The Sign of the Trough
Christmas Part 10
Luke 2:12   12-20-09 

Summary: Miracles are when God does something different from what He normally does to validate a message or messenger as being from Him (does not require blind faith). The main miracle of the prophets (and the most awesome of all miracles) is predictive prophecy because it requires total control over all events. Other religions don’t even try it. The Bible is loaded with it, proving it to be God’s Word. (That is more compelling than private miracles today would be.) The announcement that in the near future they would find a baby in a very, very unusual place was a predictive prophecy proving the angle’s message was from God. And the message was verse 11 – the Savior Messiah Lord was born last night.   

Introduction: How do we know our religion is true?
The purpose of miracles: Validation of a Message
The miracle of predictive prophecy: Awesome
The Miracle of the Trough
The Message

Luke 2:8-12 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." 

Introduction: How do we know our religion is true?
Every religion says they are right. Every holy book claims to be a message from God. And there is no end to the stream of people claiming to speak for God. And we know they are not all from God because they have contradictory messages. Some of them say that God sends all unbelievers to hell; others say God would not send anyone to hell. Some say Jesus is almighty, eternal God; others say, “No, he is just a human prophet – nothing more.” We have all these conflicting messages coming out of the mouths of people who claim to be speaking for God; we have all these different holy books – the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tao-te-ching, the Talmud, the Book of Mormon – all delivering contradictory messages. They obviously cannot all be from God, so how does God expect us to sort through this jumble of voices all claiming to be from Him and pick and choose which ones really are from Him? How does God expect us to know which Scriptures are really His Word?
I believe the answers to the questions I was just raising are there in Luke 2:12.

The purpose of miracles: Validation of a Message
The sign of the trough
In the first seven verses of the chapter we read about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. And then comes the account of the shepherds starting in verse 10.

Luke 2:8-9 8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be the sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

The thing that captured my attention this week in verse 12 is that word sign. That word normally refers to a miracle – like in the phrase “signs and wonders.” But at first glance it may seem like it is not really used that way here. The commentators say that here it must mean something like “indicator.” When you see the baby in the manger, that is the one. They say that because a baby in a manger is no big miracle. Nobody would see a baby in a manger and say, “Wow, that’s proof that He must be God.”
That is the way this hit me at first, and I was actually tempted to skip over it and move on to talk about Simeon and Anna. But about midway through the week I finally realized that the word sign is being used here in its normal sense. It does refer to a miracle – an awesome and especially persuasive miracle. In fact, of all the miracles God ever did, this particular type of miracle is one of the most precious to us – and one of the most important for our day-to-day joy and hope and faith and confidence.
It is the miracle of future prophecy – seeing and revealing the future with perfect accuracy. You see, the miracle was not that the baby was in a manger; the miracle was that God knew and revealed to these men exactly where they would find the baby when they went into town.
Authentication
It is very important, in understanding Scripture, that we understand the purpose of miracles. Why does God perform miracles? And why is it that most of the time He doesn’t? Why are they so rare? And when they do happen, what is their purpose?
Many times it is assumed that the purpose is to show God’s power. And that is half right, but there is more to it than just that. God can show His power just fine without miracles. It does not take any more power to do a miracle than to accomplish things through providence. God displays awesome power every day by powering the laws of physics. If I let go of an object I am holding, it falls downward, right? Why? Saying the word “gravity” does not answer the question – it just puts a label on the phenomenon. What force powers gravity? The naturalists have absolutely zero idea where that force comes from. Don’t expect to even find that question addressed in any textbook – they don’t know. I can tell you – it comes from God. “Gravity” is just the name we have made up to describe the force God exerts pulling things downward (or, technically, attracting masses together). Gravity is nothing more than God pulling masses together.
It is a huge amount of power, but we do not call that a miracle – not because there isn’t awesome power involved, but only because it is what God normally does. The definition of a miracle is when God does something different from what He normally does. If I let go of an object and it goes up instead of down, that is a miracle. Does it require more power for God to move the object one direction rather than the other direction? No. Gravity does not exist apart from God, so all He has to do to make something float is stop pulling down on it, and all He has to do to make it rise is pull up on it. Miracles do not require any more power than the normal things God does every day. So miracles are not demonstrations of greater power; they are just God doing something different from what He normally does in order to communicate something to us. That is why they are called signs.
So what is it that miraculous signs are supposed to communicate to us? Primarily, the purpose of a miraculous sign is to prove that a message or messenger is from God. The power of God is displayed in the creation every day. Miracles are to authenticate a messenger.
You see, God does not expect us to believe anything on blind faith. He knows that there are a lot of people running around claiming to be speaking for Him. And how are we supposed to know who really is speaking for Him and who is not? God makes it easy for us. When He sends someone with a message, He accompanies that messenger with miracles so we will know he is from God.
When God sent Moses to Egypt and said, “Go tell the Israelites that you have a message from God for them..,” Moses responded with a perfectly reasonable question.

Exodus 4:1 Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" 

Lots of people claim to have heard from God – how are they supposed to know to listen to me?

2 Then the Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" "A staff," he replied. 3 The Lord said, "Throw it on the ground." Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 "This," said the Lord, "is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers … has appeared to you."’

You prove that I spoke to you by performing a miracle. And then God went on to say, “And if that miraculous sign doesn’t convince them, do another miracle. And if that still is not enough, do a third miracle.”
The people of Israel had no way of knowing who really heard from God and who did not. And God knows that, so He made it really easy. If someone is from God he will be able to do miracles. If he cannot do miracles, there is no reason to believe he is from God.
What about Jesus? He showed up on the scene claiming to be the Messiah. Lots of people made that claim. How does God expect us to know that Jesus was telling the truth and all those others were not? Easy – miracles.

Hebrews 2:3-4 This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles

How do we know Jesus and the Apostles were telling the truth? Because of all the signs, wonders, and miracles. Those function as God’s stamp on a messenger that says, “This person really is speaking for Me.” That is what miracles are for.

John 14:11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

That was the night before the crucifixion. Jesus said to His own Apostles – “If all these three years of walking with me is not enough for you to be convinced about who I am, then just believe on the basis of My miracles.” Miracles verify that a messenger is from God.
Most people do not realize that throughout most of Bible times there were no miracles. The Bible was written over a period of 1500 years, and in that 1500 years there were only three times when we read of mass-miracles. There are few scattered here and there the rest of the time, but for the most part, all through Bible times the norm was just like it is for us – no miracles. They were not commonplace. Obviously – because if they had been commonplace they would not have been miracles, because the definition of a miracle is when God does something different from what He normally does. So if God normally did something, it would no longer be classified as a miracle, because it would not prove that a messenger is from Him. It takes awesome power to keep all the billions of stars in the universe burning. But if I stood up and said, “I have a message from God, and the proof that I am from God is the awesome power God is showing in the Milky Way right now” – that would not prove I was from God. It is awesome power to be sure, but it is not a sign, because it does not point to any specific individual person as being a legitimate revealer of God’s Words.
So throughout most of history miracles have been rare. The vast majority of miracles recorded in the Bible appear in three clusters. There is a big cluster in the time of Moses, there is a big cluster around Elijah and Elisha, and there was a huge cluster around Jesus and the Apostles. What is the significance of those three? Moses wrote the Law (the first five books of the Bible), Elijah and Elisha represent the prophets (who wrote the rest of the Old Testament), and Jesus commissioned the Apostles to write the New Testament. So there are three parts to Scripture, and each time one of those three parts was being revealed, God sent a cluster of miracles to prove it was His Word.

The miracle of predictive prophecy: Awesome
Now, I mentioned that one of the three clusters of miracles was in the lives of Elijah and Elisha who represent the prophets, but that is not to say the other prophets did not do miracles – they did. Every prophet did. And the miracle that all the prophets performed to prove they were from God was the miracle of being able to announce the future with perfect, 100% accuracy.

Deuteronomy 18:14-22 The nations … listen to those who practice … divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. 15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet …
20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say … must be put to death." 21 You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?" 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. 

If a prophet ever got one single detail wrong about the future he was to be put to death because he was not from God.
Now, I should hasten to add that the ability to work miracles is not the only test of a true prophet. According to Deuteronomy 13 they also have to have sound doctrine. So if they ever say something that contradicts what God has already revealed and verified in the past then they are to be put to death even if they are able to do miracles.
If it is a true prophet he will be able to work miracles, especially the miracle of 100% accuracy in announcing the future, and he will be in 100% agreement with what God has revealed in the past. God does not expect us to believe on blind faith. He provides miracles to prove who the real prophets are, particularly the miracle of being able to know the future.
Now let’s take a few minutes to consider what an awesome miracle that is. I do not know of any miracle that is more awesome or staggering as the ability to know the future with 100% accuracy.
A moment ago I read from Deuteronomy 18.

Deuteronomy 18:14 The nations … listen to those who practice … divination. 

Divination is using magic to try to gain insight into the future – whether it be through the horoscope, or a crystal ball or a séance or casting shells or tarot cards or palm reading or the ritual of a witch doctor. And there has always been a huge market for that. (Which is amazing given their horrendously bad rate of accuracy.)
Want to hear an amazing statistic? This will give you an idea of how bad the people in the world want to know the future. Leo Oppenheimer, in the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago has studied ancient cuneiform writings of Sumaria, Assyria and Babylon, and he says that about 90% of all the writings found — secular and religious — have to do with divination. The world has always been obsessed with divination.
But none of their efforts work with any degree of reliability. The future is just simply off limits. When you watch a science fiction movie, of all the wild stuff they dream up, the most far-fetched of all of them is when they make a story about someone being able to see the future. Talking robots, flying cars, space travel, laser weapons – all those things are much more realistic than seeing the future. Seeing the future is impossible because the future does not even exist. It does not exist because it has not happened yet. And the future never will exist because once it comes into existence it won’t be the future – it will be the present.
Seeing the future is nonsense, and yet we make up fantasy after fantasy about it because we would love to be able to see the future. If you could see the future you could easily become the richest person on the planet. If you could see the future you could avoid decisions that lead to painful outcomes. We love to fantasize about seeing the future, but in reality it is the most far-fetched of all science fiction ideas. It is the most fictional part of science fiction.
Years ago they made science fiction stories about computers that could talk. Now we have those. They made science fiction stories about man traveling to the moon. Now we have done that. They make stories about traveling at the speed of light. And we are nowhere near that and never will be, but we are getting faster and faster. The Voyager is rocketing through space right now at ten miles per second. So at least there is some sense in which we are moving toward that fantasy, even if we will never get there. But when it comes to seeing the future, how much progress have we made in the past several hundred years? Are we at least getting closer? We still cannot see all of the future, but what about a little ways into the future? What about just a couple minutes into the future? Are we making any progress at all?
No – none. Maybe you are thinking, “Well, we can sometimes predict the weather.” And that is true – we can make predictions – guesses. We can observe the direction things are moving and extrapolate. If I am traveling north at the rate of sixty miles per hour, I can extrapolate and guess that in one hour I will be sixty miles north of here.  But that is not vision into the future – it is just a guess about what is likely to happen if things stay the way they are – if I don’t take a turn or get a flat tire or increase my speed. Some people are better than others at predicting and making guesses, but no one can see the future – not even a little bit.
Let me show you. Try your hardest to look into the future – not real far – just a couple seconds, and see if you can see what the next word out of my mouth will be…
We cannot even see one second into the future – it is pitch black to us. And if anyone ever tries to tell you he is a psychic and can see the future – just give him that little test. Say, “You don’t have to look years into the future or even months. All you have to do is look one second into the future – tell me what the next word out of my mouth will be.” And then when he makes his guess, just say a different word from what he guessed and you will prove he cannot see into the future at all.
With all our advancements over the course of human history we have gotten nowhere in the effort to see the future. In fact, I doubt any scientists are even working on it, because it is so obvious that is impossible because the future does not exist yet.
If you think about it, most of the science fiction stories really are not about seeing into the future. In most of those stories what is seen in the future is only an extrapolation of where things will be if the current course remains unchanged. But if something different happens to change the course of history, then a different future happens. Which means, the old future they saw was not really the future – it never was. Which means even in the science fictions stories they cannot see the future.
Why do they write the stories like that? It is science fiction – they can write anything they want, so why not write about someone being able to see for sure what will happen in the future rather than seeing just one possible future that may or may not turn out to be the actual future? They can write anything they want, why write about mere prediction and extrapolation instead of writing about true vision of the future?
Why not fanaticize about seeing the future?
I think I have an idea why. And I think it is the same reason why some so-called “evangelical” leaders now teach that not even God can see the future. (That is a doctrine known as “Open Theology”.) The reason those teachers do not like the idea of God knowing the future and the reason the science fiction writers do not like to make stories about any infallible, unchangeable vision of the future is because of this: Since the future does not exist yet, the only way a person could know the future is if he knew all the events that will transpire between now and then, and those events cannot be changed. And that is not a scenario that people like, because it would mean that human beings are not in ultimate control of what happens.
God knows and plans the future
A minute ago when none of you could see one second into the future and guess what I was going to say next, I don’t mean to brag, but the honest truth is – I knew what the next word was going to be.
Now, granted I did not know it with absolute certainty. There was a small chance that I might have planned on saying one thing and then something changed my mind, or I got distracted and forgot, or had a slip of the tongue and said the wrong thing, but for the most part I actually had pretty good control of the situation and was able to say exactly what I had planned to say.
I cannot predict everything in my future because there are so many things outside of my control. But I can predict the things I do control. So how does God predict the future with 100% accuracy? The only way God can know with absolute certainty everything that is going to happen in the future is by controlling absolutely everything that ever happens. And that is why when Scripture speaks of God’s foreknowledge it also speaks of his power to accomplish His plans.

Acts 2:23 [Jesus] was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge

Both knowledge and intention. The reason God knew it would happen is because He planned for it to happen. And He is the one who ultimately caused it to happen.

Acts 4:28 [the people who crucified Jesus] did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

If you write a science fiction story about an absolute future that cannot be changed, you have just painted a picture in which man is not in total control. Man is no longer God. Man is not the ultimate determiner of what happens, and that is a story that does not sell very well.
And that is the same reason why the openness teachers say that God does not know the future. They do not like the idea of God being in total control of everything. And so they imagine that man is ultimately in charge, not God. It is not that they are against the idea of God’s omniscience. They do not mind God knowing all things. What bothers them is God’s sovereignty – God controlling all things. And so they do not think God can know the future perfectly because the only way He could know the future is if He controlled the future.
And they are right about that much – God’s knowledge of the future is tied to God’s control of the future.

Isaiah 46:10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. (How do you do that God? How do you know what is still to come?) I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

God knows the future because He controls the future.
So can you see what an awesome, staggering miracle predictive prophecy is? It is so much more than prediction. God knows what the next sentence out of my mouth is going to be with 100% certainty. And the only way He can do that is by being in 100% control of everything – my thought patterns, the distractions that might arise – everything. Now, how can God possibly do that with a being like me who has free will? I have my own free will, and I can chose to say whatever I chose to say. And God does not override that. He allows me to choose. And yet, somehow, He still makes sure it ends up being exactly what He had planned. If that doesn’t blow your mind, you are not listening to the sermon. If we were robots without free will it would not be all that impressive that God controls everything. But He lets us use our own free will and still makes sure every single thing that ever happens is exactly what He had planned. When you pray, do you have any idea what an awesome, awesome being you are speaking to?
Examples of predictive prophecy
That is why knowledge of the future in a prophet is such compelling proof that he really is from God. And it is also why the false prophets do not usually try prophecy. Did you know that of all the major world religions the Bible is the only holy book with prophecy? Other holy books do not even attempt it, because it is a sure-fire way to expose the fact that your book is not really from God. Sometimes you get people like Nostradamus, who say vague, non-specific things that can be matched up with future events after the fact to some degree – if you have an imagination and can overlook a lot of mistakes. They keep it really vague so they can never be proved wrong. But no holy book of any major world religion makes prophecies like the Bible, because if they did they would not last beyond the time that the prophecies are supposed to be fulfilled. 
I remember when Harold Camping published his book titled 1994, in which he said the rapture would take place on September 6, 1994. By February of that year his book shot to #4 on the Christian Booksellers Association best-selling prophecy book chart. People were buying that book by the hundreds of thousands, and bookstores were having a hard time keeping them in stock. Now you can get a copy of that book really, really cheap.
As soon as you start making specific predictions about the future you risk losing all your credibility as a spokesman for God. The way the other major world religions have remained major world religions so long is by not including prophecy in their holy books so they can never be proved wrong. But the Bible is loaded with future prophecy. And not vague, general, ambiguous predictions, but very specific announcements – even to the point of naming names and places and dates.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of a man who will someday rescue Israel from captivity, which was a very strange prediction because Israel was not even in captivity at the time. But Isaiah said, “You will be,” and three times Isaiah tells us the man’s name who will free them.

Isaiah 45:13 I will raise up Cyrus … He will rebuild my city 

“Who is Cyrus?”  That is the same thing they asked. The king of Israel at this time was Hezekiah – no one ever heard of anyone named Cyrus. It is not even a Jewish name. 
Over one hundred years later, more than one thousand miles away, a Persian woman gave birth to a baby and named him Cyrus. In 586 B.C., while Cyrus was celebrating his fifteenth birthday, the king of another country - Babylon - conquered Israel and took them captive. Many years later Cyrus became king of Persia at age 42. He was a great military leader and was bent on conquering the world. But it took a long time, because Persia was not the world power at the time – Babylon was. Finally at age 63 he conquered Babylon, and a short time later, he made an edict letting Israel return to Jerusalem – exactly as Isaiah had announced more than 150 years prior!
At the time Isaiah announced that prophecy it seemed absolutely ridiculous. Not only was Persia not a world power yet, but Babylon was not even a world power yet. So when Isaiah says God will raise up Cyrus to rescue Israel from captivity in Babylon that would be like if someone today said, “Someday, Michael Fischer from the great empire of Kenya will rescue the United States from captivity in Bolivia and allow Americans to return to North America and re-establish their independence.” It was a very specific and very unlikely scenario – impossible to guess. And yet it was fulfilled in exactly the way Isaiah announced it – to the letter.
How do the critics explain that? Do they try to say that Isaiah’s words were ambiguous, or come up with some theory of how Isaiah could have guessed this? No, the prophecy matches what happened in history so exactly that the critics do not even try to argue. You know what they say? They all say the same thing – that that portion of Isaiah must have been written after Cyrus’ time and then somehow included back in the ancient book of Isaiah. It matches what happened so exactly, that the unbelieving critics off the Bible all agree that there is no way a person could give the description Isaiah gave unless he lived after the events transpired. That is how accurate his prophecies were.
Is there any evidence to support that? Zero. They only say it because they have a fundamental commitment not to believe in anything supernatural. That is their only argument. “We know miracles are impossible, therefore it must have been written later.” One hundred percent of the historical evidence we have points to the entire book of Isaiah being written by the prophet Isaiah over 150 years before Cyrus’ time. The language matches the language of Isaiah’s time, the references to small, incidental details matches Isaiah’s time and not a later time – all the clues that would be impossible for a later writer to fake are there. There is very strong evidence that it was written by Isaiah, and zero evidence that it was written later.
And even if you could prove it was written later; even if that part of Isaiah was written as late as 500 B.C. – after the time of Cyrus, that still does not help explain how Isaiah could have made the specific announcements he made about Jesus. And they cannot say those were written after Jesus’ time because we have copies of the book of Isaiah that date back to long before Jesus was born.
The Old Testament prophets announced what would become of each of the nations surrounding Israel, and every single detail turned out to be correct. And many of those details were things no one could have possibly guessed. For example Ezekiel announced that someday Tyre would be destroyed, and all the rubble thrown into the sea (Ez.26:12). That is an awfully strange thing to predict. If an army defeats a city, why go to all the trouble of hauling all the debris to the Mediterranean Sea and throwing it in? They did not have bulldozers or trucks – it would all have to be done by hand. Why would anyone do that?
Well, 250 years after Ezekiel wrote that, a man by the name of Alexander the Great swept through and destroyed the city of Tyre. He did it in just the way the Ezekiel had said. And the people fled to a small island just off the coast. They thought they were safe because Alexander did not have a navy. But Alexander was determined to get to them, so he ordered his army to use all the rubble from the city to build a land bridge – two hundred feet wide - out to the island, and then he marched out there and attacked the people. That land bridge remains to this day. How did Ezekiel know that would happen?
How did Daniel know that the next major world empire would be a dual power – Media and Persia? And how did he know that after that would come Alexander the Great who would conquer the world with astonishing speed and then be killed in the prime of life? And how did he know that Alexander’s four generals would divide up his kingdom? And how did he know they would eventually be defeated by Rome? How did he know the details of each of the major world empires that would rise and fall in the five hundred years from his time up to the time of Christ?
And how did he know the dates? Daniel stated that the Messiah would arrive 490 years after his time. Micah said He would be born in the tiny little town of Bethlehem. Samuel said He would be a descendent of David. How did those men know that 490 years after Daniel Jesus would be born in Bethlehem to a mother and father who were both descendents of David?
The prophets are filled with detail after detail after detail about things that took place centuries after the prophets died, and I could literally go on for weeks giving examples. There is no rational explanation for the prophecy in Scripture other than that the Bible is the very Word of a God who controls history. The other religious books have no prophecy at all; the Bible is loaded with it – page after page, and never once has it been wrong.
Better than a private miracle
The only way a person can reject the Bible as God’s Word is if they have an irrational bias against the truth. Most people do not want to admit that. They say, “If God would just show me my own personal, private miracle, then I would believe.” Jesus addressed that in Luke 16. A rich man who was an unbeliever had died and gone to hell, and was begging that someone from heaven be sent back to warn his brothers. He figured they would believe if they had their own private miracle. 

Luke 16:27 "send Lazarus to my father's house, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” 29 "Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' 30 "'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' 31 "He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

“Moses and the Prophets” is a reference to Scripture. If a person does not believe Scripture he will not believe no matter how many miracles God did right in front of his face – even if he witnessed a resurrection. And that is because the miracles of Scripture are actually better evidence then your own private miracle would be. If God just took you aside one day and showed you a flurry of miracles – made your bed float up in the air, or took you outside at night and re-arranged all the stars, or turned the water in your faucet to wine – those proofs would not be as compelling as the ones in Scripture. You might think your eyes were playing tricks on you, or explain it away somehow or another. But the miracles in Scripture were witnessed by crowds of people, occurred in all kinds of different contexts, were recorded by reliable eye-witnesses, brought about amazing responses, and have stood the scrutiny of the critics for thousands of years of efforts to poke holes in them.
And more importantly than that, the miracles of Scripture are not just circus acts. They were designed by God in a very intentional way to point us to life-changing truth. That is another reason why God reserves His miracles mostly for validating a message or messenger. He does not do miracles for our amusement; He does them to point us to the truth of the gospel. We do not need ongoing miracles today because the gospel has been verified.

The Miracle of the Trough

Luke 2:12 This will be a sign to you (a miracle that points to something): You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

We normally don’t think anything of that because we are so used to Christmas cards. It is the most natural thing in the world for us to think of baby Jesus being in a manger – where else would He be? But think of it from these Shepherds’ perspective. A manger is a feed trough. Why would a baby be in a feed trough? I don’t know if any baby had ever been placed in a feed trough before this. Maybe it has happened in some obscure situation somewhere in the history of mankind, but I think it is a safe bet that none of these shepherds had ever seen a baby in a feed trough. I know I never have. Have any of you? Outside of a nativity scene, has anyone ever placed your baby in an actual feed trough or seen a baby in a feed trough?
This angel tells the shepherds that a savior had just been born and they would find Him in a feed trough in Bethlehem. This is an announcement about a strange thing that will take place in the near future that no one could have possibly guessed. You see it is not a miracle that the baby was placed in the trough – it was a miracle that the angel revealed the future. That is proof that the message is from God.

The Message
What message? The message he just got done giving in the previous verse.

Luke 2:11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.

The child that had been born that night in Bethlehem, whom they would later find in a feed trough, was Savior, Christ, and Lord. Lord was the Jews’ most common title for God. This child is none other than Almighty God. Secondly, He is the Christ – that is the Greek word for Messiah. He is the one all the Old Testament prophets said would come. Third, He is the Savior.
Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Micah, Moses, David – all those prophets who never once got a single detail wrong in their announcements about the next several hundred years after their time – why did those prophets announce all those things? Was it because it was so important for people to know what would happen with Babylon and Persia? Was their main message about land bridges and military movements? No. God threw in all those announcements just so we would know for sure that these men really did hear from God. God wanted us to know that because He did not want us to miss their main message. And what was their main message? Those prophets who were never wrong about the future – what was the main thing in all their writings?
They said that God is furiously angry with mankind because of sin. And every single person who has ever sinned deserves the full wrath of God – and will be punished with the full wrath of God if they are not rescued from that. But there is a way to be rescued from God’s wrath. There is a Rescuer who will come. He will be the Lord Himself – God Himself in human flesh. And He will be a rescuer – a savior.
If any sinner will just stop making excuses, and admit his sinfulness and utter helplessness before God, and place his full faith in this Savior – entrusting his life to Him altogether – any sinner who will do that will be saved. All your sins will be forgiven, all your guilt wiped away, your heart will be as pure as the wind-driven snow in God’s sight, and instead of suffering eternal punishment in hell you will enjoy eternal joy with God in heaven.
That was the message of all those prophets who were never wrong in their prophecies. They said this Savior would someday come, that He would be born about five hundred years after the time of Daniel, in the tiny little village of Bethlehem to parents who were descended from David. And that Savior will determine the eternal destiny of every human being who has ever lived. Reject Him and you will suffer eternal wrath. Entrust yourself to Him completely and He will rescue you.
And when He arrived God made sure there could be no mistake. He sent the angel Gabriel to announce it, and to give one more prophecy to prove that this announcement was from God. There is no question who Jesus Christ is. The only question is – will you believe all that God has said through His prophets, or will you reject it?

Benediction: John 11:25-27 Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" "Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."