Feast and Follow with Knollwood

Christmas Eve: A Future Worth Celebrating

This is the message from our Christmas Eve service. 

Jesus: The Conquering King

It has been said that the best way to sum up the book of Revelation is to say, “Jesus wins.” Now, that is true as far as it goes, but this doesn’t go far enough. The book tells us more than just Jesus wins, because it tells us how Jesus wins. Details are important, because details give us a clearer picture of who Jesus is and always was.

 

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This scene is an important detail in our Portrait of Jesus series because it helps form the final word of the subtitle I stole from Beth McGrew for this series: Jesus, Meek and Wild. This is the wild part.

 

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Jesus isn’t a general leading from the rear. His garments have blood on them. He is getting personally involved. His eyes are described as flames, and His mouth wields a sword! This is a very different picture of a Lamb being led to slaughter, but I think a careful study of this passage will enhance your view of Jesus.

 

For one, this picture will help us appreciate how patient Jesus was. At any moment, He would have been justified to slaughter everyone there, especially at the cross. But He doesn’t.

 

I think that this also shows us where Christmas is ultimately going. We rightly talk about that Christmas begins in the manger and goes to the cross, but that isn’t all there is. The cross is the redemptive moment for us, but the ultimately victorious moment is here. It begins in the manger, and it ends on the Throne, all enemies and threats to it being decisively defeated.

Jesus: The God Man

We are going to take a look at one of the most complicated and comforting mysteries in the Bible. How is Jesus in one Person able to have a fully divine nature and a fully human nature? There is one sense in which that mystery is simply left at that: a mystery. As one theologian put it: “We are simply told what Jesus is, without any attempt to show how He became what He is…It has always recognized the incarnation as a mystery which defies explanation. And so it will remain, because it is the miracle of miracles” (Berkhof, 321).

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But just because we can’t explain how this mystery works, doesn’t mean we can’t be awed by viewing it. I can’t possibly explain how a star manages for most of its life not to be crushed by its own gravity or how a hunk of rock and gases emit light, but I can still be captured by its beauty in the night sky.

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Now, unlike a star, Jesus is more than someone to admire and ultimately worship and obey. He’s not less than that, but the angle that I want to take a look at today is the comforting aspect of knowing who our God is.

 

The last couple of weeks, we have been examining the Person of Jesus. The first week of Advent, we look at Jesus’ divinity, as clearly seen in

John 1:1-14

. Next, we saw the humanity of Jesus out of

Luke 2:52

Now, we are going to look at those two elements together and see what it means for Jesus to be the Godman. Again, how this works is a mystery beyond human mental capability, but what this means for us is well within our grasp to understand and worship.

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We will consider this chapter under a couple of broad headings. The first is Jesus is the King of all Kings. Second, Jesus is the reconciler of all things, and Third, Therefore, Jesus is your sole Hope

 

Jesus: Like Us In (Almost) Every Way

Interestingly, one of the harder things for the ancient peoples to believe about Jesus was that He was truly human. When a person rises from the dead, it isn’t too difficult to believe that they are truly divine, but the idea that Jesus was also truly human was a little much. Many at that time thought that Jesus only “appeared” to be human, walking around the earth like some sort of phantom. It was just too hard to imagine.

 

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It is hard for us to conceive as well. It is hard for us to express that God experienced limits in the person of Jesus. It is hard for us to believe that Jesus actually does understand where we are coming from. He doesn’t know our weaknesses in just an academic sense. He has actually experienced our troubles physically AND emotionally. All those things that we would say makes us human from a theological understanding to a popular understanding were true of Jesus.

Jesus: More Than a Teacher

When we think about Christmas, it is so easy to be distracted by all the wonderful things that happen in this time of year. We are reminded by literally all the Christmas movies that Christmas isn’t about the gifts, the lights, the trees, but when asked what Christmas is actually about  usually the answer is “the people that you are with.” Of course, as wonderful as family and friends are, that isn’t what Christmas is about.  

This might be the moment at which Charlie Brown’s Linus might be feeling a little smug in that he quotes from Luke 2 when asked what Christmas is about. And Linus is right! It is about the birth of Jesus! But what does that mean? We are so familiar with this passage that we can zip right by what that incredible sentence is saying in verse 11 of Luke 2. 

Who is Jesus, and how is He able to be that Savior and Lord? 

That is the question I would like for us to dwell on during this advent season. Jesus is more than a manger. What happens here in the Christmas story is something that has kept historians and theologians busy for the last 2000 years. More has been written and thought about concerning Jesus than any other figure, and this Christmas, we are going to meditate on why. 

I’m calling this series “A Portrait of Jesus” but if I could give a subtitle, I would steal it from an online author I follow, Bethel McGrew, and call it “Jesus: Meek and Wild.” 

Soli Deo Gloria: Not About Us

There is a whole genre of misbehavior online called “being the main character.” This “main character” label is given to people who act like they have the staring role in the world’s story. The camera is fixed on their situation and everyone else is a just an extra, a background character, and NPC. Main character people have all sorts of annoying habits like standing directly in front of elevators getting in the way of people trying to get out, or blocking other people’s view of an area so that they can get that perfect instagram shot. It is a pattern of behavior that says “life is about me, and no matter who else I affect negatively, I am going to do what I want.” Videos and posts online to shame such people are popular because we all understand (at least when WE aren’t behaving like that) that life is not all about us.

 

‌But if life isn’t about us, then who is it about? If we aren’t the main character in this world, who is? And most importantly, how do we relate to this Main Character and His story?

 

‌These are the questions that we are going to be asking ourselves as we close our series on the five solas. So far, we have seen in Scripture Alone that by Grace Alone in Christ Alone we find salvation through Faith Alone. Today, we find out that all of this, all of life, is for the Glory of God alone, Soli Deo Gloria.

Sola Fide: Here We Stand

Today, we are going to be talking about the only thing which separates true Christianity from every other religion or approach to God and life. That concept is faith alone.

 

Faith alone is a humility boosting doctrine. Indeed, Paul tells us in

Ephesians 2:8-9

that it is so that we would not boast. Reminding ourselves that we are only going to heaven because of the work of someone else is humiliating. This is why every other religion that is man made doesn’t like this concept. Every other religion says you have to do something to convince God to like you!

 

Faith alone is also a God glorifying doctrine. God doesn’t need help saving us or need help being convinced to save us. It is His work that He has already done that saves us. He gets all the glory, all the praise, all the recognition that He is the important one here.

 

 

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Sola Gratia: More Amazing Than You Know

If you were given the task to describe God in a single sentence, what would you emphasize?

 

Listen to how the Old Testament describes God:

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Psalm 86:15

“But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

 

Joel 2:13

“and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.”

 

‌Finally, look at

Jonah 4:2

“And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

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Is this just some writer’s opinions? How do we know that they have the right view of God? Why does it seem like they are all working off that same line “gracious and merciful”? Sounds like that comes from somewhere.

 

‌Well, that line does come from somewhere. It turns out that this is the line that God uses to introduce Himself! God is going to use a sentence or two describe Himself. So what does a perfect (by definition) summary of God sound like?

 

Exodus 34:6

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” Now, there is more that we will get to in a moment, but let’s focus on this first part for right now

Sola Scriptura: Light for Dark Times

How do we know what, if anything, is true in this world?

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Where do you go when you want to know if something has really happened in this world? Do you go to the TV and tune into your favorite news caster? Do you run to your social media of your choice to follow after those who know the “real story”? Do you pull up your favorite long-form podcast and hope that somewhere in those 3 hours of a comedian interviewing a guest will you find what is really true? Or do you run to your favorite AI bot hoping that the machine will filter out human error (spoiler alert: it won’t).

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What we are increasingly finding is that really no matter which one we choose, there is some sort of drawback to getting the full truth. No matter who you listen to, there are biases in presenters. It’s just part of being human. There are limitations because of how they present their message. TV presenters are limited to how long their segments between commercials are (usually somewhere between the 7 and 15 minute mark) and podcasters have the opposite problem of making the key point in a sea of content. AI, for as interesting as a field as that is makes just as many, if not more, mistakes as the humans do!

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To sum it up, we live in an age of information but not an age of wisdom.

 

Don’t you wish there was a reliable source not only of information but of the information you actually need?

 

Well, I’ve got some good news for you: It’s the Bible, God’s Book.

Reformation Day: Remembrance and Warning

We often celebrate Reformation Sunday for all the wrong reasons. Yes, we rejoice in the work that Martin Luther accomplished, but he shouldn't be our focus. Yes, we rejoice in the proper realignment of Church authority, the translations of the Bible into the language of the people, the return of congregational singing and centrality of preaching, and recapturing of Sola Scriptura, but none of those things should be our focus. None of those things on their own changed the world. 

It wasn't Luther nailing his theses to the door, but God nailing His Son to the cross that changed the world. It is the recapturing of that reality, the recovery of the gospel, that turned the world upside down yet again. The gospel has that effect in history. Christ dying for our sins and rising again is what we celebrate every Sunday, and on this Sunday we remember how easily we lost sight of that gospel. Reformation Sunday isn't about patting ourselves on the back that we are right. It is a warning to us of how easily we forget. It's a reminder to us to take heed lest we fall. The sins of the past always return in the present, but they just update their clothing, their mask. 

Today, we are going to reexamine the sins of Rome, discover our own version of that sin, but then happily settle on Christ and celebrate Him. Our main point today is Only Christ can purchase our peace