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- A Three-Point Sermon (in Nine Words)
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Category Archives: Christmas
Have You Got the Time?
You will think that you have seen it all when you see your friends and family, and especially when you see yourself. You will be stunned and overwhelmed. “After this,” you will think, “nothing will ever surprise me again.” And then you will see him – him who made the worlds – and in that moment, you will know why you were made, why everything and everyone was made, and you will know that the making was good, was “very good. Continue reading
Christmas and the God of Surprises
Christmas is proof that God loves surprises. According to the prophet Isaiah, God had promised to bring light to people living in darkness, joy to replace sorrow, and freedom from the burden of oppression. He would do this by sending someone to rule with justice and spread peace everywhere. What is surprising about that? That the someone he was sending would be a baby. Continue reading
Posted in Christmas, Theology
Tagged Bethlehem, Christmas story, Colossians 1:15, why doesn't God do something?
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Wide Angle: Christmas, in God’s Time, in God’s Way
It’s time to zoom out and consider the Christmas story from a wide-angle viewpoint. After four hundred years of radio silence, heaven re-established contact and sent messengers (that is the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “angel”) to … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christmas, Encouragement, Theology, Wide Angle
Tagged Christmas, God and time, God's ways, Isaiah 9:6-7
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Wide Angle: Operation Bethlehem
If you remove the Christmas story from the larger narrative that surrounds it, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story but you may just miss the point. This little child … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christmas, Theology, Wide Angle
Tagged Bethlehem, Caesar Augustus, Christmas, Cleopatra, Herod, Herod the Great, Julius Caesar, Slaughter of the Innocents
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Christmas Through the Wide Angle: The Line Becomes the Point of it All
If you remove the Christmas story from this larger narrative, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story, but you may just miss the point. This little child is the fulfillment of the great promises. He is the king. Bethlehem is not just an inhospitable town; it is an invasion site. Bethlehem ought to be listed with Thermopylae, Troy, Normandy, and Omaha Beach. With the coming of this child the forces of the eternal kingdom have arrived, and the deciding campaign of the Long War has begun. Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christianity, Christmas, Wide Angle
Tagged Bethlehem, Christmas misconceptions, Glory to God in the highest, Magi
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Right on Time: A Message for Christmas
If God let his promise to them fail, might not his promises to us be annulled? If his anger smoldered against them, might it not smolder against us? If they waited too long, might we not wait too long?
But they did not wait too long. They didn’t wait long enough. Some of them didn’t wait at all. Instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands. They gave up on God, but God did not give up on himself or his promises. Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christmas, Peace with God, Sermons
Tagged Branch of David, Christmas, Immauel, Isaiah 9:6, Jeremiah 33:15-17, Providence, Waiting on God
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Faith in the Future: Christmas as a Symbol of Hope
d the Corp of Engineers to dam a river, and that meant evacuating a small town that would be permanently flooded. It took years of hearings and tons of paperwork before the plan finally went into effect. Eventually, the state purchased the property from the town, and gave people ample time to find other places to live.
As soon as the decision was finalized, a fascinating thing began to happen. The once beautiful town fell into disrepair. When things stopped working, machines failed, or windows broke, the people of the town just let them go. One of the residents said, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present.” Continue reading
Posted in Christmas, Spiritual life
Tagged Depression at Christmastime, Finding Hope, Solzhenitsyn, What is Advent?
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Wide Angle: We Stopped Trusting Too Soon
hrone of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” Remember that he was born in, of all places, Bethlehem, the town of David. The prophet had hundreds of years earlier said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.” Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christmas, Theology, Wide Angle
Tagged Matthew 3:2, Son of David, Son of God, Zechariah 9:9
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Wide Angle: When the Line Vanished
That promise was recorded and published, and it left an indelible impression on the minds of the house of Israel. And I say “the house of Israel” again because it was only a few hundred years after David that the “kingdom of Israel” was a kingdom no more. The kingdom was shattered from within, and then crushed from without. David’s descendants were sent into exile. The royal line vanished in a faraway land.
wind. They had lost the promised land and the promised king in one blow. And where was God while all this was happening? That’s what the psalmist wanted to know. Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Christmas, Wide Angle
Tagged "Wonderful Counselor", Isaiah 9:6, Psalm 89, Son of David, The Exile
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Disruption: We Hate It but We Need It
God, the theologians tell us, is omnipotent, immutable, and incomprehensible. They should have told us that he is also inconvenient. The eternal and omnipresent God doesn’t step into our little lives without disrupting our plans.
The fact is most of us need a good disruption from time to time. We may not like it – probably won’t – but that doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Without occasional disruptions, the priority of our convenience, our plans, our schedule remain unchallenged, which can leave us assuming a false independence from God. God uses disruptions for our good, to teach us to trust him, to break us out of our self-centeredness and enable us to know him better.
He also uses disruptions to move us in new and better directions. The business world has a term for systemic changes brought about by the introduction of a new agent. They call it disruptive innovation. God has been managing disruptive innovation since he banished our first parents from the Garden. No one understands it better. Continue reading
Posted in Christmas, Faith, Spiritual life, Theology
Tagged Disruption, God's interruptions, making plans
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