Sermons

The disciples ask Jesus how they ought to pray, and he answers them with the Lord’s Prayer. His instruction to ask for the forgiveness of sins is more than a call to repent of moral wrongs; it is a call to restore a relationship with God that has been broken.

Adam’s sin in eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil lay not in the fruit itself but in setting himself up as the judge of good and evil, and so overturning the order God had made. Jesus healed this rift by shedding his blood on the cross. When he died, the curtain of the sanctuary was torn, and a way was opened for anyone to come directly to God. As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus visits his disciples on the day of his resurrection, that is, every Lord’s Day, and says to them, “Peace be with you.”

The Lord’s Day is not time to be filled out of habit. It is time in which each person’s relationship with God is restored, one to one. When the whole heart is given to praise and to the Word, the wounded spirit is healed and strength is found for the six days ahead. God’s people must therefore be those who enjoy peace and freedom with the risen Lord.

Crowds wave palm branches to welcome Jesus. They spread their cloaks on the road and cheer him on, yet at the end of that road stands the cross. When some Greeks come looking for Jesus, he does not agree to see them. Instead he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The glory Jesus speaks of is not success. It is his death on the cross and his resurrection. A grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die before it can bear much fruit, and in the same way Jesus had to die so that the nations might live. As a man, Jesus too knew anguish and fear, yet he did not run from what lay ahead; he resolved to obey.

The Kingdom of God is a kingdom where life comes only through death. To follow Jesus is to deny oneself and take up one’s own cross. This does not begin with some grand decision but with a small response: when trouble comes, turning first to God and asking for his help, rather than meeting it with irritation and a sigh. As we lay ourselves down in this way, we become people who die with Jesus and live with him.

The church has reached its twenty-second anniversary. The message set two things side by side: the scene in which Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, telling them to love one another and to love as he had loved them, and a vision of being lifted by grace to the summit of the mountain of sin while those around were falling as they tried to climb it.

The new commandment is not a demand to wear oneself out in service and giving; it is a life of self-sacrifice, lived for the sake of others. Many attend church while their spirits remain parched, and to know of that thirst and pass by, the sermon said, is to break the commandment to love one another. The vision carried a further word: the mountain of sin cannot be scaled by human strength, and can be ascended only by a hand reaching down from heaven.

A day will come, it was said, when every worldly rank and outward show is stripped away before Christ and the soul alone stands before him. Even the most impressive devotion may be burned up in the fire, but a life of quiet love and prayer in a lowly place will remain like pure gold. The sermon closed with the assurance that those who love one another as the new commandment teaches can become a holy people, blessed by God.

Those who believe in Jesus already have eternal life and do not come under judgment. People suppose that they will stand before the judgment seat only after death, yet salvation and judgment are already divided here in this world, according to whether a person hears the words of Jesus and believes.

The idea that salvation and reward must be earned by piling up outward worship and good deeds is a mistaken faith. Jesus has already accomplished everything; the table is fully spread. Whether a person treasures that pearl and takes it up, or tramples it underfoot, is simply each one’s own choice.

Because judgment rests not with God the Father but with Jesus Christ, those who believe need fear neither death nor Satan. Salvation asks nothing more than obedience to his word, as one looks to the cross and to the bronze serpent. Yet once saved, believers must go on in sanctification, growing into people who lean on God ever more.

In a season when COVID had closed the doors to gathered worship, Christmas raised the question once more: why did Jesus come into this world? The usual answer is simply that he came to atone for sin, yet the sermon turned to the word that no one has ever seen God, and that the one who is at the Father’s side has made him known.

The purpose of the incarnation reaches beyond the forgiveness of sins; it lies in the revelation of God himself. Eternal life, Jesus said, is to know God and the one whom he has sent. His divinity, his person and character, and the whole of his ministry, in which he broke the power of the devil and established the Kingdom of God, were presented as a revelation of who God is.

The message went on to describe the church as the bride and the body of Jesus, his family and his temple. It closed with an exhortation: rather than resting in the fact of their salvation, Christians must seek to discern how God desires to reveal Jesus Christ through their lives.

At Easter, the church, kept from gathering in the sanctuary by an epidemic, worships at home, each in their own house. In that time, joined together online, the world is held captive by fear, and the church too is passing through an age in which it is hard to keep the faith.

The time shut in at home becomes either a blessing or a judgment, depending on how it is seen. Just as Obed-Edom, who brought the ark of God into his house, was blessed because he rejoiced rather than being afraid, if families worshiped and prayed together in that time, it was a time of blessing given by God. Jesus told his troubled disciples that there are many rooms in his Father’s house, and that house is an eternal dwelling place that even Satan cannot invade.

Only those who keep the faith without fearing death enter that dwelling place. God’s people must not be afraid or proud, must not compromise with the world, and must hold fast to the word. Then they will live in the glory of God in the eternal home that Christ has prepared.

Parents who send a son off to the army are afraid, even though they know he will come home. In the same way, we celebrate the birth of Jesus while knowing that the cross lies ahead of him. Just as God had promised when he spoke to Satan, the offspring of the woman was born in a manger.

Immanuel means that God is with us. Mary could have lost her life by becoming pregnant, yet she answered that she wanted it to be done to her according to God’s word. She knew her son would bear the cross, and still she raised him to the very end. Her sorrow was greater than the joy of fulfilling her calling, but she embraced it because it brought God’s promise to pass.

God sent his Son into the world not to condemn it but to save it. Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Christmas is not a festival of the world. It belongs to God’s people, who believe this truth.

The apostle John proclaims that in the beginning was the Word. In his day a teaching had spread through the church that held the spirit to be good and the body evil, and so denied the resurrection of the body; John refutes that falsehood by making plain that Christ came as fully human.

Christ came as the light, yet the world did not know him, and even his own people did not receive him; but to those who believe in his name is given the right to become children of God. Even as he fled from his enemies, David leaned on God alone, and the prayer he offered there shows what worship in the Spirit and in truth looks like.

To the crowds who flocked to him after seeing the five loaves and two fish, Christ said to seek the food that endures to eternal life, and that the work of God is to believe in the one he has sent. God holds fast to the end those who worship in the Spirit and in truth, and leads them into a life kept safe.