God IS the Gift
Nov 26 2023 • Cedrick Baker, Dan Kent, Greg Boyd, Shawna Boren
Wrapping paper, bows and ribbons. Christmas time = gift time, right? But in the hurry and scurry of our Christmas shopping, it’s easy to lose sight of God’s presence and the gift of his son. When God revealed himself to the people of Israel, he described himself with five characteristics: compassion, grace, forgiveness, faithful love and justice. In this series we celebrate each of these five attributes as gifts from God, made complete through the arrival of Jesus.
Sermons in this series:
Christmas is the ultimate expression of God’s compassion, a core attribute and expression of God’s being. This is an expression associated with the Hebrew word for womb, which means that compassion is about entering into the experiences of another. God enters into our life through Jesus and shows us what God is like.
Topics: Christmas,
Forgiveness,
Love
God, at the core of his divine nature, is gracious. This means that God extends his favor to us as a gift, out of his delight in us. This grace is fully expressed in the coming of Jesus, and Christmas is a time to celebrate and receive the grace of God.
Topics: Grace,
Relationships
God proclaims to Moses that his character is faithful, even when his covenant partners are not faithful to him. Jesus was born to demonstrate God’s covenant faithfulness, coming to those who were not looking for him or able to recognize him when he came. God remains faithful to us today, never leaving nor forsaking us, even when we do not seek him or we rebel against him.
Topics: Faithfulness,
Presence of God
In this second sermon of the Christmas series, we examine God’s forgiving character, how God forgives us, what it means to forgive others and why this is important to our own well-being, and to forgiving ourselves. This core trait of God’s is ultimately fulfilled in the life of Jesus, as he shows us what God’s forgiving nature looks like.
Topics: Forgiveness,
Relationships
This opening sermon to the Christmas series introduces a central Old Testament passage that defines the nature of God, which is ultimately revealed in the coming of Jesus, the perfect embodiment of God. In this sermon, Greg addresses a difficult phrase where God is said to visit the iniquity of the parents on their children. How are we to understand this passage when it contradicts both Jesus’ teachings and his actions on the cross?
Topics: Judgment,
Love
