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Nov 29, 2020

Baby Shower

Baby Shower

Passage: Matthew 2:1-

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Advent 2020: O Come Let Us Adore Him

Keywords: worship, advent, joy, sacrifice, king

We feel more acutely in this bewildering season what is true of every season: anguish, anger--anything but adoration. But adoration is at the heart of what it means to believe in the One who was God Incarnate, and to adore Him is, among other responses, to bow before Him. For Advent we’ll be looking at texts all of which have someone coming to bow at the feet of Jesus--to worship and adore Him. This week we look at the Magi--the “magicians” like those we heard from in Daniel. What does their brief moment on the stage tell us about adoration?

11.29.20 GMR Online Service from Grace Mills River on Vimeo.

Order of Worship

OPENING PRAYER: Teach us to Worship (The Valley of Vision)
CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 John 4:7,10,12,19
MESSAGE TITLE: Baby Shower
CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 2:1-12
ADVENT READING: Love Candle
BENEDICTION: Ephesians 3:17-19

Click here for Advent Daily Devotions

Readings & Scripture

OPENING PRAYER: Teach us to Worship (The Valley of Vision)
ALL: Glorious Lord Jesus, You are worthy of our gratitude and our worship.

Yet, we acknowledge that we often fall short of giving what You alone deserve.

Teach us to worship.

LEADER: Help us keep Your grace and mercies toward us in view, and relish in Your love for us. Mature in us Your promises and provisions. Help us believe and sense your presence.

ALL: Thank you for the gospel and that in spite of all failures, You grant us the righteousness of Christ, and You promise to grow us. May we know You. Enjoy you. Worship You. In Spirit and truth. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 John 4:7,10,12,19
LEADER: 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
ALL: 19 We love because he first loved us.

CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 2:1-12
1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: 6 “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’” 7 Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” 9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 12 And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

BENEDICTION: Ephesians 3:17-19
LEADER: May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

ALL: and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 8
  • Psalm 72:11
  • Psalm 87
  • Isaiah 60:3
  • Hosea 2:23
  • John 1:45-46
  • John 10:1-18
  • Romans 9:16
  • Ephesians 2:12-13

ILLUSTRATIONS:

11.29.20 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Quick--don’t think. Name something (or someone) you just adore. Why that/them? How did you come to adore it/them--immediately or over time. Tell us about it (it won’t be hard if you adore it)
  2. Why would adoration of God be an essential part of believing in God? 
  3. What marks of adoration do you see in the Magi? What marks of its absence do you see in Herod?
  4. Is adoration granted or cultivated?
  5. Have a look at the quotes from the Catholic nun and the character from The Great Divorce. Can you relate to either of them? (editor’s note: I can relate to both) How are each of those comments mistaken for adoration? How is adoration different from each? Why would adoration be necessary?

QUOTES:

  • That mystery the Jews [slander], the Greeks deride, but we adore. - Athanasius, On the Incarnation
  • 1 On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
    2 the LORD loves the gates of Zion
    more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
    3 Glorious things of you are spoken,
    O city of God.
    Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
    behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush—
    “This one was born there,” they say.
    5 And of Zion it shall be said,
    “This one and that one were born in her”;
    for the Most High himself will establish her.
    6 The LORD records as he registers the peoples,
    “This one was born there.” Selah

    7 Singers and dancers alike say,
    “All my springs are in you.” - Psalm 87
  • . . .joy is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God. - Elisabeth Eliot
  • I feel sufficiently kind toward that nineteen-year-old that I can read [my then conversion story] nowadays without too much embarrassment. When I do, in my account of my conversion I find not God, but arguments for God. I had enough maturity to refrain from making myself the object of my writing, but nevertheless, its object was not Christ; it was Christian credibility. God may have found me, but it seemed more important that I had found proofs for him. . . . I want to go back and tell that teenager, who wrote down her conversion story with such conclusive certainty, that she now has enough material for ten or twenty essays on conversion. I want to tell her of the depth, height, and breadth of conversion to Christ, joyous and painful, which is far beyond anything she could have comprehended – and yet nothing compared to what the next decades will hold for her. - Sister Carino Hodder
  • ‘Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.’. . . .Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.’ . . .Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
  • Love means love of the thing sung--not of the song or the singing. “These Poems She said,” Robert Bringhurst
  • People are merely "amusing themselves" by asking for the patience which a famine or a persecution would call for if, in the meantime, the weather and every other inconvenience sets them grumbling. One must learn to walk before one can run. We - or at least I - shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have 'tasted and seen.' Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are 'patches of Godlight' in the woods of our experience. - C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm--Chiefly on Prayer

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