Redeemer Church of Waterford

How does Jesus being the Creator of things visible and invisible speak to our own cultural moment which places a higher value on the visible (material) world than it does the invisible (spiritual) world?

In the first century, when the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, there is confusion about who Jesus is. In the fourth century, when the Nicene Creed was written, there is confusion about who Jesus is. In the twenty-first century there is confusion about who Jesus is.Before we can understand God as "maker of all things visible and invisible," we must understand the nature and person of His Son by whom He made all things.

In this continuation of our consideration of what the Nicene Creed means by "Maker of Heaven and Earth," Pastor Paul gives a fuller exposition of Hebrews 1:1-12 as we examine how the Son as the Word of the Father calls everything that is into being.

Albert Mohler: "...everything that exists traces its existence and its reality to the sovereign act of God the Father Almighty—maker of heaven and earth." What we believe about the origins of life is fundamental to everything else we believe, and more importantly, fundamental to how we live either under the Lordship of Jesus Christ or in rebellion to His creation order.

What does the Nicene Creed mean when it says, "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty"? How are we to understand God as "Father"? Preeminently, God is understood to be Father in His eternal relationship to the Son without regard to His relationship to those whom He has adopted as Sons.

In our day you can find people with problems, or foibles, or issues, or hang ups. You can find people who have made mistakes. You can find good people who occasionally do bad things, but rarely can you find a sinner.What we learn from our text is that only where the transcendent, holy God is revealed do men see themselves as sinful.

Who was this man whose resurrection from the dead we celebrate each Easter? He was a man in human flesh like any other man. But the description given of this man by his closest friend and companion as "the Word of life," but more than that as the one who was "from the beginning" indicates he was more than extraordinary.

The words of Isaiah 53 are the perspective of onlookers to the life of Jesus who mistakenly believed that the sorrows and griefs Jesus endured during his life and the ignoble death he died were evidence of the judgement of God upon him. But they soon realized that the wrath Jesus endured was not for his sins, but for theirs.

Regeneration is a Trinitarian work, which is to say all three persons of the Holy Trinity acted in eternal counsel to devise and execute the plan of redemption in such a way that it cannot fail to produce the intended result of saving all of God's people.

Regeneration is not conversion; it is not repentance; it is not moral reform. Regeneration precedes all of these things - including faith - and is solely a work of God without any effort on our part at all.

Over a 20 year period (2005-2025), the number of 18 to 29 year old's in America who identify as "Christian" has declined from 68% to 44%. We are losing our children to the culture.2 Timothy 3 defines a culture by what it loves, and those loves lead to an abandonment of God. But the Apostle Paul also offers a strategy for spiritually training our children so that they are protected from being swept into the culture and away from God.

The doctrinal stability and spiritual maturity of Redeemer Church is the work of the whole church as together we "grow up into Christ."In what specific ways do spiritually mature believers contribute to the stability and maturity of the church?

What are your expectations when you come into church on a Sunday? When you leave church, how would you describe your experience?In Isaiah 6, Isaiah is going to the temple with the congregation to worship, something he would have routinely done. But there is nothing routine about the experience he describes in Isaiah 6. Even so, we can identify five elements of worship in Isaiah 6 that ought to be present in every gathering for worship.

On Thursday, February 13 we learned that 70 Christians were found beheaded in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As shocking as this news is, these 70 are only the most recent of the millions upon millions of followers of Jesus who have "loved not their lives unto death" throughout church history.How are we to respond? "To die is gain."

At the end of a discourse on the cost of discipleship, Jesus makes a seemingly unrelated statement about salt, its flavor, and its usefulness. What does salt have to do with the radical discipleship our Lord has just described?

It is not possible to be a Christian unless you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. How does Jesus identify true disciples? Controversially:1. A true disciple of Jesus hates father, mother, wife, children, and his own life.2. A true disciple of Jesus bears his cross and comes after Jesus3. A true disciple of Jesus renounces everything he has

In his Gospel, Luke records 7 meals where Jesus was either a guest, a host, or both guest and host. What has Jesus given us in each of these meals which are also present whenever we celebrate the Lord's Table?

On the evening of His resurrection, Jesus shared a meal with two of His disciples who lived in a village called Emmaus. What do we learn from this meal that informs the way we share the Lord's Supper together as God's family?

Even as we plan our way, the Lord orders our steps to bring us to the gospel. Each of us must ask, "Who do I worship and what do I do with my sins?"The answer to those questions are found in stories of men and women in the Bible, some who experienced miraculous conversions and others who experienced mundane and ordinary conversions. Can you see your story in their stories?

The early Christians in the New Testament were not trying to imitate families. So far as they understood the gospel, they WERE a family. And in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus made the startling claim that God's family - the church - has priority over your biological family with the expectation that we will fold our families into the family of God, with the Church taking priority over every other sphere of our lives.How do I fold my family into the family of God?

In this inaugural sermon in the series "Devoted to God's Church" we consider the nature of our relationship to the church as given to us in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: the prerequisites (believing and belonging) and the particulars (the body, the brood (family), the building, and the bride.

Why don't I feel like praying? Because when I pray, I say the same old things about the same old things. There is nothing wrong with praying ABOUT the same things. The issue is SAYING the same things about the same things.One remedy to our frustrated praying is to pray the Bible. Using Dr. Donald Whitney's method outlined in his book, "Praying the Bible," Pastor Paul presents this method in this sermon on prayer.

When did it last cross your mind that Jesus was thinking about you? When did it actually cross your mind that Jesus wants you?

God made a promise at the beginning of the Bible which unfolds like a blooming flower throughout the Bible, finding its ultimate fulfillment in Revelation 21:3 "God himself shall be with them and be their God."Revelation 21:1-7 gives five specifics of what this promise means for us, as well as revealing how we come to be participants in it's blessings.

J. I Packer called the steps which the Son of God took down from heaven to earth to be incarnate in human flesh "the great stoop." In Philippians 2:5-11, using what is believed to be an early hymn of the church, the Apostle Paul traces those steps.

The Angel's startling announcement to a young virgin that she will bring forth the promised Messiah comes in two parts: what does this mean and how is it possible?

The Angel's startling announcement to a young virgin that she will bring forth the promised Messiah comes in two parts: what does this mean and how is it possible?

The story of Christmas does not begin in a manager, or with shepherds, or angelic messengers, or a star. The story of Christmas begins in eternity when God the Father and God the Son entered into an everlasting covenant to redeem Adam's fallen race. The promise of that covenant is made in the beginning of history, after Adam's rebellion, when God cursed the serpent and promised that through the seed of the woman a deliverer would come to crush the serpent's head.

The objective of the Book of 1 Samuel is to reveal the kind of leader for whom God is seeking to be the shepherd king of His people. The people had chosen Saul, who turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. God chose David, whom we have watched grow from a young shepherd boy into a mighty warrior. But God isn't looking for a mighty warrior. He's looking for a humble, principled servant. And as we observe how David responds to a devastating loss, we begin to see in David the kind of leader God is looking for.

"So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together" (1 Samuel 31:6).On the same day David is routing the Amalekites and recovering his family and goods, winning a decisive victory over God's enemies (1 Samuel 30), God is using His enemies (the Philistines) to bring final judgment on Saul and those associated with the reign of Saul (1 Samuel 31). God has literally "rent the kingdom from Saul and given it to a neighbor of Saul's who is better than him" (1 Samuel 15:28).

How can it cany any worse? All of us have asked this question when circumstances have overwhelmed us. Almost since our first meeting David in 1 Samuel 16, he has lived his life as a fugitive from Saul and the unrelenting object of Saul's wrath.And just when you think it can't get any worse, he loses everything.

The 126th Psalm is the seventh of the Psalms of Ascent which were written to accompany God's people as they made their way to the temple for Sabbath worship. This particular Psalm celebrates the LORD turning the fortunes of His people in such a surprising manner that their new reality was like waking up from a dream.God turned the fortunes of His people in the result of Tuesday's Presidential Election. What can we learn from the 126th Psalm about how we are to respond to this mercy from God?

When the Lord does not answer Saul's inquiry, Saul seeks out a woman with a familiar spirit to conjure Samuel from the dead. This episode in our Bibles raises some questions about the legitimacy of the occult, the ability of this woman to bring up Samuel from the dead, and whether it is actual Samuel who appears or a demonic apparition.

The running theme of 1 Samuel 28 is the silence of God.Saul is distressed to the point of a mental breakdown. The Lord is not responding to his inquiry about a coming battle with the Philistines. He has used every legitimate means in an attempt to get God's attention to no avail, so he turns to a woman who practices divination to conjure the prophet Samuel from the dead.

From the time David slew Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, have had a front row seat to the valor, courage, and integrity of David as he lived as a fugitive from Saul. We have come to love him, to respect him, to expect nothing but honorable behavior from him.And yet in our study today we come to a very disturbing story which reveals the depravity of David in murderous deceit. How did David fall to such a low place, and what can we learn about how we are to respond when our heroes fail?

The details recorded in 1 Samuel 26 are almost a mirror image of the event that took place in 1 Samuel 24. In both chapters, Saul is told where David is hiding, Saul is vulnerable to David's revenge, David spares Saul, and Saul seems to be repentant.But in between 1 Samuel 24 and 1 Samuel 26 is 1 Samuel 25; and the word of God to David through Abigail in 1 Samuel 25 is critical to understanding why 1 Samuel 26 appears to be a repeat of 1 Samuel 24.

When the story of David and Nabal begins, David is prepared to repay with the violence the insult of Nabal by taking matters into his own hands, an action of vengeance that would have been a blot on his character for the rest of his life. God intervenes with preventive providence through Abigail to save Nabal and his men from David's violent vengeance, but in doing so, Abigail was God's instrument to save David from himself. In the beginging David had only asked for the compensation which was rightly his for services rendered, In the end, God gives to David everything which belonged to Nabal.

In this sermon from 1 Samuel 25:29, Pastor Paul explores some "seed thoughts" from the Abigail's poetic phrase: "The soul of my Lord (David) is bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God."Abigail's expression here is covenant language, grounded in God's everlasting promise to His people to secure them for eternity.

Having considered in the previous message the details of Abigail's counsel to David in 1 Samuel 25:18-31, we come back to consider how it illustrates "answering a fool" in Proverbs 26:4-5.David responds to Abigail's counsel with three blessings and a surprise proposal.

1 Samuel 25 introduces us to "a woman of good understanding" as an example to all of us of how to see God's unseen hand in the circumstances of our lives.Dale Ralph Davis says that "Abigail is the Lord's stop sign, mercifully placed in David's path." The Lord's providential intervention through Abigail restrains His chosen king from his own impulsive folly and wrong.

In a rather blunt and matter of fact way our narrator announces the death of Samuel.But God's work in Israel did not end when Samuel died. God's work never is dependent on only one man.In this sermon we reflect upon the life of the prophet Samuel.

David and his men have been providing protection for Nabal and his possessions. When David sends his men to Nabal to request payment for services rendered, Nabal insults David. David's response reveals a surprising flaw in David's character which to this point in our studies of 1 Samuel we have never seen.There are lessons to be learned here about the restraining providence of God which kept David from becoming a bigger fool than Nabal.

The 93rd Psalm begins with the indisputable declaration that "the Lord reigns." In our previous message we were considering the Psalmist's instruction in Psalm 96:10 that we "say among the heathen, 'The Lord reigns!"This Lord who reigns does so "on high" as an imposing figure with an unassailable rule impervious to the foolish and futile assaults of the nations because He is mightier.

God gives His people a mandate in Psalm 96:10, "Say among the heathen, The Lord reigns!"The heathen are the nations surrounding the people of God who worshipped idols of their own making rather than the Creator God who made everything. Who is this Lord who reigns and what does it mean when we say to the unbelieving people around us, "The Lord reigns"?

Not unlike the prophet Isaiah (in Isaiah 6) who cursed himself because he dwelt among a people of unclean lips, David pronounces a curse upon himself in the closing verses of Psalm 120 because of the culture of lies which surrounds him. How does David choose to live in a culture of lies, and what can we learn from him about how to live in our own culture of lies?

In the 120th Psalm, David cries out to God in response to the distress inflicted on him by the slander of his enemies. What's interesting about his distress is that the events he has in view occurred YEARS earlier. How do we overcome the pain inflicted by lying lips?

In Psalm 63 David gives us insight into the psychological turmoil he is experiencing as a fugitive from Saul in the wilderness of Judah. It is David's unshakeable belief that regardless of his dire circumstances, God is HIS God, and will deliver him.

As he continues his run from Saul, David is now a fugitive in the wilderness of Judah (! Samuel 22:5). It is in the wilderness that he writes the 63rd Psalm, providing for us God's word on where we should resort when our soul's are tormented to the point of despair.

In Psalm 54:3 David says that his enemies have "not set God before them." What does it mean to not set God before us, and in what ways are God's own people guilty of not setting God before us?