Friday, December 25, 2015

Big Money!

Christmas Eve
With Titus 2:11-14
www.FirstChurchBville.com   @FirstUMCBville   @kerrfunk

• You may have seen the announcement about December 2015:
"Five Tuesdays, Five Wednesdays, Five Thursdays is Money Bags – this happens every 823 years. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. Money will arrive within four days. Copy within 11 minutes of reading."
Did you copy and send? I figure it can’t hurt, so I did!

Actually this circumstance happens six times a year, any particular combination every 5-6 years or 11 years depending on Leap year. But people hope!
• Rarer occurrence: Christmas full moon. 1977. 2015. 2034.
Rarer still: Halley’s comet…

• These are not occurrences to put our hope in.
We know rarest and best of hopes:
In Jesus Christ grace and salvation are available to all,
and sanctification!

God’s grace is available to all! 
God cleans us up through Jesus Christ, 
No one is excluded from the offer of salvation, (Ephesians 2:8)
and the offer of salvation is a gift from God. (Romans 6:23)

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:23)

• The salvation (cleans us up) includes two things:
one, forgiveness, saved from sin and consequences of sin
and two, transforms us, empowers us, enables us, saves us FOR godly (clean) living.

• Saved from sin, saved for godly living, all for the glory of God. It’s what we’re designed for.
We are made and redeemed for God’s glory and pleasure.
We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

• Into our world Jesus comes, to live in our hearts.
And we are nourished and sustained through fellowship with God.
In act of communion...

Titus 2:11-14 New International Version (NIV)

11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

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