Over the next four weeks, we will take a look at Four Dimensions on the Arrival of the Christ. This season in the life of the Christian Church is known as ‘Advent,’ which comes from the Latin, adventus, which means arrival. The idea here is that, sometimes there are people and events that are beyond our ability to comprehend in one look. It took four gospels, four different perspectives, to attempt to give us a full understanding of who Jesus is and why he came…but even one of those authors confessed that it wouldn’t be enough. Combine the magnitude of that person with the intensity and significance of his coming, and we are not able to grasp the fullness of Advent in one look.

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, one author says, “Name any historic speech and you’ll find that Jesus’s sermon outweighs them all. It’s what the Declaration of Independence is to the United States, what Martin Luther King, Jr.’ s “I Have a Dream” speech was to the civil rights movement, and then some. Everything that’s been written or spoken pales in comparison to these soul-healing, world-changing, God-glorifying words of Jesus.” (Villodas, loc 134) Simple enough for anyone to understand, the depths of this sermon take a lifetime to unpack. The simplicity of the Kingdom of God is laid out for us here, Jesus invites all who would follow him to walk this narrow path.

One of the most vexing questions when it comes to being a Christian is: What does it mean to live a holy life in an unholy world, and how do we do it? As Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, the Holy Spirit is remaking us from the inside out to be more like Jesus. We are called to live out that inner transformation in our daily lives, but exactly what that means and how that looks has challenged Christians and the church for 2,000 years. Through the middle portion of 1 Corinthians, chapters 5-10, Paul gets down to the nitty gritty with them and points the way for us. Through this series, we’ll look at several ethical challenges we face as well as work through the tension of trying to be holy in an unholy world.

It’s something we, as Christians, do every week, it’s a genre of music we listen to all the time, but what, exactly, is ‘worship’?  In 1 Corinthians 11-14 and 16, we learn not just what worship is but also what God intends for us in our worship of Him.  Worship is more than the music we listen to in our car, and more than just showing up to church on Sunday morning.  Through this series, we’ll see what it means to worship God in fullness and truth.

The most important, essential event and doctrine of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In 1 Corinthians 15:14, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”  Everything rises and falls on the resurrection of Christ.  Through this series, we’ll see how Scripture helps us explore the depths and wonder of the resurrection and why it’s not just essential to the Christian faith, but our lives as well.

One of the hardest things to embrace as a Christian, whether you’ve been walking with Jesus for a few decades or a few days, is how opposite the values and way of living of the Kingdom of God are from the values and lifestyle of our world and culture. One might say that Jesus lays out the vision and values of the Kingdom of God in the Gospels, and then the Epistles constantly call us back to it because we are so prone to wander from it. The truth is that the Kingdom of God takes the values and lifestyle of this world and flips it upside down, and there is no better example of how hard it is for us to accept this as Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.