Isaiah 9:6-7, Luke 2:10-11, Luke 2:8-20, Psalm 24:7-10, Revelation 5:13, Matthew 21:1-11, Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:9, John 12:12-15, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 19:1, Revelation 7:9-12
Hark the glad sound! The Savior comes, The Savior promised long; Let every heart prepare a throne And every voice a song. Our glad hosannas, Prince of Peace, Your welcome shall proclaim, And heaven’s ...
Philippians 2:6-7, Isaiah 53:3, Luke 2:7, Revelation 5:11-12, Isaiah 9:2, Matthew 2:9-11, Psalm 98:4-6
How shall we celebrate the day, When God appear’d in mortal clay; The mark of worldly scorn; When the Archangels heavenly lays, Attempted the Redeemer’s Praise And hailed Salvation’s Morn.
John 15:10-11, Isaiah 40:31, Acts 16:25-34 , 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Philippians 4:4-7 , Matthew 25:1-13, Luke 2:10-1
O Lord our God, we ask that you help us to stay watchful and alert as we await the coming of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, so that when he arrives and knocks, he will not find us asleep in sin, but...
Matthew 1:23, Matthew 28:20, Luke 2:10-11, John 10:11, Isaiah 41:10, Matthew 14:22-33, Philippians 4:5-7, Mark 2:1-12, John 14:16-17, Hebrews 13:5
“He stands by you:” A drowning man cannot pull himself out of the water by his own hair. Neither can you do it. Someone else must rescue you. This is the good news of Christmas. He who stands by you a...
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:1-7, John 1:14, Luke 2:10-11, Philippians 2:5-8, John 10:14-18, Isaiah 53:4-5, Matthew 20:17-19, Mark 15:33-39, 1 Peter 1:3-4
The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity--hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory--because at the Father's will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable s...
Luke 2:7, Philippians 2:7, Hebrews 2:9, Genesis 15:
The Child of glory, The Child of Mary, Born in the stable; The King of all, Who came to the wilderness And in our stead suffered; Happy they are counted Who to Him are near. When He Himself sa...
John 1:14, Philippians 2:6-8, Luke 2:7, Matthew 1:23, 1 Peter 2:24
The Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the man...
Philippians 2:, Isaiah 7:14, Luke 2:1-20, Matthew 1:, Colossians 3:10, 1 John 3:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17
You have wonderfully created us, O God, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. Allow us to share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesu...
Philippians 2:6-8, 2 Corinthians 8:9, John 1:14, Luke 2:7, Isaiah 9:6, John 3:16
The incarnation has often been described as “The Great Exchange,” whereupon God took on human form so that we might participate in God's divine life (through the Holy Spirit). In a sermon on the n...
Isaiah 9:2, John 1:4-5, Luke 2:8-14, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Corinthians 13:13, Luke 19:1-10, Philippians 1:6, Matthew 6:33, Luke 10:38-42, Luke 2:11, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 2:1-12
Dear Lord, We come to you this evening with great expectations. Expectations that your Son Jesus has been born, and that his life is a light for us and all people. We come with expectations that He c...
Isaiah 9:6, Philippians 2:6-7, Luke 2:10-12, Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1-2, 11
Who can add to Christmas? The perfect motive is that God so loved the world. The perfect gift is that He gave His only Son. The only requirement is to believe in Him. The reward of faith is that you s...
Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2-4, 1 Kings 19:11-13, Luke 2:6-7, Philippians 2:5-8, Psalm 22:6-8 , Matthew 1:22-25
In this excerpt, Frederick Buechner shares a meditation on the vulnerability of Jesus’ birth: The child born in the night among beasts. The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts. And nothing is...
Isaiah 9:6, Philippians 2:6-7, Luke 2:10-12, Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1-2, 11, John 1:14
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been witho...
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:1-7, Luke 2:8-14, Matthew 2:1-12, Luke 2:25-35, John 1:14, Philippians 2:5-8, Matthew 3:13-17, John 3:1-21, Matthew 17:1-8
We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
Luke 2:8-11, Matthew 5:3, Philippians 2:6-8, Isaiah 57:15, Micah 5:2
The shepherds show us that we don’t prepare to receive the king of heaven the same way we prepare to meet the celebrities of our day, through earthly displays of showiness. In fact, receiving our King...
Luke 1:18-25, Galatians 4:4-6, Luke 2:1-20, Philippians 4:7, Romans 5:1, Micah 5:2, John 1:14
Pastor: Gracious God, with joy and thanksgiving we gather as Your people to ponder anew the timeless story of Christ’s birth. For at just the right time, You worked in the most unlikely ways to fulf...
Luke 10:41-42, Isaiah 55:2-3, Luke 10:38-42, Matthew 25:44-45, Psalm 46:10, Luke 2:7, Isaiah 9:6, Matthew 5:9, Luke 10:1-12, Romans 8:24-25, Luke 2:25-32, Luke 2:25-38, Philippians 2:10-11, Colossians 3:17, Luke 2:13-14
Holy Lord, in this time of Advent, we confess we often are distracted by the season’s busyness, by the stress of commitment, and even by putting our own traditions ahead of the true meaning of Christm...
Hebrews 13:8, Proverbs 8:22-31, Philippians 2:6-7, Luke 2:41-50, James 3:17
But the Wisdom of God, which is His only-begotten Son, being in all respects incapable of change or alteration, and every good quality in Him being essential, and such as cannot be changed and convert...
Luke 2:10-11, Psalm 100:2, Luke 2:8-20, Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1-2, Matthew 2:1-12, Luke 2:15-16, Revelation 19:16, Luke 2:8-20, Psalm 95:6, Philippians 2:10-11, Luke 2:25-38, John 1:14, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 2:11
Leader: O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant, People: O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem. Leader: Come and behold Him, Born the King of Angels! O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us ador...
Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the senti...
Philippians 2:5-8, Luke 2:6-7, Isaiah 53:2-3, John 13:4-5, Hebrews 2:14-17, Luke 22:27, Mark 10:42-45
Humble. Before Jesus, almost no pagan author had used “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth ca...
Luke 2:22-24, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Isaiah 9:6-7, Philippians 2:6-8, John 1:14, Isaiah 61:1
They were poor. We know this because the two young turtledoves Joseph and Mary brought was the smallest offering they were allowed as devout Jews and yet the largest they likely could afford. With tw...
John 1:14, Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:1-7, Matthew 2:1-12, Luke 2:8-20, Philippians 2:6-8
It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the most profound unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. God became man; nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this tr...
Luke 1:44, Psalm 100:1-2, Luke 1:39-45, Psalm 96:1-2, Luke 2:20, Luke 2:8-20, Isaiah 9:6, Luke 2:13-14, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21:5, Luke 2:25-38, Philippians 2:10-11, Psalm 150:6, Revelation 5:11-14
Our hearts for very joy do leap Our lips no more their silence keep: We too must sing with joyful tongue That sweetest ancient cradle-song: Glory to God in highest heaven, Who unto us a Son has giv...
John 1:14, Philippians 2:6-8, Luke 2:6-7, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, Matthew 18:2-4
The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by i...
One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies....Perha...
Luke 19:10, Luke 2:7, John 19:18, Philippians 2:8-9, Isaiah 53:5, 2 Corinthians 5:17
In the sixteenth century, Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci journeyed to China, bringing religious art to share the Christian story with those unfamiliar with it. The Chinese readily embraced images of t...
Hebrews 4:15, Luke 2:52, Matthew 22:37, John 5:19, Philippians 2:5-8, John 17:4, Mark 12:30
Jesus was a whole human who had a head and a heart and a spirit. I forget that Jesus came to this earth, not as a brain in a Mason jar floating in formaldehyde, but as an embodied, incarnate, integral...
Luke 2:6-7, Isaiah 9:6, Philippians 2:6-7, Luke 4:18-19, Mark 4:35-41, Colossians 1:15-17, Hebrews 1:3
‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, Such a dainty, fragile child, But the one we know is bold and strong We can hear that in your dying song, Little boy, little boy. ‘Just a boy of flesh and b...