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Never Alone Marriage Conference Easter Service Times Sermon Series New to Prosper CRC? Is this your first time at Prosper? We’re so glad you’re here! We want to make your visit as smooth as possible. Here’s some helpful information to get you started: Learn more about Prosper Kids Programming At Prosper, we are Gospel-Centered, Family-Focused, and Kingdom-Minded. Learn more about what we believe . Have Questions? We’d love to help! Contact Us We can’t wait to worship with you this Easter! March 5 at 6:30 PM Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent, a spiritual journey leading us to Easter. Join us for a special night of worship and prayer as we prepare our hearts in anticipation for this season and the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus! We will have programming available for kids birth through 5th grade. Sermon Series Watch Sermon Series How the Gospel brings us back to everything good Why is it that no matter how hard we search, true fulfillment always feels out of reach? The brokenness of the world surrounds us, trapping us in a cycle of empty promises and endless searching. But this Easter, we’re stepping into a better story—the story of Jesus Christ. Through the Gospel of John, we’ll witness the most extraordinary reversal in history: Jesus willingly taking our place in death, rising again, and dismantling the brokenness of the world. His love and power invite us into a new life, where restoration and lasting hope are finally possible. This is the gospel. This is Easter. Join us at Prosper this season and experience the Savior who promises to make all things new. Easter Events Breakout Speakers Name Name Name Name Name Name Frequently Asked Questions What is the theme of the 2025 Marriage Conference? “Never Alone” is the theme for the Peace Church 2025 Marriage Conference. We are never alone; we walk through life with our spouse, with our church, and with our Savior. How do I register? You can register for the 2025 Marriage Conference here . What is the conference schedule? Friday 5:30 PM | Doors open 6:00 PM | Session One & Worship Night 7:30 PM | Resource Shop Opens Saturday 8:00 AM | Check In, Breakfast, and Resource Shop 9:00 AM | Welcome and Worship 9:45 AM | Session Two 10:45 AM | Breakout #1 11:30 AM | Lunch + Resource Shop Open 12:30 PM | Breakout #2 1:30 PM | Session Three 2:30 PM | Q/A Session 3:00 PM | Concluding Worship 4:00 PM | Resource Shop Closes Can I bring my children? Childcare is offered only during the Friday night session. Will meals be provided? Breakfast and lunch will be provided as well as snacks throughout the day. Who can I contact for more information? Contact Nicole Baumann for more information. What if I have a food allergy? You can select your lunch choice in your registration. We will have dairy and gluten free options available! Does this conference celebrate same-sex "marriage"? No. Click here if you'd like to learn more about our biblical views on sexuality. Will we be in the new worship center? Most likely! Will this be live-streamed? No, however we will have the Keynote recordings available for a limited time after the conference to attendees. Can I attend this if I am engaged? Yes! Vision To see the Gospel embraced and passed on for generations of Kingdom impact. Mission At Peace Church, we are Gospel-Centered, Family-Focused, and Kingdom-Minded. Sponsors Sponsors 2024 Conference Messages Maundy Thursday At 6:30 PM "Maundy" comes from the Latin word meaning "mandate. "At the Last Supper, Jesus gave His disciples a simple, yet powerful mandate: to love one another. In this special communion service, we will see how, during the Last Supper, Jesus brings about the great reversal, turning the law into love. We’ll reflect on how Christ fulfills His own commandment through His sacrificial death. We will have programming available for kids birth through 5th grade. Easter Sunday At 9:30, and 11:00 AM Easter is the great reversal—when Jesus went from death to life! The Gospel is our promise, and the Resurrection of Jesus is our guarantee that we can have not only salvation but eternal life. As we celebrate Jesus' victory over Satan, sin, and death, you are invited to join us this Easter to hear about and celebrate the Risen King, as we see how the Gospel bring us back to everything good. We will have programming available for kids birth through 5th grade. Good Friday At 5:30 PM Many would consider it horribly ironic that the day Jesus Christ was crucified is called Good Friday, but it is truly good because Christ's sacrifice makes our salvation not just possible, but secure. On Good Friday, we witness an incredible reversal: When many would see Jesus willingly dying on the cross as a surrender, it was actually an eternal victory over sin when He cries out, “It is finished.” We will have programming available for kids birth through 5th grade.

Prosper Blog Drawing the Line of Legalism Mitchell Leach Heading 3 Drawing the Line of Legalism Mitchell Leach You’ve probably heard the term legalism, or legalist used — not just in the church — but in culture abroad. Legalism carries a clearly negative connotation (and for good reason). Yet legalism isn’t a word found in the English Bible, but that doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t say anything about it. Paul uses the phrase “works of the law” eight times in his writings (Romans 2:15, 3:20, 3:28, Galatians 2:16, 3:2, 3:5, 3:10). Can we trust the Council of Nicaea? Mitchell Leach Why can the church feel this way? Because men cannot create new — correct theology — men can only discover it. Men can invent new heresy, but not orthodoxy. Men and women today and in antiquity can only recognize it. And this is what the modern church should find confidence in. As noted above, the implications of this inform nearly every subsequent theological position the church has taken since. The council of Nicaea was moved by the Holy Spirit to... How is Man Made Right With God? Mitchell Leach If you look at any human relationship – any meaningful one at that – you will find injustice from either party. It is inescapable, humanity defaults toward relational injustice, not towards relational justice. We inflict harm to those we love, and those who love us. Humanity has a strange propensity to cause brokenness in relationships. We do this not just in our horizontal relationships, but in our vertical relationship with God. How is man made right with God? Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? Mitchell Leach "So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding buildup this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them”(Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.86). St. Augustine — accurately — describes that true comprehension of the Bible comes through a combination of prayer, faith, and an attitude of submission to God's will. It is by loving God and being compelled into action, If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? Mitchell Leach Whether or not prayer is effective (and it is effective), we are called to be followers of Christ. The question shouldn’t be “Does prayer change things?” But rather “Is Jesus God?” Because if he is in fact God, then what he says goes. Questioning God on whether his commandments make sense to us is a grievously offensive practice. In doing so we (as finite creatures) are inferring that we — somehow — have a better perspective... First Prev 1 Page 1 Next Last

Heading 5 Is God Able To Forgive Sin Without The Cross? Mitchell Leach December 23, 2025 Could God the Father have forgiven sin without Jesus dying on the cross? Would it have been possible for God to do this? Whenever we ask questions like these, our knee-jerk reaction is to think, “God can do whatever he wants.” But the implications of this question will show us a lot about what we believe about God. If God could On one side if God can forgive sin without Jesus dying on the cross, then what we see happen to Jesus at the end of the gospels is totally unnecessary. To say that God could forgive sin without the cross makes what happens at the end of the gospels a worthless act of torture towards his own son. If God cannot On the other side, it seems like saying God cannot do something is putting a rule or law on God that supersedes his power as if there were a higher authority that he had to submit to. If God can’t why can’t he? So which is it? Imagine you invited me and my family over for dinner, and after dinner, it is revealed that my youngest child has broken a window in your house. Not just any window but your big beautiful bay window that faces the road. In that situation, you have two options. You can demand that I pay to fix it. This would be just. My child broke a window, I should pay to make it right. Or you can forgive me. But in that situation, someone still has to pay, but rather than it being the offending party (me), the cost is shifted to the offended party (you). It’s not like this is something you can leave broken. Similarly, God cannot simply blink at sin and allow it to disappear magically. There is always a cost involved. The Bible is clear about the reality that we are sinful people (Genesis 3:6–7; Isaiah 59:1–2; Psalm 51:4). And the Bible states that there must be a penalty paid to make what was wrong, right again. God’s Justice God is just (Gen 18:25; Deut 32:4). Isaiah 5:16 says, “But the LORD of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.” [1] Wayne Grudem, the Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary defines what it means that God is just in his profound book Systematic Theology, “God’s righteousness means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the final moral standard of what is right.” [2] God is Who He is God’s justice or righteousness is a very part of who God is. So rather than thinking that God not being able to forgive sin must be him submitting to a higher authority, think about it as God not being able to go against his very nature. This is also called the doctrine of simplicity. “God’s simplicity entails that his essence and existence are identical, signifying that there is no composition or division within the divine nature.” [3] This means that God is what describes him. The way we describe God doesn’t divide up his essence but is who he is and how he acts together. God tells us this in Exodus 3:14, when, “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God therefore cannot “throw off” his justice for a moment to forgive universal sin. To do this would make him cease to be God, as his justice is part of his “Godness.” God’s Wrath Because God is perfectly righteous, he has a perfect hate for sin itself. “It is his indignation at sin, his revulsion to evil and all that opposes him, his displeasure at it and the venting of that displeasure. It is his passionate resistance to every will that is set against him.” [4] This is what we call God’s wrath. J.I. Packer, who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential theologians of the 20th Century, connects God’s holiness to his disdain of sin when he says, “Every facet of God’s nature and every aspect of his character may properly be spoken of as holy, just because it is his. The core of the concept, however, is God’s purity, which cannot tolerate any form of sin (Hab. 1:13) and thus calls sinners to constant self-abasement in his presence (Isa. 6:5).” [5] God’s wrath is something that we can feel uncomfortable with. The idea that God hates not only sin, but even certain people is unsettling to us in the global west. In recent years liberal theologians have argued that this idea is false and paints God as a vindictive deity. What this essentially boils down to is whether God can be both good and just at the same time. But this objection isn’t an enlightened response to this doctrine. This has been a point of contention since 300 AD. [6] But this — like the idea of God’s justice — is part of God’s character and nature, and it is beautiful. God’s wrath (or deep hatred of evil) has always been a part of his character. God’s holiness has been — throughout history — something that sinful man has had to deal with when encountering the living God. System to Cover Sin This is why understanding the whole Old Testament is so important. As Christians, it is easy to focus our attention on the New Testament because it seems like that’s where the best parts happen. As someone who loves theology, the New Testament is easy because it almost reads like a Western theological work. Yet neglecting to understand the essential ways that God worked throughout the Old Testament will leave us to make major errors in our theology. One main area this happens today is around the idea of atonement. Mankind’s problem — since the fall — has been that we cannot interact with a holy God. So, back in Leviticus, God lays out a system to atone for sin through the sacrifice of a goat on Yom Kippur (or the day of atonement). This goat would — ceremonially — take the place of the people, and would die for their sin. The reason for this is that the blood of an animal symbolizes its life. Something’s blood is needed to take the rightful place of our own. One life needed to be substituted for our own. This system was a foreshadowing of what was to be fully realized in the New Testament by the death of Jesus. Because while this was the system God set up for Israel, the blood of bulls and goats couldn’t satisfy God’s wrath against our sin. We needed someone to come to take on our sin so that we could be made right with God. We needed, not an animal, but a human to die to make right what man had made wrong. The Good News of the Gospel When Jesus went to the cross he took the full wrath from God the Father for sin on himself. Jesus would die for all those whom God had chosen to be his children. Romans 3:22–25 says “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” [7] The important word to focus on is the word propitiation. It’s an uncommon word in our vocabulary. It means to appease the wrath of a God. This passage is saying that Jesus (on the cross) was the thing that satisfied the wrath of God for sinners. In other words, Jesus traded places with me on the cross, because he received what I should have received. He got the full measure of God’s wrath for my sin. And in return, I get to be treated like Jesus should have been treated. This means (among many things) I can have oneness with the Father, freedom from sin, eternal life, and favor in the eyes of God the Father. It’s like our analogy earlier. On a cosmic scale, there are two options for us. We can either receive justice for our sin. This is what Hell is. It is us paying the price for our sin, which requires an eternal death because our debt is against an eternal God. Or we can receive forgiveness because Jesus took Hell on himself. He paid, in full, the penalty for our sin. Theologically this doctrine is called penal substitutionary atonement. This is a fancy way to say, “Jesus traded places with me on the cross (substitute), paid my penalty, and has atoned for my sins.” This is the core message of the Christian faith and the reason we worship God. He paid for my sin and took my place. This is a kind of love that is unbelievable. It is the kind of love that propels us to worship and sing Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress, Helpless, look to Thee for grace: Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Savior, or I die. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 5:16. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 203. Brandon Smith, “God’s Simplicity,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018). Tony Lane, “God’s Wrath,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018). J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1993), 43. Origen, “De Principiis,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Frederick Crombie, vol. 4, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 278. “Now, since this consideration has weight with some, that the leaders of that heresy (of which we have been speaking) think they have established a kind of division, according to which they have declared that justice is one thing and goodness another, and have applied this division even to divine things, maintaining that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is indeed a good God, but not a just one, whereas the God of the law and the prophets is just, but not good” Origen refutes a heresy that distinguishes between a good God (Father of Jesus Christ) and a just but not good God (God of the Old Testament). He argues that this view misinterprets God's nature, as it fails to recognize that divine justice and goodness are not mutually exclusive but are harmoniously unified in God. He challenges the heretics' understanding of justice and goodness, illustrating through scriptural examples that God's actions, whether seemingly harsh or compassionate, are always just and good. Origen emphasizes that God's justice is not merely punitive but aims at correction and improvement, revealing a deeper, harmonious nature of divine justice and goodness. Origen concludes that the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is the same, both just and good, rewarding and punishing appropriately. He encourages a deeper understanding of the Scriptures to appreciate the unity of God's nature, rejecting the dualistic view that separates God's justice from His goodness. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 3:22–25. 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like How is Man Made Right With God? Read More

The Promise in the Ruins Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Sunday, November 30, 2025 Audio The Promise in the Ruins Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 47:56 Sermon Transcript Good morning. My name is Dean Van Ostrin. My wife Debbie and I have been members of Prosper Christian Reformed Church, coming up on 30 years. Most recently I had the privilege of serving on the search committee with an extremely dedicated group of people. Our scripture reading today comes from Genesis 3, verses 1 through through 15. Please turn with me in your Bibles as we hear God's word. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loin cloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden and in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and he said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman, who you gave to me to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed you are above all livestock and above all beasts of the fields. And on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat. All the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thank you, Dean. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 in the morning, five men changed the world. They would make a mistake that quite nearly would almost ended the world in the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. It started out with all things as a safety test. These five men made a series of mistakes, of reckless decisions. They ignored warning signs, they shut off safety systems and they pushed a nuclear reactor core past its limit, past what it was designed for. Within seconds, the reactor core exploded and it became one of the worst man made disasters in human history. After the Soviet Union had realized what had happened, that the reactor core exploded, they dumped boron sand on it. They built a concrete sarcophagus, they evacuated cities. They tried to seal the ground, the air, the water. But no matter what they did, they could not undo their original mistake. Genesis 3 is the Chernobyl of human history. One act, one choice, and the fallout is still with us. Like Chernobyl, Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves. They tried to shift the blame. But they could not outdo or undo what they had broken. No matter how much concrete, no matter how many helicopters they sent, no matter how many lives were risked, they could not undo what they had already unleashed. That's Genesis 3. The fallout of one act, one choice still reaches into every corner of the human heart. And advent begins with this truth. We need a savior. Because we cannot fix ourselves, Humanity still can't. Sins fall out is far deeper than the human repair. We can patch symptoms, but we cannot reach the core. That leads us to our main question. Do we have the ability to make up for what we've done? Do we have the ability to make up for what we've done? We want to believe that we can fix the things that we've broken. If we get a speeding ticket, we'll be more careful and feels like that speeding ticket should be, shouldn't count anymore. Or if we blow up at somebody, then, you know, if we're, if we apologize, then that kind of minimizes the damage or it erases the damage. If someone steals, they can convince themselves that giving to charity balances the scales. If they lie, if someone lies well then if I'm honest more often, then we can pretend that the lie evaporates. This is how our human hearts work. We believe that good behavior should outdo the bad behavior in our life. But does it? A season of good driving, does it erase a reckless driving ticket? A month of kindness doesn't erase a cruel word that cuts someone deeply. A generous donation does not return what was stolen. An apology does not put back the trust that once was was. We instinctively try to outweigh our wrongs with something that was done, something that we do right. It's built into us the sense that with enough effort, we can repair our own mess. But here's the uncomfortable truth. We may be able to fix a dented car. We may be able to repair a broken window, but we cannot repair a broken soul. We cannot unsay words. We cannot undo the choices we make. You can't unbreak what sin has already broken in your life or in the world when we feel it. Or we feel it when we lie awake at night replaying something that we said, something that we've done. We feel it in the shame from years ago that's still stings today. We feel it when we look at a relationship that was shattered and think, if only I could go back. If only I could unsay the thing I said. That's Genesis 3. One act, one choice. And the fallout is still with us today. We can try to cover ourselves with fig leaves. We can try to shift blame. We can try to justify or perform or try harder. But we cannot undo the core meltdown of sin. And that leads us to our big question of Advent. Do we have the ability to make up for what we've done? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter three as we see these three movements in this section. Actually, before we get there, this series, what we're going to be looking at is this. 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. So let's look at these first three movements in this passage, Genesis 3, we'll see the first sin, the first consequence, and the first judgment. This may not feel like a typical Advent series or an Advent text to read during this season. We're not talking about the angels coming to Mary yet. We haven't gotten there. We're starting off with the fall in the next couple weeks. We're going to stay in the book of Genesis as we look for this long expected Savior. But what is Advent? Advent is waiting, is longing for Christ. And that's what we see in the story of Genesis, the longing for the one who would make everything right again. Advent begins in the shadows of Genesis 3 because you cannot long for salvation unless you understand the fall first. This chapter will teach us. As humanity falls into sin, God promises to defeat the serpent and sin itself. And that let's look at that first section in verses 1 through 7. The first sin. Up until this point in the Bible, everything's good, everything's right. Adam and Eve have a perfect relationship with God. Everything had just been created. In fact, creation had just been getting settled into what it meant to be created. Everything was good. There was no sin, no death, no evil. And then we get to verse one. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. We see that word now stick out like a sore thumb. Now there's a change in the shift of tone of this book. So far, everything's good up until this point, but now, now we get introduced to the protagonist, to the enemy, to the one who's going to cause problems. We are introduced to Satan in snake form. And I think we need to pause ourselves just for a second and ask, who is Satan? We talk about Satan a lot, but we don't really maybe understand him. Or we don't take the time to talk about Satan enough. Who is Satan? Satan is a real and personal and malevolent spiritual being who opposes God, opposes his purposes and seeks to deceive, accuse and destroy humanity. Satan, here in the garden and here today, is here to destroy us. Jesus speaks about this in John chapter 8. He says, when he lies, speaking about Satan, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. And that's what we see him do in this section. Notice how he tempts Adam and Eve. He doesn't talk about offering gold or a better house or, you know, some kind of benefit. He tempts them by questioning them, by questioning God's words, by taking God's words and turning it against Adam and Eve. He says, did God really say, I wonder how often we say that in our own heart when we choose sin. Well, I know you know, this probably is wrong, but did God really say, I can't break it? Here he lies to them by saying that they won't die, that God is holding back something from them. God gave them one rule, and he gave them this rule because God knew that if they ate it, Adam and Eve would think that they didn't need God. They would think that they could find happiness or that they could try to be happy apart from God. They knew that, or God knew that this would lead them into misery. Then the snake tempts Eve by saying this in verse 5. For God knows that when you eat of it, eat of the knowledge of the tree of good and the Fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. Your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil, essentially asking Adam and Eve, does God really love you? He's keeping something from you. He knows that if you eat this, you'll be like him, knowing good and evil, being able to define it. This is the temptation that Satan uses against the first people, Adam and Eve. Satan hasn't switched up his tactic at all. This is the same trick that he plays on each and every one of us. This is the same trick that he uses day in and day out since this moment in Genesis 3. This is the universal problem for us. This is the scar left on every human heart since the fall. We want to choose what's right and wrong. We want to be the judge. We want to be able to define what is good and what is evil. This is the essence of sin. This happens from here on out in the book of Genesis. This happens from here on out in the Bible. Cain kills his brother because he defines what's right and wrong. He gets to decide who lives and dies. Noah, after completing the voyage, gets drunk and naked after the flood. Abraham decides that he's going to lie. He gets to decide what's true and what isn't. About his wife being his sister. And the truth is we do the same thing. Probably not about our wife being our sister, but you know, you get the idea. When we choose to lie, when we choose to gossip, when we choose to hate or to lust or to be greedy, we are choosing. We are deciding what is right and what is wrong. All sin is choosing to sit in God's place and decide. I'm the one who gets to decide what's right and wrong here. Every temptation from Satan carries the same lie. Is God withholding something from you? And sin begins. All sin begins with believing that lie at it's at the heart of our sin nature that we want to serve ourselves. And we will be the people who decide when we get to break the law, when it serves us best. When we decide that breaking God's rules gets us what we want. We hear this today in phrases like be in charge of your own destiny, right? Essentially, be the one who decides your own path. Be the one who decides how you're going to live. Be the one who decides whether you're going to obey God or not. From Cain to Noah to Abraham, and even down to us, every sin is an attempt at God's throne. Sin is not just breaking one of God's rules. It is replacing God's rule in our life. That's the lie behind every sin. The belief that life will be better on our own terms than God's. And at the moment Adam and Eve believed this lie, everything changed. Not just for them, not just for humanity, but for all of creation. As soon as they sinned, they felt the weight of it. And they knew they needed to cover themselves and run. And so that's what they do. That's what we see in this next section, verses 8 through 13. The first consequences. God came to them. God comes down into the garden and their first response, their first impulse is to hide. They didn't just hide, but verse eight says, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Does that sound familiar? Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord when he knew that he didn't want to follow or obey what God did. He knew that he was sinning. He fled not from God, but from his presence. This is an ancient thing in our hearts that we want. We want to run away from God's presence because we know God sees all and is all, and we hate. We hate that he can see our hearts. They realized that the fig leaves that they tried to cover themselves with would not work, would not be enough, weren't sufficient. It's an interesting note here that as sin enters the world, the first thing that people try to do is to cover themselves. The same word used in this section for cover is used later on in the Old Testament. It's translated a different way. In our English Bibles, we'll read the word atonement. This word to cover is trying to atone for their sins, trying to make right what they had made wrong. We need someone to cover us. We feel that when we sin, we feel the need to justify ourselves or to do something to make it okay, what just happened. But instead of turning to God, we turn inward. We're the ones who try to make it right. And that's what Adam and Eve do. They run. They cover themselves. The question for us isn't are we trying to run? Are we trying to cover it? Is what are you covering yourself from? What are you running from? What are you running from this season? From something you said that caused a rift relationship. Is it a lie you told? Maybe gossip that you helped spread or an addiction that you don't want to bring into the light? Is it greed in your heart? It's easy to believe that we can cover ourselves, that we can run away, but it usually comes to light. The truth is we're not that clever. Our sin usually has a way of coming out in our life, but even if it doesn't, God sees it. Even if it doesn't come out, even if you clever enough to hide your sin from everyone else that's in your life, God knows. God sees, isn't hidden. So God calls Adam. And in verse 10, we hear Adam's response. It says, and he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Adam replies, God, I was naked. God's reply to that is, who told you this? Essentially, have you done the one thing I told you not to do? And Adam's response to that is clever. He says, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate it first. He goes, it was my wife's fault. I don't know if men you've ever tried that, but that doesn't go very far, does it? I almost think that he was seeing out of the corner of his eye when he started that sentence. And he goes, it was. It was the woman. And then he sees her and goes, it was the one you gave me, you know, he goes, from her to God really quick. Adam is showing signs of the fall on the human heart. Already within minutes of this happening, the fall has pervaded his heart, invaded his heart. He's defining what's right and wrong. He tries to blame shift. He blame shifts from his wife to God himself. And Eve, following her leader, following her head, does the same thing, shifts the blame to someone else too. What results is the first judgment. And that's what we see in this next section, verses 14 and 15. Then God hands out curses on all three. And it's interesting the order in which God does this. He doesn't begin with Adam and Eve, but he begins his first word of judgment. The first word of judgment in human history falls on the serpent, not on humanity. Before God addresses the sinners, he addresses his enemies, his enemy who deceived him. God's judgment begins as an act of protection. I think that's a neat thing that we often miss in Genesis chapter three, but primarily today, we're going to look at the curse that's handed out on the serpent. Specifically verse 15. Verse 15, it says this. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. These words are not just a curse, they are a declaration of war. God himself initiates the ongoing conflict that will play out for the rest of humanity. I will put enmity. In other words, I will not allow the serpent to stay in alliance with humanity any longer. God is taking back the territory that the serpent invaded. As humanity falls into sin, God promises to defeat the serpent. God's curse on the serpent, or when God cursed the serpent, it wasn't only a message of doom, but it was a message of hope. There would be a rescue, There would be a rescuer. Someone would come to save humanity and all of creation. The Heidelberg Catechism gives us a great question and answer here. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for? One who is true and a righteous man. One who is a true and righteous man, yet more powerful than all the creatures. That is one who is also true God. What we see here handed out in this first, this first condemnation, this first curse, the first consequence is the first gospel. The Belgian Confession Article 17 says this, I think, hits this right on the head. I One of the things that you're going to learn about me is I love the creeds and confessions. And sometimes I try, sometimes they're long and lengthy and I try to cut them out. But these two, I just couldn't. They're so, so good. Here says we believe that our good God, by his marvelous wisdom and goodness, seeing that man had plunged himself into physical and spiritual death, set out to to seek him and comfort him. When he was trembling and fled from him, he promised him that he would give his son, born of a woman, to crush the head of the serpent and restore what was ruined. Notice how specific God is in this verse. In verse 15, a child will come, the offspring of a woman. Of the woman he will be wounded. You will bruise his heel, but he will deal the final blow. He will crush your head. The serpent will strike, but the Savior will destroy. This isn't vague hope. This is a roadmap. Roadmap directly to Christmas. Even in judgment, God is already moving towards mercy. Humanity is in hiding, blaming and covering themselves. But God refuses to leave them there in this very moment, justice. As justice falls, grace breaks in. Before God speaks a word of judgment to Adam and Eve, he speaks a word of salvation over them. That from the woman a savior would come. God vows to make right what man made wrong so right. At the center of humanity's darkest moment, God lights the first hope candle. He promises that sin will not win, that the serpent will not win, that death will not win. That leads us to our main idea. God promises to make right what man made wrong. God promises to make right what man made wrong. And he does this by sending himself. Oftentimes when we think about Christmas, it's the positive holiday, right? Easter is another one of those positive holidays. Good Friday, that's a sad one. But Easter comes and then it's a happy one. But Christmas, if we're honest with ourselves and if we read the story of Christmas, it's not necessarily a happy holiday. We think about the cute nativity, we think about the snow and think about Santa Claus and all these different things. But Christmas is an indictment on humanity. Essentially, God's in heaven saying, don't make me come down there. But we force his hand. If you've ever been in a car with little kids and you've said that, you understand that sometimes your hand is forced. He didn't come down to destroy us, though. He came down to save us. He came down both as a judge and a rescuer, confronting our sin while providing the way for escape. And that's what makes Christmas so staggering. The very God we rejected is the one who came to redeem us. The manger only makes sense in the shadow of the garden. The crib only makes sense because of the curse. The birth only makes sense because of the fall. Christmas is a holiday full of hope, but it's born out of hopelessness. Hope that had to come from outside of us because there was nothing left inside that could fix what we've broken. Genesis 3 tells us that we can't cover ourselves, that we can't save ourselves, that we can't climb our way back to God. So God came down to us. He stepped into our darkness. He entered the very world that rejected him. He became the offspring that would crush the head of the serpent. And that's what we remember at Advent. Not just the sweetness of Jesus birth, but the desperation that made his birth necessary. And once you understand that, you'll see that. You'll see why Advent always leads somewhere. It can't just stay in our homes. It can't just stay in this building. It invades every inch of our life. It changes hearts, changes lives, changes relationships. And that's why it leads us into our application. Our first point of application is this. Stop blaming. Take responsibility for one relational conflict. Christmas this season can be a tough time on relationships. Maybe. Maybe your Thanksgiving was rough. Maybe you had a liberal uncle who said, you know, crazy things at your dinner table. I don't know, but I'm just kidding. Adam and Eve, when they were caught in sin, pointed to someone else. And we often do the same thing by Doing this, we get to try to define what's right and wrong. We try to justify our own bad actions. We say what I said wasn't really that wrong because X, Y and Z, whatever we want to use to justify our poor behavior. But today I want you to think about one relationship that is strained. Maybe it's you and your spouse or an adult child or a co worker or maybe it's somebody here at church. I want you to ask, I want you to ask God, is part of this genuinely my fault? Most of the time it is if we're honest with ourselves. And I want you to go to that person, I want you to confess to that person what you've done, your part in this, but I want you to do it without adding, but you also did this. Every time we try to blame shift, we reenact the fall grace begins where our excuses end. So take responsibility for one relational conflict. The next thing is to invite someone into the story of the snake crushing savior. In the seats in front of you or on your seats when you walked in, there were these cards, these invite cards. They're business cards. They can fit in your wallet. That's why I wanted to make them that size. So that you take them with you. Take all of those with you. I don't want to see any left in here. Otherwise I'm going to remember where you guys stood. Do I need to take a picture? No, I'm just kidding. Where you guys sat. Take them with you. And I want you to invite one person who needs a church home in our community that you know, invite them to Christmas Eve. Fewer than half of us adults, only 47% say that they will attend a church service this Christmas. Yet more than half of those people who don't attend. So 56% of people say that they would come if they were invited by someone. That's crazy, right? I thought that would be like 2%, right? Half of the people that we interact with who don't go to church would come if only we would invite them. So this is the time, this is the season to be bold, to take initiative and to invite someone who doesn't have a church home. There are people in our community right now who will suffer eternal punishment, eternal suffering if they don't hear the gospel. I truly believe that if we all did this, if each and every one of us did this, that there wouldn't just be individuals whose lives are changed, but there would be families and generations of lives that are changed. Hearts that are turned to God. But I promise you this will not happen. If we think right now in our head, well, someone else will do that. You know, so and so. They're really good at evangelism. If that's the way that we think. This won't work. That. I was a lifeguard for a while, and what they teach you when there's an emergency is that you can't say, somebody call 91 1. If you say that, no one will call. No one will call. Everyone will think somebody else will do this. You have to point to someone and say, you call 91 1. So this is my moment right here, pointing at you, each and every one of you, saying, you invite someone this Christmas. All right, I think I laid it down thick enough. Next one. Our last application point is this. Bring one hidden thing into the light this week. Genesis 3 exposes our instinct to hide. We need to do the opposite. Identify the lies that we hear the most in our heart. Identify something that you've hidden or tried to cover yourself with that you've tried to cover all by yourself. Maybe we speak lies to ourselves that say we deserve this sin or God's holding out on you, or you'll be happier doing it your own way, or nobody will know the first sin. The first thing that sin does to us is that it makes us try to hide. That's what the first sin shows us. But the first thing that the gospel does is, is it brings us out of hiding. Bring one thing hidden into the light this week. So how is it that we can be people who avoid blame shifting that bring our sin out of hiding? Why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we try to hide our sin? Right? Isn't it better for us? Isn't it easier to not have to admit something that you've done wrong? Why would we intentionally make ourselves weak? Why would we actively take the blame when we might be able to pass it on to somebody else? The truth is because someone has taken our blame. Because someone became weak for us. When we try to cover ourselves, we can do this by all types of methods. By justifying ourselves, by dismissing, by hiding, by blame shifting. This is humanity's natural response to sin. And it seems like that's the only way. But the gospel shows us another way. As Christians, we have another way. We can try to conceal ourselves and we can try to cover ourselves. But the gospel tells us that we've realized that our sin was covered because Jesus wore our sin on the cross. We don't have to worry about trying to cover our tracks anymore. We don't have to try to worry about saving face. We don't have to try to be the people publicly who seem blameless. Because our religion is built on the fact that each and every one of us are sinners. We have to admit that that's the first thing that we have to do. We don't have to be people that have it all together. In fact, it makes Christ stronger. It makes Christianity stronger when we admit that that we don't have everything together. We don't have to be the ones who make the world right. We don't have to be the ones who make ourselves right. We don't have to justify ourselves. We don't have to save ourselves. We can't. The good news is that God promises to make right what man made wrong. Remember that this Advent season. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are. That you are a God who saves us. That you are the God who promised to make right what we couldn't. God, we thank you that it is not on us. God, you are so good. You are so good to us. Help us respond as we worship as people transformed by your word. It's in your name we pray. Amen Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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

Heading 5 If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? Mitchell Leach October 13, 2024 Since I have become convinced of God’s ultimate power to rule over all of the events in history, the present, and the future, I’ve struggled with prayer. And I know I’m not alone. I know many Calvinists who struggle to pray because we believe that God not only knows what is going to happen but that he has planned it. The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 5, "Of Providence" articulates the belief that God, in His providence, ordains not only the outcomes of all things (the ends) but also how these outcomes are achieved. If God controls all things, and God doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8), why should we pray? It is a Biblical command One of the clearest reasons why we should pray is simply because God asks us to pray (Matthew 6:6, Philippians 4:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). Whether or not prayer is effective (and it is effective), we are called to be followers of Christ. The question shouldn’t be “Does prayer change things?” But rather “Is Jesus God?” Because if he is in fact God, then what he says goes. Questioning God on whether his commandments make sense to us is a grievously offensive practice. In doing so we (as finite creatures) are inferring that we — somehow — have a better perspective than God (an infinite and eternal being) on not only what is good and righteous but on the outcomes of history. God is our Father Another reason is that God wants a relationship with his people. We are called to pray to the first person of the trinity, God the Father. This Father-like language is used throughout scripture on purpose because it communicates that God is a relational God and wants to know us and be known to us. If you have children think about what is happening when your child asks for something. They are showing — on a surface level — that they want a relationship with you, even if that’s simply out of their own need. We as parents could try to supply everything our children need without them ever having to ask. But that’s not a relationship that’s a vending machine. When our children ask for good things it’s a delight to meet their requests. It’s also a delight when they actually ask for a bad thing so we can stop it before choosing to give the dog a haircut. God on a more infinite scale loves to answer his children’s requests for good things with joy. He is our benevolent Father who not only wants to bless us but to commune with us as well. God uses the means The rationale that provided the biggest breakthrough for me was that God uses our prayer in his sovereign will to accomplish the ends he desires. In his Systematic Theology, Charles Hodge discusses the efficacy of prayer within the context of divine sovereignty, stating, “But it is certain that the Scriptures teach both foreordination and the efficacy of prayer. The two, therefore, cannot be inconsistent. God has not determined to accomplish his purposes without the use of means; and among those means, the prayers of his people have their appropriate place.” Hodge highlights that prayer, like any other means, is appointed by God and works within His sovereign plan. But honestly, many theologians have said a lot about prayer, so let’s look at what scripture says. 1 John 5:14-15 says “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” What John is saying in this verse is that God will give us what we ask for when it aligns with his will and that he hears and responds to our prayers. Again this verse shows that God isn’t changed by our prayers, but how he acts does. Our prayer never changes the end result of how God will act in redemptive history. Nor can we pray hard enough for God to change the result of God’s plan in and for our lives. In John Frame's third volume on The Theology of Lordship, he says, “God ordains prayer as a means to change history. There are things that happen because of prayer, and things that do not happen because of no prayer.” He goes on to say “Now of course prayer doesn't change the eternal plan of God. But within that eternal plan, there are many plans for means and ends.” Frame’s view of prayer could be summed up like this, God has an overarching plan for us, yet he has designed our prayer into how his will is enacted. Prayer is for us As we pray we have the privilege of coming before the most powerful being in the universe to not only ask for things, but praise him, to confess, and thank him for all he has done. The amazing part of this reality is that God desires to hear about the triviality of our lives. As we encounter God in prayer it has the power to change us. 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like Offensive Spiritual Warfare Read More

The Child Who Fulfills Every Promise Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Wednesday, December 24, 2025 Audio The Child Who Fulfills Every Promise Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 46:02 Sermon Transcript Introduction Some stories stay with us because they're beautiful, and some because they're honest. One of those stories for me is the book The Great Gatsby. It was a book that I hated reading in high school because the ending. The ending was so terrible. I realize now that that was part of the whole point, It was actually brilliant writing on the author's part to make you feel that bad by the end of the book. The Great Gatsby is not a book about romance. It was a story about what hope means, about what happens when you build your life around the belief that one thing, one relationship, one moment, one dream can finally make you whole. Gatsby built his entire life around the belief that Daisy, her love, would redeem him and make him whole. But it doesn't. And that's what makes the ending so unsettling, because in its ending, we see ourselves in Gatsby. We may not build mansions or throw parties, but we all build our lives around something we believe will fix us. Things we believe will finally make things right. Christmas is a season when those things rise to the surface. The lights are the brightest, the music is familiar, and the expectations are high. And when whatever we're counting on to save us feels closer than ever or it may be more fragile than ever. Big Question What are you counting on? What are you counting on this Christmas season? What are you counting on in your life? Most of us are counting on something, not something evil. We're counting on something reasonable, something good, something understandable. For some of us, we hope that this year will finally be different. Different than all the other ones. That relationships would heal. Family gatherings would go smoothly. Old tensions wouldn't resurface, and the ache that we've been carrying for years would ease. For others, we seek stability or success, needing to be right, being needed or being admired, or maybe for us as parents getting through this week without losing our minds with our kids at home, right? That's what that Christmas song is all about, right? Gatsby believed that Daisy could give him a future that would help him erase his past. We might say it different, but we often believe that If this works out or if that comes through, everything's going to be okay. The problem isn't that we hope. The problem is that we hope in things created. We place the burden on created things to carry the weight that only God can do to heal what is broken in us, to give us peace, and to justify our lives. Christmas has a way of exposing what we're really counting on because the expectations are higher. Emotions are closer to the surface. And if you ask any five-year-old tomorrow who didn't get what they want, disappointments hurt more this time of year, don't they? So ask yourself honestly: What would devastate you most if it didn't happen this year? What are you hoping will finally make things feel whole for you? What are you counting on to carry the weight of your happiness? Essentially, what are you counting on? The good news is that the Bible has great answers for us. We're going to look at two things tonight. A promise the world has been waiting for and that the promise is a son. So let's look at that first one. A Promise The World Has Been Waiting For When we think about where Christmas starts, we often think about the baby in a manger, or maybe we think about the angel coming to Mary, or we think about the star, we think about the wise men or the shepherds. But this story starts way before what Luke records in his gospel. The story of the advent starts in Genesis, starts in Eden. God had just created humanity. Everything was perfect, not just more not only perfect, but relationally whole. Nothing was hidden, nothing was strained. God walked with humanity, and humanity was at rest. It was the perfect that we longed for, the satisfaction that lasts. God had given Adam and Eve the first people one rule, and they broke it. As God was ushering them out of paradise, he gave them a promise. Someone would come to make right what they had made wrong. The promise is that the offspring of the woman would come to someone who would bring back that peace that they had lost. Every generation wondered, is this finally the one? That's what Genesis shows us, the genealogies, all that. It's tracing who would be the one to crush the head of the snake. And yet every generation was disappointed. The whole story of the Old Testament is a story waiting for the long-expected redeemer, the one who would make everything right, except chapter after chapter, book after book, we are left without a happy ending. No one could make it right. No one even came close. No one even filled half of the requirements that the job description required. And yet the Old Testament isn't a pessimistic book. There's hope littered throughout every page, a quiet whisper that God will bring us the one who will make us whole, who will make redemption possible. That's what makes Christmas and this Christmas story, magical. Not magical in the sense of escape, but miraculous in the sense of fulfillment. This isn't a story that distracts us from reality. It's a story that finally explains it. It's what transforms this season into a season of hope. It's the true reason we love this season, whether we understand it or not. Not for the presents, not for the music that we love, not for the family get-togethers. Why we love Christmas is because Christmas is an answer. It's an answer to a question humanity has been asking since sin entered the world. It's a question each and every one of us has asked deep within our heart. Who will come and fix the brokenness I feel? Who will come and redeem what feels lost? Who will make everything right? It's the reason we love Christmas. It's because the answer has come. The answer isn't another philosophy, another self-help book, another form of therapy, another thing. The answer is a person, and his name is Jesus. After centuries of waiting, the question isn't if someone would come, but who could it possibly be? The Promise Is A Son The answer that we see is the promise is a son. After centuries of silence, God speaks again, not to a king, not to a prophet, not to a priest, not to Jerusalem, not to someone important. He speaks to no one. He speaks to a no one. And yet he speaks. The promise is coming. God sends the angel Gabriel to Mary to deliver the world's greatest news. The promise from the garden would become incarnate. God would make good on his promise, even if he had to do it himself. The way that this story unfolds is wildly unimpressive. In fact, it's so unimpressive. It's impressive how how impressive it is. It is incredible. The good news comes to a teenager in a town that no one had ever heard of. But this is how God works. All throughout the Bible, God uses the unimpressive, the overlooked, the weak, the outsider, the stranger, the nobody, which is great news for us. Because if salvation required being impressive, being righteous, Being powerful or being all put together, we would have been disqualified before we had a chance to begin. The good news for us is that we do not have to be impressive for God to save us. This Christmas season, do you feel passed Do you feel unimportant? Do you feel like a nobody? Do you feel like you have nothing to give, nothing to bring? The good news is we stand before our creator who looks at creation and says, Look at what I do with nothing. Bring me your nothing. That's enough for me. God wanted to show that it is his greatness, not ours, that he needs. He will show his greatness through us, whether we are impressive or not. For generations, God's people had lived with these unanswered prayers. They married, they buried their children, they watched Kingdoms rise and fall, and still they waited. And yet Luke, Luke is telling us this wait is over. Jesus has come, but he's come unimpressively. Jesus comes and is born into one of the poorest households maybe in history. He's born into extreme poverty. When Jesus goes to the temple with his parents, just a couple of days after he's born, his parents sacrifice, which was a common practice in Israel. They sacrifice a dove, which indicates to us that they were one of the poorest people in all of Israel. That was only allowed if you couldn't afford anything else. In Nazareth, it was a particularly poor town, but that being said about what they had given, they were probably one of the poorest, even in Nazareth. There was a section that we can look back at through archeological digs and findings that there was a section of housing that people lived in that was carved out of a cliffside. Jesus probably lived there. Jesus's home, his bed was probably carved out of rock. Jesus probably lived in cold, dark cave. Jesus's life would show God's greatness through obscurity. He came not to be impressive. He was born in a manger, but he came to save. He came to redeem. And that's the message that Mary receives, that she will bear the Son of God. Let's look at verses 30 and 31, if you have your Bible still open. It says this, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you should call his name Jesus. She will not just bear any son. She will bear the long expected king. I think when we hear the word king, we think about the power that it takes. We think about Rome. We think about the Roman Caesars. That's definitely what the people of Israel thought of, that the king would come to be this king. That's what they were hoping And yet God had something else in mind, a king who would conquer by serving, a king who would seek his father like David did. That's what we see in the next two verses. Luke 2:32, it says, He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end. Notice how the angel talks to Mary. She brings Mary through history, at least two historical people, that Jesus will fulfill the covenant that God made with David. This covenant from 2 Samuel 7 says this, "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son." The promise That God gave David is the same promise he's giving to Mary. Jesus would be the king, the king of kings the world had been waiting for. And yet, he would not look like any king going before him. He would bring everlasting peace. He would defeat all of his and our enemies. But he would do this not by military conquest. He would do this by being conquered. He would be the one to defeat death itself by dying. The angel doesn't just talk about David, but he goes all the way back to Genesis, bringing up Jacob. The weeks leading up to tonight, we We've been studying the Book of Genesis and how it leads us on a path directly towards Bethlehem, the long-expected savior, the one who had crushed the head of the snake. We've been looking and tracing this person through the Book of Genesis. We saw that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve being tempted by the snake. God promised to reverse what had happened by crushing the serpent's head. Jacob was the father of the people who God would use to bring forth the snake crusher. Jesus would be the one to make everything right. The promise had narrowed from a people to a family, to a virgin, to a child in a manger. All of history is holding its breath for this moment. Main idea The long-expected deliverer and king has come The long-expected deliverer and king has come. Since the beginning, we needed a rescuer. We can see the constant and consistent downward spiral in scripture towards sin and away from God. We can see the misery that it brings to the world. In addition to scripture, we can feel this in our lives as well. With or without the Bible, we know that this is true. We know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world we live in. There is something fundamentally wrong even in us. We see this and feel this when success does not satisfy, when relationships fracture, when guilt lingers longer than it should, when we achieve what we desire and still feel restless. And yet the thing that we've truly wanted, the thing that we truly need has come. The thing that would restore us came 2,000 years ago. And whether we want to admit it or not, we are still people, whether we believe this, we are still people who look somewhere else. We look somewhere else for something that will satisfy us, something that will make us whole. Christmas does not invent this longing. It exposes it. C. S. Lewis has this quote that says, "If I find myself in a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." The longing we feel in this world proves that we need a true salvation, not something temporary, not just another add-on, not just another scheme we can add to try to make ourselves happy. We need true and lasting salvation. What advent shows us is that we not only can't we chase down our own salvation, but we don't have to because God came to us. God became a man and dwelt among us. It's why we sing the song we sing earlier, Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free. From our fears and sins, release us. Let us find our rest in thee. We no longer have wait to find the answer that humanity has been waiting for since sin came into the world. We can find true rest in our savior. But because of sin, we could not get to God, so God had to come to us. Salvation did not come through effort, through improvement, through enlightenment. It came through incarnation. Such good news cannot remain good news unless it changes us. We can't just see this and remain unchanged. And that leads us into our points of application, Application Believe This story is more than good news. You can't encounter it in a meaningful way and not let it change you. You can't sample it. You can't use it only for inspiration. We must believe it. This is not another add-on to our life to make our life better. This is not another philosophy that we try to mix in with other ones to see if finally this will be the thing that makes us happier. If I add just a little bit more Jesus in, then my life can be a little bit happier. No. This is This is surrender. This is saying to God, I've tried to save myself, and I can't. I know I can't. I've tried everything. I've tried justifying my actions. I've tried using it and anything and everything to distract me or numb me from the feeling that I have inside that I know something is broken, something is wrong, a longing for something true, something real. God, I surrender that desire to try to save myself. I can't. I won't be able to. I've been trying to answer the question, what will save me all alone on my own? But God, now in this moment, I know that you've given me the answer. His name is Jesus. What we believe as Christians is that Jesus came and lived the life we couldn't. He was perfect. And he came to die. He came to die on a cross trading places with us. He took what we deserved. He was punished. Although he had done nothing wrong, what he deserved was everything good. He came to be punished in our place. That's what we deserve. We deserve to be punished, to be cursed. And yet the God who created everything came to bear our curse. And three days later, after he died, he rose again from the dead. If tonight you're hearing this for the first time and it's starting to make sense to you, if you believe this, I don't want you to pass up on this moment of what the Holy spirit is doing in you. This isn't something that you've done, that you've worked out intellectually. This is God working in your heart. Christmas is more than a story of acute nativity. It is a story that can transform every part of your being. If that's happening for you today, I don't want you to miss it. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or do anything silly. But if after the service you want to talk, me and a couple elders will be up here in front, and we'd love to pray with you and talk about what this looks like. Rejoice But I want you to know one of your clear next steps is this, to rejoice. And for everyone who believes in the gospel, it is a call for us to rejoice. This is the greatest news in the history of the world. Our savior is finally here. This should cause us overwhelming rejoicing, overwhelming amounts of worship that we no longer have to seek out to save ourselves, that we no longer have to try to find the right philosophy, the right thing, the right person who will save us. He's here. He came 2,000 years ago to bear what we couldn't. This is the reason that we give gifts, is that Jesus came to be given. We give gifts because it's one shadow, it's one small way that we can embody what Christ did for us. So this Christmas season, rejoice, sing praises, pray, give gifts, serve one another, love one another, not out of a heart of trying to earn anything, not even because Jesus was just a good example, but because Jesus is reason to rejoice because God God had come to rescue us. Every one of us is counting on something. The world counts on progress. We count on relationships, success, health, control, something that we feel will make us whole again, something that will make it right. Again and again, those hopes end the same way. Unfinished, empty. But Christmas tells us something radically different. The answer did not rise from within us. Hope did not come from human effort. Salvation did not emerge from history's best idea. It came down! The eternal stepped into time. The creator entered his creation. The king laid aside his crown. He came not to be admired, but to be given. As church fathers have confessed throughout centuries: "that he, the bread might hunger, the fountain might thirst, the light might sleep, the way might be wearied by the journey, the truth might be accused by false witness, the judge of the living and the dead might be judged by a mortal court, that he, justice, might be condemned by the unjust, that he, the foundation, might be suspended on a cross, that the healer might be wounded, and that life itself would die." This is the God who came to us. He came to us so that those who are broken could be made whole. Christmas is not a story of humanity finding God. It's a story of God coming and finding us. The long-expected deliverer has come, not because we were strong, but exactly because we were helpless, not because we had earned him, but exactly because we were desperate. And tonight, the invitation is not to fix yourself. If you're hearing a message of, Try harder, be better, you haven't been listening. This is not about improving yourself. This is not an invitation to prove yourself worthy. The invitation is simply this. Receive him. Receive the long-expected deliverer and King who has come for you! Let's pray. Father, we thank you for who you are, that you are our King, that you came in the most humble ways. God, we talk about this as the humiliation of your son, Christ, to be born in a manger. God, to stumble upon the very ground you made. You came to bear our sin and our shame even more than we can comprehend. God, we thank you that we don't have to try to muster up the energy within ourselves to save ourselves. But you came to do what we could not do. God, we praise you. God, I pray that as we sing, as we reflect in what advent is, that it would be more than gifts, that it would be more than a family get together, but that we would rejoice that you have come to save us. Father God, as we sing our final song, help us to truly rejoice as people redeemed. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Heading 5 Can we trust the Council of Nicaea? Mitchell Leach June 9, 2024 It may be surprising to the average churchgoer that, the council that produced one of the most well-known creeds of the early church and solidified the orthodoxy — or theological position — of the trinity, has a bit of controversy surrounding it. Not everyone in academia can look back on this event with the love for the doctrines that came out of it, but with the weariness of the political and governmental influences that surround it. But contemporary Christians shouldn’t worry about this event being tainted by the forces behind its acceptance. Rather Christians should trust and even worship the beauty that was simplified and clarified by the work of the men who formed it. Main Issue The council of Nicaea was brought together — by the newly Christian[1] — emperor Constantine in 325 AD.[2]As Constantine came to power in the death of Emperor Galerius, Constantine found himself in a situation where he needed to unify the new republic of Rome. During this time theological divides seemed to be popping up in the newly legalized religion that Constantine allowed. So for the first time in the life of the church, pastors/bishops were welcomed without threat of persecution, to settle the division in the church.[3] The major doctrinal issue that backed by Arian — a talented Baucalis preacher — who challenged the view of the Bishop in Alexandria on his belief in Homoousion (or the doctrine that Jesus was of the same substance as God). Arian believed homoousion was Sabellianism,[4] and instead professed the belief in homoiosion (or the doctrine that Jesus was of a similar substance as God). To the modern outsider, this seems to be a minor bit of doctrine, that nerdy theologians like to debate in their free time. It seems like this is one of those fights that Paul warns against in Romans 16:17-18.[5] But the implications of getting this correct were critical for the church. Worship, and how it understands the God of the Bible, and many other practical parts of the church, hinged on understanding the person of Jesus correctly. In fact, this issue was so theologically important that is was impossible to look past each other’s view. Each side believed that the other’s view was so different that they were — ultimately — worshiping a different God. The implications of this were either — in Arian’s view — that Jesus was created, and that the son was not part of God.[6] Encouragement for the modern church During the actual council the view that Jesus was of the same essence as God was overwhelmingly adopted. Of the numerous bishops and clergymen in attendance at the Council of Nicaea (between 250-310), only two dissented. This was a huge victory for the ancient church but is also a huge source of confidence in the modern church. The modern church can look back on this event and find confidence that these men came out with the correct interpretation of scripture. Why can the church feel this way? Because men cannot create new — correct theology — men can only discover it. Men can invent new heresy, but not orthodoxy. Men and women today and in antiquity can only recognize it. And this is what the modern church should find confidence in. As noted above, the implications of this inform nearly every subsequent theological position the church has taken since. The council of Nicaea was moved by the Holy Spirit to see the Word of God correctly and identified Jesus as wholly God and wholly man. Whether that was the view of Constantine, or maybe just his wish, is irrelevant. The church can be confident in the beauty of the person of Jesus as stated by the Nicene Creed. If this were mere political pressure by Constantine, bishops would have revolted. They weren’t moved by fear of dissent. Here gathered at Nicaea were men who had been marked with scars from their previous persecution. They were not afraid of a man or the state. They feared God and in near unanimity, affirmed the truth of the Lord and Savior of the universe Jesus. [1] Or at least newly compassionate toward christian emperor. [2] Kenneth Scott Latourette, “Christianity Takes Shape in Organization, Doctrine,” in A History of Christianity, 4th ed., vol. 1 (Prince Press, 2007), pp. 154-156. [3] Bruce Shelley, “Splitting Important Hairs,” in Church History in Plain Language, 5th ed. (S.l.: ZONDERVAN, 2021), pp. 131-136. [4] Kenneth Scott Latourette, pp. 152. [5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 16:17–18. I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. [6] Kenneth Scott Latourette, pp. 154. 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? Read More

Heading 5 NeoMoral Imperialism Mitchell Leach December 10, 2025 There once was a day when Christians winced at the — once-progressive — notion of “coexist.” You remember the bumper stickers. I remember going on a youth retreat with my church, and my youth pastor saw that bumper sticker and laughed at it. This was the time when Christianity and Christian morals were the dominant view in American culture. I have heard Christians say — recently — that they wish the notion of coexistence could be extended to them. No longer is it acceptable to say, “I believe this, you believe something different. But we can look past that and live in peace.” Morality Based on Majority Morality in Western culture has become based on an insular view of what the majority thinks. By that I mean, the average man walking down the street often doesn’t believe that their morality comes from a concrete source of authority, but rather it comes from how they perceive “the majority” sees what is right and wrong. And with social media algorithms becoming better and better, how we perceive the majority becomes smaller and smaller. It becomes easy to see your world through the insular lens of your social media.[1] As wesaw in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and as we have seen every day since. This affects our view of morality drastically if our view is based on the how we perceive the majority. If we are seeing — on our feeds — the a rhetoric that proclaims that not only the acceptance of homosexuality, but the requirement to affirm homosexuality, we will begin to believe — wrongly — that this is the dominant belief in America. This leads us to a huge question... Is defending a religious position homophobic? This is a question that is progressively becoming more and more relevant in Western culture. Carl Truman, a professor at Grove City College, and author of TheRise and Triumph of the Modern Self argues, Mere tolerance of homosexuality is bound to become unacceptable. The issue is not one of simply decriminalizing behavior; that would certainly mean that homosexual acts were tolerated by society.[2] Truman hits on an important shift in the morality of what he calls a “culture of expressive individualism.” Simply being tolerant of a view of sexuality that goes against the religion you believe in is no longer acceptable. Now if you don’t celebrate these forms of sexuality, you are now a bigot and homophobic. It is ok for someone to be tolerant of an action, and to yet not affirm it because of areligious based moral belief. To say it isn't is to say my morality is the only true morality. Which is itself intolerance toward most of the world's religions. In a sense, this becomes a form of — what author Alan Ryan calls liberal imperialism[3], or what I call neo-moral imperialism. Where white men from Europe came to a new world and because they believed it was their duty to colonize the savage beliefs of the uneducated natives, so it is today. People who would find themselves in the top 90% of the global income, are condemning nearly two-thirds of the world's populations [4] beliefs as archaic. If it was wrong for Europeans to colonize the native tribes of America, then this new form of imperialism must also be wrong too. If you're saying that I can't believe what I believe about sexuality, because you think I'm wrong, you should then afford me that same right. Freedom of speech and religion Do we believe that freedom of speech is a universal right? Better yet, do we believe that for someone to talk about their own religious morality is protected by freedom of speech? If not then is it protected by freedom of religion? Either all theism is for idiots, or it is acceptable for people to believe that there is a God who has a moral code. If you want to believe the narrative that all theism is for idiots, you are easily in the global minority. It is insulting to legitimately oppressed groups. In fact, it is Islamophobic and antisemitic. How can you see the danger in wanting governments to require religions that don’t conform to a modern view of sexuality — that affirms homosexuality — to change their beliefs, as a huge danger to any belief system? [5] It takes a special kind of arrogance to call an entire religion; wrong, intolerant, hateful, bigoted, homophobic, and archaic, based on their experience alone. It may sound harsh, but it is genuinely arrogant to believe, “I’m right and everyone else is wrong,” when you have no authoritative source to draw that morality. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, they all have religious texts telling them what they believe their God tells them is right and wrong. As a Christian, I believe that my God has told humanity who He is by giving his people rules about what is right and wrong. To say it another way, I believe the most powerful and righteous being in all of the universe has told me — among many laws — that homosexuality is a sin. When someone — who isn’t committed to any form of theism, can stand on their own authority (void of any religious text or appeal), and condemn genuine religious beliefs, you’ve become the very intolerance you have fought so long and hard to defeat. Can we actually coexist? Or is it necessary to imperialize your form of morality up to everyone who disagrees with you? [1] Alexander George Theodoridis, “The Hyper-Polarization of America,” ScientificAmericanBlog Network (Scientific American, November 7, 2016), https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-hyper-polarization-of-america/ . [2] Carl R. Trueman and Rod Dreher, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020). [3] Alan Ryan, “Liberal Imperialism,” The Making of Modern Liberalism, May 2012, https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691148403.003.0006 . [4] Conrad Hackett and David McClendon, “Christians Remain World's LargestReligiousGroup, but They Are Declining in Europe,” Pew Research Center (Research Center, May 31, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/ . [5] Saskia Glas and Niels Spierings, “Rejecting Homosexuality but ToleratingHomosexuals: The Complex Relations between Religiosity and Opposition toHomosexuality in 9 ArabCountries,” Social Science Research 95 (2021): p.102533, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102533 . 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like Drawing the Line of Legalism Read More

Heading 5 Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? Mitchell Leach September 15, 2024 Imagine it is your senior season of high school football, and the school you attend has historically been — let’s just say — less than excellent. So this year your school has hired a computer to be your head coach that is programmed to perfectly analyze each play. But there’s one glaring problem. While it could technically call plays based on trends and relevant data, it doesn’t love the game. There is a huge difference between understanding the game — technically — and actually calling the plays — in reality. You can’t simply expect theory to translate into intuition. What is missing is a love for the game. At this point could you just replace the coach with a computer? If you’ve ever played a sport before you’ll answer emphatically, no! Imagine getting into halftime, anticipating a rousing speech on overcoming adversity from your coach, only to be met with statistics on rushing yards verse their cover three concepts. You could hate football and become an analyst, but you can’t coach without loving the game. The same is true for biblical interpretation. St. Augustine, an influential early church father, wrote, "So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding buildup this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them”(Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.86). St. Augustine — accurately — describes that true comprehension of the Bible comes through a combination of prayer, faith, and an attitude of submission to God's will. It is by loving God and being compelled into action, by the text that shows that we truly understand the text. All of this is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit regenerating one's heart to love the God they once hated and hate the sin they once loved. But Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? True biblical interpretation must include the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Sometimes a straw man can be made of this statement, where people will — incorrectly — conclude that this means biblical interpretation (via the Holy Spirit) relies wholly on one’s discernment of the text.Therefore it could have infinite possibilities for interpretation. Much more than this could lead people to falsely interpret scripture because they falsely interpret or misjudge the HolySpirit. To this, I would say that the pendulum has swung too far. Never should biblical interpretation become a sort of fortune-telling-like practice where the text itself is mostly disregarded for feeling. Rather, the text has a concrete main idea and transformational intent from the original author. Where the Holy Spirit comes in is to quicken us to respond in application to this inspired work before us. While biblical interpretation — in the technical sense — can be done well by anyone because there are clear steps in its approach, it fails more seriously to faithfully interpret the text holistically. This is because it will fail to see the very nature of the text itself, let alone what that text insists it to be. The Bible declares itself to be the very word of God. It is a story about God revealing himself to his creation to enter into a relationship with them. It's about a God who loves his people so deeply that he would die in their place. To technically interpret the story of Elijah, but failing to be transformed into worship by God working to bring sinners to justice and salvation to his chosen people is to fundamentally misinterpret the story. Why? Because worship was the author’s (and authors’) transformational intent. Take, for example, the story of Ruth. You could spend a multitude of time and research to bring great analysis to the four chapters in this book. You could; breakdown the narrative arc, identify the historical context in which this is placed, and how that shows an even dire situation for Ruth and Naomi and exemplifies the character of Boaz, you could trace the cross-references to other parts of scripture, or get to the root meaning of theHebrew word for Kinsman redeemer. But to do all of this — and to miss being in awe of the subtle sovereignty of God working to uphold his covenant to his people while sustainingRuth and Naomi, and how that leads to King David and eventually King Jesus — is a gross failure of proper biblical interpretation. Luther's Four Stranded Garland Only a regeneration of the Holy Spirit allows the Christian to interpret the text correctly. Martin Luther coined his hermeneutical tool "the four-stranded garland." In which he told people to think of four things while reading a passage of scripture. First, What instruction is God teaching me? Second, What in this passage causes me to praise God? Third, What causes me to confess in this passage? Fourth, what guidance do I now feel that I need from God? Luther's questions were giving the Christians a way to allow themself to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit during their biblical interpretation. A non-Christian may be able to technically answer the first question, but they cannot answer the last three without faking their answer, or at minimum pretending to act as they believe a Christian should. The work of the Spirit to convict us of our sinful nature and our daily sins is something the non-Christian doesn't have access to. God's work to make me fall on my knees and beg for mercy because He has convinced me that I do not open my heart up to God as the Psalms do, is not on the surface of the text. Therefore it isn't something a non-Christian can authentically do. This is even more true with the last question in Luther's strand. This is the question of application. This is the most spiritually significant, and dependent question. What the Holy Spirit is calling you to do in response to his word is ever-changing. This is one of the reasons Christians have loved scripture over the centuries, and equate a living aspect to it. It's not the meaning of the text that changes, it's the depth to which it calls us to be more connected to the image of the Son. This is the role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation. My question would be why would you want to interpret this story if you don’t desire to see the supremacy of Christ? Why would you care to work on scripture to get to its technical meaning without worshiping a Holy God at the end of it? What use is that literary analysis? Who will you present this to, if not to preach the Word and to exalt the most precious and glorious God of which it is most certainly about? My conclusion is that not only is a true biblical interpretation not possible for those who don’t believe, but it is also a waste to perform literary analysis on scripture without believing the whole story of which it is about. It would be as nonsensical as hiring a computer as a football coach. 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like How Did Jesus Understand Scripture? Read More

More Concerned for the Plant Jonah Mitchell Leach Sunday, November 23, 2025 Audio More Concerned for the Plant Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 43:26 Sermon Transcript Today's reading will come from Jonah 4:1 11. So please join me as we read the word of the Lord. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, oh, Lord, is it not that I. Isn't it not what I. Is it not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I know that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to live than to die. And then the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? When Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there he sat under the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant, made it come over Jonah that it might be shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so it withered. When the sun arose. God appointed a scorching east wind. And the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes, I do well to be angry. Angry enough to die. And the Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in the night. And should not I pity Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle. This is the word of the Lord. Introduction In 1914, a crew led by Ernest Shackleton set out to explore Antarctica. They were going to be the first group of people to cross the continent. His crew of 27 people and him boarded the ship called the Enterprise. This was a vessel specifically built for Antarctic navigation, trying to cut through the ice. And yet, because it was 1914 and the ship was made of wood before they hit the mainland, the ship stopped in the ice. It was seized completely. They tried for months trying to get this ship to budge free from the ice. And they lived on the ice for months as this huge ice drift, this huge sheet of ice drifted in the Antarctic Bay. This was an incredibly dangerous situation for them. This sheet of ice, because it was freezing and unfreezing, trying to budge them free, ended up. The pressure from the ice ended up smashing the hull of the boat, rendering it completely useless for them to get back home. They had no way back home. They had no radio, and no one was coming to save them. Imagine the feeling that would come over you, being in a place like that. They camped on ice floats and survived on penguin and seal meat, and they barely made it out alive. They made a daring escape on a makeshift life raft, and they made it to South America. At many points, if you read the account of them escaping and trying to survive, there were many points in this emergency that they should have all died. But incredibly, every single person made it out alive. And yet, by all accounts, this mission was a failure. They never made it on the continent. And yet, when anyone looks at this experience, no one thinks about it as a failure. Everyone survived. There's a tension in Jonah. Chapter 4. He had a plan. He had expectations. He wanted Nineveh to be judged, not forgiven. And then God relented. Jonah was furious. His expectations had been crushed like that of Shackleton's. He stood at the wreckage of his own plans. But unlike Shackleton, Jonah did not adapt. He got angry. He went outside the city. He sulked. He even said, it would be better for me to die than to live. Shackleton lost the mission that he dreamed of, but saved the lives that were entrusted to him. Jonah, on the other hand, got the mission that he dreamed of, but hated the heart of God, the outcome that God desired. Shackleton adjusted his plan to save life, and Jonah refused to adjust his heart to God's mercy. That's the tension in Jonah. Chapter 4. What happens when God's. When God ruins our plans. When God's grace ruins our plans. Big Question And that leads us to our big question. What happens when you don't get the outcome you planned for? What happens when you don't get the outcome you planned for? What happens when you get passed up for the promotion that you rightfully deserved? What happens when you lose your best employee, the one that had brought in so much business to you or had just been so loyal? What happens when you don't get the same class with your best friend? What happens when you miss that monster buck that you've been chasing all summer long? What happens when you don't get into the right college, or you lose a loved one? Or the person you thought you were going to marry ends up saying no to you. What happens when the tests come, come back with results that you were sure God was going to prevent? What happens when your spouse confesses the big secret to you? A secret that they had been hiding, or confesses that they had been having an affair? What happens when we hear heartbreaking, soul crushing news like that? When the earth seems to shatter, when the earth seems to stop spinning? And as Christians, there's even more tension, there's even more unrest in our soul because we know God is in control, that he is sovereign over everything, that he holds the world in his hand. And as Christians, we can sit there and think, God, why would you allow this to happen? We can feel the conflict in our own hearts. Here's what Jonah 4 shows us. That God's mercy is greater than our preferences. But when that mercy offends us, how will we respond? What will happen when you don't? Or what happens when we don't get the outcome we planned for? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Jonah, Chapter four. As we see this outline or these movements in this chapter, we'll see when God's. Outline When God is too gracious for us When God's mercy corrects our misery. For the context of this passage, we've been looking at Jonah and this is our last, our last, our last chapter, our last sermon on this, on this, in this series. So if this is your first time here, you picked the very right time to come because you're going to get the entire series right here. In one nutshell, you guys were the smart people while everyone else had to spend five weeks listening to me. You guys got, you guys got one. So no, the context of this. In Jonah chapter one, Jonah runs and flees from the presence of God, hearing the word that he wants Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach repentance to them, Jonah flees to the end of the world. God appoints a fish. As Jonah is thrown overboard towards his near certain death, God saves him by the fish inside the fish. God, or God hears Jonah's pleas, his prayer, and he rescues him. He saves him. And last week in Jonah chapter three, we see Jonah finally goes to Nineveh and preaches repentance, does what God wanted him to do. Nineveh repented and God relented from the disaster that was for them. And in this chapter, God will reveal his heart to Jonah as Jonah revolts against it. So let's look at this first point, this first movement in this passage, When God is too gracious for us Verses 1 through 5, God gave Jonah a mission, a mission to preach repentance to Nineveh. He goes and does it, and guess what? It happens. They repent. God had used Jonah to preach repentance to bring an evil nation back from their sin. And that's what's so jarring about verse one. Look at verse one with me in chapter four. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, right? Chapter three, verse ten. God relents from disaster. It seems like everything's going good, but Jonah is unhappy. Jonah is exceedingly angry with God. This is written in a way to make the reader, to make us when we read this, go, how could this be? How could a prophet of God be upset with God saving people? This is a prophet's dream. Isaiah, when he gets the prophecy from God, when he gets a mission, his calling is to go and preach to. To Israel, who will never hear, who will never change. And Isaiah hears this and goes, how long are. How long am I supposed to do this? He says, until one stone is not stacked on another, until the end of time. Jonah gets a prophecy, he gets a word to preach repentance, and it happens. And Jonah is angry. And that leads Jonah to pray to God. He says in verse two and three, he says, or it says, and he prayed to the Lord. And he said, oh, Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Jonah prays to God. He says, this is exactly why I wanted to run to the end of the world. This is exactly why I wanted nothing to do with your plan, nor your heart. Jonah is saying, I knew that this is what was going to happen from the start, and that's why I ran. What about for us? Have you ever felt frustrated with God because things didn't go the way you wanted, even if you knew it was right? Have you ever felt frustrated? Have you ever said to yourself, God, I knew that you would do that. That fits with your character. But I just can't get behind it. Jonah isn't shocked by God's grace. He isn't shocked by God's mercy. He's offended by it. So much so that he goes to quote Scripture against God. He quotes Exodus, chapter 34. He says this. This is a passage where Moses is hiding in the cleft of a rock. God is passing before him. And God says, this the Lord passed passed before him, Moses and proclaimed the Lord. The Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The irony that Jonah would quote this passage in this moment is unbelievable, except for it has to be from God. And I think it has to be that Jonah is also extremely frustrated with God. Jonah quotes this passage. This the context of this passage. The reason that Moses is hiding in the cleft of the rock and this is happening why? Why is it that God is proclaiming this message to Moses is that the Israelites had just built a golden calf. They had just broken the covenant that God had made with them. God, wanting to destroy them, relents from disaster of his own people and proclaims that this is who God is. He is a God who is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. In the same moment where Jonah is furious with God that he would not save his own people, that he doesn't save his own people, that he doesn't care for Israel, he quotes a passage where God does exactly that. Jonah is furious. So Jonah tells God that it would be better off for him to die than to live. Verses 3 and 4, it says, Therefore, now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? Jonah responds to God, I would rather die. I would rather die than be in a world where this is true. Have you ever felt so crushed by the unmet expectations that you didn't want to keep following God's will anymore, God's ways anymore? Not that you didn't believe in him, but that you didn't like what he wanted for you. Jonah is making a mistake here that too many of us make, too many people make about God. I have heard people say time and time again things like, well, if God could send people to hell, then I don't really want to worship him. If he would say that homosexuality is wrong, then I don't want to follow him. If he could make people, knowing that they would go to hell. I can't follow a God like that. Essentially, what people are saying is my version of morality, my version of what I think is right and wrong, is ultimate, is ultimately correct. If God doesn't fit my definition of good, then I'm out. I get to have the godlike standard of morality that everyone else has to submit to. Essentially, that's what we're saying. I've had Multiple people come up to me and debate about God. Usually atheists talking about whether God is real and passages like whether homosexuality is true or not, or, you know, whether, you know, creation was in six days or whether evolution is true. You know, these are the things that we get hung up on. And then I finally have to get to a spot where I say we can talk about those things after. But we have to answer this question first. Is Jesus actually God? Did he actually die for our sins? Is he actually risen? Because if that's true, if that's the point that we believe, we believe that he is God. He is seated on the throne right now. If that's what we believe, those things ultimately we can address later. Those things we can get to. But everything that we believe, everything that God then says we must submit to. Is there anything that we wouldn't do for God? These secondary things, I mean, if God. If God were to ask us to only wear the color green from here on out, or that we couldn't eat soup, or that we had to speak in Spanish from now on, or we had to hop on one leg, would we do these things for God? Or would we say, no, God, what you've asked of us is way too much. No, if he is truly God, if he's seated on the throne, there isn't anything that we shouldn't do for him. This feeling of self righteous morality, believing that he knows what's right, drives Jonah's anger into a deeper and darker place, into a place of utter distress, saying, God, it would be better for me to die than to live. And God responds with a question. He says, son, are you sure? Do you think that this is the right response? Where are these actions taking you? Are you on the right path right now? Verse 5 helps us to see furthermore what Jonah is feeling. So Jonah leaves the city in verse five and makes a hut outside the city or a booth outside the city. He does this because he's trying to get comfortable. He's trying to avoid the sun. The heat in the Middle east is not, it's not like the heat that we get in Michigan. It's not, you know, the sun isn't like, you know, in the Middle East. It's not like the first day of spring when we get sunburned. At least that's what I get because I'm the shade of sour cream. I'm pretty white and so I get burnt like crazy. But it's even more dangerous than that. It could take people's life. And so he's making this hut for himself. And he sits down. He's waiting to see God destroy the city. It's as if Jonah's outside or he's at a sports game and he's making a little booth for himself to watch, to become a spectator of what would become of Nineveh. Jonah makes himself comfortable in the hopes that he would see thousands of people suffer. God sees that Jonah is not getting the point, and that leads us into our second point, When God's mercy corrects our misery God is going to correct Jonah here in verse 6, God then appoints a plant to come up over Jonah to grow rapidly, and this results in Jonah going from exceedingly sad to exceedingly glad. And then in verse seven, God, it said, but God, or But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm to attack the plant so that it withered. Notice a familiar word that keeps coming up here that we saw in chapter one, the word appointed. Just like God had appointed a fish to rescue Jonah, the plant was more than rescue from the heat. It was there to correct Jonah. God wanted to show him something. And yet this frustrated Jonah. In verse nine, it says, but God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes, I do well to be angry. Angry enough to die, God. Jonah's essentially saying, God, I'd rather die than be in this discomfort, than be around you, who's not only not punishing Nineveh, but also forcing me to suffer in this way. Now, there's something before we move on, we have to examine here, because it's not in our English translations. It's this word raha. It's a Hebrew word that means disaster, displease, discomfort, evil, or even ugliness. This word pops up three times in this ending. It actually starts in Jonah 3, verse 10, and it pops up two more times in chapter 4. He says in Jonah 3 that the Ninevites were rescued from their disaster, or racha. In verse one of chapter four, it says, but it displeased, or Racha. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and that he was angry that Jonah's heart was turning ugly, it was turning towards evilness, the disaster. In verse 10, it was the ugliness that would have been poured out on Nineveh. And in verse 6, Jonah is saved from his discomfort, from his raha, the ugliness that would have happened to him, the bad outcome that would have happened to him. Now, I'm not just bringing up Hebrew words because it's fun or it's Interesting. I oftentimes don't intentionally, because nobody knows Hebrew. Not even many pastors know Hebrew. It's a terrible language. Anyways. Greek I understand a little bit, but Hebrew, never mind. You guys don't need to know that. But the point in bringing this up, the point in any of this, is that Jonah writes this intentionally. The reason that this word comes up three times in this short section, the short amount of verses, is because Jonah wants us to see something here. He wants us to see something and not to miss it. The original reader wouldn't have been able to miss it. I don't want you to miss it. What Jonah is saying to the reader is what God did for Nineveh, he did for me. And I missed it. I missed it. I was wrong. I had this whole thing wrong about God. I only wanted what I wanted. I wanted what my heart desired. I didn't want God's heart. I thought that my ways were higher than his ways. I didn't see his mercy. I didn't see how beautiful he was. I didn't see how gentle he was being with me. And that's what we see in these last two verses. Verses 10 and 11. It says, and the Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle? God is saying to Jonah, I saved you. I was the one who did it. I saved you in the boat. I saved you when you jumped into the sea. I'm saving you now. God's saying, I was the one who did it. But you're mad at me for doing the same thing for Nineveh. You don't even care about the cattle. You care about the plant, and you don't even care about the cattle there, let alone the people who bear my image in that city. Jonah was mad that God didn't destroy them. God was showing Jonah that he loves Nineveh, that his heart breaks for them. Jonah would have preferred for the plant to live and for Nineveh to die. He loved comfort more than compassion. And that's where God presses this question into Jonah that Jonah doesn't want to hear, that we don't want to hear. Do you pursue God's heart or just your own preferences? And that leads us to our main idea for today. Main idea: God's mercy is greater than our preferences. God's mercy is greater than our preferences. But essentially, God is asking Jonah this do you pursue my heart? Do you want to continue to act the way you think, the way you think you should? Or do you want something infinitely better? Too many people sit in church week after week feeling this feeling of God. I really just want to be able to do what I want. But I know that you, your word says that I shouldn't do these certain things, but I just. I see these as rules. And there's this tension in a lot of people's hearts who sit in churches week after week. This heart wrestling of going, these laws feel like they're keeping me from really what I want to do. The truth is, as we get to know each other more and more, I want to help you get to understand a little bit more of me. But I'm not going to be the kind of pastor who leads a moral reformation. The truth is, I don't really want you guys to leave here simply being more moral. I don't want you to leave being less moral. But if you leave here today with 10 tips on how to follow God a little bit better, you've missed the point. If you leave today here going, well, I need to try harder and be better, and God will love me for that. You've missed the point. If you want to run after your own desires, I'm not going to be the kind of pastor who stops you, because God won't stop you either. Romans, chapter one lays this out for us, actually, in some nice clarity. It says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to the impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. You might think, okay, that sounds pretty harsh. That sounds. It doesn't really sound that good. And yet I want to lay it on thick here. This is what God calls his wrath. I specifically left out verse 18, which is the intro to that section. It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. We think about God's wrath in a couple different ways. We think of it as hellfire and brimstone coming against judgment, against those who are doing wrong. But the New Testament lays it out for us like this. God is going to allow us to run after the sinful and evil desires of our heart, that is enough punishment. That's the same kind of punishment of hellfire and brimstone. And we think, wow, that seems pretty, pretty easy. Sounds like I can still do the things that I want. If you are thinking that you don't understand your sin. Our sin divorces us from our soul. It separates us from who we are. Our sin allowing us to run after our sin is torture in God's eyes. It will destroy us. This is what Jonah's doing. He's running after what he wants. God comes to Jonah and asks him, where does this path lead you? Where does living you do you lifestyle lead? How is it, how is it beneficial to you, Jonah, that you could do this? That you could run from me? Can't. The truth is you can chase what you want only for so long before you find yourself outside the loving arms God. I'm not saying that there's a place that you can run to that you can be so disobedient that you can be beyond forgiveness. That's not what I'm saying. But there is a reality that you can run so far from God that you find yourself permanently separated from him again. This isn't a try harder be better message. This isn't a if I do the things that God asks me to do, then I won't be outside God's loving arms. And that'll be good for me. No, the only way for you to follow God's law in joy, in a joyful attitude, is by pursuing his heart, is by loving Him. We can't do it any other way. A white knuckled trying to be obedient to God's law will not grant us anything except for resentment. We have to love the God who gives us his word, who gives us his law. When we love him, we'll fall in love with what he commands us to do. It's not always easy, it's not always comfortable. But it's always centered on what's true and eternal. There's a hymn by John Newton. He was the same person who wrote Amazing Grace. He wrote a hymn. It was never put to music, but it's one of my favorite pieces of literature written in all of Christianity. It says this. Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before, since we have seen his beauty are joined to part no more. To see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. What this hymn represents is what it is talking about is at some point in our Life following our duty to God, being obedient to God was separate from our pleasure, was separate. It was a burden on us. But when we see Christ, when we become a child, when we are transformed from a slave into a child, that duty, that obedience, becomes something that's light. It becomes a choice, becomes something that we live into. That leads us to our points of application. First, we must remember God's goodness before suffering comes. One of the worst times to be given a book on suffering is when you're in the midst of it. If you've ever been there and a well intentioned Christian has given you that, it can feel, it can feel harsh. We need to prepare ourselves before suffering comes. Trials and suffering will come. This is a promise to all of us as humans, especially those of us as Christians. Are we ready? Are you ready to see God in the midst of suffering? Or will you be like Jonah and run? Jonah forgot that the same God who could be trusted, who rescued him from the sea, could be trusted with the city. If we remember God's goodness before the storm, we will forget him in the midst of it. Suffering can be hard for us individually, but some of the hardest things for us spiritually is not just our own suffering, but seeing those around us suffering, seeing our spouse, seeing our parents, seeing our children or our brothers and sisters, our friends suffer can be detrimental, can be so hard on us spiritually. My challenge for you this week is to take inventory of the things and the people in your life. Pray to God this week about how he can prepare you for suffering. That's what you got in your bulletin this week. It's a prayer, a prayer guide. I challenge you. Take 15 minutes this week, go through that, prepare your heart, because suffering will come. And if we're not ready for it now, it'll be incredibly hard for us later. Trials will happen. God will bring us through suffering. Will we pursue him or our own sense of what's right and wrong? And that leads us into our last point of application. Recognize the danger of loveless orthodoxy. The reality is that Jonah had good, good theology. He even quoted scripture. The problem isn't that Jonah didn't believe the right things. It's that Jonah didn't love God's heart. The thing about us as reformed people is that we don't just love being right, we love knowing that we're right. Probably more than any other denomination, that's true of us. I feel that I've. I had a professor say that to me once and I was like, oh, that cuts right to the Heart. It's easy for us to say that God is powerful and yet we don't fear God. It's easy for us to sing songs about God's mercy and yet demand justice of all the people around us. It's easy for us to say that God is infinite and yet try to force him into a box small enough, small enough that we believe we can control Him. Having good theology is often like obedience. If we do it out of a heart that is not in love with God, it is meaningless. You will not be able to be joyfully obedient or have good theology without loving God. And if you try, you will miss the point entirely. The truth is, Satan can pick up God's word and say that this whole book is inerrant, that there's not one word in here that isn't true. Satan can say that. He just hates that. It is true. He hates it. Jonah's theology was flawless, but his heart was frozen. He could quote Exodus, but he couldn't rejoice in it. Orthodoxy without love is idolatry. Don't pass up delighting in God, delighting in the heart of God for something so shallow as having good orthodoxy, good theology. It's an idol that leads us actually away from God. How is it that we can run in joyful righteousness? How is it that we can love theology and not be a shell? It's not idolatry. Why is it that we can pursue God's heart? It's because on the cross Jesus heart was was crushed. Jesus heart was pierced and water flowed out of it. God wanted, or Jonah wanted Nineveh to perish and Jesus died to save the Ninevites on the cross. God crushed the heart of His Son so that ours could be made new. This is why we can pursue God's heart. It's because his grace, his mercy, already pursued us. Jonah ran from God's heart. Jesus revealed God's heart for sinners. Jonah sat outside the city waiting and hoping for judgment. Jesus went outside the city ready to bear our judgment, the judgment for us. We can love good works, we can love righteousness, good theology, obedience, and not have it be idolatry. Because we can love the heart of the infinite, God of the universe, a heart that bursts forth with mercy for the undeserving Ninevites and for us as undeserving sinners, prosper as we leave here. But let's be reminded that God's mercy is greater than our preferences. Do you pursue God's heart? Would you stand with me as we pray? And prepare to respond in worship. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Heading 5 Drawing the Line of Legalism Mitchell Leach February 11, 2025 Exploring the Delicate Balance Between Law and Love My kids are bad artists. It is a hard thing to say, but as I step back from my emotional connection to my kids and their art, and critically look at what they’ve made, it’s not something an art gallery would hang. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing better, or more precious than when my children make art out of their pure childish imagination, and give it to me out of pure love. I still have a — misspelled — card that my son made me in my office from two years ago, simply because when he gave it to me it was him saying “I made this for you because I love you and this is the best that I can do.” But later, this same son of mine (in an attempt to get out of cleaning the playroom) made me a crayon drawing and said “Here is a picture, now I don’t have to clean the playroom.” At that moment that artwork wasn’t something I wanted to cherish or even keep. It was a worthless piece of paper, because of the heart behind it. Our children’s art doesn’t have any monetary value, nor would it win any awards. When it’s given out of a heart that is trying to earn something from us, it actually disgusts us (or at least it did for me). But when given as an act of love in response to the love we’ve given to them, it is priceless. This is a similar way that God feels about us trying to earn his favor or love through our good works. This is called legalism. It’s not in our Bible You’ve probably heard the term legalism, or legalist used — not just in the church — but in culture abroad. Legalism carries a clearly negative connotation (and for good reason). Yet legalism isn’t a word found in the English Bible, but that doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t say anything about it. Paul uses the phrase “works of the law” eight times in his writings (Romans 2:15, 3:20, 3:28, Galatians 2:16, 3:2, 3:5, 3:10). The point that Paul makes as he talks about “works of the law,” or legalism, is that no one can be justified by works of the law. Legalism is one of two heresies that deal with how we respond to God’s laws. Paul brings this topic up most often in his letter to the churches in Galatia because of the faction in the Galatian churches that insisted that to be saved, you must adhere to all Jewish customs in the Old Testament. Adding To Scripture Legalism is the attitude that identifies morality with the strict observance of laws or that views adherence to moral codes as defining the boundaries of a community. [1] Word Partners is an organization that equips pastors to put the Word of God in the driver’s seat of the church and put His glory on display. One of their teaching principles is the easiest way to visualize this concept. This is an easier way to think about legalism, that it adds to scripture. Legalism — at its core — is not trusting God and his word. It is saying subconsciously, “Not only is God’s grace not good enough for me, but also his word isn’t sufficient for my holiness. I must add more rules to his law so then I can make sure I’m extra holy.” Learn From the Pharisees This is exactly what the Pharisees are guilty of in John 9 when Jesus heals the man born blind. In this story, Jesus miraculously heals a man who had been blind since birth. This is so amazing that some people are questioning whether it is actually the same man, or if it is a look-a-like. This creates such a stir that the Pharisees check into this. As they question this man, they aren’t moved to worship as clearly a miracle has happened. Their sticking point was that this was done on the Sabbath. In their defense, God commands us to rest on the Sabbath. But sadly that’s where my defense of the Pharisees ends, because they had missed the point. They had added to that commandment to rest. They made up rules — initially to help people guard their Sabbath for rest — that made stricter regulations on what was and wasn’t rest. And by doing this they took a good thing God had given them, and in a twisted way made it oppressive. Replacing Jesus Legalism is a way that we think we can save ourselves. We think that we can please God by avoiding sin and doing what he commands. Before you write an angry email or comment, hear this. God is delighted when we are transformed by Jesus trading places with us on the cross by taking our sin, then by coming to new life with him through his resurrection and then responding by obeying his laws and commandments. This is precious to God. 1 Samuel 15:22 says, "But Samuel replied: 'Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’" But this isn’t only confined to the Old Testament, the apostle John in John 14:15 quotes Jesus when he writes, "If you love me, keep my commands.” God loves when we obey what he has told us to do because his law actually reveals part of who he is. When God commands us not to worship other gods, it’s because he is saying, “There’s only one God and I’m him.” When he tells us not to worship carved images — not just of false gods but also of the one true God, he is saying “I’m infinite and eternal. I cannot be contained in something material. Not even your mind.” God wants us to obey because he knows what is ultimately right and true and every time we don’t follow, we break away from our creator. God loves our obedience, when it is done with the right intention. Our Obedience as Rebellion But when we try to leverage our obedience towards God as an act to earn God’s favor it is disgusting to him. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” [2] While this passage has some clearly strong language against good works, our English translations have softened what was communicated in the original Hebrew. Where we read polluted garments, the original Hebrew would have said something like a rag used by a woman while on her period. What Isaiah is saying is that our good works are as disgusting as a used tampon. This is because we’ve perverted what God designed for our good and turned it into evil. As if we could by our own self-made righteousness, twist God’s arm into loving us more, or blessing us more. Just like a child who tries to trick their parent out of cleaning their playroom, God is greatly displeased when we use his law as a weapon against him. Legalism is the opposite of the Gospel Legalism affirms that we can save ourselves. That if you somehow work hard enough God will say, “Well done good and faithful servant. This is what you deserve. You’ve been good, so I’m happy with you.” But the reality is that Christians can hear “Well done good and faithful servant” only because the Father treated Jesus like us to treat us like Jesus. For us to insist on getting what we are owed is to insist on our destruction. Bleeding Charity One of my favorite dialogues from all the books I've read is a passage from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. In this dialogue, the Ghost (representing a soul from hell) clings to a sense of self-righteousness and entitlement based on its own deeds and perceived moral standing. It believes it deserves certain rights because of its actions and life choices. Look at me, now," said the Ghost, slapping its chest (but the slap made no noise). "I gone straight all my life. I don't say I was a religious man and I don't sav I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see? I done my best by everyone, that's the sort of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn't mine by rights. If I wanted a drink I paid for it and if I took my wages I done my job, see? That's the sort I was and I don't care who knows it." "It would be much better not to go on about that now." "Who's going on? I'm not arguing. I'm just telling you the sort of chap I was, see? I'm asking for nothing but my rights. You may think you can put me down because you’re dressed up like that (which you weren't when you worked under me) and I'm only a poor man. But I got to have my rights same as you, see?" "Oh no. It's not so bad as that. I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear." "That's just what I say. I haven't got my rights. I always done my best and I never done nothing wrong. And what I don't see is why I should be put below a bloody murderer like you." "Who knows whether you will be? Only be happy and come with me." "What do you keep on arguing for? I'm only telling you the sort of chap I am. I only want my rights. I'm not asking for anybody's bleeding charity." "Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought." As Christians, our hope eternally is based on the reality that we are charity cases. We need the bleeding charity of Christ. This is the understanding that we are poor in spirit. Insisting on earning our favor or our righteousness is — as Tim Keller said — “being middle class in spirit.” 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. They 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. The church practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and upholds traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. They 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 More Blogs You'd Like How Did Jesus Understand Scripture? Read More