Heidelberg Catechism Project

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The Sure Word of God – How To Celebrate Christmas

Application:

The Christ of Christmas is the King we bow before and gladly receive because of His humility and mercy to we rebels.

Let me suggest ways to celebrate this Christmas… not with parties and presents but in this way:
1. Lay down your weapons! The king of Christmas comes and calls us to unconditional surrender so that we may receive the blessings of His kingdom.

This calls for admitting our own defeat and complete need for Christ to re-orient our lives with Him at the center.

This involves giving up the delusion that we are good enough in ourselves to do God’s work and entrust ourselves to Him who died for sinners and rose again for their justification so that we may be accepted by the Father and be received with the rejoicing of Heaven itself at our repentance!

2. Stop building the kingdoms that oppose Jesus Christ. The Sure Word of Christ tells us that all those who do not gather with him scatter.

This calls us to live as those who want to build on Christ’s sure foundation. It is an act of humility to say to the Lord “re-order my life according to Your Word.”

3. Share in the building of Christ’s Kingdom!

This calls us to carry the Good News to others – not because we have arrived but because we know the One who has arrived… in Heaven at the Father’s right Hand.

Sermon: Christ The End Of The Law

Scripture Texts:

Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10: 11-25
Mark 13:1-13

O Come, O Come Emmanuel! Ransom – or liberate – captive Israel! We’ve sung this song for years during Advent. It is the mournful song of a people needing divine deliverance. But what is the liberation these people seek? What is the “big deal”?

What turns a man so zealous for Judaism that he would kill and imprison anyone who called Jesus the “Messiah” into someone who risks his life time and again and suffers beatings, whippings, starvation, and imprisonment to proclaim this same Messiah Jesus of Nazareth?

What is such Good News that overcomes our own desire to seek our own well being and seek the glory of Jesus Christ? Why do we build our lives and our calendars around the coming of Christ? It pays to know… you and I will face the Day of Judgment together and its outcome will depend on whether we have entrusted ourselves to this same Messiah! It pays to know what it’s all about! Perhaps it will even inspire you and I to give ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ in gratitude for His Mercy! Wouldn’t that be amazing!

But Paul sees Jesus Christ as not just a wandering prophet from Galilee, not just as an enlightened Teacher or even a Prophet as Islam wants to say.

No Paul sees in Jesus God in the flesh, the fullness of God in human form (Col 2:9). Jesus is the One in whom all God’s promises for Israel and the world are coming true as guaranteed by Jesus’ Resurrection (2 Cor 1:20; Rom 1:3,4)

Consider the scriptures we have read today in this light –

The prophet Daniel foretold a day of resurrection when some will rise to eternal joy and others to eternal shame. This word of prophecy came to a people enslaved… they had fallen under Gods’ Curse and send from their “Promised Land” as Deuteronomy 28 had warned them.

How can a people who were once blessed, people who received the Word of God , and now a people who were condemned to slavery and whose history is one fall from grace after another ever hope to rise to eternal joy?

It seemed as if God had given Israel a second chance – the nation was set free from exile – the Temple had been rebuilt and the sacrifices had returned to the Temple!

But something was missing.

There was still no real hope.

As Jesus walks that land, outwardly the people are blessed, but inwardly they are a people filled with hypocrisy, plagued by demons, and sick with sin. The never ending stream of blood from the sacrifices may have made people technically “clean” to enter the Temple, but inwardly the pollution of sin remained untouched, uncleansed, not only under bondage to the Romans, but in a spiritual bondage and slavery.

Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 13, that judgement is coming again. The Temple they consider as eternal as the world itself will be torn down to the ground (John 2:19-22). God’s true Temple – the Resurrected Christ – will become the focus of those who worship the God of the Bible “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). Their hopes will be directed to Jesus not to the Temple.

In Jesus, the liberation that set sinners free, that cast out demons, that forgave sins, is now sealed once and for all by our Lord’s death and resurrection. In that act, Jesus seals the salvation of His people and as the judgment He promises Jerusalem comes – He encourages them to keep trusting, those who persevere to the end shall be saved.

As Hebrews says:

Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.

And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so. For he says,

“This is the new covenant I will make

with my people on that day, says the Lord:

I will put my laws in their hearts,

and I will write them on their minds.”

Then he says,

“I will never again remember

their sins and lawless deeds.”

And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

This is what St. Paul was willing to die for! Because in meeting the Resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road it was evident God’s promises really were coming true in Jesus.

Suddenly God’s covenant promises in the past from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob had taken on a reality in the Risen Jesus that made all the other promises of God an inevitable certainty because death itself had been conquered in Jesus Resurrection!

Our inability to find peace with God while locked in our own sins and incapable of living by God’s Law in our own strength are finally no longer a threat to you and a threat to me because the One who HAS been faithful to God in all things has become the mercy seat, the location of God’s forgiveness infallibly achieved, for all the world who come to Him in faith!

Yes, Paul saw, Christ was the goal for which those who lived under the Law yearned! He is the One whose saving crucifixion and death defying resurrection now brings every good and perfect gift promised by God and makes it available to all who entrust themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ!

Even more- the power of death is broken and Jesus in His ascension is reigning and He is delivering His trusting, dependent people safe to the end.

Because the promises of God have been secured, because sin’s power, pollution, and penalty are conquered in Christ for all who entrust themselves to Him, because the alienation caused by sin between Jew and Gentile can finally be healed, because all humankind can, in Christ, be transformed, there is hope for all the world… a hope for peace in Christ before the Inheriting King comes in judgment not only in Jerusalem in AD 70 but in all the world at His Second Coming (Acts 17:30-31).

Because this is true, because it is such Good News, the Apostles and Martyrs declared it without regard for their safety. On the Celtic Cross of Muiredach, Christ as standing as He was in Stephen’s vision (Acts 7) because they considered themselves ALL MARTYRS, to the cause of Christ in one way or another, whether the red martyrdom of those who shed their blood, or the white martyrdom of those who daily offered themselves as living sacrifices unto God (Romans 12:1,2).

When we finally understand why the Good News is called the Good News, we are free to risk trusting Jesus Christ with our lives! We can trust Him and give our lives to him because He is the one who has conquered death and will conquer all our enemies, even death itself! While we fear giving our lives up to His Lordship, it’s His resurrection, His forgiveness, His promise of eternal salvation that enables us to finally be free to serve Him in joy and gratitude.

What is the least that we can do in light of this Good News? The author of the Book of Hebrews has no problems speaking to people who risked becoming outcasts in their own communities – Jews living in pagan environments whose only economic lifeline is the local synagogue – and tells them this:

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

In light of Jesus’ coming, the people who cried O Come, O Come Emmanuel found the One who finally set them free to hope in God and free to live as God’s Children by Divine Adoption (John 1:12-13;Gal 4:4-7).

His Coming guaranteed that the covenant keeping God had drawn near in His grace…but not just for His ancient people Israel but for all who would draw near to God through Him!

What does the coming of Christ into the world mean to you? Why was it important?

Most importantly, how is the Christ who fulfilled the Law of God and who fulfills all the promises of God the answer to your deepest longings?

Sermon: Close to the Kingdom

To be “In” Christ’s Kingdom, we must know what He came to teach and do: Jesus’ Message was that He came… 1. To forgive our sins and reconcile us to God

2. To destroy the power of Satan and deliver people from bondage

3. To change hearts of stone to hearts of flesh

4. To demonstrate God’s own compassion, mercy, and justice

5. To invite and summon people to become the new people of God who will populate the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Jesus’ Mission – He came…

1. To be the sacrifice which atones for the sins of the world and rescue a people for God

2. To personally fight the deciding battle with Satan and triumph over the grave

3. To be authenticated as the Son of God through His Resurrection

4. To undo the principalities and powers through His Ascension

5. To establish the Church as the new people of God on Pentecost

Jesus’ Saving Acts which fulfilled His mission

1. The Cross

2. The Grave

3. The Resurrection

4. The Ascension

5. The Day of Pentecost

Our Calling in Light of Jesus’ Saving Acts –

1. Evangelism – Declaring Christ the Savior

2. Ministry – Helping Set People Free From Bondage Through Service

3. Spiritual Formation – Helping People Become Authentic Disciples

4. Love – Breaking the Powers of Hate and Selfishness 5. True Community – Living out the reality that we are the New Community Christ came to create In other words, is our gratitude at being Justified by Grace through Faith working through a true love (Gal 5:6) that causes us to fulfill Christ’s Mission for the church…. Our “Message” must be consistent with our actual “Mission”.

The Sermon “The True Character of Christian Service” is now being hosted at MissionLawrence.org

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Sermon: Always Reforming – Reformation Day Observed

The audio for this Reformation Day sermon will, Lord willing, be uploaded in a few hours.