Third Sunday of Advent..."about 9 months earlier"...sermon post

 


I have been really concentrating on making each meeting at the church during this Advent season focused on Jesus' birth.  What is the big story?  What led up to this event?  Who are the characters?  What was the purpose of it all?  How does this change our time together as families and church families?  Every time the church gathers over this time I want us to be saturated with a different message than what we have been bombarded with throughout the week.  This is a message that needs to be proclaimed that good news has come to the world that God created and so loved.

This week we are introduced to Herod the Great, Zechariah, Elizabeth, John and the angel Gabriel.  The events of the birth of John the Baptist are critical to the birth of Jesus the Messiah because the Scriptures tell us that a messenger would come before Him to proclaim who He is.  John the Baptist did this when he pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!  This is He of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who has been ahead of me, for He existed before me.'  I did not know Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing with water" (John 1:29b-31 LSB).

We will add to the meanings of the names this week but so far we have...

Zechariah - "God remembers"

Elizabeth - "My God is faithful"

John - "God is gracious" or "God gives grace"

God remembers after 400 years of silence and speaks to Zechariah in the Holy Place of the temple while he is offering prayers up on benefit of the people of God.  The angel Gabriel breaks the silence to let Zechariah know that God is faithful to His word and God is about to give His grace.  The birth of the messenger adds to the events of Jesus the Messiah's birth because it supplies another prophecy being fulfilled.  

One lesson from the sermon is how the well-versed "church guy" Zechariah responses to what God has made happened before with Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac; what God set up to identify those committed to Him, the Nazarite Vow; and God's very words said by the angel Gabriel.   Gabriel points out to him that he is not believing God's words.  How about me?  How about you?  Do we believe what God has said?  Do we not only believe it but do we act upon it in submission and obedience?  

Leading into next week, Luke does a great job of putting Zechariah's response next to Mary's response so we can compare them.

Adam




A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Galatians #15 - Galatians 6:11-18 - "On The Road Again..."

Image
  Another week closer and it involves some more travel for the Wolfgangs.  I feel like the Willy Nelson song, " On the road again... "  I don't know if I agree with the next line though. " ...I can't wait to get on the road again. " One of the members of the church in Wisconsin calculated that I will travel well over 10,000 miles to make this transition.  Traveling mercies prayers please. Last Sunday we will look at Paul's final words to the churches in Galatia.  He brought them the gospel (good news) message of Jesus and what resulted were churches forming throughout the region.  The letter is to defend that message that our salvation comes from and is in Christ alone.  Christ's sacrifice on the cross was sufficient for the forgiveness of our sins.  The summary statement of the letter is found in  Galatians 6:15 (LSB) .  " For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. "  Translated another way earlie...
Read more

God gave us a good weather window to travel...yeah God!!!

Image
  Berthoud Pass Here we are at the top of Berthoud Pass.  It was a whirlwind week to conduct a " hand off " service in Wisconsin on 3/17 and then preach a Palm Sunday sermon in Colorado on 3/24.  We give God all the glory for this happening.  So there are two video links at the bottom of this blog.  One is for the Wisconsin service and the other is for the Colorado service.  I racked up over 12,000 in the last 7 weeks.   I love to take these pictures sitting from the front row of chairs and listening to the one God has provided for the church I had been serving for 20 months.  I now have 3 and I am so thankful for the opportunity God gave us to serve Him in this type of ministry over the last 5 years.  It has been great to add to our daily prayer list Zach in Maine, Chris in Ohio and now Stephen in Wisconsin. This was our set up for the 2000+ mile trip.  No " hiccups " except for the strong eastern winds in Kansas.  Of course e...
Read more

Resurrection Sunday in a new space...Matthew 27.62-28.20

Image
  Resurrection Sunday has come and gone but it was a sweet day to be with the gathered saints of the Stillwater Community Chapel .  We are venturing through the Gospel of Matthew and this Sunday will take us back to Matthew 1.1 but last Sunday we were in Matthew 27.62-28.20.  It was a lot to cover so the white board was truly a help to keep me on track.  This year in my Resurrection Sunday message, I focused on the contrast of the cover-up story of the disciples stealing the body of Jesus fueled by a bride and the commission of speaking of a risen Lord fueled by boldness . After the service upstairs, we ventured downstairs to the lower level and had a great meal together.  The conversations around the tables allowed us to continue to talk about the passage of Scripture we covered upstairs.  Maybe this is a very informal picture of what happens at the  Waushara Community Church called the " Going Deeper " classes of the Come For More hour following t...
Read more