https://www.facebook.com/298231283665297/videos/316123170153740
Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our Sunday sermon. I am Rev. Laura A. Neff. This ministry shares the Word of God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. Our ministry was created with twelve people around this world back in 2008. Each of us shares God’s Word in ways He guides us to utilize. We wish only that God’s truth will be shared within His words as brought to us by the Spirit as it fills heart, mind, and soul to be shared with my hands, but with His words alone.
You will find us in the following location: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Rev. Laura’s other sites: Facebook & Blogspot & Twitter & LinkedIn
Prayer List: We have many on our prayer list. Some wish to remain anonymous, and others only wish to have their first names mentioned. Our prayer list grows or changes every week. This is our current list.
- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings and his health issues, which are numerous. He has been having issues with his pain, vision, and memory.
- We are ever watchful in regard to the weather with tropical weather and with the high winds around many places. We continue to pray for those who suffer or have suffered from the COVID-19 chaos. Let us pray for calm skies and seas, calm voices and spirits, and also healthy outcomes for those who are affected.
- Pray for several friends of friends who have been ill this past week, only some who have suffered from COVID complications.
- My friend Jeff has asked for continued prayers for his father who has been quite ill of late.
- Pray that another friend gets very good news in two weeks regarding their healing process and that their pain would ease completely.
- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for all of our outreach ministries with Pastor Stephen Okoth, Pastor Robert Nganwa, Pastor Simon Peter Javaji, Rev. Lisa Tyler, and all the others who have joined us.
- Pray for our nations that the voice of God be heard through the Spirit.
- Pray for our friends and families that their tomorrows bring blessings and pray our own be the same.
- Pray for those who are jobless, homeless, no matter what might have ended up causing either of those. Pray that providence would find them and ease the suffering.
- Pray for those suffering as a result of the terrors that have occurred just this past week around this world.
- Pray for our sick and wounded that they may heal.
- Pray that truth is revealed where falsehoods have been shared around this world.
- Sending out birthday greetings to my son-in-law Douglas who is 30 today.
- Sending more birthday greetings to my cousin Angela who is celebrating her birthday today as well.
- Sending still more birthday greetings for a dear friend whose birthday is this upcoming Saturday.
- And for a fourth birthday, my niece Dawna will celebrate her birthday on Friday this week.
Prayer: Father in heaven, this is our prayer for today. We prepare to celebrate the birth of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We hope for good things to happen for friends, family, neighbors and colleagues through the four weeks of Advent. We pray for our first responders and all the things that are not changing in this world around us. We pray for those suffering as a result of weather and natural disasters like earthquakes, mudslides, blizzards, and more. We pray for the ones suffering from COVID and its various manifestations. We pray for our homeless, our jobless, and those who suffer life-threatening diseases and illnesses. For each of these we pray in Your Holy Name, through our Savior Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Amen and so it shall be.
Opening Song: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtpJ4Q_Q-4
Sermon: We begin our exploration of the Christmas story through the eyes of the Gospel writer, Luke. There is a lot of work to do just to see how far reaching the miracle of Jesus’s birth would have been then and even now in a lot of ways.
Luke 1:1-2 KJV – Forasmuch as many have taken
in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most
surely believed among us,
Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were
eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
Luke starts out with words including BELIEVED, DELIVERED, EYEWITNESSES, and MINISTERS of the WORD. Those of us who truly believe in the existence of God and the power He holds to create anything, including miracles of all descriptions believe in the TRUE GOD and believe HIS PROMISES. One of those promises, foretold centuries prior, is celebrated each and every December. That promise is the birth of a MESSIAH, a SAVIOR, promised to Adam, proven to Abraham, ensured by David, created by IMMACULATE CONCEPTION as one of the MIRACLES OF MIRACLES. These verses share the awe inspiring considerations of others around Mary and her cousin Elizabeth and their children, Jesus and John the Baptist. In this first verse, Jesus Himself speaks.
John 15:27 KJV – And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.
The Apostles and Disciples along with family members of Jesus all had a great deal of experience to share in their work with our Savior in bringing more and more people to the Light of the World. Let’s take a look at these familiar views.
Hebrews 2:3 KJV – How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;
1 Peter 5:1 KJV – The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:
2 Peter 1:16 KJV – For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
1 John 1:1 KJV – That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
Now we see what the Apostle Paul shares with these.
Romans 15:16 KJV – That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.
Ephesians 3:7 KJV – Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.
Ephesians 4:11-12 KJV – And he gave
some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors
and teachers;
For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the
edifying of the body of Christ:
So, what do all these verses have to do with the Christmas story? Well, in truth, if we don’t learn how others view this miraculous birth, we won’t understand the ability Jesus had in preaching God’s truth with His Apostles and Disciples beside Him, and even long before, when He was a mere boy, including that moment where He was first laid into the manger on the night when He was born in the body of a child, the greatest miracle of God.
Luke 1:3-4 KJV – It seemed good to me
also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to
write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been
instructed.
Who is Theophilus? This is the person who Luke addresses twice in his writings. Once here in the gospel he wrote, and also in the Scroll of Acts. This is one of those “teaching moments” in Scripture. In this case, Luke is teaching, according to most theologians, a Gentile about the wondrous and amazing life of our Savior Jesus Christ. That alone makes this gospel writer all the more interesting, because he was teaching as Jesus taught the Apostles to teach and as we all should teach those around us. Here we see the second reference to Theophilus.
Acts 1:1-3 KJV – The former treatise have I
made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost
had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible
proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to
the kingdom of God:
Acts 11:4-5 KJV – But Peter rehearsed the
matter from the beginning, and expounded it by order unto them, saying,
I was in the city of Joppa praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, A certain
vessel descend, as it had been a great sheet, let down from heaven by four
corners; and it came even to me:
Jews were afraid of the Gentiles, and were ordered by the elders and priests to avoid the Gentiles at all costs. Yet, Jesus said ALL mankind should know the Love of God, and should share with each other the truth of God’s Word. Paul, Peter, and all the other Apostles knew that this was just one reason to be prepared for the questions, the censure, from the Jews. All of this was foretold as John the Beloved shares here.
John 20:31 KJV – But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
So we’re learning quite a lot about how Luke absorbed that which he wrote about in his Gospel. Let’s look here at this next verse.
Luke 1:5 KJV – There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.
Now, we all know that Elisabeth is Mary’s aunt. She is quite a lot older, and, much like Sarah was for Abraham, thought to be too old to conceive. Yet, she too bore a miracle, one that left her husband, Zacharias, mute until the moment John the Baptist was named before the priests. This too was foretold far back in history, that there would be a man born before Jesus who would baptize the Son of God. Now we will see the moment Jesus was born as shared in the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew 2:1 KJV – Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
The moment Mary gave birth was the moment the rebirth of mankind would begin. Much like the third son born to Adam and Eve would signal a new chapter in the existence of mankind, as shared here.
Genesis 30:23 KJV – And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away my reproach:
It isn’t easy to start over for some people. However, sometimes it is a necessary thing to manage. When Elisabeth and Mary bore their children, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ the Savior, everything changed for mankind. Everything. Being of pure heart, pure mind, is no easy thing. It takes work, study, prayer, clean and clear thinking, and so much more. Yet, both Mary and Elisabeth were considered to be such, as were their husbands. Luke speaks of Elisabeth here.
Luke 1:6-7 KJV – And they were both righteous
before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord
blameless.
And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were
now well stricken in years.
We know now that it is not impossible for an older woman to bear a child. Back in the days before Jesus was born, those moments were very few, and extremely far between, Sarah and Elisabeth were two of those exceptions to the rule. Also, the fact that Mary had conceived first, as a virgin, and second, out of wedlock, the stigmas that could follow a woman in that era of existence were many, and none of them were good. However, Joseph stood by her, and married her anyway, to ensure the legitimacy of the child that would alter everything in this world just by His very existence. Here we see this moment from the view of gospel writer Matthew.
Matthew 1:18 KJV – Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
There are many, many moments in scripture that reassure the believers in God that miracles would come to those who would wait, and those moments include Noah and David, King of the Jews.
Genesis 7:1 KJV – And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
1 Kings 9:4 KJV – And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments:
2 Kings 20:3 KJV – I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.
Paul reflects on those moments in the history of Jesus and His holy birth all those years before as he teaches the citizens of Corinth and Philippi. He wants them to hold that moment close to their hearts, even though they were not witnesses of that miraculous moment.
1 Corinthians 11:2 KJV – Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.
Philippians 3:6 KJV – Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
All of us, if we are true Christians, know the importance of the weeks of Advent. The twenty-five days of Christmas celebrate twenty-five steps toward salvation. Let’s take this walk together, and see just how wondrous and wonderful it can be. Now, that’s something to think about as we pray in the prayer that Jesus taught us.
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
(Matthew 6:9-13)
Closing Song: O Come All Ye Faithful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9P3zXXCTa0
~ Shalom ~
Rev. Laura A. Neff
Elder Calvin Jennings
Covenant of Hope Ministries Main Site: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Scripture Excerpts: The New Open Bible Study Edition: Copyright © 1990: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright © 1982: E. E. Gaddy and Associates, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright ©circa 1890-1910: International Bible Press, The John C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sermon or Study Copyright © 2021 http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Our mission for Covenant of Hope Ministries is not to exploit fear, but to conquer it, and overcome all that is created through fear together as the bringers of the light of Jesus found in the midst of darkness.
No comments:
Post a Comment