121 Community Church

Leadership has fallen on hard times - people are often cynical and distrustful of leaders. But God shows us that Godly Leadership in the local church is good and He tells us what to look for in a godly leader. These qualities are not just for leaders they describe a life lived in light of His goodness.

There are so many false ideas of God in our culture, understanding and articulating truth is critically important.

 If it is true we are all worshippers, then what is real and genuine worship?

Sometimes we wonder why we would worship God, and God graciously invites us in to worship Him and gives us the why.

Why is it that God is after an undivided heart in worship of Himself?

I am a fan of muscial theater. Musical theater when done at its best takes aspects of our lives and shows them in a different way to evoke emotion out of the audience and in turn give us new insights into our own lives. That’s what the best ones do. One of the most popular Broadway shows ever did something very different to invoke thinking about our time. The show opens with it’s main characters all on stage and they pose a question to the audience.. essentially the question is – given that there are 525,600 minutes in a calendar year, how should we spend them? How do we measure a year?

It is good to ponder and linger and think on what we will do with the the simple truth of Jesus having been born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on a cross, and rose again on the third day.

The season between Thanksgiving and Christmas can often be filled with more grief than joy, and there is a way to find both grace and hope in the midst of the grief.

While we may often think the people who are the good and best among us do not need a Redeemer, we discover that even the best among us do in fact need a Redeemer.

Main Texts - Matthew 1:1-3; Genesis 38 :1-30

Additional Verses

Isaiah 49:7-10

Psalm 78:67-72

Ephesians 2:7

Jude 1:24-25

Revelation 5:1-5

Intro –It’s that time of the year we are, it’s the Christmas season! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s a time for family traditions and family gatherings, movies about families. I love all these things, but it’s not always that way.. For many of us, there can be this tension because our families aren’t perfect and harmonizing over a grand piano.. Christmas can be hard because it magnifies much of the brokenness of the world and our lives.

Introducing the series, looking at the woman in the line of Jesus. There is a lot of brokenness in this genealogy, and maybe none more than the first woman mentioned, Tamar.. However, in the midst of the brokenness we see God turns the broken pieces into displays of His Glorious grace.

Judah becomes the son that receives the blessing from Jacob. The kingship line comes from his line and from this line will become the obedience of all people.. Genesis 49:10.. and at the end of history, it is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, that is the only faithful one to open the scroll.

Close – One of my favorite Christmas traditions we have as a family is our tree. ... Each ornament has significance for our family and many of them tie back to moments in our past. You know what Is interesting though, we don’t have any ornaments from horrible moments in our past.. I don’t have any ornaments that show the times I failed as a husband or father..

That is exactly what this genealogy in Matthew is.. It’s a family tree of God displaying the broken past that the savior has come from. It shows all of man’s actions that seek to cause evil and chaos will ultimately be used for God’s good glory. All the brokenness of our selves are made new in Christ and then displayed for a world to see they can have HOPE because Jesus, the son of God.. from the line of Judah by way of Tamar.. was born..