You bet. Glad to be in church today. Merry Christmas. Woo. I’d like to welcome all of you watching online. Always great to have you with us. Merry. Merry Christmas to you and your family from ours. My name’s Chad if haven’t got a chance to meet you. You guys are looking fantastic today and hope you’re ready to eat some this holiday season and enjoy family time with us Mt. Carmel Church. Christmas is a great time to get together and celebrate family, celebrate generosity and giving and but we understand it also can be a difficult time. It can also be a challenging time. Maybe it’s a time of year where you’ve lost a loved one this past year may be a difficult time for you from that aspect or could be family situations. We know that all family situations aren’t always good in the holidays and it’s our prayer for you that this holiday season, maybe you take those steps to work out those family relationships. I’m praying to work out those issues among family members, maybe not getting together or getting along very well.
We pray that you’ll do that. We’ll also pray that you will catch the gifts that God is throwing your way today. We just finished a series called where there’s a will Mt. Carmel Church, there’s a way. And so today we’re, we’re doing what we call a one hit wonder. We’re just talking about one message today. We’re not starting a series or anything, but the title of my talk today is the Christmas catch, the Christmas catch. So would you look at your neighbor for me and ask them this simple question. Ask them, what are you catching for Christmas? What are you catching for Christmas? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. That’s enough. I didn’t want dialogue. I just wanted you to ask him a question. He catching for Christmas. You whenever I was going through this and coming up with the title of what I was gonna talk about, uh, I wondered, you know, when I’ve said the Christmas catch and I writing it down, Christmas catch, I realized something that do what I do. And I, I only think tribute to Southern Illinois and the way I talk, but like I realized, I never say catch Mt. Carmel Church. Like I wrote out CA, T H and I was like, I say catch, you know like how you spell ketchup. K. E. T. C. H. that’s how I spell catch evidently. Cause they say you play pitch and catch instead of pitch and catch. It has nothing to do with the message, but I just want to throw that out that I’ve got some problems with my enunciation.
So if any part of this sermon you’re like, what language is he speaking? I’m just letting you know ahead of time the Christmas catch when we talk about we get a lot of things thrown at us during the Christmas season Mt. Carmel Church. A lot of things thrown our way, a lot of things going on this world. And so the Christmas Katz is about what are we catching out of it? What’s, what’s more most important? I, I wrote down a few things. Is it simply about Christmas shopping or long checkout lines? Maybe Santa Claus or Christmas gifts, Christmas trees with lights or maybe most importantly it’s about Christmas hallmark movies, whatever it may be for you. What do you, what are you getting out? What are you catching out of the Christmas season, if where you’re a believer or a follower of Jesus? We believe that Christmas is about, some of the kids did a great job of talking about what was Christmas like or quotes, what’s Christmas mean, what it’s about.
And they said, we believe it’s about the birth of Jesus. And so we believe that as well. And we want to talk about that today. If you would like to join in with us in your sermon notes there in your worship guide, you can pull those out if you’d like to follow along or if you got your YouVersion Bible app, you can get the sermon notes on there. And every time we open the Bible, we are excited and expecting that God’s going to speak to us. We believe he has something to say to us. So every time somebody tells us to open up the Bible, we just get excited about it today. So if you have your Bibles, phone, or book, let’s open them up today to Luke chapter two this happy, happy about that. Luke chapter two. We’re gonna dive into this Christmas story.
When you’re ready. Say I’m ready. All right. I’ll wait for the rest of you. Luke, chapter two some of you weren’t ready. You’re that are used to want to talk to me Mt. Carmel Church. Either way I’m gonna make you, I’m just kidding. I’m not flu chapter two except for two. I will start reading in verse one. Here’s what it says, and it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered and the census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Marea, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was that while there were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered and she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end.
Now there were in the same country, shepherds living out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night and behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were greatly afraid.