Good Tidings of Great Joy

(#39, Yermo, Dagget, Kelso, 1946)

Read Luke 2:1-20.

What does Christmas mean to you?  Is it a time when Christ is honored?  Why do you give gifts?

w   The birth of Jesus was no dream, no fiction of the imagination, no vision of a far away ideal.

w   The birth of Jesus was in the plan of God from the time the world began.  (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14; 9:6)

The announcement to the Shepherds was that of "good tidings of great joy" when Jesus was born.  What were the good tidings? That Christ came to die!

Christ came to make atonement for the sins of the world.  Gal. 4:4-5.

Christ did not come to be an example to men.  Christ did not come to teach men a code of moral ethics.  Christ came to redeem a bankrupt world (Eph. 1:7; Mark 10:45) "that we might receive the adoption of sons."

Christ brought immortality. 2 Tim. 1:10; 1 Cor. 15:22.

We have the promise of seeing our loved ones that have gone out of this world.

Christ came to secure us a home above.  John 14:1-3; Rev. 7:16; 21:4.

Bethlehem and Calvary (poetry by E. Margaret Clarkson)

There was no room in Bethlehem

For Him who left His throne,

To seek the lost at countless cost

And make their griefs His own;

But there was room on Calvary

Upon the cross of shame

For Him to die uplifted high

To bear the sinner's blame.

  

There was no room in Bethlehem for the King of Kings; but there is room at Calvary for sinners who come to Jesus.