Advent 2019 Week 1

New City Church Milton Keynes

Advent is the time of waiting: waiting for Christmas, waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is easy to get caught up with the commercial side of Christmas: shopping, exchanging gifts, sending cards and eating and drinking, but Advent gives us the opportunity to press pause for a few minutes to reflect on the real meaning of Christmas: that God came to be with us on earth, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Richard Wardman introduces this short series by reflecting on one of the names ascribed to Jesus before he was born: Immanuel. This means “God with us”, and Richard takes us to Isaiah 7 and Matthew 1 to see how this name was given by prophecy and how the gospels introduce Jesus as “God with us”.