Christmas Eve Sermon Outline

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Greet Congregation

A good place to start when studying anything in the Bible is at the beginning; creation.

Genesis 1:26— “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness…”

John 1:1-5— “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Jesus is God

Sinless, eternal, sovereign

The Jews were expecting their Messiah to come as a conquering king. They had received prophecies displaying him as both a king and a servant but because of how much oppression they faced they bought into the king concept.

Conquering King:

Zechariah 14:1-3,9— “A day of the LORD is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights on a day of battle… The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD, and his name the only name.”

Captivity in Egypt, Assyrian exile, the Babylonian exile, Roman oppression. They had had enough.

Suffering Servant:

Zechariah 9:9-10— “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots of Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Jesus rides on a colt in Matthew 21

Herod was familiar with the conquering king prophecy and was scared because he wanted to be in power.

Matthew 2:13— “When they had gone, an angel of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

Jesus came in complete, utter humility.

Luke 2:1-7— “In those days Caesar Agustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and the line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”

First: He’s a baby.

Completely dependent, shouldn’t need much more explanation. Nothing to be scared of.

Second: Born in a manger.

Cold, smells bad, probably has lots of flies, loud. The absolute worst place to be born.

That’s how the most important person in history entered his creation on the most important day in history. What do we do about it?

We recognize the truth. He is the suffering servant but he died and rose again and is coming back. He HAS conquered sin and death. The battle is over. Amen.

We live like him. Love without ceasing. Be humble. Serve everyone you can.

We celebrate tonight and tomorrow with that at the center of our hearts. This is so much more than just Santa Clause and giving presents. Those things are fun but as you spend this time make sure the most important thing is showing the love of Christ.

If anyone hasn’t taken the first step to follow Jesus, I want to invite you tonight. You can do it down here at the altar, you can do it in your pew, you can do it in your car on the way to whatever you do next, you can even do it laying in your bed tonight. If you’ve been running and you’ve lost sight of God, I invite you to turn around, he’ll accept you with open arms. If you need someone to pray with or to talk to there are plenty of people around you that you can ask and if you don’t know who to ask then you can ask me. The service will continue but while singing Silent Night is a perfect time to pray and you can always stay after the service if you need to.

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