Sermons

The words people most long to hear are “I love you.” Yet love that lives only on the lips is not true love; true love is patient and kind, and does not seek its own advantage. God did not merely say that he loves us. By sending his only Son into this world, he made that love real.

The word “gave” carries sacrifice within it. Parents would hesitate to send their child into hardship now, even if it were to seat that child one day in a place of great glory. But God handed over his Son for us while we were still sinners, and the Son, in obedience, surrendered himself to the point of laying down his life.

In this way God’s love became not a feeling or a word but a reality revealed in Christ. If we stop at being those who have received this love, we stay where we are; it is when we love one another that his love is made complete in us. Christmas must be a day to grasp this love, to love our brothers and sisters, and to go out into the world and live it.

Because people are so preoccupied with the Second Coming and with salvation, heretical sects are springing up among those who have fallen for Satan’s schemes instead of living by the Word. Satan, who tempted Adam and brought him into death, is a fallen archangel, cast out when he tried to seize the place of God, and even now he clouds people’s minds so that they hear the gospel and still fail to understand it.

That Satan can foretell the future is no marvel; it shows that a spirit cast out for opposing God really does exist. Those who have met Jesus Christ love their brothers and strive to keep away from sin, while those who have not met him go on following their own nature, and their lives make it plain. The heresies and false christs now flooding the world, along with wars, famines and earthquakes and such things as the legalization of homosexuality, are signs that the Second Coming is near.

No one knows the day or the hour, yet the faithful, as children of light, must stay awake and keep themselves sober. Satan does not bring a person down at a single stroke; he makes a small cut and leaves them to rot from within. But whoever holds out, even in small ways, will find that God guards that life and makes it grow. For those who walk the way of truth, God becomes a shield and a fortress, so they must not be afraid, but must be ready to meet Jesus Christ with lives that bring no shame.