Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 3

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

Speaker 1

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

Speaker 3

What I want you to see today is 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.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress.

@ Christmastime, we hear the same familiar carols and recite the same Bible passages year after year. But amidst all the holiday traditions, do we truly understand what Christmas is all about?

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares everything you need to know about the first Christmas explained in one powerful sentence. But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry.

Speaker 1

Updates.

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. On September 10th of this year, a confused rebel climbed atop a building and aimed his rifle at one of our beloved Christian brothers. The bullet that pierced his body was intended to kill Charlie, and it did. But to the chagrin of the sharpshooter, he couldn't kill the gospel. Instead, his violent crime triggered the proliferation of young Christians who are speaking boldly for Christ, just as Charlie did. Yes, God is moving across high school and college campuses in America. It's so encouraging.

And Pathway to Victory is uniquely positioned to share the gospel while the harvest is ripe. Now's the time to send our message through Pathway to Victory. And now's the time to partner with Pathway to Victory. Because of the matching challenge, every dollar you give to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory will be doubled in size with twice the impact. Plus, when you give today, we'll say thanks by providing our brand new leather-bound Pathway to Victory Daily Devotional for 2026. It's a tangible way for me to say thanks for your partnership in the Gospel.

David and I will share more details later, but right now let's turn in our Bibles to Galatians as I present a message titled "Everything You Need to Know About."

Speaker 3

Christmas. Well, it's that time of the year, isn't it? Everybody bemoans the commercialization of Christmas and laments that we've forgotten the real purpose of Christmas. And yet, if you ask most people, even most Christians, what the purpose of Christmas really is, many would be hard pressed to answer the question. And if you said you have to answer it in one sentence and one sentence explain why Christmas is important, most people would find that impossible to do. Not the apostle Paul. In the passage we're going to look at today, he uses one sentence to describe everything you need to know about Christmas. If you have your Bibles, turn to the book of Galatians, Galatians, Chapter 4. Galatians was a letter that Paul wrote to the Galatians. You don't have to be in seminary to get that.

Now the Galatians had a church, and the church was being infected by false teachers, a group called the Judaizers. Now, the Judaizers were people who believed that faith in Jesus was important. It was nice, it was necessary, but it wasn't enough to be right with God. You needed to trust in Christ and fill in the blank. Be careful of anybody who says to become a Christian, it's faith in Christ and anything. No, the Judaizers filled in the blank with the Old Testament law. To be saved, you have to have faith in Christ and keep the Old Testament law. And Paul, the Jew of all Jews, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, he said, no, it's faith in Christ alone. If you add the law to it, then you're no longer a child of God; you're still a slave to the law. And God came and sent Jesus to us in order to free us from the law, not to enslave us to it. And that's the heart of his message. You find that message in verses 4 to 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 and that we might receive the adoption as sons."

When I was in junior high school, the ninth grade, I became the editor of our school newspaper, the West Wind. I went to West Junior High School. I was the editor. I enlisted Amy to be my chief reporter on the newspaper. But I didn't know a lot about newspapers. Fortunately, my mom was a journalism teacher, and she taught me very early how to write a story. In the lead paragraph, she taught me, you ought to be able to put every vital fact the reader needs to know, so that if he didn't read any further in the story beyond the first paragraph, he would get the essentials. The lead paragraph, she said, had to answer six questions: who, what, when, how, where, and why. If you answered those questions, you'd answer the basics.

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. First of all, the question of who. Who is the subject of this sentence? It's very clear: in the fullness of time, God. God is the originator of all things. Every story, including your story, begins with God. It's all about God. In the beginning, God. This is a reference to the sovereignty of God, God's control over all his creation. Everything begins and ends with God. The late pastor and writer Ray Stedman wrote, "There is the sovereignty of the potter over the clay. Men make plans. God makes other plans." Napoleon had to learn that lesson the hard way. He once said, "God is on the side of the army with the heaviest artillery." But there came a time in his life when, exiled on the island of St. Helena, he said, "Man proposes, but God disposes." Or in the words of Mother Teresa, "We are all pencils in the hand of God." God is in control. He is sovereign. He rules over everything. He rules over government. He rules over the angels. He rules over life and death. He rules over your choices and mistakes. He rules over the so-called coincidences in your life. God is sovereign over all.

Some people get nervous when you talk about the sovereignty of God. They feel threatened by that. And if God were some giant ogre in heaven who wanted to make us as miserable and as filled with chaos as possible, we might have reason to fear the sovereignty of God. But that's not who God is. Everything God does, the Bible says, is motivated by love. And we can rest in that. For example, in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he sent his only son." Or think about Ephesians 2:4, "But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, he made us alive together in Christ." Or how about Romans 5:8? "But God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, he sent Christ to die for us." Or First John 4:10, "And herein is love. Not that we loved God, but that God first loved us and gave Himself as the propitiation for our sins." Everything in your life originates with God, a God of love. That's the who of this story. Who is the subject? God in the fullness of time? God.

Well, what did God do? That's the second thing. Well, it's very clear. He sent forth his son. Now notice Paul didn't say God sent forth his baby or child or infant. He says son for a reason. Too often at Christmas, we concentrate on the infancy of Jesus. We think about Jesus and we recall those depictions of him in a feeding trough with those pink cheeks. And then we think about babies in the world in general and how wonderful and precious they are. Then we invariably start thinking about our own children and all the circumstances around their birth. We get misty-eyed and teary-eyed, and pretty soon Christmas is nothing more than a mass of syrupy sentimentality.

Listen, here's the truth. There was nothing special really about a baby being born that night in Bethlehem. The truth is, that night there were hundreds of babies born in Israel. A baby born isn't something worth getting that excited about. But it's who this baby was that was important. This baby would grow up to become a son who was perfectly obedient to his Heavenly Father in everything. A son who would give his life for the satisfaction of God's requirement for our sins. A son who would one day conquer sin and death for us all. That's who this Jesus was. It's not that the fact that a baby was born; it was a son who was born—the Son of God.

And when did this happen? Notice how Paul answers the one question: when the fullness of time had come. I like the way the Living Bible paraphrases it: "At just the right time, God sent forth his son." At just the right time. Have you discovered yet in your life that God is always on time? He's never a minute early, never a second late. He always acts at just the right time. We have this idea that God is in heaven looking at us and wondering what we're going to do next. And as soon as we make a decision, he has to reformulate, recalculate his plan for us. We get the idea that in the garden, God was in heaven looking at his first two children and saying, "Oh no, I can't believe they did that. What are we going to do?" And he formulates a rescue plan to save us from our sins. It doesn't happen that way. The Bible said the plan for our salvation was formulated in Ephesians 1 before...

Speaker 1

The foundation of the.

Speaker 3

World. God has a plan, but he also has a timetable that we can trust in. King Hezekiah in the Old Testament came to understand that truth.

Hezekiah and the Israelites were fearful that the Assyrians were about to come and destroy Jerusalem. But God gave Hezekiah the assurance that they would not be successful.

Second Chronicles 32, verse 8 says that the people rested themselves upon that word from God.

Speaker 1

God. They rested.

Speaker 3

Themselves. You know, I can lean on this pulpit as hard as I can, and I don't have to worry that it's going to move or fall off the platform. You can sit in that pew where you're seated this morning, confident it's not going to collapse. If this were the Sunday after Thanksgiving, maybe a little different, but you can rest assured you're not going to collapse in that pew. We have something more trustworthy than a pulpit or a pew. We've got the Word of God. And the Word of God assures us that everything God does is according to plan and according to his timetable. And nothing is going to stop that. The day of your birth, the day of your death, are all written in indelible ink on God's calendar.

So it was with the coming of Christ in just the right time, in the nick of time, if you want to say it that way, Christ came. 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. It was the right time politically. It was because of that political quietness that the Romans were able to build the great network of roads. And if you travel to Italy or travel to Greece or travel to other parts of Europe, you can see those Roman roads still in existence after 2000 years. 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. Koine Greek was becoming the language people spoke and wrote, making the transmission of the Scriptures possible. Thirdly, it was the right time spiritually. The polytheism, the worship of many gods, of the Romans and the Greeks, that was giving way to a new interest in monotheism, the worship of one God. And there was particular interest in the teachings of this prophet of God out in the wilderness, John the Baptist.

And it was the right time, prophetically, for Christ to come. There were dozens of prophecies in the Old Testament, some written hundreds of years beforehand, that gave certain facts about the coming of Christ. And all of those prophecies, written hundreds of years ahead of time, converged in that tiny town of Bethlehem. Let me just give you one of those prophecies in Micah 5:2, written 700 years before the birth of the Christ. Listen to what Micah prophesied: "But as for you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity."

Jesus was to be born in a village so small, it wasn't included on any map or any registry of cities and towns. It was that insignificant, that small. Now, how did God bring that about? Remember, this happened 700 years before Christ was born. 700 years later, after that prophecy, a continent away in Rome, 800 miles from Jerusalem, the emperor, his name was Octavius. We call him Caesar Augustus. That was his title, but his name was Octavius. Octavius sat down with his cabinet and he said, "We've got a problem. We don't have enough revenue to fund our government." Sound familiar? So what are we going to do? And they conferred and they decided to tax the...

Speaker 1

People.

Speaker 3

Again. Sound familiar? If you run out of money as a government, take more from the people. So he came up with a plan to tax not just the people in Rome, but all who were living in the Roman Empire. Now, that meant everybody would have to pay a tax.

But it was a day before there were computers to track people down. There were no W2 forms to keep track of people's earnings. The only way to make sure everybody was taxed was to issue an order that every head of household, every male, would travel to the town of his birth to register for this census for the purpose of taxation.

When Octavius signed that order, little did he know that his order would cause a couple he would never know or meet to travel to a little village he had never heard of.

Speaker 1

Give birth to the savior of the.

Speaker 3

World. Somebody once said Octavius was nothing more than a piece of lint on the pages of human history. God was at work. It was just the right time for God to send forth his Son. When did it happen? In the fullness of time. When the time was just right.

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. This phrase "born of a woman" signifies two things. It's first of all a reference to Jesus' virgin birth. In Isaiah 7:14, written 740 years before the birth of Christ, Isaiah prophesied, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive."

Now, many people point out that in Hebrew, which this was written in Isaiah 7:14, that word "virgin" is the Hebrew word "alma." And it doesn't necessarily mean a virgin, somebody without sexual experience. It could mean a young woman. And that's true. We have to be honest. But that was the genius of Scripture, because in Isaiah's day, there would be a near fulfillment of that prophecy that a mother would give birth to a son. In Isaiah's day. But there was a far ultimate fulfillment that came in Jesus Christ.

And it's interesting that in Matthew 1:23, when Matthew describes and recites Isaiah 7:14, he writes, "Behold, a." And he uses the Greek word "parthenos," shall conceive. And that Greek word means one and one and only thing. It means somebody who's never had sex before. So in referring to Mary, Matthew says, she was a parthenos. She was a virgin.

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. He said it this way in 2 Samuel 7:12, "I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom." Everybody knew that Messiah would have to be a descendant of King David.

But here's the problem. Even though he had to be a descendant of David, there was, as one writer calls it, a knot on the family tree. Every family has a knot, a problem. And they did in David's line as well. You see, David was born and lived 900 years before Christ. 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. And 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?

Answer: 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 this.

Speaker 1

That. My hope and prayer is that today's message prepares your heart and soul for a wonderful Christmas celebration with your friends and family. But even more so, I'm hoping and praying that you will embrace the urgency of our times. You see, I believe the days are running short to share the good news about Jesus.

So in closing, I want to ask you a question that demands an honest answer. What are we waiting for? The world is crying out for hope and millions are dying without ever hearing the truth that could save them right now. Today, God has opened a door of unprecedented opportunity. A group of visionary partners has stepped forward with a $1.7 million matching challenge. That means every dollar you give will be doubled in impact.

We're calling it the "Now is the Time" matching challenge because frankly, there's no time to waste. Think about the urgency the Apostle Paul felt when he wrote these words: "The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." If Paul sensed that urgency 2,000 years ago, what should we feel today?

We're living in prophetic times. The signs are everywhere. The darkness is real. But so is the imminent return of our Lord. This is not the moment to sit on the sidelines. I'm asking you to act decisively, and here's my commitment to you. When you give a generous gift today, I want to thank you personally by sending you our brand new Pathway to Victory daily devotional for 2026. A resource that will strengthen your walk with Christ every single day in the new year.

The clock is ticking. The matching challenge expires on December 31. But the impact of your partnership will echo into eternity. Here's David to tell you.

Speaker 2

More. When you give a generous year-end gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you the brand new 2026 Pathway to Victory Daily Devotional. Request this exclusive resource by calling 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. When your gift is $100 or more, we'll also send you "Celebrate the Savior." That's a DVD, video, and MP3 format audio disc set featuring the best Christmas teaching messages by Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And don't forget, because of our Now Is the Time Matching Challenge, your gift will be doubled in size and impact. So be sure to get in touch with us today. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org. You could also send your donation by mail. Write to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins, wishing you a great weekend. Then join us again next week when our series called "Celebrate the Savior" continues right here 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. 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.