The Christmas Tree

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“Fear doesn’t deserve your obedience.”

~Jackie Hill Perry (1989-present), Author, poet, and artist

“We fear men so much because we fear God so little.”

~William Gurnall (1616-1679), Anglican clergyman

“The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else.”

~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), Scottish teacher and evangelist

“…All the evil in this world
Can be traced back to not fearing the Lord…
And if fear of the Lord is a fountain of life
Then not fearing the Lord must lead to death
And that’s where we all stand
In the prophet Isaiah chapter 11
We find a prophecy about a Savior to come
And it says in verse 3 that His delight
Shall be in the fear of the Lord
That Savior is none other than Jesus Christ
Who lived a life of perfect obedience to God’s law
Jesus feared God perfectly
And He died on the cross and rose from the grave
To save His people from their sins
So that all who trust Him can joyfully walk
In the fear of the Lord Forever.”

~Eshon Burgundy w/ Shai Linne

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

~C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and theologian

“The [Christian] message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.”

~J.I. Packer, 1926-2020, Theologian, cleric, and author

SERMON PASSAGE

Isaiah 11:1-10 (ESV)
1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
9 They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

10 In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be Glory…