Element Christian Church

The sounds of Christmas that surround Joseph’s life tells us, “It’s worth it. God keeps his promises.” And that is why I can say to you tonight, Merry Christmas.

The details that surround the birth of Jesus are important because they speak of God’s nature and character (meek and lowly). The exact date of His birth has no significance whatsoever, which may be why God chose not to mention it. The fact is that Jesus was born, that He came into the world to atone for our sins, that He was resurrected to eternal life, and that He’s alive today. This is what we should celebrate with our gifts, celebrations, and songs. We are told in the Old Testament Zechariah 2:10 “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord.” The New International Version says, “‘Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,’ declares the LORD.” That is exactly what Jesus did in what we celebrate as Christmas. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

We are looking at the songs, poems, and words that were sung or spoken over the events that led to what we would call the “first Christmas.” The Gospel of Luke gives very specific details about the event: Jesus was wrapped in “swaddling clothes,” and placed in a “manger.” These details speak of the nature of God and His character: meek, humble, and true. The wonderful point of Jesus’ birth is that He came into the world to atone for our sins, He was resurrected, and that He’s alive today. That is what we celebrate in the holidays of Easter and Christmas; it is cause for celebration every day, not just once a year. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

God brings glory to Himself by being the power, the authority, and the presence by which all things happen. When God redeems and rescues, He calls the weak and the broken, so He is most glorified. The whole idea of what we celebrate at Christmas was the fulfillment of God’s promises to us. The world is fallen and broken, and we are not simply victims of the messed-up world, we have participated in messing up the world; the scriptures call this sin and rebellion. This is why Jesus came, to rescue us as we could never rescue ourselves. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Zechariah was an Old Testament Priest, waiting for the Promised Redeemer. Though he and his wife were elderly, and unable to have children, he prays for a son. An angel appears, and tells him his prayer has been heard, and his wife will bear a son who will not only be an answer Zechariah’s personal prayer, but who will play a part in answering the prayers of the nation of Israel. But instead of just believing and being thankful, Zechariah wants proof. The Lord responds with a 9-month “time- out”, where Zechariah is not able to speak. God answers his prayer anyway, and the moment Zechariah names the child “John,” in obedience to the angel’s original words, his voice comes back, and his first words are considered a prophetic “song,” which came to be known as the “Benedictus.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today we end the book of Ecclesiastes by looking at Solomon being wise enough to speak of his vulnerabilities. He spent the entire book pointing out all the ways he had failed God’s call in his life. He shows that wisdom is found in those who are willing to admit their failures and trust God in life for truth. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today in the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon continues to talk about youth and beauty versus getting old. He will point out how getting older is more painful for some and less painful for others depending on the focus. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Solomon starts the section of Ecclesiastes that we are looking at today by being hopeful and encouraging. It is a departure from how he communicates the previous chapters of the book. He will say that when life and its rhythms flow in the perfect direction, life is (and can be) very beautiful. He says, “There are days that life is unbelievably sweet and the sun feels good to your skin.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Wise people help those in need, but the larger concept that Solomon moves us toward today is the idea that we will never lack for excuses to not help one another (or to work in general). There will always be something we can point to that will give us a reason to not step into the things that we know we should be doing. Sometimes it is even tempting to wonder if anything we do for God really matters, for example, when we pray for a friend and they don’t get better or we share the gospel and it doesn’t seem like anyone believes. The Book of Ecclesiastes is now moving us to push beyond what we see, to trusting what God does with our faithfulness. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today in Ecclesiastes, Solomon continues his push for us to listen to and live within wisdom. There is an infinite number of categories by which people can be classified in how they live. In much of the wisdom literature, of which Ecclesiastes is a part of, the division is among only two: the wise and foolish. Wise people are those who live their lives in rhythm with God rather than resisting His will. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today in Ecclesiastes, Solomon will write in a way that will hopefully get our imaginations to see how bad folly, or being foolish, is in our lives. He will use the analogy of perfume and say that nothing may have been wrong with the fragrance of a perfume to start off, but it had attracted a swarm of flies. Some of the insects had died, and the stench of their carcasses had turned the perfume rancid. Wisdom is sweet, like fragrant perfume, but it doesn’t take much foolishness to turn the smell into something sour because folly stinks. Derek Kidner commented, “It is easier to make a stink than to create sweetness.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today in Ecclesiastes you will see some things that are philosophical, some that are practical, and some that are theological, but they all deal with foolishness and wisdom. Vapor/vanity are the words that are also translated as “meaningless” and most of the things we freak out about are meaningless. Today we like to classify people in a myriad of ways, Solomon (and the wisdom literature) classifies people in 2 categories: wise and foolish. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

This is week 25 of our walk through the book of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes 9 Solomon will talk about death and joy, injustice and pain, what we need to remember and what we forget. The idea being that God is good enough to provide joy before death and we should embrace it as long as we can. While we have life, we also have the opportunity to make the most of our days and maximize the lot in life God has given us. The day will arrive when death overtakes us and our labors come to an end, so until that day comes we should be ambitious about our jobs, homes, families, friends, churches, and ministries because we have no idea what God may do in us and through us tomorrow. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today in Ecclesiastes we are going to look at what the fear of God means, and how God stands over our meaninglessness. Ecclesiastes is a look at how the wisest man in the world ended his days in reflection of all he accomplished; he comes to the conclusion that following God is the only way to truly live. Solomon keeps reminding us that what we build with our hands under the sun is like a vapor and that only life with God lasts. We trust God for what He reveals and also trust Him for what we don’t understand. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

This is the second part of Element’s look at the book of Ecclesiastes. The series title is “The Existential Hangover” because the word ‘existential’ philosophically is concerned with human existence. The book of Ecclesiastes deals with the questions of our lives and what we put our time and energy into and then asks, “now what?” The book is about the headache that comes from getting everything you thought you ever wanted under the sun and then realizing it doesn’t fulfill you because it is all temporary. Ecclesiastes is meant to be advice on real, practical, everyday living and to lift up an ideology that looks beyond this mortal shell to what goes on into eternity. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Welcome back to the book of Ecclesiastes. We spent the first part of this year going through this philosophical Old Testament book that centers itself on questions of life, wisdom, and God. The author of Ecclesiastes is King Solomon who is constantly asking questions about where our focus lies: on things “under the sun” (meaning the realm which we create) or the eternal. Solomon will use the words “Yet when I surveyed” to push us to face, with brutal honest self-examination, what life without God is truly like. This is why we called the series “The Existential Hangover.” The word “existential” relates to existence; the big question of the book being NOW WHAT? I had it all, bought it all, did it all, accomplished it all and now what? The writer of the book “had it all” in the realm of the created and says “I now want to tell about that which exists beyond the realm of what we create.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

God doesn’t want us to wonder about how things will turn out for those who trust Jesus. He is so committed to making sure we know that Jesus’ payment on the cross was enough to pay for our sins that He has also given us His Spirit inside of all of us who trust Him to guarantee our eternity and remind us that we belong to Him. The miracle is that the Creator puts His own Spirit inside of His creature (us) to assure us that we will never have to be apart from Him again because of our sin. He stamps our adoption into His family as “complete” and shows us each day how to live in the freedom of belonging to Him forever.

John 6 starts with the real world problem of hungry people who have traveled a long distance needing sustenance. Jesus will feed all of these people and then use this miracle to wake people up with some hard words about salvation. Why? Because we don’t understand our real problem. We focus so much of our lives on our own needs and quick fixes to those needs. We focus on ourselves so much that we miss the real Jesus and the real Gospel. Trusting Jesus is not like a salad bar at the buffet where we take the parts of Him we like and leave those we don’t; following Jesus means that we trust Him for everything in our lives. Jesus didn’t come to end world hunger, at least not at first, He came to redeem and restore men’s hearts souls. The restoration of our lives to relationship with God will lead to the restoration of the world.

God doesn’t zap us into maturity, He leads us in a process. At times that process can be painful, arduous, and long, but it’s a process in which we are not an object to Him; we’re His people. We cooperate, we participate in a personal process of growth. Manna was about relationship with God and others, we can’t live without God and we were not meant to live without each other. We are meant to gather with people who are on the same journey we are and talk about it, to lift each other up when they fall down, admonish each other, and help each other think about Jesus more as we gather what God has daily given us. We are reminded to remind one another of all that has come into our hands through God’s miraculous grace.

Modern Philosophers will say things to the effect that to be free, having no lord or master, to belong to yourself, is impossible. We are a people who are never truly our own, something always owns us in a way. This is why when God calls for His people’s freedom in the Exodus narrative He doesn’t just say, “Let my people go,” in reality He says, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” He says this because we are not free until we begin to worship the right thing in the right way. As an American, this is a radically different understanding of freedom: that unless Jesus is the absolute Lord of our life, we’re a slave to something else.