Archive for the ‘Christmas’ Tag
“JESUS: The Most Important PERSON and TASK For Everyone! Part 2” (Jesus’ Human Life / The Biblical Worldview)
Part 2A:
Part 2B:
Part 2C:
Full Message:
Bible Verses: Luke 2: 52 (Various Scriptures)
Theological Theme:
In relationship with Jesus His faith in us causes us to seek understanding about Who He is in His Person and Deeds, taking into account the entire course of His Human Life, with the help of the Holy Spirit. We’ve rehearsed Jesus’ Person and Work by grasping more of the meaning of His Virgin Birth. In this message we understand more basic and fundamentally the meaning of His Incarnate Life!
Christ Connection:
When Jesus lived He lived our life, meaning that as the Son of the Father united to us in our human nature He was the God/Man renewing our fallen human nature from the inside because he never sinned in it. Just as in Adam the human nature in which we all have shared became fallen, so in the one person of Christ the human nature in which we all shared was made right and saved! Jesus is more significant than Adam because He not only shared in our fallen human nature, but was also the One in, through, for and by Whom all things are created and made! He was both God and Man. This means that by his one human life, the human nature of everyone is now set on an entirely new basis! Where sin abounded (Adam), God’s grace in abounds even more (in Jesus!!)
Missional Application:
“Jesus embodied the unreserved presence of God with and for sinners. “Those who are well have no need of physician,” Jesus declares, “but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt. 9:12f.). Christ’s incarnate humanity — his entire life, death, and resurrection among and on behalf of sinners — provides the basis for and the reality of reconciliation. He stands in our place and acts on our behalf to heal our humanity. His vicarious humanity — i.e., his substitutionary life and death in our place and representative humanity on our behalf — reconciles us to one another and to God. Social reconciliation is both an indicative and an imperative of the gospel of Jesus Christ, both gift and task, both command and promise.” – Ray Anderson
So, as we experience reconciliation with the Father-Son-Holy-Spirit-God that Christ accomplished, and because it is social – touching the lives of every human being – we share this Good News with others that they, too, might trust Christ and experience the gift and promise of real human life before the Father along with other believers!
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The Most Important TASK Done For Everyone Everywhere – JESUS CHRIST! (Our Christmas and Biblical Worldview)
Part A:
Part B:
Full Message:
Bible Verse: Luke 2
Introduction:
Can you see from reading this section of the Nicene Creed what would be missing if as Christians we ONLY spoke about Jesus in terms of His birth (Christmas), His suffering, death and resurrection?
Excerpt about Jesus from the Nicence Creed
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.”
What happens if we leave out His incarnate life for 33 years? What if after speaking about His Resurrection we stopped and never addressed His human Ascension and Bodily Return?
Theological Theme:
“Christ does not heal us as an ordinary doctor might, by standing over us, diagnosing our sickness, prescribing medicine for us to take and then going away, leaving us to get better as we follow His instructions. No, He becomes the patient. He assumes that very humanity which is in need of redemption, and by being anointed by the Spirit in our humanity, by a life of perfect obedience, by dying and rising again, for us, our humanity is healed in Him, in His person. We are not just healed through Christ, because of the work of Christ, but in and through Christ. Person and work must not be separated.” – James Torrance
Christ Connection:
Christ emptied himself so we may be filled
“The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.
He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor. He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.
He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.” – St. Gregory The Theologian
Missional Application:
Just as Jesus took on all the parts of our human nature and flesh through the history of a human life to bring us Salvation, as those in union with Jesus in the Spirit we participate with Him in all the parts of His human history and continued Lordship, pointing others to Him as their Salvation also!
Photo Compliments: slidetodoc.com
The Most Important PERSON For Everyone Everywhere – JESUS CHRIST! (Our Christmas and Biblical Worldview)
Part A:
Part B:
Full Message:
Bible Verse: Luke 2
Introduction:
Luke 1:26-38
1:26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
1:27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
1:28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
1:29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
1:30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
1:31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
1:32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.
1:33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
1:34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
1:35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.
1:36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.
1:37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”
1:38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Theological Theme:
This story in Luke, noted above, is a good example of how we can preach and witness to others similarly about the Gospel!
vv.26-31 “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” You should start your witnessing with Who God is as Revealed in Jesus and who we are in Him – Favored!
v.31 “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” ONLY AFTER PROCLAIMING WHO GOD IS IN HIS WORDS AND DEEDS do you proclaim our participation with Him!
v.34 “Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’, 35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.’”
All of this happens by the grace of God – from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit!
Christ Connection:
“God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged [promised and given] his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualized [made actual and real] his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”- (T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 94)
Missional Application:
As we are filled with the Love of the Father and Son Relationship in the Holy Spirit, we participate with God, compelled to go to all and say:
“In and through Jesus, God has included all people everywhere in a particular relationship with himself for just these purposes so that what has been fulfilled for us objectively in Jesus by the Spirit, will then be fulfilled in us personally (subjectively) by the Spirit via our deliberate, purposeful participation (response) as subjects who are moral, spiritual agents. What Christ did for us, he did so that the Holy Spirit could work a response out in us. When we understand that the person and work of Christ establishes or reestablishes a living, vital, personal relationship with all humanity, then the biblical teachings concerning inviting, admonishing, encouraging, directing, commanding and warning in regard to setting forth the fitting or appropriate response make sense.” – Gary Deddo
Merry Chaotic and Disturbance-filled Christmas?!
Matthew 2:1-3 New International Version (NIV)
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod…[Herod] was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
I don’t know about you, but I want to run from Christmas chaos! I hate the thought of everything from the slowed up, jammed up traffic, to the packed out gas stations, highways, and stores of frenzied people pushing and shoving, literally, to get “deals” (or NOT because of getting punched by other people who snatch the “deals” right out of their greedy – oops – grubby little hands! HaHa!) Yikes!
But, as much as I hate all of that, I have to admit this atmosphere seems more true to the context in which Jesus was actually born 2000 years ago; only chaotic danger and disturbance when God enters the room in flesh, as one of us! I’m even thinking that maybe its sort of indictment against Christ’s Body, the Church, that there is not more chaos and crisis at Christmastime in our world at the proclamation of this Jesus Christ Who has entered it?
As I read Mathew’s story of Jesus’ birth, I am especially struck at how disturbing it is for the Son of God to come into the ordinariness and horrors of our broken world as man; how chaotic it really is (how disturbing it should be till everyone knows and trusts Him?! ) Everyone and everything disturbed at the entrance of the Son of God coming in flesh – “God With Us!” A marital engagement is disturbed by embarrassment and shame, and then met with the prospect of divorce before the wedding can happen! A king is disturbed enough about Jesus’ birth to lie, hunt for and cross regional lines to kill babies and toddlers hoping he killed Jesus! A family is on the run from an evil father and his ruthless ruling son!….hmmm…
Maybe Christmas isn’t really about encouraging a cute religious experience after all. Not about a nice teaching that will make people nicer and more peaceful. Maybe it’s not even about making people confident in going to heaven after “death by trampling” at the mall.
Maybe Christmas is about the Kingdom of the Father, Son and Spirit rumbling in like a jumbo jet and, through His Body the Church, fostering airwaves and noises of disturbance, prompting crises, as the Church excitedly and urgently encourages and warns its brothers and sisters of the need to get ready for the return of the Christ in “Christ”-mas???
As much as I’d like to know NOW the peace that is promised in Christ’s coming, I have to admit that because the God the Father sends His Son, in the Spirit, into the chaos of this world to be with it and see it saved, that’s the way he is still moving on earth in his Church Body till he returns bodily again! How could there not be chaos and crisis with God breaking into our world?; against evil and our broken human nature, to redeem what He has already redeemed in the glorified humanity of Jesus???
As N.T. Wright has written, for Jesus there is “No point in arriving in comfort, when the world is in misery; no point having an easy life, when the world suffers violence and injustice! If he is to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, he must be with us where the pain is.” Where the Head, Jesus, is, so must his Body, we, be, right?
Perhaps the real peace I long for, and you long for, at Christmas is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it was when he wrote, “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security… To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying down the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”
Merry Cross-mas to You as We Enter the Chaos and Participate with Christ in His Loving Disturbance,
– tjbrassell
Photo courtesy of: http://www.muchoburrito.com
How the Battle of Guadalcanal Gave Me Christmas
How the Battle of Guadalcanal Gave Me Christmas
I grew up in a faith tradition that did not celebrate Christmas. I grew up being taught and believing that Christmas was a pagan ritual that Christians had been duped into observing and that God was entirely put out by it all to the point that one may just burn up in a sea of fire for uttering the words “Merry Christmas.” I was taught that Christmas was a rip off of the pagan holiday Saturnalia… and well there is a connection. Let me explain. You see Saturnalia was indeed a pagan celebration kept by the Romans in the last centuries B.C. and throughout the early centuries A.D. Saturnalia was a time of gift giving and feasting. Families gathered for meals and to renew relationships. During the time of the Early Church Christians made every attempt to root out pagan observances so why not replace Saturnalia with a festive celebration of the birth of Jesus? Since no definitive date or time could be established for the birth of Jesus the Early Church saw no problem celebrating it over-top Saturnalia to replace the pagan ritual.
I was in my late twenties before I ever actually celebrated Christmas. It was a difficult time for me. Mythologies die hard and in the back of my mind lingered this nagging
fear that God was gonna git me. Yep, “git” me. I know… git ain’t a word but down South where I cut my teeth we don’t much care what is or ain’t a word so long as we know what we’re talking about. 🙂
In any case I struggled with the idea of Christmas as a Christian celebration. The first year of our marriage my wife gave me an early present a few days before Christmas. It was a set of documentary DVD’s about the US Marines in World War II. In one of the documentaries the narrator explained that on one particular occasion on Guadalcanal a squad of Marines attacked an enemy machine gun emplacement. Enduring the withering fire of a fully automatic machine gun these brave Marines managed to capture the gun. It was what the narrator said next that turned the light on for me about Christmas. You see the Marines, being who they are and having traditionally received the left over low-grade equipment the other branches had cast aside, did not have a machine gun of their own but as soon as they captured the enemy machine gun nest they did! What the Marines did that day back in 1942 was to turn the machine gun on the enemy.
Brilliant! What the Marines did on Guadalcanal and what the Early Church did was simply brilliant. Most often the enemy of the Gospel is the wrong-headed mythologies of our own broken minds. We invent false religions and celebrations to soothe the longing within our souls. Jesus Christ, the babe in the manger… Emmanuel is the only salve for the wounded soul. The genius of the Father, Son, and Spirit is that out of our mythologies and wrongheadedness they may just redeem and put to good use what some might dismiss as being “rooted in paganism”.
The Father’s Son has come. The Father, Son, and Spirit love and like you! Hallelujah! Amen!
~Bill Winn
Somewhere In God’s World
Recently we celebrated Veteran’s Day in the United States. It is a time when we honor those who have served our country in the Armed Forces. My Uncle Joe Winn is someone our family honors and respects greatly for his service to our country, his selfless life as a family man, and for the legacy he has left us in his children and grandchildren. Joe D. Winn made an impression on all of us in our family but I wanted to tell you about a time in 1945 when the events of Joe’s life impacted one little girl who was only 4 years old. You see after completing flight school in the Army Air Force, Second Lieutenant Joseph Daniel Winn was assigned to the island of Iwo Jima as a bomber escort flying the famed North American P-51D. On 28 July 1945 Joe was shot down during a strafing run over an airfield on the Japanese mainland. He was taken prisoner and (as were all allied flyers) classified by the Japanese as a war criminal. One evening my Aunt Beth could hear her parents and grandmother talking about Joe. She was only 4 at the time but she recounts the story in this way.
“Mama, where’s Joe?” No answer. “I heard you say Joe’s gone to ‘War’. Mama, where’s ‘War’?” “Honey, there are some things children shouldn’t hear. Please don’t ask any more questions.” Later, I heard Mama and Daddy talking about Joe again. They used words like “Japan” and “missing” and that enormous word, “War.” Mama was crying. Young as I was, I knew where to get an answer. “Grandma, please tell me, where’s Joe?” Grandmother put her arms around me and held tight, so I wouldn’t see her tears, but I knew. “We don’t know exactly,” she said, “but wherever Joe is, that place is somewhere in God’s world.” Fear slipped away, just like that, as Grandmother’s words drew a picture in my mind: a circle of light surrounding and shrinking the dark place called “War.” Then Grandmother said, “Let’s say a prayer for Joe.”
Being sent to Omori civilian prison in Tokyo, Joe and the rest of the boys in his cell block endured conditions too horrible to mention. One ray of hope came from their guard who had gone to school in the USA. As Japan’s surrender grew near the guards could be heard going from block to block executing the Allied P.O.W.s. Joe’s sympathetic guard locked the large steel door to their cell block and slid the only key under the door with instructions not to open it for any reason. Moments later Joe and his comrades heard the other prison guards shoot their friend who had just saved all of their lives. Joe made it home after the war, raised a wonderful family, and lived the rest of his life in peace. He is one of our family’s greatest heroes, though I doubt he ever thought of himself as such.
So this Christmas if you find yourself unsure of where a loved one may be or if there is some reason you and a loved one are apart remember: Jesus is the Light of the Cosmos! (Jn.8:12) Jesus called his Father the Lord of Heaven and Earth. And Jesus himself declares that we are in him and he is in us. (Jn 14:20) This is indeed Triune God’s world and whether we know exactly where someone is at any given time, whether we worry about loved ones serving in the military, a son or daughter that we have not heard from in a while, whether we are estranged from family because of brokenness or divisions we must remember that where ever that person is they are in Jesus and in God’s world. It is no small comfort to know that we are all in Jesus and we are all ultimately safe as long as Jesus is safe. Just ask my Aunt Beth.
~Bill Winn