Audio Augustus Saint-Gaudens is one of America’s most famous sculptors. In Chicago’s Lincoln Park, his 12-foot tall statue of Abraham Lincoln stands, which is regarded the finest portrait statue in the United States. From the mid-1800s until his death in 1907, Gaudens sculpted some of the most notable figures in the world. But one of his lesser known works of a lesser known subject stands outside the Trinity Churchin Boston. Standing before a large cross, with one arm draped across a Bible on a pulpit, with the figure of Jesus behind him with His hand on his shoulder, the robust figure of Rev. Phillips Brooks stands with one arm raised high. The inscription reads, “Phillips Brooks: Preacher of the Word of God; Lover of Mankind; Born in Boston, AD 1835; Died in Boston, AD 1893; This Monument is Erected By His Fellow Citizens, AD 1910.” If you pass by that statue sometime, you might find a small group of people standing there singing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” which Brooks wrote in 1868.    In the Winter of 1865, while Brooks was serving as pastor of Philadelphia’s Holy Trinity Church, he traveled through the land of the Bible. During Christmas week, he wrote home to say, After an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. . . . Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. . . . As we passed, the shepherds were still ‘keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold.’ A few months later, the pastor wrote back to his church from Rome, reflecting on that Christmas Eve he spent in Bethlehem: I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the ‘Wonderful Night’ of the Saviour's birth …. It was the memory of that Christmas in Bethlehem that prompted him to write the carol that we all know so well. At Christmastime, we turn our thoughts to Bethlehem and to the wondrous thing that happened there as God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ and dwelt among us. But it was not by accident that Bethlehem was the place where this miracle occurred. God orchestrated the events of history to bring all these things to pass in the little town of Bethlehem. It was a place of promise, a place of providence, and a place of provision. I. Bethlehemwas a little town of promise (Micah 5:2) Centuries before that night when Christ was born, God had announced through His prophet Micah that Bethlehem, the hometown of King David, would be the birthplace of another ruler. But this king who was coming would be no ordinary ruler. “From you [Bethlehem] One will go forth for Me [the LORD] to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity.” With these words, God promises that the little town of Bethlehem is significant in His purposes, for from it, He will send forth One who will rule on His behalf. This One who is to be born in Bethlehemhas origins that predate His own birth. His goings forth are from eternity. Only God is eternal, and in the person of Jesus Christ, God became one of us. John says of Him in his gospel, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, … and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory.” Philippians 2:5-11 puts it this way, He “emptied Himself,