“A Son Is Given”
Isaiah 9:6
As we approach the Christmas holidays, I would like to invite you to use this
message as part of a “Christmas present.” By that I mean learning what Christmas
means to us at present. Picture it this way: God’s glorious Gift has been wrapped up
with a number of pieces of prophetic wrapping paper. Beginning with Genesis 3:15; 49:10, Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, etc. and leading through the Gospels and Epistles all the way into the Book of Revelation, unwrap the prophecies about God’s Greatest Gift – His Son and eternal life (Romans 6:23).
Who Will End the Violence?
In the message from this text last Sunday, we asked, “Who will end the violence?”
This came to our minds once again this week when a Muslim couple savagely
murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California. This may be part of a larger
“deep terror matrix”2 or network. The family members of the assassins seem as shocked and bewildered as the rest of us. You look forward to the upcoming
holidays; they think about the horrors that haunt the families of the dead and
injured. But even as we speak, fighters from the West are bombing oilfields in Syria
in a battle with the Islamic State in Syria. How can there be a peaceful resolution to
all of these hostilities? Listen to this message here
Psalm 2 in Irian Jaya
Missionary Don Richardson3 was shocked by the jubilant reactions of the
headhunters in the Kamoor village of the Sawi tribe in Irian Jaya. As he shared the
good news of Jesus Christ with them, they expressed joyous reverence – for Judas!
It turned out that one of the highest virtues of their village society was treachery –
the skills of deception and the betrayal of trust. How could the Richardsons
encourage them to put their faith in Jesus, when they held greater admiration for
Judas? And then, the Richardsons found themselves in the midst of a vicious war
between the headhunters of Kamoor and Hainam.
What the Richardsons learned about humanity in Irian Jaya in 1962 is still
happening around the world. According to Psalm 2:1,. . . Download this entire message here