Sermons

Uzziah became king at sixteen, and as long as he sought God, he prospered. He defeated the Philistines in battle, built cities and even equipped his army with new weapons, making the nation strong and wealthy. But as his power grew, his heart grew proud, and he went into the temple to burn incense himself, an offering only the priests were permitted to make.

When the priest tried to stop him, the king turned on him in anger, and in that moment God struck his forehead with leprosy. The grace he had received had not vanished; rather, he could no longer enjoy it. No one betrays God in a single moment. It happens gradually, as priorities are slowly overturned amid wealth, power and praise.

Until the day he died, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, denied both a king’s authority and a king’s tomb. It was not that he was especially wicked. A nature that loved the world more than the unseen Kingdom kept him from overcoming sin. What allows God’s people to enjoy to the end the grace he has granted is a humble heart that never stops giving thanks for that grace.

Love and care are growing cold in the world, and more and more people live by instinct alone, like unreasoning animals. A soul that has lost God’s protection finds no place of rest and drifts through life like a wandering star.

This is Satan’s attempt to divide people from God. Cain, unable to give thanks to God, killed his brother out of jealousy; Balaam, unwilling to let go of his greed, prayed again and again against the will of God; and Korah, dissatisfied with his own place, challenged the authority of Moses. All three knew God at the beginning, yet each gave way before greed and pride.

False teachers follow this path of rebellion, stirring up trouble among the faithful without any sense of guilt. Yet God’s people are beautiful stars that reflect the light of Christ, and they must lead to him those who carry heavy burdens and have nowhere to turn. Looking beyond this passing world to the eternal Kingdom, they need to stay rooted in Christ to the very end.

Though God commands him to go to Egypt, Moses cannot bring himself to obey. Even after witnessing miracle upon miracle, he keeps refusing on the grounds that he is slow of speech, until at last his elder brother Aaron is appointed to speak for him in his place.

Aaron himself worked as many miracles as Moses and bore a great share of the work, yet because he stood beside so great a figure as Moses, what he accomplished was never much noticed. Even so, he did not push himself forward, but served his younger brother as the leader God had raised up. The fallen angel, by contrast, came to take for granted the position God had given him, abandoned it and grew proud; and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah likewise forsook the order God had established and came under judgment.

To keep the place God has appointed is humility; to leave it is pride. Because Aaron obeyed and served, he became high priest, and the blessing reached even his descendants. Holding fast to the position God has given and pressing on toward the Kingdom of God is the road his people must travel.

King Amaziah of the southern kingdom of Judah was regarded as an upright king, but after winning the war against Edom, he became intoxicated by that victory and brought back the idols of the defeated nation and worshiped them. He would not listen to the prophet’s warning and instead threatened him, and in the end he was defeated in battle and killed by his officials. By contrast, Jeroboam II of the northern kingdom of Israel was a king who was evil in God’s sight, yet the nation’s territory grew larger than at any other time in its history, and it enjoyed prosperity.

These opposite endings mean that the idea that good people do well and evil people are punished is not always right. Amaziah fell because of pride: carried away by a small success, he had put himself in God’s place. Jeroboam’s prosperity came not because of his goodness but because of the free mercy of God, who had compassion on his suffering people, and yet the people of that time failed to make their prosperity an occasion for repentance.

Success is not the same as God’s approval, and suffering is not the same as being abandoned. What must be examined is not one’s circumstances but what God’s will is. What is needed is a life that does not grow proud over small successes, does not take prosperity for granted, and stands humbly before God, continually turning back to him.

This is the first service of 2026. King Joash comes to the prophet who lies close to death, shoots the arrow and strikes the ground. Yet he strikes only three times and stops, and so the victories that might have been his are cut short at three as well.

In this we see ourselves, hesitating even with salvation already in our hands. God has made everything ready to pour out his grace and is waiting, while we halt our obedience and devotion at a line we have drawn for ourselves. Even after the prophet has died, a dead man whose body touches his bones comes back to life, showing that though a human life comes to an end, God’s power and love do not.

Our thanksgiving must not be for a flawless year but for the love that has brought us this far. On the cross God has already demonstrated that love, in which he did not spare his only Son but gave him up. Our limits and shortcomings do not stop that love, so rather than settling for standards of our own making, we need to go on trusting God to the very end.

A king came to the throne at the age of seven and accomplished a great work in repairing the temple. Yet once the high priest who had protected him died, he was swayed by the officials and began to serve idols, going so far as to stone to death the prophet whom God had sent.

Though he repaired the temple, he never removed the high places, which shows that his obedience stopped halfway. His faith had rested on the protection and oversight of the high priest; when the moment came to stand on his own, he relied on the power of the world more than on God. In the end he handed the treasures of the temple over to his enemies, fell ill, and met a wretched death when his own servants rose against him.

A faith that begins by leaning on someone else’s faith and devotion is something to be thankful for, but unless it is made one’s own, it can give way. It is worth asking whether one is ready to hold fast to God and stand firm even when the people and circumstances that once upheld that faith are gone. Finishing well does not come from a single resolve but from obedience built up day after day.

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.

Even after they had been set free from Egypt, the Israelites grumbled against God and Moses at the first sign of hardship, saying they would rather go back to Egypt. They listened to the bad report of the ten spies and lost heart on the very edge of Canaan, and the descendants of Korah, reaching for the place that belonged to Moses, fell under judgment.

This is where people end up when they forget the grace of God. They had seen the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea with their own eyes, yet when trouble came they let all of it slip from memory and fell back on human reasoning. Joshua and Caleb, by contrast, held fast to the word that God had already given them the land, and they were not afraid.

Knowing the Bible is not the same as having faith. Christians must remember the word they know and live it out, and only those who do not forget grace and endure to the end will receive what God has prepared.

Jude introduces himself as a servant of Christ and urges the faithful, too, to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to them. Those who have tasted grace and then fallen away, he says, find it hard to be brought back to repentance, and he cautions the church against people who have slipped in unnoticed, turning grace into a pretext for immorality and leading others to deny Christ.

When Christians stumble, it is not because Satan is strong but because they have yielded to temptation themselves, and that is why turning back does not come easily. God sends rain on everyone alike, yet the heart that receives that grace may become good soil and bear fruit, or it may become a field overrun with thorns and thistles through greed and lust. The words of false teachers are like springs without water: plausible at first, they only deepen the thirst and in reality satisfy nothing.

The faithful must fight for their salvation even to the point of shedding blood, and the opponent in that fight may be their own idle self, or it may be Satan. Satan does not withdraw after a single defeat but presses into every unguarded moment, so the more a heart has repented, the more watchful it must remain in the Word. Since the God who rules over Satan is our Father, abiding in Christ and overcoming sin through upright living is what it looks like for God’s people to wait for the Lord’s return.

The wicked queen Athaliah sets out to destroy every descendant of David, but Jehosheba steals away the infant Joash and hides him in a back room of the temple, where he is brought up in secret for six years. Through those years the high priest Jehoiada quietly prepares for the appointed time, and at last Joash is crowned king of Judah.

What appeared to collapse was the house of David, not the covenant of God. Jehoshaphat took Ahab’s daughter as a wife for his son, certain that he himself would never be shaken; yet that decision drew his son and grandson into idolatry and brought the nation to the brink of ruin. Human sin and betrayal, however, could not break the covenant. In a place no one knew of, God was keeping one life safe.

Christians must not place too much confidence in their own faith, for sin does not begin as a settled intention; it begins with the compromises a person makes with himself. Yet even when people fail, God does not, and the covenant he made with David is finally fulfilled in Jesus Christ. To hold fast to that promise and remain faithful to the end is the part left to us today.

Jesus’ brothers press him to go up to the feast and show what he can do. They hoped he would make a name for himself where the crowds gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles, yet Jesus gave signs not for his own reputation but as the Messiah. Jude was one of those brothers, and only after he had witnessed the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was he convinced that his elder brother was the Christ.

That even his own brothers did not believe at first shows that preaching the gospel does not make people believe straight away. Only after the Samaritan woman had truly met Jesus did she run to tell others; the townspeople came because of what she said, but in the end they heard him with their own ears and came to faith for themselves. The one who shares the gospel is not answerable for the outcome; it is the hearer who weighs it and decides.

Jude writes his letter introducing himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. Christians are not to blend in with the world but must keep their white robes holy, and if they are not seen living by the word they proclaim, even Christ is held up to ridicule. Since God first welcomed us, we must live in a way worthy of that love, holding fast to our faith to the end.

When the harvest was gathered in, the people of Israel built booths and lived in them. Yet just before this feast of thanksgiving comes the Day of Atonement, a day of fasting on which they were to deny themselves.

Before the joy of the harvest, a clean heart was required. Even after his victories, David kept examining himself and repenting. When Peter’s nets were so full of fish that they began to break, he did not give thanks but fell down and said, “I am a sinful man.” A vessel that is unclean cannot fully receive and enjoy the grace poured into it.

Repentance means leaving the place of sin, and thanksgiving fills that emptied place with grace once more. There is no Feast of Tabernacles without the Day of Atonement, and in the same way true thanksgiving grows deeper whenever it is built on repentance. It was in repentance that David received victory and Peter received a new calling.