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 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. –Genesis 3:15
God is promising in this passage that one of the descendants of Adam and the Woman shall crush the head of the serpent, but he will be bitten and die in the process. Someone, a human being, will be born who will come and destroy sin and death, and in the process lose his life. You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he, the Lord Sabaoth his name, from age to age the same, and he must win the battle with sin and death, with the serpent. He shall crush its head.
This verse is often called the “protogospel” because the outcome is set in place at the very beginning, and God wins. That’s the gospel: God wins. One of the promises of the Gospel is that he will defeat all of his and our enemies.
The culmination of this struggle is the cross of Christ. In all of Jesus’ sufferings and temptations and being nailed to the cross, when he was bruised, and whipped, and spat upon, the seed of the serpent was striking his heel. And on Friday afternoon when Jesus was laid in the grave, it looked as if the evil one had won. But then on Sunday, he rose from the dead. It was obvious that he had crushed the serpent’s head. He won. God won.
That’s the gospel! Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder
Breathe on Me, Breath of God
In Christ Alone
This Sunday is our community lunch, and August 22 is the Redeemer Ladies’ Fellowship and Prayer. Use the contact page for more information on either of these events.
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 the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. –Genesis 3:7
Satan comes and suggests that God will keep you down if you obey him. You’ll never be all that you can be unless you get a little carpe diem going on in your life. So Adam and the Woman did and how did they end up? They end up doing what most of us do most of the time: self-justification. They try to make an atonement for themselves with fig leaves. It’s pathetic. We can easily scoff at their primitiveness: I mean, leaves! But surely they are better off than we are, who have become sophisticated at it. We can even become self-justifiers in Jesus’ name and for the sake of his church and often do.
Nonetheless, there is a Second Adam whose eyes were only open to God. He knew that to be all that he could be, he would have to empty himself of the glory he already had. Instead of seizing the day, he was seized. He really was naked on the cross scorning its shame, but the reward for obeying about the second tree (the cross), is that he became the justifier of those who didn’t obey about the first tree.
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 For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
How Firm a Foundation
Jesus! What a Friend for Sinners
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 the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. –Genesis 2:23-24
This song that Adam utters at his wedding is as beautiful and it is profound. What’s more is that the Apostle Paul tells us that marriage is not an end unto itself, but a picture of our union with Christ. Martin Luther works this out in his fantastic essay, On the Freedom of a Christian:
Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace?
Christ, that rich and pious husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils, and supplying her with all his good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying: “If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine;” as it is written, “My beloved is mine, and I am his. (Cant. ii. 16.) This is what Paul says: “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;” victory over sin and death, as he says: “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.” (I Cor. xv. 56, 57.)
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
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) 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 the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. –Genesis 2:7
That’s what Ephesians 2 tells us: “as for you, you were dead…” I was not sinking deep in sin far from the peaceful shore. I was sunk! The Master of the Sea did not hear my despairing cry; my lungs were full of water. The Master of the Sea left the peaceful shore to go down to the depths of my death to breathe life into me. What God does with Adam is what he does with all his people: he comes to us in our deadness in trespasses and sins, and he makes us alive. God is always the one who initiates. And it is completely by grace that he comes to us and he opens our eyes and our ears and he makes us alive. 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 Father, You Are Sovereign
It is Well with My Soul
Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine
This Sunday is our community lunch. Use the contact page for more information.
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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 God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. –Genesis 1:27
He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. –Colossians 1:15, 16
Genesis 1 has this beautiful little song in the middle of it (or perhaps it is a chorus in the middle of a larger song, which is all of Genesis 1). Our experience of imaging God is putrid, is it not? We just do a really bad job, especially where the tongue is concerned (James 3:9). But there is one who is the perfect icon, the absolute reflection and representation of God, Jesus Christ. He is restoring the broken image in his people to glorify our Father in heaven as we were created to do. That’s the gospel!
Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper with Jesus this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Rejoice, the Lord is King
How Deep the Father’s Love for Us
Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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 God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” –Genesis 1:31
 Creation is commended for its goodness, but it didn’t do one thing to make itself good. In other words God commends himself on his perfect work in creating the world and being faithful to complete it until he says it was “very good.” That’s how it is with the lives of his people: we’ll hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant,” on the last day not because we were the cause of doing such good and faithful things, but because He who began a good work in us was faithful to complete it. 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 Sing the Almighty Power of God
Lift High the Cross
For the Beauty of the Earth
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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!
 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” –Galatians 1:8
If you think about the sins in the church at Corinth, it sounds pretty bad. Even naming them today can make people blush a little. Yet, the Apostle Paul addresses them as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” And, while he instructs them in the letters concerning these sins, his preaching with them was “nothing but Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). You’d think he had something more important to preach among them in their sad condition, but Paul knew the gospel was their only remedy.
On the other hand, if you take the churches at Galatia, their problems were different. Yes, the gospel was the only remedy for them too, but Paul addresses them as having “deserted him [Christ]” and turning to “another gospel.” He uses very harsh words, not because of their lack of piety and attention to law, but because of their abandonment of the gospel. He even says that if an angel or even an apostle comes to them with another gospel (that is, other than Christ and him crucified), don’t believe them!
So, you have have the church of poor piety and the church of distorted (law-added) gospel. Which one is more dangerous in the Apostle’s estimation? Which one does he believe is closer to being without hope?
Please join us to hear the preaching of Christ-and-him-crucified (gospel) rather than man-and-him-improved (law) this Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
This is My Father’s World
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
And Can It Be That I Should Gain
This is also the Sunday for our Community Lunch. Please feel free to use the Contact Page to request more information.
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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!
 “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” –John 6:56
There’s a terrible saying that is very common to hear today. It goes like this: “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.” It has a very spiritual air to it, almost like going to church is somehow a danger to your faith. But Jesus speaks of abiding in him as feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood. Not a little bit of ink has been put to paper to try to make this verse (and the whole passage) not say what it is obviously saying.
But, the implication is the really important part: while it may be true that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, you do ordinarily have to go to church to abide in Christ. Going to worship with the people of the kingdom to sing the songs of the kingdom to the King, to hear the King speak to his people in preaching, and to pray kingdom prayers and eat together from the King’s table is going to help you abide in the King immeasurably more than a private devotion at home. The church at worship is where the weak are made strong, the sinful are reminded of their justification, and the gospel erupts with power. Who’d want to miss that?
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Lead On, O King Eternal
Like a River Glorious
Amazing Grace
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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!
 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. –John 15:7-8
“By this” my Father is glorified. What is “this”? The answer is glorious: by your asking him for things and his giving them to you! “By this” points back to what he has just said. God gets the glory as the one who is rich and good enough to answer your prayer.
Of course this can sound a little name-it-and-claim-it, but the condition is clear from the start: his words must abide in us. When we are word-saturated the desires of our heart cease to be merely desires for our domain, but desires for his kingdom. Then we pray accordingly and he answers and is glorified in it. Too often we forget that our prayers are his idea and his goal and for his glory. We did not choose him, but he chose us and appointed us that we should go and bear fruit (John 15:16). That’s the gospel!
Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper on this second Sunday after Pentecost Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Praise Ye the Lord the Almighty
Hallelujah, Praise Jehovah, O My Soul (Psalm 146)
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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 am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” –John 15:1-4
So many times this passage is preached basically to say, “You’d better bear some fruit or you’ll be cut off!” That’s not the gospel! First of all the original audience is not us. It was the true (not Judas) disciples. They are already infallibly his. Second, he says “every branch in me,” thus we know they are already “in him”. Next he says that they are already clean by the word. And finally he says they cannot bear fruit by themselves.
Too often we are worried that we in our strength are not bearing enough fruit. Of course we aren’t! We can’t do it ourselves. Our bearing good fruit is the result of abiding in Jesus. It is not the cause of abiding in Jesus. He gets all the glory, even for our fruit. That’s the gospel!
Come hear it preached and enacted in the Supper this Sunday as we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
The related hymns we’ll sing are:
Come, Thou Almighty King
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
May the Mind of Christ My Savior
Sunday school for children (on Acts and the Early Church) and adults (on Reformed eschatology) 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!
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I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. –Genesis 3:15
