Christmas Eve Service – Brief Gospel Homily

When the Roman Empire was conquering and spreading throughout the known world, they sought to spread what they called the “Pax Romana” or the Peace of Rome.

Everywhere they were victorious they brought their own culture and ideas of peace to the region with the aim that Rome would extend throughout the whole world. I think it’s ironic that while Rome sought to bring the known world underneath it’s so called peace that the Prince of Peace was born into the world. Even though the Roman Empire was one of the largest Empires in history, lets ask a question tonight: who is more famous throughout history? The Roman Empire or Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace. Easily the answer is that Rome can’t even begin to compare to the eternal impact Jesus brought with Him in His incarnation. His Kingdom, where true peace reigns and comes to all who embrace Him by faith, will never end.

This is what we celebrate tonight, and it’s really what we celebrate every time we meet here to worship and every day of our lives. Christmas teaches us that we can’t come to God on our own, He had to come to us. In the incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus Christ, God came near, therefore we have hope because in Christ God has accomplished for sinners what we could never accomplish on our own.

For the past three Sundays we have been in a sermon series called ‘Dawn is Here’ looking into three different Old Testament passages that describe the long awaited coming King, Jesus Christ. And the reason we’ve done this over Advent for 2014 is to show that Jesus’ birth carries far more weight and meaning to it than can be found in 1^st century Bethlehem alone.  His birth was the culmination of promise after promise after promise made by God to His people.  Therefore, to properly understand the birth of Jesus one must understand that the birth of Jesus is not beginning of the story, it has roots that go deep underground in the Old Testament…so our last text in our ‘Dawn is Here’ series is found in Matthew 2:1-12. It easily divides into three sections, and I’ll walk through one at a time, hear the Word of God.