Podcast appearances and mentions of messiah jesus

Messiah Sermon Series

But God! Ephesians 2:1-10 by William Klock Earlier this week Veronica and I watched an episode of the X Files that unintentionally had some pretty sound theology embedded in the story.  Agents Mulder and Scully were called to investigate some strange goings-on in a small town—as usual.  As it turned out, a guy cleaning out an abandoned storage locker found a genie.  And the genie gave him three wishes.  As you would expect, it didn't go well.  He wished to be able to make himself invisible so that he could spy on people.  And not being terribly bright, he prompted got killed crossing the street, because he was…invisible.  His brother claimed the genie and didn't fare any better.  His wish ended up blowing up his house with him in it.  And so Mulder ended up, unexpectedly, with the genie and three wishes.  And he asked the genie why the wishing thing always ends in disaster and the genie told him that it's because people are stupid and selfish.  So Mulder thought long and hard and in his best effort at altruism, he wished for world peace.  St. Paul would call it shalom.  And he went outside to discover that he was the only person left on earth.  Because the genie knew fallen human nature and getting rid of all of us was the only way to bring world peace.  Thankfully, Mulder had two more wishes so he could undo the first and set the genie free with the third. And I thought that St. Paul would probably have a bit of a chuckle at that.  Because Paul knew the same thing the genie knew: we are all sinners, idolaters who worship anything and everything but the God who created us and loves us.  And, like Agent Mulder, but unlike the genie, Paul also knew that there is no shalom without human beings in our rightful place.  Creation groans in eager longing for the day God will finally set us to rights, he says in Romans, Creation waits for the day when God restores us to our position as his stewards, to rule creation and to serve him in his temple.  That, Brothers and Sisters, is shalom, peace.  Creation can never be complete without us in our proper place—filling the vocation God created us for in the first place.  That's why God doesn't just “Deal with evil” like so many people want him to.  Like the genie, he'd just have to remove us all from creation—and that's not how creation is supposed to be.  This is why Paul practically shouts out ho de Theos, at the beginning of Ephesians 2:4: “But God!”  Because he knew that in setting creation to rights, God can and will, first, set us and our fallen, sinful hearts to rights—something no genie could ever do. And so far, in Ephesians 1, Paul has begun with a great shout of praise for what God has done in Jesus the Messiah and then he's told the Ephesians how he prays for them—that they would know, that they would understand this great story of redemption, the power behind it to renew creation, so that they can be part of this story that ends with the knowledge of the glory of God filling the earth.  Remember at the end of chapter one, closing his prayer for them, he wrote about the church, united with Jesus and full of the Spirit being the “fullness of the one who fills all in all.”  It's a prayer that God, that Jesus, that the Spirit, that the scriptures would form and shape them and truly make them the church.  And while we might miss the significance of Paul's language of filling and fullness and being all in all, it was not lost on the Ephesians.  This was temple language. It's the language of God coming to dwell with his people.  The way he did with Adam and Eve in the garden.  The story ever since has pointing in that direction.  The restoration of God's temple, the return of his presence, and God dwelling with his people forever.  This is what the Exodus was all about.  God rescued and created a people, he gave them a law to make and to keep them pure and holy, so that he could take up his residence in their midst—so that he could tabernacle with them.  It wasn't perfect.  The people needed to offer sacrifices repeatedly so that they could be purified by that blood.  A veil separated them from the direct presence of the Almighty.  But this model of new creation pointed forward to the day when God would set his people and his creation fully to rights.  The long exile, first from the promised land and the temple, then from the presence of God, primed Israel with hope for that coming day.  And now Paul's ready to explain to the church that they—that we—are the beginning of that fulfilment.  In us, God has established a new temple.  By the blood of Jesus he has purified us.  Through the gift of his Spirit he has taken up his dwelling in us.  He has begun the work of setting our hearts to rights.  And in that, he has made us the working model of his new creation and stewards of his good news—that we might, to use the language he used with Adam and Eve, that we might be fruitful and multiply, spreading the gospel, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of his glory. Brothers and Sisters, this is the story we need to inhabit.  Too often Christians have got it backwards.  We think the gospel story is a story of escape from creation—that in Jesus, God forgives our sins, so that someday he can take us away from earth and up to heaven to live with him.  But it's really just the opposite.  Through the blood of Jesus he has purified us and made us fit to be his holy temple, so that he can dwell with us.  Jesus is the model, Immanuel, God with us.  This is the story Paul wants to get across in Ephesians 2.  Ideally we'd cover the whole chapter all at once, but we'll have to break it into two halves.  This temple story will jump out at us in the second half.  The first half begins with our sin problem. How did these mostly Gentile Christians in Ephesus find themselves in this oh so Jewish story?  He writes beginning at verse 1, “Well, you were dead because of your offenses and sins in which you used to walk, keeping in step with the world's ‘present age'; in step, too, with the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is, even now, amongst the children of disobedience.” “You”—he's addressing them as Gentiles.  In verse 3 he'll link them with “us”—the Jews.  You were dead.  Because you walked—there's that great word peripateo again—you walked, you lived a life of offense and sin against God.  And we can't hear these two words sin and death together without it taking us back to Genesis.  And if we go back to Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve's choice to listen to the serpent's lie, not just to disobey God, but to reject their vocation as priests of God's temple and to try to become gods themselves, if go way back to the beginning of the story there, we should understand that sin and death aren't about God just setting up a bunch of rules and then condemning the people who disobey them.  Sin, and especially “offence”, are what we call it when human beings, created to bear God's image—that means to be his priests and his representatives in the temple, in creation—sin and offence are what we call it when we reject that vocation.  When we try to take the temple for ourselves.  And death is not an arbitrary punishment, but the natural result of turning away from the God who is the source of life.  That's why the wages of sin is death. And, of course, once humanity chose that path of disobedience and death it just snowballed.  Human culture and even those unseen powers that God had put in place to oversee the nations went horribly wrong.  The Jews called it the present evil age, because they lived in hope of the age to come when God would set creation to rights.  But the Gentiles had no hope.  They just went with the sinful flow.  We see it today as the world rejects Christianity.  Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal of degenerate, paedophile friends would have been right at home in pagan Greece or Rome and they're exactly what you get when a people rejects God.  The devil didn't just tempt the man and woman to reject God.  He and his cronies continue to steer and influence fallen humanity.  Paul will have more to say about this later when he writes about “principalities and powers”.  In our baptismal rite, we put this in terms of the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. All these forces work together to keep humanity lost in idolatry and sin.  And so far as this goes, Paul is just restating the standard Jewish analysis of the Gentiles.  But then in verse 3 Paul goes on and writes, “We all used to live this way, in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of flesh and mind.  We, too—he means he and his fellow Jews—were by nature children of wrath, just like everyone else.”  Paul recognised that even though his own people had the torah, God's law, and were trying to live by it, they were suffering the same problem as the Gentiles.  The corrupt desires of flesh and mind had just as much a grip on Israel as they did the peoples of the nations.  The whole world, all of humanity was mired in darkness, Jew and gentile alike. And this where, at the beginning of verse 4 Paul interjects this powerful, earth shattering: “But God!”  Into the darkness, into the hopelessness, into the condemnation, into the death, God intervenes to bring light, to bring hope, to bring deliverance, to bring life.  “But God,” Paul writes, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, he took us at the very point where we were dead through our offenses, and made us alive together with the Messiah.  Yes, by grace you are saved!” Israel knew about God's mercy and love.  The story they told of their history with God was full of mercy and grace.  And occasionally some gentile would hear that story and be drawn to it, because the God of Israel was unlike any of the other gods.  Zeus and Poseidon and Hades, Aphrodite and Artemis, people might believe all sorts of things about them, but no one ever believed that the gods loved them.  The gods served themselves.  If they sometimes showed favour to this person or to that city, it wasn't because of love; it was to further their own schemes and ambitions.  No Greek or Roman—no Egyptian or Persian, for that matter—would have ever said of their gods anything even remotely like what Paul says here of the God of Israel: that he is rich in mercy, that he loves us with a great love, or that he has shown us kindness.  Zeus and Hera, Osiris and Isis, they were all purely transactional.  If you did something good for them and you were lucky, they might do something nice for you.  We need to be careful, because Christians can fall into the same pagan way of thinking about God—making deals with him or treating him like a divine vending machine.  But Paul makes it clear that the God of Israel isn't like that.  Instead, he's full of mercy and love and kindness.  Yes, his purpose is to fill the earth with his glory, but he is glorious precisely because he is unlike the gods humans dream up.  He is full of mercy and love. And Paul reminds the Ephesians: By his grace, God has taken what he did for Jesus when he raised him from death, and has made it true of us.  If we are “in the Messiah”, then we are alive together with him.  He goes on in verse 6: “He raised us up with him and made us sit with him, in the heavenly places in Messiah Jesus.  This was so that in the ages to come he could show just how unbelievably rich his grace is, the kindness he has shown us in Messiah Jesus.”  This is how God reveals his glory.  Not merely with a show of strength or power, but by showing his grace. Again, what is true of Jesus is true of the church—of the Ephesians Christians, and of us.  And it's not just Jesus' resurrection, his being made alive again.  Paul has said that before.  But here he also stresses that Jesus' ascension is somehow true of us too.  God didn't just make us alive with Jesus the King; he's made us alive in order to sit us with the Messiah, with the King in the heavenly places.  So Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of his Father.  He's the King and that's what kings do: they take their thrones and they rule.  But Paul is saying that if we are “in the Messiah”, then we're right there with him. The resurrection part of that, the being made alive with Jesus probably isn't too hard for us to wrap our heads around.  In Jesus, God has made us a promise.  Even though we'll die, because we are in the Messiah, he will raise us to life again just as he did with Jesus.  If we have any doubts, Paul would remind us that God has filled us with his Spirit to give us a taste of and downpayment on resurrection life with him.  That part I think we can pretty well wrap our heads around.  But what does it mean to be seated with him in the heavenlies? This is where we need to make sure we've got the story right.  Because if we understand the climax of the story as someday escaping from earth, as escaping our bodies, to live a sort of disembodied spiritual life forever in heaven, we're going to miss Paul's point.  Again, the story isn't about us going up; it's about God making us fit, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, to be his temple—so that he can come down—to us. Consider: Jesus has already done this.  Remember the end of Chapter 1, where Paul said that Jesus is the one in whom heaven and earth—all of creation—are summed up, are brought together, are unified, the way it was in the beginning: heaven and earth overlapping, God and human beings dwelling together.  That's how it began and that's the ending towards which God is taking history—to set his broken, sin-sundered creation to rights.  Jesus is the prototype, the signpost who points us to, who shows us what God's future will be like.  In him, God has joined our nature to his own.  In him, heaven and earth have been brought back together.  Think of that great Ascension Day hymns, “See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph”: He has raised our human nature, on the clouds to God's right hand; there we sit in heavenly places, there with him in glory stand.”  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is the temple in person.  And Jesus is the whole of creation—heaven and earth—in miniature. And what is true of him is equally true of those who are united with him by God's grace.  As we'll see in the second half of the chapter, the church—the Ephesian Christians and you and me—we are also that temple and if we have any doubts, all we need to remember is that God has come to dwell in us in the person of his Spirit.  And remember the goal, the one promised by the prophets so long before, the goal is for the knowledge of the glory of God to fill the earth.  The church is his means of making that happen.  He didn't just send his son to be the on-earth-as-in-heaven man, through his son and through his Spirit he has created a whole community of on-earth-as-in-heaven people to do just that: to live out in our lives, in our relationships, in our community heaven on earth—to be a people who show the world God's love and mercy and grace and kindness.  To be a working model of his new creation and to give the world a taste of that future right now.  To reveal the glory and the beauty and goodness of God in our lives and in our own proclamation so that everyone around us will know his glory and be drawn to him. This is then what Paul gets at in verses 8-10.  He writes, “For you have been saved by grace, through faith. This is not of your own doing; it is God's gift.  It isn't on the basis of works, so no one is able to boast.  You see, we are his workmanship, created in Messiah Jesus for the good works that he prepared, ahead of time, so that we should walk in them.”  What does he mean?  Well, Paul's reminding them that there was a time when Jews and gentiles were separated by the law, by torah.  God poured out his grace on Israel, set them apart with his law as a way to teach them how to love him and to love their neighbours, so that they could be a light to the gentiles—so they could make his glory known in the earth.  Israel failed in that mission, but God acted in grace again.  He gave his son to be the faithful Israelite and in Jesus, Israel's mission to witness the grace and glory of God was fulfilled.  And now these gentile Ephesians who have encountered the risen Jesus, who have heard the gospel, and been filled with God's Spirit—they've been united together with faithful Jews in Messiah Jesus.  In them, God's promises—all the way back to Abraham and even to Adam—are being fulfilled.  In them, God's glory is on display before the nations.  And there is no longer a need for the division that had been given by torah.  Now the Spirit is teaching them and enabling them to love God and to love each other for all the world to see.  In Jesus and the Spirit, God has made them a people who are fulfilling the very thing that torah was meant to do, not just because we keep a set of rules or live according to a certain moral code—there's a sense in which we actually do do that—but because, through Jesus and the Spirit we actually live out and put on display the new creation, God's future that is breaking into the world in the midst of the old. Paul puts it beautifully, but in a way we might miss in English translation, when he says that we—the church—are God's “workmanship”.  The Greek word is poiema.  We get our word “poem” from it.  The Greek word doesn't mean “poem”—maybe we could almost say it means “artwork”.  In the Old Testament it's often used to describe the creative work of God.  In other places it's used to describe things that are carefully and meticulously crafted for his use, like the garments of the priests or the vessels of the tabernacle.  Brothers and Sisters, we—the church—are God's carefully, purposefully, and wonderfully created masterpiece.  He's given his son and he's given his Spirit to craft, to create, to work us into something good—to restore his broken creation in us.  And, Paul sums up, God has done this work in us so that in our own lives and in the life of the church together, we can do such good work too.  Not doing good works to please him or to earn his favour.  That would be like going back to the pagan world of people doing things to manipulate the gods.  God is pleased by our good works, but he's created and enabled us to do good works as a way of showing his new creation to the world, a way of fulfilling the law he had given to Israel, as a way of loving him and loving each other—ultimately as a way to restore us to that vocation as his image bearers, to be the priests of his temple who steward his goodness and his good rule for the sake of creation. Brothers and Sisters, this is the story that God has written for us.  The story of our priesthood, reject and lost, but now restored through Jesus and the Spirit, a story of renewal and a story of hope—as it points us toward the day when God finishes his great work of bringing heaven and earth back together, of the day when he will return to dwell with us as he did in the beginning.  This the story that reminds what Jesus and the Spirit have made us.  It's the story that reminds us of our vocation as the church—that we're not just the people who long for things to be on earth as they are in heaven; we're the people who find our very identity in Jesus, the heaven-and-earth Messiah, and who are, ourselves, called to be the heaven-on-earth people—a people who reflect back to the world God's love and grace, his justice and goodness, who are by our very redemption witnesses of his faithfulness and, above all, his glory.  We are his workmanship.  May the world, by God's grace, see his glory in us and in our life together. Let's pray: Heavenly Father, our Collect today reminded us that without love, nothing we do is worth anything.  Fill us with your grace, that we might truly love.  Love you.  Love our neighbours.  Making us the heaven-on-earth people you intend for us to be, so that the world may see your glory on display in your church.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.

To Know the Surpassing Greatness of his Power Ephesians 1:15-23 by William Klock Do you ever wonder how I pray for you as your pastor?  You know I pray about the needs and concerns each of you shares with me, but I'm talking more generally about how I pray for you all as Living Word Church.  It occurred to me this week that in all my years in ministry no one has ever asked me that.  But I do pray for you and our text today from Ephesians—it's 1:15-23 if you want to follow along—this text is one of my favourite prayers.  For you.  In fact, I have this printed sheet taped inside my prayer book.  And what's on it is five prayers, all taken from Paul's letters; prayers he prayed for the churches he cared for.  Prayers inspired by the Holy Spirit.  About fifteen years ago it struck me that I should pray these Spirit-inspired pastoral prayers for you.  And so I typed them up, tweaked the wording a bit to fit the form of a collect, printed them out, and stuck them inside the back cover of my prayer book.  And each day at Morning Prayer, I pray one of these prayers for you.  And this one is, I think, maybe the most important. This prayer is still part of Paul's introduction to his letter to the Ephesians.  Last week we read that long run-on sentence that's all about the Father fulfilling his promises to Israel in Jesus; how we as Jesus' people share in the inheritance that was promised to Abraham, to Jacob, and to David; and how God's indwelling Spirit is the downpayment and guarantee of that inheritance.  And we heard that this inheritance is God's new creation.  That long run-on sentence was sort of Paul's opening shout of praise to God for what he's done. Starting with Chapter 2, Paul's going to use the rest of the letter to unpack this great shout of praise, to preach it, and to explain how it applies to us—how it shapes the church.  But first, there's this prayer.  Paul prays that his brothers and sisters in Ephesus will really and truly hear this message, that they'll take it to heart, and that they will be transformed by it.  In short: Paul's told them about the promised inheritance they have as the Messiah's people, now he prays that the knowledge of that inheritance will transform them. Before we get into Paul's prayer, there are three Old Testament passages we need to be familiar with, because they're what give shape to Paul's vision of the Messiah and the church.  The first is Psalm 110.  Psalm 110 is one of those Old Testament passages it's worth getting into your memory, because it echoes so powerfully throughout the whole New Testament.  It is, far and away, the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New.  This is the psalm, written by King David, that begins with the words, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”  When the first Christians wanted to stress that Jesus isn't just Saviour, but that he's even more importantly Lord of all, the King of kings, this was their favourite Old Testament passage. And then there's Psalm 8.  It's a close second behind Psalm 110.  It's the psalm that begins, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”  For Paul writing to the Ephesians, the really important part begins in verse 4, where David praises God for what he has made us as human beings.  David sings, “What is man that you are mindful of him?…You have made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honour.  You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet…O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”  The psalm echoes Genesis and God's creation of human beings as his image bearers.  That means to be the priests and stewards of his garden-temple.  That's what we were created to be and it's the vocation we rejected when we, instead, chose sin—to try to be gods ourselves.  In Paul's day many of the Jews saw not only the human vocation in Psalm 8, but they saw it as a prophecy of the Messiah who would be the truly human one—a new Adam who will get it right this time; a Messiah whom, according to Psalm 110, God would raise to his right hand to reign until he's put all his enemies under his feet. And then, what does the Messiah's victory look like?  Isaiah, especially chapter 11, was a favourite of the early Christians.  “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”  So Isaiah is talking about the king who will arise from the line of David.  “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”  That's the Messiah.  And his kingdom?  It should sound familiar: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat…the lion shall eat straw like an ox…and a little child shall lead them.” This was the new world that Israel expected the Messiah, the great King from the line of David, this is what they expected him to usher in.  God's Spirit would rest on him—That sounds like what happened at Jesus' baptism, doesn't it?—and through his wisdom and understanding, his counsel and power, his knowledge and the fear of the Lord, he will set this broken world to rights.  He will bring God's justice to warring nations and hurting people.  Peace will reign and the knowledge of God's glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  This was an incredibly important passage for Paul, because when Paul looked at the little churches that were popping up all over the Greco-Roman world, in pagan cities, right under Caesar's nose, challenging the old gods, and most importantly bringing Jews and gentiles together in one family in the Messiah, Paul saw with absolute clarity the beginnings of the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy.  Through the Messiah, in these churches where Jews and gentiles were becoming one, where they were worshipping together the God of Israel across their social, cultural, and ethnic boundaries, the wolf and the lamb were lying down together at peace.  In them, Paul saw a foretaste of what's to come. Putting all these layers together, we can sum up what the Messiah was to be and do in four points.  Israel expected the Messiah (1) to be the King who would defeat the powers of evil; (2) the King who would rescue God's people from their bondage to those evil powers; (3) the King who would build a temple for God to dwell in; and (4) the King who would bring God's justice or righteousness and his peace to the whole world.  That's the Messiah.  And in doing those things, Jesus inaugurates the new creation. But Paul also recognised that the Church, that we who are united with the Messiah by faith share in that messianic ministry begun by Jesus.  Filled with God's Spirit, we are the temple Jesus built.  And we confront the powers with his victory and proclaim the liberating gospel to those in bondage.  We live out God's justice and peace.  And most importantly in this passage here: As a people full of the knowledge of God and his purposes for creation, we anticipate that day when the whole earth will be full of “knowing-God” as the waters cover the sea.  The church is the beginning of God's new creation in the midst of the old. So now we're ready to understand Paul's prayer.  It begins at verse 15: “Because of all this and because having heard of your faithfulness to the Lord Jesus, and that you show love to all God's saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” Now, they weren't perfect Christians.  No one ever is.  They weren't a perfect church.  No such thing exists this side of eternity.  But Paul had lived with these people.  He'd got to know them.  When he was away from them, he heard what other visitors had to say about them.  And he knew that, however imperfectly, they were faithful to the Lord Jesus.  Faithful.  What does that mean?  It means not just believing the right things about Jesus, but more importantly, committing yourself to him.  That's probably why Paul calls him “Lord Jesus” here.  You can believe all the true things about Jesus you want, but what makes a Christian is when you give your loyalty, your allegiance to Jesus as creation's true Lord.  When we repent and turn away from our sins and from our selfishness, when we stop trying to play at being gods and to write our stories for ourselves, and instead choose to live for him and to live in hope of his kingdom, his new creation, and not just as some thing in the distant future, but something we are beginning to live out here and now, Brothers and Sisters, that's what a Christian is.  Paul saw these men and women doing that.  He saw how much it cost them.  They were shunned by their families because they'd stopped worshipping the old gods; losing their jobs, because their guilds kicked them out for the same reason; their fellow citizens considered them disloyal for not taking part in the civil religion of Ephesus and of Caesar; just waiting to take the blame for bringing down the wrath of the gods on the city should some natural disaster strike.  Faith in Jesus cost them something.  It cost a lot.  And Paul saw that they were willing to count that cost.  And, too, he saw their love for each other and for their brothers and sisters struggling in other places.  Poor as they were, they sent money to the even poorer Christians in Jerusalem.  They supported and cared for each other like family.  However imperfect their faith may have been, in them Paul saw clear evidence of the gospel's power at work.  And he prayed for that power to continue to work in them So he goes on in verse 16.  Here are the specifics of that prayer: “I pray that the God of Messiah Jesus our Lord, the Father of glory, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.  Then you will know what the hope is that goes with God's call; you will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in the saints; and you will know the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who are faithful, according to the working of his strength and power.” Paul longs for them to be enlightened by the Spirit.  Wisdom and revelation.  Here's what Paul means.  Wisdom and revelation are two facets of the same thing.  When you hear “wisdom” think of the book of Proverbs.  Wisdom is what you need if you want to truly live as a human being according to God's design.  But thanks to King Solomon as the paragon of wisdom in Israel, wisdom is also a royal thing associated with kings.  Now remember Isaiah 11.  This is why Isaiah described the coming messianic king, the one who is truly human, the new Adam, Isaiah describes him as perfectly wise.  And Paul knows that the people who are in the Messiah, share in that wisdom, that “revelation”.  Think of “revelation” as “insight” into God's design for living.  This broken world sorely lacks that wisdom and that insight, but it is ours in Jesus the Messiah.  In him we have the knowledge of God that the world lacks, the knowledge that will one day fill the earth.  The knowledge that, as the church lives it out in daily life, acts as the salt of the earth, as light in the darkness, that gives everyone around a anticipatory glimpse of creation set to rights.  Paul prays that their hearts will be opened to this knowledge.  He saw it happening already in their faith and in their love for each other, but he prayed that the Spirit would open their hearts more and more to the knowledge of God.  That the Spirit would clear away the fog that surrounds us.  Our world has its own ideas about wisdom—and they're often wrong.  Think of how the world tells us to think about ourselves, our relationships, about work and vocation, about sex and money and power, about God.  All very different from what God, in his wisdom, says about all those things.  As Jesus' people we need to take our cues and to glean our wisdom from God and from the scriptures, not the world, not worldly philosophies, not TV or movies, not social media, not motivational speakers, but from God.  As C. S. Lewis astutely pointed out in The Screwtape Letters, the devil doesn't need to put wrong ideas into people's heads; he just needs to keep the true ones out.  Brothers and Sisters, we need the eyes of our hearts opened to know God. And Paul says here that this knowledge primarily consists of three things.  These all come from that picture of the Messiah in Isaiah 11.  Paul wants us to know the hope, the inheritance, and the power.  The hope is for Jesus' victory at the cross and the empty tomb to change the whole world, bit by bit, here and there, wherever it's needed, to bring creation under the rule of the Messiah.  The inheritance is the promise that the Messiah will inherit and will rule the nations—every square inch of creation.  And I think we often forget, but this shapes the mission of the church.  This is our vocation.  This is our way today of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth and wherever we go we bring the power of the gospel, the reign of the Messiah, and the reconciling peace of his kingdom. And the power.  Brothers and Sisters, we forget the power of the gospel.  Verses 19 and 20 are a little difficult to translate into English because of the way Paul heaps up the words for power.  He literally says something like, “that you may know what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe according to the energy of the might of his strength, which he worked out in the Messiah.”  Greatness, power, energy, might, strength.  Rooted in the resurrection of Jesus.  The living God raised Jesus from the dead.  The greatest display of his power in history.  It went out like a shockwave, pushing away the great stone from the tomb, and reverberating through creation.  New creation bursting into the old.  And, Brothers and Sisters, the church—we—are the working model of that new creation, of that power that is transforming the world as the good news of Jesus goes out and continues to reverberate through creation. But there's more to it than just Jesus' resurrection.  Remember that “Messiah” means the “anointed King”.  Jesus is Lord.  That's a big part of this picture too.  So Paul goes on in verse 20: “This is the power at work in the Messiah when God raised him from the dead and sat him at his right hand in the heavenlies, above all rule and authority and power and lordship, and above every name that is invoked, both in the present age and also in the age to come.  Yes, God has ‘put all things under his feet,' and has given him to the church as the head over all.  The church is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all in all.” Don't forget Psalm 110.  There's an echo here of Daniel 7, too.  The Messiah has been raised to sit at God's right hand—to his throne as creation's true Lord.  And the practical thing that means for the church is that no matter how things may look from our perspective here, Jesus sits above every authority, every CEO, every billionaire, every ruler, every king.  There is no name on earth that anyone can invoke that will trump the name of Jesus.  This was a jab at Caesar, whose cult was especially prominent in Ephesus, but it applies just as much to the kings and power-brokers of our own day.  Think of the names in the news.  Think of all the rivalries in business or in politics or in culture.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus outranks them all.  And in this lies our vocation as the people of the Messiah.  A people, Paul says here, who is Jesus' own body.  This sovereign power—a power rooted on the one hand in God's power and glory and in the other in the love, mercy, and humility Jesus puts on display at the cross—this sovereign power is our vocation.  God created Adam and Eve to bear his image—to be good and wise stewards of his creation.  Remember we saw that in Psalm 8.  Paul's prayer here is that we would recognise that Jesus is that truly good and wise human, now enthroned at God's right hand and that through the gospel he is creating a people—you and me—to learn that godly wisdom, to learn that godly knowledge, and to share in his godly rule.  God has made Jesus the head of the church so that the church can now act, now live out that delegated authority as his body.  We're called to be a community that embodies Psalm 110 and Psalm 8 and Isaiah 11.  Brothers and Sisters, the church is the fullness of the one who fills all in all.  We are God's new creation, however small, however imperfect, however incomplete at the present, but still God's new creation in the midst of the old, full of light and life and gospel power and authority, proclaiming the Lord Jesus and his kingdom and causing that Easter shockwave to continue to reverberate through creation until the knowledge of God's glory fills the earth as the waters cover the sea. And if that seems impossible, if it seems ridiculous, if it seems overwhelming, if makes you afraid, think how it must have seemed to the people in those little churches around Ephesus in a.d. 50.  A handful of churches, each with ten or fifteen or maybe thirty people.  Mostly poor, more women than men, more slaves than freemen.  They lived for Jesus in the midst of a hostile world permeated through and through with paganism.  Everyone thought they were weird and crazy, impious and disloyal.  In not too many years some of them would be rounded up, arrested, tortured, sent to the arena to be eaten by lions because of their faith in Jesus.  The emperor would burn others alive as human torches to light his garden parties.  These little churches had no programmes.  No Sunday school or youth group.  No bands or fog machines.  No ad campaigns.  They didn't even have their own buildings.  They just studied and preached God's word, they loved and cared for each other, and they taught the world what grace and mercy and true holiness looks like.  They had the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen, and in that was a power that outshone everything.  Imagine how ridiculous and impossible it might have seemed to them: this idea that Jesus is Lord and that the knowledge of God will one day fill the earth.  And then drop them into a modern-day city.  I found myself thinking of the view we had from the US Consulate in Montreal, up on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper, looking out over the city and the steeples every few blocks—more than I could count, as far as the eye could see.  Even in little woefully unchurched Courtenay, you don't have to walk very far in any direction to find a church.  Brothers and Sisters, the power of the gospel is real.  Even though there's so much more work to do, just look at how the gospel has transformed the world since the days Paul wrote to those little churches in Ephesus.  Jesus really is Lord and the fact that you and I are here today to worship the God of Israel instead of worshipping whatever pagan God's our ancestors worshipped is proof of that power.  When someone tells me, “I'm leaving, this church is too small,” I pray Paul's prayer here all the more for them and I pray it for all of you and for myself: that we would be full of the knowledge of God and the power of the gospel and that we would trust it and have faith in what God has promised it will accomplish through us.  The proof of Jesus' reign and the power of the gospel is all around us.  May he open the eyes of our hearts to see it. Let's pray: Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, open the eyes of our hearts to the power of the knowledge of you.  Remind us of our calling in Jesus and the hope and inheritance we have in him.  Give us the faith and courage to be the people you have made us, to be the vanguard of your new creation as we live and proclaim your good news.  Give us a passion to see the knowledge of your glory covering the earth as the waters cover the sea.  Make us faithful stewards, we ask through Jesus our Lord we pray.  Amen.

Many have no awareness that walking with God is rooted in a work He alone accomplishes, and a simple faith we are called to exercise. When we lead by serving, it requires obedience that follows cleansing through God's sacrifice, and that obedience demands complete surrender. These actions point us forward to our true High Priest, our Messiah Jesus, who offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice without sin and denied His own will by leading in perfect obedience to our heavenly Father.

To the Saints and Faithful Ones in Messiah Jesus Ephesians 1:1-2 by William Klock Last week I was on my gravel bike, riding the logging roads through the foothills to Campbell River and back while pondering St. Paul's letter to the Christians at Ephesus.  As I passed the turn for Rossiter Mainline I was remembering the first time I made that gruelling climb.  It goes up to the top of the north shoulder of Mount Washington, so it's not just a big climb; it's a steep climb.  And it's a commitment.  Round trip is over a 100km.  I'd been looking at topographic maps and it looked to me that if you got up to the top, there ought to be a really spectacular view of the inland mountains you can't see from down here: Alberta Edward, Alexandra Peak, Golden Hinde.  Maybe, I thought, you might even be able to see down to Buttle Lake.  So off I went.  In mid-March.  And at about 600m of elevation, after the worst of the climbing, I hit snow.  But I'd committed too much already so I kept pushing on.  I rode in the ruts left by a lone truck that had been there recently.  Then those ended and I pushed my bike through shin-deep snow.  And the whole time I was looking up in expectation.  And finally I got to the top.  And what a let down.  All I found was a huge gravel clearing in the trees where the logging trucks turn around to go back down the mountain.  And the trees were tall and thick.  There was zero view.  Absolutely nothing to see.  At all.  I was not a happy camper.  I was cold.  My toes were wet and frozen.  I was tired.  It was about 60km home.  At least a lot of it was downhill.  So back down I went, through the trees, across the clear cuts, and then I rounded a corner and the view took my breath away.  It wasn't the view I expected.  I was so focused on the view I expected at the top, I never thought to look behind me at the view of where I'd been.  The real view was looking down over the Comox Valley and the Strait and over the coast range on the Mainland.  And it was all snowy and green and blue.  And as I stood there looking around, I noticed I was also looking down on at least half a dozen of my favourite gravel rides.  I noticed, not only how different everything looked from above, but how those trails and logging roads weren't really how I imagined.  I had a map of the mountain in my head that I'd got from ground level, but that bird's eye view changed a lot.  It was really neat.  It was worth the exhaustion and the wet, frozen toes. I say this to introduce St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians.  Lord willing, we'll be making our way through this six-chapter epistle over the next several months.  And I think the best way to describe it is that it's the unexpected view from the mountain top.  Emphasis on unexpected, because too often too many of us read Ephesians with the wrong expectations.  Like me looking for one view and finding the real gem was an entirely different one.  We've got Paul's other letters and he was always writing to a church in crisis.  In Rome the Jewish and Gentile believers were splitting the church into factions.  In Corinth they thought Christian liberty meant tolerating sin, engaging in chaotic worship, and abusing the Lord's Supper.  In Galatia, fear of persecution and false teachers were temping the people to retreat back into the Jewish law.  But Paul didn't write to the Ephesians to address any particular crisis or problem they were having.  He was in prison when he wrote.  Maybe in Rome, in the early 60s, waiting to appeal his case to Caesar, but possibly right there in Ephesus in the early or mid 50s.  It's hard to be sure.  But he was in prison and he wrote this letter to the Christians in Ephesus and the surrounding cities to encourage and exhort them.  The church there had been established by Apollos, but Paul had been their pastor for about three years.  He loved these people.  He couldn't be with them.  So he wrote to them.  And what he wrote to them was about how to be the church. All this makes Ephesians the perfect place to get a view of what the church is supposed to be.  It's easy to get lopsided views if we put all the emphasis on, say, Romans or Galatians.  This happened at the Protestant Reformation and the end result was that a lot of modern scholars decided that Ephesians probably wasn't written by Paul at all—because it doesn't fit with Romans and Galatians.  But, if we let Ephesians take us up to the lookout on the mountain and look down on Romans and Galatians and Paul's other epistles from there, if we let that view shape how we read Paul's letters as a whole, everything starts to harmonise and make sense and it's easy to see that it really was Paul all along. The structure of Ephesians is really pretty simple.  In the first three chapters Paul writes about our calling as the church, as the people of God.  And then, in Chapters 4 to 6 he writes about living that calling out.  4:1 is the pivot between the two.  A lot of you probably know that verse by heart: “I appeal to you as a prisoner in the Lord, to walk in a way worthy of your calling.”  To walk.  Some translations say “live”.  It's this wonderful Greek word paripateo that literally means “to walk around”.  It's a great image of life as we go our way, as we make our journey together as the church.  Paul writes that as we embark on this journey of life as the Messiah's people it's essential that how we do it in a way worthy of our calling.  But what does “worthy” mean.  Here's another Greek word, axios.  It's the idea of bringing a scale into balance.  Picture an old-fashioned scale.  You've got A on one side and to get it to balance out you've got to add just the right amount of B to the other until they're both hanging at an equal height.  Or, in modern terms, you might think of adjusting a crescent wrench, dialing it in, so that it perfectly fits the nut you need to unscrew.  Or finding that pair of shoes or that dress or those pants that just fit perfectly.  Not sort of fit.  But perfectly fit.  Like the balanced scale.  That's axios.  The calling we've been given by Jesus and the Spirit is hanging on one side of the scale.  Now we've got to walk in such that we match it.  That's a big ask.  But Paul's also clear: We've got God's word to show us what and how and we've got God's Spirit to make it possible. Brother and Sisters, that's Ephesians.  Let your walk be worthy of your calling.  And the emphasis isn't on “you” singular, but on “y'all” plural.  He's talking to us as the church, as the people of God.  Of course, that's going to have implications for us as individuals, but Paul's emphasis here is on our life together in Jesus and the Spirit.  So…we're ready to jump into it…Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2.  Paul writes: “Paul, an apostle of Messiah Jesus through God's purpose to the saints in Ephesus who are also faithful in Messiah Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus, the Messiah.” This is Paul's salutation, but even here he gets to the church's calling.  He introduces himself as an apostle of Jesus the Messiah.  In this case he doesn't dwell on his authority.  He could have.  He'd met the risen Jesus and had been given his calling to take the gospel to the gentiles, he could speak with authority as one of the eye-witnesses and as someone specially equipped for this apostolic ministry, but Paul doesn't need to do that here.  He might do that, for example, writing to the Corinthians.  He had to remind them of his credentials, because they'd sort of kicked him to the curb.  But here he's writing to friends.  I think Paul's main emphasis here is, instead, on the purposes or the will of God.  He'll come back to this idea of God's purposes in the verses that follow and especially in Chapter 3.  But I think this is his real reason for bringing up the fact that he's an apostle.  Because Paul knew that there was no way he ever would have found himself in this position if it hadn't been for God—and the same is true for the Ephesian Christians in their own ways.  Remember, Paul was a Pharisee, he was a member of the governing council of the Jews, and he hated Christians with a passion.  As far as he was concerned, Christians—at that point they were almost all Jewish—were traitors to their people and their God.  They were following a man who had been crucified as a false messiah and Paul didn't believe for one second the reports that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  When they stoned Stephen for preaching about Jesus, Paul held everyone's coats so that they'd be less encumbered throwing their stones.  He was the last person who would ever become a follower of Jesus. And then it happened.  On the way to Damascus to round up more Christians, Paul met the risen Jesus.  Not a ghost, not an apparition, not a dream, but the real and actual Jesus.  And everything changed.  It took Paul a good long while to sort out what it meant, but he knew from the beginning that if Jesus was really alive, then he really was the Messiah—the anointed King of Israel and the world's true Lord.  It meant God's new age, his new creation had begun.  Somehow.  Some way.  So Paul went off to Arabia by himself to think it all through in light of the scriptures and the story of Israel that he knew so well.  And when he'd done that and came back, he knew: God had a plan all along.  Jesus wasn't some fluke.  He was the plan.  Everything in history had been working towards Jesus and everything from now on would be working from Jesus. And just as God had had a purpose in calling Israel and making them his people to be a light to the nations, so it meant that everyone who believed and found themselves part of this new Israel, part of this new people of God centred in Jesus the Messiah, they were part of God's continuing plan.  Paul had been called and set apart as a messenger of this plan, but the Ephesian Christians were called and set apart in their own way as well, to live and to proclaim and to witness it. So, remember that Ephesians is about what it means to be the church.  Paul starts out reminding us that none of this is random.  God had a purpose and that's why he's called us.  Again, think of 4:1 right in the middle of Ephesians, where Paul reminds them (and us) to walk worthy of our calling—to walk according to the plan God has for us.  Christianity isn't just some therapeutic thing that provides forgiveness of sins, a feel-good life, and heaven when you die.  It's about being born again in Jesus the Messiah and then credibly living that new life, God's new creation, in the midst of the old, proclaiming the good news of the king and growing his kingdom until it fills the earth.  The church, empowered by the Spirit of God, is Jesus means fulfilling the mission of renewal he began at the cross.  So that's Paul's introduction of himself. Next he addresses them.  He calls them the saints who are also faithful in Messiah Jesus.  First, saints.  Paul's literally addressing the “holy ones”.  He's not singling anyone out, as if there were some especially holy people in the Ephesian church and he's writing to them and not to the rest of the ordinary Christians.  He's talking about all of them.  Brothers and Sisters, understand, holiness or sainthood isn't some status to be achieved that sets us apart from ordinary Christians.  The Christian who struggles with sin every minute of the day is just as much a saint as the most mature of believers.  It's not a status we earn.  Holiness, sainthood is conferred on each of us by Jesus and the Spirit.  To be holy is to be set apart.  That's what Israel was: a people set apart to fulfil God's purposes in the world.  To be light in the darkness.  He set them apart by giving them his law—a way of life that was different from everyone else in the world.  And he gave them the visible mark of circumcision.  He made them a holy people.  Saints.  And now, in Jesus the Messiah, God has done the same for us, for the church. But before I get ahead of myself, there's the second thing Paul addresses them as.  He calls them “faithful” or the “faithful ones”.  And it's important to understand what “faith” or “faithfulness” means, because we've often reduced it to just believing the right thing.  We've got this idea that to be a Christian means believing the right thing about Jesus and about the good news of his death and resurrection.  Jesus died for our sins and if we believe that, if we give our intellectual assent to it, well then, that's that.  When I was a kid, our family was involved for a few years with an organisation with the mission to evangelise children.  It was a popular programme, because the kids that signed up got to leave school early once a week.  We'd walk over to a nearby church and we'd hear Bible stories and sing gospel songs and we'd hear about Jesus.  And every week the leaders would close by inviting everyone to say a prayer with them to acknowledge Jesus as their Saviour.  When they asked who prayed the prayer and kids raised their hands, they marked them down as successes.  They were good to go.  They'd said the prayer.  They were Christians now.  Except there was no discipleship.  There was no church.  There was no Christian community.  Never mind, what all us Christian kids seemed to understand that the adult leaders didn't: Those non-Christians kids were just coming and were just raising their hands because they liked getting out of school early.  Saying a prayer, even giving our intellectual assent to Jesus as Saviour, isn't being “faithful”.  For that matter, baptism alone isn't “faithful” either.  It's God's covenant sign that marks us out as his people—externally—but Paul is clear elsewhere that—as has always been the case for God's people in the old covenant and the new—it's faithfulness that truly marks us out.  And faithfulness, yes, means belief, but it also means trust and loyalty and allegiance.  As St. James writes in his epistle: faith without works is dead—it's not faith at all.  Faith means walking worthy of our calling.  Admire Jesus, confess Jesus all day long.  Great.  But until you've actually committed to him and faithfully start walking with him according to his plan, not yours, friend, you're not a Christian. But then the key thing about all this.  Paul doesn't just address them as the faithful saints.  He addresses them—and us—as the faithful saints in Messiah Jesus.  “In the Messiah”.  Paul uses that phrase a lot.  He uses it in Ephesians more than he does anywhere else.  And for Paul “in the Messiah” is shorthand for “belonging to the Messiah”.  Brothers and Sisters, you can't make yourself a saint.  And if you're going to be faithful, you've got to be faithful to something.  Jesus.  Without him, we're wretched sinners, enemies of God, faithless and committed to idols to self and to sin and doing all the things that make this broken world broken.  We serve ourselves and we worship idols.  We hurt others, we abuse others, we use others for our own purposes.  We break our relationships.  We break our promises.  We build unjust and unfaith systems and institutions.  We exploit creation itself in unsustainable ways.  We take no thought for the wellbeing of others or for generations to come, whether it's polluting the world they'll have to live in or running up obscene levels of debt that will leave them encumbered.  Even Israel, called and set apart by God and given his law to make them a light in the darkness, even thy ended up being all but swallowed by all this brokenness and darkness. Enter Jesus.  If you're following along in a Bible, you may have noticed that when I read our text and read the word “Messiah”, your Bible probably reads “Christ”.  About ten years ago I made the decision to start using “Messiah” instead of “Christ” in my translations of the New Testament.  I did that as I realised way too many people have no idea what “Christ” means and an awful lot of people think it's Jesus' last name.  It's not.  Christos is just the Greek word for the Jewish title, “Messiah”.  And “Messiah” refers to the anointed king that God had promised to his people through David and through the Prophets.  The anointed king—meaning the king called and set apart as holy in order to fulfil God's purposes.  That's who Jesus is.  That's what the title “Christ” or “Messiah” means.  Jesus is the one set apart by God to set this broken world to rights, to inaugurate God's new creation and the age to come and to rule it through his Spirit-renewed people until all his enemies have been put under his feet.  And Jesus did this first by dying the death his people deserved.  He didn't deserve it.  They did.  But he paid the wages of their sin.  And then God raised him from the dead, defeating sin and death, and began the work of fulfilling God's promise to bring life back to a world mired in death.  Jesus' resurrection was the beginning of God's new creation.  And here's why Paul stresses that we are saints and faithful in the Messiah: because it is when we let go and turn away—that's “repentance”—when we turn away from sin and self, from our idols and false gods, rejecting the corrupted principalities and powers of this world, and instead believe the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection, trusting him and giving him our loyalty and allegiance—our faithfulness—we find ourselves united with him.  He forgives our sins and makes us holy.  And—this is important for Ephesians and the whole question of what the church is and is to be.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus' calling becomes our calling. And that brings us back to the whole “walking worthy of our calling” thing.  It brings us back to the fact that faith is more than just believing the right thing.  Because if we believe that Jesus, when he rose from the dead has inaugurated God's new creation, that he's begun the process of setting this fallen world—and fallen humanity—to rights, that he's begun the process of wiping away the tears and making all the sad things of the world come untrue.  That he has, as Paul highlights here, poured out his grace on us and given us peace—the Hebrew idea of shalom, of wholeness and of well-being rooted in our fellowship with God.  Brothers and Sisters, it means that he's called us into that same messianic mission.  He's made us heaven-on-earth people.  In forgiving us and lifting the weight of our sins from us and in pouring his Spirit into us to give us a foretaste of the life to come, Jesus has given us a vision of this world set free from sin and death and a vision of life lived in God's presence and fellowship.  Jesus has given us hope.  And that's more than mere belief, it's more than intellectual assent to a creed.  It's not less than that.  But it's also so much more.  It's life and it's hope.  And not just for us.  It's life and hope that, once we've known and experienced it, should become our passion.  With the foretaste we've been given, with that hope before us, we ought to be a transformed people doing everything we can, with the help of the Spirit and following the scriptures, to be a people who forsake the sins and the selfishness that have made the world such a dark place; it ought to make us a people full of light and life, a people eager to bring God's grace and God's peace to everyone around us.  To lift the veil on God's new world, to give them a glimpse of redemption and new creation, to share with them the hope we have. Brothers and Sisters, remember that hope when you come to the Lord's Table this morning.  Here he reminds us that Jesus changes everything.  Here he reminds us that it is Jesus body and blood, shed on the cross, that purify us from sin.  Here he reminds us that it is Jesus who makes us his people.  And here he reminds us of the hope—the great feast of new life and fellowship with God—that is our hope.  Come and remember that you are his saints.  The ones made holy and set apart by Jesus to fulfil his purposes.  And then go out into the world as the faithful ones, filled with grace and peace, equipped to walk worthy of your calling. Let's pray: Almighty God, through Jesus your son, the Messiah, you have poured out your grace and your peace on us, you have forgiven our sins, you have welcomed us into your fellowship, you have given us hope; remind us, we pray, that you have also given us a calling, a purpose: to proclaim that Jesus is Lord to the ends of the earth, and be living, walking, breathing pockets of your new creation in the midst of the old.  Make us faithful to that calling.  Give us the grace necessary to turn aside from sin and from self and walk worthy of that calling; through Jesus the Messiah, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Epiphany Ephesians 3:1-12 and St. Matthew 2:1-12 by William Klock   Have you ever wanted to live in another story?  For me the high point of Second Grade came every day after our lunch recess.  We'd sit down at our desks and Mrs. Andrews would sit on a stool at the front of the class and read us a chapter from C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.  From the get-go, I was completely drawn into this story of four kids who stumble through the door of an ordinary wardrobe into another land of magic and talking animals.  And pretty soon I was obsessed.  Now, in 1979 there was no Narnia “merch” like there was in the early 2000s after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie came out, but I still had everything I could get my hands on.  Pretty soon I had my own set of the books, because our teacher wasn't reading them fast enough.  I had a calendar.  I had a giant map my dad laminated so I could hang it on the wall.  My mom even spent months making me a quilt with all my favourite characters sewn on it.  And I couldn't open a closet door without a little tingle of hope: maybe this time there'd be a path to Narnia.  I'd even reach in and push on the back wall.  I remember blowing out my birthday candles at least once and wishing Narnia would be real.  But Narnia wasn't my story.  It wasn't even real.  There was no escape from my real-life story. Decades later I reconnected with one of my old school friends from those days.  “Remember when we wished Narnia was real?”  And he said, “You wanted to get into Narnia.  I just wished I could be part of your family.”  His home life wasn't good.  His family was kind of a mess.  It didn't help that they were poor—not that we were rich, but it's funny that he thought we were even though we weren't.  But he wanted out of his family and his story and into mine.  “That's why I used to hang around your house so much and hardly ever invited you over to mine,” he said to me.  I felt really bad when he told me that.  I knew his life wasn't easy, but it had never occurred to me that he might think mine was.  And I wonder: How often do we wish we could escape our story and live in someone else's?  I guess if we were to go by things like Pinterest and Instagram, by the prevalence of all the home and garden and renovation shows on cable TV, by all the ways our culture gives us to try to escape reality—when you think of all the fantasies we obsess over that aren't real and aren't ours—a lot of us long to live in a story that isn't the one we were born into. But here's the thing.  Raise your hand if you're baptised.  Put that hand on your head—on the place where the priest, the pastor poured those baptismal waters on you.  Martin Luther used to say that when the devil caused him to doubt his standing before God, he would put his hand on his forehead where the baptismal waters had been poured, and he would say to himself, “You are baptised!”  A tangible fact, an historical event in each of our pasts, that has objectively marked us out as God's own.  Not fantasy.  Reality.  You belong to God.  And not just that.  Our baptism marks us out as the people, as the sons and daughters of the God of Israel, made one with the Messiah—with Israel's anointed king—and filled with the God of Israel's own Spirit.  And Brothers and Sisters, that means that you have been transferred into a story, into a family, into a household that is not your own.  I think of my ancestors.  A few of them were Sephardic Jews who eventually became Christians.  But most of my ancestors were born into a story of paganism.  They danced with druids or worshiped oak trees.  One branch of my family comes from a place not far from where Thor's Oak was said to be, that sacred tree that St. Boniface set out to chop down with his axe.  I've wondered if my ancestors were amongst the pagan who watched, expecting him to be struck down by the gods for felling their sacred tree and then stood in awe as, instead, a great wind blew it down for him.  Were they amongst those first German converts who gathered to worship Jesus in the church Boniface built from that fallen oak tree?  One way or another, they heard the gospel, the good news about Jesus the Messiah who died and rose again and they were invited to pass through the waters of baptism.  And they weren't just captivated by this story and its good news—by this family that was filled with riches they never could have imagined.  When they passed through those baptismal waters in faith, they stepped out of their old pagan stories and into a new story, not one that was theirs by birth, but one that was now fully theirs by faith and by the grace of God.  Just like the Israelites leaving behind their slavery in Egypt as they passed through the Red Sea to be named God's beloved firstborn, so we've passed from a story of idolatry and sin into a new story of redemption and of light and of life.  What my friend longed for every time he came over to my house, what I longed for every time I pushed on the back wall of my closet, it's happened for real in Jesus.  By faith, I—and you all—have been given a place, a home, a part in a story not originally our own.  And in that, Brothers and Sisters, God has revealed his glory.  But now I'm getting ahead of myself. What's this got to do with Epiphany?  Epiphaneia is a Greek word that means “appearing” or “appearance”.  Or you could say, “manifestation” like the Prayer Book does when it gives the subtitle for the Feast of the Epiphany: the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  That's us—most of us, at any rate.  We're gentiles.  And that makes Epiphany our great feast.  The day we remember the wise men—those Persians astrologers—who came to worship the new-born King of the Jews.  And I have to think that if Christians had observed Epiphany in the First Century—they didn't, it came along later, but not all that much later—I think Paul would have had a special place in his heart for Epiphany.  Because proclaiming the good news to the gentiles and offering them a welcome into this story that was not theirs by birth, that was—as we say today—that was Paul's “thing”.  He was even in prison because this was so much his “thing”.  Look at our Epistle from Ephesians 3. He writes: “It's because of all this that I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus the Messiah on behalf of you gentiles…”  He trails off at that point.  He needs to say something else before he goes on.  But what we need to know is that the Church at Ephesus was predominantly a gentile church.  Paul had started it when he visited the city on his second missionary journey.  Now he's in Rome, under house arrest, waiting to be able to appeal his case to Caesar.  He goes on: “I'm assuming, by the way, that you've heard about the plan of God's grace that was given to me to pass on to you?  You know, the mystery that God revealed to me, as I wrote briefly just now.  Anyway…  When you read this you'll be able to understand the special insight I have into the Messiah's mystery.  This wasn't made known to human beings in previous generations, but now it's been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.  The mystery is this, that, through the gospel, the gentiles are to share Israel's inheritance.  They are to become fellow members of the body, along with them, and fellow sharers of the promise of Jesus the Messiah.”   The great mystery, Paul's passion, is the message that in Jesus, the gentiles are fellow heirs with the Jews.  A lot—most—of Paul's fellow Jews would have gasped at this.  He could have gotten himself stoned, proclaiming this in Jerusalem.  Imagine your family is really wealthy.  And then imagine that you've got a brother—let's call him Paul—who goes to the house of some strangers.  They're not even remotely related to you.  They're poor and miserable.  Maybe they're even slaves.  But worst of all, they don't share your values.  In fact, they laugh at your family's values. They scoff at the very things that made your family rich.  But Paul goes to them and announces: My family's riches?  Yeah, they belong to you as much as they belong to me and my brothers and sisters.  That's what Paul's doing here.  And that's why he calls it a “mystery”.  The old Paul—Saul of Tarsus—would be gasping at the thought that he'd be saying these things a few decades later.  Even the Jewish believers in Jesus had trouble with this mystery.  Yes, gentiles could share in Israel's inheritance, but to do so they had to become Jews.  Ritually purified, circumcised, observing torah so that they weren't gentiles any longer.  But Paul's now saying you don't even have to do that.  The great “mystery” of the gospel is that it brings the gentiles—through Jesus—into the family, into the people of the God of Israel.  The law, torah, is no longer the defining mark of the family of God.  Faith in Jesus the Messiah is. “This is the gospel,” he writing in verse 7, “that I was appointed to serve, in line with the free gift of God's grace that was given to me.  It was backed up with the power through which God accomplishes his work.  I am the very least of all God's people.  However, he gave me this task as a gift: that I should be the one to tell the gentiles the good news of the Messiah's riches, riches no one could begin to count.  My job is to make clear to everyone just what the mystery is, the purpose that's been hidden from the very beginning of the world in God who created all things.  This is it: that God's wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places—through the church!  This was God's eternal purpose, and he's accomplished it in Messiah Jesus our Lord.  We have confidence and access to God in him, in full assurance, through his faithfulness.”   It took Paul a while to sort it out after he met the risen Jesus and realised that he really was the Messiah, but what Paul realised is that his people had got their own story wrong.  The way Israel told her story, it no longer had a meaningful place for the gentiles.  As far as they were concerned, they—the Jews—were God's people, God cared about them, God would deliver them from their oppressors and put them on top, and one day he would rain down destruction on all the unclean people of the world.  Salvation was for the Jews, they might have said.  But judgement was for the gentiles.  Even those first Jewish Christians were still thinking in this vein.  Jesus was their Messiah.  There were a few gentiles who believed, but they had to first become Jews.  And there were the Samaritans who believed.  That was a challenge to this kind of thinking, but until Paul, no one had this vision of the deliverance, of the salvation of the Gentiles—at least not on a large scale.  But Paul, when he met Jesus, it started to sink it.  If Jesus had risen from the dead, then he was the Messiah, and if he was the Messiah, he had redefined the people of God around himself.  Jesus and the Spirit now define “Israel”. The irony is that today we've made the opposite mistake.  We've so dehistoricised, flattened out, and universalised the story that we've all but forgotten that “Salvation is of the Jews.”  Jesus spoke those words—Salvation is of the Jews—to the Samaritan woman and they ought to be a rebuke to much of the Church today that has forgotten our own story.  St. Paul writes in today's Epistle to explain his unique apostolic ministry to proclaim the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.  It has been my experience that many Christians have never stopped to consider just how odd Paul's ministry would have seemed at the time.  They've never stop to think, because we have largely removed the gospel from its narrative and historical context and unnecessarily flattened it to communicate its universal nature.  Occasionally we need to recall that, even though “God so loved the world,” it is also true that “salvation is of the Jews”.  Out of a world that had lost all knowledge of him, the Lord chose and called Abraham and from him created a people whom he made holy and in whose midst he lived.  He gave this people his law and his presence and made them unique amongst the nations.  Jesus was born a Jew.  He was the Jewish Messiah.  He fulfilled the Jewish law and the words of the Jewish prophets.  He proclaimed good news about a coming kingdom and a coming judgement to Jews and for Jews.  While gentiles were welcomed when they came to him, he made it clear that his ministry was to his own people.  Even in his death by crucifixion, Jesus foreshadows the means of execution that the unrepentant Jewish rebels would face when judgement came a generation later.  Jesus literally took the death of his people on himself in that sense.  It cannot be stressed enough that Jesus, Israel's Messiah, lived and died for the sake of his own people and to fulfil their story and to fulfil God's promises to them. We can't jump over this to get to John's announcement that God so loved the world that he gave his Son, because when we do that, we short-circuit the story, we leave out most or all of the bits that show us how God, in Jesus, has been faithful to his promises made under the old covenant.  And when we short-circuit the story that way—hear me, because this is incredibly important—when we do that, we cast a veil over God's glory.  It was necessary for Jesus to fulfil the story of his own people, because only then would the Gentiles see the faithfulness of Israel's God, be drawn to what they saw, give him glory, and in the process be incorporated into the new people of God by faith.  In this, too, we see that the means by which the Gentiles are incorporated into the new Israel fulfils the message of Israel's prophets and glorifies the Lord.  While it is certainly true that a dehistoricised and flattened gospel has brought millions to the Lord Jesus, it is also true that communicating the gospel within its context communicates the faithfulness of God as the basis for our own faith with far greater depth and builds upon a firm foundation, in contrast to so much that passes today for evangelism and Christian faith that is merely subjective.  Again, Christians today need to understand just how weird Paul's ministry would have seemed in his day—even, at first, to the other apostles.  Again, most believed that the good news about the Jewish Messiah was for other Jews, and of little interest (or even relevance) to gentiles.  Jesus radically changed what it meant to be the people of God and this became Paul's passion—and it should be ours.  Like you've spent your life pushing on the back wall of the wardrobe to no avail, but suddenly in Jesus you push through and find yourself in Narnia—you finally find yourself in that story of new life you've always longed for and the child of a God unlike any other god you've ever known of. To be clear, Israel should have known all of this all along.  Jesus and Paul are both clear about that.  The Lord delivered Israel from Egypt and set her apart before the watching nations.  She was to be his witness.  Through her he would restore and reconcile humanity to himself.  But as Paul points out in our Epistle, this “mystery” was largely lost on Israel—on previous generations.  And yet there it was from the beginning, all the way back in Abraham's day—if anyone was paying really close attention—that the Lord's intent was to one day bring the gentiles into his family and to make them fellow heirs with those who were children by birth rather than adoption.  This truth had been revealed by the Spirit to the prophets of old and, in the same way, had been revealed to the apostles—who took some time to parse it out—and to Paul it was a personal commission: to proclaim the good news about Jesus to the gentiles.  Paul adds here that this mission is not simply to ordinary people, nor is it a matter of personal piety.  As gentile believers come into their inheritance in the Messiah, the church becomes both a witness and a challenge to the rulers of the gentile world.  This diverse body of Jews and gentiles of every sort, living in unity the inheritance given them by Jesus, announces that he is Lord and that a new age is breaking in.  Just as was the case with Israel, the lords of the earth can submit in faith to the lordship of Jesus or face the judgement to come. Our Gospel today foreshadows all of this in story form.  Matthew puts the messiahship, the kingship of Jesus at the forefront.  First he shows us Jesus over against Herod.  The true King of the Jews over against the pretender and cheap imitation.  But very quickly, Matthew drives home the point that in Jesus the prophecies about Israel's King are being fulfilled.  When the wise men go to Herod to ask where this newborn king is, it sparks a discussion of Micah's prophecy.  Matthew includes a paraphrase of Micah 5:2-4.  This King of Israel, he said, will shepherd the Lord's flock.  The Messiah is the King of Israel.  It is only once Micah has established that the Messiah will be King over Israel, that he will fulfil the Lord's promises to judge and to renew his own people, that he will take up the role of King David, that he then goes on to tell us that this King “shall be great to the ends of the earth”.  Why?  Because in Jesus and in how he fulfils the Lord's promises to his own, the pagan nations of the world will see the living God—a God unlike any god they've ever known.  Their idols—and our idols—pale in comparison.  And in the end, the nations can't help but come to bow before him and to give him glory.  The wise men, the magi foreshadow this.  Matthew bookends his Gospel with the gentiles.  It begins with these wise men from the east coming to worship Jesus and to honour him as King.  And it ends with Jesus sending his disciples to go out and make disciples of all the nations.  The good news is only good news to the Gentiles because it reveals that the God of Israel is unlike the gods of the nations: he does what he says he will do and he fulfils his promises to his own.  Think of the gentiles in the book of Revelation: They worshiped the beast and frolicked with the great prostitute, but they discovered in the downfall of the beast that the kings and gods of this world can't hold a candle to the God of Israel revealed in Jesus, to his power and might, and most importantly, to his faithfulness.  Specifically, he fulfils his promises to his people in Jesus.  It is this faithfulness just as much as the amazing report of Jesus risen from the dead and the defeat of his enemies that draws the Gentiles to give glory to the God of Israel and to submit in faith to Jesus, the King of the Jews.  Of course, this carries the same ramifications for Caesar and the other rulers and gods of this age as it did for Herod.  This is what Paul stresses in the final verses of our Epistle.  Their days are numbered, for as the royal summons to the King goes out, Jesus “shall be great to the ends of the earth”. Brothers and Sisters, the gospel about Jesus is good news, because it reveals the faithfulness of God.  He does what he says he will do.  He fulfils his promises.  He does so like no other.  And that's reason for us to trust him, to give him our allegiance, to worship him and to give him glory.  And to proclaim his good news to the world.  And the wonderful part of it is that the gentiles, that we aren't simply left to look into the windows of this rich family's house and to wish that we could have part of it.  Jesus welcomes us in.  And there's no having to go back home to our poor houses and our silent idols when the party's over.  Through Jesus, we belong.  Later in Matthew 12, Jesus will say to the people with him, “My mother and brothers are those who do the will of my Father in heaven.”  By faith, we become his family.  He is our brother.  His house is our house.  Think about that today as you come to the Lord's Table.  Eat the bread.  Drink the wine.  And think on the fact that it is our brother by adoption and faith, it is King Jesus, who welcomes us—not as outsiders, but as family.  If we are in him, if he has marked us out by baptism, this is where we belong.  This is our life and this is our story. And if you're still looking in from the outside and wishing to be a part of it—like a kid who keeps pushing on the backwall of the closet in hopes of finding his way into a new world and a new story.  Stop pushing on the wall.  That's not the way into this house.  Instead, take hold of Jesus' hand in faith knowing that in him all the promises of God are fulfilled, knowing that he is supremely trustworthy and faithful.  Take his hand in faith and he will lead you, as he has led so many, through the waters of baptism and into this new story of redemption and light and life. Let's pray: O God, who by the leading of a star manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith, may at last behold your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Moss Brook Church Who is this Jesus? - Firsthand Accounts of the Messiah | Jesus, The Lamb of God December 28th, 2025 Pastor Mike Booker

Episode Summary. If you are disheartened, battered, discouraged or weary from fighting the good fight because of all the heartache and spiritual bruising my hope is that this episode will give such a clear picture of the colossal triumph of Messiah Jesus—and our part in that victory, that in some small way the pain is lessened, because we GRASP the ENORMITY of our WIN. For Further Prayerful ThoughtHow does Jesus' title Prince of Peace reinforce the truth that the gospel has four chapters, creation, fall, redemption, restoration and not just two, fall and redemption?What stood out to you about the meaning of the Hebrew word, shalom? Why would it be biblical to say that shalom is the answer to all the levels of poverty in the world?Why would you support the argument that one of the highest callings of Christians is to spread the kingdom of righteousness in their vocations?What aspects of kingdom righteousness in the workplace stood out to you?For the printed version of this message click here.For a summary of topics addressed by podcast series, click here.For FREE downloadable studies on men's issues click here.To make an online contribution to enable others to hear about the podcast: (Click link and scroll down to bottom left)

Moss Brook Church Who is this Jesus? - Firsthand Accounts of the Messiah | Jesus, The Hope of the World December 21st, 2025 Pastor Mike Booker

Key takeaways from this study God's laws were always intended as a blueprint for human dignity, justice and release from oppression, laying the groundwork for true freedom. Heaven's agenda is not simply legalistic rule-keeping, but the transformation of individuals and societies toward compassion and liberty. By making freedom the end goal for slaves — especially Israelite slaves — God modeled a system intended to end cycles of generational bondage. The Torah's pathway for Gentiles to join Israel is Heaven's open door for all nations to enter spiritual freedom. Biblical laws set higher standards for humane treatment, signaling Heaven's desire that all people, regardless of status, can be liberated. Prophetic interventions (like Jeremiah 34) show that God rewards societies that extend liberty, but withdraws his favor when they renege, underscoring that freedom is dear to God's heart. The arrival of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) is the culmination of Heaven’s freedom goal: the offer of spiritual freedom and redemption to every nation, tribe and tongue. God is deeply responsive to repentance, faith and action — always ready to set captives free, both physically and spiritually. The ultimate intention of Heaven is for all people to know freedom — not merely by law, but through relationship, faith, and loving community. The journey from slavery to sonship is the story of God's heart for humanity: that every nation would experience deliverance and restoration through His mercy and truth. It's tempting to skip the difficult parts of the Bible, like the ordinances of slavery in Exodus (שְׁמוֹת Shemot). Here, we don't dodge them. We face them head-on, recognizing that Scripture's laws were in response to brutal ancient societies but also express the heart of a redeeming God Who works through history, not around it. The תּוֹרָה Torah (“instruction,” “teaching”) is not just a book of do's and don'ts. It's an unfolding revelation — God giving His people not only laws (מִצְווֹת mitzvot) but the principles and spirit behind them. Today we’re seeking those principles, to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2Timothy 2:15), so we can discern what God is up to in these difficult passages. The big picture: Law, mercy and becoming a distinct people to do something Let's remember, Israel was called to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (גּוֹי קָדוֹשׁ goy kadosh; Exodus 19:6) — not to mimic Egypt or Babylon but to model God's justice and compassion. We're not supposed to copy distorted theologies or twisted histories, like those that fueled the Spanish Inquisition (tragically insisting on forced conversions and outlawing Torah practice). Instead, “placing the ordinances before them” (Exodus 21:1) challenged Israel to treat every person — citizen, foreigner or even slave — with more dignity, fairness, and hope for freedom than the surrounding world expected. We're still being called to do the same. When we read these laws, our immediate reaction is often that they—and the culture in which they were given—seem strange, even very strange, to us. Human nature does not change, and people who desire to exercise absolute power over others will always find excuses to do so. As believers, we have an obligation to advocate for the freedom and fair treatment of those who are enslaved. Laws about slavery: An honest look The structure of biblical servitude Exodus 21–22 doesn't ignore slavery. It regulates and humanizes it within a radically unfree world. In Hebrew, the word is עֶבֶד eved (“servant” or “slave”). Slavery in ancient Israel could arise from debt, crime or poverty. But the Torah takes that bitter reality and bends it toward compassion and eventual liberty. Israelite slaves (עֶבֶד עִבְרִי eved Ivri): They were set free after six years of service. “In the seventh year he shall go out as a free man without payment” (Exodus 21:2 NASB 1995). Gentile slaves (עֶבֶד מִן־הַגּוֹיִם eved min ha-goyim): Non-Israelite slaves served longer, but the law provided avenues for dignity and even conversion and inclusion. The key was always freedom (חֵרוּת cherut, ἐλευθερία eleutheria). “God encourages us to not just say, ‘Well, there's the law.' Rather, He teaches us the principle behind the law — so we can apply it, even as times change.” Responsibilities and restoration Torah insisted that masters provide for their servants and their families. “If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone” (Exodus 21:4 NASB 1995). But here's the twist: upon release, Israelites were to be given resources (Deuteronomy 15:13-14). Slaves could, with what they received, “buy” freedom for their wives and children — a path to holistic release. The gentile's path to inclusion An incredible provision: any Gentile (גּוֹי goy, plural גּוֹיִים goyim) who embraced the God of Israel became “as a native of the land” (Leviticus 19:34). The Torah's inclusive heart was always beating — the servant wasn't forever defined by their starting point; they could become part of the family of God. The moment he says, “I am not going to be Gentile anymore, I'm going to follow the God of Israel,” he's now a sojourner among Israel (Exodus 12:48-49; Numbers 15:15). The reality is that throughout most of the Ancient Near East, there were few legal avenues for slaves to gain freedom, whereas in Israel there were legal mechanisms that allowed slaves to become free. The Torah's laws, which may appear inequitable at first glance, were in fact more merciful to slaves than the laws common throughout the Ancient Near East. Discipline and ethics: Justice with limits The Torah sought to curb human power, even in discipline. Masters were prohibited from using lethal force against slaves: “But if the slave survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property. If, however, the slave lives only a day or two after being beaten … he shall surely be punished.” Exodus 21:20-21 paraphrase Jewish tradition explains: discipline could only use non-lethal tools—not rocks (אֶבֶן ehven, “stone”) or clubs (מַקֵּל makel, “rod”) liable to cause death. If a slave was permanently injured (e.g., lost an eye or tooth), that servant went free (Exodus 21:26-27). This is the Torah's חֶסֶד khesed/chesed (“mercy”), limiting what was culturally normal — even while working within a broken world. Consequences of injustice In parallel passage Jeremiah 34, King צִדְקִיָּהוּ Tzidkiyahu (Zedekiah) decreed liberty for Israelite slaves, an “Emancipation Proclamation” in obedience to Torah. For a moment, Heaven's pleasure was evident — the Babylonian army withdrew. “…Proclaim liberty to them, that every man should set free his male servant and every man his female servant — a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman — so that no one should keep them, an Israelite his brother, in bondage.” Jeremiah 34:9-10 paraphrase But when the people reneged — re-enslaving those liberated — God pronounced judgment, equating their act to kidnapping (חָטַף khataf/chataph), a capital offense (Exodus 21:16): “… I will give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes into the hand of their enemies … and burn it with fire ….” Jeremiah 34:21-22 NASB 1995 The prophetic message? Justice and mercy aren't just ideals. They're the very conditions for God's protection and blessing. Freedom is non-negotiable. Even kings are not above God's law. Faith, works and living out God's heart Apostle יַעֲקֹב Ya'akov (James) famously wrote about faith in Heaven that doesn’t bring life to the world: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” Our discussion reinforced that belief and action are inseparable. Kings, like Zedekiah, couldn't just declare good intentions. They had to enforce righteousness — for themselves and their society. Faith (אֱמוּנָה emunah) doesn't just reside in the mind. It must change how we respond to suffering, injustice, or even ancient laws — pushing us to build communities where no one stays in bondage. Messiah: The fulfillment of freedom and inclusion The whole of Scripture is a story arc bending toward Messiah — יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua (“salvation”). The Torah's complex social instructions longed for something greater: spiritual and ultimately physical redemption for all. Yeshua quoted one of Heaven’s key reformer prophets when He announced His mission: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release [ἄφεσις aphesis, “release/freedom”] to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.” Luke 4:18 NASB 1995; Isaiah 61:1 And Apostle Paul (formerly, Sha'ul) wrote: It was for freedom (ἐλευθερία eleutheria) that Messiah set us free; therefore keep standing firm…. Galatians 5:1 NASB 1995 Messiah is the answer to both the physical and deepest spiritual oppression. He is the One who brings both Jew and Gentile, slave and free, into “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21 NASB 1995). Principles behind the Law: Applying God's heart today Laws without principles can become cold and lifeless. God wants us to know why He commands as much as what He commands. The Torah teaches us to understand the “spirit” (רוּחַ ruach) behind the mitzvot. Yeshua taught (Matt 22:34-40: Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-37) that the three-fold loving the LORD (mind/emotions, life, wealth/resources; Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and loving others as oneself (Leviticus 19:18). When faced with a new or difficult situation, it is the principle of freedom, justice, khesed (mercy) and shalom (contentment) that should guide us. If we understand Heaven’s principle, then we can apply it in a positive way and affect a whole lot of people, including ourselves and the outcome we live through. Repentance, intercession and God's compassion A thread through Scripture is Heaven’s willingness and eagerness to listen, to show mercy and to change a decree in response to repentance (תְּשׁוּבָה teshuvah, μετάνοια metanoia, “return/repentance”) and prayer. Whether we look at Moses interceding after the Golden Calf (Exodus 32), or Abraham negotiating for Sodom (Genesis 18), or Jeremiah weeping for his people, we see a God who invites dialogue and delights to show mercy: So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. Exodus 32:14 NASB 1995 Our relationship with God is rooted in covenant (בְּרִית berit), not unalterable fate. We can plead for mercy, intervene for others, and participate with God in the work of redemption. From Egypt to Messiah: A journey of increasing inclusion The arc of Scripture is toward ever-greater inclusion and freedom, not less. The Torah began by regulating and humanizing ancient social norms. The prophets called the people to deeper justice and loyal-kindness: “To do justly, to love mercy (חֶסֶד chesed), and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). And in Messiah, the doors are thrown open wide: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 NASB 1995). God's heart, from start to finish, is to proclaim liberty (דְּרוֹר deror, “release/freedom”) to the captives and recovery for all. Proclaiming freedom to the nations The disturbing reality of slavery in the Bible is not the last word. God's commandments, even where they accommodated ancient realities, were always subversive — pushing toward a world of inclusion, compassion, and release for all peoples. We are called, in Messiah, to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24 NASB 1995). So let's be a people who oppose bondage wherever we see it — physical, spiritual, social — and who open the doors to any who wish to become sons and daughters of the Most High. May we, as those native to Israel and those grafted into her who have found freedom in Messiah, be quick to share that hope: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36 NASB 1995). Shalom and blessings as you seek and extend God's liberating love to every nation (גּוֹי goy) and every neighbor. May the God Who brought Israel out of מִצְרָיִם Mitzrayim (Egypt) continue to bring all His children into freedom and shalom. The post Set the captives free: The Bible's real message on slavery & redemption (Exodus 21–22; Jeremiah 34) appeared first on Hallel Fellowship.

Episode Summary. In producing this episode we inadvertently uploaded  a Dec 14th episode from a past December 14th, not 2025. This is the corrected version recorded two days ago. Sometimes a single word can be loaded with meaning: Mom, Dad, Darling, Champion, Failure. Single words can be so important that Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” As we continue our series on the titles of Messiah Jesus in Isaiah 9:6, both of words that make up this title are loaded with a wealth of meaning, encouragement, and hope. The title is EVERLASTING FATHER.For Further Prayerful ThoughtWhat are the differences that a person would normally have in his relationship with his king and his father? Is it overstating the case to say that Christianity is best summarized by saying that Christ did to pay for our sins so that the guilt that blocks us from a relationship with the Holy One of Israel could be removed so that we can have an eternal personal relationship with him?Why would a compassionate leader be easier to follow than one who is not?What is the worst part of being a vessel that Jesus the Potter is cutting into? What is the best part?How would you persuade a non-believer that holding the opinion that Jesus was a great teacher is logically untenable?For the printed version of this message click here.For a summary of topics addressed by podcast series, click here.For FREE downloadable studies on men's issues click here.To make an online contribution to enable others to hear about the podcast: (Click link and scroll down to bottom left)

Episode Summary. Sometimes a single word can be loaded with meaning: Mom, Dad, Darling, Champion, Failure. Single words can be so important that Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” As we continue our series on the titles of Messiah Jesus in Isaiah 9:6, both of words that make up this title are loaded with a wealth of meaning, encouragement, and hope. The title is EVERLASTING FATHER.For Further Prayerful ThoughtWhat are the differences that a person would normally have in his relationship with his king and his father?Is it overstating the case to say that Christianity is best summarized by saying that Christ did to pay for our sins so that the guilt that blocks us from a relationship with the Holy One of Israel could be removed so that we can have an eternal personal relationship with him?Why would a compassionate leader be easier to follow than one who is not?What is the worst part of being a vessel that Jesus the Potter is cutting into? What is the best part?How would you persuade a non-believer that holding the opinion that Jesus was a great teacher is logically untenable?For the printed version of this message click here.For a summary of topics addressed by podcast series, click here.For FREE downloadable studies on men's issues click here.To make an online contribution to enable others to hear about the podcast: (Click link and scroll down to bottom left)

Moss Brook Church Who is this Jesus? - Firsthand Accounts of the Messiah | Jesus, The Humble Servant December 14th, 2025 Pastor Tim Knowles

Moss Brook Church Who is this Jesus? - Firsthand Accounts of the Messiah | Jesus, The King of Israel December 7th, 2025 Pastor Mike Booker

In this message Pastor Brandon walks through the doctrine of the remnant and shows why it is essential for understanding Israel, the church, and God's prophetic plan. Beginning with Elijah and the seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal, he traces how Isaiah develops the remnant theme and how Paul explains it in Romans chapters 9 through 11. Pastor Brandon explains what a remnant is, why it is pictured as a torn piece of cloth, and how God always preserves a believing minority inside the larger nation of Israel and inside the visible church. He exposes the roots of replacement theology and supersessionism, showing how they grew out of the early church breaking from its Jewish roots and how they often flow into anti Jewish attitudes today. From there the study unpacks key covenants that still belong to ethnic Israel, including the Abrahamic covenant, the land covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant. Pastor Brandon explains why these promises cannot be transferred to the church, how Gentile believers share in the spiritual blessings of the new covenant without replacing Israel, and why the survival and future salvation of Israel depend on the remnant that God preserves. The message also looks at the stump of Jesse in Isaiah 11, the humbled and almost cut off Davidic line, and how Messiah Jesus rises from poverty and obscurity to fulfill the promises to David. Along the way you will see how all of this connects to Christmas, the birth of Christ, and his future reign on David's throne in the millennial kingdom. This lesson will help you: • Understand the doctrine of the remnant of Israel   • Answer claims that the church has replaced Israel   • See how Romans 9 through 11 protects God's character and faithfulness   • Recognize modern forms of replacement theology and Christian antisemitism   • Grow in discernment as part of the faithful remnant in the church today   For more information about Rock Harbor Church and our ministry, please visit our website at rockharborchurch dot net. Keep looking up. Our redemption draws near.

In this message Pastor Brandon walks through the doctrine of the remnant and shows why it is essential for understanding Israel, the church, and God's prophetic plan. Beginning with Elijah and the seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal, he traces how Isaiah develops the remnant theme and how Paul explains it in Romans chapters 9 through 11. Pastor Brandon explains what a remnant is, why it is pictured as a torn piece of cloth, and how God always preserves a believing minority inside the larger nation of Israel and inside the visible church. He exposes the roots of replacement theology and supersessionism, showing how they grew out of the early church breaking from its Jewish roots and how they often flow into anti Jewish attitudes today. From there the study unpacks key covenants that still belong to ethnic Israel, including the Abrahamic covenant, the land covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant. Pastor Brandon explains why these promises cannot be transferred to the church, how Gentile believers share in the spiritual blessings of the new covenant without replacing Israel, and why the survival and future salvation of Israel depend on the remnant that God preserves. The message also looks at the stump of Jesse in Isaiah 11, the humbled and almost cut off Davidic line, and how Messiah Jesus rises from poverty and obscurity to fulfill the promises to David. Along the way you will see how all of this connects to Christmas, the birth of Christ, and his future reign on David's throne in the millennial kingdom.

As we begin the Advent season, on the first Sunday the Christian Church around the world often begins by talking about hope. Hope is the persistent trust that believes and acts as though the thing hoped for will happen. In the past, the Jewish people persisted in hope that the Messiah would come. He did come as Messiah Jesus. Today, Christians persist in hope that Jesus will come again to set not just humans right with God but all things! But hoping in the midst of pain and struggle, when we can't see with our eyes proof that we aren't hoping in vain, is difficult. Join us as Pastor Jessica opens God's Word to encourage us to persist in hope. Join us for service every Sunday at 9:15am or 11:00am (EST). Here are ways to connect with us!Text TODAY to 937-358-6565 to let us know you decided to say 'Yes!' to Jesus leading your life. Text BAPTISM to 937-358-6565 to find out more about getting baptized as an expression of your new faith.Text SERVE to 937-358-6565 to find a serve community to join that matches your skills and passions.Text PRAYER to 937-358-6565 to let us know how we can be praying for you!And if you would like to support The Valley Church financially or participate in Be Rich, you can GIVE online via our website: www.thevalley.church/give.Music: Bensound.com/free-music-for-videosLicense code: 1EBH3J7EM5DURCTO

This week, Clayton Riddle starts our Christmas series . Today, the sermon is called "The Promise Foretold" where Clayton looks at the promise of the Messiah (Jesus) in Isaiah 9: 1-7. God offers hope to all people in the midst of the darkest times. God promised one who would come and bring peace. A light in the darkness.Scripture for today:Isaiah 9: 1-7 Recorded on 30th November 2025

Understanding how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament is more than a philosophical endeavor. It is the foundation that we need to strengthen our faith in Messiah Jesus. In this episode, learn how to be empowered as you grow in obedience to the Word of God through the revelation of Messianic Prophecies. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/3p4 

Did you know that the birth of Messiah was revealed in the Hebrew Bible? In this episode, learn how the Messianic Prophecies of supernatural birth can empower your faith in Messiah Jesus today. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/w1x 

The Hebrew Bible offers a multitude of ways to defend your faith and stand steadfast in God's Word.  Join Rabbi Schneider in this episode to become fully confident and convinced that the scriptures point and bring us to Messiah Jesus. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES -  https://djj.show/4ce 

In today's episode, Rabbi continues his study of Messianic prophecies, showing how Messiah Jesus' life, death, and impact in the world were revealed beforehand through types and shadows in the Old Testament. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/sap 

Join Rabbi as he reveals the significance of blood sacrifices according to the Hebrew Bible, and how its full meaning can be understood through the life and death of Messiah Jesus. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/9ty 

Messiah Jesus fulfills more prophecies than most people realize. In the first episode of this exciting series, Rabbi begins to unveil how Messiah Jesus completes the Hebrew Bible through Messianic Prophecy. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner  **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/dqt 

We join Peter on his profound journey with Christ — from his bold confession that Jesus is the Messiah to his moments of misunderstanding and his witness of the transfiguration. Through Peter's story, we are reminded that while our understanding of God is often partial and imperfect, we are fully known and loved by Him. The post The Messiah Jesus appeared first on Ottawa Church of Christ.

* You can get the sermon note sheet at: https://family-bible-church.org/2025Messages/25Oct12.pdf * In Hebrews chapter 1, we are told that Jesus - the Messiah - was not a prophet or an angel. Rather, He is the eternally begotten Son of God. The writer quotes multiple passages from the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) to establish that this should have been understood. The misconception that the "mal'ak" of YHWH was an angelic being rather than a "Messenger" or "Ambassador" had caused great confusion. One of the roles of the Son is to be the Tabernacling Presence of YHWH on the earth. He is the Apostle (official representative) of the Father. * This allusion to the "mal'ak" of YHWH (as the pillar of cloud/fire) then continues into chapter 2, where the writer speaks to his Hebrew audience as the descendants of those who rejected the deliverance of YHWH through the ministry of the "mal'ak" of YHWH, and spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. "How shall WE escape if WE neglect so great a salvation (deliverance)?" Just as the Israelite deliverance was first declared by Moses and then confirmed by signs and wonders, so this greater deliverance was declared by Jesus (God - the Son, incarnate) and confirmed by signs, wonders and gifts of the Holy Spirit! * When Messiah came, He did not come then in subjection to angelic beings but rather having authority over them! In fact, His purpose in coming was to be our champion over Lucifer, the fallen archangel, who had the power of death (2:14). The Messiah Jesus came, shared in flesh and blood, died and rose from the dead to conquer death itself and Lucifer. In this manner, He revealed that He had greater authority than the angels. * That now leads us into chapter 3 where the supreme Hebraic picture of the Exodus is again the center of instruction. The contrast is made to Moses who had authority as a servant in the "house", but the Messiah has full authority - as the builder and owner of the house! * When YHWH provided Israel "so great a salvation" out of the land of Egypt, He was leading them out of bondage in order to bring them into a land of "rest." However, this land could only be received, and entered, by trusting YHWH to give them the land (and the rest), just as He had revealed through bringing them out of Egypt. * Today, we see that the Ultimate/Greater Rest is still available to all who believe! Jesus stated, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." ( Matthew 11:28-30) * This message was presented by Bob Corbin on October 12, 2025 at Family Bible Church in Martinez, Georgia.

Galatians 3 has done a lot of heavy lifting in modern theology. Some say it proves everything is now “spiritual,” that Israel was folded into the church and the land promise dissolved. We open the text and ask: is that what Paul actually says? Paul's concern is rescue, not replacement. He confronts the claim that Gentiles need the works of the law to belong. By returning to Abraham, he shows that righteousness has always been by faith and that the blessing promised to the nations reaches its center in the Messiah. That's inclusion without erasure. We then trace what Galatians 3 does say - justification by faith, Gentile heirship with Abraham, the law as guardian, one body in Messiah - and what it never says: that the church is the new Israel or that Jewish identity and the land are cancelled. The result is a bigger table, not a different family. Key Takeaways Justification by faith predates Sinai; Abraham believed and was counted righteous. Gentiles are heirs with Abraham through the promised Seed, Messiah Jesus, without identity transfer to “Israel.” The law is a guardian, not a ladder; it cannot annul the earlier promise. “Neither Jew nor Greek” means equal standing, not uniform roles in redemptive history. Paul never says “the church is Israel.” Inclusion doesn't require erasing Jewish calling. The three strands remain - people, place, purpose - brought to coherence in Messiah, not collapsed by Him. Romans 9–11 safeguards Israel's ongoing calling, warning Gentiles against arrogance. Chapter Markers 00:00 Welcome & Series Setup: “Still Chosen” 03:00 Why Galatians? The Rescue Mission Context 08:30 Sons of Abraham by Faith (Gal 3:6–9) 14:30 Promise vs. Law; the Singular Seed (Gal 3:15–18) 21:00 Guardian to the Messiah; Faith as the Doorway (Gal 3:23–26) 24:00 “Neither Jew nor Greek”: Unity without Erasure (Gal 3:27–29) 31:00 What Paul Doesn't Say: No Replacement of Israel 37:30 Analogies: The Expanded Table & Family Business 43:00 Land Promise and Acts 1:6—“Not yet,” not “never” 49:00 Lightning Round Q&A and Next Episode Tease Galatians 3 throws the doors wide to the nations through the Messiah without canceling God's covenant with Israel. Equal standing at the Father's table, distinct roles in His unfolding story. Explore more resources at The Jewish Road, consider coming to Israel with us, and if this ministry blesses you, join “The Few” and support the work.

Today we continue our journey through Paul's letter to the Ephesians. In Chapter 2 Paul shares two different perspectives on the inclusions of the Gentiles as children of God. Paul first addresses the cosmic perspective how the Gentiles like all other humans had been separated from God due to sin but how through Messiah Jesus they are now called childred of God. The second perspective relates to the covenant. Gentiles were far away, outsiders to the family of God but again, through Christ not only are Gentiles included in God's family but a whole new family is created in Messiah. This new family - this new way to be human includes everyone equally.To support the ministry of Melbourne Inclusive Church go to: www.michurch.org.au/give Melbourne Inclusive Church boldly and proudly proclaims Christ's equal love for all people regardless of their ability, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, age, gender, race, ethnicity, or culture.Melbourne Inclusive Church is part of the EMI Global family of churches.

Psalm 91 WorksheetPsalm 91 uses wonderful poetry for believers to express their confidence that the LORD sovereignly protects and delivers those who are His! We call a Psalm a Messianic psalm when in part or the whole it expresses something that only Israel's coming Messiah Jesus could fulfill. What I am cautiously calling a “Millennial” Psalm contains aspirations that won't be completely _____________________ until Jesus reigns on earth as described in Revelation 20.For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait on the LORD, they shall inherit the earth…But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. -Psalm 37:9, 11 The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years. YET THEIR BOAST IS ONLY LABOR AND SORROW; but it is soon cut off, and we fly away. -Psalm 90:10 After we read Psalm 91 you will love it and find yourself praying that your loved ones will be enveloped with “Psalm 91 protection.” We are invited to ask the Sovereign God to be _____________ us and protect us “in trouble” (verse 15).The eternal _________________________ we have in God our refuge V. 1-24 different names for God are given in verses 1-2: Most High (Elyon); Almighty (Shaddai); LORD (YHWH); God(Elohim). He is over all! He is All-powerful! He AM, and He enters into ______________ with His people. James 4:8 Matthew 11:28Make sure you _____________________ your trust in God like the Psalmist – He is “MY refuge,” “MY fortress,” I trust unreservedly in Him!Our specific hopes for God's ___________________________ for God's people V. 3-13The word for pestilence is deber (H1698), which occurs 49 times. Among other things this word would relate to plagues and ________________________. I like how he describes the refuge we have in God in such wonderful relational terms. Our refuge is as strong as the most fortified brick castle, yet as warm and ____________________ as being at “grandmom's” house! What is the difference between a shield and a buckler?Many times the fear of something happening is as debilitating as the thing itself can be. A _______________ walk with the LORD can deliver us from the fear that keeps us from getting on with life. For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. -2 Tim. 2:7Verses 7-8 must be understood in light of all the Psalms that have made clear that trouble does come to faithful believers (Psalm 90:10) yet God is in control and we will be with believers forever (Psalm 23). The very ________________________ Psalm speaks of the wicked flourishing now but being destroyed (92:7), and the righteous future flourishing (92:12-13). Verses 9-10 will reach their _________________________ fulfilment during Christ's anticipated millennial kingdom (Isaiah 11:1-12).According to Psalm 91:11-12, God's protection includes the activity of ministering ___________________!Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation. -Hebrews 1:14 God Himself gives eternal _________________________ V. 14-16How many times does the word “will” occur in verses 14-16?________ + 2 more times it is implied.If you set your love on God, what will He do for you according to verse 14?If you call on God, what will He do for you according to verses 15-16?

The term “New Age” is drawn from Astrology, based on the false, cosmological idea that the sun passes through twelve houses in its journey around the earth. Those who subscribe to this concept believe we are on the cusp of “The Age of Aquarius,” supposedly a “new age” of enlightenment and peace on planet Earth. Is this the same as the biblical concept of a coming Kingdom Age when the Messiah (Jesus) will reign over a restored paradise world? Find out!Comparative religion website: www.thetruelight.net Ministry website: www.shreveministries.org The Catholic Project website: www.toCatholicswithlove.org Video channel: www.YouTube.com/mikeshreveministries All audio-podcasts are shared in a video format on our YouTube channel. Mike Shreve's other podcast Discover Your Spiritual Identity—a study on the biblical names given to God's people: https://www.charismapodcastnetwork.com/show/discoveryourspiritualidentity Mail: P.O. Box 4260, Cleveland, TN 37320 / Phone: 423-478-2843Purchase Mike Shreve's popular book comparing over 20 religions: In Search of the True LightPurchase Mike Shreve's new book comparing Catholicism to biblical Christianity: The Beliefs of the Catholic Church

Jesse Lasley's teaching from Hebrews 12:28-29 titled, "Worshipping Messiah Jesus."

Jesse Lasley's teaching from Hebrews 12:28-29 titled, "Worshipping Messiah Jesus."

The grain offering consisted of fine flour, frankincense, and oil. While costly for the ancient Israelite's, they presented their best before the Lord. Join Rabbi today as he continues discussing the burnt offering and outlines the grain offering as it relates to Messiah Jesus. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner   **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate   Visit our website at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com

David Brickner, currently the Executive Chairman to the Board of Jews for Jesus, became executive director of Jews for Jesus in 1996 and was the first to succeed our founding executive director, Moishe Rosen. Under his leadership, Jews for Jesus advanced internationally with missionaries in 12 countries, the largest number being in Israel.David comes from five generations of Jewish followers of Messiah Jesus. Though he turned his back on his upbringing in high school, David had a unique encounter with God in college that prompted him to attend a Jews for Jesus Bible study. David says, “I surrendered my life to Jesus in 1976 and haven't looked back.”David has authored several books, including the most recent release Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus? 12 Key Prophecies that Unfold God's Plan. He has been interviewed on secular and Christian radio and television shows, including Larry King Live and In the Market with Janet Parshall.A graduate of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, David also has a bachelor of arts degree in Judaica from Northeastern Illinois University in conjunction with Spertus College of Judaica. He has a master of arts degree in missiology with an emphasis on Jewish studies from the Fuller School of Mission and Theology.David is an avid reader, hiker, and mountain climber. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Sabra, and is the proud father of Isaac, Ilana, and Sivan, and grandfather of three. 

This Saturday on Open Line, we’re clearing out the Inbox on a Mailbag program. Gather around the kitchen table with Dr. Michael Rydelnik, Eva Rydelnik, and Trish McMillan as we answer the questions you’ve sent us. As we celebrate Independence Day this weekend, we can also celebrate our freedom in Messiah Jesus. Join us for Open Line. Books mentioned:Basic Theology by Charles RyrieThe Essential Scriptures by Kevin ZuberThe One Volume Seminary edited by Michael Boyle, Laurie Norris, and Kerwin RodriguezSurvey of Bible Doctrine by Charles RyrieLight in a Dark Place: The Doctrine of Scripture by John Feinberg7 Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible by Erwin LutzerFrom God to Us by Norman Geisler and William NixSeven Days that Divide the World by John LennoxIsrael in Egypt by James HoffmeierOn the Reliability of the Old Testamet by K.A. Kitchen Learn more about resources mentioned:Chosen People Ministries free giftFEBC podcastMoody Bible Commentary July thank you gift:Teaching to Change Lives by Howard Hendricks Open Line is listener-supported. To support the program, click here.Become a Kitchen Table Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/openline/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"...and so all Israel shall be saved." Here's the point of Paul's three-chapter argument in Romans 9 through 11: Far from being done with the Jewish people, God will draw them to Himself. And they will come the same way everyone else comes - the only Way - through faith in Messiah Jesus. Even Israel's lack of belief now, is part of the exquisite plan of Heaven. This truth has implications for every person and nation on the Earth. Here's Jim in Romans 11. Listen to Right Start Radio every Monday through Friday on WCVX 1160AM (Cincinnati, OH) at 9:30am, WHKC 91.5FM (Columbus, OH) at 5:00pm, WRFD 880AM (Columbus, OH) at 9:00am. Right Start can also be heard on One Christian Radio 107.7FM & 87.6FM in New Plymouth, New Zealand. You can purchase a copy of this message, unsegmented for broadcasting and in its entirety, for $7 on a single CD by calling +1 (800) 984-2313, and of course you can always listen online or download the message for free. RS06252025_0.mp3Scripture References: Romans 11

In this episode of Arise + Abide, Curtis and Sally reflect on the powerful hope found in Isaiah 9:1–7. After the bleak warnings of chapter 8, Isaiah 9 opens with a promise: light will shine in the darkness. The hosts explore how this prophecy points to the coming Messiah—Jesus—who brings joy, breaks the yoke of oppression, and reigns with justice and peace. They highlight the significance of God's victory through humility and grace, reminding us that the passionate commitment of the Lord is the driving force behind redemption. This is a message of hope, light, and God's enduring love.

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Mark Johnson 6-1-25

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

Pastor Runge shows how the prophecies in Isaiah 9:6-7 paint a portrait of Messiah Jesus. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1094/29

I once read a poem titled; *Jesus Volta*. While finding the poem to be clear, by not realizing it was a Sonnet nor remembering what the term Volta meant, it was difficult for me to truly understand it. The term *Volta* describes the turning point in a sonnet. Just that information alone even makes the title more clear!  Why all this talk about poetry? Over the next 15 weeks we will be moving into a new sermon series on the Psalms, the poetry and songbook of the Bible. In this book you will find a wide variety of structure, subject, and emotions: Joy, triumph, peace, praise, worship, war, distress, judgment, and, lament, along with prophecy of the Messiah – Jesus!Poetry is a style of writing, often using an economy of words and cadence and rhyming scheme. Poems put to music are what we call hymns and songs. Our understanding and application of this rich and meaningful book can give us words for our emotions and deepen our relationship with Jesus.  Prepare for this week's teaching by reading Psalms 1-2

​On this weekend's Open Line with Dr. Michael Rydelnik, Michael welcomes Larry Feldman of Chosen People Ministries to explore the meaning of the Passover and how that points to Messiah Jesus. Learn more about resources mentioned:Book: Messiah in the PassoverChosen People Ministries free giftFEBC podcastMoody Bible Commentary Open Line is listener-supported. To support the program, click here. Become a Kitchen Table Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/openline/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.