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How to use it: After watching/listening to this week’s message, from December 4, 2022, use the questions to go deeper into the message, with your group…or on your own. The questions will introduce you to the topic, reflect content from the sermon, go ‘Beyond the Message’, & get you thinking about practical applications for your life.

1. Is there part of the biblical story you have hard time understanding or accepting? If so, why is that?

2. Read Gen 3:15 and recall what Pastor Mark said the “protoevangelium” is.

   a. Thinking about Jesus’ birth, ministry, and death, how did Satan “strike his heel” (i.e. how Satan try to hinder or stop Jesus)? How did Jesus “crush Satan’s head?”

   b. Given that God so quickly declared the “first Gospel” after sin entered the world, what does this tell us about God?

3. According to Matt 2:1, the wisemen came from the East to find “the one born king of the Jews.”

   a. What explanations for the Bethlehem star have you heard?

   b. Pastor Mark suggested the star was God’s “Shekinah Glory;” a visible manifestation of God. What do the following passages tell us about God’s presence? Exod 13:21-22; Exod 19:16-18; Exod 40:34-38; 2 Chron 7:1; 2 Cor 4:6; Rev 21:3, 22-24

4. One of core doctrines of church is the virgin birth of Jesus. Do you struggle to accept this? Why, why not?

   a. Look up or recall the definition of Jesus as the “Incarnation.”

   b. Read the following passages and describe what makes Jesus the only one worthy and able to by our sufficient sacrifice for the sin of all. Isa 7:14; Isa 9:6; John 1:1, 14; Gal 4:4-5; Phil 2:6-11.

5. Reflect upon Rom 5:18-19 and then go to time of prayer thanking God for the gift of Jesus and for his initiative in sending Jesus and making a way for our salvation.