Week Two: Celebrating Advent

This Sunday will be the third of the four Sundays of the Advent season, and we will take the opportunity to explore the purpose of Advent celebrations and how to use Advent to help our families focus on the magnitude and life-changing significance of the first coming of Jesus, and His eventual second coming.

If you'd like a copy of this week's lesson notes, they can be downloaded here.

God bless you and Merry Christmas!

Matt

St. Nick, Advent, and the Nativity

This Sunday opens a brief, three-week Christmas study for our class. The series is titled: St. Nick, Advent, and the Nativity. The series centers around the traditions, themes, and rituals of Christmas and how, as believers, we can observe them through and reconcile them with a Biblical Worldview.

The date of our first lesson in the series (December 6) actually is celebrated in many Christian circles as a very special holiday. December 6 is St. Nicholas Day. Yes, THAT St. Nicholas. The one we know more commonly today as Santa Claus. Santa Claus is based partially on Christian principles and the example of a great Christian man. Today most Christians hold special childhood memories associated with the anticipation of Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve. And they would like very much to offer these same joyous holiday memories to their own children. But they are also rightly concerned about linking Santa Claus, who is now little more than a mythical figure, with the reality of the baby Jesus who was born in Bethlehem of Judea. They have good reason to fear they may weaken the validity of the Christmas story by mixing it with fantasy. What are Christians to do with Santa Claus?

That will be our study this week. To view this week's lesson notes, you can download them by clicking here.

God Bless You.

Matt

Evidence of Salvation

Preparing for this week's lesson on Becoming a Complete Christian and it occured to me that I had promised to share a summary of some of last week's points on how you can test yourself to see if you are truly a saved child of God. The Bible tells us we should test ourselves in this area, and the book of 1 John gives some very practical tests to apply.

I need to give a big thank you to Brad Bennett for sharing this with me in advance of last week's lesson. This handout, in fact, is his. He uses it in his ministry and mission work. I found it very helpful and hope that you will also. Here is the handout.

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow and hearing what God is revealing to you in this week's study. Please continue to lift your brothers and sisters up to the Lord in prayer. The needs in our class and in the circles touched by members of our class are many, and we were reminded of that again this week. Please don't be tempted to minimize the importance of your responsibility to intercede for your fellow believers in prayer. It is an essential part of becoming a complete Christian. We are commanded to do it, and we all desperately need it from one another. God bless you.

Matt

Genesis 44-47

Well, we didn't get all the way through the chapters we had planned to cover last week, so this week, we'll pick up with chapters 44 & 45 from last week's lesson notes, then go right into Genesis 46 & 47. Lots to cover, including Judah's emergence as the leader of Israel's sons, and the migration of what will be the nation of Israel out of the Promised Land and into Egypt. We also see Joseph's life-saving policies plant the seeds that one day will lead to the enslavement of the nation of Israel.

The lesson notes for the first two chapters of this Sunday's lesson can be found in the latter half of last week's lesson notes. For lesson notes on Genesis 46 & 47, click here.

God bless you. See you Sunday AM.

Matt