Many pastors find Special Occasions like Christmas a difficult time for preaching. The reason is that we are so familiar with the Christmas story that it can seem a chore to find something fresh each year.
I think one reason for this is we think of preaching only one sermon for Christmas. We fail to make much of the incarnation, a vital part of our redemption, by only taking one sermon in December and telling the same story year after year.
Since at least 1994 I have almost always made the month of December a month to emphasize the incarnation by a whole series of messages from all over the Scripture highlighting various threads or themes connected with the Christmas story.
We have done many different themes: the “Los Angeles” Christmas – all about angels; the Barren Woman theme from Isaiah 54, tying in with the barren woman theme in the Bible and culminating with Mary; the “Roots” Christmas, where I preached from the genealogies and taught the descent of Christ from Adam; and last year “The Bright and Morning Star” where we looked at Balaam’s prophecy and traced the theme of the star through the Scriptures (and taught some church history of the Moravian missions movement, using their Moravian star ornament as a tie-in). There have been many other themes as well.
Well, a friend was bemoaning the common problem recently and I took a look at my summary file of our past Christmas series. I found I hadn’t updated it for a few years. Tonight I took the time to catch it up and send it to him. This has an added benefit: it is getting me fired up for this coming December!
Our theme this year will be “The Word became Flesh” with messages from Psalm 19 as a prelude on the Word’s value to men, culminating with the Jn 1 passage and concluding with a New Years message on the ‘engrafted word’ from Jas 1.21.
You can find a copy of my updated file here. Perhaps this file might be an inspiration to some other preacher. Feel free to use as you see fit!
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