CCC Gainesville | Blog
Your giving toward Faith to Sight is special and sacrificial. Please help us account for these designated funds with:
1. A clear note on the memo line of your check, for example, “X $ to general offering, Y $ to FtS”
or
2. A separate check, also with a clear note in the memo line to designate your check as a gift toward a Faith to Sight pledge.
If you are looking for something to do with your little children this Advent, you might want to check out this little burlap bag sitting on the Advent Resource Table near the children’s Welcome Station. 
We have adapted this little family activity from a French Christmas tradition. On the first day of Advent your family can “build” the manger (pieces and directions included), and then each day through out the rest of Advent leading up to the birth of Christ, children can add a piece of straw to the manger. They are preparing the manger for Jesus to be born. On Christmas day when you celebrate the birth of Christ your children may add Jesus. The point of this tradition is to allow children to play a part in preparing for the birth of Christ.
In the French tradition the children add the straw each time they do their Advent prayers or kind deeds through out the season. The point of this activity is to give children a concrete way to see that Advent is about waiting and preparing. Waiting for our Savior to come. Preparing our hearts for his arrival. So if you are interested in adding this to your family tradition, each time you sit together and read your Advent meditations, scriptures and prayers, your children can take part in preparing for Jesus’ birthday.
Advent starts this Sunday, so if you want to stop by the Welcome Station and pick one up, please do. We are asking for a $3 donation. If you want more than one, as a gift for a friend that’s fine, extras cost $3.
If you do not do regular bible time or devotions with your children, Advent is a great time to get the ball rolling as there are so many resources out there for families. We have provided copies of the Jesse Tree Advent devotional for your family if you do not already have one. Stop by and pick up your copy this Sunday.
The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State
Hebrews 3:1 encourages us to consider Jesus. It goes on to say two things about our Lord.
1.) Apostle: representing God before men
2.) High Priest: representing men before God
J.I. Packer lays out beautifully, per usual, the glory of Jesus as our mediator:
MEDIATION
JESUS CHRIST IS THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 TIMOTHY 2:5
Every member of our fallen and rebellious race is by nature “hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7) and stands under God’s wrath (i.e., the punitive rejection whereby as Judge he expresses active anger at our sins, Rom. 1:18; 2:5-9; 3:5-6). Reconciliation of the warring parties is needed, but this can occur only if God’s wrath is somehow absorbed and quenched and man’s anti-God heart, which motivates his anti-God life, is somehow changed. In mercy, God the angry Judge sent his Son into the world to bring about the needed reconciliation. It was not that the kindly Son acted to placate his harsh Father; the initiative was the Father’s own. In Calvin’s words, “in an inconceivable way he loved us even when he hated us,” and his gift to us of the Son as our sin bearer was the fruit of that love (John 3:14-16; Rom. 5:5-8; 1 John 4:8-10). In all his mediatorial ministry the Son was doing his Father’s will.
Objectively and once for all, Christ achieved reconciliation for us through penal substitution. On the cross he took our place, carried our identity as it were, bore the curse due to us (Gal. 3:13), and by his sacrificial blood-shedding made peace for us (Eph. 2:16; Col. 1:20). Peace here means an end to hostility, guilt, and exposure to the retributive punishment that was otherwise unavoidable—in other words, pardon for all the past and permanent personal acceptance for the future. Those who have received reconciliation through faith in Christ are justified and have peace with God (Rom. 5:1, 10). The mediator’s present work, which he carries forward through human messengers, is to persuade those for whom he achieved reconciliation actually to receive it (John 12:32; Rom. 15:18; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Eph. 2:17).
Jesus is “the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 9:15; 12:24)—that is, the initiator of a new relationship of conscious peace with God, going beyond what the less effective Old Testament arrangements for dealing with the guilt of sin could ever secure (Heb. 9:11-10:18).
One of Calvin’s great contributions to Christian understanding was his observation that the New Testament writers expound Jesus’ mediatorial ministry in terms of the threefold office (“office” means set task, or defined role) of prophet, priest, and king.
The three aspects of Christ’s work are found together in the letter to the Hebrews, where Jesus is both the messianic king, exalted to his throne (1:3, 13; 4:16; 2:9), and also the great High Priest (2:17; 4:14-5:10; chs. 7-10), who offered himself to God as a sacrifice for our sins. In addition, Christ is the messenger (“apostle,” the one sent to announce, 3:1) through whom the message of which he is himself the substance was first spoken (2:3). In Acts 3:22 Jesus is called a prophet for the same reason that Hebrews calls him an apostle, namely, because he instructed people by declaring to them the Word of God.
While in the Old Testament the mediating roles of prophet, priest, and king were fulfilled by separate individuals, all three offices now coalesce in the one person of Jesus. It is his glory, given him by the Father, to be in this way the all-sufficient Savior. We who believe are called to understand this and to show ourselves his people by obeying him as our king, trusting him as our priest, and learning from him as our prophet and teacher. To center on Jesus Christ in this way is the hallmark of authentic Christianity.
Tomorrow our gifted and godly musicians will sing this song. Dwell on these words as they bring us hope in Jesus.
By Thy Mercy
1. Jesus, Lord of life and glory,
Bend from heaven thy gracious ear;
While our waiting souls adore thee,
Friend of helpless sinners, hear:
2. From the depth of nature’s blindness,
From the hardening power of sin,
From all malice and unkindness,
From the pride that lurks within,
Refrain: By thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord
By thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord, good Lord.
3. When temptation sorely presses,
In the day of Satan’s power,
In our times of deep distresses,
In each dark and trying hour.
4. When the world around is smiling,
In the time of wealth and ease,
Earthly joys our hearts beguiling,
In the day of health and peace. Refrain
5. In the weary hours of sickness,
In the times of grief and pain,
When we feel our mortal weakness,
When all human help is vain.
6. In the solemn hour of dying,
In the awful judgment day,
May our souls, on thee relying,
Find thee still our Rock and Stay
