Guest speaker, Pastor Peter Wang takes us through the incredible account of Mary's encounter with an angel. How would a normal virgin respond if they were told that they would suddenly become pregnant? Not only that, the baby is the Son of God! Mary is truly blessed as she humbly accepts her role to bring mankind's greatest joy to the world!

Our sermon series in Judges left us in a very bleak place. When everybody did what he/she wanted, everything seemed to fall apart. As we enter into the Christmas season, we are reminded even more from Judges how much we need a Savior, how much we need Jesus. However, before we even get to the story of Jesus, Luke tells us the story about a family with a boy named John. What's so important about John? It is through John and his story, we see how we are to anticipate the coming of the Savior Jesus with a joy that changes our lives.

As we wrap up the book of Judges in chapters 19-21, we see the Israelites hit rock bottom. They are without a judge, without a king, and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Everything they do to try to solve their problems ends up digging them a deeper hole. However, in the midst of this chaos, violence, and depravity, there is hope of a future king who will deliver Israel and deliver all of us from our brokenness.

Samson, this week’s Judge is covered in four chapters, Judges 13 to 16. In these chapters, we see the cycle of rebellion, punishment and deliverance throughout the book repeated again. We also see the other important underlying theme of God’s covenant faithfulness and patience. In this message based on Judges 16:23-31 and drawing from passages in the chapters, learn how God uses imperfection illustrated by Samson and how this applies to our lives today.

In Judges 11, we look at Jephthah, another unlikely judge who was used by God. As Christians, all of us are capable of doing great things for God, but we are also prone to fall to sin. This was true in Jephthah's life as well. When talking about Jephthah, we often jump straight to his foolish vow, but he also led the people of Israel to great victory. So as we study his life, we can see both positive things that we can aim to emulate and also things that we want to avoid.

Despite the victory and blessing that the Lord bestowed on the people of Israel through Gideon, they soon turned back to idol worship. After Gideon's death, Abimelech murdered nearly 70 of his brothers to seize power. God's justice ultimately prevails. Abimelech is killed by a woman and the citizens of Shechem who supported him were also punished.

In the previous sermon, we saw how the Lord gave victory to Gideon and his small army of 300 men over a vastly superior Midianite enemy. The Lord showed his own glory through this, but in Judges 8 Gideon later made a golden ephod and led Israel into sin through corrupted worship. He had often had trouble overcoming his fears and having confidence in God's word, and his later failure showed that he was not the leader that Israel needed.

We live in a culture of self-promotion. But as believers, the whole of our lives should be an aim that God gets all the glory. Our hearts cry should align with the Psalmist’s “not to us, but to God be the glory (Ps. 115:1).” In this section of the book of Judges, we see another downward cycle of the spiral of idolatry and sin. Yet, we learn of another instance of God’s gracious and miraculous deliverance of Israel through Gideon. More specifically, we can learn from this text that God receives glory when we give credit to him alone, when we trust him to work out the “impossible” in our lives, and as he graciously works through our shortcomings. Ultimately, we give God glory for what he has done through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Guest speaker, Pastor Johnson Chiu continues our series from the book of Judges. As God's people continue the cycle of sinning against God, suffering the consequences, and begging for God's mercy, our Lord sends help through a cast of unlikely candidates. How did an unarmed, untrained band of villagers defeat an army with the latest technological weapons? And who was the unassuming woman who tricked and killed the top military commander of the enemy's forces? It is not about who He called or what He called them to do, but who responded in obedience and faith.  Through these verses, we see God's infinite love and patience to draw His people back to Him.

The book of Judges is characterized by a repeating pattern of disobedience and deliverance between Israel and God. In today's message we see through this cycle how God relentlessly pursued Israel and is relentlessly pursuing us. This cycle in the book of Judges challenges us to break the pattern by moving from disobedience to obedience in God and reminds us of the ultimate, perfect judge that God has given us in Jesus Christ.