The Church of Divine Guidance (CDG) Sunday morning adult bible study group doing an Advent study looking forward to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. These posts are my notes for each session. Please study with us. You can participate by asking your questions or making comments below. We welcome your thoughts, questions, comments, and prayers.
Review
The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming.
The Advent season lasts for four Sundays leading up to Christmas. The time before Christmas is Advent, a season of preparation for Christmas. Christians prepare for celebrating the birth of Jesus by remembering the longing of the Jews for a Messiah. In Advent, we’re reminded of how much we ourselves also need a Savior, and we look forward to our Savior’s second coming even as we prepare to celebrate his first coming at Christmas.
The themes most often used for the four weeks of Advent are Hope, Peace, Joy and Love
We have celebrated the themes of Hope, Peace, and Joy, the last two weeks. This week our final one on Advent our theme is Love.
Hope. (a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.). Advent teaches us to not only to expect hope for eternity, but we can expect hope for today.
Peace (freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.)
Isaiah 9:6-7 (HCSB)6 For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on His shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
The Greek word for peace eirēnē, corresponds to the Hebrew word shalom and expresses the idea of peace, well-being, restoration, reconciliation with God. Reconciliation with God happens at salvation and that only happens through the right relationship with the Prince of Peace, Jesus. The peace that comes from being in a right relationship with Jesus is not a peace that depends on everything going well.
This peace is not just a psychological state of mind; this peace is spiritual peace. This is the peace of people whose sins are forgiven
Joy
Our joy should rise above circumstances. This joy is not produced by something external that makes me feel happy. It is supernatural result of a life filled with the Holy Spirit of the living God.
God gives us a joy that is impossible to describe.
1 Peter 1:3-9 (HCSB)3 Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.5 You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.6 You rejoice in this, though now for a short time you have had to struggle in various trials7 so that the genuineness of your faith—more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.8 You love Him, though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy,9 because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Love
In the fourth century, Saint Augustine wrote, “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.”
Advent gives us space to step back and love. By taking the focus off ourselves we are able to see the needs of others.
Deuteronomy 10:17-19 (HCSB)17 For the LORD your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and taking no bribe.
18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.19 You also must love the foreigner, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
John 13:34-35 (HCSB)34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.35 By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It was new in that the love was to be exercised toward others not because they belonged to the same nation, but because they belonged to Christ. And it was new because it was to be the expression of the love of Christ, which the disciples had seen in life and would see also in death. Such love would inevitably be a testimony to the world.
God’s love for us is so great, so powerful; so perfect and unconditional that He sent Jesus to bridge the gap that was caused by sin.
John 3:16 (HCSB)16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
He knew that we were powerless, without hope apart from Him. The Lord knew that there was no way we could ever enter into His presence on our own merit, so He who knew no sin became sin for us. God pursues us with His relentless love. He desires a relationship with us so much that it compelled Him to pay the ultimate price on the cross in order to bring us back to Him.
The only way to have and express this kind of love which is agape love. Which when translated from modern Greek is "love: the highest form of love, especially brotherly love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God."
Romans 8:38-39 (HCSB)38 For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, ⌊hostile⌋ powers,39 height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Paul broadens out the experiences, the personalities, and the things that confront the believer: death or life, angels or angelic rulers, space above the horizon or space below it, or any created thing. Then he emphatically declares that none of these things shall be able to separate us from the love God manifests, this love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The power of God's love is a theme that can never be exhausted. - The Wycliffe Bible Commentary.
1 John 3:16-18 (HCSB)16 This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers.17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his eyes to his ⌊need⌋—how can God’s love reside in him?
18 Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action.
Jesus Christ laid down His life once, and we ought to lay down our lives repeatedly in self-sacrificing love, as the tenses of the Greek verbs suggest. We may not have the opportunity to save a brother's life by dying in his place. Nevertheless we can and should do the next best thing, namely, sustaining his life when he has needs. When I give to a brother in need what might keep me alive, I have followed the Lord Jesus' example of self-sacrificing love.
The evidence of genuine love is not verbal professions but vital performances, deeds rather than words (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1; James 2:15-16). - Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas Constable
For most of us, Christmas is a time of excitement and anticipation. We eagerly wait for the moment we can open all those beautifully wrapped gifts. But the greatest, most precious gift we can ever receive is the reason we celebrate Christmas: God’s gift of eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. And guess what? We don’t have to wait until Christmas morning to open this gift, because it is available to us freely and brings us new blessings and wonders every single day. This gift has the power to wipe away all sin, comfort every hurt, and give us joy, peace, and purpose. It is a gift that we get to unwrap every day as if it were brand new, and all we have to do to receive this gift is follow Jesus.
“In Christ’s human life, there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd. The shepherds did it; their hurrying to the crib atoned for the people who would flee from Christ. The wise men did it; their journey across the world made up for those who refused to stir one hand’s breadth from the routine of their lives to go to Christ. Even the gifts the wise men brought have in themselves an obscure recompense and atonement for what would follow later in this Child’s life. For they brought gold, the king’s emblem, to make up for the crown of thorns that he would wear; they offered incense, the symbol of praise, to make up for the mockery and the spitting; they gave him myrrh, to heal and soothe, and he was wounded from head to foot and no one bathed his wounds. The women at the foot of the Cross did it too, making up for the crowd who stood by and sneered. “We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in everyone we come in contact with.” —Dorothy Day
That’s the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (HCSB)1 If I speak human or angelic languages but do not have love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.2 If I have ⌊the gift of⌋ prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited,5 does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs.6 ⌊Love⌋ finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.7 ⌊It⌋ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for languages, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.10 But when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things.12 For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1. The absence of love 13:1-3
Verse 1 The languages (tongues) of people would be foreign languages. But the language of *angels can only mean speech that people cannot understand. The Christians at Corinth were not using this gift in the right way. Without love, their speech would be only a noise. Their speech would also be like a musical instrument that produces a loud crash, but no harmony.
Verse 2 But the person with the deepest knowledge and the greatest *faith is worth nothing without love.
Verse 3 The most generous act to help poor people would be of no use without love.
2. The nature of love 13:4-7
Verse 4a What love is like:
Patience and kindness show God’s attitude to us
2 Peter 3:9 (HCSB)9 The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
The fruit of the Spirit includes patience.
Galatians 5:22 (HCSB)22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,
Verses 4b-7 What people with love do not do:
1. They are not jealous of others.
2. They do not brag about themselves.
Luke 18:9-12 (HCSB)9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else:10 “Two men went up to the temple complex to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.11 The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this: ‘God, I thank You that I’m not like other people—greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.’
3. They are not proud thinking about how important they are.
4. They are not selfish.
6. They don’t become angry easily.
7. They do not keep a record of how people have hurt them.
8. They take no pleasure in evil things. A loving Christian does not try to find fault in other people..
9.That kind of love never changes. That what it says in verses 8-13. This is because of their trust in God’s love for themselves and for other people.
“No Greater Love”
(based on John 3:16, John 15:12-13)
David L. Allen
John 3:16 (HCSB)16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 15:12-13 (HCSB)12 This is My command: Love one another as I have loved you.
13 No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.
Verse:
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only Son.
The Son gave His life for me,
when He died on Calvary.
There is no greater love,
nowhere, you won't find it
than a man would lay down His life for a friend,
there's no greater love, no greater love
than a man would lay down his life for a friend
Chorus 1:
There is no greater love,
there is no greater love,
(there is no greater love)
(no greater love)
Bridge:
No greater love,
no greater love
no greater love
no greater love
(than a man would)
(He would lay down His life for a friend.)
for a friend
for a friend
No greater love,
no greater love,
no greater love,
no greater love.
Vamp 1:
Jesus went to Calvary
to save a wretch,
like you and me;
that’s love, that’s love.
(repeat as directed)
Vamp 2:
They hung Him high,
they stretched Him wide.
He hung His head, for me He died;
that’s love, that’s love.
(repeat as directed)
Vamp 3:
That’s not how the story ends,
three days later He rose again;
that’s love, that’s love.
Next week we will begin a study of Hosea where God uses his prophet's experience with his prostitute wife to illustrate Israel's relationship to Him.
Bible Study Audio
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