2021 Worship Guide

Page 18 2021 Worship Guide LINCOLN DAILY NEWS December 1, 2021 CONTINUE God’s invitation to you (MPCC) Christmas: I want to tell you about a Father who worked very hard to communicate with his children. Many people doubt that we can actually know God. Christmas goes a LONG way in explaining how God communicated with us. Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything’s all right. [It] isn’t about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying: “Of course! Why didn’t we realize it before?” It is about God shining his clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations—and the darkness not comprehending it. It’s about God, God as a little child, speaking words of truth, and nobody knowing what he’s alking about. - N.T. Wright Why Christmas? Jesus came to show us God. Through Jesus, God spoke to us in a way that we could understand Him. This is nothing new though, just better. In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. - Hebrews 1:1-3 God revealed Himself through the words spoken by Jesus, through His message, but He did more than that. Jesus came to reveal God, to make Him known to us in ways that we can understand. Author/Preacher Timothy Keller said it like this: If Jesus didn’t come, the story of Christmas is one more moral paradigm to crush you. If Jesus didn’t come, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere around these Christmas stories that say we need to be sacrificing, we need to be humble, we need to be loving. All that will do is crush you into the ground … [But] if Jesus Christ is actually God come in the flesh, you’re going to know much more about God … If Jesus is