Immanuel: God with Us 

Pastor Jim Thomas

Matthew 2:1-12

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. ‘What if Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?’”
– Dr. Seuss

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near:  a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth.” 
– Numbers 24:17

“The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”
– Isaiah 9:2

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!”
– Isaiah 14:12

“But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, 
Too little to be among the clans of Judah, 
From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. 
His goings forth are from long ago, 
From the days of eternity.”
– Micah 5:2

Moving from “Whatever…” to “What If?”

1. Spiritual curiosity  (v. 1-9)
2. Joyful pursuit  (v. 10)
3. Grateful devotion  (v. 11)
4. Dynamic obedience  (v. 12)

“If you’ve ever wondered how far the Lord would go to make sure you were His own, look down into the manger, look up onto the cross. There’s your answer.”
– Chad Bird

“The power of a metaphor is contained in the fact that it ultimately points towards something that exists in reality. We cannot live on metaphors alone. We cannot use poetry, psychology and myth to hold God at arm’s length forever. What if the 2000-year-old story is only able to reconnect with our deepest desires for meaning, purpose and identity because it is the true story to which all other stories point?” 
– Justin Brierley, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God

“Gospel narratives are telling you not what you should do but what God has done. The birth of the son of God into the world is a gospel, good news, an announcement. You don’t save yourself. God has come to save you.” 
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

“It should be obvious by now that putting on the new nature is far more radical than attitude adjustments and behavior modifications. The life hidden with Christ in God is one of such growing union with God in love that God’s presence becomes the context of our daily life, God’s purposes become the matrix of our activities, and the values of God’s kingdom shape our life and relationships; God’s living presence becomes the ground of our identity, the source of our meaning, the seat of our value and the center of our purpose.” 
– M. Robert Mulholand, Jr.

“The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.… The real difficulty, the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us… lies not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of Incarnation.… This is the real stumbling block of Christianity… But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.”
– J.l. Packer

“The only New Year’s Resolution I make every year is to collapse more fully on Christ. I trust in Jesus’ resolve, not mine.” 
– Jack Miller

Immanuel: God with Us 

Pastor Matt Pierson

“God became man; the Divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child… the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”
– J.I. Packer

“A God who was only holy would not have come down to us in Jesus Christ. He would have simply demanded that we pull ourselves together, that we be moral and holy enough to merit a relationship with Him. A deity that was an ‘all-accepting God of love’ would not have needed to come to Earth either. This God of the modern imagination would have just overlooked sin and evil and embraced us. Neither the God of moralism nor the God of relativism would have bothered with Christmas.”
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

Isaiah 11:1-5 + Luke 2:25-32

1. God is weaving a tapestry throughout Redemption history.
2. God never gives up on us.
3. The God who is with us is the God who is for us.

“This story is so miraculous in every way that it could have only come out of the mind of God in eternity before the foundations of the earth were laid down by His mighty hand… This story is itself an argument for the existence of God and is a portrait of His holy character.”
– Paul David Tripp, Come Let Us Adore Him

“The cumulative testimony of the four Gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about Him, His deepest impulse, His most natural instinct, is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it. And if the actions of Jesus are reflective of who He most deeply is, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is the very fallenness which He came to undo that is most irresistibly attractive to Him.”
– Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“For God so loved that world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
– John 3:16

God so loved YOU that He gave His only Son!

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
– Romans 8:31b

“You rescued me because you delighted in me.”
– Psalm 18:19

“You can know the glories of God from the Old Testament, so overwhelming and daunting, but in Jesus Christ they come near. He becomes graspable, palpable. He becomes above all personal, someone with whom to have a relationship. Christmas and the incarnation mean that God went to infinite lengths to make Himself one whom we can know personally.”
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

“How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.”
– Phillip Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

“He comes, and all our
Words though wide as worlds, and all our songs
Though voiced in grandest composition
Can never carry the incomparable weight
Of this one who comes, whose incarnation
Is our hope, our joy, heaven’s confirmation
That though light from us was long withheld
God has shattered the sin that was our hell
He comes, he has come, Immanuel.”
– Andrew Roycroft, “He Has Come”

Immanuel: God with Us 

Pastor Jim Thomas

Micah 5:2 + Luke 2:1-20

“The church has a recovery program of sorts for lost wonder and trampled anticipation leading toward Christmas. That recovery program is called Advent, which means ‘appearing,’ coming from the Latin word adventus.” 
– Matt Erickson

Advent 2023

1. Commemorate the birth of Christ
2. Saturate in and celebrate the life of Christ 
3. Anticipate the return of Christ 

Week 1

Isaiah 7:14 + Matthew 1:18-25: The Dawn of Redeeming Grace

1. A Sign
2. A Son
3. A Savior

Week 2

Isaiah 9:1-7 + Matthew 4:12-22: The Joy of Every Longing Heart

1. Wonderful Counselor
2. Mighty God
3. Everlasting Father
4. Prince of Peace

Week 3

Micah 5:2 + Luke 2:1-20: The Incarnation of the Son of God

1. A Divine Invasion
2. A Glorious Wonder
3. The Greatest Good News Ever  

“But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”
– Micah 5:2

“Despite our efforts to keep Him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities:  a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked ‘No Entrance’ and left through a door marked ‘No Exit.’” 
– Peter Larson

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this… There is no question in Christianity of arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent invasion — an invasion which intends complete conquest and ‘occupation.’”
– C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“In a culture that uses this season to get children to dream about how their lives would be made better by possessing a certain material thing, where Christmas has been reduced to a shopper’s nightmare and a retailer’s dream, it is vital to draw the wonder of our children away from the next great toy and toward the wonder of the coming of our great Lord and Savior, Jesus.” 
– Paul David Tripp, Come Let Us Adore Him

“The Incarnation may be devastating or rubbish, but if we call it dull, what in heaven’s name is worthy to be called exciting?” 
– Dorothy Sayers

“Gospel narratives are telling you not what you should do but what God has done. The birth of the son of God into the world is a gospel, good news, an announcement. You don’t save yourself. God has come to save you… Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice. It is good news.”
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

“The nub of the matter is that we have been chosen to be the bearers of good news for the whole world, and the question is simply whether we are faithful in communicating it.” 
– Lesslie Newbigin, Evangelism in the City

How did the shepherds respond and how should we respond?

1. Wonder
2. Worship
3. Witness

Immanuel: God with Us 

Pastor Tommy Bailey

Isaiah 9:1-7 + Matthew 4:12-22

“A blend of homesickness, nostalgia and longing, ‘hiraeth’ is a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.”
– Lily Crossley-Baxter

• Where are we?
• Who are we?
• What has gone wrong?
• What is the solution?
• Where are we going?

“The sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which the child of God rests his head at night, giving perfect peace.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“…and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Isaiah 9:6

“God is on the move toward us, not the other way round. In the very midst of our confusion and incapacity, we are met by the oncoming Lord.”
– Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ 

Wonderful Counselor

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
– John 8:12

Mighty God

“Death is no longer a threat in the way it was. It has been defeated in Christ. The signs of aging are no longer a threat, but a promise. Gray hair and deepening lines on my face don’t need to speak to me of a past I can’t recover, but of a future I can barely conceive. The real glory days are not behind, but ahead.”
– Sam Allberry, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies

Everlasting Father

Prince of Peace

“Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace.”
– Tim Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering

“We can never anticipate Him. He always makes the first move. He is always there ‘in the beginning.’ Before we existed, God took action. Before we decided to look for God, God had already been looking for us. The Bible isn’t about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us.”
– John Stott, Basic Christianity

Immanuel: God with Us 

Pastor Jim Thomas

Advent comes from the Latin adventus meaning arrival, appearing, coming or presence. 

Join TVC throughout Advent as we:

• Commemorate the birth of Christ
• Saturate in and celebrate the life of Christ 
• Anticipate the return of Christ 

Isaiah 7:14 + Matthew 1:18-25

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” 
– Isaiah 7:14

“The essence of hope is not the downplaying, justifying or avoidance of present pain and sorrow. Rather, hope is the ex­pectation that as real as the pain is now, it will one day feel as foreign as our faintest memories.” 
– Brett McCracken

“It is noteworthy that the clearest promises of the Messiah have been given in the darkest hours of history… Immanuel is a grand word. ‘God with us’ means more than tongue can tell.” 
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Dawn of Redeeming Grace involved:

• A Sign
• A Son
• A Savior

“If there were to be an invasion of the immanent by the transcendent, all for the salvation of sinners, would we not expect it to be mysterious, to defy human comprehension? Such mystery would be a mark of reality, not human invention.” 
– James N. Anderson

“It’s one thing for God to be with us as God, but it’s on a whole different level for God to be with us as a fellow human being who spent forty weeks in utero, learned how to crawl then walk, suffered through puberty and eventually faced the firing squad of Roman crucifiers. We have that God.” 
– Chad Bird

“The central belief of Christian theology is what we call the Incarnation – the belief that God became man. It is a staggering idea on many levels, but most breathtaking of all, perhaps, is what it reveals of divine humility.” 
– Gavin Ortlund, Humility: The Joy of Self-Forgetfulness

“God has appointed us a captain of our salvation, and made Him responsible for seeing us through this world home to glory. Thank God we can count on His faithfulness and know that He will never fail, never once lose His patience or His temper with any of us, but will fulfill His appointed task to the very end. He will save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him.”  
– David Gooding, An Unshakeable Kingdom

“‘Immanuel’ means the ideal has become real, the absolute has become a particular, and the invisible has become visible. The Incarnation is the universe-sundering, history-altering, life-transforming, paradigm-shattering event of history.” 
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

Pastor Matt Pierson

Stir Up / Christ the King Sunday

1 Chronicles 16:8-36

“You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to you. Come Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness.” – Augustine

1 Chronicles 16:8-36

• David’s Song of Thanks
• On the occasion of the ark being placed in the tent in Jerusalem
• The ark had been on an approx. 100 year journey
• David appointed that “thanksgiving be sung to the Lord.”

David’s Song of Thanks found also in the Psalms:

• 1 Chronicles 16:8-22 = Psalm 105:1-15
• 1 Chronicles 16:23-33 = Psalm 96:1-10, 11-13

Indicatives of 1 Chronicles 16:

• He is a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God.  (v. 15, 16)
• He is a saving God.  (v. 23, 35)
• He is a God who remembers.  (v. 15, 19-22)
• He is an everlasting God.  (v. 36)

Imperatives of 1 Chronicles 16:

• Give thanks to the Lord
• Seek the Lord
• Remember His wondrous works and His covenant
• Tell of His salvation
• Declare His glory
• Worship the Lord

Christ the King offers:

1. Grace for our past
2. Courage for our present
3. Hope for our future

“Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.”
– John Stott, The Authentic Jesus

“Christ’s way of life is a holy attack on everything that leaks the brightness out of our lives or detracts from the promised joy of our faith. It demolishes anything that promises liberation but, in fact, imprisons us in boredom. Following Him evokes a life pursued heartily and meaningfully.”
– Eugene Peterson, On Living Well

“Before we pray, ‘Lord, Thy kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My kingdom go.’”
– Alan Redpath

The reality of Christ the King coming to us doesn’t mean the darkness doesn’t exist, but it does mean there is one greater than the darkness who has come, who has defeated death, our greatest enemy, and has promised to return to make ALL things right.  

Call & Response
1 Chronicles 16:8-13, 34

A:  Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon His name; Make known his deeds among the peoples!

B:  Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; Tell of all His wondrous works!

A:   Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!

B:  Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His presence continually!

A: Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles and the judgements He has uttered.

B:  O offspring of Israel His servant, Children of Jacob, His chosen ones!

ALL:  Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His steadfast love endures forever!

“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
– Acts 3:19 (NASB)

Pastor Jim Thomas

1 & 2 Kings: The King of Redemption History

1 Kings 11:14-43

When All is Said and Done…

1. We need a better king.
2. The God of the Bible is sovereign over all human history and faithful to all His promises.
3. God’s judgment and discipline do not negate God’s promises.
4. Jesus Christ is the King of redemption history

“Those who decline to respond to God’s goodness by repentance, and faith, and trust, and submission to His will, cannot wonder or complain if sooner or later the tokens of His goodness are withdrawn, the opportunity of benefiting from them ends and retribution supervenes.” 
– J.I. Packer, Knowing God

“And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of his father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” 
– Luke 1:31-33

“And it is He who changes the times and the epochs;
He removes kings and establishes kings;
He gives wisdom to wise men,
And knowledge to men of understanding.
It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness,
And the light dwells with Him.”
– Daniel 2:21-22

“A time of social upheaval and chaos such as ours is likely to send even the most devout Christians into despair unless they can place the terrifying flux of life in the earthly city against the unchanging reality of the sovereign God Himself.” 
– Carl R. Trueman, Protestants Need to Go Back to Basics

“When you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.”
– C.H. Spurgeon

“Corporate worship is designed to humble you by pointing out the depth of your need and enthrall you by pointing to the glory of God’s promises.” 
– Paul Tripp

“God’s forgiving love to me in Christ is a sheer marvel that passes all comprehension. Only where we understand His wrath, do we understand the might of His love. It is as we understand His love that we know that His wrath is just.” 
– Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History

“Christ is everywhere throughout the Old Testament. It speaks of Him explicitly and implicitly, in promises, patterns, types, hints and images. Through these various ways, the Old Testament reveals and anticipates the richness of His character:  His work, His life, His glory, His hope, His might, His love, His suffering, His wisdom and so much more, and it does this all before the historical event of His incarnation.” 
– Scott Redd

Pastor Tommy Bailey

1 & 2 Kings: The King of Redemption History

1 Kings 11:1-13

Three lessons from the life of Solomon:

1. The Peril of Drift
2. The Priority of Worship
3. The Provision of Mercy

“The Bible never offers a drink from shallow waters. There, you do not find a set of petty maxims, but the everlasting love of God; you do not find any shallow views of sin, but a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And that is the secret of the Bible’s permanence — when our little systems have ceased to be, for sin and sorrow and life and death and duty, it gives us drink ‘as abundant as the seas.’”
– George Herbert Morrison

“Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father…”
– 1 Kings 3:3

“…Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.”
– 1 Kings 11:6

“We feed sin by coddling it, pining after it, daydreaming about it, giving vent to it. We suffocate sin by redirecting our gaze to Christ.”
– Dane Ortlund, Deeper

“It is only human to want more. God made our hearts for abundance. We desire to know more of the goodness of God personally and particularly. But we also stray, chasing after substitutes. This is why advertising is so effective: it offers us counterfeit versions of what God created us to crave, keeping us busy and distracted.”
– Sandra McCracken

1. The Peril of Drift

“Temptation — for the entire human race, for the people of Israel and for each of us personally — starts with a question of identity, moves to a confusion of the desires and ultimately heads to a contest of futures. In short, there’s a reason you want what you don’t want to want. Temptation is embryonic, personality-specific and purpose-directed.”
– Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried

An anatomy of temptation

• External
• Internal
• Opportunity
• Decision

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
– Proverbs 4:23

2. The Priority of Worship

Diagnostic questions for my spiritual health

• What is my current spiritual trajectory?
• Where is my trajectory leading me?
• What am I building?
• Whose name am I building it for?
• Do I delight in my savior?
• Do I grieve over sin?
• Am I being governed increasingly by God’s word?
• Am I sensitive to God’s presence?
• Do I love God’s people?
• Do I love my neighbor?
• Do have an active hunger and thirst for more of God?

Resources

• Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, Donald Whitney
• Watchfulness, Brian Hedges
• Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard

3. The Provision of Mercy

“We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I’m accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.”
– John Owen

“A guilty conscience is a great blessing, but only if it drives us to come home.”
– John Stott, The Cross of Christ 

“Restore to me the joy of Your salvation…”
– Psalm 51:12