|
|
 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. –Hebrews 11:8
How many times have you struggled with a decision because you didn’t know what the circumstances would be like? Worse yet, how many times have you made a decision with a decent level of certainty that you knew how the circumstances would work out, but then they didn’t? Abraham, we see here, did not know about the circumstances; however, Abraham and Sarah considered Him faithful who had promised. Abraham didn’t know where he was going, but he knew with whom he was going. That’s the promise we have in Christ.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord
Hallelujah, Praise Jehovah, O My Soul (Ps. 146)
Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. –Genesis 12:5-8
As Abram passed through Canaan, his first and foremost goal was not military conquest. Instead he build altars and held covenant renewal worship services; he was establishing worship of the true God. This was his “strategy” and “vision.” He knew that is the way to change the hearts and minds of the people, thus the world.
Oh how we love to fight with each other, always believing we are in the right, of course! Abram resisted this urge as he conquered the land through worship. He sought first the kingdom of God, trusting that all other things would be given to him later on. Jesus did that same leaving his Father’s throne above, emptying himself of all but love, and bleeding to die for Adam’s helpless race. He did it for the goal set before him, enduring the cross, scorning its shame.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
May the Mind of Christ, My Savior
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. –Galatians 2:21
The Apostle Paul knows the law. He probably came closer to keeping some it than most of us ever could. He also knows that he is a sinner, even the chief of them. There’s a correlation: proper understanding of the law gives us a better understanding of ourselves, viz., just how sinful we are.
But, you’d think he’d make the point clear that justification (being declared righteous by God) cannot come through the law. Well, he does make the point clear, but he goes a step further: he makes it clear that Christ died for nothing, died in vain, if being righteous before God comes through the law. You have to ask yourself about your preacher: how does he handle the law? Does he say justification is not through the law, but then preaches a bunch of law as if it is, pinning the gospel tail on the donkey at the end? Or is his preaching of the law something that drives you away from yourself to Christ?
Paul suggests here that Christ did die for a purpose. What is that purpose? From this passage we see that the purpose is to justify us by faith and not by works of the law. That’s preaching Christ.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
Rev. Perry Brackin will be preaching on the above passage as Pastor Mark takes a week off.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Come, Christians Join to Sing
Why Are Nations Raging (Psalm 2)
Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” –Genesis 11:4
These Babylonians know what they want: “Let’s make a name for ourselves.” But there’s only One in scripture who is allowed truly to make a name for himself, who makes his name great, and that is the Lord God. Of all the critical things we’re taught to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, the first is that God’s name be hallowed.
This is a big deal. In the next chapter of Genesis, one of the major promises to Abram was that God would make Abram’s name great. We must realize that name you make for yourself can never be as glorious as the name God makes for you. For those Babylonians in Genesis 11, God says balal (“let us confuse” [their language]), and then he gives them a name, babal (which sounds an awful lot like nabal, meaning “foolish”). When you make a name for yourself, you won’t like it. The only name you’ll ever have that’s worth having is the one the Lord makes for you: his own name that he puts on you at your baptism.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Our God, Our Help in Ages Past
Fairest Lord Jesus
O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” –Genesis 8:20-22
Immediately after God tells Noah that he is going to destroy the earth with the flood, he makes a covenant with Noah. This covenant will stand as Noah’s hope through what had to be some long days and sleepless nights. Surely Noah must have wondered at times if being at the bottom of the water would not be the preferred place!
But he did make it through the ordeal and the first thing he does when getting out of the ark, the verses above tell us, is build an altar and have a worship service. It wasn’t just any worship service: it was a covenant renewal worship service. He was there to be reminded of God’s covenant faithfulness to him. Often times we try to look back and get encouragement for our Christian lives by something we did in the past: perhaps praying a prayer, walking and aisle, signing a card, something like that. But that’s not where true and lasting encouragement is found. If you want the real thing, you’ll have to abandon looking back at what you’ve done and look back at what God has promised and done. In Noah’s case, God saved Noah from judgment by judgment. If you know Christ, then you know exactly the same is true for you.
And that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday in a service of covenant renewal.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name!
Jesus Paid It All
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
This Sunday, September 20, is our Community Lunch. For more details, contact us here.
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. –Genesis 6:22
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. –Hebrews 11:7
It’s fascinating that Genesis commends Noah as being “blameless” and doing “all that God commanded him,” and the Newer Testament tells us he was a “preacher of righteousness.” We hear that the building of the ark itself condemned the world. But then we hear after the flood that Noah’s behavior would scandalize pietists to the hilt.
What does this teach us? It teaches us that Noah is an “heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” In other words, all this blamelessness and righteousness came not by works (Noah’s efforts) but by faith (God’s efforts). There where we learn that God chose Noah not because he knew Noah would build the ark, and not because he knew Noah would be willing to build the ark. He didn’t even choose Noah because he knew Noah could build the ark. No, God chose Noah so that Noah would build the ark.
In the same way, our commendation for good works (“Well done, my good and faithful servant”) comes from the gift of faith in the One who was always a preacher of righteousness and through whom we become heirs of the righteousness that comes by faith, Jesus Christ. That’s soli deo gloria, and that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
A Mighty Fortress
My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Lift High the Cross
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD –Genesis 6:7, 8
That’s the law and then that’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
O Worship the King
There is a Fountain
Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.” –Genesis 4:23,24
Lamech, a ruler of the City of Man, boasts that a young lad bruised or grazed him, and so he took off the child’s head. What a guy! But what’s striking is that he boasts that his unforgiveness will be perfectly unrelenting and he isn’t going to slip up and forgive somebody someday. His grudge will be not just sevenfold, but seventy-sevenfold. That phrase rings a bell, doesn’t it?
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. –Matthew 18:21,22
Wow! It looks like Jesus is thinking about Genesis 4 when he answers Peter’s question. You see, it’s in the City of Man that people are perfectly unforgiving; it’s in the City of God that people are perfectly forgiving. In the City of Man people hold grudges and smear others’ names; they vilify people; in the City of God, people forgive each other even when accused of evil. That’s how you know which city holds your citizenship.
But that’s not the gospel because nobody has the power in themselves to live such perfect forgiveness. Well, except Jesus, who has promised: “blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” –Romans 4:8
That’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” –Genesis 4:8,9
It’s a famous story and very powerful. We often miss that God’s question to Cain did not result in repentance, but resulted in Cain’s question that reveals more about why God was displeased with Cain than the quality of his offering. We know this because the Apostle John tells us: For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.–1 John 3:11-14
In other words, he actually was supposed to be his brother’s keeper. Ironically when Cain is excommunicated from the community, his protest is that he had no brother to keep him. But we do, and His blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
That’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
How Deep the Father’s Love for Us
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less
This Saturday, August 22 is the Redeemer Ladies’ Fellowship and Prayer. Use the contact page for more information.
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. –Genesis 3:24
A flaming sword of the justice of God protecting his holiness from us and us from his holiness…wow! No one is going to be able to get back in to the perfect presence of the Lord: not Adam, not Eve, not Abraham, not Moses, not David, no prophet or apostle, and none of us. No one is found who can pass the flaming sword to open the garden back up…well, except one.
Isaiah and the writer to the Hebrew says that Christ will be cut off out of the land of the living. He took all our sin and all his righteousness and underwent the flaming sword of God and thus opened a new, living, and narrow way back to the perfect presence of God for those who would follow him there.
That’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Come, Christians, Join to Sing
The Beatitudes (Isaac Watts’ setting to the tune O Waly, Waly)
Be Thou My Vision
August 22 is the Redeemer Ladies’ Fellowship and Prayer. Use the contact page for more information.
Sunday school for children (in Genesis) and adults (on Reformed Treasures) is up and running! Coffee and other treats are served at 9:15, teaching begins at 9:30, and we break to get ready for worship at 10:15.
Visitors are always welcome!
|
|
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. –Hebrews 11:8
