We all look for safety in strength, from little kids building forts to hide behind to adults building their life on something. But when the God of the universe came to his people to fulfill his promise of salvation, restoration, and peace, he did not come as a warrior king but as a baby born to a teenage peasant girl–small and powerless.

In Isaiah 61 we see how God is still working through His Spirit to heal the brokenhearted and fulfill His Kingdom on earth. The message highlights that believers are not merely observers of this divine narrative but are active participants recruited to rebuild and restore their communities. He also shows how God intertwines individual lives across generations to continue this story of redemption in the present day.

All humans have a desire for home, a longing to be in the place and with the people that feels like “home,” especially for the holidays. But this innate desire is part of a longing for a home we are truly made for. In Isaiah 35, God promises Israel to bring them back home to Zion, to restore them to himself and their home. But no city, no country, no home could meet the glory of the promises God gives. We, like them, still await God’s advent (arrival) to bring is to himself and the home we are truly made for.

Isaiah 11 reveals how God provides the hero humanity needs through Jesus Christ,  the Messiah—the true King—who emerges as an unexpected “chute from the stump of Jesse,” capable of bringing life from what seems dead and hopeless.  Discover how this hero is endowed with the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might, ready to judge with righteousness and restore creation.

Isaiah 2 challenges us to walk with the Lord with both hope and humility.  Hope that God will lead us through the darkness even if we can’t see where we are going, and humility to surrender our pride and truly follow where He is leading us.

As the next step in our series on CCV’s vision and values, this week Dean takes a look at what it takes to be an extended family. As a church, Jesus wants us to recognize how big the family God is putting together really is. There will be people in the family you find shocking, people who you wouldn’t invite to God’s house. But the gospel is for every heart. Everyone needs saving, everyone needs their soul to be lifted by Jesus. Churches are meant to be places where people of all backgrounds can come together and be formed into one family.

What is our hope as Christians? Matt Hemsley walks through the historical perspective and understanding of a Jewish audience hearing Jesus’s words, “Thy Kingdom Come”. Our present hope in Jesus as King, His kingdom here on earth and His return to be King over all.

Unfortunately the first few minutes of Matt Hemsley’s sermon on Isaiah 55 failed to record.

CCV@Home Livestream video link:

https://www.facebook.com/christchurchviennava/videos/555185372035709

John the Baptist, languishing in prison, questions and doubts–Jesus, are you the one? Jesus replies, the sick are healed, dead raised and good news is proclaimed to the poor. The kingdom that Jesus came to bring does not look like any other, but everywhere Jesus goes the effects of the fall are undone. Jesus invites all of us to participate in and experience this Kingdom of God, even if we struggle with skepticism and doubts.

Prepare the way of the Lord, Isaiah declares. But how? To prepare you need to know what you are expecting. Our expectations–what we are looking for in life and from God–affect our ability to receive what God is offering.

“As you go,” the Lord instructs through Isaiah. God plans to bring his kingdom like waters and blossoms in the dessert and he invites his people to anticipate and participate in faith, not just to wait around.

The Christmas season rarely lives up to our expectations. This is because, as Isaiah reveals, what we are really longing for is heaven and shalom. And what we truly need is the knowledge of God, the justice of the judge and the hope of the Messiah. Advent is a season to live into that points us to these deeper needs and wants and can shape our year round lives.

Isaiah calls Israel to trust Yahweh and not the power of the nations, to live in true wisdom not in human and to walk in the Light in the midst of a dark world. Isaiah is the backdrop and message of Advent and the longing of God to come and right all wrongs.