“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever been around someone who told the same story all the time? Maybe it was a parent or another family member. It could have been a friend or even merely an acquaintance. Perhaps the story was good the first time, but after a while it got old and stale. Then it got irritating. You didn’t want to hear that story again. Your familiarity with it had gradually begun to breed some contempt in your heart for both it and the person telling it. If we’re not careful, the stories of Jesus can become this for us. They never change, and we hear the same ones at the same times of year every year. Yet when we really grasp what they are telling, that same familiarity can breed anticipation instead. Let’s talk about why this is and how to make the change.
* Let me offer my apologies on the early and incomplete version of this that went out earlier this morning. One of my major pet peeves when working on a laptop is that you can’t turn off the touch pad. The way I hold my hands when I type I sometimes hit the touchpad with the pad of my hand resulting in the cursor suddenly getting punched in random and unexpected places. With my current laptop that doesn’t happen quite as often, but this morning the cursor happened to be sitting on the “publish” button on my screen. The odds of that are vanishingly small, but there it was. Thankfully, there is a safeguard built into the page so you don’t accidentally publish something before you’re really ready. It asks if you are sure. My fat hand, however, managed to hit the publish button not once, but twice, send it live before I could hit the cancel button. When I went back to actually finish writing, I made sure the cursor was on the complete opposite side of the screen. Here, then, is the full version.
“…and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations; and from David until the exile to Babylon, fourteen generations; an from the exile to Babylon until the Messiah, fourteen generations.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Everyone has a story. That’s something our culture today tends to celebrate. What is also true, but to which we don’t give quite as much attention today is that everyone is part of a story. We tend to focus only on ourselves and the chapter we are writing, but our story is only part of a much larger story that has been unfolding for far longer than the boundaries of our lives. As much as this is true about each one of us, it was also true about Jesus. And although His legacy includes some things that ours likely does not, it also includes a bunch of other parts that ours do share. This is all another gift God gives and which we can celebrate in this season of giving. Today, let’s talk about the gift of legacy.
Happy Boxing Day. Yesterday was the day. Here’s the message of joy and hope I shared with my congregation yesterday morning. May you delight and rejoice in the truth of our Savior. P.S. This will be the only post this week. Enjoy your week, and we’ll be together again like this in the new year.
Christmas Morning Message 2022
Christmas is a good time for telling stories. I’d like to tell you one this morning.
There was once a child. This child was loved by his parents. As far as they were concerned, he was at the center of their world. And this child had potential. So. Much. Potential. But he couldn’t see it. He didn’t understand the incredible things that lay ahead of him if only he stayed on the right path. But his parents did. And they knew their love was the key to his getting there. So they pursued him with their love.
“But the angel said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
One last song of the season as we prepare for Christmas Eve’s arrival tomorrow. We’re not going with anything new or particularly different today. Instead, we’re going with something old. This is a classic Christmas carol that was first published in 1739. I heard a wonderful podcast the other day in which the interviewee described this as the greatest Christmas carol ever.
It was written at a time when religious revivals were sweeping across the United States and England. This was when the Methodist Church was forming, and protestant groups generally were gaining strength. Baptists were multiplying much to everyone’s chagrin, and evangelicals were first starting to become a meaningful Christian group. About this time, participants in these various revival movements started to increasingly write their own much rather than merely singing the psalter as believers had done for a very long time prior to this point. In a sense, these hymns were the contemporary music of their day.
This was one of the first Christmas hymns written in this significant period of history. Like so many of the hymns of the day, it is filled with rich theology that can be used to teach young believers some of the great and deep truths of the faith if they are exhorted to listen carefully to what they are singing.
The hymn speaks of angels heralding the birth of the newborn King. It calls for joyful nations to rise in praise of the God who would send His Son for us. It proclaims the fully divinity of Christ at every point in His human existence. It speaks of the healing He would bring the world, and of the second birth to eternal life God promised us through Him.
By now, I suspect you have successfully identified our final song of the season as Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. As you prepare on this second-to-last day of the Advent season, may you reflect joyfully on the third day from now with a wonderful rendition of this great carol by Phil Wickham. Blessings and Merry Christmas to you!
“Jesus said, ‘Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
In just three more days tens of millions of people across the nation and world will gather around Christmas trees and open presents. While there will perhaps be a few groans of disappointment when something that was really expected doesn’t show up, on the whole, there will be many more squeals of delight. And yet, a few days later, those same millions will be making goals of things they want to accomplish in the new year. That sense of desire will not be satisfied for long by the things under the tree. How can we find satisfaction that lasts longer than a few days? Jesus tells us here in a conversation with a woman who wanted to be satisfied. Let’s listen in together.
The Nexus 