Month: December 2016

What We Celebrate at Christmas

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Truth2Freedom's Blog

In this excerpt from What Did Jesus Do?, R.C. Sproul reminds us that what we really celebrate at Christmas is the incarnation of God Himself.

Transcript

What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, as important as that is, but what’s so significant about the birth of that particular baby is that in this birth we have the incarnation of God Himself. An incarnation means a coming in the flesh. We know how John begins His gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So in that very complicated introductory statement, he distinguishes between the Word and God, and then in the next breath identifies the two, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then at the end of the prologue, he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt…

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10 Things You Should Know about the Incarnation

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Truth2Freedom's Blog

This is a guest post by Stephen J. Wellum, author of God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ.

1. The person or active subject of the incarnation is the eternal Son.

John 1:14 is clear: “The Word became flesh.” In other words, it was the Son from eternity who became incarnate, not the divine nature. The Son, who is in eternal relation to the Father and Spirit, willingly humbled himself and chose to assume a human nature in obedience to his Father and for our salvation (Phil. 2:6-8).

2. As the eternal Son, the second person of the triune Godhead, he is the full image and expression of the Father and is thus fully God.

Along with the Father and Spirit, the Son fully and equally shares the divine nature. As the image and exact correspondence of the Father (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3), the Son is fully…

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“A Prayer For Great Joy!”

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A Daily Prayer

Praying man Father, the story is so familiar to many of us since we heard it from the time we were old enough to be still and listen. Many of us participated in yearly church pageants where we dressed as an angel, a shepherd, a wiseman or maybe even Mary or Joseph. We memorized our parts from Matthew and Luke and can quote those Scriptures even today. It was exciting every Christmas to participate in the story of our Savior’s birth. Because of familiarity we can lose the wonder, the mystery, and the excitement of Christ coming to earth. Would You fill our hearts afresh with great joy as we reflect upon our Lord Jesus coming to earth to show His love to us and to teach us Your timeless truths. Our Saviour cared for the unlovable. He healed the sick, raised the dead, and drove out demons. He died for our…

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In Jesus Christ, We See The Greatest Love of All – God’s Love.

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Learning From God's Word

John 14:9

“He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In Jesus, we see love. In Jesus, we see God. We see God’s love – the love that knows no limits – love for God’s enemies; love that is undeserved – love for the unloved and unlovely; love that keeps on loving – love for those who have failed. In Jesus’ love, the love of God reaches us and changes us. “Jesus loves me” – This calls for simple, childlike faith. This is where our love for Jesus and our love for others begins. It begins with the love of Jesus for us. It begins with simple faith in His love. It goes on from there to change the way we live. By His example, Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, to love the unloved, to love those who have failed.

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Hail th’incarnate Deity

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Knowing God through His Word ... Day by Day

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

As we hear Christmas carols this year, keep a focus on the words.  Our newborn King Jesus, who we celebrate, who died in our place (as we have been reading in John this month) is King of kings and Lord of lords who will reign over all the nations.  Today we see another great missions text in Revelation, found in chapter 15, verses 3-4:

“Great and amazing are your deeds,
O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.

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Our mighty, singing Savior

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Knowing God through His Word ... Day by Day

    The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing. —Zephaniah 3:17

God singing? Loudly? Imagine the God who spoke the universe into existence with his word, now singing. Singing lovingly, gladly, joyfully…loudly!

God is mighty, He is with us and will save us. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in Jeremiah:

I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.
(Jeremiah 32:41 ESV)

Isn’t this amazing?  God is rejoicing in doing good for us and rejoicing over us with loud singing?!

Here are some other passages if you want to do more reading on this:  Micah 7:18; Psalm 35:27; 149:4; Jeremiah 32:37–42…

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“A Prayer For All People”

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A Daily Prayer

Praying man Father, we rejoice in the message conveyed to the frightened shepherds that Christmas night over 2000 years ago. The good news announced by the angel was not only for the shepherds but for “all people”, that a Saviour was born to us that would redeem us from our sins. Like the shepherds, may we hear this message, believe this message, and proclaim this gospel message to all people for all time to prepare them for all eternity. Amen.

For this message, photos, links to music and other resources see our website.

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