What Does God Want for Christmas?

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to pick out gifts that will make our loved ones smile at Christmas.  But what about God Himself?  Do you consider what He wants for Christmas?  There's a lot of ways to answer that question that simply boils down to doing good things.  But is that what God really wants most from you this Christmas? 

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The Foundations of God's Plan

This week, we tried to put the last eleven months of walking through God's plan that was revealed in the Old Testament stories.  In choosing certain people in history and working His plan through the ages, through the lives of real men and women, God has shown us who He is--His nature, His promises, and His work.  And in the end, we discover it really is all about Jesus.

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David, Part 8: God's Promise (2 Samuel 7)

The story we tell every Christmas began long before a "silent night" in Bethlehem.  We might say it started in eternity past in the heart of God, and that is true.  But the sense anticipation that not only marks our modern experience with the Christmas season but also serves as the emotional backdrop of the original birth narrative began with a promise made to King David.  It was a promise that would be the hope of Israel throughout the coming centuries as the nation weakened and was overrun by enemies.  It was the promise of a Messiah, the Christ-King ("anointed one") who would sit on the throne of David and redeem God's people. 

But when Jesus finally arrived, he found a people anxious for God to fulfill His promise to David, but who misunderstood the nature of the promise.  As we read the story today, how can we avoid the same mistakes?

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David, Part 7: Higher Ground (2 Samuel 5-6)

A new era began in David's life when he moved to Jerusalem and brought the Ark of the Covenant.  He had moved to "higher ground"--in both a literal and metaphorical sense.  God had taken him from the "miry clay" to the "rock," where he had firm footing.  How do we reach higher ground in our lives? 

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David, Part 6: Civil War (2 Samuel 1-4)

Did you know that after Saul's death, David didn't immediately become king? It's a story that's rarely told, but there was a civil war in Israel over who would be the next king. But David wanted to bring unity to the nation as peacefully as possible.

Are you in the middle of conflict at work, in your family, or in other relationships? How can we be an agent for unity in this polarizing world that we live in? We can learn from the example of David...

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David, Part 5: David, Saul, and the Philistines (1 Samuel 27-31)

We live in a superficial society, but the gospel is anything but superficial. It is able to penetrate every part of our lives as Jesus makes all things new in us. But we often put off God our compartmentalize our spiritual lives away from... "real life." We see in Scripture that we aren't the first to do that. At the end of 1 Samuel, we can see in the lives of both David and Saul the dangers of living a superficial spiritual life.

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Thanks, Bobby Jean

Sunday we honored long-time member Bobby Jean Wilkie for her many decades of service to our church and the kingdom of God.  We were blessed to have many in her family in attendance.  Here is the video we put together for the occasion:

David and Jonathan

If we are really honest with ourselves, friendship is hard.  The Bible tells us to "Love your neighbor as yourself," but so often we want for ourselves what others have.  And we see the success of others as something that we need to degrade or that degrades us.  How can we follow the biblical example to "rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn"?  God provides a shining example for what it means to be a friend in Jonathan, son of the king who would become David's mortal enemy.  Jonathan shows us that friendship is a gift of God and how we can be the friend that God has called us to be.

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Halloween and the Cross

From this month's newsletter's "Pastor's corner"...

As I sit here to write this thought, it is Halloween.  When I was little, I enjoyed the innocent activities of Halloween—dressing up as a superhero or ballplayer and going out to get candy in a plastic pumpkin.

 When I got to college, the guys that were into Halloween started to disturb me a little, with a fascination with death, torture and gore.  They liked to make replicas of old torture devices from past centuries and create “decorations” that re-enacted the bloody results of these sadistic contraptions.

It occurred to me the other day that if it weren’t for Jesus, a crucifixion cross would probably be one of the most popular features of these macabre displays. 

It is helpful to realize that even though we coat the cross in gold, Jesus’ cross was coated in His blood.  It was a cruel and gory and ugly way to die.  Jesus endured this death for us.

It’s also an illustration of what Jesus did in His death on the cross and at His resurrection.  Just as the cross itself has been redeemed from a symbol of torture to a symbol of life and hope, Jesus has defeated death and redeemed us to a life free from the fear of death and with the hope of glory.

 

Beyond the cartoonish displays that litter the landscape every October, there are symbols of death all around us, and spiritual darkness seems to abound. But Jesus has already won the victory. Look to the cross and take heart. And be urgent in your call to offer the hope of the cross to the world around you. See you this Sunday.

David, Pt 2: David and Goliath

David and Goliath is one of the few Bible stories that is still part of the popular lexicon.  Even this week as we prepare for the World Series, people have referenced "David and Goliath" in talking about the Kansas City Royals' improbable run to the pennant.  It's the classic underdog story.

Except when you really read the story in the Bible, it's not so much a story about an underdog overcoming overwhelming odds as it is about one young man who saw the true nature of the situation.  It wasn't David the underdog versus Goliath the giant.  It was a battle where a mere man had chosen to blaspheme and challenge the living God.

It is a story of perspective.  If we were to have the grace David had to see truth of our own challenging situations, what effect would it have on our lives?

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David, part 1: David the Worshiper

We begin our series on David this week with a look at David the psalmist and worshiper. God taught His people the forms of worship through Moses and the law. He taught us how to worship from the heart through David. 

(Fair warning: there is singing in this sermon. Probably bad singing.)
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Samuel: Samuel's Final Lesson

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

—1 Samuel 16:7

When God rejected Saul as king, Samuel thought his ministry was over. He mourned for Saul, but God had one more thing for Samuel to do and one more thing to teach him. It is a profound message that changes the way we look at ourselves, each other, and God: "God does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance. God looks at the heart."

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Samuel: The Problem with Saul

King Saul had great success as Israel's first king, but despite his real experience with God and all his outward gifts, he was ultimately a source of grief for both God and his mentor Samuel. How can someone with so much success and such great gifts, especially someone who seems to have rejected idols and takes pleasing God seriously, end up as such a mess? If we look beyond the "bad guy" caricature of Saul, we see someone who is not so different from ourselves. How do we avoid being like Saul?

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Samuel: A King Like Other Nations

Samuel had been one of the great leaders in the history of God's people. Now he was getting old and threats loomed to the north and the south. The people of Israel feared for their future, so they looked for a solution that matched the strongest nations around them. They wanted a king. What could be wrong with that?
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Samuel: Prophet, Priest, Judge

I could have titled this sermon "From Ichabod to Ebenezer." What the heck does that mean? You'll have to listen to find out. (Hint: It has nothing to do with headless horsemen or "bah humbug" misers).

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Samuel: An End and a Beginning

The grace of God is amazing. Throughout the period of the Judges, the people of Israel spiraled downward to more wickedness, more unfaithfulness, and more self-destruction. They stopped crying out to God, but God intervened anyway. He put an end to this cycle and raised up a leader to guide them into a new era of blessing. That man's name was Samuel.

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Victoria Osteen is Both Right and Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Maybe you've seen this video floating around the Internet in the last week.  Victoria Osteen is the wife of Joel Osteen, the megachurch pastor whose church meets in a former NBA arena and whose services are broadcast all over the world.  Why is this clip so viral?  Let's just say it's not because everyone wants to share her message...  so how should we react?



I say Victoria Osteen is right... and she is horribly, horribly wrong.

Joshua: Renewing the Covenant

There's a fine line between trusting God and taking Him for granted. 

Whether you are more apt to fret and fail to trust God or more likely to drift and take God for granted, there is something for you to learn in this story from Joshua of Israel's presumption, sin, judgment, and renewal.

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Joshua: From Grumbling to Shouts of Victory

There's something terribly damaging about a defeated, grumbling attitude. Satan loves for it to grow among God's people like gangrene, and it eventually destroyed the generation of the Exodus. When their children took over, they were much... like their parents (see the book of Numbers, chapters 20-21). But then something changed. When they reached Jericho, they had a faith that could celebrate and shout in victory before the first evidence that they had won. How did this transformation take place?

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Joshua: Call to Courage

God prepared Joshua his whole life to take over for Moses. He gave Joshua the same promise he gave Moses. Now all that was left was for Joshua to have the courage to obey. As we start our series on the life of Joshua, we look at the often-overlooked ingredient every believer needs to step into the life and calling that God has for each person. That ingredient is courage.

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Moses: Preparing to Enter into the Promise

Moses had outlived an entire generation when he stood before the people and gave his final word to the Israelites in Deuteronomy. How was this generation going to succeed where the previous one had failed? How can we prepare to answer God's call and receive what God has promised to the faithful? This week, we look at Moses' words from his most famous speech in Deuteronomy 6-10...

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Moses: Faith Versus Fear

All of you who missed church Sunday missed the tragic saga of Penny and Pete, and the even more tragic saga of the Israelites at the edge of the Promised Land.  Lucky for you the sermon was recorded and available here! 

So whether you're having a day where you feel big and strong like a grasshopper from A Bug's Life or you're feeling small like a grasshopper under the shadow of someone's lawn-mowing shoes, listen today as we talk about when faith clashes with fear.

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Moses: At the Mountain of God

We've had some technical issues recently in getting sermons recorded and posted, but this week's is ready.

Like a bride and groom looking into one another's eyes and saying their vows, God met personally with the Israelites on Mount Sinai to enter into the covenant of the law with them. God said He would make them His treasured possession. The people vowed to obey, but their words were empty.

Sin--theirs and ours--is personal to God.

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Moses, Part 3: God Our Deliverer

In delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God revealed Himself to be the God Who Saves. But salvation is not complete unless it is preserved. God had to be their Deliverer, too. As the Egyptians bore in on them on the coast of ...the sea, fear and regret set in, but then God came through in a big way.

We can learn a lot about our salvation story from the salvation story of the Israelites. This week, we look at what it means that God is our Deliverer and what truths can help us when the enemy seems resilient and strong.

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Moses: God Calling

You know the situation. It breaks your heart, but your logic and experience says you can do nothing about it. What happens when God says, "So now go. I am sending YOU"? The story has now shifted to Egypt. This is the first of our series on Moses.

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Jacob: The Struggle Is Not Wasted

The enduring image of Israel (Jacob) at the end of his life is him worshipping as he leans on his staff. The man whose life had been about "wrestling with God and man" had come to a place of praise, seeing that by God's redeeming work, he had lived to see the salvation that God was working in his life. As we look at the end of Jacob's story from Genesis, let's go to God with our struggles, knowing that, when we are dedicated to His purposes, our struggles are never wasted.

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Making Your Commencement Speech Captive to Christ

At this time of year, when graduates are graduating, we hear all sorts of wisdom being passed around. Now it's even popular for commencement speeches from celebrities to trend online. But how do we separate the well-informed from the merely well-intentioned? This week's message was advice on how to take captive your commencement speech (not your commencement speaker) and make it obedient to Christ.

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Jacob: The Struggle of a Blessed Life

When Jacob wrestled with God, he refused to let go until God blessed him.  And God did bless him, changing his name and his heart.  But in the chapters that follow, we see that Jacob's life was an endless struggle, characterized by tragedy and loss.  He must have been thinking, "THIS is the blessed life God promised me?"  Maybe you've thought the same thing.  This message addresses the struggle of a blessed life.

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Jacob: A Tale of Two Church Kids

This week, Susanna made her third appearance in church on her 3-week birthday. She will be another certified "church kid." I cherish my "church kid" childhood and the heritage my parents passed on to me. It is a parent's greatest privilege and responsibility to pass on their faith.

But their are pitfalls to having an inherited faith. We see those pitfalls in the first generation of "church kids" in the Bible: Abraham's grandsons Esau and Jacob.

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Abraham: A New Generation

I realized today that I hadn't posted Sunday's sermon yet. I have to apologize to all of you who have been refreshing this page every hour since Tuesday in anticipation, but here it is!

Today we look at the longest and final story that we have in detail from Abraham's life. In this story, Abraham is trying to ensure that Isaac will build on the foundation he has laid. That leads to an interesting question for us: How do we build on the foundation our parents have laid? How do we help the next generation build on our foundation?

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The Rebel's Cross

We say that Jesus died in our place - and it's true.  But as he took on our cross in a spiritual sense, he took on another man's cross in the most literal sense.  What can we learn from the story of Barabbas, who was set free as Jesus was crucified? 

This week's message begins with a "Barabbas" monologue and then a short message.

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Abraham: Reasonable Faith

People without faith in God often describe faith as believing something without (or contrary to) evidence. But the Bible says that without faith, it is impossible to please God. So is it possible to be intellectually honest and still have faith in God? Of course it is. And the life of Abraham gives us a great example of how to live a life of reasonable faith.

Abraham and Lot and the Question of Influence

Influence is a funny thing.  What affects one person does not necessarily affect another.  For some, it's incredibly difficult not to follow friends into destructive behavior.  For others, it's not so hard, but the suggestions of advertisers move them to action. 
For Christians, influence is central to what it means to follow Christ, who said we are "the light of the world."  But what causes a Christian to "be light"?  Today we look at two believers, Abraham and Lot.  For one, his righteous life caused others to praise "God Most High."  For the other, his light was all but snuffed out.  Why?  Let's take a look today...

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The Sin of Sodom

Part 4 of 8 in the series, "Foundations of God's Plan: Abraham"

Sodom is famous for one particular sin, but the Bible says Sodom and the surrounding cities of the plain were destroyed for another sin entirely (of which the horrific scene from Genesis 19 is only an example). When you realize the true sin of Sodom (from Ezekiel 16:49-50), you find that it hits a lot closer to home. Are you guilty?

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Abraham: A Promised Home

Part 2 of 8 in the series, "Foundations of God's Plan: Abraham"

When God blessed Abram, he not only promised him a great name but also a home. Each of these promises answers a great longing in the hearts of people.

As Augustine said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless ...until it rests in you"

So how did Abram come to his home? How do we come to our promised home? Let's look at the Scripture together...

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Foundations of God's Plan: Abraham, the Call and the Promise

One of the great theologians of the 20th Century - John Stott - calls it "the most unifying verses in the Bible" which are "indispensable to an understanding of the Bible and the Christian mission." Do you understand the significance of God's call of Abram in Genesis 12:1-3? Are you living under the blessing given to Abraham, inherited through Christ?

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Noah: Life and Promise

After Noah and the others got off the ark, they opened the door and stepped into a vastly different world from the one they had known.  Pictures of the devastation from modern-day floods are awful to see, but they are nothing compared with what Noah saw that day.  The world was waterlogged and full of death.  The stench must have been overwhelming.  But rising above that stench, there soon came another aroma which pleased the nostrils of God: a burnt offering of thanks prepared by Noah to the Lord.  In that moment, God made a decision, a proclamation, and a promise, all of which are still in effect today and still have tremendous ramifications for our lives.  The rainbow is set in the sky to remind us of the promise.  But what kind of promise is it?  What, exactly, did God promise?  And how does this promise affect us today?

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Noah: Judgment and Grace

There's a Noah movie coming out next month, filled with stars like Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, and Emma Watson.  In some of the pre-publicity interviews, Crowe has been quoted as saying that he did not see Noah as a good person at all, because he let all those people die.  (This misses the characterization of Noah as a "preacher of righteousness"--which suggests that he warned people, but they did not listen). 

This problem points to something about the story of Noah, which despite being one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, remains one of the most difficult.  This is not a "cute" story for children.  It is a story about God's judgment with a tremendous amount of death.

So what do we learn about the judgment of God in this story?

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"In the Beginning": Being Human (Genesis 3)

There is no passage of Scripture that explains and illustrates our sinful human nature like Genesis 3. 

What was the sin? 
What is our sinful nature? 
What has it done to us? 

We look for answers this week...

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"In the Beginning": Echoes of Lies (Genesis 3:1-6)

Why do we keep doing the things we don't want to do? Why do we keep doing those things INSTEAD of the things we want to do and know we ought to do? The answer is, whether the "moment" is long or short, there is a point where we give in to... temptation. Genesis 3 records the first time this ever happened. And the lies the serpent told Eve still echo back in our own inner thoughts and voices. Recognizing those lies is one step to freedom.

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In the Beginning: God Speaks

People often turn to Genesis to ask questions the text was not really meant to answer. So what questions do the first two chapters of the Bible answer? Only the most basic questions of life: "Who is God?" "Who am I?" and "Is there any hope or purpose to life?"

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Back to the Basics: 'Family Meeting' 2014

Every year near the beginning of January, I give a "family meeting" type of message to outline our goals and hopes for the coming year.  This year, the focus of the message is getting "back to the basics" and focusing on the one thing that makes any local church worth preserving.  What is that one thing?  You'll have to listen to find out!

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Everyday Sanctification

This week's sermon was a take on New Year's resolutions, which tend to be sort of a celebration of self-will. Of course, human self-will is fatally flawed, as New Year's resolutions demonstrate every year. If you've been in church long enough, you've heard someone say something to the effect of "You've got to stop doing everything by your own power and let God do it." But what does that look like?

This week, we tried to answer that question by looking at the promise of 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 and the text of Romans 5:1-5. The first part of the message was cut off, but the text from the above paragraph more or less covers it (without the benefit of my wonderful wit from the pulpit). So presented here is the "meat" of the message...

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A Christmas Blessing

I forgot to post the pre-Christmas sermon before we left, so I am posting it now.

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ^The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it."

-- 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

Christmas is a story of a promise kept.  And the promise of these verses extends to us today.  We all long for the day when we are completely free of sin and it consequences in our lives.  Christ's first coming gave us hope and peace with God.  When all is fulfilled, we will receive our full inheritance as co-heirs with Christ.

Christmas reminds us that God is faithful.  So as you enter into a new year with hope that it will bring a "better you" than the year before, take comfort in the sure hope that we celebrated at Christmas.  The God we serve is faithful, and He keeps His promises!

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