From Pastor Andrew’s Desk

Greetings First Church!
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving with family and friends. We sure did. Got off to a great start with Pastor Tom Fagan leading our FCCB Thanksgiving Day service. Becky and I had a great time hosting some good friends from our seminary days in the afternoon. And of course, I had my favorite – lots of stuffing! 
This is the type of Sunday that can tend to be a little lighter in attendance, but let’s aim to break that mold as we come to corporate worship and give thanks to the Lord for His grace … plus ramp up for Advent. I am so grateful for the ten week Sunday School time that we had on prayer. So many good insights and a lot of time to pray together. Doffy did a great job in concluding the series. 

We are now going to begin an eight week series on Living a Generous Life. We will be discussing living an “open-handed” life to the Lord’s leading in a multitude of areas with a focus on “time, talent, treasure.” We’ll be looking at how to live a life that acknowledges everything is ultimately His and how to live freely and generously by pouring out into others all that He has so graciously poured into us. It’s going to be a wonderfully illuminating time as we move into December. Ron Giovannacci will be kicking off our time this Sunday – so set your clocks and join us at 9:00 am! 

Steve Kercher notes we’ll be singing Shout to the Lord and Revelation Song this Sunday as we consider the reality of who Jesus is, and what our response should be. If you aren’t familiar with the songs or would like to hear them again, just click on the links.

This Sunday I’ll also be concluding our six week “official” series on worship. But a series like this will always continue because everything is worship as we seek the Lord! The passage this Sunday is Luke 4. Luke 4:14 starts with Jesus returning to Galilee and the word spreading about Him everywhere. People were talking about Jesus and all the amazing things that He was doing! “He was teaching in the synagogues and everyone praised Him” (Luke 4:15). Then Jesus heads to His hometown and to the synagogue as was His custom (v. 26).

Just a quick side note, if the Lord of the universe felt it was vital for Him to go to regular corporate worship– how much more do we need it :)! So He stood up to read from the scroll and He quoted Isaiah 61 (v. 18-19). “Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him” (v. 20). Wow. This passage has always given me chills. What an amazing moment. I’ve had this visual image in my mind for years…every head turning in unison, following Jesus back to His seat and continuing to stare at Him. They knew that they were witnessing something powerful. Jesus was no ordinary Scripture reader and no ordinary preacher. Then Jesus makes a statement that upped the ante 1,000 fold: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). In other words, Jesus might say something like: “I am not going to just read this Scripture or preach about this subject, but I am going to fulfill it all, because all of it ultimately points to Me and what I will do.” If some regular preacher made a statement like this we would get him checked out for losing their mind! But Jesus had not lost His mind. Rather He is telling the truth because He is the Truth
People were truly amazed and asked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son? ” (v. 22). Jesus responded by quoting proverbs and making statements about the difficulty of doing things in His hometown (v. 23-27). He challenged the people in very specific ways. It is not that Jesus was not able to do miracles in His hometown. He is God and able to do whatever He wants. Rather, it is that he would not do miracles in His hometown due to the unbelief and lack of faith He found in Nazareth. The Lord won’t force His love on people if they reject Him and He won’t just do the “laser light show” for the sake of people just seeing the miraculous, without repentance. The fact that Jesus challenged them and wouldn’t do these things infuriated the people in the synagogue (v. 28). They got up and drove Him to a hill and tried to throw Him over a cliff. Talk about extreme anger. Jesus was challenging them to the core and they hated it.
Feeling convicted of sin can cause people to do some crazy things. “But He walked right through the crowd and went on His way” (v. 30). People tried to do many things to take Jesus out early on, but in this situation He again demonstrates His total sovereignty over everything. It is His world, His redemptive plan, His timetable.

We will conclude the message on Sunday by looking briefly at 1 John 4:1-10 because it speaks clearly about discerning what is true from error about God. This is especially pertinent because the people in the synagogue with Jesus missed it. Why did they miss it? Well, as John states in v. 2 ”this is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God….”

They didn’t see this because their sin blinded them as well as listening to misleading teachers. John warns against these things in this passage and speaks of the love God has for us that pours out from Him to our hearts. This love changes us and has the ability to deeply impact those around us (v. 7-10). Truth matters and what we believe about Christ is the game changer. Please reflect on these passages leading into Sunday. I really looking forward to seeing you as we worship the Lord and give thanks to Him!

Blessings,

Pastor Andrew