Grace and Truth (Ken Bell)

Good morning.

Don't you love that all creation

shouts of God's glory.

Stars of wonder.

It has been an amazing Christmas season here at Christ Church.

And I thank you for joining us today.

I hope your celebration

honored the birth of our Savior in a meaningful way.

You know, families have their own traditions, as we know.

I remember my mom's pumpkin pie.

Just about anything she made was great.

And Irma's pecan pie.

I remember grandma's turkey and stuffing

and Gus's great cackling.

That laugh that you just don't get anywhere else.

Then the 30 of us would clear the table,

and we would all get a deck of cards, and we play solitaire.

We put all the aces in the middle,

and you can imagine the chaos when the cards were played on the aces.

Your you are elbowing people, you're slapping hands.

You're knocking arms off legs.

We're missing by the end of this.

We lost fingers. What a joy that was.

Most of those people

are now passed on and there are new traditions.

With my own children, I.

I went to my son in law's Italian gathering.

Now, some of you are Italian or you've been to an Italian gathering.

There's nothing like it. Let's face it.

We walk in.

The house is full of people.

Tables everywhere. Chairs.

The house is full of food.

The house is full of fish.

The house is full of desserts.

And then after, like, three hours of eating

and laughing and telling stories.

Game time. Right.

So we we had a game time that I had never experienced before.

We used, we use tape that is used for packaging tape.

And the person said, hey, we found this game somewhere.

We were at an event. We'd like to share it with you.

So they had put they had put cards, they put, candy, they had put money.

Everything wrapped into this thing.

You had five seconds

to find the end and unwrap it, and whatever fell out was yours.

Let me just say it was chaos and it was wild.

It was so much fun

in my family.

On Christmas Eve, we gathered at my grandparents house,

and my grandfather would give a gift to my grandmother

and the tag would read from the rat to the mouse,

and then she would give a gift to him called

that would say from the mouse to the rat.

One of those treasured memories that I had.

I'm sure your family traditions remain with you through time.

You know, God designated celebrations for us.

They draw us together with stories, with family tradition,

with laughter, games, and with food and feasts

were a part of the regular cycle for God's people.

The feast of the Unleavened Bread.

The feast of the first Fruits.

Feast of trumpets.

Feast of the Tabernacles.

Yom Kippur, and on and on.

The feasts refocused people on the god of their provision,

a reminder that God created everything,

and God provides everything that we need for our benefit.

I'm part of a Wednesday night Bible study of men and women.

We're walking through the Old Testament.

Greg Anderson, who was here and one of our ushers, leads the group.

Craig said when he was growing up, his family would entertain missionaries.

They would come and stay with them for a couple of weeks or longer,

and they would have these amazing Bible studies.

Craig says those studies were incredible and help build his knowledge,

and he listened for hours as they read the scriptures and talked

about how God had shown himself in their lives in a miraculous way.

Now, Craig is guiding our group through an overview of the books

of the Old Testament, and right now we're in Lamentations.

That's Wednesday night.

If you're looking for an Old Testament study, that's wonderful.

From the very beginning, we as humans had a big dilemma.

God was somewhere up there and we were down here.

So how could we really understand the God?

We was up there without really seeing him?

Adam and Eve, as I was

reading through the story of Genesis, Adam and Eve must have seen God.

They were sinless before they ate the apple.

Genesis three says God was walking in

the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day.

However, the two were hiding because they had eaten the forbidden fruit.

I often think, oh, if they had not eaten that fruit,

we'd be a whole different world, wouldn't we?

Here's the amazing thing.

God already had a plan for our redemption.

He was ready for our mistakes.

He still is.

He was ready for the mistakes

well before the heavens and the earth were even formed.

The details of that are going to make one great Bible study.

When we get up to heaven to understand that, it's hard to understand.

That's where.

That's where faith takes over.

God gave us his word and he made it

clear that his plan would not fail.

So what's the solution?

The only solution is a savior

who is the only one who can save us.

His only son, Jesus.

One scholar, Barton Paine, found as many

as 574 verses in the Old Testament

that somehow point to or describe the coming Messiah.

Here are a few numbers 2417

Jesus would be from the line of Jacob.

Isaiah 11 one Jesus would be born from the family of Jesse.

Jeremiah 23 five and six Jesus

would be David's kingly heir.

Micah five two Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

Isaiah 714 A virgin would give birth to a son

and would call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

He still is.

Isaiah nine six Jesus would come as a baby.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is the dividing line in history.

For centuries the waiting went on through kingdoms and chaos.

People waited for relief, waited for hope.

Waited for a Savior.

Then God went silent for 300 years.

Between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Then a baby in an unimportant lost

town called Bethlehem was born.

The birth of Jesus marked the end of the waiting.

While the world had no idea that death was about to be given a final blow.

God's word was made flesh in a physical body of Jesus Christ

for our benefit.

The Gospel of John says it this way.

And if you were able to stand, would you stand for this reading?

In the beginning was the word, and the word was God,

and the word was with God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made.

Nothing was made without him that has been made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of all mankind.

The light shine in the darkness,

and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to testify concerning the light,

so that through him all might believe.

He himself was not the light.

He only came as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world and through the world.

And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

Many still don't.

He came to that which was his own,

but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God.

Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision,

or of a husband's will, but born of God.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son,

who came from the father, full of grace and truth.

Heavenly father, thank you

for your indescribable gift of your Son Jesus.

It is through him we live and breathe and have our being.

It is through your grace and truth that we are able to know the father,

the son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Please be seated.

So the

coming of Jesus as a baby has always captured the hearts

and minds of the faithful God in the flesh.

But others find it hard to believe that God would leave his heavenly realm

not only to come to earth, but as a helpless baby,

and certainly not to die on a cross.

You would think the Son of God in a

in a palace, complete with a royal welcome

and riches, and in prominence.

The palace certainly would have provided better communication.

Right?

All the land listens to a king in the palace.

But this king was not about a land or about luxury.

You would think the Chosen one would grow up spending all his time in the temple,

standing at the lectern, sharing his infant knowledge and teaching

the religious leaders. You would think

the religious leaders would marvel at his knowledge and his wisdom.

Incredibly, the

religious leaders didn't even recognize his wisdom.

Matter of fact, they treated him as a threat

to their kingdom of religion.

There was one big thing

missing in the Pharisees kingdom.

That big thing was God himself.

The sad thing is, they didn't even realize it.

Who were the first to get the news of the newborn king?

Shepherds in a field watching their flocks.

Now, shepherds weren't close to a laundromat.

They didn't even have the money for robes or clean clothes.

When the animals started to complain about their smell,

they may have taken off their clothes

and thrown them in the river or something and cleaned them.

The point is, these uneducated,

unclean men who spent their nights warding off wild animals

to protect their sheep were the ones that heard the news first.

You would not expect shepherds would be the ones that the angels at first tell

that the God

of the universe had sent His Son in the flesh.

For us, the Messiah.

It's remarkable to think that the Son of God was born

in a stable housing sheep, goats, chickens, and other animals.

The stable was certainly not that quiet place

that we see with the moonbeam coming down and the baby in the manger.

And Hollywood's version of what happened that night.

This was Jesus in a feeding trough,

wrapped with cloths of pieces of material

they could find to help keep him warm.

Can you see why Jesus can relate to anyone?

A manger is no place for a king,

but it's a perfect place for the Son of God

who can relate to everyone poor or rich, hungry

or well-fed, thirsty or satisfied.

Jesus is comfortable with anyone,

anywhere, at any time.

Are we calling upon him?

There was a time when Christ Church had a senior high group

that went on mission trips to Mexico, Honduras,

Dominican Republic, and yes, Haiti.

After the earthquake.

We were building one room houses for people in the poor neighborhoods.

We also spent a lot of time interacting with the children

and talking with the parents in our limited Spanish.

I remember that in the house we were building, we were trying to ask

the woman where she wanted the door, and I couldn't get the words out.

She didn't understand my broken Spanish.

And so finally I sat up and I drew a picture in the dirt

and she said, are over here.

She was able to get that.

We were building one room houses

for people in the poor neighborhoods of these countries.

We also spent time interacting, and our students saw poverty

at a level they had never experienced in our neighborhoods.

The students learned valuable lessons.

They agreed the greatest lesson was meeting

people who were poor in possessions but rich in spirit.

It just stood out.

I remember when we finished work in the south of the border of

San Diego, the mayor's wife hosted a big banquet for us.

She wanted to show her gratitude for us coming down to serve her community.

Matt.

Mike Gayle Dominic was a founding member of Christ Church.

He was an elder at the beginning,

and Mike and I were at Panera Bread one day for lunch,

and we walked to the counter to make the order,

and the girl behind the counter said, I know you.

I went on your mission trip to Mexico.

She said, it changed my life.

Do you think that Mike and I were thrilled about hearing that?

That was amazing.

God had that trip in mind

for her to reveal himself to her.

So here's here's the first question this morning.

What are we looking for in our lives?

What do we after?

In this confusing time of mass

media and I spent much of my life in the media.

We have cell phones, we have television, we have radio.

We have time trying to entertain ourselves with all sorts of things.

What are we looking for?

What are we really looking for?

Or are we just looking for things to satisfy ourselves?

Have we gotten caught up in the glamor and glitz of all that we see and hear?

The glitz of celebrity?

Have we allowed others to define our self-worth

and the worth of others?

CBS 60 minutes had a segment recently

on isolation that teens are experiencing.

Ironically, we have more ways to communicate than we ever have, right?

But studies found 44%

of the students reported symptoms of depression,

37% reported anxiety disorders,

15% reported having seriously

considered suicide in the last year.

The highest recorded rates

in the history of the 15 year old survey.

We are a land of plenty,

but are we?

We have so much.

But do we have the right thing?

The Bible says only Jesus can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts

and make us whole.

You know we love to sing the Christmas carols,

and that often includes we three kings of Orient are,

the story of the Magi.

Some scholars say that the star they followed had been an event

recorded in the history, and maybe around six BC.

That's when Jupiter, Saturn and Mars all came together

to look like one magnificent shining star.

These religious men were astrologers.

Astrology is defined as the study of the positions and aspects

of heavenly bodies, as a way to predict their influence on human affairs.

The Magi set out.

They had no idea what they were,

what they would find, but they were anxious to find out.

They knew something was happening.

The star was an amazing event.

The Magi traveled

more than 900 miles to find Jesus,

who may have been about two years old at the time they arrived.

They stopped to ask Herod what he knew about the birth of the Messiah.

Now that, of course, alarmed Herod, who was a Jew

but more concerned about preserving his throne

then finding the Messiah.

So we know some of the stories that happened

after that as he tried to protect his own interests.

It's interesting to note that the Magi were not Jews.

They were Gentiles.

The Jews in the scriptures were the favored people, right?

They knew they were the chosen people.

They believed Gentiles had no claim to the kingdom of God.

Romans 1134 says,

who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?

God doesn't operate according to what we think,

to the religious values we develop.

He has the values we need.

God is not restricted to ethnic favoritism.

He used people from all walks of life

for his ministry and what he has done in this world.

First, he had the angels announce the birth of the Savior to the lowly

shepherds.

The Magi from the east were Gentiles who studied the heavens.

The stars led them to know the Messiah.

The Bible says nature draws us to the creator.

American biblical scholar scholar Frederick Dale

Bruner says this in his commentary called The Christ Book.

He says nature can be used to bring us to church,

but it's the church's Bible that brings us to Christ.

Why did the Magi stop in Jerusalem?

Perhaps the stars stopped or disappeared altogether.

It then reappears only after the scriptures

shed light on the town of Bethlehem.

Bruner goes on to say, God uses the natural world and our experience in it

to convict us of our need in those longings to awaken our longings,

and where God's grace supports to bring in the word.

In church, the word directs us to our destination.

The word brings us to Christ.

And as we read this morning, the word is Christ.

Bruner continues, God's revelation in nature raises

questions and begins the quest God's revelation in Christ.

The goal satisfies the quest.

The theological meaning of the star

is that every expectation is fulfilled in Christ.

So again this morning,

first, what are we looking for?

Secondly, what are we living for?

And now the final question.

What are we waiting for?

The Magi knew their stars and they stepped out in faith,

not sure of what they would find, but ready and willing to go.

They ended up finding their Savior.

So we ask ourselves, are we ready to step out in faith?

When we're intimidated, when we're feeling discouraged,

when we face trouble and trials, are we willing to step out in faith?

What is God calling us to do?

I've always liked history.

A sense of history helps us today.

It helps guide us for today and for our future.

Christ Church began out of a Bible study.

We were going to a church in town and we wanted to go deeper.

And so we started meeting in homes, and it continued on Friday nights

and continued for years.

We enjoyed studying the Bible together, and decided

that a Friday night Bible study might lead to a church.

As time went on, the group caught fire

and we started to put the pieces together about God.

Could we somehow develop a church?

Could we found a church in this community?

We learned that,

for instance, the Masons hall on the other side of town on a vision street was open

and for rent, and we we rented it and Christ Church was launched.

God kept

bringing gifted people and gifted pastors.

And soon there was a sense that we could buy property and build

this church right here.

I can tell you amazing stories of God's

faithfulness during that time, but I'll leave it at this.

It was all God

account.

A church was meeting at West Bay Christian Academy in North Kingstown.

Their pastor had just left to go work for the covenant missions.

Several of us met members of the West Bay

covenant at a funeral of one of their members.

The pastor had just left

and they were looking for a pastor.

We had a pastor.

We had Lyle,

and suddenly God was stirring us.

Something was happening.

The more we met together,

the more we realized that we shared common ground.

We shared sacred ground.

We joined

together, and God was off and running here.

Don Swenson has Don here this morning.

Yeah. Don's over here.

Don's also one of our original members.

His wife, Nancy, was one of our first elders.

Don was responsible for working with Newport

Collaborative to help build this building.

Designed this this church. And to build it.

Don is still with us this morning.

And his daughter Susan, too.

Part of the church from the very beginning.

We were about learning the word,

and we were about caring for people.

You see, God calls us to care at a deeper level

than the superficiality that we find in our society, right?

We focused on sharing God's love with each other and sharing God's love

with our neighbors in our surrounding community,

building better people.

Along came our Friday Care Center

and we focused on helping people in times of need.

We want them to know that God cares about them.

Our Christ Church furniture connection was an idea brought to us

by a couple, Dave and Gail Reed from Cincinnati.

They had done a furniture connection at their church.

We said, hey, we'll give it a try.

It flourished and it still goes on

for years now.

Our volunteer volunteers pick up donated furniture and deliver

to those who are in need.

Many of you have donated furniture

to this effort and I appreciate it so much.

Our storage is the old Red rooster restaurant, which is falling apart,

but it's made available to us for nothing.

So we store our furniture there on

and Post Road in North Kingstown.

Dave Sawyer, who is in California celebrating with his wife,

I think their 60th wedding anniversary or something along those lines.

So he's not here today, but he organizes the furniture connection.

Here's the beauty of this ministry.

We are invited into homes to pick up furniture and deliver furniture.

What better opportunity to ask, is there a way we can pray for you?

Is there a need of prayer?

We have been blown away by people

sharing the depth of their need.

We had faced a snowstorm and we weren't going to deliver furniture,

but the woman pleaded to us to please come over.

And so we did deliver the furniture.

It turns out that her mom had just passed away the night before.

We were there to be able to

console her and to offer God's grace upon her.

Pray for her and her family.

So we pray with people who are facing

health issues or difficulties in their families.

We have a number of special groups, as you have heard here

this morning, a c groups.

These are spiritual growth groups, support

during difficult times in our life.

We have a number of Bible studies.

The amazing grace, some of the amazing grace are here this morning

a women's group.

That's a powerful testimony to God.

Moving.

We have a grief share program available for those who have faced

loss of a loved one.

Pastor Cheryl, who is with us this morning, is involved

in every part of her church and anxious to connect anyone with a ministry

or a way of discovering their talents and their gifts.

She has a women's ID group helping them to

identify God's calling in their own life.

She can help you understand what it means to develop a practical faith

with a deep affect on your life.

We have a generous group of women who make meals to those

in our congregation, and others

who have come out of the hospital, or who are ill and at home.

Michelle Bruning, who is here, is our office manager and one of our deacons.

She helps us.

She helps coordinate the meals ministry.

Our church family will be preparing and serving a community meal

at Saint Luke's the last Monday in February.

We're going to need help with that.

We'd invite you to keep that on your radar as we go forward.

Our missions team has been supporting a refugee family from Afghanistan

with eight children here, two more in Pakistan.

The team is trying to figure out a way to get the two in Pakistan

to Rhode Island, to reunite the family.

Patrick Taco, one of our warriors here

and on the mission team, helps

pull people together, provide food and clothing for this family.

The parents speak very little English, so they're also helping them

try to navigate what it means to be in a foreign country with a large family.

Missions is also supporting Brother Philip, who was preached here

several times.

He is training pastors for the Middle East ministry.

Christ Church supports a lot of missionaries around the world.

Our children's ministry is thriving.

I got to play the part of Noah in one of the morning sessions, and I was

amazed at the enthusiasm of the kids and the enthusiasm of the leaders.

God is doing something there.

The deacons have been visiting people in the hospital,

people who are homebound.

We've been lifted by the response of these visitations.

We're thankful for zoom that people can get to us on zoom.

We've given them bags of gifts, just a variety of items

that were prepared by the amazing grace to say you matter to Christ Church.

There is

so much more that the church is anxious to do,

and to help you get involved and connected

as a compassionate Christian

community.

So that's where we are today.

More than 30 years after taking the first steps toward

Christ Church, we're sitting here this morning together.

Where do we go from here?

God has blessed us with greatly.

Pastors from Lynn Sylvester to Lyle MCC

Van Trapp and now Cheryl Lavoie here.

According to God, the best is yet to come.

So I'll end with two personal stories.

First, you may have heard me mention this in the past, but I.

I want to keep calling this out because God is doing amazing things in the prison.

I've had the privilege of mentoring a man in prison

for them over the course of time.

But this last one since 2011.

His name is Kenny Rice.

I first visited him in maximum security, and that's a scary place.

Shortly after, he moved to medium security. And

he is on fire for the Lord.

He has brought many of the men to the Lord.

Kenny has a parole

hearing coming up in the New Year, and I'm praying that he will be released

because I want him to stand here and tell you of his journey with the Lord.

And finally, this fall and winter

at the Friday Care Center, we offered something called Alpha.

It's a program first started for people in prison in England.

It had such an impact on lives.

It was made available for people worldwide.

Don and Judy Zale up front here this morning.

LED is an alpha group for a number of years.

How many years

of about about 20 years.

That's a number of years.

Had a big effect on a lot of lives.

Well, our care center decided to to offer to those who come to us for help.

We can only give them maybe a little gift card

or a little money or something, but that doesn't solve the problem.

The problem is much deeper.

The problem is they know for all of us it's spiritual.

So this is an opportunity to help people on their spiritual journey.

People were invited for a great meal

and then saw these effective videos.

These videos simply ask questions.

There a man on the street ask questions and kind of put things together.

And our guests are invited to discuss what they have

seen on these videos in their small groups.

Some of our guests

had no concept of God or no interest in how God really related to their lives.

Others had grown up in Christian homes, but had kind of forgotten as time went on

and pressures developed.

We could see at a certain time a change.

It was in the last four videos.

They were all four.

They were focused on the Holy Spirit.

Something amazing happened.

When we asked who is the Holy Spirit?

And we watch these videos of people

talking about the spirit, and then a teaching on it.

We could see a spark.

We could see a spark.

An energy that was not present in the previous meetings.

It was a thrill.

Everything was finally clear

and starting to make sense for most everyone in the group.

That was what God was offering us.

The moving of the Holy Spirit brings us clarity.

Friends,

we need to be praying for the Holy Spirit

to bring us clarity on where we go from here, right?

What does he want from us?

We've had all of this history of our church.

What does he want from us now?

A movement of the Holy Spirit changes lives.

A movement of the Holy Spirit changes our community.

A movement of the Holy Spirit.

Changes the world.

Let's pray.

The Holy Spirit flows freely in this place in the coming year.

All this is possible because the word became flesh

and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son,

who came from the father, full of grace

and truth.

Father God, as we experience

your grace, we are drawn to your truth.

Jesus, you came to set the captives free.

Holy spirit, you live in us and through us,

revealing the glory of the father, son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.