In Life & In Death Sermon Series Description Lord's Day 12 1 Peter 2 Watch

Heading 3 Adam Nash Open Chair Counseling

Membership Interested in becoming a member of Prosper CRC? Interested in becoming a member of Prosper CRC? Join one of our Membership Classes to learn about our theology, philosophy, and how to get involved. After completing both classes, you'll meet with a elder to finalize your membership. Click here to register for a membership class. Baptism We believe that Jesus has commanded all those who are His to be baptized with pure water "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). This sacrament signifies our reception into the Church of God, which separates us from all other religions and dedicates us wholly to Him (Galatians 3:27). Yet, we deny that baptism is necessary for salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; Luke 23:42-43, Romans 3:28, Romans 4:5, Galatians 2:16, Titus 3:5). We believe and confess that Jesus Christ, by His sacrificial death and the shedding of His blood, has fulfilled and abolished the old covenant practice of circumcision, instituting instead the sacrament of baptism (Colossians 2:11-12). Therefore, we believe in the baptism of infants, as it aligns with the biblical precedent of including children in the covenant community, much like the practice of circumcision under the old covenant (Genesis 17:10-12; Acts 2:38-39). Christ's redemptive work extends to the children of believers, and they, too, should receive the sign and sacrament of baptism, affirming that Jesus shed His blood for them as well (Luke 18:15-17; Acts 16:31-33). This practice underscores the continuity of God’s covenant promises, ensuring that our children are marked by the covenant from the earliest moments of their lives (Acts 16:15, 33; 1 Corinthians 7:14). We hold firmly that this sacrament, once administered, is sufficient for the entirety of one's life, symbolizing both our initiation into the faith and God's enduring grace towards us (Ephesians 4:5; Romans 6:3-4). Profession of Faith We believe that profession of faith is an essential outward expression of an inward belief in Jesus Christ. Scripture teaches that faith should not remain private but should be confessed openly, as seen in Romans 10:9-10: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Jesus also warns against being ashamed to profess faith before others (Matthew 10:33; Luke 9:26). While the Bible does not prescribe a specific method for this profession, we recognize the longstanding tradition in church history of publicly affirming one’s faith, whether as a new believer or as a child raised in the church. Because of this, we ask those who have never publicly professed their faith in a church setting to do so when becoming members. We see this as an opportunity to glorify God, encourage fellow believers, and affirm one’s commitment to Christ and His Church. We believe that profession of faith is closely connected to both church membership and baptism. We practice covenantal infant baptism, and those baptized as children later profess their faith when they have a firm understanding of the gospel. For those who were not baptized as children, profession of faith and baptism occur together. We know that some lifelong believers may feel that a formal profession is unnecessary, but we encourage it as an act of testimony, unity, and accountability within the church. Through this process, we affirm that new members are not only declaring their faith but also committing to walk with the Lord, support fellow believers, and receive the loving guidance of the church community.

Pray With Us “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” — Philippians 4:6 (ESV) Paniba PANIBA is a Christian ministry committed to feeding the hungry, sharing the love of Jesus, and strengthening vulnerable communities in the Dominican Republic. Their heart is especially for children and families living in economically disadvantaged areas, where access to nutritious food is limited and basic needs often go unmet. Through weekly feeding programs, PANIBA provides nutritious meals to children to help them grow, learn, and thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually. These gatherings aren’t just about food — they include worship, Bible teaching, games, and intentional time to share the hope of Christ with young lives. In addition to nourishing children, PANIBA extends care to elderly and disadvantaged adults, offering monthly grocery support for those who otherwise have no safety net. The ministry partners with local churches and volunteers to meet both practical needs and spiritual hunger, demonstrating God’s love with compassion, dignity, and respect. Update Tracie Pratt October 20, 2026 Update Please continue to pray for Tracie and Lyle Pratt. Tracie has been feeling the effects of the cancer, and hospice has now been brought in. Pray that the Lord would give Tracie and Lyle strength for each day, peace, and a deep awareness of Christ’s presence with them — and pray for their family as they walk through this together. Claire Sullivan Deployment October 20, 2026 Military Please be in prayer for Claire Sullivan, who serves in the Military Police of the U.S. Army and deploys this Sunday, October 25. Pray for her safety, strength, and perseverance — and that she would know the Lord’s nearness while she is away. Pray also for her family as they send her off. Duane Dick October 19, 2026 Health Please be in prayer for Duane Dick. His health has been declining, and he has had a couple of falls recently. Pray for strength and comfort for Duane and the Dick family, and for the peace of Christ in this season. Update Dean Van Ostrand October 9, 2026 Update Praise God! Dean Van Ostrand's heart catheterization was a complete success. Doctors had feared they might find major blockages — but they found only very minor ones. This is a wonderful answer to prayer. Please give thanks with us for the Lord's faithfulness, and continue to pray for Dean and his family as he recovers. Update Ellie DeRuiter October 6, 2026 Update Praise God! Ellie DeRuiter's surgery went very well, and she is now home and recovering. Please give thanks with us for the Lord's care, and continue to pray for a smooth recovery and good rest in the days ahead. Claire Sullivan Engagement October 6, 2026 Celebration Rejoice with us! Claire Sullivan is now engaged. Please give thanks to the Lord for this joyful news, and pray for Claire and her fiancé as they prepare for marriage, that the Lord would build their home on Christ and bless them richly in the years ahead. Safety During Harvest October 6, 2026 Community Please pray for the farmers in our church and community as harvest is underway. Pray for safety in the fields and on the roads, for strength through long days and short nights, for good weather, and for working equipment. Let us give thanks to the Lord for the fruitfulness of the land and for those whose labor provides for so many. Henry DeRuiter's Arm September 16, 2026 Surgery Please pray for 10-year-old Henry DeRuiter, who broke his arm through the growth plate. Pray for good healing, protection from any further complications, and peace and patience for Henry and his family during his recovery. Update Tracie Pratt September 15, 2026 Update Please continue to pray for Tracie and Lyle Pratt as they walk through this very difficult season. Tracie has decided not to pursue further treatment and is trusting the Lord to sustain her in the days ahead. Please pray for peace, strength, comfort, and a deep sense of Christ’s presence for Tracie, Lyle, and their family. Expectant Mom August 19, 2026 Baby Pray for excellent health for our expectant mothers, Sarah DeKam , Carrie Dick, and Cora Dick and give thanks for this blessing. Keith DeRuiter Melanoma Cancer June 22, 2026 Cancer Please be in prayer for Keith & Phylla DeRuiter and the DeRuiter family as Keith has been diagnosed with a stage 4 melanoma cancer. They would appreciate prayers for comfort as they navigate treatments in the next few weeks.

Join us for Easter at Prosper Christian Reformed Church in Falmouth, MI. Celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with worship, Scripture, and a welcoming community. Never Alone Marriage Conference Easter At Prosper Easter Service Times Sermon Series Sermon Series What We Believe Our Staff Our History Watch Sermon Series Crowned: with Purpose with Praise with Humility with thorns with glory Crowned follows Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and through the events of Holy Week, showing that his kingship is unlike every worldly vision of power. He does not seize a throne by force, flatter the crowds, or preserve himself from suffering. He reigns by obedience. He is praised by the people, rejected by sinners, humbled unto death, and then vindicated by the Father in resurrection glory. This series helps the church see that Easter is not merely the happy ending to a tragic story. It is the public revelation that Jesus truly is King. From his resolute march toward Jerusalem to the empty tomb, every scene reveals a King who rules with purpose, receives praise, embraces humility, bears shame, and triumphs in glory. As we walk through these passages, we are confronted with a searching question: what kind of King do we want? A King who serves our expectations, or the King who saves through sacrifice? Crowned calls us to bow before Jesus as he truly is—the crucified and risen Lord—and to follow him on the path of obedient discipleship. 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. Children are welcome to worship in the sanctuary. Easter Sunday At 9:30 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 age 4 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.” Children are welcome to worship in the sanctuary.

Cut It Straight Prosper Christian Reformed Church Cut It Straight 2 Timothy Mitchell Leach Sunday, October 4, 2026 Audio Cut It Straight Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 01:04 Sermon Transcript 2 Timothy 2:14-26 Remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some, but God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. This morning I want to start with a question: what do you do when you know someone is wrong? Not about something small — something meaningful, something bigger than who we rooted for last night, even though all of our teams lost. What do we do when we know someone — maybe even more than that, someone who is a believer — is wrong? I think some of us are natural fighters. We like to make sure that people understand where we stand, but it's easy, while you're fighting for the truth, to have it quickly move from fighting for the truth to, hey, I want them to know that I'm right. I want them to admit it. Others of us avoid. When we know someone is wrong, we avoid it, and that can sound loving. But sometimes what we're doing is dressing up fear and calling it kindness. If we really believe something is true, then we can't pretend that it doesn't matter. But if we love the people that we're talking to, we can't treat them like an enemy to defeat either. Big Question What do you do when you know someone is wrong? So what do we do when we know someone is wrong? Well, fortunately, the Bible tells us how to do that in this passage. Keep your Bibles open to 2 Timothy 2, as we will see three major movements within this passage. First, don't bend the truth. Second, don't write them off. And third, don't crush the person. Outline Don't Bend the Truth (2 Timothy 2:14-19) Don't Write Them Off (2 Timothy 2:20-22) Don't Crush the Person (2 Timothy 2:23-26) Don't Bend the Truth (2 Timothy 2:14-19) Let's look at this first section: don't bend the truth. Paul had just been encouraging Timothy as we lead into this section. Right above it are four lines that talk about God's character. They jut out from the letter because they're written differently — written poetically. In fact, this was likely an early church creed or confession that the church would have recited. Verse 14 starts with this: remind them of these things. We're being called to look back at those four lines. Paul is telling Timothy to remind the faithful men he was supposed to entrust the gospel to — to remind them in their own suffering, in their own times of discouragement — and not only that, but to charge them before God. This was courtroom language, the language used in the imperial courtroom: to be charged before the judge, to be sworn in, to be asked to tell the truth before the highest authority there was. Paul is doing the same thing. Charge them not before a judge, not before a jury, not before people, but before God. Paul is telling Timothy: pastor, God is watching. And that's why he encourages him not to quarrel about words. There were false teachers running rampant in the church, spreading things that discouraged the members, troubling their faith. These men were not looking to debate; they wanted to argue. They wanted to quarrel about words. This was probably some sort of contextual argument happening in the first century — possibly about the resurrection. They had nothing to build the church up with, so what they were doing was destroying it by attacking it, arguing about senseless things. In our context, we might not be arguing about words or fighting theological battles in our church, but my question for you would be this: are we fighting for things that allow the gospel to flourish, or to shrink? Sometimes we have preferences, things we believe the church should do — but are we fighting for things that bring the gospel forward? We don't need to win every fight, because our standing doesn't come from our ability to get our own way. It's one of the things I love about this church: no one gets to be a dictator in our council. We have a set of rules we've written and self-imposed that guard us from that — no one gets to dictate, gets his way every time. I love that rule, because I've seen too many churches fall prey to a pastor who gets comfortable being power-hungry, gets his own way, and is no longer seeking after what the Holy Spirit is telling him but after what he desires. The truth is, I am a sinful person. Our council has had to say no to me before, which is a really good thing, because I'm a sinful man. No one gets their way — and that's the beauty of how a church is supposed to operate. We're supposed to follow God's will and not the will of one man. Paul continues in verse 15: do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Again Paul is using courtroom language, saying firmly: present yourself to God. Your audience is God — not your congregation, not the people in front of you, but God himself. I've seen far too often pastors preach to a room, believing the congregation is the person they're supposed to impress. God's word tells us that it is him, and him alone. To preach to the room is to preach to itching ears. Imagine if I could only tell you, as a congregation, the things you wanted to hear. Imagine how bad that would be for our lives — imagine if we had no one in our life willing to tell us we were wrong. We have to have, from some authority, someone who's going to correct us. The beautiful part of what Paul is telling Timothy here is that it is God's word. Imagine for a minute that we believed no one could hold us accountable, not even God's word — that nothing could tell us something uncomfortable. Essentially, God would have to be my size. He'd have to be my shape. He'd have to believe everything I believe. He couldn't have something better for me, couldn't bring me into any sort of growth, if his word can't confront me. In some sense, for me to insist that God's word has to fit everything I already believe means that, in some sense, I'm already my own god — I'm already the highest authority and no one can correct me. That's not what Paul is telling Timothy. Paul's telling Timothy to teach the truth correctly, without distortion, and to pass that on to the next generation. Timothy's job isn't to make God's word interesting — and neither is any pastor's. It is not my job to get up here on Sundays and entertain you. It's not my job to be funny. My prayer is that at the end of my life, people would not remember my jokes but would remember that I taught them what God's word said. My job is to cut it straight. This is why the preaching of the word is the central thing in any of our worship services. Whenever we gather to worship, the word is central — it's why the pulpit is at the center of the stage. In a church that believes in God's word, grounded in God's word, you will see a pulpit at the center. It's not an accident. Paul continues in verse 16: but avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness. This irreverent babble is church-like talk — Christianese — that doesn't really mean anything, going through the motions to go through the motions. What it leads to is more and more ungodliness, or, put another way, it will make us better at being bad, because we'll have the right language to cover it up. In verse 17 he continues that this will get worse and worse, that it will spread like gangrene. That was a visceral image for them — a flesh-eating infection that slowly and painfully took over the body. In the first century it was a death sentence. What Paul is saying is that false teaching in the church is not just wrong information, not just people being factually wrong — it's a pathogen. It's infectious, and it leads to death. He names two people, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who had been speaking false doctrine in Timothy's church and leading people into discouragement or even away from their faith. Notice at the end of this passage Paul quotes from the book of Numbers, and it's not just a random quote. It's a quote from Korah's Rebellion — a group of people who believed that Moses was no longer speaking for God, that Moses was leading God's people astray, and who said, we are going to separate ourselves and follow God our own way. Moses had warned them this was wrong, that God was still using him. What happened was these people were swallowed up in the desert — their rebellion against God and against the one God had chosen led them to disaster and to death. Paul uses this quote because what he's saying is: these two men are working against you, working against the church, but look at what happened in the Old Testament. Those men didn't get very far; that rebellion did not stick around. It starts in verse 19: but God's firm foundation stands. Korah did not destroy the tabernacle, and these two men will not kill the church. This is the encouragement Paul is giving to Timothy. The foundation doesn't hold because Timothy can successfully refute every heretic who walks into his church. The foundation holds because God laid it, and because God sealed it himself. There will be times people come against this church, but they will not win. So when someone is wrong, Paul says: do not bend the truth. Cut it straight. Don't Write Them Off (2 Timothy 2:20-22) But now Paul does something surprising, because the greatest danger to Timothy isn't only that people would believe something false in the church — Timothy needs to watch what happens to Timothy while he's correcting them. Which brings us to our second point: don't write them off. You'd expect Paul to say: here are two people speaking heresy, actively confronting the church — get them out. But he doesn't say that. Instead he uses an object lesson in verses 20 through 22: the example of vessels, or containers. Within the temple there were different types of containers — some used to house really important and valuable things, and others used for the byproducts of animal sacrifice, for gross stuff. So why is Paul bringing up containers in the middle of encouraging Timothy about two false teachers? He's not just bringing up vessels to bring up vessels; he's talking to Timothy about these men. It would be easy to read this passage as being about Timothy himself — as if Paul is saying, Timothy, if you cleanse yourself from what's dishonorable, you'll be a vessel of honorable use. That's the easiest way to read it, but it isn't about Timothy. Timothy isn't a dishonorable vessel; that's not what's being talked about here, and it would be a strange and even offensive thing for Paul to say to him. What Paul is saying is that these two heretics, these two men teaching false things, are the dishonorable vessels — and God can cleanse them. God can lead them to repentance. That's why he says, in verse 22, so flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the name of the Lord from a pure heart. We often read “flee youthful passions” and immediately think it's about sex or lust, but that would be a strange way for Paul to write — talking about heretics, talking about vessels, and then suddenly talking about lust. That's not what the youthful passions are here. He's talking about getting angry — about being a hothead and coming unglued on these two men. He's saying: look at these dishonorable men, these men working against the church, but you cannot fly off the handle at them, because God is able to make what is dishonorable honorable again. He's the one who cleanses. Notice the word “so” at the start of verse 22 — whenever you see the word “so” in a letter, that's the author telling you what to do. He's saying: look at these vessels, because there are false teachers; Timothy, you can't act this way. You can't lean into your youthful passions. Flee. Don't blow up at them, because God may restore them. So don't read this passage as a call to clean yourself up — you don't have the ability to cleanse yourself. What this is saying is that when you see someone who you know is saying the wrong thing, who is actively against your faith or against the church, you don't get to write them off. You don't get to cut them out of your life. You don't get to say, I don't want anything to do with you anymore. You can't come unglued on them. This is an encouragement for a pastor not to get discouraged by false teaching, because God knows who are his, and he is the one who cleanses them. Don't Crush the Person (2 Timothy 2:23-26) That leads us into the last point in this passage: don't crush the person. If God can take what's dishonorable and make it honorable, then Timothy cannot treat these men as disposable. To blow up and fight these men would be a detriment to his ministry — it would be a soldier getting entangled in civilian affairs. So does this mean that if people are doing outright sinful things in our church, or teaching things that are outright wrong, we have no recourse, that we just let it happen? No. Look at verse 25: correcting his opponent with gentleness, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. We absolutely are called to correct. In fact, this word “correct” is the same word used for discipline — this is what and why we practice church discipline. Church discipline is never done because elders or deacons like to meddle in people's business; it is the last thing we ever want to do. The reason we do it is because we desire to see people restored. We believe that sin is actually bad for us — that if we continue in the wrong thing over and over, our hearts will harden to it, and if there's no one walking alongside us to correct us, to bring us back, we can turn into that sin going on and on like a machine. Quarreling and correcting are not the same thing. Correction is desperately needed in all of our lives; we need it, we ought to submit to it. But look at what this all hinges on, in verses 25 and 26: this hinges not on them repenting, and not on Timothy having a clever argument. This hinges on God granting them repentance. Paul gives Timothy three things in this section: cut it straight, keep clean, and say the hard thing gently. And yet none of this is dependent on Timothy — God is the one who grants repentance. So what do we do when we know someone is wrong? This passage tells us three things: don't bend the truth, don't write them off, and don't crush the person. Our errors, the other person's errors, really do matter — we must not bend the truth. We must not write them off, because their story isn't finished. And we don't crush the person, because their repentance belongs to God. And then, after doing those three things, we trust God to do what only God can do. What we see in this passage, and our main idea, is this: grace makes a worker who handles truth cleanly, stays clean, and corrects gently. This teaches us something about what it means to have a pastor, and what a pastor ought to be: a pastor must be both doctrinally precise and gentle relationally. You can't have one without the other. When you have one or the other, it leads to a pastor abusing his power. If you have a pastor who isn't theologically sound but is just really kind and gentle, it allows false teaching to run rampant through the church — and false teaching doesn't just stay out there, it affects our lives, it changes who we are. To believe something wrongly about God shapes our perception and hurts us. On the other side, to have men preach who are brilliant, who are smart, but whose lives lack the integrity to model the same values they preach, is a huge detriment to a church. This is why pastors need real training — we don't just let anyone with passion preach, and we can't just let smart men be elders. If you look at the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy, you'll see mostly a list of character qualifications. There are only two qualifications that are competency-based: know the right doctrine, and be able to correct false doctrine. The rest are about the kind of man you must be. Having one without the other will hurt the church. We should never be impressed with a pastor's ability to defend the truth if he consistently violates that truth in the way he treats people — and we should never be impressed by a pastor's ability to love people well if he consistently bends the truth to keep people happy. That leads us into our first point of application: do not quarrel. Our culture has turned disagreement into a spectator sport. Online, the highest compliment a rebuttal can receive is that it destroyed or totally owned the other side. Debate no longer means we're pursuing truth together; it's become a way to exert dominance over people. But you don't need social media to be quarrelsome — this happens at the dinner table, in your marriage, in the car with your kids. You can be completely right about an issue and completely wrong in the way you've treated the person. Some of us need to learn that not every wrong statement we encounter in the world needs our enlightened perspective. Paul tells Timothy that there are controversies he must simply not participate in. So when you disagree with someone, what do you actually want? Do you want them to know the truth, or do you want them to know that you were right? That leads us into our second point of application: correct false teaching. Some of us hear “don't quarrel” and think, great, I'll just keep my mouth shut — that's probably the easier temptation for most of us. But Paul won't let us do that either. Verse 25 does not say ignore his opponents with gentleness; it says correcting his opponents with gentleness. Some of us hate conflict so much that we've renamed cowardice kindness. Our therapeutic culture has come to treat all confrontation or disagreement as a form of violence — we say conflict is bad, we say let people just believe what they believe. That flatters itself as gentleness, but it's often simply cowardice, unwilling to say the hard thing to someone. Verse 25 will not permit that. We need to correct things when we see them — when your child is beginning to believe something that isn't true, when a Christian friend is walking into deeper sin, when someone tells you something about God that Scripture simply does not say, when your spouse is developing a pattern that is hurting your marriage. Gentleness in this text is never the absence of confrontation; it is confrontation conducted in a certain way. Love does not always say, that's okay, I agree with you. Sometimes love says, I love you enough to tell you this isn't true. I love you enough to risk making this conversation uncomfortable, to risk our relationship, for you. As Christians, we're not allowed to simply stand on the sidelines. As we come to a close, how can we read this section of Scripture and not walk away thinking, I need to work harder, I need to try better, I need to start handling the truth better, correct more gently? That would be the wrong way to walk away from this passage. There are a lot of imperatives, a lot of commands in this section, but we have to look at how this whole letter is constructed. Paul spends the first half of this letter explaining the gospel, commanding that the gospel be followed and passed on. The second half is how we respond to that gospel. It is always gospel then law, grace then obedience. We don't lead with what would Jesus do — we lead with what has Jesus done. So how can you hold tightly to the truth without crushing the person who is wrong? Because on the cross, the truth was crushed for us. God sent his Son — truth itself. What did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth, and the life. He climbed up on the cross and was crushed for our iniquities. We no longer have to prove something before others; we have nothing left to prove. Christ has already secured our standing before God. We do not need to win the argument. We do not need them to admit that we're right. We don't need to change their heart — in fact, we're incapable of doing so. God does that. So, church, remember this: grace makes a worker who handles truth cleanly, stays clean, and corrects gently. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Heading 3 Sherilyn Schaeffer The Journey Christian Counseling

Offensive Spiritual Warfare Spiritual warfare is a topic that Christians either think too much or not enough about. We’ve all met Christians who attribute every bad thing in their lives to spiritual warfare, so much so that there is no more room for sin or our fallen nature. On the other side, there are Christians who nearly disregard the reality that there is an enemy out there who seeks to kill steal, and destroy (John 10:10). Heading 5 Why the Lord's Supper Does What Believer's Baptism Doesn't Mitchell Leach December 18, 2024 Bible Spiritual warfare is a topic that Christians either think too much or not enough about. We’ve all met Christians who attribute every bad thing in their lives to spiritual warfare, so much so that there is no more room for sin or our fallen nature. On the other side, there are Christians who nearly disregard the reality that there is an enemy out there who seeks to kill steal, and destroy (John 10:10). Not Just For Defense One of the greatest mistakes in understanding spiritual warfare is putting ourselves on the defense against Satan. I believe this is what he wants us to believe. It only gives him the advantage if we believe that he has the edge in our world and he is launching assaults against Christians and the church. While it’s true that Satan will launch attacks on us, we must realize that this is not how the Bible paints the picture of what is happening in the spiritual reality. As Jesus was teaching his disciples, he asked them “Who do people say that the Son of Man is.” After Peter answered, Matthew records Jesus saying this to Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” Jesus is saying something about spiritual warfare that we have often overlooked. If you're not familiar with battle tactics, it can be easy to miss the fact that gates are used for defense, not offense. Far too many pastors preach that we must protect ourselves from the evil one and his schemes. While it’s appropriate to be on guard, the picture of spiritual warfare the Bible gives us is one that should bring hope and encouragement to us. We’re the ones who get to advance against evil and wage war on hell itself. Too often the scene that is set for us is one where we cower in the corner as Satan and his forces attack and we just hope that we can make it long enough until Jesus comes back. In his book The Invisible Hand, author, pastor, and theologian, R.C. Sproul says, “The basic premise of Scripture is that the power of Christ is greater than the power of the devil and his domain. Therefore, Christians need not live their lives in fear of Satan's power but ought rather to rejoice in Christ's victory over him.” Christians can have confidence in God, all too often we can believe that somehow God and Satan are opposing forces who are equal in power. But scripture reveals that God is all-powerful even over the actions of Satan and his forces. We then have every reason to be encouraged knowing that even Satan’s plans have been accounted for by God and will be used for ultimate good, and will lead to Satan’s ultimate demise. Church is a base not a haven With this view, it is easy to believe that culture is so far gone and under Satan’s control. We are easily deceived that we need to huddle together to weather the storm of life. While we need to band together it isn’t because otherwise we’ll be torn apart by Satan’s attack. It is so that we can mount a strong attack on evil and the gates of Hell. The American church has — unfortunately — believed that it is a safe haven for weary Christians. While it needs to be a safe place for us, this must be because we are a base, an outpost of the kingdom. It is a launch point for us to make our attack against the evil we see in the world. It is the place where we come to get our battle plans on how we will take back the creation that was lost to sin, death, and evil. It’s the place we come back to remember how powerful our God is. And to remember that we carry with us that same power by the Holy Spirit. John Owen a prominent English theologian in the 1600’s wrote this in his book The Mortification of Sin, ”What a comfort this is to believers, that all the power of Satan is under the control of our Captain, who is the Lord of hosts, the Lord mighty in battle! The enemy is mighty, but he is mightier; he is strong, but he is stronger; he is active, but he is more active.” God is sovereign and we know he has already won. Therefore we cannot be timid people afraid of culture, we must be courageous Christians who are ready to take back the culture by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think this is a desire that is lying dormant in the church as a whole. Men — in particular — are attracted to a message that says “Go and take what is ours.” Yet instead of fear-mongering people into political action, scripture is exhorting Christians to go into their local communities and wage war by proclaiming the gospel and loving our neighbors. Satan’s strategy One of the dangers of believing we’re on defense while we’re supposed to be on offense is that it puts Christians in great danger. Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus’ battle against Hannibal during the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE) is probably the most famous example of how seemingly random and unpredictable attacks could take down a larger army. Hannibal's army was far superior on the open battlefield, employing innovative tactics and formidable cavalry that the Roman legions struggled to counter. Rather than engaging in direct, large-scale battles, Fabius adopted a strategy of harassment and attrition. The Fabian Strategy involved avoiding large-scale engagements and instead focusing on small, inconsistent attacks such as skirmishes, raids on supply lines, and ambushes. These attacks targeted Hannibal's army indirectly by cutting off its supplies and wearing down the troops through constant harassment. This approach was frustrating for Hannibal, as it denied him the decisive victories he sought to force Rome into a peace agreement favorable to Carthage. Over time, the attrition and inability to force a decisive battle took its toll on the Carthaginians, contributing to their eventual withdrawal from Italy. This — in large part — is the same strategy that Satan uses to attack Christians. Spiritual warfare feels inconsistent. At least it does in my life. It’s not every day that I feel the attacks of Satan and his forces. It is so inconsistent that I get lulled into a false sense of security where I feel nothing will happen today. Armor Of God On Attack The challenge of putting our armor on when you’re not expecting an attack every day is that you’re not reminded you need it every day. This is why getting the perspective correct on our spiritual battles is so important. Imagine yourself in a physical war. Imagine you are given plans for an attack on the enemy. As you get ready what do you do? You’d make sure to put on your armor, to grab your weapon. When we accept the reality that we are the ones on the attack, we are the ones who have the advantage, how we live our lives will change with it. So here’s my plea Christian. Go and prepare yourself for battle knowing you are taking the unlimited power of God as you are carried by the Holy Spirit. Know that you have the advantage, know you are on the attack, and know that Satan is the one who fears you. Arm yourself every day because you will need your weapon as you wage war against the evil in this world. But most of all know this, as you go “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 16:18. R.C. Sproul, The Invisible Hand: Do All Things Really Work for Good (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1996) 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). Drawing the Line of Legalism Read Learn More About What We Believe Prosper Christian Reformed Church holds that the Bible is the inerrant, divinely inspired Word of God and the highest authority for faith and life. We believe in the centrality of the gospel: that all people are sinners in need of salvation, which comes through Jesus Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, by grace alone through faith alone. We practices infant baptism as a sign of covenant inclusion and uphold traditional biblical teachings on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. We affirm Reformed theology, including the five points of Calvinism, and embrace an amillennial view of Christ’s reign and the end times. What We Believe

Crowned With Thorns Prosper Christian Reformed Church Crowned With Thorns Crowned Mitchell Leach Friday, April 3, 2026 Audio Crowned With Thorns Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 01:04 Sermon Transcript Scripture Reading Matthew 27:33-50 When they came to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, 'This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.' The two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, 'You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!' And also the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him, saying, 'He saves others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, "I am the Son of God."' And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' That is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And some of the bystanders hearing it said, 'This man is calling Elijah.' And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But others said, 'Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come.' And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. This is the word of the Lord. Some things feel like a footnote until you realize that they change everything. There's a story that came out of World War II, out of Auschwitz, where a prisoner had escaped and the guards found him and brought him back. As a punishment, they found 10 men at random to punish by starvation. One of the innocent men chosen at random, as he was being taken away toward a part of the camp where he would be starved to death, saw his wife and his children and broke down crying out, 'My wife! My children!' In the camp, there was a pastor who stepped forward. His name was Maximilian Kolbe. He didn't protest the injustice. He didn't negotiate a sentence. He simply offered himself. He said, 'Take me instead.' And that's exactly what happened. The man who was saved later recalled: 'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on, the immensity of it. I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offering his life for me, a stranger. Is this some dream? I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian. I was saved and I owe him the fact that I could tell you all of this today.' The guilty went free, the innocent took his place. That is substitution. And everyone understands why a story like that would stay with you, because substitution is the only kind of love that saves. Big Question Why did Jesus have to die? We like the idea of forgiveness when it is cheap. We love the idea of love without justice. In some sense, we want a God who says, 'It's fine,' while still being a God who's holy. But if God just forgives, if he ignores sin, he stops being good. He stops being just. And if God punishes sin without mercy, then we have no hope. How can God be truly just and truly merciful all at the same time? That's the question — why did Jesus have to die? It's because sin cannot be waved away. Someone must bear it. Outline A Crown of Shame (Matthew 27:33-37) The Mockery of the Truth (Matthew 27:39-44) The Cry in the Dark (Matthew 27:45-49) The Final Surrender (Matthew 27:50) A Crown of Shame (Matthew 27:33-37) Matthew doesn't just point out the pain of what happens on the cross; he shows us shame. A king being treated like a joke. Let's look at Matthew 27:33-34: 'And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means "Place of a Skull," they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it.' They are going to the address of death. This was outside the city and it is important to understand that during Passover it was against Jewish custom to kill someone inside the city. The Jewish leaders thought they were just expelling a blasphemer from their holy city, except they're doing something infinitely more important. Just like in Leviticus, a sin offering had to be given outside the camp. Jesus, in this moment, becomes the sin offering the world needed, sacrificed outside the city. They were enacting Leviticus without understanding it, sending a sacrifice outside so sinners could stay inside. John Calvin on this section has this written in his commentary: 'In no other way could our guilt be removed than by the Son of God becoming a curse for us. If God declares that our salvation was so dear to him that he did not spare his only begotten Son, what abundant grace do we here behold?' We see in this section Jesus taking the blows as he's being cast out. And this is the cup that he must drink in order to satisfy the wrath of God, which is exactly why he passes up the cup mixed with wine and gall. This cup was most likely a mild narcotic. When Jesus was in the garden praying to God, the imagery of this cup kept coming up. The cup he must drink is the cup of God's wrath, which is why he cannot drink this numbing cup. He must be fully present in order to bear the full weight of our sin. In Gethsemane, he resolved to drink the cup of God's wrath to the full. Matthew 27:35-37: 'And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."' Matthew sprints past the crucifixion, gives it just a couple words because he wants us to see that the mockers are the dialog here. He's writing in irony, not a gruesome description. This echoes Psalm 22 where they strip him and cast lots. The mockers are performing Psalm 22 in front of the one who wrote it. As Pilate nails the charge sheet above the cross intending to mock Jesus, the charge becomes a coronation proclamation. Despite every intention to strip Jesus of his kingship, every event here solidifies it. Look at who Jesus is crucified with — he's crucified with the accomplices to Barabbas, the one who was set free as Jesus took his place. The Romans wanted people to see that Jesus ends up on the wrong side of history. He is crucified with criminals. But the scene secures his kingship. The cross is his throne, the thorns his crown, the mockers his court, his witnesses. Everything is being set for Jesus to become the king that the world has longed for. The Mockery of the Truth (Matthew 27:39-44) Matthew in his gospel loves this theme of the upside-down kingdom. And here is the deepest irony in all of his gospel. Every taunt in this section accidentally becomes true. Matthew 27:39: 'And those who passed by him derided him, wagging their heads.' Any reader steeped in the Psalms would have been slapped in the face by Psalm 22:7, which says: 'All who seek me mock me, and they make their mouths at me, and they wag their heads.' These mockers are not improvising; they are performing a script that they have never read. Matthew wants us to see that we are inside Psalm 22, the psalm about the righteous sufferer, and here is a better David suffering beyond what any human ever had or will suffer. Matthew 27:40-44: 'You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in 3 days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!' Notice that phrase — 'If you are the Son of God.' That line has a history. It points directly back to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Luke records Satan saying, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.' And when the temptation ended, Luke records: 'when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.' This is that opportune time. Satan has come back to tempt Jesus one more time through the mouth of the mockers — saying, 'Prove who you are by saving yourself.' But Jesus' mission was not to save himself. The crowd's logic is: if you are the Son of God, your divine identity gives you the power to escape. So do it. Prove it and we will believe. But the gospel logic is this: it's precisely because Jesus is the Son of God that he cannot come down. More evidence will not produce faith in people who have already hardened their hearts. Coming down from the cross will not make them believe. But even more — it will not save them. Jesus must be our substitute. He must stand in our place. He must be treated like us to treat us like him. He cannot save himself because we could not save ourselves. This is substitutionary atonement spoken out by mockers. John Stott in The Cross of Christ says this: 'The concept of substitution may be said to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be. God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserved to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone, and God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.' This is what Good Friday is all about. The Cry in the Dark (Matthew 27:45-49) For 12 verses, Matthew's been focused outward — on the soldiers, the passersby, the Sanhedrin, the criminals. The noise has been relentless, taunt after taunt, wave after wave of mockery. And then everything changes. Everything up until this point was about the horizontal suffering, the physical suffering from others. Now we will see not only the physical punishment but God's wrath and the spiritual punishment as well. Matthew 27:45: 'Now from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour.' Anyone who had read the Old Testament — this darkness equals judgment. Judgment has fallen on the Son for all the sin that God hates. A crucifixion was a spectacle, a show. People walked by just to see. It may be in this moment that the Father is hiding the Son's agony from public view. The holiest moment in the history of the world happens under a veil. 3 hours where heaven is saying, 'This is no longer entertainment; this must be atonement.' 'And about the 9th hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"' — that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' Matthew writes this down in Aramaic because he was there. He remembers these were the exact words Jesus spoke. Everything else in the gospel is written in Greek except for this. He remembers the exact phrasing, the dialect, the language in which Jesus spoke it. This would have been a memory you couldn't possibly forget. And in this moment, Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1. This is not Jesus quoting a verse to stay religious. This is Psalm 22 becoming flesh. He is the righteous sufferer, and he is alone. Notice what Jesus says. He says, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' Every prayer that Jesus has spoken up until this point started off with 'my Father,' 'our Father,' 'Father.' And here on the cross, he can't say that anymore. Jesus was not just experiencing the physical brutality of the cross; he is now abandoned by his Father. Jesus is suffering true, actual hell on the cross. The full wrath of God is being poured out. Jesus is not just experiencing what hell would be like if any one of us were there — he is experiencing every single chosen person's hell compounded into one moment. An agony, a spiritual agony no one of us can imagine. Jesus is bearing the full weight of sin on his shoulders. Isaiah 53 explains what's happening on the cross: 'Like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' This is the answer to our big question: why did Jesus have to die? Because the Lord laid our iniquity on him. The curse that belongs to every lawbreaker, every idolater, every rebel against God is here concentrated and falling on the head of Jesus. Sin cannot be simply waved away. God could not have just snapped his fingers and said, 'We're going to let this go.' Sin had to be paid for. When something is broken, it has to be fixed. If you are the one who broke it, someone can forgive you, but that means the cost is now passed on to the owner. And that's what happens here on the cross. The Final Surrender (Matthew 27:50) 'And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.' Matthew doesn't record what he says, but other gospels do. The Gospel of John says that Jesus said, 'It is finished' — meaning the debt is paid, the account is settled, the curse has been borne. All the wrath towards God's chosen has been paid in full. There's no more wrath for you. There's no more wrath for me. He gave up his final breath. The irony of the cross is that the one who spoke the world into existence breathes out his last word, his last and final breath. Everything now that has been broken begins to come right. The King, the true King, reigns by giving himself and completing the work the Father set before him. If you want the simplest summary of Good Friday: Jesus' death is not a tragedy. He died as your substitute. And when he said, 'It is finished,' he meant there is nothing left to add. Not only does he bear the curse and remain faithful — at the very moment when he feels the most forsaken, he is the most faithful. This is not Jesus losing his grip. This is Jesus holding on. Richard Sibbes says this: 'Jesus is never more obedient, never pleases the Father more than when he utters these words on the cross. The moment of maximum God-forsakenness is simultaneously the moment of maximum obedience for Jesus.' The Father turns away, but Jesus doesn't. He does not recant. He does not curse the Father. He could have come down, but he stays. Not because nails held him, but because love did. Main Idea Behold the King who bears the curse for sinners Jesus stays on the cross so he could have you. He could have your whole heart, everything you are, because he loved you already. When Jesus cries out, it's not in a moment of weakness. It is in a moment of ultimate faithfulness. This is the greatest display of love in human history. Jesus becomes the promise of life made to us all the way back in the Old Testament, and he purchases it through his death. Jesus is treated as guilty so we can be treated as righteous. He is shut out so we can be brought in. Jesus is treated like us so we can be treated like Jesus. Application You cannot help yourself Jesus, as he's hanging on the cross, is mocked to save himself and yet he does not come down because we could not save ourselves. Everything that happens on the cross is a trade — a radical reversal. Jesus gets what we deserve. We get credited his righteousness, because we could not save ourselves. No amount of goodness in us makes us better in God's eyes. The beauty of the cross is that Jesus declares, 'It is finished.' If we try to save ourselves, if we try to add anything onto the cross after that, we're trying to make Jesus a liar. We're saying, 'Well, Jesus, I know you said it was finished but you didn't really mean it.' There would have been no need for Jesus to die if you and I could have been even 1% good enough to save ourselves. Believe that it is finished Have you come here tonight with spiritual agony in your soul? Have you come here with guilt and grief that you don't know what to do with? The cross answers this. There is a story of a Puritan pastor who sat at the deathbed of a man who had lived in spiritual darkness for 30 years. The man said to the pastor, 'What can you say to a man who is dying and feels that God has forsaken him?' And the pastor replied, 'What became of the man who died, whom God did actually forsake? Where is he now?' The dying man caught it and said, 'He is in glory and I shall be with him.' Charles Spurgeon commenting on this says: 'So the light came to the dying man who had been so long in the dark. He saw that Christ had been just where he was and that he should be where Christ was, even at the right hand of God the Father.' Christ came to trade places with you. And today, if you believe that that's true — not as a cold fact, not as another add-on to your life, but as a total life-transforming reality — today is the day to believe that. Some of you have been in the dark for a long time. Tonight, the light is the same as it was for that dying man as it is for you. Not a feeling, not as a fix, but as a King who went where you were, where you are. As we come to a close, we all live under a verdict. Throughout our life, either by ourselves or by others, we feel guilty, not enough, ashamed. On the cross, that verdict came down on Jesus. Jesus takes this verdict for us. Not near you, not in some proximity to you — for you, in your place. The curse that should fall on us falls squarely on him. And the guilt that our conscience fears is spoken over Christ. And now there is nothing left to add, no debt left to pay. He said it was finished. So tonight we believe him before we see in 2 days what finished looks like. Church, behold the King who bears the curse for sinners. Closing Prayer Father, we praise you that our sin was paid in full. God, we cannot imagine what it looked like to see our sin on the cross. Father, your verdict has been spoken on the cross, and you've declared us innocent by treating your Son as guilty. Father, thank you that we can be received into you, that we can have you through this. Help us to go knowing the peace and knowing that this story is not over. In 3 days we will see a resurrected Christ. Father, we love you. We love to do your will. So help us worship you here now. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Church, your verdict has been spoken at the cross. Christ was treated as condemned so you could be received as beloved. So go in peace knowing the story is not over. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, be with your spirit now and forever. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Watch, Listen, and Read the sermons from Prosper Christian Reformed Church. Transcripts of every sermon are available here to read. Sermon Transcripts Sermon Series 2 Timothy September 13, 2026 Guard, endure, and preach the gospel without shame. To: November 8, 2026 From: 2 Timothy Come And Be Free August 30, 2026 Jesus is the Light of the World who exposes the slavery his own listeners refuse to see — and only those who abide in his word will know the truth and be set free by the Son. To: September 6, 2026 From: Come And Be Free Come And Drink August 16, 2026 At the Feast of Booths, Jesus exposes every shallow judgment about his identity and offers the Spirit to anyone who will stop arguing about him and come to him thirsty. To: August 23, 2026 From: Come And Drink Come And Eat July 5, 2026 Jesus is the true Bread from heaven who gives his flesh for the life of the world — and true disciples remain with him not because his words are easy but because his words are life. To: August 9, 2026 From: Come And Eat Come And Live June 7, 2026 Jesus is the Father's life-giving Son who heals the helpless, raises the dead, and fulfills the Scriptures — and the only fitting response is to come to him and live. To: June 28, 2026 From: Come And Live Consider Your Ways May 17, 2026 Because God calls his people to prioritize his presence and glory, we must repent of self-centered delay and trust that he will fill his house with a glory greater than we can imagine. To: May 31, 2026 From: Consider Your Ways Latest Sermons Filter by Clear Filters Filter By Scripture Select Scripture Book & Chapter Filter By Topic Select Topic Cut It Straight October 4, 2026 Mitchell Leach 2 Timothy 2 Built to Endure September 27, 2026 Mitchell Leach 2 Timothy 2 Wear the Chains September 20, 2026 Mitchell Leach 2 Timothy 1 Keep the Fire Burning September 13, 2026 Mitchell Leach 2 Timothy 1 The Pillar August 30, 2026 Mitchell Leach John 8 Rivers August 23, 2026 Mitchell Leach John 7 His Own Party August 16, 2026 Mitchell Leach John 7 Where Else Would We Go? August 9, 2026 Mitchell Leach John 6 Flesh and Blood August 2, 2026 Mitchell Leach John 6 First Prev 1 Page 1 Next Last

Christ Prosper Christian Reformed Church Christ Gospel In Three Words Mitchell Leach Sunday, January 18, 2026 Audio Christ Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 44:33 Sermon Transcript Most people have heard the name Martin Luther before. We learn about him usually in world history at some point. He was a German monk and a Bible professor about 500 years ago who became a key figure during the Protestant Reformation. As a young man, Martin Luther really struggled with this idea, and he was terrified of God's judgment and how to deal with it. He didn't take it lightly. Growing up, this was something that he thought about day and night, especially as a monk, he took this on himself. He prayed for hours. He fasted, lived with discipline. He confessed every day to the point where those he was confessing his sins to told him, You need to stop. You're confessing too much. But the strange thing was, the more serious that he took this, the more guilt, the more he couldn't let this go, the more he felt crushed by it. Later, Martin Luther would talk about this in saying, If anyone could save themselves, by doing the right thing as a monk, it would have been him. And yet he had no peace because he was enveloped with this idea, answering this question, What does a Holy God require? As Martin Luther began to translate the Bible from Latin into English, he started to find passage after passage that convicted him and transformed him. He realized that the righteousness that God requires is the same righteousness that he gives as a gift through grace, through faith. Luther later said that it felt like the gates of paradise opened up before him when he realized this. This is not just Martin Luther's story, though. This is our story. Our story that almost every philosophy, every religion, every worldview looks at, trying to answer this question, our big question, how can we be saved? How can we be saved? Our culture will give us a couple of different answers to this question, and yet they all come back to one commonality. They put the weight on you. An atheistic worldview would say, there is no God, there is no final judge, there's no final judgment. And so you don't need to worry about being saved. Just try being a decent human being. And yet the question doesn't go away. We still have a standard. We still feel this guilt inside of us, and we know that there are things that we can't undo. Even in a world where we try to convince ourselves that a judge doesn't exist, it doesn't erase the feeling in our soul. Other religions will say, Yes, there is a God, there is a standard. And so here are the rules. Here's how you should live. Practice them. Live by them. Do them. Prove yourself. And if you try hard enough, maybe you'll be accepted by this God or this spirit or whatever. The problem is you never know where you stand. You never know what What is good enough. And deep down, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know we don't meet that standard. And then there's a third approach, which is very common in the American church. We wouldn't ever say, we never confess that we are saved by works. And yet we often live by it. We view Jesus as this ticket, this entry ticket into heaven. And once we've we've punched that ticket. Once we've said that sinner's prayer, believe that it's our job to maintain that standard. We really don't believe that we need to go any higher, but we need to maintain it. We need to be good. We need to serve hard. We need to know the right answers, vote the right way, parent the right way, anything to feel secure. So whichever path we take, whether it's know God, works-based religion, or trying to play the church performance game, The question comes back to, how can we be saved? But fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Colossians 1, as we will see three movements in this passage. Christ's supremacy in creation Christ's supremacy in redemption Christ's supremacy applied to believers. We are in week three of our series, Gospel in Three Words, where we're just focusing on Christ. So far, two weeks ago, we looked at the righteousness of God, how God's standard is so high that even our own righteousness could never meet it. Last week, we looked at our sin. Not only is God perfectly righteous, but we are desperately sinful. That leads us to this week, a need for salvation. In this passage, what we'll see is Jesus Christ is the Supreme and sufficient Lord of creation and redemption who reconciles all things to God through the cross. John Calvin has this quote to say, he says, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God, the knowledge of ourselves." That's what we've been trying to do in this series so far, understand who God is, understand ourselves, because that drives us into the wisdom of knowing we need a savior. In other words, if you want to know whether or not you can be saved, Paul says, you have to look at the supremacy of Christ because only someone who is truly God can reconcile you to God. So let's look at that first section, Christ's Supremacy in Creation Paul is answering a question, why can Jesus save you? He does this by showing us that Jesus is God. He's not a mere resemblance of God, but that he is the image God. He is God revealed. He is God. That's why he says in Colossians 1:15, the first half, he says, He is the image of the invisible God. The point is that Jesus is not a copy. Jesus is not some form of God. The point is, if you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. He doesn't resemble God. He is God manifested. He's not a manifestation of God. He is God made flesh. In Greek thought, the idea of an image is that they would share in the reality of what they reveal. That's what Paul is trying to communicate. Jesus is the image. He is the reality, not just a mere resemblance of it. Not only is God, not only is Jesus God in the flesh, but that he has all authority. That's what we see in the second half of that verse, that he is the first born of all creation. This doesn't mean that Jesus is created. That's why we did the Nicene Creed a little bit before this. I want us to understand that this passage, a warning, that this passage is clear that Jesus is not created. The first born means not a literal son. It means someone who has the inheritance, who has the right The first born in the Bible means the supreme heir, the one with the right and rule, not the first one made. Psalm 89 says this about Jesus, prophesying about him, and I will make him, the first born, the highest of the Kings of the Earth. The first born is the one who inherited. He was the one who would be next in line for the throne. If it wasn't royal It would be the next in line to inherit the business or the farm. It wasn't just an inheritance of money or an inheritance of land. It was an inheritance to continue on what your father had done, to make the same decisions. Jesus has the authority over all of creation. He is not the first created thing. He is God. And in fact, if Jesus were part of creation, Paul would not say what he says next in Colossians 1:16-17. He says this, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Paul makes it perfectly clear and impossible for us to think that Jesus is created because Jesus is saying, Jesus created everything. You can't create everything if you were created yourself. Jesus cannot be inside the category of created things. He is the creator. He created all things. That word all, right? Sometimes we break down the Greek. This isn't a simple one for us. It's the Greek word 'pos', the meaning of it is all. You can't take it another way. It just It means all. That's it. Which is why John says this, All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. What Paul, what John are trying to show us the proof that Jesus is God. They're saying, Look, look at what Jesus does. He owns everything. He is the creator. He is the one who does it. All things were made through him and for him. ' He does the very things that God does. Not only was everything made by him, And through him, everything was made for him. I think that's important for us to understand. Jesus is able to receive glory. That's what we see in Jesus being or everything being made for him. Any other place in scripture, when someone tries to worship an angel or someone else, the angel will say, No, you cannot worship me. But Jesus is able to receive glory because everything was made for him. That means that the universe is ultimately not about us. It is about him. Everything exists in creation to glorify God, and that includes our life. There's a great quote by Ironías who says this, The glory Of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of a human consists in beholding God. What he's trying to say is, Our lives belong to God, fully alive, glorifying God. Paul is creating an argument here about how Jesus can save us, and it's crucial that we see and understand that Jesus is God. Verse 17 says this, And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That he has authority over all of creation. Paul is saying that Jesus isn't just the starter of the universe. That he is the sustainer of it. He is the one who holds all things together. He holds every atom of the universe together. Every breath that we have, every heartbeat is borrowed from God. So Paul starts by taking us all the way up. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the creator of all things, the one who holds everything together. But Paul isn't giving us theology, fun facts. He's showing us something. He's building an argument. Only the creator has the authority to redeem creation. And that brings us into our second movement here. Christ's Supremacy in Creation, Colossians 1:18-20. Verse 18 says this, And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead. That in everything he might be pre-eminent. He is not only the authority over creation, but he is the head of the church. He has authority over the church. And that The word head doesn't just mean authority. It means authority, but it also means the source of life. If Christ is the head of the church, then the church can only stay alive by staying connected to him, which means the church is not a book club. It's not a time where we can come together and passively observe God. This The church is the body. It is a living, breathing organism that gets its life from Christ himself. He also is the first born from the dead. It doesn't mean that he's the first resurrected person. In the Old Testament, there are people that were resurrected. In fact, Jesus resurrected Lazarus. It means that he is the first a new resurrection. He is the beginning of a new creation. The resurrection is this resurrection, his resurrection, is a guarantee that death will not have the final word for his people. It finishes by saying this verse, it finishes by saying, He is all of these things so that in everything he might be pre-eminent. That he's not one opinion among many. He's not a spiritual teacher that we can add on and hope that it improves our life. He's not a moral example that we can sit and view like we're at the movies. Paul says that Jesus is pre-eminent. He is first place. He is ultimate. He is supreme. He is unmatched. That's what pre-eminent means. He is first place in every category. If Christ is merely important to you, but not ultimate, you might not be seeing the Christ that Paul is proclaiming here, the Christ that we see in Scripture. Paul is trying to show us that Jesus is not just another person, that he's not like everyone else in the Old Testament that tried their best but ultimately failed. Paul wants us to see that he is God. He always will be God. He always has been God. It leads us into Colossians 1:19, For in him all the four God was pleased to dwell. This is Paul's way of cutting down every argument, every statement that would say Jesus was a good idea, or he was almost God, or he was a neat thing, he was a good teacher, he seemed moral. No. Jesus is not part of God. He can't be a fraction of God. He cannot be a slice or a manifestation or some other mode of God. Jesus is God. He's not a junior deity. All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him. The whole divine nature dwells in him. God has ensured that in Jesus is found all that makes God God. Colossians 1:20 says this, And through him to reconcile himself to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. When Paul says, To to reconcile all things. He does not mean that every person will be saved. This is not universalism, that everybody goes to heaven. What he means is that Christ's cross is the decisive act that will put the whole universe back together under the rightful rule, either through redemption or through final judgment. Through the cross, Jesus will make everything sad come untrue. Either way, Jesus will have the last word. This passage that we're going through is actually it's called the Christ hym. It might have been sung in early churches. But this Him reaches its apex, not in creation, but in reconciliation. That's why Paul has been piling up language, piling up this argument to say, what sin has destroyed, God restored through Christ. Sin isn't something that God could ignore either. Sin is not something that he could have just turned a blind eye to, turn the other way and let happen, let go unpunished. Sin had to be dealt with. And it was dealt with by God himself coming and bleeding for us. Our sin was paid for. It was paid for by the blood of Jesus. Because if Jesus is truly God and all the fullness is pleased to dwell within him, then his death, his blood is not just tragic. It is sufficient for us. The cross has the weight to truly deal with sin and shame. Paul won't let this idea stay out there, cosmic far off in the distant. He turns and says in this next section, And you, because reconciliation isn't just a theory, it's personal. Christ's supremacy is what we'll see applied to believers iColossians 1:21-23 God's heart is to save, but he saves through real justice, not by ignoring it. You were made by God and for God. We were created to be in relationship with God. And yet humanity's problem, like we saw last week, is that we choose everything but God. Colossians 1:21 says, And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, our problem isn't just that we were alienated. Our problem is that we are hostile, actively running away from God. Not neutral, not having some blemishes or mostly good, but we got a few issues that we just need to iron out. No, Paul says that we were opposed to God in our minds, our instincts, every flinch of our body ran directly towards hell, directly away from God. To get us back, he could not simply ignore the evil we've committed. Because if God could just turn a blind eye, could just allow it to go, it would mean that God is unjust, that he is not good, and that he's corrupt. There are some things that we've done, causing this rift in our relationship. That cannot go under the rug. They can't be swept under the rug. They have to be dealt with. And Jesus, we see in this passage, came to deal with evil by becoming sin for us. In fact, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this, For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Colossians 1:22 goes on to say, He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Jesus reconciled us the Father through the cross. This is why it says the word body, flesh, and death, because reconciliation isn't a metaphor. It's not an analogy. It's not some neat teaching that we can draw something from. It is real. Reconciliation required a real substitute, a real death. It required a real death for us to have real life. If you want a one paragraph explanation of what reconciled his death means. Romans 3 might be the best passage for this. It 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. Because God is a Holy God. And what we saw in week one is that God cannot even look at evil. His Holiness is so complete, so good. And the bad news for us is that we are nowhere near his Holiness. All have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Something has to happen. God cannot turn a blind eye to it. It might seem weird that God can't, that he can't just let this go, that he can't just snap his fingers and make everything go away. That's not what forgiveness is. If I came over to your house and I broke a window, which isn't unlike me, but if that happens, there's two ways you can go about that. You can say, Dude, you broke my window. You need to pay for it. And you'd be right to do that. I broke the window. That's justice. The second option is to say, Don't worry about it. I've got it. Maybe get out of my house so you don't break any other windows. And that's forgiveness. But regardless, forgiveness is not just letting it go. The window has to be fixed. The window cannot go unfixed. Someone has to pay the price. Forgiveness means that someone has to absorb the cost. Forgiveness means that the offended is the one that has to pay. This is what happens on the cross. The offended took the place of the offender. God himself provided the propitiation. It's a word we don't use. What it means is to satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus bore the wrath we deserve so that he could be both the just and the justifier. Jesus, who is fully God, satisfies his wrath so we wouldn't have to. Jesus loved us so much that instead of demanding justice, instead of demanding that we pay the price, that he would pay it. Why? He does this. This shows us in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If you're someone who circles in your Bible or writes in your Bible, circle that in order to... Paul is showing us the reason why. The reason why Jesus must be pre-eminent so that we could be presented, holy and blameless. This is salvation in one sentence, not just forgiven, changed, not just spared, presented, holy before God. God does not reconcile us and then leave us in our filth. It's in order that we could be saved, in order that we can be his again, that he could wash us of our evil, our sin, and that we could be one with him. The goal of salvation isn't merely to escape hell. It is to be reconciled. It is to be unified with God. And that's what leads us to our main idea. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. Think about how staggering that is. The one who spoke creation into existence is not distant from our mess. The one who holds the universe together did not stand back here with his arms crossed, scolding you, hoping that you would pick yourself up by your boots, traps, clean yourself off. No. Colossians says that all things were created by him, through him, and for him. And then in the same breath says that he made peace by the blood of the cross. It means that the greatest power in the universe is not just the ability to create, it's the willingness to suffer. And that's why we talk about the cross so much. It's not because as Christians, we want to be morbid. It's not because we're stuck on guilt. It's because the cross is the place where God's Holiness and God's love meet perfectly together. At the cross, God doesn't pretend that sin is small. He proves that it is deadly, that it will kill us. Rather than allowing it to kill us, he chose to die in our place. At the cross, God does not tell you to fix yourself. He does not tell you to try harder, to be better. He comes and rescues you. The offended, the offended one pays the cost. The judge steps down and bears the judgment that he just pronounced. This is the most beautiful reality in all of the world. The God that you sinned against is the God who was moved in love, moved in compassion to come to you, not with denial, not with sentimental tolerance, not just blinking at your sin and writing it off, but with blood bought peace. Do you see what happens on the cross? Do you see it? Jesus goes and bears the wrath of God. He was punished for you. He was tormented for you. That is what hell is. It's God's wrath poured out against sin against evil. And Jesus willingly did that for you. Do you know what love that takes? I think most of us in here have people in our life that we would die for, people we love, people that we would take a bullet for. But who in here would be willing to trade places with someone, to bear the wrath of God for all of their sin? Jesus did. Jesus did before the foundation of the world. He said, I do, I will, I love you that much. And if this is true, if God made you, the God who made you is the one who came to save you, then Christianity is not, first and foremost, an invitation to improve yourself. It's not some moral betterment program. It is an invitation to be reconciled, to stop hiding, to stop negotiating, to stop performing, and to come home. This changes everything for us. If salvation is earned, or if salvation is not earned, it is received, if peace with God is not achieved by effort but purchased by Christ, then it has to reshape everything about us. That leads us into our points of application. First, believe the gospel. If you've come here today, and you don't, this is my earnest plea not to leave here without believing the gospel, not merely confessing something. Belief is not mere confession. We can't believe in the same way. We can't believe in Jesus the same way we believe it's going to snow. We live in Northern Michigan. It's going to snow, right? Those two things are categorically different. Belief in Christ demands our whole life. It means whole-hearted transformation. It means surrender to God. It means putting God, seeding God, where where he belongs, treating him as if he's God. I think too many of us are all too comfortable with treating God as if he's only our provider, only our protector, only our healer, only our savior, not wanting him to be Lord of our life. Belief in Jesus has to come with relinquishing that, putting him, seeding him as Lord of our life. We cannot not say to God, Jesus, I want you to save me for my sin, but I don't want you to tell me what to do. That cannot work. Jesus must have total authority of our life. Belief means we trust him for everything. Not just simply using him as a get-out-of-hell free card. It means trusting him totally because we can. It means trusting his work on the cross even more than trusting our own emotions. I think too often in the modern church, our salvation is tied to how we feel. We come to church because the music makes us feel good. We like the way that the sermon makes us feel. Even our own relationship with God is tied to how we feel towards him, that we feel saved when we feel saved. The danger in this is that our salvation is then It's tied to an emotion. It's still tied to a work, to how we feel, to making us feel a certain way. Historic Christianity has always said, You are saved, not by a philosophy, not by some step program, not by emotion. You are saved by a historical event. Jesus came and died for you and rose again three days later. We know that we're saved because God tells us that we're saved. He tells us in his word that we're saved. And if we ever get confused on that, he's actually given us two really great things. He's given us our baptism and the Lord's Supper. Two means of grace that can remind us what God did for us. We cannot shift back into self-salvation. That's what we see in our next point of application. Continue in the gospel. Don't shift back into self-salvation, trying to save our self. Paul goes on to say, Continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. The translation? Once you've been reconciled, you are going to feel tempted to try to measure yourself up by what you've done, by what you feel. Some of us will be tempted into pride, into saying, Yeah, you know what? I have done a good job. I've been to church every single week this month, and I've done the right things, and I've really avoided doing X, Y, and Z. I'm much better than that person out there. Or we'll be tempted into despair in recognizing the sinfulness in ourselves. No, I have failed this week. I haven't been around church. I haven't done these things. I am without hope. But both of these forms of shifting away from the gospel. It does this because it makes you the center. It makes you the auditor of whether you're good or not. Martin Luther has this to say. The law says, 'Do this, and it never does, and it's never done. Grace says, believe this, and everything is already done. We are saved by what Christ has done, not by working for it, not by trying harder. And we'll see that next week in Galatians. So practice this one simple thing this week. When you sin, don't hide, run to Christ, confess quickly, and receive forgiveness. Preach the same gospel that you would preach, preach the same gospel to yourself that you'd preach to any sinner. But you are saved not by what you've done, good or bad. You're saved by grace through faith. Believing the gospel is not moving from bad people to good people. It is moving from people who are proud, moving from people who are in despair, to moving to people who can rest in the work, in the finished work of Christ. That leads us into our last point of application, which has three subpoints. Live reconciled. These aren't ways to earn peace with God, but this is a way that our peace from God bears fruit in our life. We need to forgive. If Christ has absorbed the cost of our sin, then we need to, in our life, slowly, painfully, and truly absorb the cost of others' sin against us. I want to I'll ask you two questions. Who do you keep punishing in your mind? What have you refused to release? It's a great place to start in forgiveness. The next is to be generous. If everything that's been created is created for God, then what we have, possessions or money, it belongs to him anyways. It's ultimately not for us. And if Jesus gave himself for us, then generosity is not a negative on our balance sheet. It is an opportunity for us to worship. The last thing is to reconcile. Reconciliation is maybe one of the most clear pictures that we can give the world of the gospel. If Christ moved towards us while we were hostile, while we were enemies to him, then you don't get to stay distant, forever, and safe from people. Is there a text that you need to send? A conversation you need to start? A confession you need to make? Not to win, but to make peace. We don't forgive, give, and reconcile to get God to love us. He already does that. We do it because in Christ, he's shown us that he has. The beauty of reconciliation between us and God is that it is not not just for this life. Salvation isn't merely God's way of helping us cope with the here and now. It is him bringing us home forever. Because the end of the story isn't escaping a bad place. The end of the story is God dwelling with his people. Revelation 21: 3 says this, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and he will be and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. That is reconciliation complete. Not a temporary peace, not a fragile assurance, not a relationship on probation. That is God with us forever. How do sinners get there? Not by measuring up, not by earning it, only through the blood of the Lamb, because peace with God had to be purchased. So if you hear anything this morning, hear this. The God who made you is the God who saved you. The gospel isn't our way to climb to God. It is his way of showing us that he came to us and that he will be the one who brings us all the way home. Would you stand with me as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Father God, we thank you for who you are, that you are a God who came to us, not just for this life, but to bring us home that you loved us even while we were still sinners, and you came to purchase us back. God, we cannot live and leave here as the same people. God, let us be transformed by your word. Let us go out and live with the peace that you've bought for us. Live as reconciled people. God, we love you. We love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

2 Timothy Sermon Series Description Second Timothy is a dying man’s final letter to the son he trained. Paul is imprisoned in Rome and awaiting execution. Churches he helped establish are being unsettled by false teachers. Former companions have deserted him. And Timothy—the man Paul is counting on to carry the gospel forward—appears tempted to shrink back in fear, shame, and discouragement. So Paul writes a final charge to his beloved son in the faith: Guard what you have been given. Entrust it to people who will pass it on to others. Expect suffering as part of faithfulness rather than as proof that something has gone wrong. Continue in the Scriptures. Preach the Word even when people no longer want to hear it. Fulfill the ministry Christ has given you. Second Timothy therefore gives the church more than a picture of Paul’s final days. It gives the church a biblical vision of pastoral ministry. A faithful pastor is not defined primarily by personality, popularity, charisma, novelty, institutional success, or how closely he matches a congregation’s preferences. He is a man called to guard the gospel, depend on grace, endure hardship, handle Scripture accurately, pursue holiness, correct gently, preach faithfully, and finish his course. This series is not intended to persuade the congregation to like or affirm its pastor. It is intended to place both pastor and congregation under the authority of Scripture. The congregation should learn how to recognize faithful ministry, how to encourage it, and how to sharpen its pastor when he falls short of the biblical standard. Guard, endure, and preach the gospel without shame. Cut It Straight 2 Timothy 2 Watch Built to Endure 2 Timothy 2 Watch Wear the Chains 2 Timothy 1 Watch Keep the Fire Burning 2 Timothy 1 Watch