Element Christian Church

The book of Acts details the beginnings of the early church, their stumbles, their questions, but most importantly, the leading of Jesus by His Spirit which was sent to guide. That same Spirit is the one that leads and guides us as well. Right after Jesus’ ascension, He told his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. Waiting is never easy; when the disciples waited, they did something wonderful, they prayed. In the scriptures it is hard to find waiting without the accompaniment of prayer.

Welcome to week two of Acts. This series will take us through September as we learn about the founding of the early church and the original Apostles. The book of Acts is constantly re-centering us on Jesus as the focal point of all creation and our lives.

Welcome to a new year and Element’s new sermon series on Acts. This series will take us until the end of September, so strap yourselves in, get comfortable, we will be here for a while! Today we are not starting with Acts 1, we are reviewing the entire gospel of Luke to help us gain pertinent background information to start the series. Luke wrote a historical account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ…and Acts paints the picture of a detailed account of how Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. Both of the books, Acts and Luke are written to the same person: Theophilus, who Luke addresses as “most excellent.”

Isaiah 25:6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

Today we're going to look at the only biblical story of Jesus as a child. We know this story is true, because when Luke was writing his Gospels he relied heavily on eyewitness accounts (Luke 1:2). Luke would trace these stories, and people's accounts of Jesus very carefully and make sure that everything was backed up by multiple people who where there. So while I'm sure he had notes on a ton of stories about the complete life of Jesus Luke only included what was important and had multiple eye witness accounts to it. This story has multiple areas to look at that reveals the kind of Servant Jesus is and how he lived a Fully Human life growing up just as we all do today.

The 4th week of Advent typically centers on peace. Sunday morning we looked at the Magnificat, Mary’s response to hearing the Gospel, as well as other possible responses to the Gospel message (centrality, wonder, fear, and truth). It’s crazy to think that Mary was the first person to learn of God’s specific plan! This discussion is a great opportunity to refresh your GC on the meaning of the Gospel.

This week of our Advent journey focuses on joy. Joy is often depicted in our culture as an overwhelming emotion, but it is something much greater for followers of Jesus. For the Christian, joy is a permanent state, the result of knowing a loving God that has rescued us. Advent is an especially great season of joy, because we take time to remember the very act of God being born into the world.

This week, we begin our Advent journey together. To mark this shift in seasons, you may want to do something fun as a Community….share a meal (other than the Agape meal you shared last week) or do something festive. This is a new “appointed time” that is worth celebrating! The holidays are a great time to reach out to those outside your Community as well, so remember to be intentional about inviting them into your celebrations.

This is our last week in our series called “Legends of the Fall,” where we look the “bad” guys or bad stories in the Bible. Throughout this series we have seen how we are like many of the “bad” guys we have talked about. Today we look at Lucifer, or the Devil.

Today, we look at the shortest bad guy in the Bible, Zacchaeus. He is one of the guys that people love because of the story, but he started off bad. He was a chief tax collector. Zacchaeus was a person who became a member of the ruling class by exploiting the poor in order to benefit himself. Tax collectors would extort extra money from those paying taxes to further benefit themselves. The poor hated tax collectors, just like the Occupied Wall Street movement hates Wall Street today, with the difference that no one could protest. When Jesus shows up, He calls Zacchaeus by name, giving him value.

This week we look at Balaam and his talking Donkey! Balaam is a pagan prophet, a seer, and a diviner. He is a smart guy who knows how to “see” the future based off reading patterns in animals. He had to know animals, flight patterns, and even claimed he was able to look at the liver of a dead animal to help predict the future. He was also believed to have claimed to be a sorcerer that could influence human events to bring about his desired outcome. Balak, King of the Moab people, wants Balaam to help him destroy the Israelites because he fears them.

In Legends of the Fall we are taking 10 weeks to look at the villains in the bible, those that everybody considers the “bad guys.” We are looking at how we are not as different from them as we might think. Today, we take a look at THE BETRAYER, Judas Iscariot. The most infamous traitor in Scripture, other than the Devil, is Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ. Judas is a guy that we love to hate, we often think we are so much better than him, but in reality we have all betrayed Christ in one way or another.

During the summer we did a series titled Coloring Book All-Stars (about the heroes you would find in children’s bible coloring books). We are now in a series titled Legends of the Fall (about all the bad guys in the bible). We travel through these two series in an effort to be able to see how the people in the bible are just like us, lost and in need of God’s redemption.

We are in a series called “Legends of the Fall,” which is all about the “bad” people or the “bad” stories in the bible and how it relates to who we are. We tend to want to look at “bad” guys in a story and say “that could never be me because I’m really a good person,” but we are exactly like those bad guys. Today we look at an incestual story of rape; we look at Amnon. It is important to remember that the story of Amnon immediately follows the story of David and Bathsheba. Even though God forgives David for his sin, there is still a price that get’s paid (not to God, but when we model bad behavior to our kids). The prophet Nathan in 2 Sam 12:10-12 warned David of what was going to happen for not leaving a proper legacy for his children. David’s sin of sexual abuse now its way directly into his family. We have a tendency to think that our sin only affects us, but it does not, sin permeates all aspects of our life and community.

Today we look at the story of David and Bathsheba. There are two stories people remember about the life of King David, his highest triumph (when David slew the giant Goliath) and his lowest personal defeat (when David gave in to personal temptation and slept with a woman who was not his wife). For every Goliath we seem to be able to defeat, there is a temptation, like Bathsheba, waiting to take hold of our hearts.

Today, we look at the Tower of Babel. The people of Babel were proud of their tower, but the language in the Bible shows that God was not impressed with their works. Genesis 11:5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. Sometimes we are so impressed with our own works that we think God has to also be impressed, but no matter how good we think we are, we cannot earn God’s favor.

This week, we look at the first murder in the world and find out how Cain is exactly like us. Thankfully, identifying with one of the “bad” characters in the Bible points us in the direction of Jesus, our Redeemer!

The first “legend” of the fall is actually two people, Adam and Eve, our first parents. Many times they are cast in a positive light, but all that we know of our fallen world begins with them, it is why Aaron called them “patient zero.”

Welcome to the last week of coloring book all stars, the series where we take a look at some of the most popular stories, or people, in the Bible. We realize that some of your personal favorites may not have been covered during this series, but that is OK, you get to tell your friends, families and kids about them. This week we look at who Jesus is and why who He is becomes so important to our concept of faith.

This is week 11 of coloring book all-stars where we look at figures in the bible who are larger than life, who (usually) make it into the coloring books that kids love to scribble on. This week we look at Jacob’s favorite son, JOSEPH! Genesis 37:3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age.