¹⁸ This is how Jesus the Mes­siah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be mar­ried to Joseph. But before the mar­riage took place, while she was still a vir­gin, she became preg­nant through the power of the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to dis­grace her pub­licly, so he decided to break the engage­ment qui­etly.²⁰ As he con­sid­ered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was con­ceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹ And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his peo­ple from their sins.”

²² All of this occurred to ful­fill the Lord’s mes­sage through his prophet:

²³ “Look! The vir­gin will con­ceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord com­manded and took Mary as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not have sex­ual rela­tions with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:18–25

God With Us

It is the day we cel­e­brate the birth of Christ. The day “God moved into the neigh­bour­hood.” (see John 1:14 in The Mes­sage). The story of Jesus began in Gen­e­sis 3, when God promised that a Mes­siah would break the curse of sin. And now, the Mes­siah has been born.

Every­thing we’ve writ­ten about since we started look­ing at the book of Romans finds it’s hope in this cel­e­bra­tion. Jesus ful­fills the Law and releases the era of Grace.

Take time today to reflect on what this day truly means.

Merry Christ­mas.

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So, some of you may have noticed that today and tomorrow’s posts were mixed up. Sorry. Deal with it. You know, what do you expect for free? Sheesh.

I’ll try not to let it hap­pen again.

And for the rest of you who didn’t even notice … yeah, I wont say anything.

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I want to thank you for check­ing out the new Oil Change web­site. It’s amaz­ing to me that The Oil Change is now over two years old. Just under 800 emails have been sent out, one a day for two years and two months, offer­ing my thoughts on a vari­ety of bib­li­cal books. We’ve cov­ered a few of the Gospels, Acts, many of Paul’s let­ters, as well as a num­ber of Old Tes­ta­ment books.

And yet, only those who have been with us since the begin­ning have had the oppor­tu­nity to read all of them. Yes, we’ve repeated a num­ber of the books when I took time off from writ­ing, but many of the posts have only been sent out the one time. Miss them, and you’re out of luck.

As well, some of you receive the emails at work. That means, you don’t get them on the week­end. Or, when you’re on hol­i­days. Oth­ers get them at home, and you want to have the chance to read them again at work — or for­ward the post to a friend at work, and yet, you’re unable to access the email from a dif­fer­ent computer.

Still oth­ers want to have the chance to read the posts on an iPhone or Black­berry. The email may not come through as clearly on a mobile device, and you wish that it could be for­mat­ted for what­ever screen you’re view­ing it on.

Well, as of now, that all changes.

Using the new for­mat, you can access The Oil Change from any com­puter at any time. Sim­ply enter the web­site URL: http://oilchange.robdale.ca into any browser and you’ll be directed to this web­site. From this page, you can view the most recent devo­tional as well as go back and review any past entries. And, the site has been designed with a spe­cial mobile phone plu­gin, so you’ll be able to enjoy it on a mobile device as well.

For those of you who pre­fer to have The Oil Change deliv­ered to your email inbox, you can still do that. Sim­ply click on the “Updates by email” link on the right hand side and fol­low the easy instruc­tions. You can also sub­scribe using your favourite RSS reader if you find that easier.

And you can now leave com­ments on a par­tic­u­lar devo­tional. I will be mod­er­at­ing the com­ments, because I’m not want­ing it to become a place to debate things, how­ever if you have a ques­tion about a cer­tain post, you can place it in the com­ments sec­tion and oth­ers may share their expe­ri­ences with you.

My hope is the new for­mat will help The Oil Change to grow up a lit­tle and be even more effec­tive for more people.

Take a few weeks to decide which for­mat works best for you. I’ll be tweak­ing things a lit­tle over those weeks, and hope­fully when we are done, we’ll have a great place to grow together in a healthy under­stand­ing of spir­i­tual things.

Enjoy!

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