Category: Exhortation

People of God, Christmas can be summarized by that phrase in verse 37: For nothing is impossible with God.  How can a virgin conceive? How can a barren woman in her old age conceive? This is all a part of this great cosmic plan of redemption. At a time when there is no hope, no salvation and deliverance, and when the world is most overtaken by sin and misery, it is then when we must remember: Nothing is impossible with God.

But the greatest of all impossibilities is the Coming of God to His own creation in the Lord Jesus Christ.  As Mary became the servant of the Lord, the Son she would bear becomes the servant of all. In the incarnation, the eternal Son of God takes the form of the servant as a man, but also giving Himself up to man’s rebellion against God, placing Himself under the judgment under which man has fallen in this rebellion, under the curse of death which rests upon Him.[1]

“He makes his own the being of man under the curse, but in order to do away with it. He acts as Lord over this rebellion even as He subjects Himself to it. He frees the creature in becoming a creature. He overcomes the flesh in becoming flesh.” [2] He reconciles the world by serving the world. Continue reading “Christmas Eve Exhortation”

Brothers and sisters, the reading of God’s word is the very voice of God. It is no secret that the modern church has abandoned the importance of the public reading and hearing the word of God. This is one of the central reasons for a biblically illiterate evangelical population. Some will say that the reading of the Scriptures belongs in a private setting, but the Bible will not allow you to keep the public reading away from the congregation. ‘The Spirit uses the oral reading and preaching combined with the congregation’s hearing of the Word in the church to bring life to His people.”[1] The Bible calls us again and again to hear the word of the Lord. It is in hearing the word that we become formed by the word.

This is why our Scripture readings are all framed around a central theme. They come from both covenants, so the people of God can hear the whole counsel of God as one united message proclaiming the glories of the Triune God in every page. My exhortation to you is to hear the Word attentively, respectfully, and joyfully.

When we have whole-heartedly received the word, the minister says “This is the Word of the Lord, and our only response is one of gratitude, and so we answer: Thanks be to God!

Prayer: Our God, your word is truth. May it shape us to become more and more like the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ in whose Name we pray, Amen.

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[1] Meyers, 199.

Editor’s Note: This is a short devotional delivered at Trinitas Christian School in Pensacola.

The Season of Advent teaches us that Christ comes again and again for us, and He will come again at the end of History for us and bring us to a new world of righteousness and glory. And at Christmas we find the hopes of all humanity, the hope of 2,000 years, the hope of Israel, and of the entire world coming to pass in the birth of a little child who is truly flesh, truly human, God of God and Light of Lights. We celebrate the Christmas story only because we celebrate the Easter story. The God/Man born in a manger is the God/Man crucified on a tree, is the God/Man raised to save and set His people free. We give to one another this Christmas because Christ was given for us, we serve one another this Christmas because Christ served us, we rejoice with one another this Christmas because the joy of the world has come.

People of God, we will ask you today: In Whom do you trust? On what do you place your trust? Do you trust in chariots and horses, do you trust in the American Military to defend you from the wiles of the devil? Do you trust in your family lineage? Or do you do trust in the Lord your God, who made heaven and earth; Father, Son, and Spirit, One God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity?

Answering that question means everything to us.  “Everything hinges on how you understand the Bible and on what you profess as biblical truth.” It is not just belief in the Bible; it is belief in the True God of Scriptures. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons all claim to love and trust the Scriptures, but we see clearly that their understanding is very different than ours. We believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, begotten not made. The cults will deny the truth of the Advent Season, which teaches that God became man incarnate.

So there is more than simply saying “No Creed, but the Bible.” In fact, this statement is useless, and we should avoid it all costs. Creeds and confessions are not as authoritative as the Bible, but they still play a crucial role in the life of the Church. They are unavoidable. When someone asks you what you believe, and if you pause and answer with a statement, well, that is a creed. What we are claiming at Providence, and virtually what the Church universal has said for almost two thousand years, is that the Church needs to summarize those things which are most important in the teachings of the Bible. Continue reading “Exhortation: In Whom do you Trust?”

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Paul begins in chapter three by calling us to rejoice in the Lord. In verse 9-11, he calls us to die and then he calls us to know the power of Jesus’ resurrection. This is the Purpose Driven Life: Die and you shall be raised. It won’t sell many books, but this is the call of the apostle.

First, we die. We become like Christ. We know that the Advent of Christ was one of mercy and grace to others. He came as a servant. He came to bring humanity from the rubbish and the stench of Adam’s sin and make us into sweet smelling herbs and spices, a glorified and beautiful humanity to God. When we follow Him, we esteem others better than ourselves. We make meals for those who are sick and recovering, we invite people over for a movie or fellowship during the week, we call them, we send them a card, we smile when we meet, we weep with those who weep. This is all a part of dying to self, because dying to self is to make others alive in Christ.

Secondly, we desire to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. We now live out our faith in the middle of the assembly. Because you are resurrected, you join the resurrected Christ in His mission. You desire resurrected living. This means you forget your former life and former ways, you move forward. You press on toward your goal of Christ-likeness. You have been forgiven in Jesus’ Name, and now in Jesus’ Name you live the life of faithfulness. Do you want to know how to walk like Christ? Paul says look to those who do it better than you. Look to those who are walking as Christ did. Learn from them. Watch them as they imitate Christ. Watch them as they interact with their children. Learn from one another. I will never forget what Randy Booth told us in Advance Family Conference. He said that we are to be 10% more like our neighbor. Not just like him, but 10% more like our neighbor. If we have weaknesses in one area, become 10% more like your neighbor who is strong in that area. In this manner, we become like one another in the ways that reflect Christ-likeness, while maintaining our distinct personalities and gifts, which are so crucial for the well-being of the Church.

I exhort you brother and sisters, to live the life of death and to be raised into the newness of Christ’s image in the year to come. Amen.

On this Advent Season, the sermons will be only from the gospels. We will hear much about the birth of Christ, the context surrounding it, and the cataclysmic effect of Christ’s incarnation. But even in this season, we are also reminded that the gospels depend heavily on the Old Covenant, and in particular, they depend heavily on the prophets and the psalms. So reading from the Prophets, and in particular, the Psalms are a strong part of our liturgy. I have said this before and I will say it again, that approximately 90% of our liturgy is taken from the Scriptures. We sing the Scriptures, we receive assurance from the Scriptures, we hear the Scriptures, and we receive a benediction from the Scriptures. This is purposeful and it is Scriptural. The Scriptures demand that we be saturated with it.

This is one reason why we have a responsive psalm in our liturgy following the singing. We sing a psalm together and we corporately declare the psalm together. One of our goals in the future is that once we have matured in psalm singing, and we are maturing, that whatever psalm we have for responsive reading we will also have for corporate singing.

In part, this is what the responsive psalm is: Talking to one another; speaking the words of Yahweh to one another; echoing the psalmist’s passion to one another, echoing the psalmist longing for worship to one another.

Providence Church is a Scriptural saturated church, and our desire is to be saturated with God’s inspired hymnbook.

This morning I exhort you to use these psalms daily. If you will notice in the bulletin, you will always see next Sunday’s psalm printed for you. We place them there for you so you can familiarize yourself with these texts, so you can be attuned to the phase of the Church Calendar we are currently in.

Another point is that when the pastor leads you in these psalms he is leading you to respond with vigor; to respond with greater joy than the psalmist himself. Why? Because the Psalmist hoped for the coming Messiah, we live in the day of the Messiah’s reign. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray: Almighty God, thank you for the psalms. May we grow into the maturity of the psalmist in our singing and corporate response.

If you have visited other CREC congregations you will notice that the order of things may vary a bit. For instance, some CREC congregations place the Hymn of Faith following the Call to Worship. There is indeed a liturgical rationale for this order of things. But whereas the order of things may vary, the CREC is generally united in the necessity of these hymns of faith as an appropriate response to God’s calling.

Here at Providence, we have two songs–a hymn and a psalm of praise– following the Assurance of Pardon. We believe that once we are forgiven as a people, we then lift our voices together as a people. We will speak about the psalms in future exhortations, but my exhortation to you this morning is to be prepared to lift your voices in singing.

How can you better prepare to lift your voices on Sunday?

a) The first thing to do is to familiarize oneself with the new Songbook. It was mentioned last week that they are heavy and need to be handled with care. In the weeks to come I will be posting our Hymns/Psalms on the Wednesday before the Lord’s Day in my weekly Pastor’s Note, which will include a link to the hymns. I encourage you to listen to each recording at least once.

b) The second important point is to listen as the pianist plays through the first verse. We do that so you will hear the tune and properly transition to this new phase of our liturgy. Repetition is the key. I know sometimes we can be overwhelmed with so much new music, but remember you are storing in your minds and in the minds of your children a rich musical heritage. Our music reflects the greatness of God and His work for us. We are not interested in sentimentalism. We are interested in rich biblical music; not in music that will fade and die in ten years, but music that will be sung by your children and your children’s children unto a thousand generations.

The Psalmist says that we are to enter into God’s courts with praise. We, in the New Creation, are this new temple and house of praise. When we enter into this gathering, it is good and right that we enter with songs of praise. Let us do so this morning with great joy.

As I mentioned last week, our posture is not one of perpetual kneeling, for after confession we rise and hear “…the pastor proclaim the Lord’s forgiveness to all who have publicly confessed their sins and trusted in Christ alone.”[1] We rise because we are no longer in the Old Creation. We rise because Christ has come with authority and power. We rise because Messiah defeated sin on the Third Day.

We rise to hear the Word of the Lord. It is not the pastor who forgives your sins; it is God who forgives your sins. The pastor pronounces as God’s representative what the Word of God pronounces to all who confess their sins. The Assurance of Pardon is God’s assurance of Pardon.

We need God’s forgiveness daily, but how precious it is when we are forgiven together as a body. How precious it is to know that all of us are coming to Christ with our hearts cleansed and purified by the blood of the Lamb. This is the part of the liturgy that causes you to rise from your knees and shout aloud: Thank be to God! Our Sins are Forgiven in Jesus’ Name! Amen.

 

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[1] The Lord’s Service, 188.

The next part of our liturgy is the confession of sins. I think if there is one item that modern churches are quick to dismiss it is the corporate confession of sins. I want to make three observations about the significance of the confession of sins:

a)     The first has to do with the location of the confession in our liturgy. Our confession of sins takes place at the beginning of our liturgy as opposed to the middle or the end. The reason this is important is because we come to the presence of God in the beginning of the liturgy, and not in the end. We as a people do not dare to come into God’s presence without humbling confessing our sins and receiving the forgiveness of Christ. The Psalmist echoes this when he says “if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”[1] We have a corporate written prayer, so that we can come together as a body, indicating that we as a church, and not individuals, are coming together and confessing our sins as a body. Once we confess our sins together as a people, there is no more need to confess our sins during this worship service. After this corporate confession, everything is simply joy, delight, celebration, and feasting with God our Lord.

b)     The second observation is that after corporately confessing, we give you a short time of silence to confess your sins individually. This does not mean that you are going into your private prayer closets separated from the body, but this is your opportunity to confess to God your faults and sins in relationship to one another in the body.

c)     Finally, the posture of our confession is kneeling. Some who are not able to kneel may remain seated, but if you are able kneeling is an appropriate posture of confession. I know that the floor may be a little hard on our knees, but confession is also a painful moment. After all, we have transgressed God’s laws. We confess our sins this morning, because if Christ had never suffered death for us, our posture from now and to the end of our days would be one of perpetual kneeling, but we know the rest of the story. We have forgiveness in Christ Jesus, and after kneeling we stand to hear the assurance that our sins are forgiven in Jesus’ Name.

 

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[1] Jeff Meyers, The Lord’s Service, 181.

This is an especially appropriate day to speak of our liturgy, because the psalm this morning in the sermon has the community worshipping God with their voices. In the same manner, in liturgy there is a community of faith speaking to one another. God calls, we respond together.

After being called, we are greeted. This is the purpose of the salutation. We begin our service in the Name of the Triune God. He is the great host of this celebration. Apart from Him we can do nothing…our worship is meaningless without the power of God to guide us.

Then we come to a universal greeting in the Church of Christ. The pastor hails the congregation with “The Lord be with You” and the people respond “And also with you.” This Hebrew form of greeting arises from God’s promise to be with us. We see this type of response throughout the Bible. In fact, by the end of the third century this greeting was universal within the Church of Christ. When the minister says, The Lord be with you, he is praying that Yahweh will bless the congregation under his leadership. Your response is to desire the same thing for the man God has chosen to lead His people. When you say “and also with you” you are affirming the pastoral office. In the salutation the pastor and the people of God are building a bond of trust. We are coming together declaring that we want to be renewed by God.

We conclude by stating that this service is only possible, because God has rescued sinners and brought them into His sanctuary. His power to create heaven and earth is the same power to help sinners.