Well here we are already, the fourth Sunday in Advent. Christmas is just a few days away now. If you have noticed the sequence of lessons read here in church during these four weeks, they begin the first Sunday with longing, and expectation, and the hope that God will send a savior, a Messiah. Each week we move closer to that event that we as Christians believe is the event in which God kept that promise to send a savior, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem.

It was here at Bethlehem, we believe, that God fulfilled the promise of Isaiah that we heard read as the Old Testament lesson for this morning, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Which means, "God with us."

So we are there now on this Sunday. We have arrived at Bethlehem, at the site where …