Most of us don’t walk through our days shouting to the masses, ‘Hey, everyone, I’m weak! Let me tell you about my weaknesses…’ But, maybe we should start to do just that! According to the apostle Paul, God’s strength and power is made perfect in our weakness. It is during those weak times that we most often turn to Christ for help and grace… and he gives it freely and in abundance. What a gift!

The people of God were created to be a blessing to the world. We were created for and are to be about his mission. This mission, as the book of Genesis makes clear, is both about spiritual and material blessings.

Speaker: Danny Carroll, Distinguished Professor of Old Testament, Denver Seminary, Littleton, Colorado

In Luke 12:22-34, Jesus tackles the issue of worry. He repeats the ‘do not worry’ statement many times. He encourages the us to look at our own limitations and realize that worry does not change anything. The real solution is to trust in God, to draw near to him, and to invest your life in eternal things, not temporal. Jesus reassures us that God sees us and that he cares for us. He warns about the distraction that worry can have on all of us. He also gives some great ideas for going on the offensive against worry.

Speaker: Wooddale Church Discipleship Pastor, Shawn Winters
 

Pastor Leith Anderson recently underwent elective spinal surgery on his neck area. The surgery went very well and now he will be recovering over the coming month. He and Charleen will appreciate your continued prayers during this time of rest and recovery. Thank you for your expressions of love and care on their behalf.

Leith will resume the David series in May.

 

2 Samuel 2:1-3:39 - Some parts of the Bible are difficult to read out loud in a family church service. The report of David’s rise to royal rule over Israel is full of bloody murders, intrigue, wife-stealing, lying and politics. It’s not a pretty picture. The Bible tells us what actually happened. It doesn’t always explain how people with God can behave so godlessly. However, the Bible demonstrates how God relentlessly pursues his purposes and fulfills his promises through the maze of strange and sinful human behavior.

 

2 Samuel 1:1-27

Life is seldom simple. There are often complications and confusion. The messenger claimed that he killed King Saul, thinking that would get him a bounty from David. Instead, David accused him of murdering God’s anointed king and ordered the messenger executed. Only after the execution did David realize the man wasn’t a murderer after all. True stories are often a mess.
David expressed his grief through music in a psalm that never made it into the book of Psalms.
 

The sad and gruesome story of 1 Samuel 31 is an important part of David’s personal story because he lost his best friend and his mentor in one day. It was the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new dynasty with David as the sole leader. The daring courage of this story of violent death comes not from David and his men but from the brave men in an obscure village called Jabesh Gilead. They decided to do what was right even through the danger was great and the personal benefits were none.
 

After David and his comrades homes were ransacked and familes kidnapped, they successfully went into battle to reclaim their possessions and rescue their families. Not only did they reclaim what was taken from them, they walked away with loads of loot! What are we supposed to do with winnings like that? Keep them all for ourselves or share them with others? David decided to share.
 

David faced an impossible dilemma. Israel and Philistia were headed to battle and David had to fight on one side or the other. Either way was trouble. God gave David a gift through the collaborations of the Philistine generals who insisted that David and his soldiers retreat from the fight. One of the biggest and most important battles in their history was not to be David’s fight. Sometimes our best choice is to stay out of the battle. We can’t fight every time and place. There are only so many battles in us. In God’s grace he allows us to retreat to fight again another day.

Saul became a frightened and desperate leader who turned to dangerous and illegal behavior. In one of the Bible’s most bizarre stories we read how the king visited a witch to practice necromancy—calling up the prophet Samuel from the grave to ask for his advice. Saul was reaping the consequences of his personal and political decline. He was a desperate man without God. The simplest and most direct moral to the story is for us to never get into such desperation. Trust and obey God before life’s hardest times come.
 

Christmas is about God coming our way. Jesus is God who came to our earth and became human in one of our bodies. In other words, God condescended and came to be with us. It is the best news we could ever hear or have.

Jesus not only came to us but asks to stay with us. That’s what it means to be a Christian—to welcome Jesus into our lives and be with us forever.
 

David’s name is more frequent than Jesus’ name in the Christmas story. Joseph and Jesus are both the “sons of David.” The difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethelehm was to make sure that Jesus was born in the “city of David.” Mary and Joseph were both from the “house and line of David.” But it is important to realize that the story is most about Jesus not David. David was the path to Jesus.
 

Jesus’ ancestry always includes David but there are a lot of other interesting characters in his family tree. The reasons for including genealogies with the Christmas story were multiple. Matthew and Luke wanted to make clear that Jesus was the new King of Israel with royal blood and heritage. But they also showed us that Jesus came from a line of sinners and ordinary people.

We should be impressed with Jesus’ lineage but far more impressed with his deity. His Father in heaven is God. He is himself the Son of God and eternal person of the Trinity.
 

When Jesus was dying on the cross he quoted the words of his ancestor David written in Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). When David first wrote Psalm 22 he most certainly has his own suffering in mind but he became an unanticipated prophet of the sufferings of Jesus on Calvary’s cross.

David wrote more biblical songs than anyone else—73 of the 150 Psalms are attributed to the Musician-King. He wrote about a coming leader who would be greater than himself. Since the Holy Spirit was inspiring his words he wrote about a future Messiah with words beyond his own understanding. While Psalm 110 has never been called a typical Christmas Carol that is sort of what it is. David gives a 1000-years-in-advance preview of Jesus as the King, Priest and Victor sent by God from heaven to earth.