Jesus redefined the meaning of the word “king”.
And, it’s a good thing, too, because 15 kings found their way into his bloodline,
And not one of them set the kind of example Jesus did.
Sometimes it’s easier to define something by what it’s not,
So this week, we’ll juxtapose 15 kings against the King of kings,
And find for ourselves a better definition.

From the time of the promise God made to Abraham to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, 42 generations of ancestry unfolded, building a deeply unique human DNA that was infused into the life of the Messiah. What was God working at while His people were waiting? As we enter into Advent, we have the brief and precious opportunity to investigate the question:

What are we waiting for?

The final stanza of Lamentations is a sincere coupling of questions. God answered one of them with a definitive YES, and the other with a definitive NO. Why? Find out as we study the closing salvo of Jeremiah’s Lamentations.

Here are the unedited links to the YouTube videos we used in the sermon….

“Restoring a Cabinet”

https://youtu.be/JG1kKKqE8sg

Gladys

https://youtu.be/FYPahfwg-9M

It could seem a little odd to start a study in the book of Lamentations in the month of thanksgiving. But it may surprise you to find out that there is great MEANING in our MOURNING.

One of our core tenets at VTL is to “live on mission”. Each week we profess “the sending” as a way to renew our commitment to the urgency of our context. But, when’s the last time you thought about the people on our planet who have NO ACCESS to the Gospel? The Great Commission tells us to pay attention to ours, and the world’s context as we pray for the Gospel to make its way into the hearts of all nations.

We had the great honor to have Joshua Bolds, President of AIMS.ORG with us this weekend to help give us some greater context.

It’s important to finish the race.
But it matters more HOW you ran.
It’s popular to pay attention to people’s ‘last words’, and we’ll do that with King David tonight, but, At the end of our lives, the hope is that we lived our life LOUDER THAN LAST WORDS.

Anyone can start a race.
It takes passion, persistence and purpose to finish.
We're rounding the final stretch with King David and comparing his twilight days to those of The Apostle Paul’s.

What does it look like to FINISH WELL?

King David was known as a ‘man after God’s own heart’… so, let’s talk about that heart. The most dangerous moniker God ever chose to use to explain himself was FATHER. What does the Father’s heart look like? And what do David’s and the Prodigal Father’s heart have in common?

2 Samuel has all been leading to this…. The tragic, irreversible, and avoidable end of David’s insurrectionist son, Absalom. In many ways, the in-fighting between King David and his son were ‘the perfect storm’… a confluence of details that caused an impossibly difficult scenario that, SPOILER ALERT, will end in tragedy. What can we learn from this? How can we avoid situations like this in our lives?

We’ve all heard the phrase, “The Battle Belongs To The Lord”. While that’s easy to speak, it’s hard to live out. King David is going to show us just how much he believed that God’s sovereignty was unimpeachable. He was willing to live out his faith in God in ways that many of us aren’t. If the Battle belongs to the Lord, what does that mean for us?