Sermons

The kings of northern Israel fall one after another. Baasha wiped out the house of Jeroboam, only to walk in the very same ways, and his dynasty ended with his son. Zimri reigned for seven days; then, after Omri, Ahab at last comes to the throne. Ahab served Baal, a foreign god, and provoked God to anger more than any king before him.

As God judged the wicked, so the curse Joshua had pronounced long before came true for the man who rebuilt Jericho. Whether it speaks blessing or curse, not one letter of God’s word fails. Yet in the midst of that dark history, the prophet Hanani and his son Jehu, one generation after the other, boldly proclaimed the word of the Lord.

The world grows ever darker and more wicked. Yet whatever course it takes, God’s people are to bear the calling he has entrusted to them to the very end, hold fast to their faith, and hand it on to the next generation. That is where they must stand.

Asa was a good king of the southern kingdom of Judah, who rooted out idolatry and defeated the million-strong army of Cush. In his later years, however, when the northern kingdom of Israel invaded, he sent treasure to the king of Aram and asked for his help instead of turning to God, and when disease struck his feet, he relied on physicians rather than on the Lord.

Yet Scripture still says of Asa that “his heart was wholly true all his days.” The sin of weakness that springs from human fear and the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit stand on quite different ground where forgiveness is concerned. Judas Iscariot went on committing small sins until his heart grew hard, and in the end he betrayed Jesus. Peter denied Jesus three times, but because his failure was a weakness born of fear, he repented, was restored, and went on to lay down his life as a martyr.

There are sins from which a person may still turn back, and there are sins beyond restoration, which deny God much as a child might disown a parent. Whoever thinks their own sin small and treats it lightly will find their heart led down a road from which there is no return. Christians must receive grace with reverent fear, and the moment sin comes to light, turn from it completely.

When Asa became king, he removed the idols, the high places, and the Asherah poles left by his grandfather and father, and commanded the people of Judah to serve only Yahweh. Even when the Ethiopians invaded with an army of a million, Asa led a force less than half that size and cried out to God, and God struck them.

Even after the war was over, Asa did not settle into ease; he renewed the covenant once again and burned the idols. Yet even his grandmother, Queen Mother Maacah, was serving a wooden Asherah image. Asa did not overlook idolatry, even in the person closest to him, and deposed her on the spot.

True reform means cutting out first not the sin of others, but the sin beside oneself and within oneself. If one truly seeks the good of a loved one’s soul, there are times when the resolve to cut off that relationship is needed. Only when one’s own faith first stands upright before God does one gain the strength to rescue the soul one loves as well.

Rehoboam inherited a strong and stable kingdom built by David and Solomon. But once the kingdom was firmly established, he grew proud and abandoned the law of Yahweh, and all the people followed him and turned to idolatry. In the end, only five years into his reign, Shishak king of Egypt invaded, and the treasures of the temple and the royal palace were taken.

Though guilty of the same sin, Rehoboam and the people humbled themselves before God and repented, and so they escaped complete destruction; yet through the suffering of becoming Shishak’s servants, they had to learn how serving God differs from serving the world. Even so, because he never set his heart firmly to seek Yahweh, he remained an evil king. Yet even he was buried in the city of David, which shows that the covenant God made with David was faithfully kept to the end, despite the weakness and failure of his descendants.

From his grandfather David and his father Solomon, to the help of the priests and Levites early in his reign, to Shishak’s invasion and the rebuke of the prophet Shemaiah, Rehoboam was given opportunity after opportunity to turn back to God. He took the evil path not because he lacked opportunities, but because, having been given them, he did not choose the way of faith. Before the opportunity given now, the choice still remains to seek God with an undivided heart.

The Assyrian army falls in a single night, and Hezekiah recovers from an illness that should have killed him. Yet the son born to him in the fifteen years God added to his life in answer to his prayer becomes the most wicked king in Judah’s history.

Hezekiah came to credit his healing to his own godliness, and his judgment grew clouded, until he went so far as to open the temple and the treasuries to the envoys from Babylon and show them everything. His son, who did not inherit a faith that was whole, tore down with his own hands the wall of grace his father had kept, leaving the people bitten by snakes and stripped of their safety. The lives of this father and son show that sin frightens us the first time it is committed, but once it is repeated, the fear disappears.

Those who cling to God alone in times of trouble can easily forget that grace once peace returns, and lay claim to their own righteousness. But whoever breaks through a wall is bitten by a snake, and whoever digs a pit falls into it himself. After a prayer is answered, one must take all the more care and live always in thankfulness and humility; only then is there safety within the hedge of the Holy Spirit.

As the first service of 2025 draws near, a new year has been given once again, whether the past year was spent well or not. This church, too, has come to be what it is today through twenty-two years of events great and small, and none of them simply happened by chance.

The same stretch of time does not bring the same growth to every member of the congregation. Those who received their troubles as a calling entrusted to them by God, and went down on their knees, grew in faith; those who poured out their feelings unchecked and complained did not mature as far. Facing death in prison, the apostle Paul wrote to several churches, urging them to live a life worthy of the calling they had received. Such a life means laying down one’s own will and bearing with one another in humility, gentleness and patience. Moses, who went on interceding for the people of Israel to the end, even as God’s anger burned against their sin, was held up as an example of that gentleness.

When each person grows according to the measure of Christ’s gift granted to them, and all work together, the church is built up as the complete body of Christ. It begins with learning to hold back just once, even in moments of anger and of feeling wronged; and those single moments, one upon another, form a firmness that no attack from the world can shake.

As the year drew to a close, there had been a longing to see many in the congregation brought to the place God intends for them. Yet the word came that this very fretting, with all its disappointment and pain, was itself a form of selfish desire. Diligent teaching and faithful service do not change a person; that is the work of God alone.

It is God who blesses those who hear the Word and come humbly, rebukes those who judge in their pride, and brings judgment on those who have wandered far away. A pastor’s prayer and devotion, like a parent’s sacrifice for their children, is simply what love does; but according to whether that love is taken for granted or received with thanks, God himself answers in their place with blessing or with rebuke. The message, then, was to set personal feelings aside, lay down both the sorrow and the reproach, and entrust each one to God in prayer, calling them by name.

There followed a testimony of receiving the diagnosis of an extremely rare blood cancer and finding, instead, a deep peace. To be called home tomorrow would be a blessing, and to be given more years would be a blessing too; so there was no need to fear, but only to fulfill the calling where one stands. In the light of that word came the hope that the new year would be met with selfish desire laid aside and with trust in God alone.

The infant Jesus laid aside the throne of heaven and was born in the lowliest of places, a stable and a manger. To rescue humanity, held in darkness by the sin of the first man, Adam, he had to come in a body without sin and overcome the power of death through his death on the cross and his resurrection.

Because he descended to the very lowest place, Jesus was able to embrace all humankind. Those who follow Jesus, who came as the light, have now become children of light, and each must set the light of life they have received upon a lampstand. Yet the light a person carries can shine only on what lies around them, so brothers and sisters in the faith need to gather together and keep one another’s lamps from going out. The strong crushing the weak by the logic of power was no different in the Rome of Jesus’ day than it is in the world today; but as in the dream of the great statue that Daniel made known, all those kingdoms will fall, and only the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the living stone, will stand forever.

Christmas marks that forgiveness of sins and that life, but it must not end there. Having received that grace, God’s people are called to love their families and their fellow believers, and to grow into mature Christians who hold the light of life high in a world growing ever darker.

Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, fell ill. Despite his father’s hardness of heart, he had remained good in the sight of God to the last, yet his sickness came upon him because of his father’s sin. Jeroboam sent his wife in disguise to seek out the prophet, but the child died, just as had been foretold.

In the eyes of the world, a child’s mortal illness is a misfortune; before God, it was the last opportunity for repentance given to Jeroboam. And for Abijah it was grace, for God took his life before the judgment that would destroy his whole house could fall. It is precisely a desperate trouble beyond any human power to resolve that God uses, in his compelling work, to turn people’s eyes to him.

The world and God draw the line between suffering and blessing in different places. Jeroboam let his opportunity pass, never able to lay himself honestly before God, while Abijah, after a brief affliction of the flesh, was gathered into God’s arms. Rather than resenting present hardship, what is needed is a faith that can see the opportunity God has left open within it.

The world is losing its standards of common sense and morality, and as the laws of the home and the church break down, people are rushing headlong into evil. For forty days Goliath mocked Israel and its God, and no one dared to step forward. Then the young David went out alone to face him.

David did not go out to win a reward. He could not bear to stand by while God was being insulted. So the battle became not David’s war but God’s, and what he had learned guarding his sheep and fighting off lions and bears became courage and wisdom when he faced Goliath. In this way God raises up the poor and powerless wise man to put the strong to shame, yet the world does not heed that wise man’s words and is quick to forget him.

The battle and salvation belong not to sword and spear but to the Lord. We must be poor wise men who speak the truth, even when no one acknowledges it and no one remembers. That experience of faith is the courage and the weapon by which we overcome the world.

A prophet from Judah comes to Bethel and boldly proclaims the word of God before the king. The judgment comes to pass there and then, exactly as spoken: the altar is split apart and the king’s hand withers. The prophet firmly refuses the king’s invitation to a meal and, as he was commanded, sets off home by another road.

Yet when the old prophet of Bethel falsely invokes the name of God to call him back, the man who moments earlier had stood unshaken before the king gives way all too easily. Relieved at having finished a great task, and swayed by the authority of one who was a prophet like himself, he watered down the word with his own reasoning. People are most easily brought down not in the place of fear, but in the smooth stretch where they believe they have done the work well.

In the end he is killed by a lion on the road home. The word he delivered was fulfilled to the letter, yet he himself failed to obey to the last. For those who have received the word of God, faith is measured not by knowledge or long experience but by whether they live that word out, and whatever temptation or hardship they meet, they must not turn back from the way they were going.

Solomon came to understand that the race is not to the swift, nor is the battle always won by the strong. He had possessed wisdom, power and wealth alike, yet in the end he confessed that his own life had been vanity.

Those who run with their eyes fixed only on their ambitions cannot see what lies on either side, and so they lose what is precious. An ambition pursued without the grace of God is like a tree whose roots have rotted: however much strength and power it gains, it is no true victory. Only by forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward Christ, the goal, as the apostle Paul did, can a person keep to a straight path.

King Nebuchadnezzar, too, was shown the future beforehand in a dream, yet he did not repent. He was driven from his throne and lived like a beast for seven years, and only then did he confess God as the Almighty. No one can know the seasons of life, and so the word preached today calls each person to turn back before suffering comes and to run toward Christ, the goal.