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Covenant Life Church

Covenant Life Church

By: Pastor John Butler
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About this listen

 Pastor John Butler Real. Relational. Reaching. https://www.covenantlifebremen.org/Copyright 2025 Christianity Spirituality
Episodes
  • Christmas the Way It Had to Be

    Christmas the Way It Had to Be
    Dec 21 2025
    Why did Christmas have to be the way it was?The birth of Jesus was so unconventional and so unexpected that even good Jewish people, who had been anticipating the coming of Messiah their whole lives, missed it. Galatians 4:4-6 tells us that there was a plan and that God was waiting for the right time. One version calls it the fullness of time. If God had a plan for WHEN it was going to happen, don’t you think there must have also been a plan for HOW it was supposed to happen and — more importantly — for WHY it had to happen the way it did? This week, we’re looking at Jesus’s life, talking about Christmas the way it had to be and exploring the big picture God was trying to accomplish.
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    26 mins
  • Salvation in a Curse: The Genesis of Christmas

    Salvation in a Curse: The Genesis of Christmas
    Dec 14 2025
    In the American church, we have turned the account of the birth of Jesus into some sort of Christian mythology. We only talk about it in December, keep it separated from the rest of the Bible and do our best to downplay the supernatural aspects. It’s like we keep it in a red and green spiritual Christmas tote that we only pull out of storage on Thanksgiving and then put back promptly on December 26. Despite this fact, the first reference to Christmas in the Bible isn’t even in Matthew or Luke. It’s also not in Isaiah or any of the other prophetic books. It’s in Genesis. There is no mention of wisemen, no angelic visitations and no mangers, but there it is — right there in the first book of the Bible. It’s there that we find both the subtle sin and the surprising solution that created Christmas in the first place.
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    34 mins
  • Missing Jesus

    Missing Jesus
    Dec 7 2025
    What if the wise men only went to where Jesus was because they were excited about the astronomical changes going on in the eastern sky? The shepherds, the innkeeper and countless descendants of King David could have easily all had other things on their mind. We don’t know whose lives were changed as a result of their role in the Christmas account, and as a result, it’s possible they all missed Jesus. If you look around, there’s a lot of things going on during this season — shopping, decorating, cooking, wrapping, vacationing, attending parties and more. It would not be hard to have something to do every day of December. It’s easy for us to shake our heads in judgment at how spiritually dull the people of the Bible were, but in all of our running around this time of year, are we also missing Jesus?
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    34 mins
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