Prosper Christian Reformed Church is Rooted in the Reformed faith since 1894, we seek to pass on the gospel, disciple families, and serve our neighbors with Christ’s love. Rooted in Scripture Centered on Christ Engaged in Our Community Rooted in the Reformed faith since 1894, we seek to pass on the gospel, disciple families, and serve our neighbors with Christ’s love. Latest Sermon Cut It Straight Watch Sermon Sunday Morning Service 9:30 AM Get Directions Go Join Us Online 9:30 AM Watch Live Go Events About What We Believe Go History Go Staff & Leadership Go Stay Connected Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and follow us on social media for the latest Prosper CRC updates. Newsletter Sign Up Contact Us

Weddings Prosper CRC is happy to participate in instituting Christian marriages for believers in Jesus Christ. Marriage is a covenant, designed by God, and modeled after Christ and His relationship with His church. It is the lifelong and faithful union of one man and one woman before God. The purpose of a Christian marriage is to glorify God in reflecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world through the marriage relationship. 01. Couples desiring to be married at Prosper must be Christians. (2 Corinthians 6:14) 02. At least one individual must be a member of Prosper CRC. 03. The couple must agree to remain sexually abstinent and live separately until marriage. 04. The couple must participate in pre-marital counseling (3-5 sessions) with a CRC Pastor. To allow time for this, wedding applications should be submitted at least 3 months in advance of the wedding date. 05. If one or both person(s) has been married before, their union must conform to the biblical teaching on divorce and remarriage. Prosper CRC holds to the biblical teachings that remarriage is only permissible following a divorce caused by adultery or abandonment by a nonbeliever (which includes abuse). Requirements We're serious about marriage at Prosper CRC. Therefore, the requirements to be married by the Pastor at Prosper are as follows: Wedding Application Process The first step in the process is to fill out the wedding application. A Prosper CRC staff member will contact you following your application submission. Wedding Application Go

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Christmas Eve Times Come celebrate the birth of Christ with us at Prosper CRC’s Christmas Eve Candlelight Services! Services will be held on December 24th at 5 PM, & 7 PM . Nursery will be available for children birth-5 years old. We invite you and your family to join us for this special evening of worship and reflection.

Gospel In Three Words Sermon Series Description What is the gospel—really? In a culture filled with spiritual confusion and shallow answers, this three-week series clearly and faithfully explains the core of the Christian faith through three essential words: God, Sin, and Christ . We begin with God , whose holiness, righteousness, and justice establish a perfect standard no one can meet. From there, we confront Sin , not as a surface problem but as a deep condition of the human heart that leaves us desperate for mercy and renewal. Finally, we behold Christ , the supreme and sufficient Savior, who reconciles sinners to God through His death and resurrection. This series is designed to help believers articulate the gospel with clarity and confidence, and to invite skeptics and seekers to see the beauty, seriousness, and hope of Christianity. As we move from God’s holiness, to our need, to Christ’s saving work, we are called to trust God’s justice, confess our sin honestly, and remain steadfast in the gospel that truly saves. The gospel begins with God’s holiness, confronts us with our sin, and offers reconciliation through Christ alone. Christ Colossians 1 Watch Sin Psalm 51 Watch God Habakkuk 1 Watch

The Blessing of Abraham Prosper Christian Reformed Church The Blessing of Abraham Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Sunday, December 21, 2025 Audio The Blessing of Abraham Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 31:16 Sermon Transcript Our scripture reading for this morning comes from Genesis 12: 1-9. If you have a Bible, or you can use the Bible in the seat back, if you don't, that is our scripture reading for this morning. We are in the third, fourth sermon in this series called Come Thou Long-Expected, where we're looking at the journey through Genesis of the promised seed or the promised offspring of the one who would come and crush the head of the snake. And this morning we're going to be looking at the call of Abraham. So Chapter 12, verses 1 through 9. This is God's word. Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and your kindred in your father's house to the land I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abraham went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Heron. And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions in Hairan, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak of Moroth. And at that time, the Canaanites were in the land. And the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring, I will give this land. ' So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, and Bethel on the west of AI, on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abraham journeyed on still going towards makeup. This is the word of the Lord. Our world is broken. And it's not just us as Christians who see this. Secular writers and authors have seen this same thing, this problem that plagues this human project that we're a part of. In 1945, an author noticed this, and he wrote a book commenting on the human condition. The author, George Orwell, wrote a book, The Animal Farm. It's a story of a group of animals who revolt against their human owner to overthrow his power. They believe that the problem in their world was external. It was the farmer. That if they remove him, they can create a fair and just and equal society. And at first, everything looks good. The old rules are torn down. Equality is promised. But slowly, the pigs are the ones who are leading the revolution begin to change. They take more power. They rewrite the rules. They claim that everything that they're doing is for the good of everyone else. But the book ends by saying this, the animals looked from pig to man and from man to pig and could no longer tell which was which. The corruption got so bad at one point that one pig says, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a warning, as a warning that removing oppression does not remove sin. And And that revolutions fail when the human heart remains untouched. And that leads us into our big question, can our world be fixed from the inside? If we just change the systems, if we replace leaders, if we educate people better, if we rearrange power, if we pass the right laws or advance far enough in technologies, would this bring a just society? Would this fix our world? This is our modern cred that humanity, given enough time and refinement, can heal itself. And we see it everywhere. Every election promises a turning point. Every movement says that this time it'll be different. Every generation is confident that it sees with the last one missed. We don't just believe in progress. We need to believe in it. Because if our world can't be fixed from within, it means that the problem isn't just out there, but our problem is here. History interrupts our optimism. New systems produce old sins. New leaders repeat ancient failures. Power changes hand, but corruption stays put. The faces change, but the hearts remain. Animal farm isn't shocking because it's extreme. It's unsettling because it's familiar. The revolution that promised equality in the book ended up finding the same heart, the same desires, quietly climbing back to the top, which raises an uncomfortable question for us that we rarely ask. What if the problem in our world isn't simply bad structures, isn't simply having the right people in power? But what if it's our brokenness? What if the reason that every attempt at utopia collapses isn't because we were not trying hard enough, but it's that the human condition seeps into every new experiment, every new world we try to create? That's the tension that we're left with after the flood in Genesis, a cleansed Earth, and yet it's the same old story. So the question remains not just for scripture, but for us. Can our world be fixed from the inside? Or do we need help that is from outside our story altogether? Unfortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Genesis 12: 1. We're going to be looking at a large swath of scripture today. Our first section will be who will bless the nations. We're going to look at verses one through nine. And then the second section, we're going to look at the rest of the Book of Genesis. We're not going to go verse by verse, but we're really tracing what happens with this family and what will happen with this family. Before we hear God's promise to Abraham, we need to see the space that we're in. We need to remember how desperate the story has become. Genesis 3 starts off by showing us the fall that Adam and Eve brought sin into the world. But we don't get to move on further without God promising that he will bring someone through the offspring of Eve who will redeem all of humanity. But in the very next chapter, the offspring, Cain, murders his brother Abel. The promise line does not bring rescue, but it brings bloodshed. Sin becomes such a problem that by Genesis 6, God sends a flood to cleanse the Earth. And the people that we're left with after the Earth, unfortunately, look a lot like the people who were there before. What we're left with, still no savior. From Eden to exile, from family to flood, God has shown us a pattern. God keeps making promises, and humanity does almost everything it can to try not to fulfill it. The question hanging over the story is no longer, is this world broken? We know this world is broken. The question remains whether God will keep his promise to fix it. So let's look at who will bless the nations, verses one through nine. Where we're left at in this story after the flood is seemingly hopeless. There is no savior, is no redeemer, no one to crush the head of the snake. We're left in a world that has failed every test from God. And yet we see a God who speaks not in anger, but in promise. So let's look at verses one through three. They say this, Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I will curse, and in you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Notice what God is doing here, what he's saying, what he promises Abraham. He promises him a people, a place, and a purpose far bigger than anything Abraham could have dreamed of. We see now, again, in the story of Genesis, God is doing something. It's not just that something is happening. It's not just that the plot is moving forward, but God is doing something again. Notice what God doesn't say to Abraham here. He doesn't say, I will bless you so you can be more comfortable or that you can have an easier life or take these blessings and make them work for you. No, he says, I will bless you so you can be a blessing. I think that forces us to ask a question of ourselves, do we treat God's gifts as a way to bless others or as a way to become more comfortable? When blessing stops with us, it's actually no longering. This is not what God wanted for us. This is not the blessing that God wanted, or it's not what God wanted us to use his blessing for. It's not what God wanted Abraham to use his blessing for. His blessing. Is far bigger than that. It's not just that he will become a good nation or that he'll bless other nations. It's that he will be a blessing to the entire world, to all of humanity. It says that all the families of the earth will be blessed. This is not God choosing one family instead of the world. It's God choosing one family for the world. If God brings blessing to the world through ordinary obedience, I think we should ask ourselves, or maybe we shouldn't ask ourselves, Am I changing the world? But rather, Am I being faithful where God has already put me? I think we need to ask, How do we speak to people when we're tired? How do we handle frustration? How do we treat people who have nothing to give us? How will we handle those ordinary moments of quiet obedience? Because God will work mightily through them, far more than we think. I think that's how God changes the world through those little moments. Finally, in this passage, what we see is that the one who will reverse the curse from Genesis 3 is going to come from Abraham. The promise will happen. This is God reaffirming that his covenant is true, that God is sending a rescuer. This is a better sound. It should be a better sound in our ears than if we were stranded on a desert island and we heard a rescue plane, we all presently today, we all feel the after shock of the fall reverberating through our lives. Every time we see death in our world, every time we experience heartache, every time we're betrayed, every time we long for true satisfaction, and we can't find it, we can see that our world broken. Deep in our souls, we know there has to be something better than this. For the first time since Eden, the future sounds hopeful. Imagine being Abraham hearing this. Imagine what joy would have over load in his heart. We can narrow the scope on where the savior will come from. And yet there's a problem. Sarah is barren. Yet God will intentionally choose to use an unlikely woman in an unlikely way to bring forth the child of promise, just like he would hundreds of years later in a little town in Bethlehem. And that's what she does. She conceives miraculously and gives birth to Isaac. But even here, Genesis teaches us to hold our breath because God promises the blessing will come through Abraham, not from him. It forces us to ask, what will happen with this family? We get to this spot where Abraham is finally given a son. We have to think, is this it? Imagine you're an Israeli child hearing these stories for the first time. Maybe you're at some festival and your uncle is telling you about the story of Abraham. Moses writes the Book of Genesis in a way that forces us to ask every time we come to a new character in the Book, Is this going to be the one. He carefully authors this in a way that strings us along to force us to ask that question. We ask that with Cain and Abel. We asked that with Noah and his sons. And now we ask that with Abraham, who later becomes Abraham. But it isn't him. Later in the story, Abraham disqualifies himself. He has a child with his wife's servant. He lies about his wife being his sister. We see the fall reverberating through Abraham's life. We see him choosing to define what is good and evil in his own eyes. From this point on in Genesis, Genesis begins to repeat itself like a drum beat. Promise, hope, failure, death. Promise, hope, failure, death. And so now our attention turns to Isaac, Abraham's son, Abraham's son, who as a child, is part of a story that points directly to the gospel. Abraham is asked to bring his only son up on a mountain and to sacrifice him, and yet God provides a ram as a substitute. It's an example of how the Old Testament continually points to the need of a better savior. The Old Testament points to the need of the advent story. So Isaac grows up, and through his wife, Rebecca, gives birth to a boy. Isaac, the child of promise, grows old, dies, still waiting for the promise. And so now we look at his children, Jacob and Esa. God tells Rebecca that These two will be at odds, and they are. Jacob tricks his brother into selling him his birthright. Later, Jacob tricks his dad, Isaac, into giving him the family blessing. Jacob becomes the one who will carry out the promise he will be the new covenant representative, even though it disqualified him from being the one who could complete it by tricking his dad and his brother. It leaves us wondering, is this just another failed experiment. Jacob wrest with God and has renamed Israel. Jacob is the one who has 12 children. And at this point, the reader has to surely think one of these 12 has to be the one. Just a law of big numbers. It's got to be of these guys. A lot happens with these sons. They're important. They become the 12 tribes of Israel. And this is where we get the story of Joseph in the multicolor coat. A lot happens with these brothers that we can't cover this morning. But in the remaining chapters, what happens is that the promised family leaves the promised land in exile and moves to Egypt. And the story ends here in chapter 50, it's the last chapter, the last section of the book. It says, So Joseph died being 110 years old. They involved him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. The Book of Genesis ends not with a throne, but with a coffin. The promise alive, but the people are not. Joseph dies in Egypt. Like animal farm, Genesis ends with a dream still written, the world unchanged, staring death instead of deliverance. Hebrews 11 is the famous chapter where it recounts all of the Old Testament saints. It's called the Hall of Faith, all these people who had exemplary faith. It talks about Abraham and his family. It says this in verse 13, talking about these people, These all died in faith, not not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. All the Old Testament, all of Genesis, the lineage This family looks from afar, not seeing the promise come through. No snake crusher. Every single person dies being disqualified from being the one who can defeat what Adam and Eve brought into the world. That's what we've been doing in this sermon series. That's why we've been tracing the seed of the woman, the offspring, the promise. It's all throughout Genesis. It's as if each character we interact with is crying out, 'Come thou long-expected Jesus? ' Genesis ends in death. No savior on the horizon. Time after time, people choose to define what is right and wrong in their own eyes rather than trusting God. Genesis is a genealogy of humanity's failed attempt to save itself. We cannot fix the world from the inside. We do not have the ability to. No matter how hard we try, no matter what tactics we employ, Genesis is clear, no one born in sin will be able to save themselves, let alone save anyone else. That leads us to our main idea. We long for a redeemer who will defeat what we couldn't. We long for a redeemer who will defeat what we couldn't. This longing is not accidental. It's not weakness. It's design. Genesis shows us that we were made to live in blessing, not under the curse, to flourish under God's rule rather than trying to grasp and to scramble for control. So when the world feels fractured, when relationships break, when our bodies fail, when justice ends. Don't stop longing. We can't stop longing. The problem isn't that we hope. The problem is where we aim our hope at. Every generation in Genesis feels the ache that surely this will be the one. And every generation ends the same way with another coffin. So we learn something crucial. If redemption is going to come, it has to come from outside the story. And yet we, as a people, continue to try, try to save ourselves. We try to redeem ourselves through success, through family harmony, through control, through being right, through getting back to how things used to be. I mean, especially in Christmas, that desire is there. The expectations intensify. Christmas tempts us to believe that this year, finally this year, Something will save us. Something will bring us what we truly need. But it doesn't. It can't. Advent, it's not what advent's about. Advent doesn't train us to hope harder. It trains us to hope rightly. And that's where Genesis presses on us, not to condemn us, but to prepare us. Because if we cannot receive a savior, or we cannot receive a savior if we are trusting in a substitute, and that leads us into our points of application. I've got to mix up here, but we're going to start with the second one. Let advent expose our false messias. Advent has a way of bringing out the false things we like to worship. And especially, especially this week, as we are just a couple of days away from Christmas, it reveals what we truly believe will save us. When time runs out, when emotions rise, when expectations peak, Whatever we believe, whatever we're counting on to make things okay, that's what you believe in. Ask yourself, what do you think would finally make things right? What would be the one thing that would happen that would ruin Christmas? What outcome are you quietly hoping will justify you? Advent doesn't shame us for these answers. It clarifies these. Whatever you ask to save you will will one day ask everything from you. This season, we don't just celebrate Christ coming. It reveals everything that we hope would have come instead. An advent doesn't end by telling us to try harder or to be better. It ends in pointing us to a savior who came anyway, who came even though we could not save ourselves. When the calendar fills and the pressure rises, our saviors, our false saviors, will reveal themselves. And it leads us to our second point, have hope bigger than your lifetime. Genesis teaches us something uncomfortable. Sin is never private. Adam's disobedience did not stay with Adam. Cain's worship did not just affect him. It fractured a family, then a culture, and then the entire world. Cain's legacy. His lineage is marked by violence. Lamech, his offspring, boasts about that violence generations later. By the time we reach Noah, it has invaded every aspect, every corner of creation. It travels quietly. Sin goes and multiplies when it goes unrepented. This is why scripture never lets us say, This is my life. I get to do with it what I want. I'm in control. Yes, our choices are personal, but they are never isolated. What you normalize today, someone else will inherit. What you excuse, someone else will... They will repeat. What you refuse to repent of, someone else will suffer from. But Genesis also shows us something hopeful. That grace is generational, too. God promises blessing through Abraham to a people Abraham will never meet. Faithfulness plants seeds whose fruit grow long after they're gone. And that's why Adam's hope is bigger than one lifetime. God works through families, through communities, through histories, not just single individual people or individual moments. So ask yourself, not only what am I allowed to do, but what am I allowing to pass on? Because your repentance today may interrupt cycles tomorrow. Your obedience may become someone else's safety. Your faith today may spare generations, wounds you will never see. So hope bigger than your lifetime, because both grace and sin echo far beyond us. Genesis ends with a death. But advent begins with a birth. Hope has come. Heaven meets Earth. Love has come down. Grace is clothed in skin, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel. Jesus comes as our long-expected redeemer. The death that ends Genesis confirms terms the curse, but the death we see on the cross was there to end the curse. This is why we celebrate Christmas. This is why we celebrate Advent. Our savior has come. Our savior has come to take our place. Jesus came to be the better Adam, came to be the better Abraham, the better Noah, the better Joseph, the better Isaac. We talked about that earlier in the story that Isaac followed his father up a hill, carrying wood on his back, obedient even to the point of death. And yet a ram was caught in the brambles as a sacrifice. Jesus would come, and he would be the lamb who would be our substitute, following his Father up a hill, carrying wood on his back to take our place. We could not reach up to heaven, and so heaven came down to us. This is what we remember this advent season. We long for a redeemer who will defeat what we couldn't. Let's stand and pray together as we prepare for worship. Stand and pray. Father, we thank you for who you are, that you are a God who condescented, who came to us. You sent your son to take our place. Thank you for being our substitute, our savior. Thank you for humbling yourself to being born here on earth, humbling yourself to being put to death on a cross. God, we love you. We love to do your will. So help us do that as we respond in worship here this morning. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Before we get to our song, you guys can come up. Before we get to our song, I want to read this closing benediction, and then we will sing our closing song. May the God who calls us out by grace keep you from trusting in in what you cannot save. May your hope rest in Christ alone, the one promised to Abraham and given for the life of the world. Go in faith, hope, in peace. Amen. Go tell it on the mountain, the one that we've been waiting for, the King of our salvation. Born on this day, our savior, Christ the Lord. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere, that we can be forgiven. The weight of all our sin he came to bear. Emmanuel God with us, Emmanuel King Jesus, the savior of the world is born. Emmanuel God with us, Emmanuel King Jesus, savior of the world is born. Go tell it on the mountain. Humbly in a manger lay. Mercy sent from heaven. Angels till the sky with highest grace. Emmanuel, God with us Emmanuel, King Jesus, the savior of the world is born. Emmanuel, God with us, Emmanuel, King Jesus, the savior of the world is born. We tell it on the mountain. This baby born of Virgin birth, the ruler of all nations, the glory of our God has come to earth. Emmanuel, God with us. Emmanuel, King Jesus, savior of the world is born. Emmanuel, God with with us, Emmanuel, King Jesus, The savior of the world is born. We'll tell it on the mountain. This baby born of virgin birth, the ruler of all nations, the glory of our God has come to Earth. Emmanuel, God with us. Emmanuel, King Jesus, the savior of the world is born. Emmanuel, God with us. Emmanuel, King Jesus, the savior of the world is born. The savior of the world is born. The savior of the world is born. The savior of the world is born. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

One Another Sermon Series Description One Another is a series about what it means not merely to attend a church, but to belong to one. In a culture shaped by independence, consumerism, and private spirituality, the New Testament presents the Christian life as shared life under the lordship of Christ. Jesus does not save isolated individuals and leave them alone. He gathers a people to live together in humble service, intentional discipleship, mutual belonging, and cheerful generosity. This series helps the church see that membership in Christ’s body is not a sentimental label or a loose association. It is a covenant reality created by the grace of God and expressed in concrete obedience. To belong to Christ is to belong to his people, and to belong to his people is to take up the responsibilities of love. Each sermon presses that truth from a different angle: we serve because Christ served, we make disciples because Christ reigns, we honor every member because one Spirit made us one body, and we give generously because God’s grace abounds to us. As we walk through these passages, the church is confronted with a searching question: are we merely near the church, or are we truly living as Christ’s church? One Another calls us to reject isolated Christianity and embrace joyful, sacrificial, embodied life together under King Jesus. Because Christ has joined us to himself, he calls us to give ourselves to one another. Giving 2 Corinthians 9 Watch

Giving Prosper Christian Reformed Church Giving One Another Mitchell Leach Sunday, May 3, 2026 Audio Giving Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 32:03 Sermon Transcript Scripture Reading 2 Corinthians 9:6-8 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that, having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. This is the word of the Lord. There's a story of a man who gets this incredible offer. It was set in the 1800s in Russia and this man is a peasant. He has one day to claim all the land that he could ever want. As much land that he could claim in one day, he can have. So he goes out in the morning, starts walking, and the land is good. He keeps walking and walking and pushes further and every chance, every time he thinks, 'Oh, this is good,' he'll turn around here. The land just in front of him looks even better and so he goes and gets that. By late afternoon, he realizes that he's gone way too far and so he desperately sprints back all the way to where he started and gets there just as the sun sets. He collapses at the finish line. He turns up dead. This story was written by Leo Tolstoy and the title of this work was 'How Much Land Does a Man Need?' The story answers that question by saying, 'Six feet. Just enough to be buried.' The scarcity that our world shows us is embodied in this story. There's a voice in our culture that says, 'We need more. It isn't enough. Hold tighter to what you have.' It's a voice that we bring into this room every Sunday and it's the reason that a sermon on money makes us feel uncomfortable. It's the reason that we don't publicize that we're going to talk about money because the truth is when we publicize that, people don't show up to church. The mood in a room changes when we talk about money, unfortunately. And so we're just going to say the quiet part out loud. Big Question Why is the church always talking about money? Everyone knows when we start talking about money, walls go up. You feel like you've heard it before. And I get it because most of us have either been in a church context or we've heard of churches where a giving talk feels like an old western stand-up. It feels like we're getting guilted into giving more. The implication is almost like this: if you loved God more, you'd give more. So let me be straight with you. I'm not here to guilt you into giving. In fact, that is the opposite of what the passage we're going to look at this morning says. I want you to look at what you trust because money is one of the most honest things in our life. It shows us what we love. It shows us what we trust. And that's what Paul wants to show us this morning. He wants to show us a God that's worth trusting. So why is the church always talking about money? Fortunately, the Bible has an answer. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 9:6-8. Outline A Principle of Sowing and Reaping (2 Corinthians 9:6) A Call to Willing and Cheerful Giving (2 Corinthians 9:7) A Promise of God's All-Sufficient Grace (2 Corinthians 9:8) A Principle of Sowing and Reaping (2 Corinthians 9:6) What we're going to be doing is looking at more than just money. This is a framework for us to look at any possession, anything that we could have here on earth. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:6, 'The point is this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.' Paul's using two contrasting words here: 'bountifully' and 'sparingly.' He picks these two words on purpose. This is a way in which we see the world — either sparingly or bountifully. The word for sparingly really means to save from loss. It's an economic term, used as a job description, like someone who is an accountant. Paul doesn't just pick any word here. He's not saying whoever sows a small amount. Paul is using a word specifically about protecting yourself from losing something. The sparing giver isn't giving just a little because they have a little; he's giving a little because every gift feels like a threat. John Calvin, unsurprisingly, has something great to say about this passage. He says, 'The flesh is always ingenious in devising excuses. And some will plead that they have families and it would be unkind to neglect. And some use the fact that they cannot give much as an excuse for giving nothing.' The truth is we calculate. We look at what we have through the lens of what we can get back. Everything is an opportunity to gain more. What happens is we end up trusting in our security that money can bring rather than the God who gives it. And that's why Paul says that we need to sow bountifully. The word 'bountifully' means the one sowing with blessing, the one who gives as a benediction, as a blessing, as a gift. The contrast here isn't between giving a little and giving a lot. It's those who give in a calculated way versus those who give as a way to bless — not only themselves but others. So don't hear benedictory giving as something that's only easy. In fact, if your generosity never hurts, never touches something that you'd rather keep, the truth is you haven't given; you've tipped. If we can give in a way that is just comfortable for us, we haven't embodied what it means to sacrifice in the way we've been called to. In Hebrews, the author says that Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross. Jesus went to the cross, paid the ultimate price, and the writer of Hebrews says this was done out of joy. Joy and cost coexisting in the same act. The model for Christian generosity is not painless giving; it's costly giving that trusts God the Father on the other side of the cost. Our culture revolts against this kind of thinking. We live in a culture — not just in America, but here in northern Michigan, in Falmouth, in McBain, in Lake City — steeped in a scarcity mindset that believes there is only a finite, limited amount of resources and that we need to run and chase after every single one of them. This is a world without God who provides. If there is no God who multiplies loaves and fish, then every dollar I give is just gone. If that's the way we see the world, then the only way to rationally respond is to live sparingly, to be calculated with everything we have. Living sparingly is not simply a financial decision. This is a theological one. When we live sparingly, it shows us who we worship. Our money is a gauge on our heart that shows us what we truly value. And that's why we're talking about money today. Not because we're short on money as a church. Not because the deacons have come to me and said we need another message about money. We're talking about money today because it is actually important for our spiritual lives; it is actually important to our souls. Human wisdom says: evaluate everything you have for its return. But divine wisdom says the opposite. God commands the most radical self-denial. Jesus tells us, 'Whoever would save his life will lose it.' And then he turns and tells us that this self-denial is the very path to the deepest joy we could ever possibly know. If you look at any organization, any family, any budget, they'll show you what they value. That's why people say, 'Follow the money.' In fact, in America, it shows us some pretty scary things about what we love. The average American spends $1,097 on coffee annually. Families earning over $100,000 spend more than $2,300 per child per year on youth sports. Entertainment accounts for 5.2% of household spending, which is nearly double what goes to charitable causes. Not only that — the average evangelical donor gave $2,500 to church in the prior 12 months, down 15% from the inflation-adjusted figure of just under $3,000 in 2021. Just over a third of regular church attenders do not give any money to their churches at all. Christians are giving at a rate of 2.5% of their income. During the Great Depression, that was 3.3%. I'm reading these numbers not to guilt you into anything. I'm reading them because money is a gauge on our hearts — and the truth is we will always fund what we trust will deliver. Right now America trusts comfort, experience, and security more than it trusts the God who promises to provide. A Call to Willing and Cheerful Giving (2 Corinthians 9:7) That's why Paul gives us a call to willing and cheerful giving in 2 Corinthians 9:7: 'Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.' The phrase 'decided in his heart' is a phrase in the Greek that implies someone who came to church knowing what they were going to give — had decided, had prayerfully decided. It wasn't last minute, it wasn't impulsive, which is why giving online is just as much an act of worship as giving in person. The cheerful giver is deliberate in what they give. The one who has looked at their resources, obligations, and opportunities, and made this decision on what they will give — in stark contrast to the one who gives reluctantly or out of grief. Charles Hodge has this to say: 'Many gifts are thus given sorrowfully, where the giver is induced to give by a regard to public opinion or by stress of conscience. This reluctance spoils the gift. It loses all its fragrance when the incense of a free and joyful spirit is wanting.' So if reluctance spoils the gift, what then makes it fragrant? See, the motivation in giving here is not transactional. It's not about getting something back. It's relational. If you hear 'Give cheerfully' and hear that as 'I give cheerfully so that way I can get something back,' you're still hearing this as a transactional relationship. But if you hear 'God loves a cheerful giver' and see that as a relationship, that relationship will be worth everything — enough that it will be a reward in and of itself. A cheerful giver is simply someone who has come to look like their heavenly Father. And the Father loves to see himself in his children. When we reflect his generosity, he loves seeing that in us. When we let go of our idols in order to grab more of him, that is what he loves to see. So the takeaway from this isn't just, give more cheerfully, try harder. That won't work. The invitation is this: see the kind of Father that you have. The heavenly Father who gives you everything you've ever had — every breath, every meal, and yes, every dollar. A Father who's invited you to sit at the table with him, to laugh with him, to enjoy him. A heavenly Father who wants to see you embody the same life-giving action of giving to other people things that they don't deserve. A Promise of God's All-Sufficient Grace (2 Corinthians 9:8) Here we'll see the power of this passage. 2 Corinthians 9:8 says: 'And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency, in all things, at all times, you may abound in every good work.' The word here for 'able' is the word we get our word dynamite from. It only shows up 3 times in the New Testament, and it comes here in a passage about giving. It means to display capacity, to be powerful, to be effective. Paul's whole argument about giving hinges on this characteristic of God: that he is a God who is able. The appeal to give is not some specific promise that every dollar we give, we're going to get 10 back. The appeal to be generous is in who God is himself. God is infinite and eternal, unchangeable in his being. He does not change and there is no end to him. It is in God's very nature that he would never run out. We live in a world where we believe I have to go and get mine, otherwise someone else will go and get it. And yet we believe in a God who we will never find the edges of. There is no way to exhaust who God is. We drink from a well that will never run dry. James 1:17 says it this way: 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.' God is the one who gives. And the grace in 2 Corinthians 9:8 is not just merely the grace to receive forgiveness or the grace of the gospel. Specifically here in this passage, this includes God giving us the grace in order to be generous. You might be sitting here thinking, 'I'm barely able to pay the bills. What do you mean God's going to give me this ability?' We've all been through financially hard seasons — and this isn't a promise that God's going to make everything right tomorrow. And yet, the promise is that God will give you the grace, the ability to give yourself, to give your time, your hospitality, your care, and yes, even your money. But you will only do those things if you believe that God is the one who supplies them. That's the decision this passage puts in front of us. Main Idea Trust God rather than scarcity The appeal to be generous is in the very nature of who God is — not what you'll get back, not the return on your investment. So the question isn't, 'Why is the church always talking about money?' The question this passage is really asking is, 'What does my money reveal about who I trust?' That's what it comes down to. Your money is one of the most honest things about you. It shows what you trust. It's not about what we confess on Sunday morning. It's not about what we profess about giving, about generosity, about God. Our actions show what we believe, especially our money. And Paul is telling us that generosity is good for your soul. It's not about the church's budget. It is the thing that pries your fingers off the idol of security and puts them toward a God who is able. Now I want to be clear: tithing is an important part of what it means to belong to a church. This whole series we've been going through is about what it means to belong to a church, to be a member of a church. And tithing is a part of that. I believe that if you call this church home, you should be giving to this church. The Bible doesn't apologize for that. But if the thing you've heard this morning is that the church needs more of your money, you haven't been listening to the passage or what I've been saying. This passage is not about what the church needs from you. It's about what generosity does in and through your life. For some of you, you've been sitting here waiting for me to say a percentage, waiting for me to say an amount. Don't hold your breath because I'm not going to tell you. That's not the point. The point is not, 'Here's the minimum amount — here's what you have to do to be a good Christian.' God loves a cheerful giver. The point is that we would give bountifully; that we would be generous with all of who we are. This is not a call to figure out the floor or the basement. It is a call to look at your heavenly Father, see what he has given, and ask, what does a life of gratitude actually look like? Not just with my bank account, but with my time, with the talent God has given me, with the other resources he's entrusted to me. Application Audit your giving for the manner of it — not just the amount This week, your application is this: sit down and look at what you give — not to see whether the number is big enough, but to ask yourself, how did it feel when I gave this? Did you decide in your heart before you got there, or was it an afterthought? Did you give it freely, or did you grieve it all the way down to your core? The amount might be fine, but the manner might be telling you something else. $100 given with a clenched fist honors God less than $10 given with an open hand. So don't start with a number; start with where your heart is in giving and do some assessment of that. Look for when scarcity starts talking this week And I don't just mean about your money. Scarcity is something that talks to us all day long, every day of our life. It's the reason you don't call a person you've been meaning to call because you feel like you don't have the time. It's the reason you drive past your neighbor who's mowing the lawn alone and don't stop because you've got your own lawn to deal with. It's why you eat dinner in front of the TV rather than at the table because you're convinced you don't have the energy for a conversation tonight. It's the reason the meal never gets dropped off, the visit never gets made, the invitation never gets extended. Not because you don't care, but because something else is saying, 'I don't have enough. You need to take care of you first.' That's not the voice of wisdom. That's not the voice of stewardship. It's a secular creed we've embodied — the belief that if you live in a world without God who provides, then you need to get exactly what you need to take care of you. Scarcity will start talking about your money. It will talk about your time, your energy, your attention, your hospitality. So when you hear it this week — and you will — name it. Ask, why is scarcity talking right now? Maybe even track what it is that scarcity talks about in your life. Is there a pattern? I think if you pay attention, that pattern will show you an idol that you're maybe holding onto too tightly. Everything Paul has said about generosity — the sowing, the cheerfulness, the all-sufficient grace — none of it makes sense unless we understand where it comes from. Earlier in 2 Corinthians, Paul says this: 'For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.' Jesus Christ was rich — not in the kind of rich like a big house. Jesus was rich in the sense that he had created everything and everything belonged to him. Every star, every atom, every breath we've taken belongs to him. And yet, he became poor. Not just inconvenienced, not just slightly diminished — Jesus became poor. He was born into one of maybe the most impoverished families in all of human history. On the cross, Jesus became even poorer than that because on the cross, God the Father took every sin that you've ever committed, every act of greed, every clenched fist, every dollar that you've worshiped instead of him, and laid it on his Son. Jesus paid the price fully in your place. The one who owned everything was forsaken by the Father so that you, who deserve nothing, would become rich. Not money rich — rich in grace, rich in forgiveness, rich in a relationship with God that can never be taken from you. This is the foundation on which everything else that we've been talking about is built. You are not generous because you have to be. You are not generous because the church needs your money. You are generous because you have been made impossibly, eternally rich by a Savior who became impossibly and completely poor for you. Scarcity has no claim on the person for whom Christ has already paid the price. So give — not out of guilt, not out of obligation, but because you know the grace that you have found in your Lord Jesus Christ. And that grace has made you rich beyond all comparison. So church, hear this: trust God rather than scarcity. That is the foundation for our generosity. Closing Prayer Father God, we praise you that you are a God who is not just generous, but God, you gave yourself to us. The greatest gift we could ever experience was you. God, let that reality — that you came, that you left your throne in heaven to be with us, to take the miseries of this life and to die on the cross for our sake — let us respond not just today by singing, but with a life of generosity, knowing that we are a beneficiary of that generosity from you. God, we love you. Let us sing your praises here. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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Come Thou Long Expected Sermon Series Description When we think of Christmas, we usually think of shepherds, wise men, and angels — and we’ll get there. But Christmas didn’t begin in Bethlehem. It started in the garden when God made a promise that one day someone would come to crush the serpent, restore what was lost, and bring us back to Himself. This Advent, we’re going to walk through that promise, from the garden to the manger, and see how all of history has been pointing us to Jesus. From the ruins of the fall to the birth of the King, God weaves a story of judgment, mercy, and promise—fulfilled in Jesus, the long-expected Savior. The Child Who Fulfills Every Promise Luke 2 Watch Judgement and Mercy Genesis 6, Genesis 7, Genesis 8 Watch Blood on the Ground Genesis 4 Watch The Promise in the Ruins Genesis 3 Watch The Blessing of Abraham Genesis 12 Watch

What We Believe About Dispensationalism Prosper Christian Reformed Church rejects dispensationalism and its theological interpretations.  While we wouldn’t call this faulty belief system heretical, we would strongly declare that it is erroneous and an improper way to handle God’s word. The failure in this theology is that it divorces God from his steadfast love, or covenant love. God’s covenantal love for his people becomes dependent on the time in which he speaks. Heading 5 Why the Lord's Supper Does What Believer's Baptism Doesn't Mitchell Leach April 14, 2026 Position Paper, Theology Introduction Every theological dispute is ultimately a dispute about God. Arguments about prophecy, Israel, the church, and the end times can seem abstract — the kind of thing seminary students debate and ordinary Christians ignore. But underneath every one of those arguments is a more fundamental question: what kind of God are we dealing with? Is he a God who tests humanity, watches it fail, and starts over with a new arrangement? Or is he a God whose purpose never wavers, whose covenant never changes, whose plan was never derailed, never improvised, never interrupted by human failure? That is the question this paper is about. Dispensationalism — the theological framework popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible and carried into millions of homes through books, films, and study notes — answers the first way. Reformed covenant theology answers the second. The difference is not merely academic. It determines how you read every page of your Bible, how you understand the church you belong to, and what you believe about the God you worship. At Prosper CRC, we confess the second. This paper explains why. What is Dispensationalism? At its core, dispensationalism is a way to view how God works throughout history. It’s a philosophy and a framework for interpreting scripture. In this framework, dispensationalists hold that God’s will is distributed distinctly in different eras throughout the biblical narrative. 1 The word dispensation translates the Greek oikonomia — meaning stewardship, administration, or economy. This framework is then applied to the whole breadth of God’s word. Leading to a distortion of the nature of God, the narrowness of salvation, and the importance of the church in the New Testament (to name a few). In his study bible, which was the primary work that popularized dispensationalism, C.I. Scofield wrote that a dispensation is ”a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.” 2 What Scofield — and dispensationalism — implies is that God works differently during seven eras or dispensations. History of Dispensationalism One important clarification about dispensationalism is its relatively novel history. Up until the 1830s, dispensationalism wasn’t a term in any christians minds, nor in the theology books. A man by the name of John Nelson Darby systematized and promoted dispensationalism. Darby grew up in a well-connected family where he had access to the best schools and education. Upon becoming ordained in the Anglican Church, Darby suffered a horse riding accident. This turned out to to be a pivital moment his life. “While convalescing in Edward Pennefather's house in Dublin, Darby underwent a crisis in his religious beliefs. Finally deciding that an established church and its appurtenances were unscriptural, he resigned his curacy later the same year.” 3 It was at this time that he came to see the term “kingdom” in the book of Isaiah to mean something completely different from the church. Based on his study of Isaiah 32, Darby believed that Israel would experience earthly blessings in a future dispensation that were different from what the church would experience. He advocated for a strong distinction between Israel and the church. This is one of the major new discoveries that 4 Darby proposed: that the church and Israel are two distinct groups, two distinct identities, and two distinct futures. Acts 2 is a stop in God's dealings with Israel. During this time, Darby started the Plymouth Brethren church with dispensationalism being one of the core beliefs. The Brethren were deliberately anti-creedal and anti- confessional — a detail of enormous significance for Reformed believers. They don't accept or require any kind of confession of faith to join. 5 Charles Spurgeon — Darby's contemporary — was not silent: Spurgeon regarded their hermeneutics as "warped," saying: "Plymouth Brethren delight to fish up some hitherto undiscovered tadpole of interpretation, and cry it round the town as a rare dainty.” 6 Scofield Reference Bible No one event had more of an impact on the spread of dispensationalism than the Scofield Reference Bible. Edited and annotated by Cyrus I. Scofield, it popularized dispensationalism at the beginning of the 20th century. Essentially, it was the first study bible with a small commentary worth of notes on the same pages as scripture. These notes put forth a single view of the narrative arc of scripture, dominated by dispensationalism. This made it extraordinarily difficult for ordinary readers to distinguish the Bible's text from Scofield's theological notes. Contemporary Impacts The system moved from theological classrooms into mass popular culture with explosive results. The rise of figures like Hal Lindsey with his book The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) brought dispensational premises to a wider, non-theological audience, interpreting current events as fulfillments of biblical prophecy. The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (1995–2007) carried the system to tens of millions of readers with no formal theological background. The Critical Historical Argument Dispensationalism has no roots before 1830. The entire Reformed tradition — from Bullinger (1534) to Calvin, Olevianus, the Westminster Assembly (1647), and the Belgic Confession (1561) — is covenantal to its core and knew nothing of a hard Israel-Church distinction. The Reformed understanding of the history of redemption has much more in common with that of the Epistle of Barnabas (c. AD 120), Irenaeus (c. AD 180), Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and the Reformed orthodox than it does with the Dispensational understanding of redemptive history. From the 1520s forward, Reformed theology was covenantal at its core. To speak anachronistically, it was always anti-Dispensational. 7 Ironically, dispensationalism entered American Reformed and Presbyterian churches not directly through theological documents such as creeds or confessions, but through Bible conferences, study Bible notes, and popular evangelism — bypassing the very ecclesial structures of accountability that the Reformed tradition exists to maintain. Errors of Interpretation Seven Dispensations One of the core beliefs of dispensationalism is that there are seven major sections, eras, or dispensations in which God works his will differently. They are: Innocence (Genesis 1:1–3:7) Conscience (Genesis 3:8–8:22) Human Government (Genesis 9:1–11:32) Promise (Genesis 12:1–Exodus 19:25) Law (Exodus 20:1–Acts 2:4) Grace (Acts 2:4–Revelation 20:3) The Millennial Kingdom (Revelation 20:4–6) Each dispensation has several defining characteristics: 1) a distinctive idea of God's revelation; 2) a specific test for obedience in relation to that divine revelation; 3) a failure of man under that economy to the divine revelation; 4) a judgment of God for the failure; 5) the beginning of a new dispensation. 8 Each dispensation is essentially a fresh test that humanity fails, requiring God to reset the terms of engagement. Dispensationalism would argue that history isn't organically unfolding toward a single promised fulfillment in Christ — it is a series of discrete, self- contained experiments. One of the side effects of this system is that it creates commitments to views that directly contradict reformed theology. Three major commitments come to mind. Israel and the Church are permanently distinct peoples with separate destinies. Since the Church Age is a parenthesis — inserted after Israel failed under the Law dispensation — national Israel retains its own set of unfulfilled earthly promises that the Church does not inherit. God has two programs running in parallel. The hermeneutic must be consistently “literal." Because the dispensations are concrete and distinct, OT prophecy addressed to Israel must be fulfilled literally, in the land, through a national people. The Reformed typological/Christological reading of those prophecies is dismissed as spiritualizing. The law does not apply to the Church in the Grace dispensation. Since the cross has ended the dispensation of the law — according to the dispensationalists — the Mosaic law — including the moral law — is no longer the governing standard for the Church. According to the Scofield notes: "The law is a ministry of condemnation, death, and the divine curse.” The Reformed threefold use of the 9 law collapses entirely under this framework. This is not an abstract concern. If the moral law — including the Ten Commandments — does not bind the New Testament church, then the entire structure of Christian ethics is unmoored. The Sermon on the Mount, which Scofield placed under the dispensation of Law, becomes a document addressed to Israel rather than to the church.² The Decalogue, which the Heidelberg Catechism calls the rule of our gratitude and which Paul upholds for the church (Rom. 8:4; 13:9; Eph. 6:1–3), is no longer the shape of the Christian life. The result is what the Reformation called antinomianism — the severing of grace from the obligation to obey. Scripture is unambiguous: Jesus himself declared that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and that "until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law" (Matt. 5:17–18). Paul insists that the gospel does not overthrow the law — "on the contrary, we uphold the law" (Rom. 3:31). The law was not abolished at the cross; it was satisfied at the cross, so that its righteous requirements might be fulfilled in us (Rom. 8:4). To say the law is simply gone — rendered obsolete by dispensational change — is to misread both what the cross accomplished and what the Christian life requires." Reformed theology has never denied that God's one covenant of grace is administered differently across redemptive history. The question is whether those different administrations constitute fundamentally different economies in which God relates to different peoples by different means. The Reformed response is not "there are no differences between the Testaments" — it is that the differences are administrative, not substantial. One covenant. One people. One Savior. One gospel. Differently administered across redemptive history, but never divided into hermetically sealed compartments where God tests, fails, judges, and resets. Christology: Dispensationalism Marginalizes Christ's Present Reign Because dispensationalist theology makes the church and the nation of Israel two separate peoples of God, Israel still has its own set of earthly promises that haven’t 10 been fulfilled, which the church will not inherit. In this disjointed view, God has two peoples with two plans of salvation running separately and alongside each other. In dispensationalism, the real focus of scripture is the future earthly kingdom for national Israel. When this is the focus, then Jesus’ reign over all things is not only downplayed, 11 but it is denied. Paul is clear in Ephesians 1:20-23: 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. 12 Jesus is the fullness and the head of all things to the church, or the present New Testament people of God. To all who are able to be saved, Jesus the crucified and risen Lord is in authority over all things. For nearly two thousand years, Jesus has been the high point of the biblical narrative. To some dispensationalists, the high point hasn’t come yet. At least not for Israel. This view also contradicts one of the clearest doctrines in all of scripture. The primacy and exclusivity of Jesus as the only way to be saved. Jesus’ own “exclusive” claims John 14:6 — “I am the way… No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 10:7–9 — Jesus as “the door”; “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” John 3:16–18 — salvation tied to believing in the Son; “whoever does not believe is condemned already.” John 3:36 — whoever believes has life; whoever rejects the Son does not have life. John 8:24 — “unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” John 5:23–24 — rejecting the Son rejects the Father; whoever hears/believes has eternal life. John 11:25–26 — life/resurrection bound up in Christ (“I am the resurrection and the life…”). John 6:40, 47 — eternal life attached to believing in Christ (“whoever believes has eternal life”). John 6:53 — “unless you eat the flesh… and drink the blood… you have no life” (life is only in union with him). Matthew 11:27 (cf. Luke 10:22) — only the Son truly knows the Father, and only those to whom the Son reveals him. John 17:3 — eternal life defined as knowing the Father and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Apostolic proclamations in Acts Acts 4:12 — “There is salvation in no one else… no other name… by which we must be saved.” Acts 10:43 — “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness… through his name.” “One mediator / one name / only in Christ” in the Epistles 1 Timothy 2:5–6 — “There is one God, and there is one mediator… Christ Jesus.” 1 John 5:11–12 — “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son… does not have life.” 1 John 2:23 — “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” 2 John 9 — “Whoever does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.” Romans 10:9–13 — salvation tied to confessing/believing in Jesus; calling on the Lord. Galatians 2:16 (cf. 2:21) — justification is not by law-works but “through faith in Jesus Christ”; if righteousness were through the law, Christ died for no purpose. Ephesians 2:18 — “through him we… have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Hebrews 7:25 — Jesus “is able to save to the uttermost” those who draw near to God through him. Hebrews 10:19–20 — access to God comes through Jesus’ blood and “the new and living way” he opened. “No other foundation” (exclusive basis) 1 Corinthians 3:11 — “No one can lay a foundation other than… Jesus Christ.” If dispensationalism is true, then it changes something about the God we worship. This God would be one of confusion by pronouncing — quite repetitively — that Jesus is the only way to be saved, and yet that is not true. Either God can lie to us, or God’s promises to one group of people can be given with theological earmuffs, as it were. Can God promise this exclusivity to the church and cover the ears of the Jews and say, “This message really wasn’t meant for you?” Reformed theology says no. The Wall Rebuilt: Dispensationalism Reverses Ephesians 2 Paul answers the two-peoples question directly in Romans 11 with one of the most vivid images in all of his letters. He pictures the people of God as a single olive tree — one tree, with one root system, one source of nourishment. Some branches, unbelieving Israel, have been broken off (v. 20). Gentile believers have been grafted in (v. 17). But there is one tree. Paul does not plant a second tree for the church alongside the first tree for Israel. He does not describe the church as a parallel program. He says Gentiles have been grafted into the same tree that was already standing — “the root of the olive tree” (v. 18), which Ephesians 2 is Paul's theological explanation of exactly what happened to that wall between the branches: 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 13 In Ephesians 2:14-16, Paul writes that because of the cross, the “dividing wall of hostility” has been “broken down.” This was in reference to a literal wall in the temple that divided Jews from Gentiles. This was a physical barrier for Gentiles who wanted to experience God’s presence, which resided in the center of the temple in the holy of holies. To re-introduce the separation between Jew and Gentile is not a minor theological adjustment — it dismantles the very argument Paul spent an entire letter making. The whole of Galatians is Paul's sustained case that the cross of Christ has created one new people, unified not by ethnic identity, religious pedigree, or ritual compliance, but by faith alone in Christ alone. When the false teachers in Galatia demanded that Gentile believers adopt Jewish identity markers — circumcision, food laws, calendar observances — Paul didn't treat it as a secondary matter. He called it desertion (Gal. 1:6). He called it slavery (Gal. 5:1). He called those who preached it accursed (Gal. 1:8-9). The reason the stakes were so high is that the Jew/Gentile distinction wasn't simply a social boundary — it was a theological one. There was a literal dividing wall in the temple that governed access to God by ethnicity, gender, and status. Paul's climactic declaration in Galatians 3:28 — "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" — names each of those checkpoints and declares them demolished. Not reformed. Not softened. Demolished, in the flesh of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:14). What made Peter's behavior at Antioch so serious — serious enough for Paul to oppose him to his face and declare him condemned — is that Peter hadn't changed his theology. He had simply changed his table. He withdrew from eating with Gentile believers when the circumcision party arrived, and in doing so, he preached a different gospel with his feet. He acted as though Christ were sufficient to forgive the Gentiles, but not quite sufficient to make them clean enough to share a meal with. And that subtle, relational distinction was, in Paul's judgment, a reconstruction of the very wall Christ died to tear down. The Heidelberg Catechism states plainly what is at stake (Q&A 30): “To say that Christ is not enough is a most enormous blasphemy, for it then would follow that Jesus. the old categories — any addition of ethnic, ritual, or cultural prerequisites layered on top of faith in Christ — does not deepen the gospel. It contradicts it. Prosper’s stance on Dispensationalism Prosper Christian Reformed Church rejects dispensationalism and its theological interpretations. While we wouldn’t call this faulty belief system heretical, we would strongly declare that it is erroneous and an improper way to handle God’s word. The failure in this theology is that it divorces God from his steadfast love, or covenant love. God’s covenantal love for his people becomes dependent on the time in which he speaks. God’s promises in the Old Testament become irrelevant to the New Testament church. That hermeneutic then dissolves any true need for the work of Christ. One — of many — things that breaks down is if the Old Testament is obsolete, and the New Testament tells us that Christ is our atoning sacrifice. What does atonement mean? Why would we need that? The list of themes in the Old Testament that — not only shape but also — provide a theological basis for the New Testament is too numerous to cover here. Without the narrative of the Old Testament, the salvation that comes in the New Testament wouldn’t make sense. Covenant Theology As reformed believers, we believe that God works consistently through scripture. This belief is grounded in what the writer of Hebrews says in his letter by saying, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” 14 God works through covenants, or promises, where the collateral is your own life. As reformed believers, we confess with the Belgic Confession that “this church has existed from the beginning of the world and will last until the end, as appears from the fact that Christ is an eternal King who cannot be without subjects” (Article 27). The church is not a New Testament invention. It is not a parenthesis inserted after Israel's failure. It is the one people of God, present in every age, always gathered around the same Mediator, always saved by the same grace. The Heidelberg Catechism echoes this when it defines the church as the Son of God gathering, defending, and preserving a community “chosen for eternal life” from “the beginning to the end of the world” (Q&A 54). These are not new ideas developed in God makes these covenants throughout scripture, all of which lead to the coming of Jesus the messiah. Every covenant leads to a single redemptive point, where the Father saves his people through his Son. Covenant of Works & Covenant of Grace Covenant Of Works There are two major covenants in this grand story we find in the bible. First is the covenant of works. This covenant was given to Adam (and Eve) in the garden (Genesis 2:15-17). In this covenant, if Adam and Eve could obey God’s law, they could: Stay in the garden Have the protection and comfort it offered Live in unity with God They wouldn’t need a mediator Live in harmony with creation Remain in a state of innocence Live with the ability not to sin This covenant was wholly dependent on Adam and Eve’s ability to obey what God had commanded them. But we know that happened in Genesis 3. Covenant Of Grace Because Adam and Eve sinned and broke the covenant God had instituted in the garden, and sin had corrupted God’s good creation, they couldn’t live in the garden with God as they had before. God then chose to give grace to Adam and Eve — rather than putting them to death right then and there — he allowed them to live. As God did this, he made a promise to them (a new covenant). He promised to redeem them and reverse what they had brought into the world. This is the point where all of redemptive history changes. Previously, humanity could keep the covenant by their obedience, but now they must be saved. From here on out, God must step in and save his people from their sins. All the covenants lead to this action. God saves sinners by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone — and this has always been true, in every age, for every person God has ever saved. The Mosaic covenant does not replace the Abrahamic. The New Covenant does not start over. Each is an administration of the same grace, pointing to and finding its fulfillment in the same Mediator. The Westminster Confession puts the Reformed position plainly: "There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.” Crucially, in covenant theology Christ is the center and goal of all history — not national Israel, not a future millennial kingdom, not a restored temple in Jerusalem. Every covenant pointed to him. One Consistent God: Immutability Scriptural Proof of Immutability Against Dispensations Psalm 102:26–27 26 They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, 27 but you are the same, and your years have no end. 28 The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you. 15 The psalm was written by a people under affliction pressing toward the promise of redemption, and the ground of their comfort is precisely God's immutability: "the church should continue in its stability, because it stands not upon the changeableness of creatures but is built upon the immutable rock of the truth of God, which is as little subject to change as his essence.” 16 Exodus 3:14 — "I am that I am" Charnock argues this is the foundational assertion of immutability: "If his essence were mutable, God would not truly be; it could not be truly said by himself, 'I am that I am,' if he were such a thing or being at this time and a different being at another time." This name is not incidental — it is the ground of every covenant promise. Malachi 3:6 — "For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." This is the direct covenant-immutability link in Scripture itself. God's unchangeableness is explicitly given as the reason Israel was not destroyed. The covenant people's preservation hangs not on their faithfulness but on God's immutable nature. Charnock cites this passage as God's own assertion that immutability governs his will and counsel. Numbers 23:19 — "God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." Charnock uses this to establish that change in God's will would require either deficiency of wisdom (he didn't foresee the circumstance), deficiency of power (he couldn't execute), or moral instability — all of which are impossible. Therefore his covenant decrees stand. Hebrews 6:13–18 — The oath of God to Abraham This is perhaps the most direct biblical statement connecting immutability to covenant. Hebrews 6:17–18 says God "interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement." Charnock calls this explicitly "the immutability of his counsel." This passage is foundational because it reaches back to Abraham and forward to the new covenant church — the same immutable counsel, one continuous covenantal promise. Hebrews 1:10–12 (citing Psalm 102) The author of Hebrews applies Psalm 102:25–27 directly to Christ, identifying him as the "You are the same" of the Psalm. This is decisive: the immutability of God is not merely an abstract attribute — it is personally located in the Son. Charnock notes the Christological force of this: Christ's eternal unchangeableness is the anchor of the covenant of grace. Immutability of God's Knowledge In his book on the attributes of God, Stephen Charnock establishes that God's knowledge is eternal and unchanging: "God knows all things from eternity and therefore perpetually knows them... by one simple knowledge he considers the infinite spaces of past and future." More pointedly: "God does not know creatures because they are, but they are because he knows them... He knew them when they were to be created in the same manner that he knew them after they were created.” 17 Now apply this to dispensationalism's foundational claim — that the Church Age was not revealed in the Old Testament, that Israel's rejection of the Messiah was not anticipated in God's original plan, and that the Church is a mystery hidden from the ages. Dispensationalists argue this mystery means the Church was a genuinely new thing — not foreknown as part of the original program but inserted in response to Israel's rejection of Christ. But if God's knowledge is immutable and eternal — if "all his works were known to him from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18, which Charnock cites directly) — then there is no moment at which the Church was unknown to God. There was no divine discovery. There was no pivoting to a new program. The dispensational "parenthesis" doctrine requires that at some point — whether at the cross, at Pentecost, or at Israel's rejection — God shifted to a plan he had not originally purposed. Immutability says this is impossible. His knowledge does not admit succession or surprise. Immutability and the Pattern of Test-Failure-Reset Charnock gives the razor that cuts dispensationalism's structural logic: "There can be no reason for any change in the will of God. When men change in their minds, it must be for want of foresight, because they could not foresee all the rubs and bars that might suddenly offer themselves — which if they had foreseen, they would not have taken such measures." He identifies only three possible causes for divine change in purpose: Want of foresight — God didn't see the failure coming Natural instability — God is morally unstable Want of power — God couldn't execute the original plan Now run the dispensational pattern against this. Each dispensation ends in failure and a new economy begins. But if God is immutable in knowledge, he foresaw every failure before the dispensation began. If he foresaw it, why structure the dispensation as a test whose outcome was unknown? The answer dispensationalism must give is that God didn't know how humanity would respond — or that he structured the test anyway knowing failure was coming. The first option denies omniscience. The second makes God's entire management of history a theatre of the absurd — testing what he already knew would fail, judging what he had already foreknown, resetting to what he had already purposed. The Reformed framework has a clean answer: there is no series of failed experiments. There is one immutable decree of election and redemption, administered across different covenantal epochs, each pointing forward to the same end. "The wickedness of former ages altered not his purpose." God was not surprised by Adam's fall, Israel's failure, or the Conclusion The dispute over dispensationalism is not ultimately about Israel or the church, the rapture or the millennium, the seven dispensations or the one covenant of grace. It is about God. The God of dispensationalism describes is a God who tests and watches and waits — who offers a program, absorbs its failure, judges it, and begins again. He is a God whose purposes can be interrupted, whose plans can be parenthesized, whose original intentions were not accomplished until the seventh attempt. He is, in the end, a God who is surprised by what his creatures do. The God of Scripture is not that God. He is the God of Psalm 102 — the one who endures while the heavens wear out like a garment, who remains the same while all creation changes, whose years have no end. He is the God of Malachi 3:6, who declared that he does not change, and therefore Israel was not consumed. He is the God of Ephesians 1, who chose his people before the foundation of the world, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, whose eternal purpose in Christ Jesus was never interrupted, never parenthesized, never improvised. He is the God whose eternal decree to send his Son to die was not a contingency response to Israel's failure — it was the immutable, pre-temporal, unstoppable purpose of the triune God, who does not test and reset, but redeems and restores. This is the God we confess at Prosper CRC. This is the God our confessions describe. This is the God whose one covenant of grace has gathered one people from the beginning to the end of the world — not two peoples on parallel tracks, not a primary program and an inserted parenthesis, but one body, one bride, one church, built on one foundation, saved by one Mediator, secured by one immutable promise. The God of Scripture does not run experiments. He keeps his word. And because he keeps his word, his people are not consumed. Bibliography Charnock, Stephen. The Existence and Attributes of God . Edited by Mark Jones. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022. Clark, R. Scott. "Can Dispensationalists Be Reformed? (Part 1)." The Heidelblog . October 9, 2023. https://heidelblog.net/2023/10/can-dispensationalists-be-reformed- part-1/. "Darby, John Nelson." Dictionary of Irish Biography . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press / Royal Irish Academy. https://www.dib.ie/biography/darby-john-nelson-a2398 . Gribben, Crawford. "Darby, Dispensationalism, and the Rise of Evangelical A n t i s e m i t i s m ." T h e G o s p e l C o a l i t i o n . J u l y 1 0 , 2 0 2 4 . h t t p s : // www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/darby-dispensationalism/ . N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism*. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. Johns, Varner J. "Dispensationalism and the Scofield Bible." Ministry: International Journal for Pastors 18, no. 3 (March 1945). https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/ 1945/03/dispensationalism-and-the-scofield-bible. Mangum, R. Todd, and Mark S. Sweetnam. The Scofield Bible: Its History and Impact on the Evangelical Church . Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2012. Marino, Matt. "Dispensationalism 101." The Reformed Classicalist . April 29, 2023. https://www.reformedclassicalist.com/home/what-is-dispensationalism . Mathison, Keith A. "What Is Dispensationalism?" Ligonier Ministries. https:// learn.ligonier.org/articles/dispensationalism . Mohler, Albert. "J.N. Darby, the Father of Dispensationalism … or Maybe There Is More to the Story — A Conversation with Historian Crawford Gribben." Thinking in Public . Podcast. AlbertMohler.com . July 10, 2024. https://albertmohler.com/2024/07/10/crawford- gribben-2/. Ryrie, Charles C. Dispensationalism . Revised and expanded edition. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2007. Spurgeon, C. H. Commenting and Commentaries . London: Passmore and Alabaster, Vlach, Michael. "Dispensational Theology." The Gospel Coalition . https:// Footnotes Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism , rev. and exp. ed. (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2007), 33. C. I. Scofield, ed., The Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1909), 5. "Darby, John Nelson," Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press / Royal Irish Academy), https://www.dib.ie/biography/darby-john-nelson-a2398 . Michael Vlach, "Dispensational Theology," The Gospel Coalition , https:// www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/dispensational-theology/ . Albert Mohler, "J.N. Darby, the Father of Dispensationalism … or Maybe There Is More to the Story — A Conversation with Historian Crawford Gribben," Thinking in Public (podcast), AlbertMohler.com , July 10, 2024, https://albertmohler.com/2024/07/10/crawford-gribben-2/ . C. H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1876), 28. R. Scott Clark, "Can Dispensationalists Be Reformed? (Part 1)," The Heidelblog, October 9, 2023, https://heidelblog.net/2023/10/can-dispensationalists-be-reformed-part-1/ . Matt Marino, "Dispensationalism 101," The Reformed Classicalist, April 29, 2023, https:// www.reformedclassicalist.com/home/what-is-dispensationalism . Varner J. Johns, "Dispensationalism and the Scofield Bible," Ministry: International Journal for Pastors 18, no. 3 (March 1945), https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1945/03/ dispensationalism-and-the-scofield-bible. Rather than the reformed veiw the church and Israel are two names for God’s chosen people. Dispensationalists believe that the return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the prophecies that needs to be fulfilled in order for the Second Coming of Jesus to occur. Rather than favoring the conversion of Jews, dispensationalists view support of Jews as part of Christian doctrine. Dispensationalists cite Genesis 12:3, in which God promised Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse." Christian Zionists interpret this covenant with Abraham to apply to his descendants, the Jews, and thus they believe that supporting Israel, considered as the community of Jewish people and, since 1948, the Jewish state, is imperative to their own blessings as Christians. Gary Burge, a theologian in the Christian Reformed Church, states the Reformed position clearly: Christian Zionism takes the land promises of God in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 and applies them to the modern state of Israel. Therefore, despite Israel's own declared intention of being a secular state, modern Israel still benefits from a 4,000-year-old promise. Reformed theologians believe something decisive happened in Christ. His covenant affected not simply the covenant of Moses, making a new and timeless form of salvation, but also every other Jewish covenant, including Abraham's covenant. Reformed theology does not split Israel and the church; it finds rich continuity between them. Paul did not "become" a Christian; he realized the deepest meaning of his Jewishness when he chose to follow Jesus. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Eph 1:20–23. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Eph 2:14–16. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Heb 13:8. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ps 102:26–28. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 6. Stephen Charnock, 24. 17 The following Statement affirms this inerrancy of Scripture afresh, making clear our understanding of it and warning against its denial. We are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside the witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit and to refuse that submission to the claims of God's own Word which marks true Christian faith. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) Read Learn More About What We Believe Prosper Christian Reformed Church holds that the Bible is the inerrant, divinely inspired Word of God and the highest authority for faith and life. We believe in the centrality of the gospel: that all people are sinners in need of salvation, which comes through Jesus Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, by grace alone through faith alone. We practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and uphold traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. We affirm Reformed theology, including the five points of Calvinism, and embrace an amillennial view of Christ’s reign and the end times. What We Believe