Pathway to Victory

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Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress. Before we begin today's podcast, I want to invite you to partner with us at Pathway to Victory.

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Speaker 2

Hey podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And right now your generous gift will have twice the impact, thanks to the Now Is the Time Matching Challenge, active now through December 31st. To give a special year-end gift, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

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Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to study God's Word with you.

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Every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition, a Pathway to Victory.

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If you ask most people, even most Christians, what the purpose of Christmas really is, many would be hard pressed to answer the question.

Not the Apostle Paul and the passage we're going to look at today. He uses one sentence to describe everything you need to know about Christmas.

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Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, every December, people complain about the commercialization of Christmas, claiming we've forgotten the real reason for the season.

So where can we turn to find the true answer? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares one powerful sentence from the Apostle Paul that captures the true meaning behind this celebration.

But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.

Speaker 1

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Most of us would find it impossible to explain Christmas in one sentence, but the Apostle Paul could. And in just a moment, I'll show you everything you need to know about the true meaning of Christmas.

But first, the clock is ticking on something extraordinary. We're in the final days of Pathway to Victory's record-breaking $1.7 million matching challenge, and the response has been incredible. Here's what makes this moment so powerful: every dollar you give right now is doubled. Your $200 gift becomes $400. Your $500 gift becomes $1,000. Whatever amount is on your heart is instantly matched dollar for dollar until we hit our goal of $1.7 million to fuel Pathway to Victory's mission in 2026. Don't miss this opportunity to double your impact before the December 31 deadline.

Now, in addition to matching your gift, we're going to say thank you by sending the all-new Pathway to Victory daily devotional for 2026. Copies are moving fast, but we still have one waiting for you. In this daily devotional, I've written a reflection for every weekday in the new year. Bound in supple tan leather with elegant gold accents, it's designed to become a treasured companion throughout the entire year. And at more than 500 pages, it's the finest we've ever published. A bit later on, I'll give more details on this beautiful book.

But right now, let's begin our study in Galatians, Chapter 4. I titled today's message "Everything You Need to Know About Christmas."

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If you have your Bibles, turn to the book of Galatians, Galatians 4, 4, 5. One sentence in the Greek text that explains everything you need to know about Christmas.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Well, what I want you to see today is that in this one sentence, the Apostle Paul answers all six questions that are vital to understanding the Christmas story: who, what, when, how, where, and why.

First of all, the question of who. Who is the subject of this sentence? It's very clear in the fullness of time.

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God.

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Well, what did God do? That's the second thing. Well, it's very clear. He sent forth his Son. And when did this happen? When the fullness of time had come. I like the way the Living Bible paraphrases it: at just the right time. In what sense was it just the right time? Well, it was the right time politically. The Roman Empire ruled the world, and the Roman Empire was experiencing the Pax Romana, as they said, the Roman peace. The world was at peace for the most part. Why was that important? It would facilitate the spread of the Gospel. When Christ came, it was the right time politically, it was the right time culturally. People were becoming more educated, and it was the right time prophetically. All of those prophecies written hundreds of years ahead of time converged in that tiny town of Bethlehem.

Fourthly, how do you answer the question how? How was Messiah sent forth? He was born of a woman. That tells us how. Born of a woman. Now we read that and we think, well, duh, born of a woman. Who isn't born of a woman? It's true. We're all born of a woman. But this baby was unique in that he was born only of a woman with God, not a male, as his father. Now, why was it absolutely essential that Jesus be born of a virgin? Stick with me on this. This shows you the genius of God.

In 2nd Samuel 7:12, 900 years before the birth of Christ, God said to David, he said to King David, one of your descendants will be the Messiah. But here's the problem. Between David and Jesus, there was an evil king named Jeconiah. He was also called Jehoiachin. And he was so evil that God was infuriated against him. In Jeremiah 22:30, he said to Jeconiah, not one of your descendants is going to sit on the throne of David and be the Messiah. Not one of your descendants. So you've got David up here, you've got Jeconiah here, and now you have Joseph and ultimately Jesus. Jesus had to be a descendant in some sense of David. But if he was the biological descendant of anybody after Jeconiah, including Joseph, he was disqualified from being the Messiah.

So how could the Messiah be a legal descendant of David and yet not a biological descendant? The answer is a virgin birth. By having Joseph as his legal father, but not his biological father, Jesus escaped the curse of Jeconiah. He was qualified to be in the line of David without being a physical descendant of David. Only God could come up with a solution like that.

Unless you think I'm making too much of this, notice in Matthew 1, the lineage of Jesus, tracing him back to David. What it says in Matthew 1:16 is, "Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." Now that phrase "by whom" is feminine, singular. Most of the time when we talk about a child being born, we talk about the father and the mother—father and mother. A child is born as a result of a father and a mother. But here it just refers to Jesus and Mary: Mary, by whom Jesus was born. This is a reference to the virgin birth.

That's one reason he says Jesus was born of a woman. But it not only refers to the virgin birth; here is a reference to the humanity of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was 100% God, but he was also 100% man, which means he makes a perfect and understanding priest.

Before us, I read the story of a six-year-old boy who was in the backyard attempting to shoot some baskets. But he always fell short of the hoop. His father walked by, saw what he was doing, took the ball from his son, and said, "Now son, do that."

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This way.

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And he threw the ball and perfectly went into the hoop, made a basket. So the boy tried, and again he fell short. And the father said, no, now watch me carefully. The father made an easy basket. The son grew frustrated, and he said, it's easy for you up there, but you don't know how hard it is down here.

You know that could never be said about Jesus Christ. It never could be said about God the Father. That God doesn't know what it's like down here. It's easy for you to be God way up there in heaven, but you don't know what it's like to be human. Oh, yes, I do, Jesus says. Jesus knows what it's like to be betrayed by friends and even family members. He knows what it's like to experience incredible temptation. He knows what it's like to stand over the grave or the tomb of somebody you love. He knows all of that. He knows the minor irritations of life like family life or waking up with a sore throat in the morning and still having to go to work. Jesus knows it all.

And that's why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:15-16, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, and yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we might receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need."

Listen to me. When you go to God in prayer, telling him how you feel, you're not talking to somebody who's alien from what you're feeling. And he knows it all because he's experienced it all. Doesn't that give you comfort to know you have a high priest who understands? That's why it was significant that Jesus was born of a woman.

Fifthly, where did it happen? Where was Jesus born? Well, we say in Bethlehem, but here Paul answers the question with the phrase he was born under the law. Look at verse four. "But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law."

You know, people have the funniest ideas about God. They think God used to be this intolerant tyrant in the Old Testament, but he loosened up a bit in the New Testament. He wasn't so uptight about sin. And that's when Jesus came. Jesus helped God be not uptight about sin and more tolerant. No, Jesus said, "I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it." Jesus was under the regulation of the Law. God hasn't changed. He desires and demands absolute perfection, which, by the way, is a standard none of us except Jesus can meet.

But the fact that Jesus did meet those requirements qualified him to be our Savior. And the fact that he lived under the law, obeyed the law, meant that he could pay the price for our inability to obey the law. If Jesus had sinned and not kept the law, then he would have died for his own sins. But the fact that he was under the law and obeyed the law made him the perfect Savior to atone for our sins. That's why that's important.

And the last question. Why? Why did God send forth His Son to be born of a woman? He gives two reasons in this climactic phase. First of all, he did so to redeem us in order that he might redeem us who were under the law. That word redeemed, you've heard me say before, is the Greek word ex, which means out of, agarazo, which means diagora, the marketplace. To purchase out of the marketplace is what redeem means.

Remember when Paul wrote these words, a third of the world were slaves. So they understood that word redeemed very well. If you were a slave and your master got tired of you, he would sell you to somebody else. You would go down to the agora. You'd be placed on a wooden pedestal in chains. It didn't matter if you were a male, a female, or a child. You were auctioned off to somebody who would pay the price. A new master.

And that new master would ex Agarazzo, take you out of the marketplace. Not for a life of luxury and ease, but a horrible life. Every slave knew that things would not be any better under a new slave master. In fact, they may be worse. The master was free to do anything he wanted to with a slave: abuse him, torture him, put him to death. It was all up to the master because he had paid the price. He had purchased that slave out of the market.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible says you and I are born into this world slaves. Not slaves of God, but slaves of Satan. He is our master, and he has nothing but terrible plans for the rest of our life and for all eternity. God could have left us in that state as slaves, and we would have gotten what we deserved. But God, for no other reason than the great love with which he loves you, came in human form. He took the form of a bondservant. He became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He poured out his blood. He suffered the wrath of God for one reason: to redeem us, to free us from Satan's grasp and plans for our life and to give us a life that is filled with hope and abundance.

God didn't buy our freedom to set us free to obey ourselves, to live for ourselves. We have a master, but it's a new master, one who loves us. One who has a wonderful future for our present and our future and all eternity. And that's why Paul wrote in First Corinthians 6:19-20, "Do you not know you are not your own? You have been bought with a price."

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Therefore glorify God in your bodies.

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That's why Christ came to redeem us. But not only that, he says to adopt us. To adopt us, to adopt us as sons. When Christ came to redeem us, we are no longer slaves with no rights. We're not even children with limited rights. He adopts us as fully mature sons and daughters. This is a reference to the Roman custom that when a child became 14 to 17 years of age, he would receive the full rights as a member of the family. And that's what Paul is saying here. When we become a part of God's family, we're not again slaves with no right or children with limited rights. We have full rights before God.

That means three things. First of all, we enjoy a unique position with God. We are a part of his forever family. And nothing is ever going to change that. Nothing we do, nothing we've done in the past that might be dredged up, nothing will change our status. We are always a member of God's family, our position. It's also a reference to our privileges as sons and daughters of God. We can ask our Father for anything. Anything.

Now, does that mean he's going to grant every request? Remember this. God didn't even grant Jesus his every request. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed that God would spare him from the horrible experience of the cross. But God said no. But here's what our unique privilege means. It means we can ask God for whatever is in our heart, depending upon the wisdom of God to answer or not answer that request. That's what 1 John 5:14 is all about.

And this is the confidence we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. That phrase "according to his will" isn't a loophole to keep God from having to do what we want him to do. It's a wonderful, loving boundary God places around our life. The will of God is not to keep good things from coming into our life.

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But to keep evil things from Entering our life.

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That's the unique privilege we have. He gives us a position, a privilege, and finally a unique power.

A unique power, the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, gives us victory over worry, over anxiety, over temptation, and ultimately over.

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Over death itself.

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That's the unique position we have with God. You know, it's incomprehensible to think that God, in the person of Jesus Christ, gave up his rights as God to come to this spinning ball of dirt in the universe to give his life as a ransom for our sins.

But that's what the Christmas story is really all about. Many of you remember the name of.

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Paul Harvey, the radio commentator.

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He was a Christian. He even visited our church once or twice every year. On his syndicated radio program, he would tell the same story that really epitomizes what Christmas is all about. The story is about an old, jaded farmer who had grown disillusioned with life. He separated himself from his family and friends and lived by himself out on a farm.

One cold winter's night, he heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He looked out his window to see what was causing the sound. And he saw tiny, shivering sparrows beating up against the glass door, evidently attracted to the light. The warmth of the room touched him. The farmer bundled himself up, trudged out in the snow, and opened the barn door. He turned on the light, threw some hay in there, and left a trail of saltine crackers in order to provide a way of safety to the sparrows.

But they wouldn't follow him. He tried other tactics. He would circle behind them, trying to push them into the barn, but they scattered. He tried throwing crackers up into the air, but that didn't do it. He was a huge alien creature to those birds. They didn't understand that he was trying to help them, not hurt them.

Resigned to their fate, he trudged back in the snow to his home. He watched through the window at those doomed, shivering sparrows as they beat themselves against the glass.

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Then he had a thought.

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If only I could become one of them. If only I could become a bird for just a moment. I could show them I was here to help them. I could point them to the place of safety and warmth.

And then he had a second thought. He had just grasped the meaning of Christmas. Philip Yancey said, a man becoming a bird is nothing compared to God becoming a man.

To think that the king of the universe, who is sovereign over the vast universe, who could fill the entire universe, would come and pour himself into one human being, is more than most people could believe or ever accept.

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But Paul believed it.

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That's why he said, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law in order to redeem.

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Those who were under the law, that.

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We might receive the adoption as sons. That's everything we need to know about Christmas. Praise God. Praise God.

Let's bow together in a word of prayer.

Are you ready to receive Christ as your Savior? Are you willing to say, God, I know I have fallen short. I know I deserve your punishment. But I believe I'm depending on what Jesus did for me to save me from my sins.

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Today, if you would like to receive the gift of God's forgiveness in your.

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Life, I want to encourage you, wherever you are, to pray this.

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Dear God, thank you for loving me.

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I know I have failed you in so many ways and I'm truly sorry for the sins in my life. But I believe what I've heard today, that you love me so much you sent your son Jesus to die on.

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The cross for me to take the punishment from you that I deserve to take.

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And right now I'm trusting in what.

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Jesus did for me.

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Not in my good, but in what Jesus did for me to save me from my sins.

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Thank you for forgiving me and help.

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Me live the rest of my life for you. In Jesus name. Amen.

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In one sentence from the Apostle Paul is everything we need to know about Christmas. And it's a wonderful reminder as we prepare to celebrate the arrival of Jesus Christ, born in a manger to Mary and Joseph. The same Jesus who came as a baby in Bethlehem is coming back, not in humility this time, but in power and glory.

And friend, I believe we're living in the days when that return draws closer than ever before. I think of Paul's strong words to the Romans: "The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

See, this isn't a time to retreat. It's a time to proclaim the gospel with courage and conviction. That's exactly what Pathway to Victory is positioned to do in 2026.

And here's an incredible opportunity. Generous friends of this ministry have established a $1.7 million matching challenge. Every gift you give before the December 31st deadline will be matched dollar for dollar, instantly doubling your kingdom impact as our way of saying thank you.

When you give to this matching challenge, we'll send you the 2026 Pathway to Victory Daily Devotional. A stunning tan leather edition with gold accents that you'll use every single day.

Now is your moment; the time is short, the need is urgent, and your gift, matched and multiplied, will make an eternal difference. Here's David with all the details.

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Today, when you give a generous year-end gift to support this ministry, we'll send you a copy of the brand new 2026 Pathway to Victory Daily Devotional. To request your copy, call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org. When your gift is $100 or more, we'll also include the teaching series Celebrate the Savior on DVD, video, and MP3 format audio discs.

And right now, because of our Now Is the Time Matching Challenge, any gift you give will be doubled in impact. So call us toll-free at 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. A lot of listeners prefer to write, so here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. Most Nativity scenes feature Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, and the Wise Men, but there's one group that had the best seats in the house for the story. Discover what the Angels know about Christmas Tuesday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible.

And right now, your special year-end gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact thanks to the Now Is the Time Matching Challenge. Take advantage of this opportunity to double your impact before the deadline on December 31st. To give toward the matching challenge, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.