Sermons on Faithfulness

The Virgin Shall Conceive

Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy that confirms Jesus’ humanity as well as his royal heritage. Although Jesus was born into the line of King David, his immediate parents were actually poor and insignificant. Jesus had a true humanity. And yet, the genealogy was unique in how it explained his relationship to his parents. Instead of following the pattern of naming the father, Matthew carefully states that Joseph is not the physical father (Matt 1:16). More explanation is provided in our…

Do Not Harden Your Hearts

The bulk of our passage this morning is a direct quote from Psalm 95. That psalm opens with a familiar call to worship. We’ve used it several times to open our own worship service.  Psalm 95:1 ESV Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Some bible scholars suggest that this psalm was liturgical and frequently used during the preamble of the service. So, as the author begins to quote a…

Jesus Is Greater Than Moses

Martin Luther provides a helpful definition of God Larger Catechism “A “god” is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If…

A Merciful and Faithful High Priest – Pt.2

I’m sure you have heard of this quote from George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” I have noticed that many times—Business teachers have experienced one or two failed business endeavors. Marriage and Family Therapists come from broken or troubled marriages. Church planting coaches tend to be men whose own church plant failed. So why would anyone want to learn from those who have not tasted the glory of success? How could our Savior live a…

A Merciful and Faithful High Priest

Before knowing God, Jonathan Edwards had a fear of thunderstorms. “I used to be a person uncommonly terrified with thunder: and it used to strike me with terror, when I saw a thunderstorm rising.” But after his conversion, Edwards writes: “Now, on the contrary, [thunderstorms] rejoiced me. I felt God at the first appearance of a thunderstorm. And used to take the opportunity at such times, to fix myself to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear…

Perfect Through Suffering

In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, where he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death—regardless of any mitigating efforts we might implement. The opening sentence reads: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He went on to blame nearly every social problem upon the fact that we simply have too many people.  His doomsday prediction was based upon a faulty hypothesis that overpopulation of the planet had reach unrecoverable proportions. Ehrlich’s…

Such A Great Salvation

In his book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr writes about how the internet is changing our ability to think. “Neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that, even as adults, our brains are very plastic. They’re very malleable, they adapt at the cellular level to whatever we happen to be doing. And so the more time we spend surfing, and skimming, and scanning … the more adept we become at that mode of thinking.” Wisdom is associated with deep concentration. Scholarly intellectuals, or any…

But You Remain

We can all get a bit nostalgic about returning to time when we didn’t have a care in the world. For many of us, that’s a time in childhood where we felt a sense of security. For some of us that time was a very brief window before the hardships of reality crept into our lives.  An essential aspect of our reality is that we are in constant flux, alongside other creatures and creation that is constantly changing. We have…

The Scepter Of Uprightness

Perseverance is the final description applied to those who maintain their faith in Christ to the end of their lives. That faith will not remain in hearts that do not treasure Christ. That is why this sermon-letter opens (and continues) with numerous examples of the superiority of the Son. The author of Hebrews establishes Christ deity, and thus, his ultimate supremacy over all things like few other sections of Scripture (cf. Jn 1; Col 1). Last week we considered how the Son is superior…
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