God With Us 1: God With Us
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Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Isaiah 7:1-17
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Opening
Opening
Welcome to Family Worship here at Eastern Hills on this wonderful holiday weekend. I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor, and I don’t know about you, but I have been reminded this weekend of just how much I have to be thankful for that I ordinarily take for granted. Yes, the last year and a half has been difficult, but God has never left His throne, never taken a break or a nap, and has never been out of control, even though for us it feels like things are that way sometimes. Praise the Lord for His faithfulness!
If you weren’t able to be here last Sunday morning, I just want to encourage you to go back and watch the message that we were able to hear from missionary Kit Klein, who shared about the missionary task that we are each and all a part of as believers in this world. It was a great Sunday, and a great meal afterwards. I want to thank Deanna Chadwick, our church family services chairperson, and the team that she put together for our churchwide Thanksgiving meal. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and food, and I’m blessed to have been a part of it.
Announcements
Announcements
Back in June of this year, we had a special service recognizing the ministry of our Pastor Emeritus Larry Miller and his wife Camille as they retired from their respective formal positions within the ministry of Eastern Hills. For those of you who have become a part of the Eastern Hills family since that time, Larry served as our senior pastor from 1995 to 2018, and then as part-time paid Pastor Emeritus until the end of 2020. Camille worked with Eastern Hills Christian Academy beginning in 1997, first as a teacher and then as an administrator, retiring at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. We took up a collection from the church and the school in order to bless them and say thank you for their combined 48 years of service to this fellowship and Academy. The purpose of the collection was to help them to put in wood laminate flooring throughout their house, as Larry is confined to a motorized chair now, and any transitions make getting around difficult for him. Well, I was able to go over and see the finished product the week before Thanksgiving, and the floors look incredible! Here are some pictures. You might notice in the pictures that there is a transition board at the entrance to the hallway from the living room, but any of those have since been removed and now are level with the rest of the floor. Larry said his house now is like driving on glass, and I know both Larry and Camille are incredibly appreciative of your generosity, church. And the total amount given was almost exactly what they needed! Thank you, church, for the love that you show to your pastors through your gifts, your prayers, and your encouragement. We can’t say that enough.
Last Sunday was the last day that you could turn in Operation Christmas Child boxes, and you remember how full the stage was with them last Sunday. Well, the total is in, and Eastern Hills delivered 1,191 Operation Christmas Child boxes to Samaritan’s Purse this week! Thanks so much, Eastern Hills Family, for giving to help kids around the world experience the love of Christ and receive a Christmas gift. And thanks to the Delaneys for their year-round hard work with that ministry, and thanks to all those who have helped them throughout the year.
Week of Prayer for International Missions this week, you can grab and information sheet from the Get Connected Table in the foyer.
Dessert Fellowships Monday @ Clarks, Torres, and Wrights @ 7PM. Please RSVP to the home you’ll visit.
Day of Prayer all day Wednesday here in the prayer room, 6:30 am to 6:30 pm.
Prayer Brunch Friday @ Treeces @ 9:30 am.
Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions kicked off last week. Goal: $30K. Given since last week: $9,700! Remember that 100% of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering directly supports IMB missionaries, and the offering accounts for 61% of the funding that our missionaries receive. Prayerfully consider how God would have you give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year.
Series Opener
Series Opener
This year for our Christmas series, we are going to spend from now through Christmas Eve in the book of Isaiah, considering 5 prophecies about the Messiah that we find there. The first prophecy, the one we are studying today, is where we get the title for this series: God With Us, from the name “Immanuel.” [עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל׃ עִמָּ֫נוּ אֵל : Im-ma (Heb iym, “with”)- nu (Heb nu, “us”) el (Heb el, “God”)]
The promise of the coming Savior was a promise of rescue, for sure, but it was also a promise of something even deeper: it was a promise of presence. When God promised the first Christmas, He promised that He wouldn’t merely save: He would come and live with His people. And each week as we unpack another prophecy from the book of Isaiah, we will flesh out another facet of the Gospel as we rearrange the words that make up the declaration “God With Us.” I hope that you will plan to be here each week as we look at Christmas through the lens of the prophet Isaiah, through promises made 700 years before the baby Savior was found in the manger on that first Christmas morning, the greatest gift that could ever be given to a lost an dying world.
Intro & Scripture
Intro & Scripture
For this morning, however, we will start with the first prophecy of the Messiah, made in Isaiah chapter 7. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage this morning, Isaiah 7:1-17, together:
Thus says the Word of the Lord:
1 This took place during the reign of Ahaz, son of Jotham, son of Uzziah king of Judah: Aram’s King Rezin and Israel’s King Pekah son of Remaliah went to fight against Jerusalem, but they were not able to conquer it. 2 When it became known to the house of David that Aram had occupied Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the hearts of his people trembled like trees of a forest shaking in the wind. 3 The Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out with your son Shear-jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Launderer’s Field. 4 Say to him: Calm down and be quiet. Don’t be afraid or cowardly because of these two smoldering sticks, the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram, and the son of Remaliah. 5 For Aram, along with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has plotted harm against you. They say, 6 ‘Let’s go up against Judah, terrorize it, and conquer it for ourselves. Then we can install Tabeel’s son as king in it.’ ” 7 This is what the Lord God says: It will not happen; it will not occur. 8 The chief city of Aram is Damascus, the chief of Damascus is Rezin (within sixty-five years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people), 9 the chief city of Ephraim is Samaria, and the chief of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all. 10 Then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz: 11 “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God—it can be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.” 12 But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.” 13 Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God? 14 Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel. 15 By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating curds and honey. 16 For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned. 17 The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s house such a time as has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah: He will bring the king of Assyria.”
PRAYER
Have you ever found yourself in a the midst of a problem, and someone who had more knowledge, more wisdom, and more experience came along and offered to help, offered to give you a solution, and you said, “No, thanks… I’ve got it.”? Why do we do that? I admit that I have found myself in this kind of situation more times than I care to admit. Whether it’s from an over-inflated sense of my own ability, a reluctance to want to ask for help and take someone else’s time, or simply a fear of looking foolish, I’ve been there. Fortunately, I don’t always fail in this way. An example:
When I was called as the Youth Pastor here at EHBC in 2001, I had never been to college. I had done a trade school for administrative work, but no actual college. The church family, thankfully, saw God working in my life and suggested that I start a more formal education. Then, foolishly, on a whim I decided to go and take my placement tests at CNM (T-VI then) to get started on core classes. I went in cold, without studying, and without having been in a normal educational environment for probably 15 years. I walked in on a Friday afternoon, sure of my abilities in English and Math, to embark on my undergraduate degree.
And while my English test went well (I had, after all, spent 10 years reading legal documents as a paralegal), my math skills were severely lacking. I had forgotten how to do fairly simply algebra. You high school students in the room are going to laugh at this: I had completely forgotten how to multiply binomials: I didn’t remember FOIL. I have no idea how class numbers work now, but at the time college-level classes started at 100 and went up. I did not test into level 100 on my first try. This was frustrating, because I was always pretty good at math!
I thought that I could just go on my own strength and get this done, but I needed help. I could have tried to muddle through the weekend and figure out what went wrong, or I could have just surrendered to the class I tested into, which wouldn’t have counted toward my degree, but would have just retaught me what was probably freshman Algebra. But instead, my younger brother Scott (a computer engineering student at the time who tutored other college students in math on the side) offered to help me. I could have told him, “No, I can do this by myself.” I could have said, “I don’t want to waste your time.” I could have said, “Never mind, I’ll just spend money and time taking a whole semester to relearn something I already “knew”.”
But instead, I submitted to his knowledge, his expertise, and let him tutor me. He knew things that I didn’t. He understood things that I had completely forgotten. And after working through just the weekend, I went back in and retook the math placement test on Monday, and tested into Intermediate College Algebra, Math 119, which counted toward my degree requirement.
Now, that might seem like a kind of silly story to open with, but isn’t this what we see (admittedly, on a much grander scale) in this passage in Isaiah? The Southern Kingdom of Judah, represented by her king, Ahaz, was in a difficult position. He had a problem, and someone wiser, more powerful, and with more experience than Ahaz (namely, the Lord God) came offering counsel for the problem. Ahaz was left with a choice: accept the counsel or not. He knew he had a problem, but unfortunately the true problem he had was not the problem that he thought he had.
1) The problem: Separation
1) The problem: Separation
According to what we know about Ahaz from other places in Scripture, he was not a good king. Even though he was the king of Judah, which was the part of the Divided Kingdom that stayed with David’s line, we find that he acted like all of the horrible kings of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in the choices that he made:
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what was right in the Lord’s sight like his ancestor David, 2 for he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made cast images of the Baals. 3 He burned incense in Ben Hinnom Valley and burned his children in the fire, imitating the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites. 4 He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.
We also see almost this exact description in 2 Kings 16 as well. We won’t read it because of length and time this morning, but the picture of the situation of Judah in 2 Chronicles 28 is really bleak. They were at war with a combined Aramean and Samarian coalition from the north. Judah had already been soundly defeated by them and lost 120,000 troops and had women and children taken captive, even though they hadn’t been able to capture Jerusalem. They were raided by the Edomites to the southeast and the Philistines to the west as well. And over everything political and military in that area of the world at the time was the specter of the might of Assyria.
So when Ahaz hears of the Aramean and Samarian troops massing again for another run at Jerusalem, he’s terrified:
2 When it became known to the house of David that Aram had occupied Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the hearts of his people trembled like trees of a forest shaking in the wind.
Judah is separated from any military help. Judah has no real political power. They are basically alone. They could see they had a problem, but they knew that they were powerless to do anything about it.
But the military and political conflict wasn’t his biggest issue, even though they thought it was. No, the greatest issue facing Judah was that Ahaz had lived, and as their representative had led the people of Judah, the people of God, to live in ways that separated them from their Lord. They lived in sin, going their own way, thinking that they could do whatever they wanted and live however they wanted, and that everything would be just fine.
It would be so easy to make a parallel to what is going on in our own nation today; to look at the moral and political decay taking place in our country and decry our leaders’ failings both past and present; to decry the foolish human plans for solving foolish human problems with results that tend to be equally foolish. But while we could do that, I don’t think it’s particularly useful for us as we reflect on this passage today. Why? Because since it’s easy to do that, it’s also really easy to get so focused on the sins of others that we spend all of our time looking outward, because their failures are so visible and public, and not spend any time looking inward, at our own tendency to do the exact same thing.
Humanity’s biggest problem is the same problem that Judah had: separation from God because of sin.
We ALL sometimes go our own way, trying to solve our problems on our own without any guidance from the Lord. We all sometimes think that doing things our way is the best way, thinking that somehow, this time, unrighteousness will be the path to blessing. We read this last week in our Bible reading:
2 God looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. 3 All have turned away; all alike have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one.
The human race is found to be broken apart from God. We would rather do things our own way than God’s way. We would rather live the way we want to than the way God wants us to. We would rather have our own definitions of right and wrong, our own methods for solving the problems in the world, our own considerations of how to see others or treat others or relate to others. We are corrupted by our sin, and that sin separates us from relationship with the Lord who made us and who loves us.
To be clear, we who belong to and walk with Christ cannot be separated in an eternal sense from God, and that is a truth that gives us great hope and peace. However, we can still go our own way and do our own thing, and assume that we know better than God does. We can still fall headfirst into sin and hinder our relationship with God.
To put it simply, the sin of humanity and our separation from God, even the failings of those who have placed their faith in Christ for salvation, are evidence of unbelief.
2) The reason: Unbelief
2) The reason: Unbelief
Looking back at our focal passage and Ahaz this morning, we find the reason for the problem: Ahaz was separated from God because he didn’t believe God. His life up to this point had been kind of a case study in what not to do as the king of Judah. Obviously, he had lived in such a way that evidenced his unbelief. But God isn’t done trying to get through to Ahaz, and would still give Ahaz opportunity to trust and obey Him.
3 The Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out with your son Shear-jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Launderer’s Field. 4 Say to him: Calm down and be quiet. Don’t be afraid or cowardly because of these two smoldering sticks, the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram, and the son of Remaliah.
Isaiah was to take his son Shear-Jashub along to meet Ahaz as he was examining the water supply for Jerusalem. It wasn’t until Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became king that Jerusalem had an underground water supply, so this was critical point to defend. The reason for the Shear-Jashub’s coming along to the meeting is that his name is a message. We don’t do this as much today, but then, a name meant something specific. Shear-Jashub’s name meant “a remnant shall return.”
For us, this sounds hopeful. No matter what happens, there will always be a remnant of God’s people. For Ahaz, though, this might have also been a warning: persist in your own way, and destruction will come, and God’s people will be carried off, but there will be a remnant who returns. This would have been particularly meaningful for him following the military loss that I just spoke about from 2 Chronicles.
What God knew and that He was speaking to Ahaz about was that Ahaz was considering an alliance with Assyria to prevent Judah’s defeat by the Syro-Ephraim coalition. He tells Ahaz to calm down, to be still, to not be afraid or to cower. The thing that he thinks is going to happen won’t:
7 This is what the Lord God says: It will not happen; it will not occur. 8 The chief city of Aram is Damascus, the chief of Damascus is Rezin (within sixty-five years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people), 9 the chief city of Ephraim is Samaria, and the chief of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all.
Ahaz doesn’t need to join forces with Assyria. The Lord has declared what is going to happen, and all Ahaz has to do is let it happen. God is calling Ahaz to trust that the Lord has the situation well in hand, and so Judah has all the help she needs. Side note: We have the advantage of being able to look back and know that God was exactly truthful in what He had Isaiah say. This message was likely given to Ahaz in around 734 BC. Within 2 years of this, Aram was overrun by Assyria. Within 12 years, the Northern Kingdom was broken, and then in 670 BC (64 years later), the king of Assyria made a mass deportment of Israelites in the Northern Kingdom and replaced them with people from other parts of the world, thus creating the Samaritans that the Hebrew people were so offended by in New Testament times.
But God also declared to Ahaz how it would go if he didn’t repent and walk in faith: He said that if Ahaz didn’t stand firm in his faith, then he would not stand at all. The message is clear: trust God and stand, or don’t trust God and fall.
Apparently the message didn’t get through to Ahaz, and he either continued in his deliberations or actually formed an alliance with Assyria following verse 9. Isaiah again visits Ahaz with a message from God:
10 Then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz: 11 “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God—it can be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.”
This is the last chance that God is going to give Ahaz, the Lord makes an incredible offer to Ahaz in the moment: “Ask whatever you want to see as a sign, Ahaz, so that you can know that you can trust in what I have said, and I will do it.” This is the God who created the rainbow as a sign that He would never again flood the earth. This is the God who gave miraculous signs of the staff becoming a snake and Moses’ hand becoming leprous and then clean again instantly, so that His people would believe. This is the God who made the fleece damp with dew and the ground dry for Gideon, and then reversed it the next morning. He’s offering to give Ahaz whatever sign he wants so that he will trust in God’s promise.
12 But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.”
Taking this verse by itself, it seems like he was being pious, righteous even. Deuteronomy 6:16 says not to test the Lord, and Ahaz refused to put God to the test. But the issue wasn’t that asking for the sign was unrighteous, because Ahaz didn’t even ASK for the sign. He didn’t say, like Gideon had, that he just needed a sign to help him know that God was really speaking. God TOLD him to ask for it. The issue here was that Ahaz didn’t actually want to trust in the Word of the Lord through Isaiah. He had already decided what he was going to do and how he was going to do it, and a sign would have just convicted him to go a different direction. In short, he didn’t believe that God’s way was best for him. His words sounded good, but they came not from a place of reverent faith, but of irreverent disobedience.
Like the problem of separation, we have the same reason for it as Ahaz: We often don’t actually trust God, or at the very least, our actions show that we don’t really trust God the way we claim to. We think that we can handle things on our own, in our own way, in our own time, and our lives look like we think that way. We don’t actually want to hear the Word of God, because we’ve already decided what we’re going to do. We only go to God as a last resort, instead of trusting Him from the outset.
Speaking to those who don’t believe: Your life is marked by unbelief, and in fact, it is the eternally defining fact of your life. You do not believe in God. You do not believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You aren’t saved. The Bible says that you are bound for hell, where you will be separated from the God who created you and loves you for all eternity. I can hear it now: “Bill, this is a Christmas message… why are you talking about hell?” Because this is a huge part of the WHY of Christmas! Scripture tells us:
11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Most people think that if there is a heaven, they will go there, as if there is some sliding scale, and just about everyone makes the grade. But that’s not true. There’s a scale all right, but it’s reversed: almost NO ONE makes the grade. Only Jesus does, because the standard is complete perfection. So the only way for us to be rescued from our sin is for Jesus to do it with His perfection in our place. But He’s not going to force us to be rescued. He offers for us to quit going our own way, repenting of our sinful acts, and to believe in what He has done to save us! The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son doesn’t have life. It’s that simple.
And John said in verse 13 of 1 John 5 that he wrote these things to us who believe in Jesus so that we MAY KNOW that we have eternal life. And since we have that life in the Son, we can trust God step by step by step in our lives, because we know that as Paul wrote to the Romans, our God is for us:
31 What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?
This is the solution that God announced to Ahaz through Isaiah: the solution to the problem its reason is Immanuel: God with us. God’s solution was to give Himself.
3) The solution: God Himself
3) The solution: God Himself
The thing that I think is so incredible about the interaction that God had with Ahaz through Isaiah following the offer and rejection of the sign is that God doesn’t just go, “Okay, fine… no sign for you.” He instead tells Ahaz that he’s going to get the sign whether he wants one or not. And it’s going to be like this:
13 Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God? 14 Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.
Notice something right off the bat: in verse 11, Isaiah said to Ahaz, “Ask for a sign from the LORD your God...” But here in verse 13: “Will you also try the patience of MY God?” He knows for certain that Ahaz doesn’t worship the Lord. So this announcement is made: “The virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.”
At Christmastime, we tend to just look at verse 14 all by itself without any other context. For us, the declaration of Immanuel is incredibly good news. But put yourself in Ahaz’s sandals for just a moment. God knows that Ahaz doesn’t believe. God knows that Ahaz is separated from Him. God knows that Ahaz worships pagan gods and is planning on forming an alliance with Assyria instead of trusting what God has promised. And God is coming in Person to be with His people?
What is a thrilling announcement of celebration to some is a declaration of despair to another. Have you ever thought about it that way? Like Shear-Jashub’s name could have meant hope for some and an omen to Ahaz, so the promise of Immanuel: this was not good news to Ahaz, as the rest of the prophecy says:
15 By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating curds and honey. 16 For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned. 17 The Lord will bring on you, your people, and your father’s house such a time as has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah: He will bring the king of Assyria.”
The language of rejecting bad and choosing good both point to the child’s age, not His moral capacity. At around the age of 12, a Hebrew boy was declared to be mature enough for the matters of the Torah, or Law, and was considered an adult for purposes of decision-making. Modern adherents of Judaism hold a celebration for this “coming of age” called the bar mitzvah.
But notice the language here in the results of this prophecy: it’s all basically bad, other than the fact that the land of the two kings will be abandoned by them (which happened). It even ends with the promise that God will bring the king of Assyria AGAINST Judah, instead of FOR Judah as Ahaz was hoping. This also eventually happened.
For the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to look at Matthew 1, and see the connection between Jesus and Immanuel:
22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”
The beautiful thing is that when this promise was ultimately fulfilled, in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, it really was good news, and remains the greatest news ever proclaimed! And that good news was proclaimed first to shepherds in the fields, just going through life the way they always did:
8 In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.”
Jesus: Immanuel, is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to Ahaz: His promise of Himself, His very presence, with His people. Not a sign that Ahaz asked for, but a sign that God decided would occur for the rescue of His wayward creation. Our trust is not in a God who might; we trust in the God who will. Immanuel, God with us, willingly took on our humanity and then laid down His life to die for us who deserve death, so that we could have our relationship with Him restored, and so that we who don’t deserve eternal life would have it because of Him. He is the solution to the problem of separation because of our unbelief. He is the One we can rely upon. Surrender your life to His work today and live for Christ!
And if you belong to Jesus this Christmas, it’s only in Him that we are going to find the true peace that the world keeps claiming that it wants. That peace comes from setting our minds completely on Him, depending on Him in the day-by-day, and living our lives from that place of trust and dependence.
3 You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace, for it is trusting in you.
This is the announcement of Christmas: God with us.
Closing
Closing
So we close with a question: have you believed and trusted in the Messiah, announced to Ahaz 700 years before the birth of Jesus? If not, why not? There’s no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved, according to Scripture. We either belong to Jesus, or we don’t. There’s no “kind of” saved, no “good enough” on our own. Unlike my math placement test, we can’t just take it again on Monday. We have the same problem as Ahaz: we’re separated from God, and this is because we refuse to believe, surrender, and go God’s way. And the arrival of Messiah is what Christmas is actually all about. This Christmas, stop trying to to your own way, realize that you are separated from God, turn away from your sin, and surrender yourself to His means of restoring that relationship: trust in Jesus as your Savior and your Lord, completely in charge of your life both now and forever. And we want to help you on that spiritual journey. In person, online.
Saved, but walking in unbelief. Repent.
Church membership.
Giving.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading: Starting 1 Samuel tomorrow, and we’ll read straight through 1 and 2 Samuel, one chapter at a time.
Instructions, including for guests
Benediction, a reminder that just as Immanuel is a message of hope and blessing for some, but terror and dread for others, so some see the Gospel:
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. 15 For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things?
We are to spread the aroma of the knowledge of Him everywhere, trusting the Holy Spirit to draw the lost through that aroma.