Christ Chapel Cape Cod

We live in two worlds. Jesus Christ is the Lord of both. Just as Jesus occupies a position of power and privilege in the heavenly realm so, too does He occupy the same position of power and privilege in our heart and mind.

Soon 2019 will be history. We can savor its joys but we cannot relive them. We can remember the sorrows, but we cannot relive them either. Onto 2020. Just as God gave us our daily bread in 2019 so He will give us what we need every day during 2020. Since He will give us what we need to live through 2020, we can trust Him to give us what we need in the future. We live by faith in future grace. By faith we believe the future is as bright as the promises of God. By faith we believe the promises of God are the foundation of a life built by trusting Him.

We live in a world starving for good news. We also live in a world drowning in good advice. And lest there be any confusion, they are not the same thing. Where good advice is information you decide to be either useful or useless, helpful or harmful, true or false; good news is information about an event which is true whether we choose to believe it or not.

You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to recognize the dominant image in this passage is that of a stump. Yet when Isaiah delivered this prophecy, the nation of Judah was doing well and King David’s family tree, firmly planted in Jerusalem, was otherwise healthy and bearing fruit.

Every Advent we are reminded of a fundamental contrast. The same season in which we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ as the Light of the world happens during the darkest season of the year.

This the heart and soul of the gospel. Jesus was born to redeem us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. This is the good news about which we are reminded every year at Advent.

The more we know the gospel the more we’ll trust in the trustworthiness of God. Just as the Galatians trusted the gospel and believed they were declared righteous by hearing with faith not by works of the law.

Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit uses experience to make the gospel come alive for us, our faith is not built on our experience. Our trust in Christ is founded on what the Bible says God says about our standing before Him.

As Paul uses it, calling the Galatians foolish implies they were not thinking clearly. They were neither idiots nor unintelligent, just very lazy intellectually. To quote that noted theologian Dr. Phil, the Galatians were guilty of stinking thinking.

Reformation Day celebrates more than just the recovery of the gospel as the true treasure of the Church. It celebrates the recovery of the one doctrine long considered to be the cornerstone of the Reformation—justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The gospel introduces us to a new way of relating to God; one in which our sins our forgiven by the grace of God the Father through faith in God the Son, Jesus Christ.

From Paul’s gospel-driven perspective, what Peter did at Antioch was more than wrong; it was dangerously wrong.

Over the course of his ministry, the apostle Paul encountered his fair share of well-intentioned dragons. In fact, most of his letters were written in response to the activity of well-intentioned dragons among the churches he planted. Galatians is no exception.

Paul's commission came through a direct revelation of Jesus Christ, therefore neither he, nor the gospel he preached, required verification either by another human being, or any human agency. Nevertheless, Paul often had to defend his authenticity as an apostle as well as the authenticity of his gospel.

The letter to the Galatians, is Paul’s passionate appeal for the churches in Galatia not to abandon their newfound faith by turning to a different gospel.

Paul wrote Galatians out of concern the churches had abandoned the gospel as a result of the influence of preachers who believed that salvation required faith in Jesus plus practicing certain parts of the OT law such as circumcision and the dietary laws.

The more we practice what Jesus preaches the more we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. The evidence of our growth is the fruit of the Spirit. As far as Paul is concerned the fruit of the Spirit is the necessary evidence proving you are practicing what Jesus preaches.

How do we know we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ? How do we know we are practicing what Jesus preaches? According to the Puritan Richard Sibbes, “We may know whether the Spirit of God has wrought anything in us by our embracing of good things.” When we embrace good things we produce the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The more we follow Jesus the more we will practice what He preaches. The more we practice what Jesus preaches the more holy we become. And the evidence of this holiness is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Paul begins this last section of Galatians 5 with a command - "walk by the Spirit" followed by a promise - "and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."

Whereas many Americans would define someone who is spiritual as being open and tolerant of all religions and philosophies, and someone who is religious as being a close-minded, no-thinking, rule-following, intolerant person, the Bible defines someone who is Spiritual as possessing the Holy Spirit, and being religious as being led by the Spirit to practice what Jesus preaches.

Paul wrote Galatians to encourage them to keep walking by the Spirit, to continue being led by the Spirit and to carry on sowing to the Spirit by practicing what Jesus preaches.

The Bible defines freedom is found in a relationship with God the Father through faith in God the Son which is brought about by God the Holy Spirit.

Paul is concerned for the Galatians because the Jesus PLUS gospel preached by the Judaizers is a false gospel. The True Gospel—the one preached by Paul and the other Apostles is this: we are saved from our sins and spared from the wrath of God by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Thus, Paul’s question: “Who cut in on you?” The Galatians were running well, but were being persuaded to veer off to follow a different Jesus by following a different gospel.

Whereas many Americans define freedom as self-rule and the right to do what we want without any interference by anyone, the Bible defines freedom in terms of a relationship with God the Father through faith in God the Son which is brought about by God the Holy Spirit.

"Evangelism…is the task of communicating a message from the Creator to rebel mankind. The message begins with information and ends with an invitation. The information concerns God’s work of making His Son a perfect Savior for sinners. The invitation is God’s summons to mankind generally to come to the Savior and find life." -- J.I. Packer, "Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God"

On the day of the LORD the holiness of God will be revealed in all its danger and safety. It will be a day of dread and a day of hope; a day of punishment and a day of reward; a day of judgment and a day of salvation.

The imagery of danger and safety is a central theme of Zechariah 14 and his description of the day of the LORD. On that day, the day when Christ returns to judge the earth and all who dwell therein, everyone will discover that God is not safe. The danger in God is His holiness. But it is His holiness that also makes Him good.

God is not safe. There is a danger in God and that danger is His holiness.

Zechariah 14 is filled with frightening images and scary words. And yet, if we are to be good students of the Bible; if we are, as Paul tells Timothy, to present ourselves to God as workmen who need not be ashamed, who use the word of God correctly; then we must not only read the frightening and scary words, but try our best to understand and apply them.

According to the apostle Paul, Real life means knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. It means living in a faith-relationship with the Son of God. This is what Paul means when he writes: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh (or, in the body), I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

John begins the story of the resurrection with Mary Magdalene arriving at the tomb while it was still dark. Upon seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb, she immediately ran to tell Peter and John. Mary did not look in the tomb. We don’t know what she thought except that something was wrong and she went to get help.

The day Jesus rode into Jerusalem—the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday, He was met with a variety of reactions. One of the more noticeable things about John’s account of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem is how different people react differently to Jesus than others.

The most important feature of Jesus’ role as shepherd is that He lays down his life for the sheep. Of course, His intention is to live and protect them. But Jesus cares so much for the sheep that he is willing to come between his flock and danger. He is willing to die for them.

The connection between Zechariah 13.7 and the death of Jesus Christ lies in this: in both cases God does something unexpected. Sometimes God does the unexpected to help us see His love through a different lens.

Zechariah 13 ends with God refining His people as silver and testing them like gold. The aim of this refining and testing is so they will call upon His name and He will answer them.

Here is as clear a picture of the death of Jesus as you will find in the OT. Pause and linger over this text. The death of Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment of OT prophecy and the starting point of the new covenant of salvation by grace through faith.

The God who made heaven and earth, also made us in His image and likeness. He breathed His Spirit into us and designed us to rely on Him to lead us through every circumstance we encounter. Come what may, we can trust Him to help us through. We can trust His leadership because everything that happens to us has already happened to Him.

Reading Zechariah 11 is like reading a book or watching a movie in which your favorite character keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. Despite being warned by God not to repeat the mistakes made by their ancestors Zechariah's generation will repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. Sometimes God lets us make a series of mistakes so we will turn to Him to make things right.

In many ways the generation addressed by Zechariah is not all that different from the generation addressed by Moses. They have the form of religion but not its substance. And even though they consider themselves to have descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they likely have little to no idea of what it means to be in a covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Having set the table Zechariah now describes how the LORD will make the enemies of the King His footstool. God will help the King restore His people and protect them in a climactic battle against their enemies. By this the LORD will do for His people what they cannot do for themselves.

The message of Psalm 110 is simple and profound: Our God reigns. His light still shines and the darkness has not overcome it. He rules even in the midst of His enemies. The subject of the psalm is the Lord Jesus Christ. We know this because Jesus quoted this psalm in speaking about Himself.

"This psalm is one of the most notable of the sacred hymns. The brightness of this Psalm is like unto a sapphire stone ... it flames out with such flashes of light as to turn night into day. This holy song casts a clear light even to the uttermost parts of the sea, and warns against that practical atheism which ignores the presence of God, and so makes shipwreck of the soul." --Charles H. Spurgeon

Psalm 90 is the first psalm in the fourth book of the psalms. It is a prayer of Moses, the man of God and is placed here to encourage Israel to lift their eyes above their circumstances to see the God who reigns and rules regardless of their current condition.

Psalm 84 is a love song dedicated to the temple in Jerusalem. Whether or not the psalmist was familiar with the daily activities of temple worship, offerings, and sacrifice his passionate vocabulary reveals a deep yearning to worship God and experience His presence.

Inasmuch as 500 years after Zechariah spoke this these words, Jesus Christ fulfilled them when He entered Jerusalem riding a donkey on the very first Palm Sunday, it is only appropriate to study this text on this last Sunday before Advent—the day we call Christ the King Sunday..

A change is gonna come means: "Cheer up; you're a lot worse off than you think you are, but in Jesus you're far more loved than you could have ever imagined.” When it comes to the judgment of God, some receive justice while others receive mercy.

Post tenebras lux (After darkness light) became the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. The phrase refers to the rediscovery of biblical truth in a time of spiritual darkness. After years of being covered up, the Reformation represented the dawn of the Gospel Light. As well as being the rallying cry of the Reformation, after darkness, light is a very helpful description of the events described in Zechariah 8.

When we engage in acts of piety we are not prepared to be told that God had no regard for our crocodile tears.

The leader whom God will send will be unlike any leader they’ve had in the past. He will be a new kind of leader; a leader who will be both king and priest. A leader who will wear the crown yet serve and reign in and from the temple. A leader whose name is the Branch.

As we approach this last vision given to Zechariah, God has separated the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the true believers from the false. The stage is set. All that remains is for the chariots of God’s wrath to be released to carry out His judgment. The cry for mercy made in Zechariah 1.12 is now about to be answered.