‘Tis the Season for hope and salvation

I am so excited to prepare for Christmas. What a tradition! We get to remember the promise of the First Advent of the Messiah and celebrate the fact that it happened in human history. All of human history was split in half by the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the most famous human being of all time. His book, the Bible, continues to be the best selling book of all time. The birth of Christ has set our Western calendar for the past 2,000 years. To me, Christmas is a magical season. Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season that we forget the reason WHY we do all of this every year. It is a time of remembrance. It is also a time to reflect on the fact that the First Advent implies that there will be a Second Advent. I have written several articles on the Sundays of Advent and you can read them by clicking on the following titles:

Christmas: The Word became Flesh

I am excited to prepare for our Connect Group lesson that will be taught this coming Sunday. This is the last Sunday before Christmas. We are all getting ready to celebrate. That is a good thing. As we prepare to celebrate, we must pause and consider why we are celebrating. In order to prepare, let’s turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 1.

Christmas means surrender

Does the title of this article strike you as being odd? What in the world do Christmas and surrender have in common? Jesus surrendered to the will of the Father by taking on flesh and blood and being born into His own creation. Jesus is not the only One to surrender on that first Christmas. Mary surrendered and so did her husband, Joseph. Christmas is all about surrendering to the will of God! The family time is nice. The presents are nice. The food is amazing, but, the central focus of Christmas is worshiping the King of kings and the best way to do that is to surrender to the will of God.

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ

We are getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the moment when God became man and stepped into human history. The theological term used is “incarnation”. God became flesh. He became like His creation. God came to His creation to be a servant. Jesus Christ came in the flesh to set an example to follow. In order to follow His example, we have to surrender the leadership of our lives over to Him. This is the lesson that the Apostle Paul worked really hard to teach the church in Philippi. In order to understand this concept, we are going to turn to Philippians 2.

In verse five of chapter two, Paul commands the Philippians to have the same mind/attitude that Jesus Christ had while He walked this earth. Let’s find out what that attitude was and see the manifestation of that mind in the daily life of a follower of Jesus Christ.

Unto us a Child is born

The Scripture has been fulfilled. The Promised Seed of Genesis 3 has come. When Seth was born, Eve thought he was the Promised One. She was ready to celebrate the birth of the Savior. This is the first occurrence of the celebration of the birth of the Messiah. She was about 4,000 years too early, but, we see the desire to celebrate the birth of the Savior. Eve was looking to the Savior for her rescue. We look back to the Savior for our rescue.

21 “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1)

The name Jesus means God saves. He will rescue us from our sins. I pray that our attitude will be like Mary’s attitude, a reminder of Eve’s attitude when she first learned of the coming Messiah. Marry has just been told that she will give birth to the Messiah. Here is her response as recorded by Luke:

38 And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to Your Word.”  (Luke 1)

From the Brewer family, we want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

In Christ’s Love,
Erik, Elena, Evangelyn, Emmanuel, and Elizabeth

Finding Favor with God this Christmas

 

I have written on the same subject and you can read it here.

Christmas is not a pagan holiday

Just a warning here in the beginning, I will be on a soapbox for a portion of this article. Now, here goes . . .

Finding favor with God this Christmas

I have been writing and teaching on Christmas for the past 3 weeks. We are in full holiday mode all across the country at the moment. My prayer is that we will prepare for and celebrate Christmas correctly this holiday season. I have taught on how to prepare for Christmas and the importance of Christmas. This message is about finding favor for Christmas. Many time, we make Christmas all about ourselves instead of being all about Christ’s birthday celebration. We use the holiday as an excuse to self-indulge. Christmas is all about worship. We have seen how the wise men worshiped Christ and encouraged others to do the same. Now I want to take a look at Mary and Joseph, how they also worshiped Christ. I pray that this lesson will be practical. I am going to teach it in a couple of hours to the children of our church.

The Importance of Christmas

In the last article we focused on preparing for Christmas the Biblical way so in this article I would like to focus on the importance of Christmas. Many people celebrate Christmas yearly all over the world yet at the same time, many of these same people are just keeping traditions that were passed on to them by their ancestors. When asked the importance of Christmas or why they celebrate, why they do the things they do, like giving gifts, it is hard to get a concrete answer. Many say we celebrate the birth of Jesus during Christmas but if asked “why” the answers get a little fuzzy.

Prepare for Christmas the biblical way!

I spent the better part of this week preparing to teach a Biblical lesson during the youth service. We are starting a series of messages on Christmas and tonight kicks it off with how to prepare for Christmas. Many times people are so frantic during the Christmas season that they forget to prepare themselves. They prepare the parties and gifts and family meetings but many times the most important part is left out.