Episodes
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Christmas is the day that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We Christians are celebrating the coming of the Lord by setting apart one day as “Christmas.”
When I was a child, I used to go to church around Christmas. To be honest with you, I went there to get free tasty food. While I was young, people were impoverished with the Korean War. There were times I had to go to an orphanage in town with an empty bag to get some milk powder. At that moment I felt envious of those orphans because they seemed to be being fed better than I was. At the orphanage where I went begging, I saw a cross for the first time in my life. In those days orphanages were being supported by American Christians, so there used to be crosses at any orphanages. I didn’t have faith when I first went to church and looked at the cross, but as I got older, I came to put my faith in Jesus; and now I am delivering the Christmas message to you as a pastor.https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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That Jesus Christ has come to this world in human flesh is really the greatest miracle. That God the Creator took on the appearance of His creature and came to dwell among the creatures is really a great miracle.
When our Lord came to this world, the angels appeared to the shepherds and said, “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” It is written here, “This will be the sign.” It means there will be a miracle. The waters dividing as Moses points to the Red Sea is a greater miracle, but the greatest miracle, the greatest work, among the miracles we can find in the Bible, is the event of God coming to this world in human flesh as Baby Jesus. This is the biggest event in the history of this world. There probably was no greater miracle than this in the universe.https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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Episodes manquant?
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We just read Luke chapter 2 as our main Scripture passage for today.
Verse 11 said here, “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” This means that the King of kings had come to this earth to save us from all our sins and iniquities. This very day, when the King of kings who made the universe came to this earth, is none other than Christmas Day. Take a look at the stars in the sky. Just how many stars are there? Christmas is the day when God Himself, the Creator who made all such hosts of the heavens and the earth, and who is the King of kings, personally came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man in order to save us sinners from all sins. I thank the King of kings for coming to this earth. Words cannot express how overwhelming it is that the King of kings personally came to this earth for the lowly human race, for you and me.https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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It has been over 2000 years since Jesus came to this world. The dating mechanism of year of the world that we use is based on the birth of Jesus Christ in this world. So the historians have divided it into Before Christ (B.C.) and Anno Domini (A.D., the year of the Lord), and it has now been over 2000 years since the birth of Jesus.
There was no vacancy in the inn of Bethlehem when our Lord came to this world. Simply put, He was born in a stable of animals where livestock ate and slept. He lay in a feeding trough of an animal, a manger, wrapped in a rough swaddling cloth. Our Lord the Savior was born in such a shabby place. The Scriptures say, “And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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When we look at the genealogy of Jesus Christ, we see that such Gentile women as the harlot Rahab and the Moabite woman Ruth were among His ancestors. The word Gentile implies a sinner. But these Gentile women were the ones who had put on the grace of God by their faith. They believed in God’s Word and His servants. In short, Jesus’ genealogy shows the succession of faith.
Likewise, Mary was also a woman of faith. An angel had said to Mary that she would conceive in her womb and bring forth a Son, and that she should name Him Jesus. So Mary had said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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At the time of Jesus’ birth, the Roman Empire was ruled by Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.~ A.D. 14), and it was expanding its territory throughout the whole known world. It was no exaggeration to say that Rome was ruling over the entire known world at the time. It is against this background that Emperor Augustus ordered a population census in all the colonies of Rome. This occurred on the first year in the Western calendar. Since this is when Jesus Christ was born, it is 1 AD. Like this, Jesus Christ is an actual historical figure and our Lord.
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Historians determined the Western calendar based on the year when our Lord came to this earth, calling it AD (Anno Domini, in the year of the Lord) and referring to the years before the coming of our Lord as BC (before Christ). Almost all countries of the world are now using this standard. Before the adoption of this calendar, each country in the world had its own calendar. So someone mentioned, “History is His story.” This implies that for this world also, our Lord is its Master. This world was made by Jesus Christ the Creator, and it is also being run and completed by Jesus Christ.
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I’ve already spoken on many occasions about the meaning of Christmas, but I still want to continue to preach about the significance of Christmas. It’s probably because Christmas hasn’t gone by yet. I took some rest yesterday. I watched a video while resting, and the movie was about the melting of the glaciers around the world and the events triggered by this. This movie was made with fictional imagination, of course, but it got its material from the global warming and climatic changes occurring on the planet earth today. In one of the scenes, the surging seawater swept away the Statue of Liberty in New York City and flooded the whole city. Only a few skyscrapers remained standing above the water, and big ships floated around downtown. It was a typical blockbuster movie from Hollywood.
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The Bible says that life is like dust. However, God also said that our lives are more precious than anything under the heavens. The human soul is more valuable than anything else in the world. In some ways, life seems completely worthless, but in other ways, a soul is very precious. Like this, the Lord spoke of life in completely contrary terms. Although He says that life is nothing, at the same time He also says that it is actually very important. Referring to our lives, He said that they are more precious than the whole world.
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With the arrival of Christmas Season, we are celebrating Jesus who came down to this earth about 2,000 years ago. Just as Jesus was conceived inside Mary’s womb about 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born inside the hearts of you and me who are living today in this era. How wonderful is this Truth, and how special is this God’s love? Mary was able to take the Baby Jesus into her heart by accepting the Word of God delivered to her by an angel. Likewise, it was possible for us to prepare a place for the Lord inside our hearts because of our earnest desire to wait for the Lord’s love.
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The account of today’s Scripture passage is a story that occurred on the eighth day after the birth of Jesus Christ when Mary and Joseph came to the Temple of Jerusalem with the Baby Jesus to carry out circumcision and give the first offering before God. It is the same today as it was in the past. People who wait for God as well as those who believe in God are all over the earth. They all have been waiting for the coming of the Savior as ever.
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As we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in this Christmas season, we should remember that the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into the hearts of those who welcome Jesus as their Savior and receive the remission of sins by believing what God said and what Jesus did through the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Our salvation from sins is similar to Mary’s conception of Jesus through her obedience. Likewise, in this Christmas season, we should all receive God’s Word into our hearts as Mary did.
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The Bible says, “Now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself five months, saying, ‘Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me, to take away my reproach among people’” (Luke 1:24-25). Elizabeth was the wife of Zacharias, a priest of the division of Abijah, one of the grandsons of Aaron the High Priest. Elizabeth was an old woman. Until that time, she had no children. She had lived being disregarded quite a bit because she had not been able to have a child until then. In our country, too, women were kicked out of their homes a long time ago if they could not have children. The Israelites thought that a woman who could not bear children was really cursed. One of the seven valid causes for divorce in our country long ago was not being able to bear children, and this kind of woman was driven out of the home because she could not perform her proper duty.
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As we greet this Christmas season and wrap up this year, we truly feel in our hearts something is wanting. There are a lot of complicated things that happen as we live in this generation, but the most important thing we must know is that to us human beings, there isn’t just our outward man but that there is also a soul that is our inward man. So, one of the writers of Psalms said, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God” (Psalms 42:11).
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Christmas is a day we commemorate and celebrate that the Lord God came in the flesh of man to this earth to save all mankind from all their sins. I am very thankful to the Lord because we get to share the Word of prophecy about the birth of Messiah.
We are living in truly difficult times. It’s already been over 2,000 years since our Lord came to this earth and saved all sinners through the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and there are signs all around of His Second Coming. Therefore, it is worthwhile for us to think about the Lord’s birth together with His Second Coming in this Christmas season. Thus, we have very strange feelings and are excited.https://www.bjnewlife.org/
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