On behalf of the leadership at CPC, I hope that you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with family and friends. Marketers have been busy attempting to convince us that Thanksgiving is a gateway into great deals, big sales, and accumulation of more things. It’s a reality of our present day that this season has become more about consuming than celebrating the transcendent truth of the coming of Christ. This is why it is important for the church to focus on Advent, lest Christians conform to the world instead to Christ.
Advent is a double celebration. First, it is remembering the birth of Christ into the world as the Word made flesh (John 1.14). Second, it is an act of expectation of His return. This Advent season our sermon series will reflect on several “Songs of Christmas” throughout Scripture as God’s people longed for the coming Redeemer. These songs will help us remember that we are an Advent people, hoping in a God who acts and is making all things new.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
- John 1:14
We are called to live wisely, so that we might avoid the traps of pre-Christmas commerce and sentimentalizing the birth of Jesus. We are called to live with hope “until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). The gospel gives us strength amid this “present evil age” and teaches us that Christ is with us in our sufferings. With that strength, we can endure because of two truths: 1) Jesus is with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28.20) and our sufferings are “not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).
Join us this month as we worship, hope, and wait together for the Christ, who has come and will come again.