“Christmas Dreams” Matthew 1:18-25 December 20, 2015 Christmas captivates us like no other holiday on our calendar. When we are young, birthdays are anticipated and exciting, but the older we become birthdays are associated with less anticipation and with more dread. We like July 4 and Thanksgiving in America, but those days pass quickly and […]
Read More Sermon: Christmas DreamsWednesdays with Watson is a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from A Body of Divinity, and is a meditation on the hypostatic union of Christ – answering a number of questions about His incarnation. Q. Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist? A: In his being born, […]
Read More Why Christ took on fleshWhat is God the Father like? John 1:18 tells us that no one can see God and live. So we cannot know the fullness of God. It is impossible for us to know God. Except Christ came for the express purpose of revealing the nature and character of God to us. So because of Christ […]
Read More He explains the FatherThe following is a manuscript of the Christmas Eve message I gave tonight. After my junior year in college I got a job working in a hardware store and lumberyard. While “fix-it” projects had always intrigued me, I really knew nothing about what I was selling. And our store had one particular customer who seemed […]
Read More He came to explain the FatherThis is a bonus edition of Wednesdays with Watson — a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from A Body of Divinity, Part IV: “The Covenant of Grace and Its Mediator;” it follows this morning’s post, “Why was Jesus Christ made flesh?” Use one: Of instruction. (1.) […]
Read More Why was it useful that Jesus Christ was made flesh?Wednesdays with Watson is a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from A Body of Divinity, Part IV: “The Covenant of Grace and Its Mediator.” (1.) The causa prima, and impulsive cause, was free grace. It was love in God the Father to send Christ, and love […]
Read More Why was Jesus Christ made flesh?The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: A Short History of Jesus 1 Timothy 1:15-17 December 14, 2014 If you didn’t know better, it would be pretty easy to be confused about what Christmas is about. When you listen to Christmas music you might think that the heroes of Christmas are: Frosty the snowman Rudolph […]
Read More Sermon: The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown“The glory of the incarnation is that it presents to our adoring gaze not a humanized God or a deified man; but a true God-man — one who is all that God is and at the same time all that man is [yet without sin]; one on whose almighty arm we can rest, and to […]
Read More The glory of the incarnationI have never cared for the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” However, here is a version even I could enjoy: HT: Kevin DeYoung.
Read More “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – a good versionThe Indescribable Gift 2 Corinthians 9:15 December 24, 2013 It was the Christmas that almost wasn’t for me. I think I was about 8- or 10-years-old. I didn’t almost miss Christmas because I overslept or was out of the country. It was because I made a tactical error. In my recollection, in those years my […]
Read More Christmas Eve: The Indescribable GiftWhat’s in a Name Selected Scriptures from Mt. 1-2; Luke 1-2 December 22, 2013 When Raye Jeanne was pregnant with the girls, we spent many hours reading names back and forth to one another, trying to come up with something that we thought sounded right and would be fitting for our unknown child. At the […]
Read More Sermon: What’s in a Name?This is our Savior who in the fullness of time appeared to accomplish the redemption and salvation of mankind.
Read More What the Messiah does[HT: Challies]
Read More Christmas in Dark PlacesSome helpful articles: “Rescuing the Rupps: A Christmas Parable” (Clint Archer) One balmy Summer day in 1997 Rita Rupp (57) from Tulsa Oklahoma, was on a lengthy road trip with her husband Floyd (67). For no reason in particular, she began to sense that they may be in danger. She started thinking, ‘What if someone […]
Read More Grab bagIn his book, The Christ of Christmas, James Montgomery Boice reflects on a sermon by Donald Grey Barnhouse, “The Contrasts of Christmas:” [This message] is of interest here because each of the eight contrasts developed by Barnhouse illustrates this central paradox. First, Barnhouse compared Luke 2:11 with John 1:12. Both deal with birth. In the […]
Read More Contrasts of Christmas
Words of Grace 