Christmas

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

            Last Sunday we saw hope renewed in the hearts of people because God stepped into history after 400 years of silence and renewed the hope in His promise to send a Savior, the Messiah by revealing to an old priest that his wife would have a son who would be the forerunner of the Messiah.

INTRODUCTION:

There is no text with this service.

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

            Growing up in the church, the son of the church’s pastor I remember each Christmas my dad setting up on the church lawn a life-size nativity.  It had everything:  Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in the manager.  It had sheep, a donkey, and shepherds.  It had wise men and camels, and they were all life size.  They were only two dimensional, life-size pictures mounted on plywood but impressive looking none the less, especially the camels.

INTRODUCTION:

            As we come into this advent season, as we begin to consider again the incarnation of Jesus Christ, I want to spend the next three weeks looking at some of the people that were caught up in the events leading up to and surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ.  For this first week I want to look at Joseph, the forgotten father in the events of the incarnation.