Introduction & ice breaker
What’s the best hot chocolate in NYC?
Themes to Consider
Past:
GOD LOVES US ENOUGH TO COME TO US.
We are not abandoned! We are loved.
Present:
God loves us enough to SHARE WITH US AND THE POWERFUL MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL IS THAT CHRIST INTENDS TO PRESENTLY BE VISIBLE TO THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR LIFE!
God loves us enough to share his life and way of life with us.
Future:
GOD LOVES US ENOUGH TO BE A JUDGE
A SOLID ADVENT HOPE IS THAT GOD IS GOING TO COME AND MAKE THE WORLD RIGHT
Advent takes us from the stable to the throne and invites us to live in the time between in LOVE.
Discussion Questions
Name a childhood memory of feeling very loved.
We live differently now because we know the end and the beginning. How have you understood the love of God?
How has the reality of Gods love displayed in the past present and future changed how you want to live now?
Guided Prayer
Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.
Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life. Amen.
Supplemental Content
The one we know as Jesus is identical, it seems, with the Word who was there from the very start, the Word through whom all things were made, the one who contained and contains life and light. The Word challenged the darkness before creation and now challenges the darkness that is found, tragically, within creation itself. The Word is bringing into being the new creation, in which God says once more, ‘Let there be light!’ —NT Wright
Something has moved. It is not human beings who have moved; it is God who has moved . This is the announcement: Emmanuel, God-with-us. We are not abandoned. The power that created the universe with a word, and could equally destroy it with a word is not against us, but for us. God has moved, not we to him, but he to us. The angel Gabriel has bi-sected the ghastly yellow clouds. The sons and daughters will be raised from the dead and the human family will be restored around the table of the Lord. I cannot tell you why it takes so long and why it costs so much pain. I can tell you this: we are speaking today, not about human hopes and human wishes and human dreams, but about God. What is happening at Christmas is not from man but from God. —Fleming Rutledge
“In the beginning God had planted a garden for humanity to live in (Gen. 2:8). In the end he will give them a city. In the New Jerusalem the blessings of paradise will be restored, but the New Jerusalem is more than paradise regained. As a city it fulfils humanity’s desire to build out of nature a human place of human culture and community. True, it is given by God and so comes down from heaven. But this does not mean humanity makes no contribution to it. It consummates human history and culture insofar as these have been dedicated to God” —Richard Baukham
[The] prophets had gone far towards envisaging the whole city as the place of God’s holy presence, as his truly ‘holy mountain’. But John seems to have been the first to eliminate the temple altogether. The city needs no temple, a special place of God’s presence, because the whole city is filled with God’s immediate presence. As a result the city itself becomes a temple. As well as features already mentioned, the most striking sign of this is its perfectly cubic shape (21:16). In this it is like no city ever imagined, but it is like the holy of holies in the temple (1 Kings 6:20). The radical assimilation of the city to a temple, taken further in Revelation than in its prophetic sources, shows how central to the whole concept of the New Jerusalem in Revelation is the theme of God’s immediate presence.” —Richard Baukham
