Christmas

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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.

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

            Have you noticed how early people began decorating for Christmas this year?  When it is not raining, I walk to the church and when I leave it is dark and I was amazed at how many Christmas trees I could see through house windows right after Thanksgiving.  We had one house in our cul-de-sac that had their tree up before Thanksgiving.  Why?  I think partly because people are home more, but more than that I think because they want to focus on something that brings them happiness and memories of happier times in the midst of this pandemic.

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

INTRODUCTION:

            Last Sunday we began to look at a passage in Luke 2 that I only got partially through and I promised that I would finish it up this morning.  We began looking at an often-overlooked portion of the Christmas record, the circumcision and presentation of Jesus.  Within this passage we have three human witness to confirm the truth of who Jesus is, that He is the promised Messiah, that He is the Savior, that He is the Son of God, that He is Immanuel, God with us.

INTRODUCTION: