Tag: God

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Communion Meditation: God Has Made It Clear

The good news of the Kingdom is that Christ has conquered the devil. But how He conquered is the important part of this text. He conquered Satan not by arguing with temptation, but by rebuking temptation with God’s Word.

He did not allow the devil to set the rules for the game. The rules were set long ago. We are not to give the devil the privilege of interpreting what God has made so clear.

We come to this table this morning with the full assurance that Word and Sacrament are clear means of grace for us this morning. God gives us His word for our nourishment and He gives us Bread and Wine as eternal signs that no temptation is greater than that which we can bear, but God is faithful and just to provide us a way to escape it.

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Exhortation Series on Church Membership: Striving for Unity

We have had a couple of extraordinary years as a Church. God has richly favored us. As a sign of this favor, we will be adding new members this coming Sunday. And part of being a member of Providence means abiding by a common covenant; sharing a common agenda.

In the next few weeks I would like to explore very briefly the covenants we make with one another and this congregation.

Our Church Covenant states that we “joyfully and solemnly enter into a covenant with the members of Providence Church.” And this is the first of those covenants:

We commit to walk together in Christian love through the power of the Holy Spirit and to strive for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

This is taken directly from Ephesians four where the apostle Paul says that we are to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3).” In an age where church divisions are quite common, the Bible calls us to do something very uncommon: to work hard at unity. What does this mean? This means as a member you have to do something. You can’t simply sit passively going through the motions of membership. You actually have to work at something, and in this case working to ensure that– for the next 3 months to 30 years, or however long God keeps you in our midst—Providence Church continues to be a model of peace to the world.

The difficulty of keeping the peace is that you can’t simply lock yourself up in a closet, because that would be easy; but walking together in Christian love means loving in context; loving those around you. This is what is expected of you as a member of this congregation: to embody a theology of love. Some of you come from broken environments where divisions were expected and it is your duty to make this into an alternative city; a city that functions differently

One powerful way we begin to exercise this Christian love is by coming together today and walking together in this liturgy: smiling, singing, and striving to make this a house of peace, through the Spirit who is Himself the bringer of peace.

Prayer: Our God, apart from you peace is impossible, but with you peace is our great agenda. Mature this body of believers to love, serve, and bring the shalom of God to one another, through Christ, our Peace, Amen.

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Peace and Destruction

“He [Christ] came to bring peace, to be sure, but the peace that He came to bring must be built upon the complete destruction of the power of darkness.” –Cornelius Van Til

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Communion Meditation: Manna from Heaven

This marks the end of the Pentecost Season, and thus the end of the church calendar. The Psalmist says that “In God we have boasted continually,

and we will give thanks to His name forever.” This is a day to boast in the God we serve. We boast in Him for who He is, what He has done, and we give thanks because God never ceases to display His abundant love to His children. We are participants in this great thanksgiving agenda. Every time we sit and eat and drink together we are demonstrating to the world that we have abandoned a life of selfishness and pride, and thanksgiving now forms us a people.

The table of our Lord is a table of finality. The table is the final act before God commissions us into the world to serve our Risen Lord. And so as we come to the end of the Church Year, let us respond with thanksgiving, for God has led us through this journey of exile and deliverance, and now He will lead us to the expectation of the Manna who will come from heaven to be given and broken for us.

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Communion Meditation: The One and the Many

This Trinitarian life is given for us in many ways. The God who is Three and One gives us Bread and Wine in the midst of the congregation. The Oneness of this body is joined with the Many bodies worldwide forming the glorious body of Christ.

As we eat and drink, remember our oneness in Christ, but also remember our diversity. We are not robots made the same way with the same personalities, rather we are image-bearers, or better, worshiping humanity, made differently, but exalting as One the One who is One and Three.