Category: Exhortation

Exhortation on Mother’s Day

I John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

The love of our God is an unmatched love; it is incomparable. It triumphs human misery, it is comforting, it covers us with care, and it instills peace to his children. In our own lives, God has placed mothers to echo that love to her own children. The love of a Biblical mother is sacrificial. She will care for her own no matter what the dangers are. She will pick you up when you fall, she will calm your fears, she will speak words of wisdom, she is filled with strength, and she is the queen of her household. Not only because of that, but because God has placed such selfless love in our mothers, we are to honor them. We are to honor their beauty, their gentleness, their gifts, their labors, their undying commitment to their sons and daughters. Behold, in all our days, especially today, we are called to rise up and call her blessed. My dear sisters, Happy Mother’s Day!

Let us pray together: Our Lord, we thank you for our mothers, for they are more precious than jewels.

Exhortation: Divine Habitation

I John 3:24: All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

One Puritan writer referred to I John 3 as the trial of divine habitation. It is a trial because it is conditioned by obedience to God’s commandments. If we are to abide in the Father we must live by the eternal principles of God’s authoritative word. We know that He abides in us because we produce works of righteousness; works that please the Father; works that have as its sole purpose the exaltation of our great God and the well-being of our brothers and sisters in the faith. God the Spirit abides in us. So how can darkness in any way overwhelm the light of the Spirit? The answer is that it cannot! Since the Spirit of grace abides in us, we abide in the works of the Spirit.

This Johannine exhortation is a call to be consistent with the Spirit of God, which dwells in you. When you find yourself living inconsistently with the Spirit, then you are called to live consistently with repentance. And we will do that corporately and individually as we come to confess our sins. Bring your sins to God and find comfort in the Third Person of the Trinity.

Prayer: Gracious Spirit, dwell in us and teach us to cry Abba Father.

Call to Worship:

Psalm 20:1 May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!
May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!
2 May he send you help from the sanctuary
and give you support from Zion!
3 May he remember all your offerings
and regard with favor your ascension offerings. Selah

Salutation:

Pastor: Christ is risen!

People: He is risen indeed!

Exhortation:

This morning our Psalter reading and New Testament reading from Acts stress a similar concept:  the idea of unity. Psalm 133 says that it is good and pleasant when the people of God dwell in unity and Acts 4 says that the effects of the Resurrection proclamation is that believers were of one mind and one soul. This is remarkable! Looking at our evangelical lanscape today, unity is not on top of the agenda. We cannot deny that in a fallen world there will be disagreements over all sorts of matters, but in a fallen world the people of God must be united in what is essential.  We must be united in the truths that have guided the apostolic church all these centuries. We will confess these truths in our Apostle’s Creed; we will confess together: the third day he rose again from the dead. But to make this affirmation is also to affirm that you have also been raised from the dead into newness of life. There are a lot of intricacies to this truth. To be raised from the dead is to be united with Christ; to be united with Christ is to be united to His body. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be united to Christ and act as if the others united to Christ are not part of the same body.  Brothers and Sisters, if we are united to Christ, we are united to the concerns of the body. One body, one faith.  That is why this idea of unity is so difficult to accomplish. We want to be in unity, but only in the theological sense, not in the practical and communal sense. This simply is unbiblical. To be in unity with one another is to love one another, to be hospitable toward one another, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice. To live in unity is no easy task once it passes from our minds to our hands, but there is no other way to do this. I exhort you this morning to live resurrected lives and this means in unity with one another.

Let us pray: Unite us, O Lord, as you are united, Father, Son and Spirit. One God united in perfect fellowship for all eternity.

19 Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the Lord.
20 This is the gate of the Lord;
the righteous shall enter through it.
21 I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
22 The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
23 This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

What does it mean to live a resurrection life? What does it mean to live with the hope of the resurrection? Paul seems to deal with this question extensively in I Corinthians 15. In fact, he ends that long passage by stating that our labors are not in vain in the Lord. We are called to pursue all that we do with gusto. We ought to labor with our eyes fixed in the gospel. Because all that we do ultimately is for the sake of the world; our marriages, our parenting, our obedience as children, and our relationships. When we leave this family this morning, we will go into our separate families and live as individual families the gospel of the resurrection.

One of the main differences between our living and the unbeliever’s living is that we live as if there is a future resurrected life in the New Heavens and New Earth and they live in disbelief of this future life. If you have no belief in a future life, then there is room for immorality and unethical practices. In the words of Matthew Henry, “we can live like beasts, and eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” But for us in covenant with God, every time we fall into sin, it is a sign that we are disbelieving the resurrection with our actions. We have the resurrection, because we are resurrected saints, baptized in the Triune Name, created unto good works. To live the resurrection life is to live it with our heart, mind and soul. So, let us labor in the Lord, then we will eat, drink, and feast for when we die we will live forever in the presence of our Resurrected Savior.

Prayer: Our Reigning Lord, our labor will not be in vain because you have been raised from the dead and thus been vindicated by the Father.

Exhortation, Fifth Sunday in Lent

In the 16^th century, Luther nailed to the door of Wittenberg the 95 theses, meant as a way of beginning a discussion concerning the abuses of the Roman Church. The very first of Luther’s propositions states that the whole of the Christian life is to be a life of repentance.  Repentance is that inglorious word to the sinner’s heart, but that glorious response in the sight of God. God loves a repentant life. David knew this well; in fact, he penned the most profound song of repentance, which is Psalm 51. King David establishes for us a pattern of repentance that we are to follow in our lives.  David tells us that he knows his transgressions; He knows what has offended God. He is so intimately tuned with the word of Yahweh that his heart is heavy in the presence of sin. It was so heavy that he could not bear its filth, so he prays; create in me a clean Heart, O God. The prayer of the saint is that God would renew his actions, so they would conform to the actions of His beloved Son. If our life is to be a life of repentance, we need to know the Son who died for us to make us clean. For if He had not died, Psalm 51 would meaningless. But thanks be to God, we have a redeemer of God’s elect, Christ our Lord.

Prayer:  Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.

Let us worship the Triune God.

Hear the word of the Lord:

Psalm 93:1-2

The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
Your throne is established from of old;
you are from everlasting.

Have you ever considered the implications of this worship service? Have you actually considered what happens when we gather as one family to worship Father, Son, and Spirit? According to Paul, we are seated in heavenly places. The One who has elected us before the world began to be recipients of His grace, also takes us to be in His presence. When we confess our sins, we are confessing them before the Throne of Grace, when we praise Him in song, we are praising Him together with the angels, when we confess our common faith, we are confessing with the saints gone before us, when we hear the word preached we are hearing the Word of God to His people, when we eat bread and drink wine, we are communing with Christ in the heavenlies. He is feeding us, not we ourselves. In the end, all things are gifts from God so that no one may boast.

Let us Pray.

Our God, You made us alive in Christ Jesus so that we may be raised to newness of life and to worship you in the heavenlies. Teach us to worship you not as ordinary sinners, but as resurrected saints, for we desire to walk after your truth.

Exhortation

Third Sunday in Lent, March 15^th

Psalm 95:1-3

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.

Good morning and welcome to our worship.

The apostle Paul says that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. How can it be folly? It is the greatest word of all. It is the word of eternal life. However, Paul says that it is folly to those who are perishing. For us who are being saved it is the power of God. Paul speaks of two groups of people: Those who hear the word and call it foolish and those who hear the word and call it the power of God. Paul is speaking of an antithesis; a great gulf between the thinking of this world and the thinking of the covenant believer. Apart from the work of the Spirit, when an unbeliever hears the word of God preached or the sacraments administered, they think it is foolish. Why would we want to listen to such non-sense? Why would we want to drink a cup of wine and eat a piece of bread? It is all foolish, the unbeliever says. The covenant member hears the word and rejoices in God’s revelation; the covenant member eats bread and drinks wine and responds with grateful hearts to the goodness of God. There is a great gulf fixed between the believer and unbeliever. If this is what Paul says, then why do Christians not live in light of this antithesis? Why do we compromise our ideas with the ideas of the world? Paul says that we cannot compromise our message. Our duty is to live out this Christian message.  Our duty is to be committed to the message of the cross; our duty is to teach our children the message of the cross without compromise. Out duty is to believe in the Christ of the cross no matter what they may say. The church will only reclaim her rightful place of honor in this world, when generations of fathers and mothers and children and their children’s children learn that the word of the cross is the power of God unto salvation.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, deliver us from the compromise that has led so many to an abyss. Restore our joy and commitment to the power of your righteous Word.  May we bring our thoughts captive to your Lordship and live in light of your revelation. May we breathe the words of life and may we speak the words of life for the glory of our Lord who suffered on the cruel tree to give us life everlasting.

Call to Worship: Psalm 30:4-5

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.  Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Exhortation: Run the Race

I Corinthians 9:24-27

In the early church there were two exaggerated views of sports. One was the Greco-Roman view, which promoted physical attractiveness and appeased the pagan gods, but they downplayed the spiritual significance of sports. On the other hand, the Gnostics emphasized the spiritual by minimizing the significance of the body. For the Gnostics, the soul was trapped in the body and it would finally be set free at death. The early church strived to find a proper view of the body and soul. Clement of Alexandria coined a phrase that helped nuance the Christian perspective on sports: “physical activity, yes; cult of the body, no.” Paul uses the illustration of a runner in I Corinthians 9 to make a point about how we are to be discipline in order to win the prize. We are to balance our spiritual lives with our physical lives; we are not to give so much emphasis to our spirits that we forsake the body as the Gnostics did. Nor are we to spend so much time perfecting our bodies that we forget our Spirits as the Greeks did. Rather we are to discipline our lives, so that together as a covenant community we pursue to serve one another, as Paul served in proclaiming the gospel.

For us this morning, a Christian perspective on sports tells us that: Our dignity as human beings is grounded in our being created in the image and likeness of God, a unity of body and soul. God gives each of us varying talents, including athletic ones; the reason we develop these gifts is not merely to receive a perishable prize, but the imperishable prize of service to God and to others.

Prayer: Our Father, our bodies are gifts from you and our souls are gifts from you. May we pursue, body and soul, the imperishable and may we not run aimlessly as those without hope, but may we run the race with full conviction that you are our eternal reward. Amen.

Psalm 147:12-13

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.

Welcome to our Covenant Worship.

The Apostle Paul says that He has made himself a servant of all. He served them with his life and even his death. In the same manner our Lord came to serve in His life and in His death. Paul’s service was actually part of his evangelistic mission. He writes in I Corinthians 9 that He became a servant so that He might win more to the gospel of grace. Servanthood becomes an apostolic method to win those outside of Christ. If this meant sacrificing his tradition, He did it. If it meant not eating meat, He did it. Why? Because He did it all for the sake of the gospel. The gospel was greater than his differences with the weaker brother. For Paul, if it did not violate the law of God, he would do it for the sake of the gospel. Can we be imitators of Paul as he imitated His Lord? Beloved, let us serve one another in the body, but let us serve those outside the body also. They are the ones in need of grace. Paul says: “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” Paul is so selfless that He wants everyone to embrace the blessings of the gospel. How selfless are we this morning?

Prayer: Teach us, O Lord to love your gospel and doing so, to live the life of a servant; the life of the cross, the life of your beloved Son who became a servant of us all by dying the death of the cross. In the name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.