Podcasts about through abraham

A Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity Ephesians 4:1-10 by William Klock Have you ever been part of a group that forgot what it was about?  About twenty years ago I joined the Sons of the American Revolution.  It's a civil fraternity for descendants of those who fought in the American Revolution.  Because you have to prove your lineage, it's a group that's big on genealogy, but its main purpose is to promote the ideals of American democracy.  I enjoyed the SAR for several years, but then we had a new guy transfer in from out-of-state.  He was a registered parliamentarian.  Yes, there is such a thing.  And before too long he was picking apart our bylaws—and the bylaws of the state organisation—and pretty soon all of our meetings were consumed with fights over rules governing the organisation.  There were no more presentations and lectures on history and civics and one by one people started dropping out.  By the time the parliamentarian got his way, there was almost no one left and when the monthly presentations and lectures came back they were consistently highjacked to defend the agenda that had been pushed for those last several years.  And membership dwindled even more.  It's easy to lose focus.  It's easy to forget what we're about. I think, Brothers and Sisters, we're all probably well aware, the same sort of thing can happen easily in the Church.  We're brought together by Jesus to live out and to proclaim the Good News, but we lose focus.  The Church can easily become a social club for people to sit around and bicker about which Bible translation to read or what colour the new carpet should be or how to organise next year's budget.  Or maybe it's not trivialities that side-track us.  Sometimes even important things can cause us to forget who we are.  Years ago I was in an online discussion forum where, one night, a number of us had a horrible, ugly, no-holds-barred Internet brawl over the nature of—get this—the love of God.  There we were arguing over the love of God while being so unloving that some people were throwing down their keyboards in anger, never to return.  Talk about forgetting our identity! Our Epistle this morning is taken from Ephesians 4.  This is where St. Paul launches into the second half of his letter.  And if we read between the lines we can get a sense of the problems he was addressing in the Ephesian churches.  They were struggling to maintain their unity.  And as we saw in our lessons from Galatians this past month, in the early Church one of the chief causes for disunity was the divide between Jews and Gentiles.  The first Christians were all Jews and part of being Jewish meant keeping apart from the Gentiles—the non-Jews.  The Jews found their identity in their having been set apart by the Lord.  Circumcision, diet, Sabbath, these were the things that set Jews apart and drew a boundary: Jews on the inside and Gentiles on the outside.  They were clean, they were pure; Gentiles were unclean.  And then the Good News went out to the Gentiles and they started coming to the Church.  And then Paul was called to actually go out as a missionary to the Gentiles and to bring them in.  And the Jewish Christians didn't know what to do.  Did Gentiles need to become Jewish converts before they could truly follow Jesus?   Did they need to be circumcised and observe the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws?  This all became a huge source of division and disunity in the churches. And so in Ephesians Paul takes these people back to the basics.  He takes them back to what it means to be a Christian.  In Chapter 1 he reminds them that Jesus is their hope.  He's the Messiah and he tells them, “When you heard the Good News, when you believed in Jesus, he sealed you—all of you—with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is Jesus' guarantee to you of the inheritance he has promised.”  And Paul also stresses what that inheritance is: It's their redemption as God's own people—again, all of them, not just the Jews, but the Gentile believers too.  When they read that they must have remembered the stories of Pentecost—maybe some of them had even been there—and remembered how the Spirit brought together people from every corner of the world and overcame their different languages to forge them into one church.  As the Lord had once sealed to himself the people of Israel by the gift of the law, he has now sealed these people, his new Israel, the Church, by the gift of the Spirit. At the end of Chapter one, just a few verses later, Paul stresses the kingship of Jesus.  Jesus died and God raised him from the dead and gave him a throne—a throne and a dominion and a name above every earthly power.  Jesus is the world's true King and the Church is his body, called to declare his death and resurrection and called to proclaim the Good News that he is Lord until every enemy has been put under his feet.  We brought death into the world when we sinned and rebelled against God, but in Jesus he has unleashed life.  Jesus has begun the work of recreation and setting Creation to rights and part of that setting to rights is manifested visibly in the unity of the Church—in the unity that was so dramatically seen at Pentecost and in the unity that should have been so dramatically seen in churches like the one at Ephesus, as Jews and Gentiles came together as one people, as the true Israel of God.  In 2:14 Paul reminds them that Jesus is their—and our—peace.  In his flesh he's made those who were near—that's the Jews—and those who were far—that's the Gentiles—one in himself.  Through his cross he's put to death the hostility that once kept the two apart.  Through Jesus we all have access to the Father in the one Spirit.  We're one household, he writes—and the house is God's.  We are his temple, each one of us brought from our particular background, each of us with our unique stories to tell, but brought together by the Spirit, made holy, and made a dwelling place for God.  Brothers and Sisters, that what the Church is to be. And now in our Epistle today from Chapter 4 Paul sums things up for the Christians in Ephesus with three basic points.  First and foremost, they've been called to follow the King; second, that they've been given and equipped with God's amazing grace so that each has a part to play, a role to fill in the serving the King as the Church; and finally, he stresses the unity they have in Jesus.  It's a wonderful reminder that unity isn't something we create; it's something Christians naturally have in Jesus.  Our duty is to guard that God-given unity.  Numbers two and three, the grace and the unity, tend to take care of themselves when we remember number one—when we remember that we've been called to follow the King. Look at Ephesians 4:1-3. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord [Paul is writing to them from prison], urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.   This is something that Paul stresses over and over in his epistles.  We've been called to follow Jesus and that means walking—living with each other and bearing with each other—humbly, gently, and patiently in love.  Friends, that's how God has dealt with us.  He created all things good.  He provided everything human beings need to live.  And we made a mess of it.  We're the ones who doubted his goodness.  We're the ones who disobeyed his commands.  We're the ones who corrupted his Creation.  And yet the almighty Creator of the universe who is perfectly good and perfectly holy has been patient with us.  We stand condemned to death before him, but he came as one of us, humbling himself, taking up our flesh and dying the death that we deserve so that we might be forgiven and restored to his fellowship.  As Jesus said, he came to those condemned, not to heap more condemnation on us, but to redeem us. If that is how the Lord has dealt with us, shouldn't we deal humbly, patiently, and lovingly with each other?  It's a struggle.  It's not easy.  Christians can gossip just as well as non-Christians.  We rub each other the wrong way.  We do things that offend.  We make mistakes.  And, yes, we're called to correct each other, but we don't correct each other by gossiping to others.  We don't correct each other by ignoring them or putting them out of our lives.  We correct in love and with the hope of restoration—just as God has corrected us.  Friends, when something happens between you and someone else in the Church, is your first thought to take offense, to get upset, to assert your rights—or is it to maintain the unity Jesus has given us?  Is it to keep the bonds of peace the Spirit has forged?  We struggle to be patient, humble, and loving because we haven't kept Jesus before us, because we've forgotten that this is how he's dealt with us, because we have a tendency to take grace for granted. Brothers and Sisters, remember our calling.  Look at verses 4-6: There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.   One, one, one, one, one.  One body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and he's Father of all—and this is our one call.  The call of the Church at one point reached each of us.  At some point each of us, through a parent, a friend, someone, heard the proclamation that Jesus died and rose again, that he is Lord and the world's true King.  At some point each of us heard that.  It was a call to repentance, a call to turn away from everything that is not Jesus and to find our hope, our security, our calling, our life in him.  At some point each of us believed.  We affirmed that Jesus is Lord—not Caesar, not money, not sex, not power, not recognition.  Jesus is Lord and we gave him our eternal allegiance.  At some point the call reached us and because we have believed we've now been called to carry that gospel, that Good News to the world. Remember what the word “gospel” meant in the Old Testament.  It was the proclamation of good news. It was the good news that the army had won a great victory against the enemy.  It was the good news that a people in exile could return to their homes.  And remember what the word “gospel” meant in the Greco-Roman world.  It was the news spread by imperial heralds that a new king had taken the throne to rule the empire.  And “gospel” for the first Christians rolled all of that together.  Good News, they proclaimed!  Jesus has won the victory over sin and death!  Good News!  Jesus is Lord!  Jesus is the world's true King!  Brothers and Sisters, the Gospel is not good advice.  What we proclaim isn't a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.  We're not going out to tell people that Jesus is another viable option on a religious smorgasbord.  It's Good News.  We are heralds of the news that Jesus has risen from the dead, that his kingdom is breaking in, that it is unleashing life into the world, and he is King and no other.  The Good News is a call to the world to repent, to turn aside from everything that is not Jesus and to take hold of him in faith lest we be handed forever over to death. Paul says that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all and to proclaim that message the one Spirit has created one body, one Church to act as the herald of the kingdom.  In Ephesus the division between Jew and Gentile was threatening that unity, but Paul reminds them that Jesus has created a new family.  This is what so much of Chapter 2 was about, but it's a theme that runs through the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.  God doesn't have two families or two peoples.  Jesus came in fulfilment of the prophecies given by God as far back as Abraham.  Through Abraham's family he would restore a knowledge of himself to a world that had forgotten him.  Through Abraham's family he would bring blessing to the world and set his Creation to rights.  Israel failed, but Jesus came, Abraham's son, and he did what Israel had failed to do.  He gathered a new Israel around himself, starting with his twelve disciples, and opened to Jew and Gentile alike.  At Pentecost he gave his law, not written on stone tablets this time, but written on the very hearts of his people by the Spirit.  We, the body of Christ, represent God's future and so we must guard our unity from whatever might drive us apart.  Paul writes about guarding our Jesus-centred unity the way soldiers guard a city from an enemy. It's hard for us to grasp just how important unity is in Paul's teaching and in his vision of the Church.  We've become so used to the idea of division.  We've got the Orthodox and the Romans and the Protestants and within our own Protestant tradition we've got hundreds of smaller divisions.  Even our own Anglican tradition is in the midst of a realignment.  Sometimes the divisions have allowed us to grow so far apart and our languages and practices are so different that it can even be hard to recognize fellow Christians. Some divisions take place over serious issues.  Those of you who started our own church left the Anglican Church of Canada because the gospel was no longer being preached and because sin was being promoted as virtue.  In more recent years we've had other divisions in the Comox Valley because of teaching that denies the divinity of Jesus.  These are issues that create division and they undermine our unity in Jesus.  He is our centre and if you preach a different Jesus and if you preach a different message as the Good News you've separated yourself from the body Jesus created.  As important as unity is, Paul also stresses many times that we are to have nothing to do with those who preach a different gospel. But what Paul is specifically addressing here are the unnecessary divisions in the body.  The Ephesians all believed in the same Jesus and the same Good News.  The reasons their division were sinful was because they were over things that should not divide the body of Christ.  The differences between Jew and Gentile should not divide.  The differences of socio-economic class or of race or language should never divide.  Our personalities, our priorities, even the wrongs we do each other should never divide.  Instead we need to be patient, humble, and gentle with each other as we guard the unity we have by virtue of our shared life in Jesus. Finally, in verses 7-11 Paul writes about the different gifts Jesus has given through the Spirit. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.  Paul's about to launch into a list of some of the many gifts the Spirit gives to equip the Church for our calling to proclaim Jesus and his kingdom, but before he does that he quotes from Psalm 68: Therefore it says,           “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,                   and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)   The psalm is about Moses.  In the Exodus the Lord defeated the Egyptians and led Israel out of her bondage to them.  When the people had camped at Mt. Sinai Moses ascended up the mountain and when he came down he had the law written on stone tablets.  And Paul sees Jesus doing something similar.  Moses points to Jesus.  The Old Covenant points to a new and better one.  In his death and resurrection Jesus has led us in a new exodus from our bondage to sin and death.  After he rose from the dead Jesus ascended to take his throne and to rule from heaven until every enemy has been put under his feet.  But instead of coming down as Moses did with the law, Jesus gave his people the gift of God's own Spirit.  When Moses came down the mountain with the law God created a people for himself and just so, but on an even grander scale, Jesus has created a new people for himself in his ascension and his sending of the Spirit.  We are the people of whom the old Israel was a type and a shadow.  In our baptism Jesus plunges us into the Spirit, he frees us from our bondage to sin and death, he gives us life, he unites us in that one Spirit, and he gives us grace and equips us both for our life together as his people and for our mission as his people to proclaim his kingdom. That's what Paul is writing about here.  But it's not just the Font.  It's not just our baptism.  Each Sunday we come to the Lord's Table.  In Baptism we reach out to Jesus in faith and are united with him by the Spirit for the first time, but each week we gather and in the Lord's Supper we celebrate the Sacrament of our continuing life in Jesus by the Spirit.  Here we come and as Jesus feeds us we eat of the one bread and drink of the one cup, again reminding us that as individuals we are united: one faith, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. Think on that as you come to the Lord's Table this morning.  We share in the one bread and the one cup because we share in one Baptism into Jesus by the Spirit.  Despite all of our differences, we are one and we're one because we share a common life in the Lord Jesus.  Dear friends, let the Lord's call to his Table this morning be a reminder to guard the unity Jesus has given, let it be a reminder to walk in a manner worthy of his call—to bear with each other patiently, humbly, lovingly, graciously as Jesus borne with us. Let us pray:  Heavenly Father, as we asked in the Collect we ask again: may your grace always go before us and follow after us.  May we be so enveloped by the grace you have shown us in Jesus that we can't help but share that grace with each other and with the world.  Give us grace to guard the unity we have in Jesus.  Give us grace to remember that we are one in him.  And strengthen us with your grace to proclaim to the world the truth that has brought us together: Jesus died and rose again.  He is Lord and life.  Amen.

Through Abraham's family matters, God teaches us numerable valuable lessons about His love, our families, and much more. In this episode, we'll analyze the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael.

A Sermon for Ascension Sunday Daniel 7:9-14 & Acts 1:1-11 by William Klock   As you came today you walked through the lychgate and under those words carved on it: “Jesus is Lord”.  That’s the central truth we celebrate and remember in the Ascension and it’s an exhortation we need to hear right now more than ever.  People are living in fear of sickness.  Our government is trying to control the spread of that sickness—and for so much of the last year it feels like we’re wasting out time, like those people out cutting scotch broom along the public right of ways, while acres upon acres are growing on private land just the other side of a wire fence, like bailing water out of a sinking boat.  And, meanwhile, the scientists have been working frantically for a solution—and now we’ve got it, if only we can get it to people fast enough.  Brothers and Sisters, the people living in crippling fear need to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.  The politicians and the technocrats need to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.  And everyone who thinks that Science is our saviour needs to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.  Healthy fear, good government, and the miracles of science are all good things—but we need to remember that they are gifts of God under the lordship of Jesus. In our lesson from Acts, St. Luke tells us about Jesus as he led the disciples out of Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives.  He promised them that John’s prophecy would soon be fulfilled.  He was going to send his Spirit to baptise them with fire.  They didn’t know what that meant.  In fact, it didn’t even seem very important to them at the time.  They wanted to know about the kingdom!  That’s what the Messiah was about—he was supposed to come and restore the kingdom of Israel.  When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday they were thinking that maybe now he would finally throw off the poor itinerant rabbi disguise and restore the kingdom, throwing out the Romans and taking up David’s throne.  But instead Jesus allowed himself to be arrested, beaten, and killed.  They were despondent.  But then on Sunday he rose from the dead.  Maybe this was finally it.  But through the next forty days Jesus simply taught them the Scriptures.  The disciples were excited to have Jesus back with them.  They were excited about his resurrection, although they didn’t yet truly understand what it meant.  And so there on the Mount of Olives they asked again: Jesus, it’s great you’re alive again.  We appreciate all the Bible teaching.  But when are you going to bring the kingdom?  And in response Jesus once again promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower their witness and then told them that it wasn’t their place to know the times and seasons fixed by the Father.  But then Jesus did something amazing: he ascended into the clouds.  There were the disciples staring into the sky, probably with their mouths agape, as Jesus disappeared from their sight.  And they just stood there, staring and staring until the two men, the two angels, broke into their wonder and amazement saying, “Hey, you men of Galilee!  Are you going to stand there forever staring into space?  Jesus went up to heaven and he’s coming back.  Didn’t he give you something important to do in the meantime?” What just happened there?  Why were they agape, staring into the sky?  It wasn’t just that Jesus had done something that no one else had ever done before.  No, it was because he did something that anyone who knew the Hebrew scriptures recognised.  In our Old Testament lesson from Daniel 7 we read about the one called the son of man.  Daniel saw in a vision a sequence of empires…Babylonians, Persians, Greeks.  They were ferocious, destructive, oppressing God’s people.  And then they were destroyed and, Daniel says, he saw this one like a son of man—a figure representing the people of God— “with the clouds of heaven…he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.  And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” God’s people had suffered, been defeated, exiled, oppressed and through it all the faithful continued and they cried out to the Lord and Daniel saw their prayers answered in the son of man as he was revealed in glory, as he came on the clouds to take his throne with the ancient of day.  Friends, the disciple stood there agape because right there on the Mount of the Ascension, Daniel’s vision had just become a reality.  The son of man had ascended to take his throne and that meant—it still means—that despite any appearances to the contrary, despite despotic kings, despite rejection and persecution, despite the ongoing presence of sin and death in the word, Jesus is seated on his throne, Jesus rules, Jesus is Lord. It is providential that Augustus chose to use the imagery of Caesar ascending into heaven to become a god and that “Caesar is Lord” became the quasi-religious pledge of allegiance to the Roman Empire.  I say it’s providential, because what the pagan Romans had been depicting in their imperial iconography for a generation before Jesus, was also struck down that day when Jesus did for real, what the Romans believed Caesar had done symbolically.  However much Caesar insisted that he was lord of the world, no matter how hard he pressed those early believers to acknowledge it, to offer him a pinch of incense on the imperial altars, no matter how many he crucified or fed to the lions, they knew that Jesus had done it for real and they persevered in faith knowing that Jesus is Lord. Jesus’ kingdom is here and now.  It’s not coming in the future.  It’s not coming after a rapture of believers.  It’s not coming before or after or in the middle of a Great Tribulation.  And it’s not something we have to go to heaven to experience.  The disciples asked Jesus when the kingdom was coming and Jesus responded by telling them that it was not for them to know.  I think he was smiling as he said that, because the next thing we see is Jesus ascending.  Just as the Ascension sends the message loudly and clearly that Jesus is Lord, it also sends the message loudly and clearly that his kingdom is here and now, even if the King’s throne is in heaven.  They asked him when the kingdom was coming and in response he gave them a dramatic visual that they’d never forget: They saw the King ascend to his throne.  Brothers and Sisters, the Ascension of Jesus tells us very dramatically and unmistakably that the kingdom is here and now.  Why is the Ascension important?  Again, it tells us dramatically and unmistakably that the kingdom is here and now. All of this is important, but what does it mean that Jesus is reigning and that the kingdom is here and now?  For that we need to look at the big picture.  In the beginning God created the Cosmos to give him glory.  At the centre of it was a garden and in that garden the Lord placed human beings to tend and to keep it.  Everything about the garden points to its being the Lord’s temple.  When the Israelites built the tabernacle, the design was meant to mimic the garden.  It was in the garden that human beings lived in the presence of the Lord.  And later it was in the temple that the Lord manifested his presence in the holy of holies.  The temple was the place where heaven and earth met and where the people went to meet with, to worship, and to fellowship with the Lord.  The temple pointed back to the garden.  When humanity sinned, the garden was lost.  Adam and Eve were cast out and an angel placed at the entrance to guard it.  And from there the story of humanity goes from bad to worse.  And yet the Lord never abandoned his Creation.  The creation was meant to give God glory and when it turned on him, instead of destroying it, God chose to manifest his glory by renewing it—by making a new creation.  And as humanity lost all knowledge of the Lord, he called Abraham to himself and through Abraham created a new humanity in the family of Abraham.  Through Abraham, the Lord began the work of restoring the garden. And yet think about a garden.  You can’t plant a garden in the wilderness and expect it to flourish on its own.  Enemies and wild animals will raid the garden and steal the fruit.  Without cultivation and protection the wild will quickly overcome the garden.  And so the Lord provided for the protection of his new garden.  He sent Jacob and his family to Egypt, where the king looked on them with favour, provided for them, cared for them, and protected them.  When the king of Egypt became hostile, the Lord himself rescued his new creation—Israel—and led her into the wilderness and to the promised land.  He fed her in the wilderness and he drove out her enemies from the land.  Eventually the Lord gave her a human king to protect his new creation from the wilderness—from the hostile enemies—that surrounded her.  But through it all, it was ultimately the Lord who was King and who protected his people.  Isaiah declared that “the Lord reigns” when Israel was faced with conquest by the Babylonian empire.  The Babylonian king and the Babylonian gods had no power over Israel no matter how bad things got.  In Daniel’s vision ferocious beasts represent the kingdoms of the earth that had conquered and dominated Israel, but in that vision the Lord takes the kingdom away from those monsters and delivers it to the saints and ultimately to the son of man—to Jesus.  Even when the Lord uses earthly kings to discipline his people, he continues to care for them.  That’s the purpose of his kingship and his kingdom: the care and cultivation of his new creation. And all this comes to full fruit in Jesus.  He has come as the Son of Man.  He has come as the Messiah—the true and eternal king in the line of David.  He has come to bring the Lord’s new creation to full fruit—to suffer for his people and to give them his Holy Spirit that they might truly be the new creation that Israel was supposed to be—that they might be the true sons and daughters of Abraham.  But not only that, he has also come to establish a kingdom over which he will rule himself—a kingdom to protect and to safeguard the new creation—the Lord’s garden as it grows and flourishes and spreads throughout the world.  This is the story of the book of Acts.  We read the beginning today: Jesus ascended into the clouds to take his heavenly throne.  Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.  The rest of Acts is the story of the church, of the new creation, of the kingdom spreading throughout the world.  And Acts ends dramatically with Paul in Rome, in chains, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus right under Caesar’s nose.  Through the suffering, persecution, and martyrdom of the saints, the kingdom of Jesus has triumphed and will continue to triumph. Brothers and sisters, we are that new creation.  The wilderness has surrounded the Lord’s garden.  Earthly empires and kings have tried to steal its fruit, they’ve tried to stamp it out and burn it down, but King Jesus has preserved it.  Because of his preservation, past generations have carried the good news that Jesus is Lord from Jerusalem to Samaria and to all the world.  Because King Jesus has preserved it we know and believe that good news here in Canada, half a world away from that mount from which Jesus ascended to his throne two thousand years ago.  Because King Jesus continues to preserve his new creation, we can have confidence to go out in faith, to charge into the darkness with the light of Christ, knowing that no matter what happens the kingdom of God is here and now and that nothing will stop it.  As St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, this new creation of which we are a part is protected by the one who has been given all authority and who will reign until every last enemy is put under his feet, even death itself. Our hope as Christians is in that day.  Death is the last enemy to separate earth and heaven and on that day when Jesus finally defeats it, he’ll return from his throne on the clouds as the angels told the disciples.  As the joyful people of Rome went out to join their triumphant Caesar as he marched into the city as the conquering hero, St. Paul says that the people of Jesus will meet him in the air to accompany him as returns to earth the conquering hero—as he comes accompanied by heaven itself and restores earth and heaven. Brothers and Sisters, in the Old Testament the temple was the one place on earth where heaven and earth met and where the Lord could be known.  When Jesus came he became the temple for us.  The amazing thing is that Jesus didn’t leave it at that.  He sent his Holy Spirit to fill and indwell us.  We, his Church, are now the temple.  We are now the place where heaven and earth connect and where the Lord is made known.  And that’s our mission.  Carved on our lychgate are those familiar words: “Jesus is Lord”.  We pass beneath them as we come to the church to meet and to worship, but have you ever thought about what they really mean?  The next time you walk under those words remember the Ascension.  Remember that Jesus is seated on his throne, that his kingdom is here and now, and that he has made us his people.  We are his army, but not an army like those of Rome sent out to conquer barbarians with the sword.  Jesus calls us to charge into the darkness bearing his light, to suffer and even to die for the sake of the lost as we seek to make known his love, his peace, his justice, his mercy, and especially his grace. Let us pray: Gracious Father, in his Ascension you have raised Jesus to the place of kingship and authority.  Let us never forget the significance of his rule.  As we face the darkness, give us courage to shine his light brightly and to proclaim that he is Lord.  Increase our understanding of your love and grace that we might manifest it to hostile world around us.  And remind us, Father, to live in the hope of his sure return when all of his enemies have been subjected to his rule.  In the meantime, as we wait for the restoration of heaven and earth, let us be faithful representative of your kingdom, making heaven visible and known to all around us.  We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Lord.  Amen.

Welcome to Day 1586 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomPartakers of the Divine Nature – Worldview WednesdayWelcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps; thanks for coming along on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Today is Day 1586 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today's current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, we will continue reviewing the book from Dr. Michael S Heiser titled “Supernatural.” The book is an abbreviated version of his more comprehensive book, “The Unseen Realm.” I highly recommend both of these books. Creating a Biblical Worldview based on how the Old and New Testaments connect with God's overall plan for humanity is essential. This book review will help us understand what the Bible teaches about the unseen world, and why it matters. Partakers of the Divine Nature Do you know who you are? I asked the question earlier, but it's time to raise it again. Yes, we are in the world but not of it. True, we have been saved by grace through faith in what Jesus did on the cross (Ephesians 2:8–9). But that's just the beginning of understanding what God has been up to. God's original intention in Eden was to merge his human family with his divine family, the heavenly sons of God who were here before creation (Job 38:7–8). He didn't abandon that plan at the fall. Christian, you will be made divine, like one of God's elohim children, like Jesus himself (1 John 3:1–3). Theologians refer to the idea by many labels. The most common is glorification. Peter referred to it as becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+3%3A1&version=NLT (1 John 3:1) puts it this way: See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don't recognize that we are God's children because they don't know him. In this chapter of Supernatural, we'll take a look at how the Bible conveys that message. Sons of God, Seed of AbrahamWhen God turned the nations of the world over to lesser gods at Babel, he did so knowing he would start over with a new human family of his own. God called Abraham (Genesis 12:1–8) right after Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). Through Abraham and his wife Sarah, God would return to his original Edenic plan. God's people, the children of Abraham, the Israelites, ultimately failed to restore God's good rule on earth. But one of those children would succeed. God would become human in Jesus, a descendant of David, Abraham, and Adam. It was through Jesus that God's promise to one day bless the nations he had punished at Babel was fulfilled. Paul wrote about that in several places. Here are two. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+3%3A3%E2%80%936&version=NLT (Ephesians 3:3–6): As I briefly wrote earlier, God himself revealed his mysterious plan to me. As you read what I have written, you will understand my insight into this plan regarding Christ. God did not reveal it to previous generations, but now by his Spirit, he has revealed it to his holy apostles and prophets. And this is God's plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God's children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+3%3A26%E2%80%9329&version=NLT (Galatians 3:26–29) For you are all children of God through...

Through Abraham’s obedience, God’s plan of redemption begins to take shape. Steena mentions the song "Where is the Lamb" by Wendy Francisco. You can find it at this link: https://cutt.ly/the_lamb

The Face of Moses Exodus 34:1-35 by William Klock This morning we’ll be looking at Exodus 34.  This is the third chapter covering the golden calf incident.  In Chapter 32 we read about the Israelites, who fearing Moses was dead, made a golden calf—basically a throne for the Lord—in an attempt to bring him down the mountain and into their midst.  The Lord announced he was going to destroy the people.  This was their covenantal honeymoon and they were already breaking their end of the covenant.  But Moses stepped in—taking up his role as mediator—and pleaded on behalf of the people.  Remember, Moses appealed to the Lord on the basis of his covenant—his promises—to Abraham.  The Lord relented.  He would not destroy the people, but the covenant with Israel was off.  The people had broken it.  He would fulfil his promise to give them the promised land, but he would not go with them.  He would send an angel to guide them.  Instead, he would start over with Moses alone and would fulfil his promises to Abraham through him. Moses went down the mountain to deal with the people.  The Levites struck down three thousand—presumably the ringleaders who instigated the idolatry.  And Moses pitched a tent, away from the camp, and there he met with the Lord and continued to plead Israel’s case.  More than anything, Moses wanted to understand the ways of the Lord, and so as we ended our look at Exodus 33 last week, we read that the Lord told Moses that he would give him a glimpse of his glory.  To glimpse the Lord’s glory, the God who will show mercy to whom he will show mercy and will be gracious to whom he will be gracious—somehow to see his glory is to understand—or at least to begin to understand—his ways.  This is an answer to Moses’ request, but what does it mean for Israel.  This is where we pick up in Chapter 34. The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.  Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.  No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.”  So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone.  The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.  The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”  And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.  And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”   Does all this sound familiar?  It should, because all of this—apart from the instructions for Moses to cut two stone tablets—all this repeats what the Lord had said to Moses back in Chapters 19 and 20 before he called him up the mountain the first time.  Moses is to climb the mountain in the morning.  The people are stay back—even the livestock—while Moses ascends and the clouds descend.  There’s a reason the Lord repeats everything from the first time Moses went up: he’s chosen to renew the covenant with Israel.  And so the Lord, as he did in the beginning, declares his name.  Moses had asked to know the ways of the Lord and here the Lord answers that request.  He passes in front of Moses, he declares his name and his character.  The Lord is full of mercy and compassion, he is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  He will punish the guilty, but he will forgive the sins of those who are repentant, as Israel has shown herself to be.  The Lord reveals his glory.  The Lord is prepared to start afresh with his repentant people.  I think it’s worth noting that Jewish tradition refers to these verses at the “Thirteen Attributes of God” and they’re recalled in the synagogue liturgy on holy days when the Torah scrolls are brought before the people to read.  The rabbis saw here the birth of the people of God and understood God’s own character to be foundational to the covenant.  Recalling his attributes not only reminded the people of who the Lord is, but also sets the pattern for the way they pray and petition him.[1] Moses, it seems though, has his doubts.  The Lord declares his mercy and forgiveness, but Moses responds by pleading again on behalf of the people.  I say it seems he has his doubts, because Moses addresses the Lord not as the Lord—not using the name Yahweh, that the Lord just used of himself—but by addressing him as ’adonay, using the common Hebrew word for “Lord”.  Moses uses this word ’adonay four times in this way in Exodus and each time it’s when Moses is expressing his doubts to the Lord.  But the Lord doesn’t reprimand Moses.  He is patient and full of grace and mercy.  No, the Lord goes on to explicitly renew the covenant with Israel.  We read the covenantal preamble in verse 10.  Notice how the Lord is promising to do again what he did when he led the people out of Egypt. And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant.  Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation.  And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.   The Lord will start over with Israel.  Again, this people will be birthed through marvels so that the surrounding nations will see that Israel is the work of the Lord—his people, brought forth by him, given the land by him, and in whose midst he dwells.  Think back to his promises—the covenant—with Abraham.  The story that immediately precedes Abraham’s introduction in Genesis is the story of the tower of Babel.  The key point to that story is to highlight that humanity had lost all knowledge of our Creator.  And then the Lord calls Abraham out of the pagan morass, makes himself known, and announces that through Abraham and his family he will make himself known to the world.  Through Abraham’s family, the Lord will begin his project to set the world to rights.  Israel is that family and Lord again promises that he will be present with this people and work amongst and through them in ways that the nations will have no choice but to take notice. But, remember, there are two ends to every covenant.  The promise, “I will be your God and you will be my people” commits the Lord to Israel and Israel to the Lord.  And so the Lord reiterates again the terms of the covenant in the verses that follow.  These are Israel’s obligations and he starts in verse 11 with the words, “Observe what I command you this day.”  And the Lord promises, “I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”  In other words, the Lord will set apart this land of Canaan for the holy use of a holy people and he will do that by driving out its current inhabitants.  For Israel’s part, she must ensure the purity of the land.  He goes on, and I’ll summarise, that they are not to make any covenants with these people—because a covenant was serious business and would put Israel in conflict with her covenant to the Lord.  As he says in verse 12, “lest it become a snare in your midst”. The Lord puts emphasis on the need for Israel to remove the pagan altars and idols from the land.  He will remove the people, but they must remove every last remnant of the worship of their pagan gods.  After the incident with the golden calf, Israel needed to hear this.  The Lord warns that if paganism is not purged from the land, the Israelites will be tempted, as he puts it using the covenantal imagery of marriage, to “whore after other gods”.  He also stresses here that they are not to intermarry with the people of the land for the same reason.  If you marry your son to one of their daughters, she will cause him to whore after those pagan gods.  And, sad to say, this is precisely what will happen.  But in verse 17, the Lord sort of sums all this up and stresses: “You shall not make for yourself gods of cast metal.” In verses 18 through 20 the Lord commands them again to keep the Passover—the Feast of Unleavened bread.  This was the sacramental meal of the Old Testament in which the Lord’s people, in each generation, recalled and participated themselves in the redeeming events of the Exodus, those events through which he’d made Israel his people.  And as the Lord reminds them of their redemption from slavery, he also reminds them of what became known as the law of the firstborn.  Every firstborn son—whether of human beings or of the livestock—belonged to the Lord and was to redeemed.  It was a reminder of that night when the Lord’s angel passed through the land of Egypt, taking the lives of all the firstborn, but sparing the sons of the Israelites who had painted the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their doorposts.  Israel belonged to the Lord.  I will be your God and you will be my people. In verses 21 through 24 the Lord commands again that they observe the Sabbath and three great seasonal feasts.  Why?  Because, he says, “I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders”.  The Lord stresses all of this again, because the Israelites, when they made the golden calf, had declared a new “feast of the Lord” that the Lord had never commanded.  Again, it can’t be stressed enough, that the Lord’s people can only come to him on his terms—never on their (or our) own. To us it may seem repetitive and tedious to read all of this again, but it’s all here to emphasise that what the Lord is doing is renewing the covenant.  Israel has sinned—and there’s a bit of the Lord rubbing Israel’s nose in the specifics of that sin here—but he is longsuffering, gracious, and merciful.  In light of Moses’ intercession on behalf of a repentant people, the Lord will take them back.  He will be their god after all. I think we also get a sense of the nature of the Lord’s forgiveness in the way the surrounding narrative is structured.  The last half of Chapter 31 is the Lord’s command for Israel to keep the Sabbath.  He then gives Moses the tablets with the law written on them.  Chapter 35 picks right up from there with Moses himself instructing the people how to keep the Sabbath.  If Chapters 32-34 were missing, we’d have no hint that nothing had gone wrong.  The Psalmist’s commentary in Psalm 103 on the Lord’s revelation to Moses of his mercy and grace, which I noted last week, continues: He does not deal with us according to our sins,          nor repay us according to our iniquities… as far as the east is from the west,          so far does he remove our transgressions from us.  (Psalm 103:10, 12) And so the Lord commands Moses to record all of this, to write it down that the people not forget either the covenantal commitment they have made to the Lord or the gracious and merciful commitment he has made to them despite their sin.  Verses 27-28: And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”  So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights.  He neither ate bread nor drank water.  And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.   Moses stays on the mountain for forty days and nights.  He doesn’t eat or drink.  The narrator highlights the way in which, on the mountain and in the presence of the Lord, Moses has been taken into an experience beyond the ordinary.  It foreshadows and explains what comes next.  And the Lord inscribes the law, once again, on stone for the sake of his people. Now look at verse 29 and following: When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.  Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.  But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them.  Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai.  And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.   Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him.  (Exodus 34:29-35) Moses returns to the camp and is surprised to find the people afraid to come near.  It would be interesting to know how that scene went in detail.  I assume Moses must have asked what was wrong and a cowering Aaron, perhaps, explained that they couldn’t bear to look at his shining face.  Whatever the case, Moses carries with him not only the Lord’s law, but his glory, shining as a sort of afterglow of having been in his presence.  This, too, is a reminder to the Israelites of the danger there is in being in the presence of the Lord.  In making the calf, they tried to summon the Lord into their midst and they can’t even bear to look at the divine afterglow of Moses’ face.  It was a mercy that the Lord did not come to them as they wanted.  We also see that all those rules and regulations they’ve been given to follow not only to come before him at the tabernacle, but even to be the people in whose midst he lives, all of that is a mercy, too—given not to burden, but to protect them. If we look at a passage like Habakkuk 3:4, the sense of this word indicating that Moses’ face shone is “rays of light”.  It’s also used there in parallel with a word meaning “brilliant light”.  So there’s this radiance shining from Moses face.  It marks out Moses as both the Lord’s prophet and as the Lord’s mediator for the people.  Think back to how this incident began with the people despising Moses, because they assumed he had somehow failed in his role as mediator.  This time he comes down the mountain marked out by the Lord.  Instead of being mocked, the people fear him. There’s also a play on words going on.  The word for this radiance shining from Moses face is related to and sounds like the Hebrew word for horn.  The Latin Vulgate Bible, in fact, translated the word as “horns”, which is why you sometimes see Moses portrayed in medieval art with horns projecting from his forehead.  But this wordplay ties in with the gold calf.  The people had tried to make a mediator for themselves, but in imparting this radiance to Moses, the Lord has marked him out as the real and legitimate mediator.  And, even though the Lord’s cloud of glory will descend into the tabernacle after it’s built and will dwell in the midst of the people, Moses right here becomes a sign of the return of the Lord’s presence to Israel.  God is with them through the presence and prophetic and mediatorial office of Moses.  In a sense, Moses has become the embodiment of the tabernacle, even as he veils his face to protect the people from the radiance of the Lord’s glory. Now, let’s talk about that.  In the first week of our look at this part of Exodus we looked at the covenantal nature of Israel’s relationship with the Lord. Then last week we asked that important question, “Does God change his mind?”  And I said that this week we’d look at Moses’ role as a mediator—something we’ve seen through all three of these chapter. But first, we need to understand the problem in these chapters.  It’s easy for us to see the problem as the Lord.  What a lot of people latch onto here is the Lord’s anger and his announcement that he will destroy the people.  We read the story selectively and start thinking of God as if he’s arbitrary or petty or loses his temper.  We forget or ignore the context.  Brothers and Sisters, Exodus is a story of recreation.  The calling of Moses and Israel are told so that they mirror the creation story itself.  Israel is even brought into being as a people through the parting of the sea.  Everything highlights their uniqueness, their specialness as a people.  If the first thirty-one chapters of Exodus connect Israel’s deliverance with creation, their sin here represents the “fall” of God’s people—it mirrors the sin of Adam and Even in the garden. I think this helps us understand the Lord’s angry response.  Yes, he is holy and they have sinned, but more specifically, the Lord has poured himself into these people.  He has manifested his power to Pharaoh and to them.  He’s literally brought heaven to earth in the giving of the tabernacle and the law.  And in response they have rejected him.  So what we have to explain isn’t the Lord’s anger; it’s why the Lord turns from his anger at Moses’ intercession for the people. We were told in 32:30 that Moses approached the Lord to make atonement for the people.  This was to be the purpose of the tabernacle—the place where sacrifices were made for atonement—but even before it’s been built, Moses steps in as both high priest and as tabernacle to make atonement for the sins of the people.  Do you remember how he did that?  He pleaded with the Lord: “Blot me out of your book”.  Kill me instead.  Right here we see where the sacrificial system and the whole of the old covenant is leading as Moses offers to take the Lord’s anger himself that that the people be spared.  One death can bring life to the many. Just as the Lord is preparing to establish a system of sacrifices for sin involving animals, in this selfless act of Moses, we get the first hint of what’s truly needed for atonement for sin—not the sacrifice of animals, but of a person.  As one commentator puts it very well, “At the very inception of the sacrificial system, it is a glimpse into the heart of the heavenly reality to which the earthly sacrificial system points.”[2]  In the New Testament we see Jesus fulfil that system, but here the people of God are prepared for that, more than a thousand years before it happened.  Moses shows us that the specific manner in which the old covenant sacrifices would be fulfilled will be through a personal sacrifice. And yet the Lord rejects Moses offer.  Why?  Well, he says to Moses that only the guilty can be punished.  Moses isn’t the one who sinned.  Guilt can’t simply be transferred from one person to another.  And we read that and think, “But…but…that’s just what Jesus did.  He took on himself the guilt of his people.”  But, you see, this underlines the difference between Moses and Jesus—a difference that the animals sacrifices also pointed to.  Moses was not a suitable sacrifice.  To be a substitute for sins, one has to be—like the animals offered on the altar in the tabernacle—without blemish.  Moses was the mediator between the Lord and his people, but he was not perfect.  He could not bear the guilt of another.  You see, Jesus was worthy to bear his people’s sin, precisely because he was himself sinless—and we find this truth all the way back here in Exodus. Brothers and Sisters, it’s increasingly common for Christians to write off the Old Testament as irrelevant.  We talk as if it was God’s “Plan A” and he gave it up and went with Jesus instead.  That’s simply not true and we see it right here.  The Lord rejected Moses as a substitute for the sins of the people.  He couldn’t meet the criteria.  This is the mystery of the cross.  Jesus was guilty.  The sins of his people were removed and taken up by him.  How?  Because he was worthy to bear those sins and to offer himself as a sacrifice, because he was himself without guilt.  Friends, there is no grasping this, no understanding this, no making sense of this without the Old Testament.  The story of the Lord and Israel is not only what leads us to the cross, but is also what makes sense of the cross.  It is also in light of Moses’ bearing a fading glory of God that, I think, we gain a true appreciation for Jesus when we read, for example, in Hebrew 1:3 that Jesus himself “is the radiance of the glory of God”.  Jesus embodies perfectly that which faded from the face of Moses.   “In him,” as St. John writes, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”  Why?  That he might “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” Let’s pray: Father, in our collect today we acknowledge your bountiful goodness, which we’ve seen again as we read about your renewal of the covenant with Israel, but which you also revealed to Moses—your goodness passed by as he hid in a cleft of the rock—leaving his face radiant with your glory.  Considering that Jesus is the fullness of your radiant glory and that we are united with him, cause us to radiate your glory into this dark world as we bear the fruit of your Spirit, as we proclaim the good news about Jesus, as we lift the veil lift the veil on your new creation.  Through him we pray.  Amen. [1] Rosh Hashanah 17b [2] Peter Enns, The NIV Application Commentary: Exodus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), page 590.

Paul shifts from defending his faith to defining the Christian faith in a broad, yet personal way. Paul shows us how we all can have a relationship with God, by highlighting the very first man to enter into an authentic and personal relationship with God: Abraham. Through Abraham's story, we learn that God has always connected with people by faith. When we trust in Him and His promises, we breathe in brand new life to our souls. Shame, bondage and separation can be replaced with forgiveness, freedom and family. There's no greater relationship we can forge. There's no greater favor that we can know.

You often hear people talking about how God's blessing flows on their lives. But sometimes, we can take a narrow view of what God's really up to.   A Deep Truth of the Bible It's great to be with you again today and this is the second message in a series that I have called "Blessed to be a Blessing". The society in which we live tells us it's all about "you"; it's all about "me". I buy the newspaper reasonably frequently and the one that I buy on Friday, once a month, has a glossy magazine inside it called, "Wish". It's full of expensive watches and expensive holidays and expensive dining experiences and coffee and real estate and it's so glossy; it's so seductive. Sociologists talk of the phenomenon of "cocooning"; of wrapping ourselves in comfort. For so many people in the West, that's what they are trying to do. To somehow ignore everything else that's going on; to hide from all the problems in the world and imagine somehow, that we can be satisfied in the cocoon of luxury. There's an airline that for a long time, had an advertising campaign for it's business class and the by-line of the advertising campaign was, “It's all about you”. And that's it isn't it? To cocoon ourselves in these luxury things and experiences and ignore the pain and the starvation and the sickness that's going on in the rest of the world. There are billions of people in poverty today. There are billions of people who don't have enough food and some of those people are listening today. I had feed-back recently from a listener in a Liberian refugee camp, in Sierra Leone and there, life is purely about survival – food, water, avoiding disease, keeping away from war. And when I am talking about God's blessing, the one thing that I'm conscience of is the need to speak into both ends of that spectrum. A man who I really admire, who taught me a lot, a man called Barry Chant, was a great influence on me. He's a lecturer at the Bible College I attended, and I have a great respect for this man. One of the ministry classes we were in, there were a small number of students and we were having a discussion and we were talking about the tendency in some parts of the church to preach what some people call a "prosperity doctrine" – to believe God for a bigger car and a bigger house. Now Barry has been ministering around the world for over fifty years and when we came to this, his face became very serious and he said this: If you are going to preach on God's blessing and God's prosperity, then what you say has to apply to the poor and to the rich. It has to work in the West and in the developing world and if it doesn't, it's not God's truth. You see, God doesn't have favourites. Sure, God plants us in different places, in different circumstances but if we are going to talk about God's blessing in this series "Blessed to be a Blessing", I am really conscience of the fact that what we say, what we uncover in God's Word, has to apply to everybody. Now, that's always really stuck with me and what I want is never to open my mouth and speak unless I'm speaking God‘s truth. Today we are going to look at two deep truths of the Bible – God's Word, God's very heart. We are going to talk about God's blessing and particularly look at the story of Abraham. One of the things that strikes me about the Bible is that when God blesses people He expects them to take that blessing and bless other people. And that's the first deep truth. It's this: a blessing is only really a blessing if it flows in and out. Let me say that again: a blessing is only really a blessing when it not only flows into us from God, but it also flows out again. That's the first truth. And the second is this: the birth of a blessing in our lives can often be very uncomfortable and painful, and so we often miss exactly what God is up to and what's going on. I wanted to put those two truths right up front because that's what we are going to be talking about today. I believe that God is a God of outrageous blessing but so often we don't understand how He blesses and what He expects. We need good teaching on God's blessing – Biblical, profound, truth. God's blessing is God's favour. It's when He intervenes in our lives for the good – it can be Spiritual, it can be emotional, it can be physical healing, it can be in relationships and even material. I weep when people reduce the blessing of God just down to the next big, expensive car that they want to buy. I know some people will get upset with me saying that but it's a matter of priority. God is a God of blessing but we are blessed in order to be a blessing. A blessing has to flow into us from God and out from us to others, otherwise it's not a blessing at all. Let's have a look at the story of Abraham and we clearly see how God works. We are going to Genesis, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. If you have a Bible, grab it: "The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation,” – listen to this – “and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and in you all the peoples on the earth will be blessed." So Abram left as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran and set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh, at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land and the Lord appeared there to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So Abram built an alter there, to the Lord who appeared to him. From there he went toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. See, there are a few aspects to this story. Firstly, God said, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household. Leave everything you're comfortable with and step out. And if you do that, I will bless you. I promise, I will make you a great nation. All the peoples on the earth will be blessed." The point of the blessing was not just that Abram would be blessed but that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed, through him. That's huge! Ultimately Israel was blessed in that they received the Promised Land and you and I were blessed in that Jesus Christ was physically a descendant of Abram. Now this required a lot of obedience. This man was seventy five years old. Most of us are heavily into retirement aged seventy five – not that I know, I'm not quite there yet – but it was no obstacle to him. Abram was quite wealthy yet he set out into the unknown; he set out into God's blessing and to be a blessing. I always admire this man because he had no Bible; it wasn't written then. I don't know how God talked to him, but somehow God did and Abram believed Him and he set out. He left his father's house, his comfort, his people, recognition, his own country, his home on a promise from God. "Step out of your comfort zone, Abram, follow me to this land that I will show you." He didn't even know where he was going, there were no planes, trains or automobiles or air conditioned business class. This was God's promise: "I will bless you so that you will become a blessing to all the nations." Aged seventy five, he went on an uncertain journey on God's promise. So what happens next?   Stepping out into the Blessing Okay, today we are talking about God's blessing and the two deep truths: firstly that a blessing has to flow. A blessing isn't a blessing unless it flows into us from God and out from us to other people. And secondly, when God starts to birth a blessing in our lives, it's not always comfortable and it's not always convenient and it doesn't always feel like a blessing. God's promise to Abram was a huge blessing. Remember, Abram was seventy five years old; the greatest sadness of this man's life was that he had no children. To the Hebrews, the two great signs of God's blessing were lots of kids and lots of land. If you had those you were blessed, if you didn't you weren't. God not only called Abram out of his comfort zone but He promised him those two blessings. Firstly in Genesis, chapter 13 verse 14, it says this: The Lord said to Abram after Lot had departed from him, “Lift up you eyes from where you are and look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if anyone could count the dust then your offspring could be counted. Go; walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you." And again in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 4: Then the word of the Lord came to him. “This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them,” then God said to Abram, “so shall your offspring be." The guy is seventy five; his wife Sarai is about the same age. These are huge, impossible promises: the land that God is promising him is inhabited by the Canaanites; they've been childless for all these years, and yet God calls Abram and Sarai out of their comfort zone into the absolutely impossible – He sends them on a long journey. When you read the story out of the next few chapters of Genesis (and I encourage you to do that) the two things that leap out are these: firstly it was an interminable journey – twenty five years! It went on and on and on and on. We are talking "God" and "blessing" and we think an hour, a day, a week at the most. Twenty five years! What was God thinking? Not even twenty five years in the comfort of their own home, but twenty five years of rough and rugged time on the road in tents, with all their animals and possessions and servants travelling with them. Imagine the organisation and the difficulties and the discomforts all for some vague, impossible promise of blessing. And the second thing that leaps out at you as you read the story of Abram and Sarai are their imperfections. They didn't do this perfectly, they made lots of mistakes. Abram took Lot with him. God didn't ask him to take Lot with him. They had to separate and Abram had to give land away and then he had to rescue Lot from captivity, putting God's plan in risk again. And they doubted God over and over again. And then Abram and Sarai think, ‘Well, God's not showing up so maybe we'll give Him a hand.' So Abram sleeps with a woman, a servant, Hagar and has Ishmael. They laughed at God's promises. They said, “God, do you understand how old we are?” Twice Abraham lies about Sarah; says she is his sister not his wife and she ends up in some king's harem. Abraham was not some super Christian, you know, who did everything perfectly – just a simple, ordinary human being with an extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God. After twenty five years God gave them a son and God told them to call this son Isaac, which means "he laughs". You see God had the last laugh, "he who laughs last, laughs best". And they were blessed to be a blessing. They were called out of their comfort zone into God's promises – so called "blessings" – in order to be a blessing to all the nations. But all they saw for the first twenty five years was heartbreak and trial after trial on an interminable journey. You see how easy it is to make a mistake when God is birthing a blessing, to mistake that birth of a blessing for a curse? We go to God and ask Him to bless us and – listen to me, here's a deep truth – often it gets a whole bunch worse before it gets better. In a relationship, if you pray for your husband or your wife or your children: "God bless them, improve our relationship, deal with that thing in them that I can't deal with." The most likely thing that is going to start happening is that it will get worse. They're going to start acting up and then we give up. When they start acting up, when it gets worst … praise God! When things take a turn for the worst after we've prayed for a blessing in that area, thank God, because God is up to something good. That's His way. The birth of a blessing often is a difficult birth because that's how we learn and grow and walk in faith. It's a deep truth that the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we often miss out on exactly what God is up to and what's going on. When someone taught me that, when I finally learnt that, it made a huge difference to my life. We need to stop putting our trust in circumstances we can see and put our trust in the God we can't see. When God starts something He will finish it! Even though we bumble through it imperfectly, like Abraham and Sarah, even though we lose heart sometimes, even though we even laugh at God and say, "Look God, this is impossible", God wants us to learn this lesson today. It's one of the things that He will use mightily and powerfully over the rest of our lives. God's blessings so often involve change in people and in circumstances and in attitudes and when they start breaking forth, it feels risky and uncomfortable and uncertain and sometimes it even feel worse. When you are in that situation, I pray that the Holy Spirit will bring this back to you. God is a God of blessing and we will sometimes suffer incredibly as His blessings come to pass. It seems to be so often His way.   Believing the Promise God is a God of blessing and I truly believe that He wants to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Abraham was the case in point. Right from the beginning, God promised that Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. At that time he had no idea what that meant. He spent twenty five years wandering after that promise. Finally, finally a miracle – a son, Isaac. But what about this other huge promise, that through Abraham God would bring blessing to every nation on earth? Well, let's roll forward a little bit now, to the New Testament, about fifteen hundred years on and the writer of the Book of Hebrews says this – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it at chapter 11 and verse 8: By faith, Abraham, when called to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he didn't know where he was going. By faith he made his home in this land, like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were his heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, who's architect and builder, was God. Isn't that beautiful? By faith, Abraham, even though he was past the age and Sarah, herself who was barren, was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made that promise. And so, from this one man and he was as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the sea shore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to return, instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for He has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God said to him, “It will be through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead and, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. See, this is a beautiful story! Abraham stepped out, he wandered for twenty five years, he finally had a son but he never saw the promises of blessings to all the nations. See what it says in Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” Now we are going to go back to those two profound truths of God's blessing that I talked about at the beginning of the program. The first is this deep truth: a blessing is only a blessing if it flows in and out. That's the first one. And the second is: the birth of a blessing can often be uncomfortable and painful and so we can miss exacting what God's up to and what's going on. Now the story of Abraham brings these two truths together. It was uncomfortable for twenty five years, but even more so, he never saw the major promise come to fruition. The promise from the beginning to Abraham was this: ‘I will make you into a great nation' He never saw that. It didn't happen until after he died. And again, ‘All the peoples will be blessed through you'. He never saw that. Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. He suffered for that blessing but never fully saw its fruition. Through Abraham, Israel received the Promised Land and through Abraham you and I receive Jesus Christ because Jesus was descended, physically, from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on. Jesus is the greatest blessing of God to all humanity and Abraham had no idea. He had to suffer those twenty five years so he could be part of that blessing but he never saw the end of it. God blessed him in order that God's blessing could flow through him, down to the centuries, to you and me, here and now. And that is utterly amazing. Do you see how limiting it is when we want God just to bless us, and somehow we imagine that blessing stops with us? It's not God's plan. God's blessing is only really a blessing when it flows down to us from Him and out from us to everybody else. He wants us to be the place where His flood tide of blessing brings life to the rest of the world. Look what Jesus said about exactly that: John chapter 7 verse 37: On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice (notice: He said this in a loud voice so everyone would hear) “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. See, there's an "in" and an "out". Are you looking for something? Are you parched and needy and dry? Come to Jesus and drink; put your faith in Him. And whoever believes in Him, rivers of living water will flow out of them. It's one of the greatest passages in the Bible. It's powerful. It's the crux of being a disciple. We are blessed to be a blessing! Rivers – Nile and Ganges and Murray and Mississippi and Amazon – rivers! Again Jesus said: Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure that you use, it would be measured to you. God blesses us so that we can be a blessing. Whether we are Abraham or just some little person living in this century – we are blessed to be a blessing! It is a double sided transaction. When we limit God's blessing to just flowing in, that's a very, very sad thing. You and I are blessed to be a blessing.

It may appear that Abraham is a mere example of someone who once trusted God and somehow illustrates how we are to trust God.  But a closer look reveals that Abraham is more than an example.  Through Abraham, God moves his plan of salvation toward Christ, reveals the gospel of justification by grace and faith, raises up a people from Jews and Gentiles for his glory, and gives his church a mission on earth that extends to all the nations.  Christians are connected to Abraham, for he is the father of all who believe.

Every Square Inch Acts 1:1-11 & St. Luke 24:49-53 by William Klock Now, more than ever, we need to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.  Some of us are really good at remembering that and we’re hanging onto it as tight as we can these days.  Others of us, not so much.  I wonder how many of you looked up as you walked under the lychgate as you arrived this morning?  How many of you saw those words carved over the entrance?  Those words that say, “Jesus is Lord”? There are a number of ways that churches remind us of what it means to be a Christian and of our union with Jesus.  The church Veronica and I attended when we lived over in Vancouver was entered through the baptistery.  You couldn’t get into the church without having to walk in a semi-circle around the enormous font inside the church doors.  The water in the font carries God’s promise of redemption and new life.  At some point we each passed through those waters in faith to become part of the people of God.  And the font, there at the entrance to the church, was a reminder every time we passed by it of God’s covenant promise and of God’s covenant faithfulness.  Here, every time we walk through the lychgate, we’re reminded of the gospel itself.  Here we’re reminded of whom we come to worship and why he’s worthy.  Jesus is Lord.  Brothers and Sisters, that’s the heart of the gospel. And that’s why we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus.  Year in and year out, during the first half of the calendar, the Church through scripture and prayer and liturgy leads us through the life of Jesus.  The year begins in Advent as we anticipate his coming.  Then, at Christmas, he arrives in humble majesty.  At Epiphany we see the Jewish Messiah manifested to the Gentiles.  Then, through Lent, we walk with him in his ministry as he makes his way to the Cross.  On Good Friday we recall his death with sombre silence and yet, still with joyful hearts, knowing that through his death comes the forgiveness of sins.  And then that joy rises to its height on Easter as we celebrate the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection from death.  At the Cross, evil rose up to its full height and did its worst, but on Sunday Jesus rose victorious over sin and death.  He broke the chains.  New creation went out from that empty tomb like a shockwave through Creation. But the resurrection of Jesus did—or maybe better it signified—something else that often gets lost in the story.  Jesus is the Messiah.  That’s what “Christ” means.  It’s not Jesus’ last name.  It’s the Greek word for Messiah.  And the Messiah was the long-hoped for and long-awaited king of Israel.  Not just a king, but the king—the one who would lead the people in a new exodus, the one who would fix Israel’s heart problem, the one who would set this messed up world to rights.  Of course, we read in the Gospels and then in Paul, a lot of the Jews had the Messiah all wrong.  They’d misunderstood the plan that God had for the world and their place in it.  They were like the postman given a letter and then keeping it for himself.  And so they rejected Jesus.  More specifically, they rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  “We have no king but Caesar!” they shouted.  “Crucify Jesus!” they cried.  And so the resurrection of Jesus was more than just a happy ending to the story.  The resurrection was God’s vindication of his Son.  The world said, “He’s not the Messiah” and they killed him.  But God overturned their verdict and turned their violent act of hate and rebellion into an act of redemption through which he revealed his King. And so, for forty days, the risen Jesus walked and talked with his disciples.  Luke says that he explained the Scriptures to them so that they would understand the story, his place in it, and theirs too.  And he says that this risen Jesus was glorious.  He was the same and different at the same time.  It took a while for his friends to recognise him.  But he was as human as ever.  He sat on the beach and ate fish with them.  I can imagine Jesus juggling the hot fish from one hand to another and gingerly biting into it lest he burn himself.  He was as human as ever, but he was more.  Appearing in a locked and sealed room and then disappearing just as quickly.  The resurrected Jesus was as at home on earth as he was in heaven and at home in heaven as much as one earth.  And that’s what we see today as we remember and celebrate his ascension. In our Epistle we read those first eleven verses of the book of Acts and then in the Gospel we read the last verses from St. Luke.  Luke says that forty days after the resurrection, Jesus led his disciples out of Jerusalem and up to the Mount of Olives.  He promised them that John the Baptist’s prophecy would soon be fulfilled.  He was going to send his Spirit to baptise them with fire.  They didn’t know what that meant.  In fact, it didn’t even seem very important to them at the time.  They wanted to know about the kingdom!  That’s what the Messiah was about—he was supposed to come and restore the kingdom of Israel.  When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday they were thinking that maybe now he would finally throw off the poor itinerant rabbi disguise and restore the kingdom, throwing out the Romans and taking up David’s throne.  But instead Jesus allowed himself to be arrested, beaten, and killed.  They were despondent.  But then on Sunday he rose from the dead.  Maybe this was finally it.  But through the next forty days Jesus simply taught them the Scriptures.  The disciples were excited to have Jesus back with them.  They were excited about his resurrection, although I don’t think they truly understood what it meant at this point.  And so there on the Mount of Olives they asked again: Jesus, it’s great you’re alive again.  We appreciate all the Bible teaching.  But when are you going to bring the kingdom?  And in response Jesus once again promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower their witness and then told them that it wasn’t their place to know the times and seasons fixed by the Father.  But then Jesus did something amazing: he ascended into the clouds.  There were the disciples staring into the sky, probably with their mouths agape, as Jesus disappeared from their sight.  And they just stood there, staring and staring until the two men, the two angels, broke into their wonder and amazement saying, “Hey, you men of Galilee!  Are you going to stand there forever staring into space?  Jesus went up to heaven and he’s coming back.  Didn’t he give you something important to do in the meantime?” Why were the disciples standing there agape?  You and I would too if we saw our friend ascend into the clouds.  That’s not something that people do.  But for the disciples it was more significant than we might think.  It’s tied to Jesus’ last words and it’s tied to both the Old Testament and the symbolism of imperial Rome.  First, that great messianic passage in Daniel 7:13-14 that gives a dramatic visual of the son of man rising to his heavenly throne to rule: I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven          there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days          and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion          and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages          should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion,          which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one          that shall not be destroyed.   But, as I said, this symbolism was important to the Romans, too.  Julius Caesar took on the trappings of divinity when he became emperor of Rome.  After his death the senate declared him divine.  The later emperors of Rome followed suit.  On their deaths the Senate declared that they had ascended to heaven as gods and they were depicted in imperial imagery ascending into the clouds. That was the imagery that surrounded Jesus at his ascension.  He didn’t have to ascend into the clouds that way.  Heaven isn’t up there somewhere above the clouds.  You can’t get there by travelling up—not even with a spaceship.  Even the Romans understood that heaven was simply the realm of the gods in contrast to the earth, which is the realm of human beings.  And so Jesus didn’t have to fly up into the clouds to leave the realm of human beings for the realm of God.  He simply could have vanished from the disciples’ sight.  But instead he chose to leave in a way that drew on this imagery familiar to both the Jews and the Gentiles.  Everyone knew that Caesar didn’t actually fly up to heaven.  The comet commemorating his divinity on Roman coins was just a symbol.  But Jesus did it for real.  Why?  Because it sent the message that Jesus is the Messiah, confirming the prophecies of Israel’s scriptures, and at the same time declaring that Jesus is Lord.  “Caesar is Lord” was the creed of imperial Rome.  But Caesar was just a pretender.  He brought peace to the world, but it was a temporary peace forged by violence and intimidation.  Jesus, on the other hand, really is Lord.  In contrast to Caesar who conquered his enemies with the sword, Jesus conquered his enemies by humbling himself and dying on a cross.  And in return, God exalted Jesus and seated him at his right hand—in the place of heavenly honour.  Caesar pretends at being Lord, but Jesus really is.  That’s the first take-away from the Ascension story as St. Luke tells it. But the other take-away is the one that upsets much of the popular theology of today, and that’s that the kingdom is here and the kingdom is now.  The kingdom is not coming in the future.  It’s not coming after a rapture of believers.  It’s not coming before or after or in the middle of a Great Tribulation.  And it’s not something we have to go to heaven to experience.  The disciples asked Jesus when the kingdom was coming and Jesus responded by telling them that it was not for them to know.  I suspect he may have said that with a smile, because the next thing we see is Jesus ascending.  Just as the Ascension sends the message loudly and clearly that Jesus is Lord, it also sends the message loudly and clearly that his kingdom is here and now.  They asked him when the kingdom was coming and in response he gave them a dramatic visual that they’d never forget: They saw the King ascend to his throne.  Brothers and Sisters, the Ascension of Jesus tells us very dramatically and unmistakably that the kingdom is here and now.  King’s don’t sit on thrones to rule over nothing.  Why is the Ascension important?  Again, it tells us dramatically and unmistakably that the King is one his throne and that his kingdom has already been inaugurated. All of this is important, but what does it mean that Jesus is reigning and that the kingdom is here and now?  For that we need to look at the big picture.  In the beginning God created the Cosmos to give him glory.  At the centre of it was a garden and in that garden the Lord placed human beings to tend and to keep it.  Everything about the garden points to its being the Lord’s temple.  When the Israelites built the tabernacle, the design was meant to mimic the garden.  It was in the garden that human beings lived in the presence of the Lord.  And later it was in the tabernacle and then the temple that the Lord manifested his presence in the holy of holies.  The temple was the place where heaven and earth met and where the people went to meet with, to worship, and to fellowship with the Lord.  The temple pointed back to the garden.  When humanity sinned, the garden was lost.  Adam and Eve were cast out and an angel placed at the entrance to guard it.  And from there the story of humanity goes from bad to worse.  And yet the Lord never abandoned his Creation.  The creation was meant to give God glory and when it turned on him, instead of destroying it, God chose to manifest his glory by renewing it—by making a new creation.  And as humanity lost all knowledge of the Lord, he called Abraham to himself and through Abraham created a new humanity in the family of Abraham.  Through Abraham, the Lord began the work of restoring the garden.  “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” God promised (Genesis 12:3). And yet think about a garden.  You can’t plant a garden in the wilderness and expect it to flourish on its own.  Enemies and wild animals will raid the garden and steal the fruit.  Without cultivation and protection the wild will quickly overcome the garden.  And so the Lord provided for the protection of his new garden.  He sent Jacob and his family to Egypt, where the king looked on them with favour, provided for them, cared for them, and protected them.  When the king of Egypt became hostile, the Lord himself rescued his new creation—Israel—and led her into the wilderness and to the promised land.  He fed her in the wilderness and he drove out her enemies from the land.  Eventually the Lord gave her a human king to protect his new creation from the wilderness—from the hostile enemies—that surrounded her.  But through it all, it was ultimately the Lord who was King and who protected his people.  Isaiah declared that “the Lord reigns” when Israel was faced with conquest by the Babylonian empire.  The Babylonian king and the Babylonian gods had no power over Israel no matter how bad things got.  In Daniel’s vision ferocious beasts represent the kingdoms of the earth that had conquered and dominated Israel, but in that vision the Lord takes the kingdom away from those monsters and delivers it to the saints and ultimately to the Son of Man—to Jesus.  Even when the Lord uses earthly kings to discipline his people, he continues to care for them.  That’s the purpose of his kingship and his kingdom: the care and cultivation of his new creation. And all this comes to full fruit in Jesus.  He has come as the Son of Man, the representative of Israel.  He has come as the Messiah—the true and eternal king in the line of David.  He has come to bring the Lord’s new creation to full fruit—to suffer for his people and to give them his Holy Spirit that they might truly be the new creation that Israel was supposed to be—that they might be the true sons and daughters of Abraham.  But not only that, he has also come to establish a kingdom over which he will rule himself—a kingdom to protect and to safeguard the new creation—the Lord’s garden as it grows and flourishes and spreads throughout the world.  This is the story of the book of Acts.  We read the beginning this morning: Jesus ascended into the clouds to take his heavenly throne.  Jesus is Lord; Caesar is not.  The rest of Acts is the story of the church, of the new creation, of the kingdom spreading throughout the world.  And Acts ends dramatically with Paul in Rome, in chains, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus right under Caesar’s nose.  Through the suffering, persecution, and martyrdom of the saints, the kingdom of Jesus has triumphed and will continue to triumph.  The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper summed it up well in that famous line of his: “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  Others, like Caesar may make their claims, but the reality is that Jesus is Lord of all. Brothers and Sisters, we are God’s new creation.  The wilderness has surrounded the Lord’s garden.  Earthly empires and kings have tried to steal its fruit, they’ve tried to stamp it out and burn it down, but King Jesus has preserved it.  Because of his preservation, past generations have carried the good news that Jesus is Lord from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and to all the world.  Because King Jesus has preserved it we know and believe that good news here in Canada, half a world away from that mount from which Jesus ascended to his throne two thousand years ago.  Because King Jesus continues to preserve his new creation, we can have confidence to go out in faith, to charge into the darkness with the light of Christ, knowing that no matter what happens the kingdom of God is here and know and that nothing will stop it.  As St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, this new creation of which we are a part is protected by the one who has been given all authority and who will reign until every last enemy is put under his feet, even death itself. Our hope as Christians is in that day.  Death is the last enemy to separate earth and heaven and on that day, when Jesus finally defeats it, he’ll return from his throne on the clouds as the angels told the disciples.  As the joyful people of Rome went out to join their triumphant Caesar as he marched into the city as the conquering hero, St. Paul says that the people of Jesus will meet him in the air to accompany him as returns to earth the conquering hero—as he comes accompanied by heaven itself and restores earth and heaven. Brothers and Sisters, in the Old Testament the temple was the one place on earth where heaven and earth met and where the Lord could be known.  When Jesus came he became the temple for us.  The amazing thing is that Jesus didn’t leave it at that.  He sent his Holy Spirit to fill and indwell us.  We, his Church, are now the temple.  We are now the place where heaven and earth connect and where the Lord is made known.  And that’s our mission.  Carved on our lychgate are those familiar words: “Jesus is Lord”.  We pass beneath them as we come to the church to meet and to worship, but have you ever thought about what they really mean?  The next time you walk under those words remember the Ascension.  Remember that Jesus is seated on his throne, that his kingdom is here and now, and that he has made us his people.  Jesus has restored us to the vocation for which we were created.  He has restored God’s image in us.  He has made us the people in whom heaven and earth meet.  He’s given us the gospel message: the King who died and has risen from the grave is Lord.  And he sends us out like Adam and Eve with that good news, to be fruitful and to multiply—to carry the royal summons to our friends, our families, and eventually to every corner of creation, spreading his kingdom.  We’ve seen the Conqueror mount in triumph and now we go out as his army.  But not an army like those of Rome sent out to conquer barbarians with the sword.  Jesus calls us to charge into the darkness bearing his light, to suffer and even to die for the sake of the lost, as we seek to make known his love, his peace, his justice, his mercy, and especially his grace. Let us pray: Gracious Father, in his Ascension you have raised Jesus to the place of kingship and authority.  Let us never forget the significance of his rule.  As we face the darkness, give us courage to shine his light brightly and to proclaim that he is Lord.  In this time of disease that reminds us of our mortality, remind us that you have given us a promise of life.  Increase our understanding of your love and grace that we might manifest it to the world around us.  And remind us, Father, to live in the hope of his sure return when all of his enemies have been subjected to his rule.  In the meantime, as we wait for the restoration of heaven and earth, let us be faithful representative of your kingdom, making heaven visible and known to all around us.  We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Lord.  Amen.

It is easy to get so invested in this world that we forget that our real home is the one waiting for us in Heaven. Through Abraham’s life, we explore the value of living as a pilgrim in this world while looking toward the next.

Staying on the theme of Amen in Scriptures, Andrew explores the faith of Abraham in Genesis 15:1-6. Through Abraham's example, we understand how this life of nurturing and sustaining faith is crucial if we want to see God's promises established in our lives. Three things that happened in Abraham's life that shifted his focus from fear to faith. We discover what those three things are and how we can live our lives by faith. Not just faith but active faith.Click here for SERMON NOTES

To kick off our 2020 year at Liberte City Pastor Levi Marychurch shares a message titled, "It's Time to Dream"! Levi encourages us to dream and have expectations for this upcoming year by relating our lives to the story of Abraham in Genesis 11 & 12. Through Abraham's journey we can be hopeful that whether we are beginning a journey, seeing a dream reborn, or reaching the promised land, God is with us and will help us along the way!

Matthew 1:1 — Lists of names or genealogies can seem quite obscure, boring, and irrelevant. In his message on Matthew 1:1, however, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says the essence of the Christmas message is found in Matthew’s genealogy. If Christianity was just a teaching or philosophy, Dr. Lloyd-Jones reminds us, then historical events in the Bible would not matter. If Christianity was merely a new outlook on life, then dates would be no concern. Since Christianity is based upon, and concerned with, the person of Christ, we recall that there was a given day when Christ was born. Because we are concerned with a person and not just a teaching, we remember that this event really did happen. Take away the event and you take away Christ. Take away Christ and there is no Christianity. Dr. Lloyd-Jones highlights the names of David and Abraham in the genealogy in order to connect the coming of the Messiah with the Old Testament promises. The essence of the Christmas message can be summarized in the fulfillment of these two promises, says Dr. Lloyd-Jones. In God’s covenant with David, He establishes that it is through His posterity that His universal kingdom will be fulfilled. Through Abraham, God commits Himself to the salvation of the nations. Dr. Lloyd-Jones calls us to reflect upon the Christmas season and find comfort in the fulfillment of the promises of God. Listen as Dr. Lloyd-Jones bring the message of comfort and joy in the fulfillment of Old Testament promises.

Through Abraham and his family, we see God working to pour out blessing on the entire human family. While we continually fall short in our journey of faith, God’s faithfulness toward us remains steadfast. In Genesis 15 we see a picture of how committed God is to bless us, and in Jesus we see the ultimate fulfillment of God’s covenant to bless and redeem mankind. If we put our faith in Jesus, we become members of the family of God and heirs of the promise.

Trusting God isn't always easy, but it is possible. God is always faithful and He always keeps His word. Through Abraham, we see the grace, goodness, and faithfulness of God on display. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/believersfellowshipag/support

MagnificatLuke 1:46-55 Dec 16, 2018 (1713)I. Introduction:A. Dan Bellamy will be here this Wednesday night, for our MV Kids ChristmasParty, from 6:30PM- 8:30PM! There will be hotdogs, chips, cupcakes and thenstoryteller Dan Bellamy sharing the gospel in a unique way that will absolutelyimpact your littles ones and how they see life with Christ. This night is foreveryone, young and old, kids or not, we want you to come out and enjoy thenight!B. As we continue today to look at the Christmas story through the eyes of Mary, theMother of Jesus, we will see her response to the announcement from the AngelGabriel that she will be the mother of the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ,Jesus!1. This section has been called the Magnificat, which comes from the first wordof the first line in the Latin version of the Bible, the vulgate of Mary’sdeclaration of praise. (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum,” or “My soulmagnifies the Lord.”)C. The setting of this praise was that after Gabriel told Mary the news of Jesus’ birththrough her that she went to visit her relative Elizabeth, the old barren womannow six months pregnant with the forerunner of the King, John the Baptist.1. When Mary arrived and the two greeted each other, Elizabeth was filled withthe Holy Spirit, listen to what she said.a) And note as I read that two times she will call Mary blessed.b) Read v42-45 Emphasize blessed in both placesD. And now we come to this morning’s passage, the response of Mary to whatElizabeth said and what the Angel told her, the Magnificat!E. Before I read it, let me tell you a bit about this section of Scripture.1. In this section Mary tells us that she is exalting or magnifying, lifting up thegreatness of God and rejoicing in God who is her Savior!2. It is loaded with OT allusions, which tells us that Mary, even at a young age ,most likely in her teens between 15-17, knew her Bible well, the OldTestament and the promises it had made especially about the coming Kingand Savior, the Messiah!3. Also this Psalm of praise is broken up into three sections:a) What God has done for Maryb) What He does for all who fear him and are humblec) What He has and will do for Israel4. Finally the driving theme of this passage is God’s mercya) Mercy is simply an inward concern for someone in serious need andbringing the outward help that they need.b) We see this idea as the word mercy is used two times and a thirdreference to mercy in the word regard which means to take special noticeof someone with the implication of concerning oneself with the one youare noticing.c) I believe that the thrust of this praise is the fact that God is merciful tothe humble by doing great things for them and merciful to Israe. byremembering His promises to them. Simply God is merciful to thehumble and to Israel!5. Watch for all of this as I Read v46-55• Let’s start by looking at the first section aboutII. God is merciful to the humble by doing great things for themA. Read 48a. God has taken notice of Mary who was not someone of high positionor importance in the community. She was just another one of the young girls, oneof humble state.1. She recognized that from then on every generation would consider her asblessed, just like Elizabeth just did for being the mother of the Lord andbelieving His word!2. Then she states that the Mighty One, the Holy One, has done great things forher, the one who is of a humble state!3. Listen as I read v48b-49 “for….”B. Then Mary continues her praise of God’s mercy by extending beyond just herselfas a person of a humble state and expands it to God’s mercy to everyone who ishumble, those who fear Him. To them also the Mighty One has done mightydeeds!1. Basically she is saying it’s not just me that God is merciful to and does greatthings for everyone who is humble, everyone who fears Him, He does greatthings.2. And here is the good news – that means what we read in the Magnificatincludes you and me who are humble before the Lord and fear Him!3. Watch as I read v50-53 for how God shows His mercy to the humble byexalting them and doing great things for them while he brings down theproud.C. The proud, the powerful and the wealthy she is referring to here are those who donot know God, or in our day we could say they are lost people who do not knowJesus.1. While God is always down on pride, there is a big difference between a lostperson who is so proud they have no need for Jesus and can do it allthemselves versus a believer who may struggle with pride.2. Also the Bible shows us many examples of wealthy and powerful people wholove God are Humble and have had His blessing.D. And we also know many lost people who are proud, have high positions andmany possessions who are not empty handed, and at the same time manyChristians whose lives do not seem so exalted and filled.1. Even the Psalmist was very troubled when he considered the prosperity andease of the wicked while he was being stricken all day long. But all thatchanged when he went into the presence of God and perceived their end!2. I think that Ps 107:8-9 gives us some perspective here.a) The wonders, the mighty deeds God does for the humble are things inthe spirit and soul and in the future. Things that are a part of the unseeninternal world and future world rather than the things we see right now!(1) We need to get our eyes off the two second life here and put themupon the big one!b) God scatters the lost proud and brings them down and sends them awayempty handed regarding the things that really matter, the things thatmoney cannot buy, the things that are eternal, the things of the soul andspirit!c) Makes me think of the picture I saw around Thanksgiving of a homelessman on his knees in the middle of the street thanking God.(1) Listen to what He said when he was asked why a homeless manwith nothing would be thanking God?(2) He replied: “God will never forsake me and though I might nothave much in material things, I have the greatest gift of all –salvation… thanks to Jesus Christ”! He said, “My riches don’tcome from man and money, but from our heavenly Father”!• So we learn in the first two-thirds of this psalm of praise that God is merciful to thehumble by doing great things for them! In the last third of this psalm of praise we seeIII. God is Merciful to Israel by remembering His promises to themA. Watch for this as I read v54-55B. God in His covenant with Abraham promised him many things which they hadbeen looking forward to the fulfilment of these for centuries! God promised Hewould:1. Bless Abraham and his descendants,2. That God would be their God,3. Save them from their enemies,4. Give them a land forever,5. Through Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.C. This is all part of the larger story of redemption we will look at on Christmas Eve,but by the way we are in on these blessings and promises as well because thosepromises were spoken to Abraham and His seed Jesus, and because of ourrelationship with Jesus we are in on all these promises and blessings!IV. So what can we take away from all of this?V. Final ApplicationA. First “God is attracted to and blesses the humble!”1. Listen to what 1 Pet 5:5 saysa) There is a greater experience of God’s grace when a believer is humblebecause we see throughout Scripture that God blesses the humble!2. The Pharisees were a great picture of pride.a) They did deeds to be noticed and admired by men,b) They loved to be seated at the place of honor at banquets and religiousgatherings,c) They loved the respectful greetings they got in the market placed) And loved being called teacher,e) Basically they wanted to be seen by others as impressive, important andsuccessful.3. Listen to what Jesus said to them after confronting them about these things.Read Mt 23:124. Even believers struggle with wanting to be around people who areimpressive, important and successful so we can feel significant and looksignificant to others.5. If this is the case for your own benefit and the blessing of others and theglory of God, you need to confess your sin of pride, seek God to build intoyou a spirit of humility like Mary’s.B. Secondly, do you need mercy today? Prayer is one of the greatest forms ofhumility as we put everything else aside and turn to God to do for us what wecannot do for ourselves – Heb 4:16C. Finally when we consider worship, John Piper says, “The only people whose soulcan truly magnify the Lord are people like Elizabeth and Mary—people whoacknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of themerciful God.

It's a sermon topic often avoided, but one that also provides a valuable insight into the lives and stories of the Bible. Through Abraham and Lot, we can learn about God's promises, trust and justice - and how we must too, take a leap of faith to be close to God. This fourth instalment of the Nothing New? sermon series for 2018 helps to unravel the stories of Genesis, and how they continue to be relevant today. The beginning of the sermon contains a short game guessing the identities of famous individuals based off of their headlines - showing that a headline doesn't fully represent who someone is. The accompanying presentation for this can be downloaded using the links below. Following the sermon, we listened to Hillsong Worship's song Calvary, reflecting upon our own leaps of faith.

In this message, Pastor Shane takes a look at God's promise and call for Abraham. Through Abraham's calling, God shows him the Gospel and tells him that all nations and families will be blessed because of his faith.

Through Abraham, God established a New Nation. Eventually, that nation was led by King David who decided to build a beautiful New Temple for God. Unfortunately, God didn't ask him to do that. It was a nice gesture, but God didn't need a home. This...

Through Abraham we see how God's personal call graciously challenges every aspect of our lives, by giving us entirely new lives with a radical new purpose. God's call to Abraham presents him with the opportunity to find his true self, and to rely on the ultimate security that comes from trusting Him. This sermon was preached by Rev. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 22, 2001. Series "The Gospel According to Abraham". Scripture: Genesis 11:27-12:9