Chapel Hill Bible Church - Sermons

In Ephesians 3:14–21, Paul pulls back the curtain on how he prays for the church—and it may not be what we expect. Rather than focusing on circumstances or outcomes, Paul prays for inner strength, deep roots in Christ’s love, and a growing grasp of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace. This prayer reveals what truly matters for the health and maturity of God’s people. As we listen in on Paul’s words, we learn not only what to pray for a church, but how God delights to work powerfully within His people for His glory and their good.

For our last Sunday in Advent, we looked at Jesus as our Savior in the birth narrative in Matthew. It is a brief passage and one that contains the whole Bible in a sense. Jesus is our promised, incarnate, Savior, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

This third Sunday of advent, we focus on Joy and the work of Christ as our King. God had told Israel they could have a king, but the catch is he had to be totally different than the kings of the nations. He had to be a pastoral king, a fatherly king, the king that served the purposes of the kingdom. Kingship is a really big theme in the Bible, and unfortunately in the Old Testament there are a lot of broken examples. But at the end of the day, they pointed to the perfect King. And we will revel in Him this Sunday.

This second week of Advent, we now look at the picture called Priest. Christ is our Great High Priest and that changes everything. We will look at Hebrews 7 as the author paints for us the Old Testament origins of the priesthood and its goodness but also its incompleteness. We need a perfect priest and a priest who finished the work of purification, once and for all. So, we see that Jesus is and always was the ultimate and forever priest who not only leads but actually is the purity of God's people. And, among other things, that brings PEACE (the theme of the second Sunday of advent), forever peace, powerful peace, experienced peace.

This week begins our Advent Series. Picture the series as four paintings, side by side. I know there are things called triptych, a 3 panel painting, but I am not sure if there are quadtychs? These paintings reveal a different facet of our Christ. One is the Prophet (this Sunday). One is the Priest. One is the King. And the final one is the Savior. We will trace how these four offices were promised in the OT, fulfilled in Jesus, and then what that means for us today and for Advent as we not only gaze into that paintings, but discover we are one of the characters God has painted into the frame.