The This is the time of year when holiday lights and decorations are everywhere.

In the midst of the festive displays, you often see nativity scenes that depict Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus in a manger.

And although this scene as familiar,

many people don't actually understand why it's significant. On Truth for Life weekend,

Alastur Begg explores key questions surrounding Jesus incarnation, beginning with when?

Galasians chapter 4 and verse 4 and our text is essentially here in verse 4 and 5

but when the time had fully come God sent his son born of a woman born under law

to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

We'll just read on the next two verses. Because your sons, God sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, the spirit who calls out Abba father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son,

and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. You might find it helpful just to keep

your Bible open at that passage or prop it up in front of you.

Although the gospel records will be familiar to many of us,

because routinely we turn to them at least at this time of year, if not on other occasions,

many of our friends and neighbors would have to be honest and say that Jesus is to them,

at the very best, something of a mystery, something of an enigma.

Even in our own country, where we tend to think that the Christian message is very familiar to people,

many of our friends are once again confused about who Jesus was, who he claimed to be, and certainly they are unsure if we were to ask them, why was it you believe that Jesus lived, and more importantly,

why did he die? Now, we can take core samplings of our culture in a number of ways. One of the

most obvious is to ask school

children what they know about these things. I was struck by the fact that someone with a group

of school children had asked them, who do you think Jesus was? One bright spark, believing

to be on it, immediately said, he was the one who took from the rich and gave to the poor.

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