How will you react this year to the portrait of Jesus lying in a manger as given to us in Scripture?  For some Christmas is all about spending too much, opening gifts, eating food, and visiting family but nothing more.  The mere thought of the Son of God being born to a carpenter’s family and in a stable instead of a king in a royal palace seems utterly absurd to them, after all for them the Bible is really nothing more than the product of a fairy tale or “how to book” on being good.  Taking “Christ” out of Christmas is like being at a “football game with no football, a tennis match with no tennis ball, a golf outing with no golf ball or a basketball game with no basketball” … it simply makes no sense!  But what even makes less sense is to be a born-again believer and yet under the guise of going to church, reading Scripture, and singing Christmas carols merely pretending to rightly worship our Savior^[4] while in practicality hanging a sign on our hearts that says there is no room in the inn for God’s Son!  Truthfully, we love the manger scene because within this glorious story for us lies a frail baby who is dependent on us rather than we on Him!  The following sermon is going to examine Luke 2:1-20, the birth of Jesus, with the goal of encouraging you to not ignore or give mere platitudes to Christ on His birthday but to honor Him by taking time to meet Him, by trading fear for joy of His righteousness and by spreading the Good News that the Babe lying in the manger is none other than the world’s Redeemer come to save the people from their sins!