Christmas is an event that brings joy to many today, be it the decorations, the carols, the family reunions or the good food. However, the event by which Christmas celebrates was very polarizing to those around Jesus. This Sunday, we'll see how different people responded to the birth of the true King, with implications for our own responses to Him.
Ready or not, it’s election season. Now through next November, candidates will propose their solutions to our nation’s problems. It’s fitting, then, that we find ourselves in Matthew 1, where Jesus is declared to be the true solution to all of the world’s problems. This Sunday we’ll see how the origin of Jesus—including his bizarre and controversial virgin birth—presents him as the only hope for humanity, including you and me.
One of the things our Creator has instilled in each of us is a longing for justice-- the desire to be treated fairly, and to know that systems are in place to protect us. But if we look around, we see that there is injustice everywhere. People are abusing their positions of power and authority, cheating and stealing from each other, and getting away with it.
Where is God in all of this?
This Sunday we'll look not only at Isaiah 9, but all over the Bible to see what God has to say about justice, and what he has promised to us with the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ.
During the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, the cheers always begin at the climactic ending: “O’er the land of the freeee...” Freedom is at the very heart of Americans and many immigrants that come to the United States for study and work. But in the midst of all this “freedom,” do you really feel free? Are we truly free? We’ll explore in Sunday’s scripture text how Jesus comes to bring true freedom to our lives.
Our Heavenly Father has put in each of us a deep desire for joy. We crave more than just sleep, eat, work, repeat. In the deepest part of our souls, we want to know:
Can my life have real and lasting meaning?
Can I be loved unconditionally?
Can I know the Almighty God who created me?
Isaiah 9 answers all of those questions with an emphatic "Yes!" and declares that when the Messiah (Jesus) comes, He will fulfill our longing for joy.
Advent is a season when the church remembers Christ’s first coming as we long for His second coming. One way to recognize that the Christmas season is upon us is the lights—lights on homes, in windows, on Christmas trees, and more. This has become part of our culture each year, but there is deeper meaning to all of these lights. Christmas is truly all about a dark world that is longing for Light.
Is there significance to the phrase "Jesus of Nazareth"? You bet there is! This was more than just a title or an address; the fact that Jesus was raised in the town of Nazareth says a great deal about who God is and what He is about. This Sunday we'll wrap up our Advent series, all about the unexpected way in which God became human and entered our world.
This week marks the first Sunday of Advent as we celebrate Christ's birth. Advent simply means "coming." Together with Christians around the world in this season, we identify with Israel, who waited hundreds of years for the coming of their King and Savior -- as we also look forward to Jesus' second coming. But even though Israel had expected the Messiah's coming for hundreds of years, we'll see in this series in the Gospel of Matthew how truly unexpected his coming was in so many ways. Indeed, our God delights to work through unexpected circumstances in history and also in our own lives.
How would you like to grow this year? In this final Advent Song, John the Baptist exhorts "all people" to "prepare the way for the Lord." As we reflect on 2016 and look ahead to 2017, this is a fitting time for us to heed John the Baptist's call to evaluate our current way of life and strive to make greater room for Christ.
Simeon received the unique promise from God that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah with his own eyes. This song is his response to the fulfillment of that promise: the moment when he held the baby Jesus in his arms. One of the lyrics of his song is, to paraphrase, "Now I can die in peace." What would it be like to be to able to face death with that kind of contentment? The Bible tells us that if we are in Christ, we too can not only die in peace, but we can live in peace too!
The song the angels sang to the shepherds announcing the birth of Jesus was a song of glory to God and peace to all who will accept Christ as Lord and Savior. What is peace? Where does it come from? How can we have it?
We're looking at Mary’s Song (Luke 1:39-56), often called "The Magnificat" from the first line, "My soul magnifies the Lord." Mary is a troubled teenager who finds herself in an anxious yet glorious situation. Troubled because she is pregnant and unmarried, yet she knows she’s a virgin.
But when God speaks to her, affirming his plan for her, she moves quickly from anxiety to adoration. It’s remarkable what a spoken word from God will do to the countenance of your soul. A word from God to you could move your soul from anxiety to adoration in an instant. Come…let’s talk about it.
This is the first of 4 "Songs of Advent" we'll look at during the Advent season. Zechariah's song of praise to God can be found in Luke 1. What does it show us about drawing near to God?
