Sunnyside First Baptist Church
"A Righteous Branch"
  • Jesus
  • Beautiful One
  • Living Hope

  • Advent Reading - Candle of Hope

    This advent season we are looking at the coming celebration of the birth of Christ from four different perspectives. This first week is the perspective of one the three wise men.
    His name is Gaspar, But do you know there is nothing special about me or the other two wise men , we simply try to be in touch with the right things and the right people.
    This meant listening to God and His promises and the signs that he said would occur. This is how we prepared for that first Christmas!!! What about you, how do you prepare for Christmas?? Now some of my friends are preparing for Christmas by going to parties, eating lots, working out how they will deal with family, trying to finish work, planning holidays and looking for bargains.
    On the other hand some of my other friends don’t like this time of the year at all. They don’t have many friends, they are missing someone or they simply want to avoid crowds so keep to themselves. We found it best to prepare for Christmas by first listening to God.
    Then looking out for the signs he said would occur. And looking forward to the promises he makes, and you how we found Him, We followed what God said would occur when He was born.
    We followed that bright star, because that is what God said would lead us to the new king. As you prepare for Christmas Take some time to follow the light of Jesus. The light that gives you and me hope of a better future. You know you can easily do this through Advent by spending some time everyday listening to God and talking to Him. You can do this personally or you can do this corporately. We will be having an Advent Devotional, Monday-Thursday at 10:00 on our facebook page. We now light the candle of hope. Because our king Jesus gives us hope no matter what we face.
    Candle Prayer:
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    Our Passage this week is from the prophet Jeremiah 33.

    Jeremiah 33

    Most biblical scholars locate Jeremiah 33 after the exile.
    The passage represents a vision of a radically new future but instead it is just a reprieve in the long and difficult history that The Jews have had with Yahweh, with God.
    Jeremiah’s oracles or warnings lead up to the the very day of yet another Babylonian captivity or the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the 587BC.
    Jeremiah was a prophet… God called him to be His mouthpiece to the people of his time and to a time in the future that were lacking any HOPE
    Old Testament Prophets frequently had a message for several different peoples and cultures.
    Much of the story told in Jeremiah has to do with the threat and fulfillment of captivity and of the destruction of Jerusalem.
    The people have been ignoring their commitments to God and in spite of that God has continued keeping His promises to them.
    POINT #1a - How long has God kept His promises to us? (b)And how long will He continue to keep them?
    The answer to the first question is this. How long has God kept his part of the promises
    In many ways He has been keeping promises since Adam and Eve first sinned.
    The list is 100’s of promises includes:
    God’s relentless chasing of us even after we sinned in the garden.
    We have violated and continue to violate the Ten Commandments.
    He has made 7,487 promises to mankind throughout the old and new testaments
    And yet we cannot even keep the simplest of commands to “love one another.”
    POINT #1b - …And how long will he continue to keep them? That is completely up to God.
    We are continually told be ready at moments notice.
    We are told he will come like a thief in the night.
    We read that the coming end of the world is gradual like birth pangs. How much longer until Jesus returns.
    As we have said before… Even Jesus does not know the day or the time. But we have to be ready.
    Judgement is coming… terrible awful judgement.
    They faced imprisonment, death, separation from family members. They cried our to God in anger and despair. Without HOPE!
    Despair is that feeling that there is NO HOPE, And that feeling that GOD does not hear you in your current condition.
    Humans feel despair when they cannot imagine God’s promised alternative future.
    These are the people of Jeremiah’s time. There has been along list of punishments from God. They have deserved them!
    This has lead them to little HOPE and lots of despair
    I would suggest to you that we are in a similar position.
    Our world is mess… Often times we see it without HOPE!
    Our county is so divided that if you disagree you are an enemy.
    There is no HOPE for something that brings us together. +
    Looking at history you see times like these… times of despair often punctuated by war or a huge nationwide calamity that finally draws us together.
    The Prophet Jeremiah would identify with our “junk.”
    Here is what he wrote some 2500 years ago...
    Jeremiah 33:14–16 ESV
    14 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’
    V.14 - “Behold” Hey everyone stop and listen. What you have done for generations has not lead to HOPE but despair. God says I am willing to try again… But listen carefully.
    I’m going to fulfill the 6000+ old testament promises...
    How exactly is God going to do that...
    V.15 - Without specifying “how” God says I will cause a “righteous” branch to spring up.
    Jeremiah is not the only prophet to speak about a “branch”
    Isaiah 11:1 ESV
    1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
    Both of these branches… Are branches of ultimate HOPE!
    Both of these BRANCHES are Jesus Christ… The ultimate HOPE!!!
    There I have said it… Our hope is built on nothing less as the old hymn says than Jesus Christ and nothing less!
    We have waited a long time...
    Through the promises to the house of Israel and Judah
    For a peaceful future from a Righteous Ruler
    And suffered through exile #1, #2 and #3… Still our lessons weren’t learned.
    We have seen the Messiah come… to seek and save the lost. To give HOPE to a sick and dying world. Still there is no Righteous Ruler
    Now -- our world simply needs HOPE. We’ve lost every semblance of HOPE that we have ever laid our futures on.
    BUT… We always tried first to do it on our own. Then when all of that fails… We reach out to GOD! GOD HELP US!!!
    There is a great deal of significance including Jeremiah, Isaiah in our discussion of HOPE. Of making those part of our Advent Celebration of Hope.
    POINT #2 - It is vital that we consider the message of HOPE that is found in the prophets and in the coming of Jesus.
    Trusting in God’s provision for us in the past, we imagine what shape God’s fulfillment of promises will take in the future.
    Although we do not bring about God’s intended future by our will, in our waiting, in our prayer, in our efforts to see our world even our little better we place ourselves in a posture. Hopefully on our knees so that we might become partners with God in the advent of a new reality.
    PARTNERS WITH GOD IN A NEW...
    A REALITY OF HOPE
    A REALITY OF COMPASSION,
    A REALITY OF LOVING ONE ANOTHER
    In a new reality with God as our decision maker. With Christ ruling the earth for a literal 1000 years. With the branch of the stump Jesse coming to right all of the world’s wrongs.
    Let’s fast forward 500 years...
    “In those days …” On Christmas Eve Luke will turn the church back to a historical context of Jesus’ birth, anchoring the event in time with persons and places, in a world of Caesar and census.
    Luke 2:1 TPT
    1 During those days, the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, ordered that the first census be taken throughout his empire. (Quirinius was the governor of Syria at that time.)
    But on the First Sunday of Advent, Jeremiah turns us forward to the future: “In those days and at that time …” In these days before Christmas the future is not where our culture encourages us to go; it fosters a holiday experience that is nostalgic and immediate.
    “In those days and at that time” God will decree justice and righteousness. Seasonal traditions dictate charity. “The days are surely coming” when God will fulfill the promise.
    We are sure that consumerism will deliver our fulfillment. The church is called to hear the prophets in this season, not for “once upon a time” background music, but for an overture playing in real time, sounding themes to be developed going forward. “In those days” there will be “justice and righteousness,” peace and security.
    POINT #3 - Know justice, Know peace, Know security… And finally, know Jesus.
    We seem to get back here all of the time. There is an inverse to this
    No justice, No peace, No security without Jesus!
    There is a PROMISE that the Prophet Jeremiah delivered.
    This promise absolutely screams redemption, reconciliation, reborn into a NEW LIFE.
    This promise is so fundamental to followers of Jesus that Jewish authorities have attempted to diminish and retreat from a biblical position.
    Here are those verses...
    Jer 31.31-34
    Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV
    31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
    To the practicing Jew in Jeremiah’s time, he would soon after studying the scripture and asking the Rabbi. Would be shut down. Maybe expelled.
    I’m a plain reader of scripture… If the Bible says it I believe it.
    Even verse 1
    Jeremiah 31:31 ESV
    31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
    That new covenant is forged in the blood of Jesus Christ. Since Jesus is not just King. He is the ONLY path to redemption in the world and for EVERYONE, Jew, Christian, pagan from the four corners of the earth.
    There you have it. No matter where we are in scripture. It always make’s it way to Jesus.
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      • Jeremiah 33:14–17NLT

      • Jeremiah 33:14–16NLT

      • Isaiah 11:1NLT

      • Luke 2:1NLT

      • Jeremiah 31:31–34NLT

      • Jeremiah 31:31NLT

  • Angels We Have Heard On High (Gloria)
Sunnyside First Baptist Church
sunnysidefbc@gmail.com
509-837-3084
https://sunnysidefbc.faithlifesites.com
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