Enthusiastic Angels Scaring Folk

Who would have thought the birth of the incarnate Son of God would include: a barn, a teenage Mom, questionable characters called shepherds peaking into barns and sheds at night, a hay trough... why all the nobodies.. and a special Somebody!

Luke 1:26-38,2:1-20
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
James 2:5
2 Corinthians 8:9

Sermon discussion topics for parents to use with their children:

• How many nobodies do you know?
• What is God's intentional strategy concerning nobodies?
• In what ways did Gabriel explain her future Son to Mary?
• Why did this event include shepherds?
• Why is this all so important for you personally?

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA

Why Does This Have to Be So Hard?

Why does our life and Jesus' life have to be so hard? What does this tell us of who He is and of how glorious His salvation is?

Matthew 1:18-2:23,4:1
Hebrews 2:17-18,4:14-16
John 3:16
Romans 6:23

Observe how the Lord Jesus was "a man of sorrows" even from His infancy. Trouble awaits Him as soon as He enters into the world. His life is in danger from Herod's hatred. His mother and Joseph are obliged to take Him away by night, and "flee into Egypt." It was only a type and figure of all His experience upon earth. The waves of humiliation began to beat over Him, even when He was a nursing child.

The Lord Jesus is just the Savior that the suffering and sorrowful need. He knows well what we mean, when we tell Him in prayer of our troubles. He can sympathize with us, when we cry to Him under cruel persecution. Let us keep nothing back from Him. Let us make Him our bosom friend. Let us pour out our hearts before Him. He has had great experience of affliction. J.C. Ryle Expository Thoughts on Matthew

Sermon discussion topics for parents to use with their children:

• Why did the announcement to Joseph have to be so hard?
• Why did Jesus' life have to be so hard?
• What impact did His trials have on our relationship with Him in our daily trials?
• Why is the mission of Jesus so accompanied by brutality?
• What does this tell us about the ultimate questions in life?
• Why does this make what He does for us glorious beyond description?

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA

Strange and Marvelous

Celebrating the birth of a displaced refugee peasant as God is both strange and marvelous.

Isaiah 9:6-7,11:1-5
Matthew 1:18-2:18
Luke 1:11-20,1:26-38,2:1-20
Hebrews 1:1-4

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA

What Child is This: The King

What child is this? Do we really grasp the significance that this baby was called a King... the King of the world? A few people at the time of Jesus birth did (some for good and some for bad). Their response is a helpful study of the real implications for all people that Jesus is the King.

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Luke 1:26-38,2:1-20
Genesis 49:8-10
Psalm 2:7-12
Isaiah 9:6-7,11:1-2,11:10
2 Samuel 7:11-16
Acts 2:36
Matthew 1:1,2:1-18
Revelation 11:15

Sermon discussion questions for parents to use with their children:

• What is the difference between a King and a President?
• Why does it seem that people today just don't get the significance of the fact that Jesus is King?
• Why do we need a King and a Kingdom?
• What are the implications that Jesus is King and Lord?
• What are the implications for people who say they are not interested... or not into religion... or not into Jesus?
• What do the manger and the cross say about Jesus as King?
• What happens when the King comes back a second and last time?

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA

1 Peter: What God Has Done, Is Doing, and Will Do

It is so easy for us to let our day to day trials and troubles to sink our hearts into discouragement or worse...complaining. Peter was addressing people who were suffering. And he himself knew great suffering. But he learned to overcome these discouragements by remembering what God has done, is doing and will do for us believers.

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John 3:1-9,1:13
1 Peter 1:1-6,1:23
Ephesians 2:1,2:4-5

Sermon discussion questions for parents to use with their children:

• What did Peter say God has done for us in the past?
• What is He doing for us in the present (in this text)?
• What will God do for us in the future?
• Why is Peter reminding the believers of these great realities?
• How is the knowledge of these things supposed to affect our outlook today and every day?

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA

God and Man in One Person

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Luke 1:26-38
Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9,2:10,2:14-18
John 1:1
Colossians 2:9

It was not because the Son of God needed to experience it to become accustomed to the emotion of mercy, but because He could not persuade us that He is kind and ready to help us, unless He had been tested by our misfortunes: and this like other things He has given us. Whenever, therefore, all kinds of evils press upon us, let this be our immediate consolation, that nothing befalls us which the Son of God has not experienced Himself, so that He can sympathize with us; and let us not doubt that He is in it with us as if He were distresses along with us. John Calvin

Sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the experience of sin but on the experience of the strength of temptation to sin which only the sinless can know in it's full intensity. He who falls yields before the last strain. B. F. Westcott

Pastor Todd Jaussen
Crossroads Christian Fellowship Church
Greenville, PA