God Opened the Heavens and said, “I Love You!”

A friend invited us to visit his church today; Harvest Bible Chapel. He knew John would love the praise band and I would love the sermon. And I do love sermons where I learn something new and that also ignite something inside me.

The minister today talked about what it was really like for Jesus to come to earth, when and where He did. And how we need to get beyond the “familiar” of Christmas to see the scriptural. There were a couple things from his sermon I’d like to remember.

The shepherds were excited by the message the angels gave them. They ran to Bethlehem to tell others and to see the baby for themselves. The people in Bethlehem were interested in what was going on because it was unusual – kind of like us reading the news and talking about it. But, they held back. They just wondered and talked about it. But the shepherds worshipped.

We need to get excited and worship, not just sit back and wonder.

Another thing he said was that in the Christmas story in Luke 2:1-20 in one verse Jesus is referred to as Savior, Christ and Lord. Savior is really what Jesus’ name meant. Jesus is another name for Joshua, which means salvation. Christ is His deity and Lord is what He is: ruler of all. The pastor said as Christians instead of just calling Him Jesus like even unbelievers are comfortable doing, we need to call Him Lord Jesus or Jesus Christ or even The Lord Jesus Christ.

And finally he told a story about coming home from work one day and as he was getting out of the car his 2-year-old opened the front door and shouted, “Guess what! Guess what!” He couldn’t imagine what she was so excited to tell him and answered, “What?”

She said, “I LOVE YOU!”

And that’s what God did on Christmas. He opened the Heavens and said, “I have something exciting to tell you! I LOVE YOU!”