10/20/2025
Yesterday, October 19, 2025, we heard a sermon on Anticipating Christ's Advent based on Luke 1:1-17. Delightfully, we are heading into a journey through the gospel of Luke, and we started yesterday! As Pastor Ben put it:
"Advent, the coming of Christ, is not only a December theme. The coming of Christ is actually the crowning event of redemptive history. From Genesis to Revelation, everything depends upon this truth: God Himself has truly come down to redeem his people!"
We were reminded that "Many people treat the story of Jesus birth as though it belongs to the same category as all those other stories that fill our culture at the end of each year. Sentimental tales that are told to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.... If we are not careful, even we may begin to think of our Savior’s birth in that way, like a charming scene with polite shepherds, shining angels and all the cute perfectly clean little animals gathered around an adorable baby in a manger who apparently never even cried. We may come to think of Christ’s birth as a nice story that makes us feel very, very comforted and happy, and yet it’s still just a story. But Luke won’t let us get away with that. Luke contradicts that mindset from the very first sentence. He insists this gospel is not a fantasy. This is not a legend told to inspire happy feelings. This is true history. It really happened, and because it really happened, it really matters. Luke writes, so that we may know with certainty, what God has done in Christ, so that our faith would not rest upon sentiment, that it would not rest upon tradition, but it would rest upon the truth. So he sets out to tell the story in the most careful and detailed way, recording for us the life, death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Please see link in comments if you want to catch the sermon for yourself! Join us next week for a sermon on Psalm 74, the psalm of the month, and the following weeks for more on Luke!