The Big Idea: The Messenger IS the message.

Hebrews 1:1-4 John 1:1-5, 9-14

The Privileges of the King Philippians 2:5-11

The Power of the King Paradoxical power: Power that looks for all the world like weakness, intervention that seems indistinguishable from nonintervention. More than that, it is guaranteed to stop no determined evildoers whatsoever.

“The New Testament proclaims an unlikely Savior. The work of Jesus in his incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension makes no worldly sense at all. The portrait the Gospels paint is that of a lifeguard who leaps into the surf, swims to the drowning girl, and then, instead of doing a cross-chest carry, drowns with her, revives three days later, and walks off the beach with assurances that everything, including the apparently still dead girl, is hunky-dory.”

“God doesn’t force people to behave. God doesn’t stop sinners from sinning—he doesn’t stop murderers from murdering. Of course, he does make exceptions, but those are exceptions, not the rule. And at the end of all the doing, he simply disappeared, leaving as far as anybody has been able to see in 2,000 years or so: no apparent city, no effective Kingdom able to make the world straighten up and fly right. The whole operation began as a mystery, continued as a mystery, came to fruition as a mystery, and to this day continues to function as a mystery. Since Noah, God has evidently had almost no interest in using direct line power to fix up the world. Why? You ask. Well, the first answer is, I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. God’s reasons are even more hidden than His methods.” - Robert Farrar Capon

The Priorities of the King Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus accomplishes things in HIS OWN TIME and HIS OWN WAY: ● He turns 5 loaves and 2 fish into an all-time eat out for 5,000 men, plus women and children. ● Instead of circumventing death, he rises from the dead. ● He does take rulership of this world, but through resurrection, not political power.

RESPONSE: ● I Make Three Confessions: 1. I want to understand the ways of God. 2. I want to know and trust King Jesus . 3. I will follow King Jesus in spite of my discomfort with His methods. ● I will share my experience today with someone in my Oikos.