The last two weeks we looked at the Magi and Herod and how Jesus rocked the political world. Today we turn our attention to the shepherds and how Jesus rocked the social world.

The events surrounds Jesus's birthday wee anything but peaceful and dreamlike. This was the cradle that rocked the world. Today, we are thinking about the political world that Jesus was born into and the kind of kingdom he came to establish.

The Christmas season is filled with warm, sentimental images and traditions that warm our heart. But these very traditions can make it difficult to rememer what we're actually celebrating.

Drawing on imagery from the entire Old Testament, and culminating with the triumph over sin and death in Christ's death and resurrection, Revelation shows us where God's whole creation project is headed. And it is glorious. It's called New Jerusalem.

The book of Revelation presents a problem... If God is love, how are we to understand the images of extreme violence depicted in this last book of the Bible? And most of us have been taught to believe these are predictions of what must take place at the End of the World.

The Book of Revelation is easily the most misunderstood and misused book in the Bible. But when properly understood, Revelation gives us one of the most stunning, creative, and beautiful portrayals of Jesus Christ and his kingdom in all the Bible.

Revelation 5:9-13

Luke 16:19-31. This vivid story was prompted by yet another clash between Jesus and the Pharisees. When they mocked Jesus for saying that you can't serve God and money, he gave them the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Let's consider it carefully.

If God is Love, we need to rethink a lot of things; everything in fact. And one of them is the subject of hell. What does the Bible really say about it, and how can we understand it in light of the revelaton of God in Jesus Christ?

The Gospels make it clear that God did not kill Jesus. God did not demand the death of Jesus; we did, human culture and civilization. The cross is a cosmic collision of violence and forgiveness. The violence part is entirely human; the forgiveness part is entirely divine.

In this series, we are grappling with one of the most important questions we could ever ask: What is God really like? A foundational premise of the Christian faith is that Jesus has shown us exactly what God is like. But this leaves us with a startling realization about the cross.