Advent - James 5 - Rainey Segars

I'm grateful to be uh here with you today.

Um we get the opportunity and the privilege to hear from Rainey today.

Um would say that to have a woman speak or preach in a church, that your church must be a liberal church or a progressive church.

We are neither liberal nor progressive.

Um Rainey and I are both historical, biblical, orthodox Christians.

That's who we are.

We believe that the Bible is perfect.

We believe that it's infallible, we believe that it should never be uh interpreted more liberally because our culture becomes more liberal.

We never believe that.

We believe that the Bible is perfect the way that it is.

So it is true that in the scriptures that there are spaces where Paul says certain men and women shouldn't speak and shouldn't preach and shouldn't lead in the church.

That is true.

And it is also true that there are spaces where Paul has men and women leading and speaking and prophesying in the church.

And so for us, we have this conviction that not only should women be allowed to and are allowed to speak and use their giftings in the church, we also believe that it's a necessity for the life of the church to flourish.

And so, in the same way that a child needs both a father and a mother to thrive, and they both parent, they just do it differently.

Father parents one way, my mother does it another way, but they need both of those things to thrive.

I believe and we believe and have a conviction that the church needs both men's voices and women's voices so that the church can fully thrive.

And so, with that, I'm excited for her to do that today.

And I realize that maybe for some of you, uh, this is like completely normal, and some of you uh you've been in churches where it's never been allowed for women to preach.

And so if there's any questions or concerns, we would love to buy your lunch, buy your coffee, whatever, get your steak, whatever, we'll buy it.

And we'd love to just have that conversation with you to explain uh kind of how we wound up in those spaces.

Um and obviously we have like two or three or ten book resources that we'd love to share with you uh about this topic in general, uh, because it can be a divisive topic and we don't want it to be.

So we'd love to have that conversation with you at some point.

But with all that said, I'm very excited.

You're in for a real treat.

She's incredible and incredibly gifted.

Um so with all that, please welcome Rainey.

Good morning, church family.

Hello.

Thank you all very much for having me.

Um so a few months ago, Teddy said something mean to me.

Colton had been sick with a cold, and so we're at home, it's the evening, and so I told Ted, please go brush your teeth, please go wash your hair, both of which he hates.

And he said, Well, I don't want to, I'll do it tomorrow.

And I said, No, you have we have to brush our teeth every day.

Obey, please, please go brush your teeth.

And he was mad at me, and so he muttered under his breath, I wish you were sick instead of daddy.

So we all heard him, and Colton said, Ted, that is a mean thing to say.

You need to apologize.

And like a little Ted, a little kid, Ted goes, sorry.

And Colton very rightly said, uh, no, that doesn't count.

What are you sorry for?

And Ted did this.

Just like that.

He wouldn't say it.

He didn't want to say it.

And we said, Well, there is no real apology.

There is no real healing if we won't say what we did.

Um, and so no rush, but the three of us, we are gonna sit here on the couch together until you take ownership and apologize.

And we did not realize when we said it what we were committing to.

The three of us, no, no joke, you can ask them.

The three of us sat there on the couch waiting for him to say what he did for a full hour.

He wept.

He begged not to have to.

And the irony was we all already knew what he did.

No one didn't know.

And he wasn't gonna be punished.

You admit it, we forgive you, done.

We want to heal with you.

There is no danger here.

But no, for an hour we sat there waiting on him to say what he did.

He wanted the reconciliation, but he didn't want to confess.

And I think that's not just because he's eight.

Aren't we all like Teddy?

We want healing, we want peace, but we do not want to take ownership of what we did.

And yet, what I want us to talk about this morning is that confession is the only way to healing.

In James, the Lord makes us this promise.

He says this.

He says, if they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you may be healed.

This is God's promise.

I confess my sin, plus you pray for me, equals healing.

So I want to unpack this promise together today.

So, first, let's check and see if we think this is even true.

Is he making stuff up?

Is he trying to trick us?

Or is this real?

So before we unpack the promise, I want to check his claim and see if we even buy this.

So I invite you for just a second to close your eyes.

And imagine that you get a call from one of your parents.

And they say, hey.

I know this sounds out of the blue, but I've been thinking a lot about your childhood.

And I think there were a lot of moments that felt really bad to you.

And you were right to feel that way.

Those moments weren't your fault.

They were times when I was struggling.

And if I could go back, I would have stepped aside, I would have calmed myself down, and then found you and helped you with whatever you were struggling with.

I'm sorry.

And if you're ever willing to talk to me about any of those moments, I'll listen.

I won't listen to have a rebuttal.

I'll listen to understand.

I love you.

So sit with that call for just a second and ask yourself: would that help anything?

Now you can open your eyes and I'll ask you again: would that call start any kind of healing?

I think you and I both know that it would.

Because that parent, intentionally or unintentionally, would be following Jesus into confession and repentance.

And obeying Jesus always brings healing and peace.

Always.

Now you know we are in the four weeks of Advent, and today is the week of peace, and we all want peace.

Yes, we want peace in the Middle East, we want peace in Memphis, we want peace at our family holidays.

But for a society of people who all want peace, somehow we have no peace.

We're all taking melatonin so that we can stop our racing thoughts and we can sleep.

We're all excited for the next election so we can finally get somebody who will get a handle on the crime.

Everybody promises lots of peace, but despite all the doctors and despite all the elections, we don't seem to have any peace.

Because we're trying the wrong things.

There is no real peace in vacations or job promotions or plastic surgery.

Those things help short term, but they don't help long term, and that is because this world does not have any peace to give us.

It claims it does, but it doesn't.

With all of our technology and our education and our money, you would think that we could have finally gotten the right things in place to have some peace, but no.

There's a study out of the University of Virginia that asked men to sit quietly with nothing but their own thoughts for 15 minutes, or they could shock themselves with a strong electric shock to get out.

And 67% of the men chose the electric shock over sitting quietly with their own thoughts because sitting with their own minds was so awful.

Despite all the promises, Pinterest didn't help.

And getting married didn't help, and the new job didn't help.

And then into this peaceless world comes the Prince of Peace.

The Prince of Peace.

In Luke 2, we see an angel choir come down to sing about Jesus' birth.

We heard about that this morning.

And they only make one comment about it.

This is what they say.

They say, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.

They say, Emmanuel, he's here.

And on earth to those who see him and love him and follow him, peace.

It's not just something that might happen.

It will be his primary impact.

Just a few verses before in Luke 1, Luke 1 says this about Jesus.

He says, with Jesus, I love this, God's sunrise will break in upon us, shining on those in the darkness, those sitting in the shadow of death, and he will show us the way, one foot at a time, down the path of peace.

When getting pregnant didn't work, and making more money didn't work, how do we follow him down the path of peace?

So the bigger answer is that every single thing Jesus says and asks us to do will bring healing.

So close your eyes, pick something at random that he says, and we could talk about how that is the only way to have any life or health or peace.

So today I want to pick one, and I want to focus on one of the ways he promises we can have peace.

Now, Jesus can be cryptic.

It can be hard sometimes to understand what in the world he's talking about.

But what I want us to look at today is not cryptic.

In James, he tells us this confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, and you will be healed.

This is not unclear.

It's just hard.

But this is the way.

Follow the Prince of Peace down the path of peace and be healed.

So today I want to unpack this promise.

So, number one, we do not want to confess.

We are like precious Teddy.

We respond to confessing our sin like this.

We don't want to be embarrassed, we don't want to admit that we're wrong.

We don't want our spouse to win.

And our social norms are not helping us.

This is how we are socially trained to behave.

This here.

The baby doesn't poop, there's no dog, nothing's broken.

We all wear white.

So I'm not sure what sure was wrong with you, but we are happy and tidy.

Okay, next.

Oh, I love this.

I love this.

Her caption is one nation.

Yes.

God bless America.

You're very patriotic.

Yes, yes, we we got it.

Okay, next.

Oh, I like this.

I'm just standing with my car.

I'm rich.

Yeah, got it.

We got it.

Okay, next.

Not to judge, we are all doing this.

I'm not judging.

Here's one of us.

What you wouldn't know from this picture is that we did not get one good picture that whole day.

And so this is a fake baby that the photographer made with Photoshop.

Nothing wrong with us.

Our social training is to present only the best versions of ourselves possible.

And then you take this disaster and you combine it with cancel culture, where if you say the wrong thing, you're fired.

You mess up, we drop you.

You can't admit mistakes in a culture like this.

Our culture is not helping us, but our problem is not just cultural.

Our resistance to confession is deeper in us than that.

So the very first human failure we ever see is Adam and Eve in the garden, and they are eating the fruit of the knowledge of evil, right?

And God comes down and he asks them what happened, and right then, in that moment, we see our own DNA.

Adam's answer for what happened is it was that woman you put here.

Well, there are no other people.

Adam, Eve, and God, that's it.

So it was that woman you put here, Adam literally blames everyone in the world except himself.

And Eve's answer is the snake manipulated me.

I got confused.

Deep in our DNA, we do not want to admit it was me.

That urge in us, that feeling in us that it wasn't me, I'm not the problem.

We could call that a lot of different things.

We could give that a lot of different names.

But for us today, I want to call that clinging to our own glory.

Glory for me.

That's our instinct.

But this morning and at Christmas, we sing about Jesus.

Mild, he lays his glory by.

To establish his kingdom and to rescue us.

Jesus did not keep his own glory.

We have a king who was willing to diminish himself.

Before he came here, Jesus was enjoying infinity, the perfection of heaven.

And to come here and to be small and sleepy and dirty like us, to come here and to heal and to rescue, he had to lay that glory by.

We get a sense of what he gave up if we look at two different people's comments on Jesus.

The first comment is before he came here.

In Daniel, Daniel gets a vision of Jesus, and this is what Daniel says about him.

He's freaking out.

He goes, I looked up and I saw a man with a belt of pure gold around his waist, and his body was hard and glistening as if sculpted from precious stone, his face radiant, his eyes bright and penetrating like torches, his arms and feet glistening like polished bronze, and his deep voice sounded like a choir of voices.

And at the sound of it, I fainted.

This is what he was.

So overwhelmingly magnificent that look, Daniel can only use comparisons to describe him.

It's like he's sculpted.

He's like bronze.

Daniel's going, I don't know what that is.

I've never seen anything like that.

And then I fainted.

And then again in Matthew 13, once he's here, we see someone comment on Jesus again.

And now the comment is isn't that the carpenter's son?

He's forgettable.

To rescue and to heal, he had to lay his glory by.

And the same is true for us.

If we want to heal our bad relationships, if we want to restore our families, we have to stop clinging to our own glory.

Clinging to your own glory creates dysfunction because you always have to be right.

You can't be wrong, you can't be embarrassed, you have to win.

Now we might be tempted to think, I don't think that's me, I don't think I'm like that.

I don't think I have a glory problem.

So I have two tests.

Let's check.

Here's test number one.

The next time it's true, I want you to say to somebody, huh?

You were right, I was wrong.

And then stop.

No explanation, no reason, just you were right, I was wrong.

And stop.

If that feels uncomfortable, we're clinging too tightly to our own glory.

When Teddy was a baby, he had this book about a tiger who messes stuff up.

And through the book, the tiger keeps saying, Tiger is sorry.

And so now when Colton and I need to apologize, we will often say, Tiger is sorry.

Well, one night recently we had a real dinger of an argument.

And so after a while, Colton came up and he gave me a big hug and he said, Tiger is sorry.

And then he whispered, I think that's easier to say than Colton is sorry.

And he's right.

Tiger is sorry is easier to say than Rainey is sorry.

We resist so much healing because we won't admit we're wrong.

Here's our second test to see if we have a glory problem.

We are trying too hard to keep our own glory if we say to people, I'm sorry, but I'm sorry I did that, but that's my personality.

Sorry I said that, but you know I get upset when you're late.

If I say I'm sorry, but what I'm really saying is, I did a bad thing, but it isn't really my fault because you caused the bad thing that I did, and I keep my glory.

I'm trying to get credit for having apologized, but without any real repentance.

And so if Colton says, you didn't even apologize, I can say, yes, I did, but I didn't.

I didn't really lay my glory by.

C.S.

Lewis says this way that we're living, this me, me, I'm right.

I didn't do anything wrong.

It's not me.

This is the culture of hell.

Lewis says it like this.

He says, We must, I love this, we must picture hell as a state where everyone is concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and everyone lives the deadly, serious passions of envy and self-importance.

Listen to this.

Satan lived first in God's kingdom.

And in the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of but his own prestige.

Hell is a world where everyone has to be right and impressive.

Heaven will be a world where people aren't concerned with being impressive.

You're not impressive.

He's impressive.

And when we're with him and we can see the blazing splendor of how magnificently beautiful he is, do you think anybody will be impressed with you?

They won't.

So citizens of his kingdom have to be people who are comfortable not having the glory.

To bring the kingdom of peace, our king had to lay his glory by.

And if we want to enjoy that kingdom of peace, we're gonna have to do the same.

So number two, what even is confession?

What does that mean?

If we want the healing, if we want to try to lay our glory by and confess our sin, what does that mean?

What is he asking us to do?

So this is what confession is.

Confession is saying what I did specifically out loud to someone else without excuses.

Here's what confession is not.

I'm sorry you're upset.

I've just been really stressed lately.

I'm going through a hard time.

I'm sorry about what happened, as if something external happened to you.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We have to name the thing.

These are confessions with no but.

I lied.

I yelled.

I shouldn't have said that.

I made things harder.

I picked a fight.

I overcommitted.

I Googled bad things.

I flirted with my colleague.

I lost my temper.

We have to say it.

We have to say it out loud to another believer, not just to God and not just to ourselves.

Not this.

I'm gonna be honest with the hardest person to be honest with of all myself.

Not that.

No.

You've ever really confessed sin, you know good and well, yourself is not the hardest person to be honest with.

To say specifically what we did out loud to someone else, it feels like death.

It feels like death because it is death.

It's the death of the old glory-grasping self.

So if it feels like death, my goodness, why in the world would we do this?

So, number three, why would we do this?

Why confess?

So Adam and Eve were the first people ever to touch and to feel sin.

And so their immediate reaction to it gives us a good picture of how we all instinctively respond to sin.

When we sin, when we do wrong, we see in their story what we sort of naturally do.

And they do three things: they feel ashamed, they hide in the bushes, and they blame everyone but themselves.

Without following Jesus, this is how we instinctively respond to sin.

Shame, blame, and hiding.

These are the fundamentals of the broken world.

Confession, ownership, and repentance, then, are the fundamentals of the new world.

Now, non-believers, I'm gonna suggest to you that nonbelievers can't really do this.

I work at St.

Mary's and I was in the hall one day, I was chatting with colleagues, and somehow the conversation became what would you do if you didn't care about being good?

Like what sin tempts you?

And I said, Oh man, I would shoplift.

Like for sure.

Absolutely.

And these two other colleagues looked at me like I was crazy.

And they said, that is terrible.

Said, I don't have anything like that.

There's nothing bad I'm tempted to do.

What a loadable enemy.

But these two women aren't believers.

I love them, but they're not believers.

They haven't accepted the gospel.

And part of accepting the gospel is saying, when you consider all the harm that people do, I do some of that harm.

I'm not just a victim of meanness, I also contribute to meanness.

I'm not just a victim of dishonesty, I also contribute to dishonesty.

I'm part of the problem.

And to those of us who are willing to admit we're part of the problem, Jesus says, excellent.

I'm not part of the problem.

And I'm here to rescue you.

But accepting that rescue has to begin with admitting I need rescue.

In the guts of the gospel is admitting my own flaw.

I'm completely with Ross, FYI.

So Ross hurts Rachel, they're breaking up, and it's very sad, and he doesn't want to break up.

He's trying to fix things with her.

And she says, absolutely not, no way.

And she says something that has always stuck with me.

She says this.

She says, no, I can't.

You're a totally different person to me now.

I used to think of you as someone who would never, ever hurt me ever.

Well, sister, why would you think that?

That's madness.

It's Jesus you're looking for.

There's no way Ross would never hurt you ever, and there's no way that you will never hurt him ever.

A major part of a healthy, peaceful, Jesus-centered relationship is knowing up front you will do a lot of harm, and I will do a lot of harm, and neither of us is superior.

The unbelieving world does not know this.

This is often unique to Christians.

We accept our sinfulness up front as a fundamental of accepting our faith.

And if we're believers, we can not only acknowledge our sin, but we can be at peace confessing our sin because we know that in his kingdom, confession always equals mercy.

Always.

King Jesus has declared it.

Admitting sin equals forgiveness.

Always.

So be at peace.

Confess your sin.

He'll forgive you here.

And we'll forgive you here.

And then things can start to heal.

He promises they will.

That's not the question.

The question is: do we trust him enough to obey him?

Either he's lying, and then what are we doing here?

Let's go to brunch.

Or he's not lying.

And he has promised you'll see healing and you will.

And then it builds.

As we take the risk and obey him, and then we experience healing, and then we realize the promise is true, and then we grow more and more willing to confess.

And then you confess to me, and we heal.

Ephesians 6 tells us fit your feet with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

I can attest to this.

I have been trying over the past couple of years to make it more of my practice in my own life to start confessing more of my sins out loud.

And now I crave it.

When I do something wrong, which is a lot, and I can see the death spreading, and I feel that gross shame in my chest.

I want to get it out.

You can ask Colton, but I have called Colton from work and been like, I need to confess, I said something ugly.

This feels bad.

Get it out, heal it, lech.

And then Colton says back, in the name of Jesus who died for that sin, you are forgiven.

It feels great.

And we become eager, we become antsy to make peace.

You don't have to confess to everybody, in fact, maybe don't.

But pick someone.

Pick someone that you know to be filled with the Spirit, and go to them and say what you did and ask for forgiveness, and you'll get forgiveness, and then you'll start to heal.

It is written.

Which brings us to our last point.

How do we respond when someone confesses to us?

Because this is half, right?

This is half the promise.

So how to respond?

Um, some of you know in parenting, you can't make a huge deal out of everything.

If everything's a 10, no one will listen to you anymore.

Um, and so you have to pick a couple of things that are like your biggest thing.

And Teddy knows my number one thing that I care about is lying.

Don't lie to me.

I don't care if he wears pajamas to church, I don't care if he's barefoot and Kroger, I don't care if he eats his donut off the floor, don't care.

I want you to commit not to lie to me.

But to accomplish that, I've had to make a commitment too.

So you can ask Ted.

My commitment with Teddy is you promise to tell me the truth, and I promise I will never make you sorry you told me the truth.

If you will tell me the truth, you will get forgiveness and help.

If someone confesses to you, they are probably terrified.

Especially in this culture where flaw is so unacceptable.

So, as the body of Christ, if you confess to me, I am called to make that experience as similar as I can to you confessing to Jesus.

And Jesus never clobbers repentant sinners.

Ever.

I had a friend one time say about her ex-boyfriend, she said, I'm not forgiving him, I'm not Jesus.

That's not completely true.

You're not Jesus, that of course is true, but if you're a believer, you are filled and animated by his heart and mind.

And we are currently his only presence on the earth, so actually, your ex-boyfriend should have an experience with you that is increasingly similar to the experience he would have with him.

This does not mean that our sin has no consequences, but it does mean that with me, a Christian, I know I am not superior to you, and that you will be forgiven 100% of the time.

I am under orders.

In this kingdom, mercy is the behavior of the king, and mercy is the expected behavior of the citizens.

It is no good to say, I know I've done wrong, I know I need forgiveness, I want God to forgive me, but you shouldn't have done wrong, and I shouldn't have to forgive you.

This is no good.

If I understand the gospel, I know I'm not superior, and going into a relationship with you, I knew up front I'd have to forgive you for lots of stuff.

And you would have to forgive me.

I wasn't confused because I'm a Christian.

He is asking us as his body, as his hands and feet and face.

He is calling us to show confessing people that his promises are true.

And that in this kingdom, confession equals healing.

We are called to show them mercy, and then we are called to pray.

Pray that they would have supernatural healing and freedom.

Jackie Hill Perry, who's my favorite, she says this we need the Holy Ghost.

We need Him to convict us of sin, and then we need Him to give us the power to turn from the sin and to trust in His Son.

So pray.

Pray that they will be set free.

And Jesus promises that in the combined obedience of their confession and your prayer, there will be healing.

It is written.

In the Navy, they say that if you see a shark, you should swim right at it, because everything else in the sea is prey and swims away.

So that's what the sharks are used to.

So if you swim right at it, the shark won't know what to do and it'll swim off.

Sin is like that.

The very, very first time the Bible uses the word sin is in Genesis 4.

God uses it and he says this to Cain.

He says, Sin is crouching at the door.

It wants you.

And the Hebrew word here for want is the word for a big cat looking at prey.

The very first thing we ever hear about sin is the picture of a big cat who has spotted a hog.

And the cat is locked in.

And it's down in the grass and it's back on its haunches and it's about to pounce and rip.

The way a bobcat wants a hog, God says evil wants us.

And what we naturally do is act like prey.

We feel ashamed, we blame other people, we hide what we did, we lie, and it starts to rip.

Our connections, our community starts to crumble.

But when we don't act like prey, because actually, Jesus has already carried our sin and our shame to the cross with him.

And actually, we already have his spirit of resurrection victory in us.

So actually, we're not prey anymore.

When everything else in the ocean swims away, but we swim at the shark, we're not ashamed, we don't hide, we don't blame other people, we take ownership and we confess.

And the predator doesn't know what we are.

Because nobody acts like this.

Imagine the enemy's frustration with communities who really do this.

He must say, we have no power there.

When they sin, they're not embarrassed.

They tell what they did.

And then the other people aren't bitter, they forgive them and they pray.

We can't do anything with this.

And off it swims.

Revelation 21 describes the healed world at the end of things, and it says, There will be no more crying or death or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

And we are called to start that now.

To be a little pocket of new world life in this world with no peace.

It's like an American embassy in a foreign country.

If I'm traveling and things go south, things get really bad, I just need to make it to the embassy.

Because here in this scary foreign place, there's this little footprint of American soil.

And I'm a citizen, and so if I can just make it to the embassy, they'll help me.

And that's what we are.

In the middle of cancel culture, we are a little embassy of Eden.

A little pocket of Eden life.

Where we're not afraid to confess and we know we'll receive mercy.

Hebrews 4 tells us the promise of entering his rest still stands.

He says, We also had the good news proclaimed to us just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.

He promises.

In this little auditorium, the promise of entering his rest still stands.

But the message we hear is of no value to us if we have no faith and we won't obey.

Obey.

Believe the promise.

Lay your glory by, confess your sins, and respond to each other with mercy and prayer.

And let's be healed.

We believe him or we don't.

So hear the good news today, church.

Jesus Christ lived 33 years of perfection.

And in God's economy.

He gives you credit for that perfection.

And then he takes your sin to the cross with him.

And he receives the rejection of God the Father that you were going to receive.

And now that you are cleaned of sin, you can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You can be animated by Jesus' own thinking and self.

And so now the health and the beauty of Eden life is a live option for you, which it was not before.

And upon your death, you will be welcomed into God's kingdom here on a healed earth, and you will walk deeper forever into Eden with Jesus next to you.

That is the gospel.

And Paul tells us any other gospel is no gospel at all.

Any other solution is no solution at all.

Peace from any other place is no peace at all.

So this advent.

Will we start to follow the Prince of Peace down the path of peace?

Into the kingdom of peace?

Or would we rather keep chugging away at the weight loss and the dating and the making money and seeing if that'll finally work?

Which it hasn't for anyone, ever.

If you are afraid of how you will look or what someone will think, then be at peace.

This is Christmas.

The cat's out of the bag.

Every one of us is so bad off that nothing less than a rescue could save us.

So what image of perfection are you trying to maintain?

In a world of begging for glory, are we exactly the same?

Or are we willing to become a little bit more like our Lord who diminished himself?

Can you say to your colleague, look at that?

You were right, I was wrong.

Can you say to your spouse, I lied earlier, I'm so sorry?

And can you say back, I'm dishonest too.

I know how hard it is.

I forgive you.

For what person would you say, I would rather heal things with you than keep insisting I'm right?

I would rather admit I'm wrong.

I would rather look bad than lose you.

I'm willing to lay my glory by.

Jesus felt that way about you.

Do we feel that way about anyone?

Confess your sin out loud to someone.

Someone who will respond in mercy and who will pray for you.

And let's follow the king into peace.

Mild he lays his glory by.

Born that man no more may die.

You know it.

Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.

Hark, the herald angels sing.

Glory to the newborn king.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we ask today that you would fill this space with your spirit, you would fill us with your spirit, that you would put our old hearts and minds to death, that you would resurrect your heart and mind in us.

We have so much content and so little power.

Please fill this auditorium with your miraculous power and healing.

We ask that you would do it today.

Amen.

He welcomes you to the table to declare in gratitude that he has made peace between us and God.

This is something the prophets only longed for, but we have.

So let's say this together.

You say the parts in bold with me.

This is Isaiah's hope.

This is Isaiah's longing for what we now actually have.

There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.

On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest.

You have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.

He will reign on David's throne, establishing and upholding his kingdom with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Isaiah longed for it.

We now have it.

If you know he is your only hope, respond in faith and gratitude and obedience and come to the table and declare that his body was broken and his blood was shed so that you could have peace with God.

Take a moment.

Confess to the Lord sins you need to confess and come to the table.