THE TRUE CHRISTMAS STORY
Springcreek Church | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart
December 24, 2023
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When we don’t know the Christmas story as well as we think we do, we run the risk of turning Jesus’ birth into a fairytale or a bedtime story. This is one of the worst things we could ever do to Christmas. The Christmas story, as told in Scripture, is unsanitized, dark and gritty. Everything about Jesus’ birth is the opposite of the way it should have been. But in telling the story as it actually happened, it sends a powerful message to every person who has ever felt like an outsider, excluded or unwanted. The TRUE Christmas story is incredibly good news to broken people. Come hear it again this Sunday in all of its imperfect perfection.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. It’s obvious that the Christmas narrative surrounding the birth of Christ gets sanitized in so many different ways. In what ways has society made the story of Christ’s coming into the world something more akin to a fairytale than the real and gritty reality it actually was? Why do you think we do this to the story of Christ? How do we correct those mistaken notions?
2. The choosing of the shepherds as the first eyewitnesses to the birth of Christ and the proclamation that they are “those with whom God is pleased” upends the thinking of the day and prioritizes the least, the last, and the lost. The truth about whom God values still gets lost even today. How does this aspect of the Christmas story comfort you or challenge you?
3. The adoration from the shepherds is spontaneous and natural. In thinking about the C.S. Lewis quote Pastor Keith shared, why is praise something that characterizes the humble and is absent in the cranks and malcontents? When was the last time you saw or experienced something amazing and just had to share it with someone?
4. Take some time to think about all the ways, even in His infancy, that the Jesus story reminds us of the real reason Christ came. How do you connect the cradle and the cross?