Unto us a Child is born

The Scripture has been fulfilled. The Promised Seed of Genesis 3 has come. When Seth was born, Eve thought he was the Promised One. She was ready to celebrate the birth of the Savior. This is the first occurrence of the celebration of the birth of the Messiah. She was about 4,000 years too early, but, we see the desire to celebrate the birth of the Savior. Eve was looking to the Savior for her rescue. We look back to the Savior for our rescue.

21 “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1)

The name Jesus means God saves. He will rescue us from our sins. I pray that our attitude will be like Mary’s attitude, a reminder of Eve’s attitude when she first learned of the coming Messiah. Marry has just been told that she will give birth to the Messiah. Here is her response as recorded by Luke:

38 And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to Your Word.”  (Luke 1)

From the Brewer family, we want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

In Christ’s Love,
Erik, Elena, Evangelyn, Emmanuel, and Elizabeth

Jesus’ 7 I am sayings

I want to write on the 7 I am sayings of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, when Jesus claimed “I am” He was making connection to the Old Testament name “Jehovah“, the name that God revealed to Moses when he asked God, “who is sending me”? God stated that this is His name for all generations. The Jews knew what Jesus meant when He called Himself “Jehovah”, that He was and is God. As Jehovah, He is also El Shaddai, the God who has life in Himself and imparts that life in the lives of His followers. In the Gospels, Jesus tells us what He imparts to us as His followers. Do you know what all Christ has to pour into you as His follower? I would say that many “followers” are unaware of what is at their disposal as disciples of Jesus Christ. This has been my experience over the past 17 years of ministry, literally all over the world.

Jesus explained by Isaiah

I am so excited about this week’s Sunday School lesson. Over the past couple of weeks, we have covered:

• David’s humility and Goliath’s pride
• David’s repentance
• Naaman’s salvation

This week, we are going to study some of Isaiah’s prophecies about the first coming of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, there are over 300 prophecies about the first coming of Jesus Christ. These prophecies are given over a 4,000 year period. The prophet Isaiah lived and wrote about 700 years before the birth of Jesus. He reveals some great truths about Jesus, in his inspired writings. Let’s see what we can learn about Christ and ourselves from the prophecies that Isaiah wrote almost 3,000 years ago.

Contend earnestly for the faith (II)

I previously wrote an article on this same subject a couple of weeks ago as I was preparing to teach a seminar on how to study the Bible inductively. I am now teaching Jude, Precept Upon Precept. Last week we met and covered lesson 1, the overview. I am preparing to teach lesson 2 this coming Monday night. I would like to share some of the truths that I have discovered. I pray that they will be as encouraging to you as they are to me.

As we have seen from our previous study of Jude, there are two types of people described in this letter and they are both members of the church. I would like to examine the two different groups to see what we learn about contending earnestly for the faith.

Are you an ambassador for Christ?

Last week, I had some dear friends of mine from Moldova come and stay with us for most of the week. They were speaking at our annual missions conference at Hoffmantown Church. They came a little early and we were able to spend the week ministering with them. They taught our Bible study groups and shared their testimony of life on the mission field to several different groups of people. On Thursday morning, Alex led our staff Bible study and my heart was touched by what we studied. I would like to share that with you here in this article.

Does God still judge sexual sin today?

I have been teaching the Bible study “The Truth about sex” written by Kay Arthur since 2004 when I first studied it for my own personal walk with the Lord. I was amazed to see how practical the Word of God is in the area of human sexuality. One of the lessons that hit home with me was the fact that God still judges sexual sin today, as He did in the Old Testament.

I grew up after the sexual revolution and so a warped form of human sexuality was given to me at an early age, via mass media, public school, and from friends and their “experiences”. I also grew up hearing that God is not the same as He was in the Old Testament because Jesus changed all of the teachings of the Old Testament. My whole world was rocked after studying this lesson.

The authority of the Word of God

Last week, during our staff meeting, we covered II Timothy 3, learning the differences between the believers and the unbelievers in the church based on their attitude toward the Word of God. This week, we want to focus on the authority of the Word of God. Do you sit under the authority of the Word of God? How do you know that you sit under the authority of the Word of God? Let’s see if we can find the answer from the Word of God.

Compete to win the prize

I am going to continue teaching my staff this week from II Timothy. We took a break over the Christmas holidays and studied about the birth of Christ for a couple of weeks. Now we are ready to dig back in to II Timothy. This week, we are going to cover II Timothy 2:5.

The last lesson that we covered was about verses 3-4, the importance of and the need for trained soldiers. These two images go together to explain the spiritual truth of the importance of training in the Word of God in order to make disciples. Let’s see what we can learn about competing as an athlete.

Humbleness and Obedience go hand in hand

Last night, during our Philippians Bible study, we covered the idea of humbleness and obedience to the Lord. God, through His great wisdom, gives us an example of humbleness and obedience in the person of Jesus Christ. He also commands us to humble ourselves and obey Him. Not only does He do these two things, He also gives us a litmus test daily to show if we are humbly obeying Him or not. Now, is an example and a command enough? Let’s find out.

Our passage of examination is Philippians 1:27-2:11. Take a moment to read this passage. Now let’s examine what God has to teach us here.

Thanksgiving – Reminder to be grateful

Tomorrow during Kids’ Express, we are going to celebrate our Thanksgiving, thank you Jesus feast. I have the privilege of attending and I have been invited to share a short message from God’s Word. I want to talk about being appreciative or grateful. We have to be taught and reminded to be grateful because gratefulness is not our nature. Because of our sin nature, we are selfish. Gratefulness comes out of a selfless attitude. This is important because if we do not teach each generation to be selfless and grateful we cannot expect them to be. Once we teach people to be selfless and appreciative, we have to remind them of it over and over. We have a tendency to forget. God has set up annual holidays that remind us to be grateful. These are good reminders for us.