November 29, 2020
Upcoming Events and Notices
San Diego Country remains in the highest COVID-19 risk category of Purple/Widespread. The State of California guidelines for San Diego County states that all worship services should be conducted outdoor. And given the challenges of weather and logistics, we have made the decision to return to hold our Lord's Day worship service online only.
Please join us 10 AM, November 29, for worship. You can participate in this week's service via YouTube here. If technical issues prevent the livestream, a video of the service will be available later in the day. Further information will be made available Sunday afternoon via a separate email.
You can find the order of worship and songs here.
You can find the sermon from the November 22, 2020 service here.
November 29 (Lord's Day 11:15 AM): Please join us for fellowship after the worship service via Zoom: Meeting ID: 879 4595 5692
December 2 (Wednesday 7 PM): Please join us for for "Knowing God" Zoom study. This week's study will cover chapter 11 — "Thy Word Is Truth." Meeting ID: 831 0828 6050
Thank you for your continued support of Grace Fallbrook (PCA). Your loving support makes the proclamation of the gospel and the building up of the saints possible. Please continue to mail in your gifts and offerings to our church treasurer, Bruce Summers. In addition, our church website now features online giving. Please visit the church website and click on "Give" which you will find in the upper left corner of our church's website. When you click on "Give Online Now" button on that page, you will be directed to the PCA Foundation where you can give towards Grace Fallbrook (PCA).
Before We Worship
This week's Thanksgiving celebration, as well as the upcoming Christmas and New Year's Day, give us opportunities to get together with our family. And it often happens that some of the same stories are repeated over and over at our family gatherings. Children may roll their eyes and protest, "This again?" But those of us who are older understand the importance of shared stories. For these shared stories, our shared experiences, have made us who we are and continue to define us.
Our celebration of Christ's first advent is much the same. We gather as God's family, and retell the stories that have shaped us and continue to mold us. So as we enter into the Advent season, we remember the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In this first week of the Advent season our meditations focus on the gift of hope. The Immanuel prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was given to a nation amidst God's judgment. The coming of Immanuel would turn their sorrow and gloom into joy. So Israel hoped for the fulfillment of this promise.
But this promise would not be fulfilled in order to give earthly political relief to Israel. Rather, the Immanuel prophecy was fulfilled in Matthew 1:18–25, with the climactic announcement that Jesus "will save his people from their sins." Of course! Israel's very difficult predicament in Isaiah was the result of their sin. So what good is a political relief unless the problem of sin is dealt with? Indeed, Jesus came to deal with the root problem of sin, to save his people from it.
As we remember Christ's first Advent, we continue to hope. For we are not yet fully delivered from sin. While we are no longer condemned before God as sinners, and while sin no longer has dominion over us, we continue to struggle against sin, and we long to be freed from it. Indeed, our great hope is, as the hymn "It Is Well with My Soul" eloquently expresses it: "O Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend, "Even so" — it is well with my soul!"
Christ's first Advent reminds us that we are a people of hope. Hope, for those who have hoped in God for salvation were not disappointed. Hope, for we look forward to the glory of Christ's second Advent. Hope, because it makes us who we are.