Sunday, December 18, 2016

DREAM

• 4th Sunday of Advent
with Matthew 1:18-25
www.FirstChurchBville.com    @FirstUMCBville   @kerrfunk

• We had the children’s musical at the Baptist Church on Wednesday, Fact or Fiction: the Christmas Edition. Game show with Christmas Bible trivia and a message of the changed life of a disciple.
Lyrics: Fact, what is true. Fiction is pretend.
What about dreams?
• 1865 German chemist August Kekulé dreamed the ring-shaped molecular structure for the compound benzene.
Almost 100 years later American biologist James Watson dreamed of a spiral staircase and figured out the double-helix structure of DNA.
• Humans dream every night, about two hours, maybe half a dozen dreams.
Blood flow to the brain increases during dreams, more so than wakefulness.
It’s like brain exercise!
• Sometimes I think we should ask God to speak to us in dreams.
• Joseph received a message from an angel during a dream.
Chose to follow message, despite circumstances.
A long-lasting decision that had long-lasting effects.
What do you do with a good/bad dream?
Do you tell? What do you do with a message dream?
Joseph chose to act as though dream were real.
Newlyweds: now you’re married, do you feel married?
Doesn’t matter, better behave married!
Joseph lived the rest of his life as though his dream were real. Why?
And how do we live? Not everyone believes…
Live with the conviction that the truth of the story is worth living for.
•So discipleship. So Advent message.
Choose to live in expectation of Christ’s real return.
Choose to live in faith that the stories of Jesus are fact not fiction
and that through the real life of Jesus
there are real effects in my life today.
Forgiven, reconciled, hope
Because he lives…

• Hymn 230 O Little Town

Matthew 1:18-25 (CEB)   
18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. 20 As Joseph was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:
23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant
and give birth to a son,
And they will call him, Emmanuel.
(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

24 When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus. X

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