Chesed: Sermon Highlight

By Sydney Gautier

Scripture | Hosea 2:14-19

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope . And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.  And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever . I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in Mercy.

Hosea has become one of my favorite books of the Old Testament. There’s something incredible about the steadfast love and complete mercy that are portrayed throughout the story, along with the radical pursuit Hosea shows towards Gomer and that God shows towards His people. The Hebrew word that means, “loving-kindness, mercy, or steadfast love” is chesed, and shows up in Hosea 2:19, “And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.” 

The story of Hosea is one of incredible mercy and love. Hosea 1:1 starts out by telling us, “The word of the Lord comes upon Hosea.” So Hosea is set apart to deliver a difficult truth to the people of Israel. But before He sends Hosea to speak to Israel about how they do not love Him as they should and are not faithful, God wants Hosea to understand how He feels. So this is what we find in Hosea 1:2, “When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom”. This would be a hard instruction to take from God, to willingly take someone as your spouse, knowing they will not be faithful to you… I think a lot of us would be less than thrilled about this.

Hosea was obedient and took a prostitute, Gomer, as his wife. They had three children, two of which are speculated by some to have not been Hosea’s children, but another man’s instead. In that case, I’m sure most of our friends would be telling us to leave this person, that they’re not good enough for you, you can do way better. But this is what God says to Hosea, “And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”(Hosea 3:1) Oh….It makes no sense, it’s illogical and totally goes against our natural instinct in this sort of circumstance. But Hosea was obedient again and went back and got his wife and continued to love her. This is a picture of God’s relationship with Israel. The Israelites were unfaithful, they had no relationship with God, but continually God showed them mercy and steadfast love, the chesed love of God.

In this story, we see that this type of mercy and love pursues. I always think of my sweet, patient, persistent husband when I think of this. If you know Joe and I well, you might know that he pursued me for quite a long time. He was very persistent and I was very stubborn. He would pursue me and I would ignore him and no matter how many times this would happen he was always there. And once I finally realized how silly I was for being so stubborn for so long, Joe didn’t hold it against me for making him wait so long or make me earn his love. Instead, he just loved me and then proposed to me, to be committed to each other for the rest of our lives. This is what God called Hosea to and this is just a tiny glimpse of how God feels about us. In chapter 3 of Hosea we see him pursuing Gomer in her complete wickedness and literally buys her back, most likely out of slavery, and Hosea says, “And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” (Hosea 3:3) God proclaims that same thing about us, He wants our hearts and our affection and for us to have a relationship with Him. This buying back is our way of being protected and loved, it’s mercy pursued.

After Hosea bought Gomer back and told her that she can’t be with another man again, she was different. She was no longer the women who went around with other men, but was Hosea’s faithful wife and he was her faithful husband. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Just like Gomer was transformed, we too are transformed. God not only bought us back, but changed our identity, we are now in Christ, brought into a new family and given a new role and new life. The mercy of God transforms us; who we are, the way we interact with people and our relationships with others and the chesed love of God changes everything.

Ruwach: Sermon Highlight

By Sydney Gautier

Ezekiel 37: 1-10 | 

“The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.”  So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

I remember being in high school and telling myself that if I could just get to college everything would be great. And then when I was in college I couldn’t wait to be out of college because I thought then life would be easier. Then I got out of college and realized, “silly me, can I go back to kindergarten?” Because life after college was just as hard, if not harder.  And I saw that hoping for the next thing in life, assuming it will suddenly make life easier was just an endless cycle. There’s always some aspect of difficulty because we live in a broken world. I’m almost 25 and my knees already pop when I walk up and down stairs, there are hurricanes and wars and a lot of the time things look pretty bleak in the world. But when we realize this and stop hoping in the world, our achievements, relationships and ourselves, then we start putting our hope in Christ instead. We realize we are hopeless unless God shows up. 

When we read through this scripture of Ezekiel’s vision we are shown a hopeless period in the life of Israel. Ezekiel is set down in a large valley, full of bones, I’d imagine this would be pretty scary and confusing. And as we go back and read this story, we see something crazy happen. We see God bring these bones back together and there was an army of bodies standing there empty. But then God breathed life into them. The Hebrew word that refers to the breath God breathed into these bodies is “ruwach” which means, wind, breath or spirit. Through Scripture, the Holy Spirit is almost always referred to as ruwach in the Old Testament. We see ruwach come through wind, breath, or spirit giving life powerfully in Scripture. This is a reminder that the ruwach of God brings life and hope!

In a previously hopeless situation, God stepped in through Ezekiel to offer a message of hope to Israel. This was a time in Israel’s history when people had been starved to death, some were led off as prisoners of war to Babylon, and some were killed. It looked like a pretty hopeless situation. Barry said he pictured them to be frantic, running around trying to fix this mess on their own, but God wanted them to quiet their hearts and hear His words and be filled with hope,  “Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit (ruwach) within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD.” (Ezekiel 37:12-14)

How often do we find ourselves in these types of situations? Feeling utterly hopeless, frantically trying to solve our problems by our own strength; not trusting that God can see the situation from beginning to end and has full control. No matter the situation we find ourselves in, God can breathe life into it. We see this in Exodus when God was leading Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt to the Promised Land, with the army coming after them, they came to the Red Sea and were at a loss. They couldn’t turn around but they couldn’t go through it either. There was no way out until God sent a wind, ruwach, split the waters and made a way. God is still splitting the Red Sea’s of our lives today, He’s already made a way for us through Jesus, and He continues to show up in our lives daily. 

Jesus is the perfect example of the hope we have in God. Barry pointed out that he fully trusted that the ruwach of God would blow upon his ministry, his sacrificial death and that the breath of God would bring him back to life three days later. His perfect hope enables us to hope in God. In our hopeless situations, let's remember that our God is a God who breathes life, that in Him, bleak situations can be redeemed and that we are utterly dependent on God to show up.

Anakephalaiosasthai: Sermon Response

By Sydney Gautier

In my opinion, there are two types of storytellers in the world: the ones who give you every last detail, down to the color of their socks when the events were taking place, and then the ones who neatly sum things up and make sure you actually get the point of what they’re trying to tell you. Both are great, in different ways and depending on what the story is about. Today, we are focused on the latter type of story teller, the idea of “summing things up, bringing all things into unity, providing a center,” or the Greek word for all that, anakephalaiosasthai.

So that we have a better understanding of this 19 letter word, Barry helped break it down for us, here we go. First is “ana.” This word adds intensity to whatever it’s connected to. For example instead of saying, “it is cold.” We would say, “it is extremely cold.” It helps portray something as big and forceful. Next is “Kephala.” It means, “head, putting ahead, or an organizing center.” An organizing center is something that puts everything where it is supposed to be. This immediately makes me think of my husband, Joe. He loves organization and is a stickler for everything being in its rightful place, so we have various organization cabinets around our house because he knows without them, I would probably leave everything a disorganized mess. 

Paul used this word twice in scripture, once in today’s passage and once in Romans 13:9. He wrote, “For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:9). See what he did there? All of the commandment and the words of the prophets are anakephalaiosasthaied, or “summed up or unified” in the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul’s usage of this word signifies an extreme reorganization around a new center that brings unity to all things.

In Ephesians 1, he shows us this new center, Jesus, the great unifier. He starts off with a very elaborate welcome and salutation to the church in Ephesus. We know from Acts 19 that Paul started the church in Ephesus and had a great ministry there. Barry told us that he and his disciples had so much favor that all the residents of this part of Asia (now known as Asia Minor) heard the Gospel! So we can understand why Paul would write this letter, but why was he so excited? Barry told us that in the original Greek, Ephesians 1:3-10 was one long run on sentence. Basically, Paul just kept writing and writing. If he was talking out loud he probably wouldn’t have time to take a breath between all the words. In verse 10 Paul brings it all together, “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1”10). The phrase, “to unite all things” is anakephalaiosasthai. God united all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth. Jesus changed everything.

Barry told us that Paul likely wrote this letter from a Roman prison, so he probably wasn’t in a situation that would cause much excitement. On top of that, Paul had a pretty rough life. He had been betrayed, arrested, been beaten, shipwrecked, left for dead, and, to top it all off, he had to put up with fights between Christians. But anakephalaiosasthai gives Paul a reason to be excited! Paul can look back on his life and see that he has anakephalaiosasthai-ed the story of his life. He can look at everything that has happened to him but with Jesus as the organizing center, the one who brought all of his life into unity, and that changed everything. It gave him a new perspective on his life. Everything that happened to him happened for a reason. Jesus brought unity to it all and God used it for his glory! This allowed Paul to have hope! All those bad things don’t seem as bad anymore when you can see that they have a purpose and that you can see God as the one who pours forth grace and blesses and adopts us sinful men and women and sons and daughters because of his love and for his pleasure. 

This can help give us a new perspective on our own lives, just like it did for Paul. Sometimes it can be easy to look back and dwell on the bad times, the struggles, or the negative parts of life. While we don’t need to pretend they didn’t happen and block them out of our minds, the shame, terror, illness, lies, and stress we have been through are part of each of our stories, but the Gospel provides and new perspective to see that story through. We can look back on our lives like Paul and retell our story, this time with Jesus at the center as the one who brings unity to all things. In doing this we can see redemption and hope like we see in Ephesians 1. It doesn’t mean that everything in our life will make perfect sense, but it does mean that we can have faith and trust that God is doing something, that He is constantly at work in our lives and in our stories.

Jesus Walks on Water: Sermon Highlight

By Sydney Gautier

Scripture | Matthew 14:22-33

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

In the midst of the storm Jesus is with us.

We can all recall storms in our lives. Maybe you feel like you’re in the middle of one now, or maybe you just weathered one and are on the other side. But we’ve all been there. I specifically remember my senior year of college. The first semester was one big storm that I thought would never end. One thing after another went wrong, I felt like I couldn’t catch a break. However, the story we read in Matthew 14:22-33 reminds us that in the midst of the storm, Jesus is with us. Jonathan went through three things that this story of Jesus walking on water in the middle of the storm shows us about Jesus.

God is in control.

We see in the passage above that Jesus sent the disciples out to sea before he went up to the mountain to pray. The trip they were making was about 5 miles. They left in the evening, but Jesus didn’t come to them until very early morning. That means they were out on the sea for quite a long time—longer than they had expected to be, but they made no progress because of the storm. This trip had become much more complicated than they thought it would be. They were terrified. The storm was out of their control. However, God knew what was going to happen before they stepped into the boat. That means he knew how it was going to end as well. The storm didn’t surprise Him. He was completely in control of the situation, so it’s important to know that Jesus didn't send them into the storm to punish them. God is powerful enough to use the brokenness of storms in our lives to show us Himself!

God loves you.

The first words Jesus says to the disciples when he comes to them in the storm are, “Do not be afraid.” This is what we say to people we love because we don’t want them to live in fear. This is what Joe says to me in the middle of the night when I swear I heard someone in the closet. This is what my parents told me when I thought there were monsters under my bed as a child. We see throughout scripture that Jesus is consistently loving and gracious towards the disciples despite the fact that they got things wrong a lot and didn’t deserve it. Sounds a lot like us, but through the storms and the sin and getting it wrong often, we are still so loved by God. In the scripture above we see Peter walk out onto the water. When he takes his eyes off Jesus, he starts to sink. He cries out to God, “Lord, save me,” and Jesus does because he’s Jesus, and he’s patient and gracious and loves Peter like he loves you and I. In the following verse, Jesus says to Peter, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” He doesn't say this to call Peter out or to shame him. Instead he’s saying it with love in his eyes, wanting to reassure him that he never needs to doubt—that he loves him and will never fail him.

It’s not about your faith, but God’s faithfulness.

My senior year, in the midst of a storm, I remember at times wondering what I could do to make myself stop sinking. Muster up more faith? Try harder? It’s easy to fall into that trap, but we learn from the story of Jesus walking on water that that isn’t the answer at all. In this story, we don’t see Jesus make Peter try harder to stop sinking in the middle of the storm. Instead he immediately reached out his hand to save him. We learned that what’s important is the object of our faith, Christ. Jonathan shared a quote about this from David Platt, “. . . if your eyes are on the wind, you will fall…But when your eyes are on Christ, when the all-sovereign, gracious, loving, merciful Savior and King of creation is the focus of your faith, you can always rest secure. Your faith will be constant, because Christ is constant.” This takes the burden of trying to muster up enough faith off of us. We just have to trust and keep our eyes on the Lord. We see that when we encounter God and his truth, it leads to worship. Despite the storm and the struggles, we can know God is in control. He loves us. He is faithful and for us, and this leads us to worship in His unexplainable peace in the midst of chaos.

The Older Brother

By Sydney Gautier

As with anything in life, context is very important when we read stories in the Bible. We’ve all had those moments when we catch just one sentence in someone’s conversation or hop in at the end of a conversation and only hear something like “and then the cops pulled up.” Well, if you don’t know the context of this statement you have no idea if this person is getting arrested, if someone was hurt, or if they are on the run from authority. Understanding the context of this story is essential. In this story of the prodigal son, the context is just as important. 

Jesus’s audiences when he was telling this story were middle eastern peasants and religious leaders around A.D. 30. In this culture, when the younger brother asks for his inheritance from his father while he was still alive, it was basically like he was saying, “Dad, why don’t you just drop dead and give me what’s mine?” For this culture, the response that the dad gave normally would have been to slap the kid for such a request. Instead, he accepts that his son rejected his love. He gave him his inheritance, so the younger son takes the money and leaves. The boy goes out into the far country, loses all his money, and ends up feeding pigs to survive. Eventually, the boy saw his money issue as the true problem. He decides to go back to his father and work to pay off the debt that he owed. However, the father knew that the true problem wasn’t the money. It was the broken relationship. When the young son returns the Bible tells us that the father runs to him and embraces him to show his love and acceptance, regardless of what he had done. Here the boy also sees that the broken relationship was the problem, and there was nothing he could do to fix it, but he accepts the love and grace of his father and returns with no problems.

With the return of his youngest son, the father throws him a party. However, his older brother has no idea that his younger sibling has returned yet. He had probably written him off as a lost cause. As he approached the house, someone told him that his brother had returned and his father had killed the fattened calf to celebrate his return. In this culture, everything in the house was legally the property of the older brother even though the father remains the head of the house. Everything that was left was pledged to his son, so when the father threw this party for the younger brother, he was using the older brother’s inheritance to do so. Also, in this culture, the father would have been sitting with the guests and the older son would often stand and serve the meal as a sort of “head waiter.” He would engage in conversation with the guests, and he would even have to serve his younger brother. Jesus says that “...he was angry and refused to go in.” (Luke 15:28). He didn’t want to lower himself to such a point as to serve his younger brother. By refusing to enter into the party, the older brother brought shame upon his family just as the younger brother had, and once again we see the father paying the price of reconciliation with one of his sons. Instead of getting angry like society expected him to, the father “...came out and entreated him...” (Luke 15:28). In other words, he came out and tried to reconcile with his son so he could see things from his father’s perspective.

The older son was still angry though. He was full of bitterness, hate, pride, and self-deception. He felt justified in his actions towards his father and brother., yet the father reassures his older son, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32). 

This is where the story ends. We don’t know what happens after that, but in leaving it here, Jesus invited all those hearing the story to come heed the words of the Father. 

God was represented by the father in this story, seeking reconciliation with his people. He loves those who have been careless with their lives and have lost everything that has been given to them, as well as those full of pride, bitterness, and hate. We see that the love of God is unfathomable. We see in Christ an example to follow. As Barry said, Jesus, the truly perfect Son of God did not look at us in our sin and failures and pride. Instead, we see the humility of Christ. We are hopeless outside of Christ, and in his love, mercy, and compassion, the Father sent the Son to bear our burdens and take our shame, to make possible reconciliation with the Father. This shows that Gospel is the foundation of our humility. We are to humble ourselves and serve others the way Jesus has.  Through faith in Christ, the Spirit lives in us, and gives us what we need to lovingly serve those around us, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. . .” (Galatians 5:22-23). And in Mark 10:45 Jesus tells us that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. Thus we are to follow this example and humbly serve those around us.

“...though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

Epiphany Sunday: the Magi

By Sydney Gautier

The Wise Men are a very popular part of the Christmas story. There’s a well-known song about them called, “We The Kings.” We see them in all the Christmas plays, in the Nativity scenes set up on fireplace mantels, and in front of churches. What you may not have known is that they were not kings at all, but instead they were Magi—basically they were pagan astrologers. The word magi is actually where we get our word magic. So why is it that the first people to go see Jesus were people that practiced magic, something that God condemns? 

God is the ultimate seeker and that He has a heart for the nations.

“When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:10-12). These pagan astrologers saw the star and came from the east. They weren’t from Israel, and they weren’t righteous or holy, but God led them to Jesus from afar. This shows us his love for all the world.

As we have seen through this story of the Magi, God has a radical love for all people. He desires everyone to come and worship his son, not just the righteous. Jesus said he came for the sick, those who knew they were in need of a savior. This is what we see God doing here with the Magi. Even though the Magi practiced something that was shunned by the Jews, God drew these men to come and worship Jesus. God loved the Magi more than we can understand. God loves us more than we can understand. That also means that God loves those around us more than we can understand as well. At New Circle, we talk a lot about seeing the city of Indianapolis made new through the Gospel. That renewal involves men and women, boys and girls, rich and poor, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, convicts as well as upstanding citizens all coming to know Jesus as their Savior. God loves these people and wants them to come to faith more than we can imagine. No one is too far gone for God to give up on them! 

God desires all people to come to know him, and he uses a variety of ways to bring people to his Son. With the Magi, we see that he used their love for astronomy to lead them straight to Jesus. He used something applicable to them, something they can relate to. In other stories through the Bible we see God use things like miracles, a talking donkey, tragedies, and nature to bring people to himself. God is still doing this today. People may be into practices that can look strange to us, but God can lead people to himself using these things just like he did with the Magi. 

The two means that will always be a part of the story of God drawing people to himself are the Word of God and the people of God. When the Magi went to Jerusalem, because that was the city of the Jewish people, they asked Herod where the Messiah was going to be born. Herod didn’t know, so he assembled the people of God to speak to the Magi from the Work of God. Here God used both his people and his Word to lead the Magi to Jesus. And if you are a believer, and have his word in your heart and your hand, you have everything you need to be used by God in the story of someone else’s salvation! “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20). Jesus is with us always, and has not asked us to go alone into sharing the Gospel, but to trust that he is with us in it!

Advent: The Love of the Kingdom

By Sydney Gautier

Every year I get so excited to give my husband his Christmas gift (and birthday present) that I literally cannot wait until the actual day. So last night I gave Joe his Christmas present. and as much as he liked this gift, it by no means expresses just how much I love him because we could never find a present great that can express our affection enough to the people we love. When we apply this to God, we remember that he created everything and owns everything, and that means He could give the greatest gift ever. He did just that when he sent his Son Jesus Christ to save us. 

For God so loved the world. . . 

Barry pointed us towards John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” This is a well-known verse. When I was a kid, this was the first verse we memorized in my Sunday school class, but when something is so common we can completely miss the significance of it. God created the world and everything and everyone in it. Even though we have rebelled against him and placed things above him, he still loves the world. We see this in scripture when we read that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4). While the death of Christ was sufficient to save everyone, God does not force anyone to be saved. Jesus is a gift that must be received as a gift!

The cost of God’s love.

The gift of Jesus comes from God to each and every one of us. God by no means had to give us this gift of salvation. We don’t deserve it. His love is deep and reckless, but like all gifts that we give, this gift of salvation was not free. Not only was it not free, but it was the most expensive and costly gift that has even been given. God knew that when he sent his one and only son to Earth that our salvation was going to cost him his life. It can be hard to remember that Jesus was fully human and fully God at the same time. He was someone’s son, brother, and friend here on earth, but ultimately he was God’s only son. When we try and think about giving up someone we are so proud of and love so deeply for people who don’t deserve it, we can probably feel just a smidgen of how truly difficult that would be. Yet, Ephesians 5:2 says, “Christ loved you and gave himself up for us.” Our salvation was not cheap. God gave us his absolute best because he loves us that much.

God’s love is reckless.

“For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) The love of God is deep and costly, and it knows no bounds; it is reckless. Barry didn’t mean it in a negative way. God is very free with his love. He is extravagant and over the top with his love. He sent Jesus to come find us. He constantly pursues us. However much you think God loves you, he loves you even more than that. His love is reckless and it frees us from all guilt and condemnation. Barry pointed us to Psalm 103:12, “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.” As hard as that can be to comprehend, it’s true! His love knows no bounds, and this should leave us awestruck and amazed, completely overwhelmed by his incredible love.

Advent: The Kingdom Life

By Sydney Gautier

“I have spoken these things to you so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

- John 15:11

Because Jesus came, we can have joy.

A lot of sad things happen in our world. You don’t have to look far to find something that you wish was different in this world or in your life. Mass shootings, illnesses, divorces, the loss of a job, these things can make us feel hopeless. Jesus changes all of that, he came to make the sad things untrue, and to bring us joy in the midst of pain. Like Barry said, Jesus did not come to give us a bunch of rules to follow, he came to bring us joy! 

The coming of Jesus makes joy a reality.

Barry gave us an example of a sad story that was made untrue: the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, a godly couple who were unable to bear a child (they were also advanced in their years). In this story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, we see God bringing hope to a situation that seemed utterly hopeless. In grace, God performed a miracle and allowed Elizabeth to have a son named John. Without God intervening, this was physically impossible. 

Zechariah and Elizabeth’s hard times did not come about because of sin in their life or because they did something wrong. They were described as righteous people, their hard times came because we live in a world that is broken by sin. Hard times, like the inability to get pregnant, are a product of the fall. But, in love and grace, God can intervene, making the sad things untrue, and the coming of Jesus makes this joy a reality. (To read the full story of Zechariah and Elizabeth go to Luke 1).

The birth of Jesus brought with it the great reversal.

Before John was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth, when the angel, Gabriel came to Zechariah to tell him that they would have a son named John. He also told Zechariah, “...many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord...he will be filled with the Holy Spirit... And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:14-17) 

Here we are told that John will do great things. His ministry would see the hearts of many turn towards God in Israel. In his ministry, we get a glimpse of the sad things becoming untrue, and all of this would prepare for Jesus’ life and ministry. In Jesus’ ministry we see the blind see again, the lame begin to walk, and dead raised to life physically as well as those who are spiritually dead raised to life again as well. Tim Keller said this about Jesus doing all of these amazing things, making the sad things untrue: 

“The work of Christ was not a suspension of natural order but a restoration of the natural order.” 

The inauguration of God’s kingdom by the birth of Jesus brought with it the great reversal. During Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, we see God begin the process of restoring things to their natural order—making sad things untrue and joy possible.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

It can be easy to look around and see God working in the world yet still feel like He’s not working in your specific life. Barry brought up the word Emmanuel, pointing out its meaning is, “God with us.” This means that, by faith, Christ is with you all of the time. The amazing works he performed are not just stories of the past, he is still doing amazing things in our lives even now. If you are in Christ, he is with you always. He hears your prayers, and he cares for you. We should remember that even while there are tears on earth, and times can be hard like they were for Zechariah and Elizabeth, God is faithful and in his presence, there is fullness of joy! (Psalm 16:11)