Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Glorious Father, we assemble before You now in the kindness of Jesus Christ our Savior. We praise Your infinite wisdom and knowledge, for You alone were able to bring creatures like us into Your presence. We assemble before You now in the …
Partaking
As we have considered in the course of the message, there is no such thing as a nature/grace dichotomy. Nature is grace, and grace, rooted as it is in the very nature of God, is entirely natural. When we come to this table, we are certainly partaking of Christ. But we are not doing this …
Let Earth Receive Her King
The Lord Jesus was born in 4 B.C., which was the year Herod the Great died. He was the tyrant who had the children slaughtered in the region of Bethlehem because of what he heard from the wise men, and so obviously, Jesus had to have been born before Herod died. Dionysus the Insignificant was …
Santa Claus At Nicea
And here on the last Sunday of Advent, we need to deal with a competing story. But it would probably be more accurate to say that we have to deal with a godly story that has been encrusted with many layers of foolishness. But let us take away those layers, and ask—who was the original …
God Deals With Us
Observing the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis makes it a central event in our lives. As we have said a number of times, God deals with us here, and He deals with us according to His Word, and not according to ours. If we are struggling against His work in us here, the temptation …
Justified Praise
Father of all glory, God of all majesty, Lord of all men, we lift up our praises to You now. We know that we offer back to You only what You have given to us, and this simply causes us to be more grateful. We know that nothing we offer to You can be accepted …
Christmas 2004
INTRODUCTION: On a number of different occasions, we have considered the importance of having our times and seasons defined in relation to Jesus Christ. The only alternative to this is to have them defined in reference to someone or something else, and this is obviously an unacceptable alternative to all faithful Christians. Jesus Christ really …
Foundations of Marriage V
INTRODUCTION: In this season of Advent, we are preparing ourselves for a celebration of the Incarntion of the eternal Logos, in which the eternally begotten Son of God became the son of Mary, and, through her, a genuine son of Adam. We are also considering the impact of this truth on our marriages TEXT: “. …
Surplus Praise
Great God of heaven, we come into Your presence with thanksgiving and praise, and we ask You to receive our joy because we offer it up to You in the joy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are in the Advent season, and we ask You to prepare our hearts with the kind …
History as Wedding Preparation
We have come to the third Lord’s Day of Advent, and so we continue to prepare our hearts. This is not just a religious festival that we Christians observe. In all that we do in the presence of non-believers, we are making cosmic claims, and we believe them to be true. Put another way, the …