Advent Candle lighting

Christmas Eve Dec 24th, 4th Sun Of Advent 2023

Advent(from Lat. adventus“coming”).

Can designate either:

the incarnation of Christ or

his second coming.

The True meaning of Christmas: The Messiah is coming back soon!

Adorning our Heart

Advent is waiting for the Coming of Jesus. How are are you waiting?

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear.... but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 1 Peter 3:3–4 (ESV)

Be Adorned, Be “wrapped” for Jesus -

This is how Revelation describes us in the new Jerusalem the home of all of God’s family. We are adorned for God. Rev 21:2.

Today we light the forth (God’s love” and middle candela fifth white candle is added in the centre of the wreath. This is lit on Christmas Eve to mark the coming of Christ the Light.

Advent schedule

1st – Dec 3: God’s Prophesy

2nd - Dec 10: God’s Preparation (Nathan)

3rd – Dec 17: Our Response (pink=Rejoice)

4th – Dec 24: God’s Love (Christmas eve)

Christmas - Dec 25: God’s Son (white)

Review: God’s Preparation (Nathan)

take notes about this.

Advent - God’s Love

Sermon by Pastor Ken Geer

Intro - God’s Character and Love

We are focusing On God’s love today. Love is a key Characteristic of God. Have you thought about what kind of fellow God his? What Kind of Character he has?

Character is

What is the the moral character of God?

D.L. Moody said:

“Character is what you are in the dark when no one is watching.” Dwight L. Moody

That determines what your made of… the kind of actions you do when you think no one will know. Will you do right even then?

You and I have trouble with our Character , there are times when the blemishes in our character are evident, and in such times it is the quality of our character that will determine how quickly we repent and ask for forgiveness.

God’s Character is Consistent

The delightful thing about God is he is utterly consistent in character and it is the very finest.

He is perfect in every way.. in love, and justice, wisdom, in all his ways.

God is the very definition of Good Character. God is the same Yesterday to day and forever, the Alpha and Omega as it says in revelation. God’s character does not change. Today we will look at the most challenging and difficult of all God’s Characteristics. LOVE.

Last Week: Adoption

Last week I pointed out that every human has a choice. to respond to the light of God Jesus. God had brought light into the world through his son Jesus.

John 1:12–13 ESV

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

God wants YOU to have a deep relationship with him! A deep friendship with HIM! No longer orphans, but instead fully part of the Family of the Tri-une God having a good good father. the best father. much better than the best early father you can imagine.

God’s love is adoptive 0 desiring to make us part of His perefct family in such an intiment way that we can call out ”Abba Father”.

from Dick Schroeder

“The WORD did not become a philosophy, a theory, or a concept to be discussed, debated or pondered. But the WORD became a Person to be passionately followed, enjoyed, and loved!” - Dick Schroeder

God wants to have an eternal relationship with YOU!

No other religion describes God like this.

Yet most of the world will shrug this off. Why? because they do not perceive him.

John 1:10–11 ESV

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Your view of God is critical

What you think and believe about God is the most important Belief you will ever have.

Knowledge of the Holy

A. W. Tozer… a marvelous bible teacher and a incredible author that passed away in the 60’s. He wrote a book called “Knowledge of the Holy” Dick Schroeder once gave a summary of 5 points about knowing God from A. W. Tozer’s book:” Knowledge of the Holy”.

The Most important thing about you is who you picture God to be.

Our idea of God must correspond to what HE really is is. (we all have an imperfect view of God, and as we go through life we must be teachable to learn a better views of God)

Any errors we have in theology is based out of imperfect view of God.

Idolatry is based on a false concept of God

Your relationship with God depends on your concept of God

Since so much depend on it, let us therefore today on Christmas Eve, lets meditate on God’s love.

Meditating on God’s Love on Christmas Eve

The love of God is the hardest of all His attributes to speak about.

We are trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Yet at the same time, it is the Love of God for us (that came first ) that is leading us into enlarging our concept of God and Jesus. We can learn from that too…

1. We can perceive God’s Love working in us as we attempt to love Him.

Today as we meditate, we will NOT bring only our intellectual understanding of God to bear… but we will use our whole being to bear in this meditation on God’s Love.

Just as the Shema (HEAR) tells us to do:

The Shema kind of Love

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Hear (SHEMA) Oh Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall LOVE the Lord our God with all your LEV (HEART), with all your Nephesh (BEING), and with all your Meod (Muchness = ABILITY TO PRODUCE strength/wealth).

I believe that this is the same way God loves us.

God love us with all his Heart, Being and His Muchness.

We can see this in the most famous verse on God’s love:

God’s John 3:16 Love

John 3:16–17 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God’s love was with all His Lev HEART, for he held nothing back, sacrificing his very “son” reminding us of how Abraham had loved God and was willing to sacrifice his most precious of all things His SON.

God’s love was with all His Nephesh (BEING), for it was not just his son, but himself a part of the triune God head. that was setting aside all divine rights and humbling herself as a man to experience a sacrificial death on the Chris to save all humanity.

God’s love was with all His Meod (MUCHNESS), for Jesus was the very creative strength of God that produced the entire universe and ever thing that is made. In order to BUY BACK (save) the entire world.

GOD’s love is that expansive, grand and precious.

what was Jesus God’s son purchasing for humanity?

What is ETERNAL Life!

what is eternal life? (days without end?)

but that is not how the Bible defines it.

John 17:3 (ESV)

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Definition of eternal life

eternal life = knowing God & Jesus.

Know = Experientially, (not intellectually)

God wants to have an eternal relationship with YOU!

Eternal live is a statement of quality of relationship! it is about the closeness of your real relationship with God.

We all get to live forever. But what will the quality of those days be? It will either be with God or without God).

To have the quality of life called eternal life means to know God experientially, which means to Love God for even the demons have an experiential understanding of God and shudder in fear. There are so many different facets of God’s Character, but it is is love and His Kindness that we want to consider today.

God’s Attribute of Love:

The love of God is the hardest of all His attributes to speak about.

We are trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

John who writes revelation, perhaps knew Jesus as a close friend face to face as well as anyone in the entire world, and He described it like this:

1 John 4:7–21 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Love is not God; but God is Love.

perhaps the first thing to teach from this passage is to correct an error that springs from this verse:

In 1 John 4:16 it says “God is Love”. but it did not say Love is God. Our culture has it upside down and inside out. God is not EQUAL to LOVE.

Love and God are not the same, they are not equal. Love does not define God. A.W. Tozer says it well

The Attributes of God, Volume 2: Deeper Into the Father’s Heart Chapter 10: God’s Love

When it says, “God is love,” it means that love is an essential attribute of God’s being. It means that in God is the summation of all love, so that all love comes from God. And it means that God’s love, we might say, conditions all of His other attributes, so that God can do nothing except He does it in love

We know little of True Love

The other thing to recognize in this passage is that we are far from perfect in our love. None of us are “Love Experts”

1. we must be taught by God what love is.

2. If we were love experts, we would have no fear

3. if we were love experts, we would never hate our brother.

On our own apart from God we understand precious little about true love

1 John 4:19 ESV

We love because he first loved us.

The passage starts with a concept that Love only exists because God exists and it is a necessary part of his character. 1 John 4:7-8! (sing the song)

I think if God did not exist that it would be impossible for love to exist. That love is an essential characteristic of God. I am not a proper philosopher, and to debate this is a bit hollow to actually recognizing that internally in our own soul it is true.

This passage says we only understand how to love because of God’s love toward us. What kind of love would we have it it were not for God’s example?

Our “so-called love” apart from God is a shallow, self-centered that it is to God’s love as saccharin is to real sugar or Honey. our saccharin “love” is false and bitter.

A proof of how inadequate our concept of Love is: how we have a hard time unifying Love with Justice.

I believe that at the judgment seat of God, the damning of Man and the redeeming of Man will be coming out of God’s perfect Unity of his essential characteristics of Love and Justice. There will be no contradictions with Love or with Justice but will be fully expressed without compromise. To most of us this possibility is a difficult thing to understand.

I think we must admit that we are Not love experts… and that the full unity of God’s characteristics is still more mystery then adopted reality in our own lives.

There certainly would be no Christmas without God’s love. This passage goes so far as to say that anyone who actually “loves” must have been born of God. That apart from knowing God Love cannot

Love is the PRINCIPLE of GOODWILL

The other thing this passage teaches is that the Christmas story is the center-piece story of Gods Love. look at it again

1 John 4:9–11 ESV

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

in Luke 2:14 what did the Angles proclaim?

Luke 2:14 NKJV

“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

Goodwill: Love always wills the Good of it’s object and never wills any harm to it. If you love someone, really love them, you will never want to harm them but instead you will want the very best for them.

Perfect love casts out fear

This is why the passage says 1 Joh 4:18

1 John 4:18 ESV

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

There are two aspects to this.

When we are living with a clean conscience toward the one we LOVE we are free from fear. When you have not sinned against your love, you no longer live in fear. Christmas Hallmark movies have a “recipe” don’t they?

The Christmas tree lot scene. and lie. The entire movies is about the drama of a lie that will inevitably be discovered before they confess. the whole movie has this drama held in place by the fear the main character has because their love is not perfect - and will inevitably hurt the one they claim to care for. They do this because they are scared of the truth. Perfect love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. I guess from that perspective, Hallmark movies are good at showing us that we need God’s perfect love… they show us how weak and pathetic our selfish “love” is compared to GOD. God knows our secrets and lies - we can’t hide them, so confess them immediately and walk in love and obedience to God, and all the DRAMA leaves and we are left with the PEACE that passes understanding.

The second aspect of this “perfect love casts out fear” is this: If I truly know a person truly loves me, I am not afraid of them. But if I am not sure of their good will, I will be cautious and careful and will justifiably not trust them - there will be a element of fear. love casts our fear… when we know we are loved, we are not afraid. PERFECT LOVE is Consistent and casts out fear.

This can be seen in part in a example we are familiar with: when a small; child is lost in a store. They may fall apart in fear at that moment … the terror of being alone overcomes them. The faces of strangers, even kind strangers are not enough to calm their fears. But at the sight of their mother, they will run sobbing into her arms, and that love will cast out the fear.

ALL REAL FEAR GOES when we Know that GOD loves us PERFECTLY and we are in His HANDS.

FEAR comes when we are in the hands of one who does not have goodwill toward us.

We live in a word were we have many things against us.

SIN, Satan, Accidents, and even it seams our own government. These things do not have GOODWILL toward us.

If we’re in the hands of accidents, of the devil, of sin, we have something to be afraid of.

many self-help books on conquering fear; advise you to sit down and tell yourself, “Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” when of course there are. It’s ridiculous simply to say, “Don’t be afraid.”

Consider a man sitting on the railroad tracks down at the center of Colfax. HE can tell himself there is nothing to be afraid of, but when the train comes, that won’t protect Him. Of course there is something to be afraid of. This is a very dear parable to me because that man was my grandfather. and the city was Pray Montana. As a boy he wanted to get a ride on the cow catcher. YOu know what that is? JOhn Aurther.

If your sitting on the train tracks and are not afraid your a fool. and if your in the hands of change, of course there something to be afraid of. If you keep deliberately sinning against God and not repented, there is a “fearful expectation of Judgement” that will come upon you. It is Right and it is natural.

Hebrews 10:26–27 ESV

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

But if I through the open door of the Cross of Jesus CHrist and the power of GOD, put myself firmly and unshakably in the hands of GOD. Repenting of my sin, and then God cancle my sin, and my past and accepts me completely and the PERFECT Love of GOD takes me over. This is designed by God to drive FEAR from my heart. Because His love comes in. and I have faith and TRUST in his GOODWILL over my life.

His actions over me will be GOOD. His Gifts are GOOD. and my heart can rest at peace.

Our only trouble is that our faith and trust are imperfect, and any FEAR that remains, is to us a sign not of God’s lack but our need for more of Him.

The book of revelation is about this. His Love for us and His our ability to trust Him in times of trial. — that is perfecting love in us.

Summary: Love casts out fear

The truth is if we have accepted Jesus we are in the hands of God.

WE may appeal to the most high God.

God is our friend through Jesus Christ and He wants us to prosper.

Therefore, I’m not afraid; I put myself in His hands without fear. Love casts out fear. Love is the principle of good will and God wants to be our friend.

This is the Christmas message.

And it is the message we take to the world with the rest world.

it is the message of Good will toward man. and PEACE come to earth.

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Altar Call: Sensing and Gods Love that casts our FEAR

get rid of an orphan spirit. the Fearful spirit. repent and get rid of the the fearful expectation of punishment.

Next week

ALl Sunday morning Worship with Ben Brown.