Click to Login or Sign Up

Baptist Message

"Helping Louisiana Baptists Impact the World For Christ"

Archives for December 2016

What if Jesus hadn’t been born?

By Jack Graham He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. -- Colossians 1:15 I want you to try to imagine what the world would be like without the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s beyond our imagination, but just try to picture it. We certainly wouldn’t know God as we know Him. In fact, we’d be fortunate to have even heard about the God revealed in the Old Testament. So what changed on that first Christmas so long ago? Well, when Jesus Christ came, the Bible says He was Immanuel… “God with us.” God was no longer a distant deity. He was no longer an unfathomable, unapproachable image. But God became flesh and blood; God was with us! That’s why Jesus would later say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). When Jesus was born into the world, He was God! He wasn’t a man acting like God; not even God acting like a man; but God who was fully man and a man who was fully God! When Christ was seeing, that was God seeing. And when Christ was walking, that was God walking! If Jesus hadn’t come, and if He weren’t God, we’d never have the knowledge of God we have today. So thank God today for sending Jesus to Bethlehem all those years ago so that you might have a clear picture of a God who … [Read more...]

My Takeaways from Christmas 2016

By Waylon Bailey Amazingly, Christmas is now behind us, and as with all other years we now have to look to the future (and eat less!). Here are some of my takeaways for Christmas this year. First, I need Christmas. This is what I mean: I need the hope of Christmas and the joy of Christmas. I need a time when I wish people a merry Christmas and give gifts. I also need to focus on the events of the past (what really happened at the first Christmas) and what it means in the present. I think our sermon series on “Christmas: What It Means” from John 1 was good for me. Second, we have to have families. Christmas provides a time for families to be together. We need that time. God created the family. It is the basic institution of society. We have to do everything to build up the family. Christmas helps us do that as well. Christmas gives us a good picture of the family. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus show us real people dealing with real issues and blessing other people through it. Life was not easy for Joseph and Mary; it’s not easy for us either. Third, God knew what He was doing when He created the church. It’s easy to dismiss the church; people have been doing it for centuries. But the church is God’s plan and … [Read more...]