The Messiah Comes

I feel like we need a greeting for Christmas time.  You know like on Easter morning.  I always look forward to saying “He is risen,” and then hearing the answer, “He is risen, indeed.”  Maybe I should say something like, “The Messiah is coming.” And your answer would be, “The Messiah is here.”  

Let’s take a minute and pray before we get into the message.

Lord Jesus, You are the Messiah.  Thank You for coming into the world, for coming to save us.  Oh how we need you.  Please come afresh into our lives, every day, every minute.  Clean out the corrupt things in us, the deceitfulness and just plain wickedness.  Redeem us and make us new.  We thank you that you have done the work already.   Speak to us now.  Fill us with the wonder of your coming.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Promises of the Messiah

In Galatians 3:6-9 Paul says, “Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.  The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” 

In the NASB it says, “The Scripture…preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham…” The promise of the gospel (i.e. the promise of the Messiah) started all the way back in the book of Genesis. It didn’t start with the promise found in Micah 5:2 that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. It didn’t start with the promise found in Isaiah 7:14 that a man would be born from a virgin and that man would be called “God” or specifically “God with us” which is “Emmanuel”. It didn’t even start with the promise found in Daniel 9:26 that the Messiah would die at a particular time in history.  

In Ephesians 1:4-6 Paul shares how long God had planned on giving His son, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”  Eugene Peterson paraphrases the passage in The Message this way, “Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!)” 

Poured Out and Devoted

Titus 3:1-15

Welcome! Today we have are going to finish our series on Titus by looking at Chapter 3, the final chapter of the book. This is a bit of a change from our previous plans, in which we were going to spend two weeks on Titus 3, because we will have a special guest speaker next week, Timmy Powers. Timmy was a pastor here at CCC for many years, and then he became a missionary in Eastern Europe, based in Kiev, Ukraine, where he has continued to serve for more than ten years. I am really looking forward to seeing Timmy and hearing from him again.

Anyway, when we opened the Titus series, we talked about how God desires to build us into a people that are mature in Christ, people who are completely transformed by Christ’s love and who reflect the goodness and love of Christ in all that they say and do. I gave the analogy of building skyscrapers and talked about how in many parts of the world it is common to see unfinished, abandoned building projects.  Unfinished because they ran out of money, or they realized it was a bad idea, or for one of countless other reasons. Such unfinished buildings are an eyesore, and unfortunately, spiritually speaking, it is not uncommon to see people that are likewise unfinished, likewise no longer advancing in Christian maturity.