As we are accustomed, this coming Lord’s day we have the privilege and honor of gathering in the name of our Lord to bring Him worship and praise, and to celebrate His great love towards us. But unlike other times, this Sunday we will devote our time, by the grace of God, to making much of Christ together through prayer, song, and Scripture that retell the good news of the Incarnation.
We have been richly blessed by our time in the Gospel of Matthew, listening and gleaning from Christ as He teaches His sermon on the mount. Beholding the glory of Christ as He unfolds His purpose in coming to fulfill, not abolish, the Law and the Prophets, presenting Himself as the fulfillment of all true righteousness. In an effort to connect this gospel to our lives in the stewardship of the Christmas season, we will be taking a short leave from our exposition of Matthew and will be focusing on The Gospel of Christmas in a two-part series.
The first message is entitled: Immanuel Promised. It is a meditation on the central hope that the story of Christmas represents. The gospel—or good news—of Christmas reaches higher and runs deeper than is scarcely known or felt in the hearts of people who busy themselves with the holiday. In a world that so often preoccupies itself with symptoms rather than causes, whether concerning depression or delight, the gospel of Christmas is a message that is sorely needed. With uncanny power, the bigger picture of Christmas touches lives weighed down by sin and its consequences, penetrating the core of humanity’s plight and representing its only real hope. On his quest to escape pain and suffering and to find meaning and purpose, love and joy, man discovers that the deepest longings of the human soul find ultimate satisfaction in none other than the One in whom they live and move and have their being. We will only be restless until we find our rest in God with us—this is the greatest representation of Christmas.