruct.

26:57Come to him as Christ. God's anointed one to rule over you. Words and thoughts in every aspect of your being. This is a good gift, a living gift. Come to him as your substitute and keep coming to him as your substitute. You won't get, that'll never get old. Come to him as your very reason for living. He is your resurrection. He is life. See him as your friend. For that he is. See him as judge of all.

27:47That he is. That's him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we continue to sing and celebrate the truth of your dwelling among us. Father, we remember, we want to follow you beyond the cradle. We want to do more than just pour out our lives and our treasure. We recognize the worthiness. Of your Son. Father, we want Him to instruct us. We need His instruction. Father, we need your truth planted deep within us. Father, we need Him. We need you. We need your Savior.

28:51Father, we need You to be truly, we need to truly embrace You as Messiah, our substitute, our resurrection and life. And so, Father, we come and we help us now to delight in reflecting the very substance of this glory. In Jesus' name, amen.