December 21, 2025
We’re just a few days away from Christmas so I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and express my love and gratitude for your love and all you do! Christmas is a time when we show more love, help and give more. It’s wonderful! Don’t you love all the love? Today we’re talking about love! I’m going to tell you the Greatest love story! It’s not Romeo and Juliet or a Hallmark Christmas Movie or your Mom and Dad’s story.
Here’s how the greatest love story starts: it goes, God so loved the world that he sent Jesus! Jesus taught, healed and gathered followers. The story of Jesus seemed to his followers to end with tragedy: Jesus died on the cross. But three days later he rose from the dead! It’s a story of love that conquers death! That’s the Easter story. But the Easter story starts with the Christmas story.
We’re in the last Sunday of our sermon series: Arrival, which is about preparing for Jesus’ coming. The first Sunday of Advent, we talked about hope! Our hope is not in a what, it’s not in life going according to plan. Our hope is in a who: in God! The second Sunday, we talked about how we can experience the peace of God. Also, God forgives us, so we have peace with God. Last week we talked about joy; God put you here with a purpose, to follow Jesus to joy, and then spread joy to others!
Today it’s Love, love, love! Christmas is not a love story between a man and a woman. It’s much bigger! First, there’s a love story between a father and a son. The beginning of the gospel of John starts, John calls Jesus the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.” Jesus is born a human in Bethlehem, but he was with God from the beginning. Before anything, before the world was created, there was a father and a Son. And Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” They were very close!
Then came the first Christmas, when the Father said goodbye, and sent his son to earth. Galatians 4:4 says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son…” Those of you who have kids know what it’s like when you send them out into the world! After your baby is born you go back to work, and it’s the first time you drop them off at the babysitter. Or they’re three and you take them to the first day of preschool. You take their photo, multiple photos, and say, “I love you sweetie!” Then comes the wailing and gnashing of teeth! It’s not your kid crying, it’s you, the parent tearing up! You sit in the car and cry.
Or maybe it’s when they get their driver’s license, they drive off and you go put them on the church prayer list, because you’re so worried about them! You know what it’s like to send off a child. God sent Jesus off, knowing there actually would be something horrible happen to him, he would go to the cross. Christmas is a love story of God the Father and the Son.
Christmas is also a love story of a mother and a son. It’s incredible, Mary is maybe 14 or 15, when an angel tells her she’s going to be a mom and says, you’ll name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. She’s got to go tell Joseph, I don’t know how to tell you this, I’m pregnant. But it’s not what you think, it’s by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph goes, “Right.” And he’s going to divorce her. But an angel tells him, don’t get divorced, Mary’s right!
So, Mary and Joseph stay together and have to travel 90 miles to get to Bethlehem, and she’s riding on a donkey. And her feet swell, and she has to find a bush every 15 minutes to use the bathroom. They get to Bethlehem and she has to give birth in a stable, because there’s no room for them. It’s awful!
But it’s all worth it because she has a beautiful little boy who will save people from their sins. Until this guy named Simeon comes along and says, “this child has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him…And a sword will pierce your very soul.” No one wants to hear that their child is going to suffer and die! Christmas is a love story about the Father and the Son, and Christmas is a love story about a mother and a son.
Christmas is also a love story about the love of God and us! John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world, that he sent his only son, so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but would have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might have life.” God didn’t send Jesus to make you feel bad. He sent Jesus to save you, to give you everlasting life. The greatest love story of all time is that Jesus loves you!
You may think, well, you don’t know my story, you don’t know what I’ve done or who I’ve hurt. Right, you don’t know about me either, good thing! No matter what’s happened in your life, the greatest love story of all time is that Jesus loves you! Scripture tells us Jesus loved the woman at the well, who was looking for love in all the wrong places. She’d had five husbands, and now a boyfriend. Jesus told her, you’re thirsty for something. You’re looking for something that can’t satisfy. But I’ll give you living water, I’ll show you God’s love, and you’ll never thirst again. She changed her life and brought her village to see Jesus! She said, “You’ve got to meet this guy!”
Jesus also loved Peter! Peter said he would always be faithful to Jesus. Always. Until Jesus went to the cross, and Peter denied he knew Jesus three times. After he rose from the dead, Jesus loved Peter and said, “Do you love me? Go feed my sheep!” Jesus reinstated Peter! He just left the past in the past. The Greatest Love Story of all time is that Jesus loved the woman at the well, and he loved Peter, and he loves you and he loves me!
What’s Christmas all about? We have t-shirts, and decorations that tell the reason for the season. What’s the season all about? Jesus is the reason for the season. And we want to make sure Christmas isn’t ALL about Santa. But what is the reason for the season? The reason is you! You are the reason Jesus came. For God so loved YOU that he sent his one and only Son. You are the one that Jesus loves. 1 John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” That is the greatest love story of all time. God loves us and sent Jesus to save us. Because no matter what you’ve done, no matter how broken you feel, no matter how far you might feel from God, you are the one Jesus loves.
You might feel at times a little unworthy of God’s love. Maybe you just don’t realize how much you’re worth to God! Think about the love story between God the Father and Jesus. They were so close, they were one! When you recognize how much God loves you, that he sent his Son to suffer for you, it only makes sense that you want to give your whole life back to Him. He loves you so much! Tell somebody near you, “God loves you!”
My homework for you this week is to tell yourself, I’M the reason for the season! I don’t deserve it, but God loves ME!
The Greatest Love Stoy of all time includes a Father who loved his son, who was so close to him! And a Mother who loved her son and endured so much for him. And a God who loves everybody from the president to a prisoner on death row, doesn’t matter what you’re done. He sent his beloved son for you. God loves you! And YOU are the reason for the season. Amen.
Maureen Duffy-Guy's blog 