Tomorrow Morning we will gather for our Christmas Program! This is the Sunday that we celebrate the birth of Christ as a church family and we can’t wait to be together. Tomorrow morning we will be served by our worship team, led by Chris McCrea and our Childrens Choir led by Rebekah Judd. They have been hard at work over the past month gearing up to serve us. We will also have some other special pieces of music as well.
Finally, we will hear the third sermon in our incarnation series: Fully God, Fully Man, Born this day. In the fullness of time, the Scriptures say, Christ came into our world! We look forward to getting a closer look at that tomorrow.
We are trusting the weather that bypassed us yesterday and today will continue to stay mild and there will be no need to make a call on our meeting. However, if the weather changes substantially, please check the blog late tonight or tomorrow morning for final word.
See you tomorrow!
Eric
PS: Don’t forget about our Christmas Eve service on Thursday night, December 24th at 7:00 pm.
On Sunday we studied the humanity of Christ and the astounding reality that He is able to empathize with us because of His experience as a man, yet without sin. R. Kent Hughes wrote the following in his commentary on Luke to illustrate this. It really is incredible!
“Consider the implication of Christ’s astounding capacity for sympathy and understanding. His instrument, so to speak, was the same as ours. It is a fact that if you have two in-tunes in the same room and a note is struck on one, the same note will gently respond on the other, though not touched by another person’s hand. This is called “sympathetic resonance.”
Christ’s instrument, His humanity, was like ours in every way, except that He had no sin. And when a chord is struck in the weakness of our human instrument, it resonates in His! There is no note of human experience that does not play in Christ’s as well. ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses’ (Heb. 4:15). He has an unequaled capacity for sympathy. It goes far beyond intellectual understanding. Jesus does not just imagine how His children feel – He feels it!
We are all sometimes under incredible pressure. We may feel that no one understands, much less cares. But the truth is, any note we play (whether a melody or a dirge, or a minor key, or a discordant note) has sympathetic resonance in the heart of Jesus Christ. This is a supreme glory of the Incarnation. All glory to God! Do you need sympathy? With Christ, there is understanding.”
What a rich time it has been studying the nature of our Savior Jesus Christ. I very much enjoyed a conversation with a godly man after church where we realized that as much as God has shown us and continues to show us, we’ve only scratched the surface in our knowledge of Christ. How wonderful it is to know eternity will not be enough time to get to the bottom of His glory! Yesterday we studied the importance of the humanity of Christ. You can download or listen to the message here. I hope these questions will help you apply God’s word to your life.
1) How would you answer the question “Who is Jesus?”
2) As we studied what Jesus was like, did what you learn stir a greater love and appreciation for Christ, faith in, or desire to worship Christ? How so?
3) Why was it necessary that Christ live His life as a true man in true human experience (Heb. 2:14-18)?
4) How does reflecting on the humanity of Christ help you in the midst of what you are going through right now? Do you believe that He knows? What do you think He wants you to bring to Him as the One whose heart resonates with yours in your trial, struggle, temptation or pain?
5) What does it look like for you to draw near to Christ more quickly and more often in the midst of your life? The Incarnation tells us that He cares and He knows. How can you let those truths function well in your life?
Good evening! It continues to be a busy time! The 316 Christmas Banquet was a smashing success last night! I’m sure they’ll be plenty of picts over at Facebook soon enough. We look forward to being together tomorrow as a church! There is a team of us that pray together in the Spurgeon Room at 9:00. Join us if you can. At 10:00 Jordan will lead us in singing. We are looking forward to learning the story of another Christmas Hymn and continue to exalt Christ our Savior.
Tomorrow’s sermon will be part 2 of our current series: Fully God, Fully Man, Born Today. We will be studying the humanity of Christ found in Scripture and especially why His humanity is so wonderful and important. We will close our meeting with a time of prayer for anyone who is in need and of course, we’ll share a cup of coffee with all who can stay! We’ll see you tomorrow!
….now that I’ve figured out how to get video on the blog, did anyone put this on their Christmas list?
I’ve seen way to many people with the Snuggie in their shopping cart! Just make sure you REALLY want to be a Snuggie person! If you do, then go strong!
Last week we completed our discussion of the book A Quest for More in our care group. The main question we were trying to answer was, “what did you get out of this book?” The video above is a brief description from Paul Tripp about the message of this book from his perspective, and therefore, what he might hope that we would get out of the book! I think as a care group we got pretty close to what he is saying, even though the book hit us all in different places in our lives.
All of this reminds me of a statement John Piper once made about reading books. He said, “books don’t change your life, paragraphs do!” He went on to explain that in most books he has read, there has been at least one paragraph in the book that captured either the essence of the entire book or the thing that he would remember and take with him from that book. This so resonated with me and relieved so much of the guilt I typically feel from forgetting 90% of what I read in a book! I could probably walk you down my bookshelf and tell you in one sentence what I got out of each of the books I’ve read! I’m sure you could do the same.
I think A Quest for More is this kind of book for me. While there is much to glean in the details and in the many examples Tripp provides regarding “big kingdom” living; I believe there is one central message of the book that has affected me. I was reminded that my life and every part of my life and every moment of my life is about something much bigger than me. My life is a part of the glorious and massive kingdom of God of which He has made me a part through the gospel of His Son. The daily question for me is, will I live in light of this or will I live for myself? I love that it is the heart of God to free me from myself and it is the grace of God seeks to work that in me everyday. And when I fail, I can trust that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more! God continues to help me, by His Spirit, to change and grow and bring Him glory with my life as I seek to love, serve, encourage, care for others and live for others. What a great and needed message for me and all of us.
Thanks for taking the time to read and study this book! I hope the paragraph you came away with will encourage you to live your life for His glory in the days, months and years to come.
