Philippians 1:8–10 & Hebrews 1:1–3: The best news in all the world is that God came to us in the form of a man to save us from the curse of sin and death. Jesus, the light of the world, radiated through the darkness and dealt a decisive blow to every single terrible effect of sin by his atoning death on the cross. This is worth remembering during Advent and every other month of the year.

John 3:16. This Christmas, I pray you see in John 3:16 the amazing love of God, embodied in Jesus Christ, for you. God’s love is central and foundational to our faith and is not an old topic to just pass over. John 3:16 takes us directly to God’s love, but additionally, John 3:16 is packed with so many other amazing statements in such a short verse. God. The World. His Son. Whoever. Belief. Perishing. Eternal Life. It is not just the fact that God loves us that is amazing, but all the aspects that accompany this love.

Matthew 2:10–11 God has indeed created us to find joy. But everything outside of God himself will be a lesser joy. Joy is found in Jesus. In other words, you will find your spend your whole life searching for joy until you come to Christ.  And texts like Matthew 2:10–11 give us great confidence that this is why we were created.

Isaiah 40:3–5 I am so thankful that throughout Scripture God chooses to talk to us in these types of pictures and metaphors, because it appropriately grabs us in exactly the right ways to help us know how to prepare our hearts in our waiting. Whether we are preparing and waiting in remembrance of what Christmas was and is to us today, or whether it is in preparing and waiting for Jesus’s second coming, our preparation and waiting is best guided not by what particularly needs to happen, but rather, by what (or who) you are preparing and waiting for.

Isaiah 9:2, 6–7 Hope and promise drives much of our endeavors as humans. We hope that a certain school or college, outfit, sports team, job, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, or spouse will bring us everything we ever hoped and wanted. When we don’t have everything we have hoped for, we look for promises. Promises that tell us if we just buy a certain item, say the right thing, engage with the right people, then our hopes will be fulfilled. Do you know and need the great promise of God found in the manger this Christmas season?

Luke 2:1–21. This text is a tale of two kings. Both are mighty. Both are powerful. Yet they express this power in very different ways. One in pomp and circumstance for worldly accolades. The other, through humility, bringing a message of hope and salvation for all people. And you and I have a choice—which type of king will we look to for our own hope and salvation?

Luke 1:57–80. This is the third sermon in our four-part Advent series. As we’ve said before, our hope during this Advent season is that God would help our hearts to grow in celebration and longing for the coming of the King—greater celebration of his first coming and greater longing for his second coming. For this sermon, we will look at the birth of John the Baptist and his earthly ministry, apply it to our own lives, and then we will look at Zechariah’s prophetic song and apply that in a similar way as we reflect on what is so great about Jesus that makes spending our whole lives pointing to him totally worthwhile.

Luke 1:39–56. Today, we get to look and see that Mary believed the promise of the Lord. What we're going to see is that the Mighty One, God, exercises his mercy on the humble who fear him, and we are to trust him and his plan just like Mary did. First, we're going to see who our God is and Mary’s faith through Elizabeth's eyes, and then we're going to see it in Mary's own song. 

Luke 1:26–38. Luke, the writer of the Gospel of Luke does something no other writer of a gospel does—He juxtaposes the promises of Jesus’ birth with the promise of the birth of John the Baptist. He records John’s backstory in as much detail as he does Jesus’s birth and the events leading up to it. As we look at the birth of our Savior and compare it to what God was doing in John the Baptist’s narrative, we will see the same amazing picture that Luke wants us to see as well—that our God is working and our God is coming!