We All Need the Messiah

This week was one of my favorite (but not the #1 favorite) weeks of the year. I LOVE Thanksgiving. I love roasted turkey. I love fried turkey. I love my wife's dressing with giblet gravy. I just love Thanksgiving. But now it is over...

And because it is over, it is time to start thinking about another of my favorite weeks of the year - Christmas. I love Christmas for so many reasons, but none more than the fact that we celebrate the cominging of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ... the Messiah. The Messiah did for me what I could not do for myself. He restored my relationship with the Creator.

Although Almighty God created us with a perfect design for a perfect relationship, we destroyed that relationship. How? By trying to be like God ourselves.

As a result, all of our relationships are distorted. Our relationship to ourself, our family, each other... but most importantly our relationship to God. What's more... we can't fix them. We can't fix our relationship with ourselves. We can't fix our relationships with our families. We can't fix our relationships with each other. We are lost.

We all need to be saved.
We all need the Messiah.

Jesus is that Messiah. Won't you place your faith in him? Allow him to reconcile you to God.

To hear more, click on the link below to hear this week's sermon.

The Need for the Messiah
http://www.box.net/shared/vj9r49hmn9

A Picture of the Messiah

What does this picture remind you of?

Of course, it reminds you of Jesus - but why?

What makes us believe this is the correct image of our savior?

What makes us believe we know anything at all about what he physically looks like?

Unfortunately, we all try to create our own picture of the messiah. We try to put him inside the box of our own understanding - not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well.

The Old Testament gives us a progressive messianic view that spans from Genesis to Malachi. Despite that complete picture, the Israelites (like ourselves from time to time) had created their own expectations for the coming messiah that were probably not exactly correct. For the most part, they were looking for a conquering king, which Jesus will be, but wasn't during his first advent.

Next to the book of Isaiah, the book of Zechariah is probably the OT book most quoted in the NT with regards to the fulfilment of the messianic promise in Jesus Christ. It's no wonder, because through the book of Zechariah, we see one of the clearest pictures of the messiah in the Old Testament.

Zechariah was not specifically written to paint a picture of the messiah. It was written in parallel with Haggai to convince the people to finish the work of completing the rebuilding of the temple. Nevertheless, Zechariah painted a beautiful portrait that deserves examination.

To hear more and perhaps paint your own picture of the messiah as he truly was, click on the link below.

Zecharaiah – A Picture of the Messiah
http://www.box.net/shared/kcdam59394

Haggai - God's Rhetorical Questions

Have you ever thought about this? If God were to ask you one question about your life, what would it be? If He were to question the life that you were living, what part would He question?

The truth is, we all know what's wrong with our own lives, but we tend to ignore our own flaws and fallicies. We know the level of our own disobedience, but we choose not to correct it. If God were to ask us about these things in our lives, the questions would be rhetorical because (1) God knows the answer anyway and (2) so do you.

During the reign of Cyrus, King of Persia, the Israelites were sent back to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon with the task of rebuilding the temple. Unfortunately, the cares and worries of life (not to mention opposition from their enemies) distracted the Israelites and they ceased working on that task.

In Haggai, God calls Israel back to the task of doing the work of God with a few key rhetorical questions.

To hear more, click on the link below.

Haggai-God’s Rhetorical Questions
http://www.box.net/shared/fqy75lzsqo