Sermon Video: Joseph adopts the Messiah, Matthew 1:18-25

 

Joseph of Nazareth was a fairly ordinary man up until the moment he found out that he fiancé Mary was pregnant.  Instead of letting pride or anger rule him, Joseph chose to embrace mercy, he was willing to divorce her quietly.

Having demonstrated this strength of character, an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream to tell him that God had chosen him for a monumental task: Adopt the Messiah.

Joseph may have been an ordinary carpenter, living in the unimportant village of Nazareth, but when he obeyed God's command by marrying Mary, Joseph became an example of faith and obedience that we would all do well to imitate.

Why do they think God is a failure? A question for those who think they alone have the true Gospel

 

One of the things that the First Fruits of Zion (HRM), Christian Fundamentalists (KJV Only zealots), and Latter-Day movements (JW, LDS, etc.) have in common is the belief that they alone have the Truth with respect to Jesus Christ.

But what are the implications of such a belief?  What does it say about God if 99% of those who have ever put their hope in Jesus Christ were actually in fundamental error?

The answer is that in their view God is weak, a failure.

But that's not what the Word of God proclaims.

Sermon Video: The Son before Bethlehem, John 1:1-3,14

 

Where was Jesus before Bethlehem?  For ordinary human beings like us that's a question that doesn't go anywhere, our lives began at a definite point-in-time.  But for the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, that question opens the door to profound theological truths.

The Apostle John explains in the prologue to his Gospel that the Word (Jesus before the Incarnation) was with God in the beginning, that he is, in fact, God.  Not only that, the Word (Jesus), had an equal hand in all of Creation.

That same person, the one who is God and is with God (the wonder of the Trinity allowing such phrases to be true), also came to Earth "in the flesh."  The Word became a man, the man Jesus.  

The wonders and depths of these truths are great, our response is simple: Worship Christ the newborn King.

An opportunity to elevate our conversations as a Christian community...

 

My own frustration as a pastor at the sub-biblical and non-theologically engaged arguments taking place on social media, often by individuals claiming the name of Christ but not acting/thinking/speaking in a way that reflects a connection to a Christian Worldview, was the inspiration for this series.

We can do better, we need to do better.  This is one small step against the avalanche of social media, but every journey has to start somewhere.

Sermon Video: The Ancestors of the Messiah - Matthew 1:1-17

When you are someone as important to history as Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah, curiosity about your ancestry is only natural.  Matthew begins his Gospel by addressing this desire and does so in unexpected and interesting ways: (1) He starts with the titles of "Messiah," "son of David," and "son of Abraham."  Each of these carries weight and adds to the claims about Jesus that Matthew's Gospel will be making. (2) The inclusion of four mothers with strong Gentile connections in a list that otherwise only contains fathers.  In so doing Matthew points toward God's concern for the whole world as well as his willingness to utilize people who would otherwise be overlooked, two key themes in the Gospel narratives.  (3)  Matthew leaves in the list (while some have been left out to form thy symbolic 14,14,14 symmetry) men both good and bad, heroes and villains, making what Jesus will prove himself to be even more remarkable.