“That’s What Christmas Is All About”

HT: Biblical Counseling Coalition Blogs.

The end has come

The babe in the manger whose arrival more than 2000 years ago we celebrate today was as helpless as any other child ever born. He who created the vast expanses of the heavens and the stars that fill them and the atoms that comprise them was dependent on the care of his teenage mother and […]

Paradoxes of Christmas

We haven’t done it this year yet (we might be a little late!), but one of the things the girls particularly always like to do at Christmas time is go and look at the lights — we’d ooo and ahh at all the extravagant decorations. And when the girls were little, Raye Jeanne and I […]

It’s Christmas. Be fearful.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, […]

You shall call His name…

When Raye Jeanne and I chose names for our children, they were our attempts to give them an identity. We desired for them to carry names that would reflect our desires for them. And we hoped that the legacy we left them with their surname would give them a heritage to live for when we […]

Why the virgin birth is important

This morning we considered the birthday story of Jesus and the virgin birth (Matthew 1:18-25). Some might think that spending time thinking about the virgin birth is immaterial — that it really doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus was born of a virgin. Yet there are many reasons why the virgin birth is essential. To […]

“You shall call His name Jesus”

From John Broadus on Matthew 1:21: It is familiar fact that Hebrew names were commonly significant, a natural and pleasing custom. This being no longer a usage with us, we often give names of great and good men who have lived in other days. Sometimes heroes of fiction. This too is beautiful. Names often make […]

A favorite Santa Claus story

What’s your favorite Santa Clause story? Nathan Busenitz tells his favorite story of the real Santa Claus, the fourth-century pastor Nicholas of Myra: Tradition says that Nicholas was one of the bishops attending the great council [of Nicaea]. As he sat listening to Arius proclaim views that seemed to him blasphemous, his anger mounted. He […]

Sunday Leftovers: the deity of Christ

From the opening verses of John’s gospel, a number of truths about Christ are readily apparent: Jesus Christ has eternally existed. Jesus Christ has eternally existed alongside God the Father. Jesus Christ is Himself God, with the Father. Jesus Christ is the originator of all things. Jesus Christ is life and is the source of […]

Free audio book: God Is in the Manger

This month’s free audio book at Christian Audio is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. “There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross […]

This was to fulfill what was spoken…

In Matthew 5, Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (v. 17). There might be a temptation to think that His fulfillment of the Law began with His public ministry. Not so. His fulfillment began with His birth, […]

They said what they’d seen

When you read the stories of Christ’s birth in Luke 2, it is possible to come up with sermons that are pleas to be more evangelistic: the shepherds investigated the revelation of the angels by going to find the new-born Christ and then declared what they discovered to others. This provides potential opportunity for another […]

It’s not just a name

When my wife was pregnant with our children, we spent many dinners and evenings reading names to each other from the baby name books. And until we settled on a final name, not wanting to call the baby, “baby,” we came up with interim names — monickers that tickled us as we read through the […]

This is the way the Lord deals with His own

It’s possible to read the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth in Luke 1 and think, “that’s a blessed family.” But that’s like reading the last chapter of a book first, finding the happy ending and assuming that the participants of the story knew the end of the story while all the hard stuff was happening, […]

Grab bag

Some helpful articles I’ve spotted around the internet recently: John Knight reminds us about the subtle ways in which the agenda of abortion is pushed in the media. “Three continents. Six children dead. Every headline mistaken.” is a tragic tale of the death’s of six innocent children, and a sorrowful demonstration of how far the understanding […]