Dustin Crawford, lead pastor of True North Community Church in Atlanta, continues our Weak is Strong series with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 5:1-10. Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.Hope in the Face of DeathPastor Dustin CrawfordSunday, December 27, 2015Before I get started I just want to share a little bit about

our church plant and just say thank you. Without your sacrifice and generosity

giving to Sojourn Network, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. We wouldn’t be

able to share the gospel, so I just want to thank you from the bottom of my

heart. We are overwhelmed by your generosity for us and for the other 14 church

plants. I’d like to share a story so that you can rejoice with us because when

you give, you are going with us. The salvations that we see and the

reconciliations that we see in marriages and all the beautiful things that we

see because of the power of the gospel, you are participating with us and so

I’d like to share a short story.There was a guy named Jonathan Walker, we call him Waka, and

if you have ever seen our website, he is the guy who does all the photography

for our website. He is a nonbeliever. He is one of the first guys I met once we

moved to Atlanta. He is on Instagram and somehow someway, me and my wife went

to a Braves game and he saw a post that my wife made about me wearing all my

Braves gear. He sent me a message that said, “I just don’t understand the

tattoos. I don’t understand that you guys want to move to the inner city and

work among the down and out and the hurting and the poor and you are a pastor.

I don’t get that so I’d love to meet up for coffee if you have time.” I was

like “I’ve got plenty of time!” So we got to coffee and over coffee he shares

his story. Over the course of about 3 years ago he was in the process of

committing suicide. He was getting ready to walk out into the MARTA, which was

the train system. His sister called him twice and since she called him twice he

figured it must have been an emergency. So he answered the phone and didn’t

take his life by the grace of God. Over the course of the next two months or

three months as we are journeying with him and sharing the gospel with him,

sharing our life with him he starts to wonder what the hope is that we have

that he feels like he is just missing.  He’s

got this deep hole within his heart that he is just longing to feel healed, to

feel satisfaction, to feel joy in the midst of sorrow and he is thinking “What

is it?”So he pulls me aside after community group one night and he

is wrestling saying “You are answering questions that I have. No one has ever

done that. You are talking about things that I really struggle with and you

don’t say it in a way where you are just blowing me off and saying ‘believe

this’, you are sharing your doubts and your hurts and you are fighting to trust

the Lord. What is this? What do I need to do to have my sins forgiven?” So I

got to share the gospel with him and now we are walking with him. We don’t know

if he is saved yet, but he is right there and your giving makes things like

this possible. So we can rejoice with this, and without your giving, Waka would

have never heard the gospel, so I thank you and I praise you for Christ in you

so thank you so much.Today we are going to be in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10. This is a

meaty passage, a weighty passage. I’m not going to be able to walk through it

and pull out all of this beauty and the beaut...

Pastor Paul continues our Wonder advent series with a sermon from Matthew 2:1-12

I’ve got to be honest; I am really jazzed about this Christmas season. Gilbert crew got back into our house after our little kitchen fire mishap and they have been busily scrubbing every surface. I didn’t know that there were that many surfaces to scrub in a house. Our house has never been cleaner since it was built. So, I would love a little Advent fire every year. It would be awesome.

I love Four Oaks at Christmas. The lights, the Christmas Eve service (Melissa, no hair spray this year as we are passing that flame around) Melissa caught on fire one year but any way parents its ok. We have safety monitors, so it’s ok. Love our décor back here and if you don’t like that, if you’re a traditionalist, bah humbug to you.

I love this because we have a lot of gifted singers, artists, creative people, and talented people in these areas and I am not ashamed to say that I am not one of them, ok? This explains why when I was in elementary school in Chattanooga I was a part of the Chattanooga boy’s choir. I know, its shocking. Every year they would do the singing Christmas tree at the Tivoli theatre and my first year there, they asked me to be Joseph, mainly because I didn’t have to do anything, and I didn’t have to open my mouth. So I just stood there the whole time staring at the plastic baby doll in the manger and of course, the pinnacle of that performance and the pinnacle of every Christmas performance it seems is that as Mary and Joseph are gathered around the manger and the angels are there and of course they bring in the shepherds and trail them all in there at one time, so what it the coup de gras? They bring in the wise men, right? They are bearing their gold and frankincense and myrrh and they perch the star on top of the set. They play “We Three Kings, which I’ve always kind of liked.

If you don’t remember the first verse, let me flash it up here for you. The first verse says “We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts, we’ve traversed afar” (its not travelled, like I always thought, its traversed) “Field and fountain, moor and mountain following yonder star” So I asked Josh if we could sing that this morning and he selfishly refused. Something about “artistic integrity” and also something about “it not being Biblical”. That’s always an important criteria, so as I studied this passage this week, lo and behold, he is right! There is not necessarily three, they are not kings, probably not from the Orient and this was not a star per se. Other than that, this song gets it all right, ok? We are going to be talking about the star and the wise men so you can turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 2. Since we are talking about stars and galaxies and celestial events, it seemed like the appropriate time for me to break out the top ten spoilers of Force Awakens and relate them to the Christian faith, should I do that? Oh I wont even tell you about Luke and…. I won’t even go there.

Good stuff actually, part of an Advent series that we are calling “Wonder”. Seeing the supernatural in Christmas. You may say, “That seems like a strange thing, Pastor Paul, to be preaching on. Isn’t the whole point of Christmas, is that things are supernatural? Isn’t that the essence of it? That God became man? Why have we titled the series in this way? We love to get after the progressives and secular elites this time of year, who try to deconstruct Christmas and say it...

Pastor Dave continues our Wonder advent series with a sermon from Luke 2:8-18.

Pastor Josh continues our Weak is Strong series with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Pastor Dave continues our Weak is Strong series with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 4:7-15. Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.

Pastor Dave continues our Weak is Strong series with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.

Pastor Paul continues our Weak is Strong series at Killearn with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 4:1-2. Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.

Pastor Paul continues our Weak is Strong series at Killearn with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 3:12-18. Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.

Download the sermon guide at fouroakschurch.com/guide.