Category: Exhortation

Today marks the first Sunday of Advent. It is the beginning of a rich season of anticipation and preparation.

For centuries Christians have used the month prior to the celebration of Christ’s incarnation to ready their hearts and their homes for the great festival.

Advent is a time to consider our lives in light of our calling. We will be busy with many things in the weeks ahead, but let us not be too busy to consider the magnificent descent of God for us in human flesh. Let’s place ourselves in the story of our forefathers and walk with them as they sung and hoped for their redeemer.

This is the beginning of a new year; a time to re-consider our walk and ask: “Have persevered in Christ-likeness?” If Christ did become man for us have we become man and woman as he expects of us? This is a season of examination; and it will not take long to realize that we have failed to live as we should.

In this season, we will sing great hymns of expectations; great hymns pertaining to Christ’s coming for us. This will cause us to anticipate even more the season ahead. The best way to prepare for the coming of the Lord is to make straight His pathway in our hearts. Let us do so even now as we pray:

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ever faithful to your promises and ever close to your Church: the earth rejoices in hope of the Savior’s coming and looks forward with longing to his return at the end of time. Prepare our hearts and remove the sadness that hinders us from feeling the joy and hope which his presence will bestow, for he is Lord for ever and ever. Amen.

For the Church, the last Sunday of the year is not in late December, but today. This is the last Sunday of the Church Year. We have undergone a myriad of emotions in these last 12 months only to go through them again beginning next Sunday. One reason we follow the Church Year is because we are a Christo-centric people. We are a people shaped by Christ and His Gospel, and so, we never tire of hearing of Jesus’s birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. We never tire of hearing about the gospel story because the gospel story has now become our story.

As we prepare this week for the Season of Advent, Providence will provide booklets with readings and devotionals for the entire season of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. We have used them for the last few years and they have proved to be a valuable resource during this Season.

The season of expectation is nigh. This morning, what is your expectation as a member or visitor in this Lord’s Day? Is your expectation to be renewed by God? Is your expectation to grow in grace? Is your expectation to commune with one another? Is your expectation to lift up your voices in adoration? Is your expectation to meet our Lord at His table? May these be our expectations today! Believe this and rejoice.

Robert Jenson argues that theology is “the church’s enterprise, and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and solitary church of the creeds.”[1] That is to say, the Church has its boundaries. To study the Bible and God we need to have certain presuppositions. God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. We believe in the Communion of Saints. If a church abandons these central ideas she is doing theology in vain.

This is All Saints’ Day. As we celebrate the great actors in God’s history/play, we are celebrating men and women who did theology in the context of the holy, catholic, and apostolic church. They were not isolationists, they did not drink of the wine of the individualist, but rather they discovered that studying the Scriptures happened most effectively when there was proper accountability, faithful ministers, and pure worship.

Let us come this morning as worshipers of Christ in his holy Church.

Prayer: How shining and splendid are your gifts, O Lord
which you give us for our eternal well-being
Your glory shines radiantly in your saints, O God
In the honour and noble victory of the martyrs.
The white-robed company follow you,
bright with their abundant faith;
They scorned the wicked words of those with this world’s power.
For you they sustained fierce beatings, chains, and torments,
they were drained by cruel punishments.
They bore their holy witness to you
who were grounded deep within their hearts;
they were sustained by patience and constancy.
Endowed with your everlasting grace,
may we rejoice forever, O Christ, in your goodness,
grant to us the gracious heavenly realms of eternal life, through Christ. Amen.

God likes to move stuff. Motion is life and beauty and productivity. Stillness is stagnation and corruption and death.[1] We have spoken quite often in our Samson series of his mission. Though we assume we know what a mission is, we tend to overlook how the idea of mission is used in the Bible. The Bible views a mission in terms of covenant. We can then ask: what is a covenant? When you hear the word covenant think of relationship. Mission and covenant are related in every way. Samson was sent on a mission. He was sent out to establish a relationship with the Philistines. Sometimes these relationships are hostile, sometimes they are friendly. Sometimes they embody both hostility and friendship. In fact, this is how Samson’s life is revealed. God’s covenant always results in one of two reactions: peace or war. To quote my friend, Mike Bull, “Neutrality is impossible: there is no spiritual Switzerland.”[2] This is why we gather here this morning. In this Covenant Renewal, we are calling the world to peace or to war, but there is no middle ground. We appeal compassionately to those with the gospel, but we also appeal strongly with the gospel. Our mission this morning is a mission of peace, but ultimately to those who despise God’s covenant, war is the only alternative. Covenant Renewal is a call to spiritual warfare, because God is always moving humanity to response in one way or another.

 

Prayer: Yahweh, may your gospel fill our hearts and may our voices cause Your truth to shine as the righteous who shine like the sun. Amen.

 

This past week our denomination changed her name from “Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches” to “Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.” There were many reasons for this change, but fundamentally there was a great desire to reflect more and more the unity of the Christian church universal. We confess each Sunday that we believe in the “Communion of Saints.” To commune with the saints means to be of one accord on those fundamental matters of the faith. But it also affirms our communion with the saints gone before us. We are united to one vast body throughout the history of the Church. We share this morning not only union with the saints who are worshipping in all the world who confess Jesus as Lord, but also with the great martyrs and fathers of the Church in the past. More importantly to us, when we confess “we believe in the communion of saints” we are also confessing our union and communion with the One who binds us together, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of our union with him, we are bound to one another in love and worship. We believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Prayer: Unite your holy Church, most merciful Lord. Strengthen our denomination that we may be a great force in defending the apostolic truth and pursuing unity with all the saints. Amen.

We tend to compartmentalize different aspects of our lives, but in reality to be Christian is to be whole. To be Christian is to become truly human. As believers, we receive all of Christ, not just part of him. Christ has become a new human. Humanity was not just a shell Christ put on to satisfy the Father, humanity was what Christ voluntarily put on to satisfy himself and the Father. He did endure the suffering and pain that we too endure, but he endured it because by doing so he taught us that humanity is not to be despised. To be Christian is to be truly human as Christ was truly human. We refashion our lives because by doing so we become more like the Christ who was fashioned as man for us and for our salvation.

Prayer: We bless you, Jesus Christ, for becoming the true human; the true and final Adam, Amen.

On this day ten years ago, I sat in a class on World Religions. My professor was about to read a section from the Koran when an agitated young lady walked into our classroom to inform us what had happened. That day, of course, is ingrained in the mind of every American. The brutality expressed in the actions of 19 coward men changed the face of this nation. In the end, this is not just a geo-political issue, in reality it is a deeply religious issue. And because what happened on September 11 is religious, we need to consider the implications of that despicable act as Christians.

Since 2001, two extremes have become prominent: radical Islam and western Secularism. On the one hand, Islam has received all the propaganda they ever wanted, whether good or bad. On the other hand, there has been an extreme reaction to any form of religious expression. Western secularism has gained distaste for any sentence that starts with the word “God.” Most notably, the atheist Christopher Hitchens leads the pack with his enthusiastic hatred of religion.

In the middle of these two extremes, we need to consider how we are to think. World events cause us to think through the implications of our faith. We are called to colonize the world, so what happens in the world should matter to Christians. When we look at these two extremes from the viewpoint of Christian theology, we realize that these are really not two different extremes, but rather two manifestations of the same ideology: a hatred for the Triune God of the Bible. Islam hates the God who is Three and One. It adores a God who is wholly other; completely separate from the affairs of men. Islam adores a God who delights in being alone. Western Secularism adores a God made in its own image. It adores the god of immorality and generally gives their god the name Tolerance. In the name of Tolerance, secularism spews their intolerance towards anything Trinitarian.

In the end, these ideas have one thing in common: they are both idolatrous. They worship false gods; the same god of the Philistines in Samson’s narrative.

The Scriptures on the other hand, teaches us that we should love only One True God. In Him we move, live, and have our being. In Him, there is love sufficient to be shared in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, we are not alone, because He is not alone being with One another from all eternity past. In Him, we do not sacrifice ourselves, we sacrifice for others. In Him, we have life, and we seek this life today as we worship the only True Lord.

Let us pray: Almighty God, Father, Son, and Spirit, cause us to trust in Your justice. May you be our Protector, so we might be delivered from evil, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.