"Christmas" Tagged Sermons

"Christmas" Tagged Sermons

Christmas Eve: My Eyes Have Seen

They say love is a fool’s game… because it seems foolish to keep thrusting our hope and heart on relationships that can easily let us down.  But it is not just in love that we play this foolish game.  All too often we try to find hope, security or satisfaction in things that can so easily crush us.  As we look at the Christmas story we meet a man who had thrust all of his hope on the promise of…

A Son is Given

“No, you can’t always get what you want But if you try sometime you find you get what you need” Christmas is a time when we can reflect on how true this statement Is. The things that we want are often not the thing that we need. In the book of Isaiah, God spoke a message of judgement against the nation of Israel because they rejected him as their God. But Judgement wasn’t the end of the story. In the…

He Shall be Called Immanuel

Many of us may have found ourselves in situation where everyone around us expects us to believe in God but we just don’t feel it ourselves.  In this situation maybe we knew of our doubts but were too afraid to admit it, so we just talked a good talk and coasted under the radar as best we could.  King Ahaz of Judah found himself in such a position… but as the pressures of being king pushed in against him, his…

The End of Evil

In our society we have a tendency to downplay the concept of evil. We like to think that there really aren’t such categories as black and white, or good and evil; preferring to smooth everything out to grey. That is until something happens that we cannot mistake for anything but evil. The story of the Bible doesn’t hide the reality of evil.  In fact it highlights evil so that we cannot miss it.  But more than just highlighting it, the Bible…

The End of Self-Justification

When we dust off our cute little nativity scenes each year we think little about the world that Jesus was born into.  We know the famous story of Joseph, Mary and the manger but we know very little of the kind of society that these events took place in.  As we start our Christmas series for 2015 we will look at what this society was like and how the coming of Jesus dramatically changed it.

He Surrendered Perfection

Perfectionists can be infuriating to be around… especially if you are happy with a less-than-perfect way of living… BUT if we think about it there is a little bit of the perfectionist in all of us; we all like things to be just the way we want them.  So when we get things just the way we want them, (the perfect house, car, marriage, children, job), the last thing we would dream of doing would be giving it up.  But…

The Rejected God

The story of the crowded inn and the stable has always sat squarely in the middle of the Christmas narrative. We have this picture of Joseph scouring the streets of Bethlehem for a hotel only to find “No Vacancy” signs everywhere.  But the reality is that it wouldn’t have been like this at all.  Our cliched picture of Christmas has hidden from us another scandal… a scandal that changes everything.

Christmas isn’t Merry for Everyone

It is supposed to be a happy time of year for food, family and fun, but you only have to look around our country and the world to realise that a simply holiday doesn’t change the brokenness and hurt we can face – in fact Christmas can often magnify this pain!  As we start our series on the scandal of Christmas we look at the reality that Christmas isn’t merry for everyone; not now and not at the time of…

God of the Outsiders

In each social circle in which we move we can very quickly determine who are the in-crowd and who are the not-so-in-crowd.  The reality is that some people find themselves on the outside fringes of society never really fitting in with the cultural elites of their day.  Maybe you feel like this?  Well if you do then there is some wonderful news for you in the message of Christmas.  At Christmas we can’t hide from the fact that God sent…

Christmas sets us Free

Back at the start of chapter 1 of Luke and that start of our journey to understand the impact of the Christmas story on the lives of people at the time we met an old forgotten priest named Zechariah.  He was depressed and isolated but God grabbed a hold of his life and promised him that his prayers (and the prayers of the nation) would be answered.  The last words Zechariah spoke before being struck silent were words of unbelief……
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