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Infant Baptism At Prosper CRC, we baptize infants because we believe baptism is a sign of God’s covenant, just as circumcision was in the Old Testament. Throughout Scripture, God’s promises extend not just to individuals but to households (Genesis 17:7, Acts 2:39). Just as Israelite children were marked as belonging to God, we believe the children of believers should receive the sign of baptism, recognizing them as part of the covenant community. Baptism doesn’t save—only faith in Christ does—but it is a visible declaration that God claims us as His own. It reminds us that salvation is by grace, not by our own efforts, and that God’s promises extend to the next generation. Jesus welcomed children and declared that the Kingdom of God belongs to them (Luke 18:16), and the early church baptized entire households, suggesting that children were included (Acts 16:15, 33). In baptizing infants, we affirm that God’s grace comes before our response, just as He loved us before we loved Him (1 John 4:19). This practice is not about what we do for God, but about what He has done for us. It’s an invitation for parents and the church to raise these children in the faith, pointing them to Jesus as the only source of salvation. Baptism is not the finish line—it’s the starting point of a life lived in response to God’s grace. Infant Baptism Process To schedule an infant baptism at Prosper CRC, please fill out the form, and a staff member will be in touch with you. Infant Baptism Form

Judgement and Mercy Prosper Christian Reformed Church Judgement and Mercy Come Thou Long Expected Mitchell Leach Sunday, December 14, 2025 Audio Judgement and Mercy Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 56:58 Sermon Transcript While they're being seated, would you please take your Bible and turn with me this morning to Genesis 6. It's right in the beginning of your of your Bible. Genesis 6. We're going to read a few verses, and I'll try to direct you because we're not going to read consistently. We're going to read, skip a few verses, then read and skip a few and go again. So I'll try to help you understand where we're going. Genesis 6, beginning with just verses 5 through 8. Passage of scripture we don't read all that often in scripture, but listen carefully to what God has to say to us this morning. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regreted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. I want to pause there. Does that surprise you at all? So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I'm sorry that I've made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now, if you will, go with me to verses 13 and 14. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. Then drop down with me to verse 16 of chapter seven. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded, and the Lord shut him in. Would you pray with me for just a moment? Father God, we give you thanks for your word. Lord, it hurts that you looked at us, human beings, and said, I'm sorry I made them. Father, help us to understand you want a love relationship with us. And then Lord, help us to open our hearts and to literally love you with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength the way you want. Introduction Some stories stay with us because they say something true about us. This morning, one of the stories comes from an unlikely place. It comes from the movie Groundhog Day. I bet you didn't think I was going to say that this morning. Groundhog Day, for the four of you who haven't seen the movie, is a movie starring Bill Murray. He plays a character named Phil Conners, a man trapped in an endless loop. Every morning, he wakes up. It's the same day over and over again. The same mistakes, the same temptation, the same patterns. Nothing he tries can break the cycle. No indulgence, no escape, no effort. It's funny on the surface, but the reality is it's haunting. It teaches us a haunting truth that we can relive the same day thousands of times and still be the same people. We are all like Phil. We need more than just a new day. We need a new heart. And that's exactly the problem that Genesis 6 shows us. Humanity didn't need another opportunity. It didn't need another reset. It didn't need another try better next time. The world had been given a second chance after Eden. And sin simply went with it. And that's the big question that this passage asks us this morning. Big Question Do we just need a second chance? Isn't this what we believe in as Americans in the West? Isn't this what we believe in in second chance? Is the power of second chances? We tell each other that people are basically good, that we're shaped mostly by our environment, and that deep down we're capable of becoming our best selves if we just get a fresh start. If we We have a new year, a new habit, a new relationship, a new school, a new career, a new resolution, we tell ourselves, if I could just start over, I can fix myself. And it sounds hopeful. It even sounds compassionate. And we want to believe that this is true. We see this language all over in our culture saying everyone deserves a second chance. We all just need a clean slate. People change. Give them a chance. Give it time. And it feels It feels right because we want this to be the solution. A second chance is simple. A second chance is manageable. A second chance keeps the problem out there in our circumstances, in the environment in which we're in rather than in here in our hearts. But then real life happens. We get a second chance, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and we keep finding ourselves in the same loop in the same situation. We can resolve to be different people, yet slip back into the same sins. Tim Keller has this quote. It says, If our problem was only our environment, God would have sent a teacher. If our problem was only ignorance, God would have sent a philosopher. But our problem is sin, so God sent a savior. You can change your environment, but temptations still come with you. You can turn the page with the same heart writes the next chapter. Human history had second chance after Eden, and it didn't get better. It got worse. Which brings us to the tension that Genesis 6 confronts head-on. Do we just need a second chance, or do we need something greater? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Genesis. We're actually going to cover Genesis 6 through 9. We're not going to read the whole thing, but this is the whole story of Noah. And so we're going to see three movements in this story. Outline: We're going to a second chance a second Eden a second fall Let's remember where we're at in this story so far. In Genesis 3, sin entered the world. In Genesis 4, sin spread to a family. Cain murdered his brother Abel. By Genesis 5, sin had taken root in a genealogy in generations of people. And by Genesis 6, sin has infected the entire world. What began with a whisper now roars across the earth. Instead of the seed of the woman crushing the serpent, the seed of the serpent fills the earth with violence, corruption, and pride. This is no longer a broken couple or a broken family or a broken community. This is a broken world, and God sees it. What we will see in this story is as human wickedness multiplies and creation is corrupted, God grieves and brings judgment through flood, yet he preserves his redemptive promise through Noah, the righteous man who walks with God. A Second Chance And that's what we'll see in this first section, a second chance, Judgment and the Ark, chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 5 showed us a genealogy from Cain and a genealogy from Seth leading up into Noah. When we arrived to Noah, the trajectory set by Cain has become full-fold It has fully blossomed and corrupted the world. Look at Genesis 6:5 with me. Genesis 6:5 says this, The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. Humanity had become totally evil, totally wicked. They had become tyrants. That's what the word nephilum means. These people were tyrants, ruling over people in an There were men using women to satisfy their lust instead of seeing them as image bearers. The Earth was filled with wickedness, with selfishness, with pridefulness. That's what we see in Genesis 6:6-7, if you look at that with me. "And the Lord regreted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." God's heart is pined by the evil the world has come to love. This is not the fury of an irritated deity. This is the grief of a father whose children chose to love violence than him. Cornelius Planteca has this quote that says, "Sin is not just the breaking of rules. It is vandalism of Shalom." This is why advent begins in the shadows, because the savior we wait for comes into the world that God himself judged for its violence. The peace that was once in the Garden of Eden is perverted. And because of this, God declares that he will cleanse the Earth. But notice this, that God is not abandoning his promise that he made in Genesis 3. He is purifying the stage on which that promise will unfold. God does not start over completely. He has every right to, he has every right to wipe everyone off the face of the Earth and start over again. But he doesn't. God had promised to bring salvation into mankind through the seed of the woman. And God is a faithful God. That's actually the first time we see this in scripture. God God's faithfulness coming out in a clear and direct way, at least. God's faithfulness to his promise here because he won't go back on his promise. Genesis 6:8-9, it says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japhoth." Grace appears before obedience. Favor precedes faithfulness. And that's the pattern that we see in scripture. That's why we see this pattern here. Anytime God commands obedience, he saves first. He shows grace first. You look at the Ten Commandments, that's the way that it happens. God saves He saved Israel from the Red Sea, from the Egyptians. He delivered them and then calls them into obedience. So he chooses a family. God chooses a family here. God looked at all the people of the Earth, and he chose Noah. The word in this passage that says found favor is really a word that means that God's heart was moved. Noah didn't earn this. This wasn't something that he did enough good in order to earn God's favor. This is actually the same word that we use throughout the Old Testament and New Testament for grace. This is the first mention of grace. And it's interesting because it's in the context of judgment. Before God saves through a manger, he saves through an ark. I think some of us still think that God loves us because we're better than most or that we're better than these other people. I think it's easy for us, and maybe we don't say that confessionally or we don't say that outwardly. But deep down, I think in everyone's heart, we believe that we're better than them. We're better than those people who don't follow God, or we're better than those people who do this thing. At least I don't do that. Noah reminds us that grace is never earned. It is only received. If you're tired this advent season of trying to clean yourself up for God, this passage invites us to rest in God's grace. This verse doesn't mean that Noah was without sin. When it says that he is righteous or blameless, what that means is that Noah's righteousness was given from God to him because he believed in the promise, that his blamelessness was based on his worship because he walked with God. God had every right to wipe the whole world clean. Sin had pervaded every inch of the world, the perfect world that he had created, and that included Noah. Noah's righteousness is imputed to him. Not a righteousness of his own, but a righteousness of faith, God's righteousness. And so God makes a covenant with Noah. Look at Genesis 6:18 with me. He says, "But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you." This is the first time the word covenant appears. And there is a huge sensation for me to stop and do 15 minutes of talking about a covenant right here because covenant is such a huge part of our faith. But we're going to talk about that in 2026 a lot more. So I'm going to limit myself to this brief explanation. A covenant is more than a legal contract. A covenant is even more It's not even just a promise. It is a promise against your own life. It is a promise marked by blood. It is like a promise, but you have to put a deposit down. And imagine that deposit being your own life. That is what is happening here. God is promising Noah and his family against his life that they will be saved while everyone else dies. What we see here in this story is that the Ark is a type of Christ. It's the only place of safety when judgment comes. We must be found in Christ just as Noah was found in the Ark. But even after the waters recede, we are left asking, Will Will this cleansed world cleanse the human heart? And that's what we see in this next section. The second Eden, a new world, a new covenant in Genesis 8, the whole chapter of 8, and then Genesis 9:1-17. God brings all the animals to Noah, and the flood begins. Everyone boards, and God shuts the door. When he closed the door to the Ark, he sealed the coffin on humanity. And this might offend our modern sensibilities, but we have to remember what's happening. This was justice. This wasn't God punitively punishing people. But this was justice. This was creation had gone so arrived, so wrong, that this was justified. In the Bible, judgment and salvation always travel together in the same waters that destroyed the wicked, the same waters lifted the boat, the Ark, to safety. The same act that shut the doors brought Noah and his family in. That's what we see in Genesis 8:21, Genesis 7:21-23, it says, "And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, bees, and all swarming creatures that sworn on the earth, and all mankind." Everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of the heaven. Sin had become so violent, so corrosive, so dehumanizing, that God would no longer allow his creation to rot unchecked. This is why in chapter 6, he says, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. This word abide, that God's spirit would not abide in man forever, really means to strive or contend. Really, what God is saying is, I will not try to negotiate with mankind anymore to try to follow me. They are a lost cause. It is futile. They are flesh. They only want what they want, and what they want is not a relationship with me. And so the water subsides. Noah and all the animals get off the boat. And for a second time in humanity, there's a chance to obey God, to follow him, to follow what he says, and to live by how he defines right and wrong. Moses wants you to hear. Moses is the writer of Genesis. Moses wants you to hear the echoes of Genesis 1 in this. Look with me at this. A world covered by water, wind sent by God, dry land appearing, animals multiplying, man standing as the head of humanity. This is a second Eden, a fresh start, a new creation. Many of us, we love this time of year because It's a chance for us to think about something new. New Year's is right around the corner. There's a lot of new things happening. Kids, we're about to get a lot of new toys. It feels like a great way to start over. In fact, this is probably a time where we even think back about our year. If you have Spotify, you get a Spotify wrapped, you get a chance to look back at your year and think about what your year was. And many of us maybe feel like we have things to run from. The story of Noah shows us that a new start is not enough. We can try to run away, but sin and guilt and shame will always follow. What we need is a redeemer. And that's what this advent season is It's not about a fresh start, but salvation coming in the form of an infant. A washed world is not a new world. Water can cleanse creation, but it cannot cleanse the human hearts. C. S. Lewis says this, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever makes a good omelet." And I think that's true here. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many fresh starts we have, we cannot change who we are. So God makes a covenant with Noah as he steps off the boat. In chapter 9, verse 11, he says, I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by waters of the flood, and never again shall I Why shall there be a flood to destroy the earth? So God gives Noah another covenant. And why a covenant here? Because the second Eden will fail for the same reason the first one did. Unless God binds himself to all humanity with grace, humanity will walk away. The truth is Noah is not holding on to God. This covenant shows us that God is holding on to Noah. God is holding on to all humanity. The rainbow that we see here is not a sign of human progress. It's a symbol of divine restraint. God's showing that he will no longer judge the world in this way. For a moment, it feels like Eden is restored. A righteous man, a renewed world, a fresh covenant, a new start. If anyone can crush the head of the serpent, if anyone can get it right, Noah surely has to be the one. But unfortunately, that's not what we see in this next section. A Second Fall The sin that returns. Genesis 9:18-29. Genesis 9:20 says this, Noah began to be a man 'Man' of the soil. He planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 'And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. ' This, admittedly, is a confusing passage, and it is not clear what happens. But it is clear that both Noah and Ham sinned. Moses wants us to see the big point, not the details here. The man who walked with God stumbles. The righteous one falls into shame. The new Adam lies naked in a garden-like setting, just as the first Adam did. Noah goes from the righteous one to the drunk and shameful one, allowing something clearly evil to happen. Just like Adam and Eve, Noah brings sin back into the picture. Do you hear the echoes of the fall? Adam eats the forbidden fruit, Noah abuses the fruit of the vine, Adam's nakedness is exposed. Noah's nakedness is exposed. Adam's son rebels. Noah's son rebels. Martin Luther says this, The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent, that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ. This message is unmistakable. You can restart the world, but you cannot restart the human heart. Noah Noah looks like he would be the one to crush the head of the snake, but he isn't the one to do it. A clean world with the same old heart is still a broken world. And that's where advent becomes necessary. If all it was was an environment, God could fix the environment. If all it was was our circumstances, God could fix the circumstances. But the problem is us. It's our hearts. It's what we love deep down. So salvation cannot come from inside the ark. Salvation cannot come from inside of us. It has to come from inside of heaven. And that leads us to our Main Idea Judgment can cleanse the Earth, but it cannot change the human heart Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. We need more. We need something more than a fresh start, more than a do-over, more than a try better next time. And subconsciously, unfortunately, we believe this, that we just need a do-over, even in our relationship with God, even in our salvation. As a former youth pastor, I can say this without a shadow of a doubt. There is an epidemic of people rededicating their lives to Christ. And I don't want to throw shade on people whose hearts are convicted by sin and that there's a desire to get right with God. I think that there is a lot of good in that. The danger in rededicating our hearts to Christ is it puts people in this spiritual limbo of, are they saved? Aren't they saved? I've seen countless times where people feel the conviction at a conference or during a sermon or at a retreat. People understand that their sin is evil, but they maybe grew up in the church, and they don't want to confess that maybe they weren't a Christian or that they had been walking in this way and feeling like They have to admit that maybe they really had something wrong when it came to their salvation. Unfortunately, this is a way... The rededication can be a way to ease our conscience about how we've been living, that we can do this and continue to live the life that we've been living and still keep a Bible verse in our Instagram bio. This might last for a couple of years, but nothing changes. We use rededication or dedicating our lives to Christ as a way to have a fresh start, a do-over. This Christmas story, the Christmas story, isn't one to make you feel better about your sin. The reality is that it's here to judge. It's here to judge you. It's here to judge me. We should feel judged by it. We cannot fix ourselves, even with unlimited do-overs, even if we had a Groundhog Day experience, if we relive the same day over and over. If we don't feel the weight of this in this passage, we've missed the point. Jesus came to fix the Earth, to fix what we couldn't fix, to fix our hearts. I think there are churches, there are pastors, there are Christians who would revolt against what we just talked about. They love to say things like people in the Gospels never felt judged around Jesus. Jesus was so accepting. Jesus was so open to people that he never made people feel judged. And unfortunately, that's just a lack of biblical literacy. That's a lack of seeing what happens in the Gospels. I mean, goodness me, if you were one of the Pharisees, I hope you felt judged by Jesus. If you've read the Gospels, you would have seen that. A few other places in the Gospels where Jesus makes people feel judged around him is: in Peter's confession after the miraculous catch the rich young ruler the disciples after the storm John in Revelation Dietrich Bonhoffer says this, "The coming Becoming of God is not only glad tidings, but first of all, frightening news for everyone who has a conscience." We feel judged by God because of his righteousness, because of who he is. He's perfect. Just being around him would make us feel judged. But the good news is for us that we don't have to stand in that judgment. We do not have to be the people who live in that judgment. The one who was born in the manger came to be condemned in our place. All of God's The wrath fell on the head that Mary held. And because the wrath fell on his head, he could crush the head of the serpent. That leads us into our application. Application Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability The first point of application is this. Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability. Instead of saying to yourself, I'll do better next time, pick one area in your life and tell someone, I need help with this. Some practical steps would be telling a spouse, Telling a friend where you're failing. Ask them to check in on you this week and choose a specific time when to talk about it. We can't go through life continuing to walk in the same sin over and over. We have to be willing to say we need more than a second chance. Our second point of application is this. Practice one act of generosity that stretches you this week The world before the flood was filled with people who wanted to exploit it, exploit other people for their own gain. Advent shows us the infinite nature of God's gratitude, of God's generosity, that God himself gave us himself something we needed desperately, but we could have never earned, never deserved. So this week, do this. Give someone something or give to someone who can't repay you back. Buy groceries for a struggling family, leave a gift card anonymously, Tip generously. Fill a need in the church without being asked. Generosity loosens the grip that sin strengthens in our heart. Of sin, and it strengthens our heart towards worship. One thing that we didn't talk about in this story so far is the rainbow. It was a sign that was given to Adam and Eve, is the sign that was given to all of humanity. It points directly towards the manger. When we see a rainbow, we associate it with positive feelings that it's happy, it's a good thing. And yet we forget that the rainbow is a sign of a weapon. That God chose to hang up his bow, to hang up his weapon. The next time that God would judge the world, the judgment wouldn't come down. It wouldn't be facing down. Look at the shape of a rainbow. This time, the next time that God would judge the world, the bow would take aim directly at the heart of heaven. And that's what we see on the cross. God's wrath, God's judgment coming down directly towards his son. Judgment can cleanse the earth, but it cannot change the human heart. Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. Would you stand with me as we pray and prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Let's stand and pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are. God, you are so good and good to us. God, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for communion, for worship, God, that you would ready us for more than a way just to remember you, but to commune with you to enter into your presence, to identify you so deeply inside of us that we want to consume you. God, because we know that we can only be saved by entering into you, by entering into the Ark like Christ. It's the only place safe from wrath. God, thank you for sparing us. Thank you for saving us. Help us to respond in worship. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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Freedom That Bears Fruit Prosper Christian Reformed Church Freedom That Bears Fruit Christ Alone Mitchell Leach Sunday, March 8, 2026 Audio Freedom That Bears Fruit Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 38:20 Sermon Transcript Introduction In the year 2000, two researchers from Stanford set up an experiment. It was an experiment to see how we respond to different amounts of options that we have. What they did is they set up two different stands in two different grocery stores where they were selling jam. They were allowing people to sample different types of jam. I don't know why they picked jam, but they did. One stand had 24 different options. The other had six. The one with 24 had tons of people come up to it because there's lots of options. It drew a lot of people in, but nearly almost no one ended up buying any of the jams from that stand. When there was as a contradiction or as an opposition to that, the stand with six, only six jars of of jam had tons of people who ended up converting and buying the jam. The researchers concluded that the reason for this was when we have too many options in front of us, we actually become unhappy with either the choices we make or we get this idea of decision fatigue. Almost no one bought anything from the place that had more options. But when there were six people decided. We believe as a people that when we have more options, we have more freedom to choose, to choose what we want, that we will be happier. But research shows, and I think the Bible is going to show us that that actually is the opposite, the opposite of the truth. The truth is that we are a people that need some restrictions on what we can and can't do. Having more options, we know, leads us to being more unhappy. If you've had kids and you've given them more than one option, and even then, even when you give them one option, they tend to still not be happy. It's true with us, too. We believe that we want the ability to do whatever we want to do. But when we experience that, we know that that's not freedom. Big Question How can you truly be free? How can you truly be free? One of the dominant stories, one of the rising cultural phenomena or cultural movements in our world right now is to say that freedom means having no authority. In fact, any authority is oppressive. Our modern impulse is to think of the word danger or to feel danger when we hear the word authority rather than safety. Some of the most prevailing thought leaders in our culture, some of the most secular prevailing thought leaders in our culture affirm this idea, affirm the idea that any authority is oppression or that it's an intentional effort to take away our rights, our free, or it's just a power grab. This is why there are these undercurrents rising up. It's an increasingly popular idea, to say things like to have a boss is bad. Any parents or family structure is oppression. Spiritual authority is manipulation. Political officials we increasingly call dictators. Police become something that we talk about as a machinery of our own oppression. But is freedom devoid of authority? Is Is it fair for us to have structure? Is it fair for us to have rules and for us to have people that we listen to? Or is true freedom individual autonomy? Sociology, psychology, and God's word argue against that, argue that authority is a good thing in our life. The right authority is a good thing. So our question, how can you truly be free? Or how can you be truly free? Fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us. So keep your Bibles open to Galatians 5 and 6. Outline Freedom Must Not Be Surrendered to Legalism (5:2–12) Freedom Must Not Be Abused by the Flesh (5:13–26) Freedom Must Be Lived Out in Community (6:1–10) As we look at this passage, this longer passage, to summarize it in one sentence, the guts of what this passage is saying is this, Christian freedom is not freedom to serve the flesh, but freedom to walk by the spirit, fulfilling the law of love as a spirit forms community that bears one another's burdens and does good to all. This passage is in a context. We've been going through the Book of Galatians in this series so far. This is our second to last sermon, our second to last passage in this series. But the end of Galatians 4, Paul has just gotten done comparing two different things, two women and two mountains, Mount Sinai, where the law was given, where the Ten Commandments was given, and Mount Zion or Jerusalem, where God's promise is given. He also compares Hagar and Sarah. The reason that he does this, the reason that Paul compares these two women, is that he's trying to say, he's trying to tell us that when Abraham received the promise, there were two things that he did. First, he tried to take hold of the promise himself. He tried to, in essence, bring the promise to fruition by himself. He tried to actually save himself by having a child with the servant of his wife with Hagar. Later on, then he steps into trusting God, trusting God's promise by faith and that the salvation would come through God's promise and having a child through Sarah. The passage ends by saying that we are no longer slaves to the law, that we cannot try to save ourselves. And now that we have this freedom, it leads us into this section. Freedom Must Not Be Surrendered to Legalism (Galatians 5:2-12) So far in the Book of Galatians, we've talked a lot about works, righteousness, a lot about faith, faith. Because the Book of Galatians talks about this, that's why we've been bringing it up in this series. And circumcision is the issue that represents this tension between works and faith in these churches. So why is this such a big deal? Paul says that it nullifies the gospel. And Paul isn't just nitpicking a ritual here. He's protecting the gospel. Because once you add anything, whether it's circumcision or baptism or whatever it is, to say that in order to be saved, you must do these things. You must believe in Jesus, but you must also do these things. You're not simply adding another step for someone to climb. You're adding, you're replacing embracing Christ. And that's what Paul says in Galatians 5:2. Paul says this, Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumvision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. Paul is essentially saying, If you say that this thing must happen in order to be saved, Christ is meaningless, which is, it seems like an overreaction by Paul, right? This is one thing, right? Who cares, right? It's just one thing, one more thing. It's not changing the religion. Obviously, still believe in Jesus. But Paul's point is brutal. You make circumcision necessary. You add one small aspect to it. You're subtracting the whole savior. Christ cannot be part of your plan. He has to be your only hope, or there's no hope at all. If you want to replace Jesus, Paul is saying, if you want to replace Jesus, if you want to add God works to your salvation, fine, but you must keep the entire law. That's what verse three says. And then James 2:10 comments on that same point. He says this, For whoever, for whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point has become guilty of it all. Legalism always sounds nice, right? It sounds like we're putting up more rules or we're just safeguarding. We're putting up guardrails so we don't get close to the edge. It's just add one more thing. But the law never lets you add just one more thing. The law demands everything. See, either you obey all of it or you're guilty of breaking all of it. If you want a law-based righteousness, you don't get partial credit. It's not like school where you can get an A, B, C, or even D to pass. It is a pass fail. And if you fail one thing, you failed it all. Trying to add Jesus, to your rituals of what will make you whole will not work. Jesus is not a commodity. He's not an object. He's not some philosophy that we add to our life to make it better. We add to our life to make it feel more meaningful or to feel righteous or to feel like we're good enough. He's not some magic salve that we put on ourselves that somehow makes us holy. Jesus is a person. We don't believe in a philosophy Christianity isn't a philosophy, it's a history. That's the good news of the gospel is that Christianity is not 10 tips to be holy. Christianity is Jesus died. It's a historical event. It happened. And believe. Paul is not saying that obedience to the law is wrong, but what he's challenging us against is adding something to our faith in order to subvert the gospel. Galatians 5:5-6 say this, For Through the spirit by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love. That Galatians 5:5, when it talks about hope, is a different hope than what we talk about in America in our modern culture. When we talk about hope, we're saying we hope that it doesn't rain tomorrow. We hope that there's good weather. When Paul talks about hope, what he's saying is there is something He promised there is something sure that we can put our hope and that we can be sure of. Notice here in this what Paul counts, what Paul is moving towards. He says it's not circumcision, not uncircumcision, not badge wearing, not virtue signaling. It's only faith. And real faith is not alone. Look at what Paul says. He doesn't end it by saying faith working towards being happier for something He says, faith working through love. Our freedom comes not by being self-reliant. The law tries to promise you things that it cannot come through on, that it cannot deliver. It tries to promise that you can do it yourself. It tries to promise and tell you, you know so many other people have let you down. Everyone else in your life has let you down. If you just add enough rules to your life, you can be the one you count on. You can be the sure and steady anchor, the thing that holds you to righteousness. You won't need to rely on anyone. If you can do these things right, then you can finally be good enough. But that's not what Jesus says. That's not what scripture says. That's not what Paul says. Paul says, the Bible says, Galatians says, Freedom comes through the spirit of God. Paul is so frustrated with the slavery that comes from believing that Jesus is not enough that believing that you need to add Jesus plus circumcision, that he says this in Galatians 5:12, I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Paul is saying, If they want to believe, if you want to believe that circumcision can save, then I wish that you would just take one step further. If you believe cutting part of it off is good, is going to save you, then just keep going. To sprinkle Jesus on top of the other things that we believe will save us or just to make our life better is to have a different Jesus. Again, it nullifies the gospel. Yet this grace that we've received cannot be abused. Freedom Must Not Be Abused by the Flesh (Galatians 5:13–26) Paul shifts from finding life in the law to requiring us to be obedient and not abusing it. The good news is that we hold on to and that we can hold on to is that we have been forgiven of all of our sins through Jesus Christ. Mark talks about this. He records Jesus saying this to a crowd. He says, Truly, Jesus says this, Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphèmes they utter. We all who have put our faith in Christ have this promise that all our sins will be forgiven. We are people who have been set free from the burden of trying to save ourselves to keep the law. And all of our sins have been forgiven. So to now live as people who do not care about the sin that we commit, to live like sin does not matter is essentially to look Jesus in the face on the cross and to spit on him, to absolutely disrespect him. Jesus has paid, paid it all. Our sins are forgiven every a single one of them. And then to continue to live, to heep on more sin that Jesus had to pay for on the cross is to totally disregard what he went through. Galatians 5:13 says this, For you were called to freedom, brothers. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Opportunity here is a military word. You 're almost talking about a military installation, a military base, a temporary military base. Paul is saying, Don't use grace as a base of operations for the flesh. Flesh is not just your body. It is the old you. It is being self-centered, being self-ruled, being allergic to God. And notice Paul's direction here. It's not through freedom to serve yourself. It is through love, serve one another. Freedom is new life in the Holy spirit. The world says, freedom means having no master. Paul says, freedom is having a new and gracious master. Not sin, not self, but the Holy spirit. Freedom isn't what we think of when we hear it in an American context. Freedom is not being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do, and no one can stop you. Freedom, biblical freedom, is the ability not not to live our lives running after the sin that our flesh desires, running after our sinful nature. It's the ability to resist the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the garden, that you really can't trust God, that you are the one who needs to make the decision for yourself. There's no one better than you to decide what's right for you. So where does this ability, where does this power come from? The ability to resist sin, where does it come from? It comes from the spirit of the living God, the one who resurrected Jesus from the dead, the one who's inspired scripture, the one who changed every heart of stone to a heart of flesh, to be able to love God. You don't beat sin. You don't beat the flesh by gritting your teeth, by trying harder, by having more discipline in your life. You beat the flesh by walking with the spirit. The Holy spirit doesn't just point you to Christ. The Holy spirit pours Christ's life into you. And what comes from this new life in Christ while being formed in the spirit? It's one of the most famous passages in scripture. It's the fruits of the spirit. Galatians 5:22 says this. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things, there is no law. Paul says, Against such things. That word such really means that there are more fruits of the spirit. This is not an exhaustive list, but these are some of them. Notice Paul does not call it the work of your willpower. He calls it the fruit of the spirit. Fruit is what grows When new life is inside you. His fruit is what true freedom looks like. Love that serves, self control that resists, gentleness that restores. Paul is saying, Galatian churches Jesus, you have got it all wrong. Trying to save yourself, trying to add more things to the gospel will not work. Good works do not earn your salvation. If you want to do great works, You have to confess that you've done evil works, that you are evil. And through that, through the faith in Jesus Christ and confessing our sins, we will be given a Holy spirit, who produces good works in us that only he can do. The gospel is clear that you cannot do anything to be saved. But the other side of this is that those who understand the gospel are filled and filled with his spirit desire to see good works pour out of us. People who understand the gospel produce good works from the Holy spirit. Those good works are not just meant for you individually. They are meant for the community, not just how we live behind closed doors. They are meant to be a blessing to the people of God. And that's why Paul goes straight to community in chapter 6. And that's what we see in chapter 6. Freedom Must Be Lived Out in Community (Galatians 6:1–10) One of the clearest proofs of the gospel is not private feelings, but how we treat sinners. As people who understand that we, too, are sinners, that we are only saved by someone else saving us, that we can't contribute anything to our salvation other than the need to be saved. When we see people fall, we don't let them fall alone. We do not let them, we do not ostracize them. We do not cast them out. We love people. We bring them back. We embody the gospel when we love others like Christ has loved us. Someone says this, Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Caught here does not mean caught by someone else. It means being tangled in sin when someone is stuck. The goal of this is not punishment. The goal of this is not to make people feel more condemnation. The goal of this is restoration, to restore people, to prepare what is broken, to bring them back. It is more than just the goal of the church to do this. It is the duty of the church and all of its members to seek right relationships with others. When we have been wronged, we don't have a right to isolate from people, to cast people away from us. It is our duty to seek right relationships with people. If Christ came to us while we were still sinners, we do not have the ability, we don't have the right, we don't have the permission to run away from those who have hurt us, who have sinned against us. We have to restore them. That doesn't mean that every part of the relationship goes back to the way it used to be, but it means that we have a right relationship with those people. That's what forgiveness means. Paul guards against us. Every part of this passage, what it means to live in the spirit means to live in community. Look at verses 25 and 15, and in this whole section. Paul is talking about loving each other in community. How will people outside of the church know that we are Christians? They will know that we are Christians by how we love. This is our natural response to being liberated from believing in ourselves, from believing in our own efforts, from believing in Old Testament rituals, from believing in our own ability to earn our salvation. Mission. The gospel naturally causes us to love our neighbor. It says that we cannot try to rank ourselves with other people in the room because we are saved not by something that we did. We cannot withhold community from those who have sinned and repented. This passage says that we cannot be passive in trying to grow our faith and obedience to God. This letter in this section takes a strange twist. This whole book, this whole letter has been Paul almost yelling at the churches in Galatians, You can't save yourself. You can't add anything to your salvation. It's only by faith. And then here at the end of the book, Paul is demanding almost that we are obedient in these categories. Why would he do this? Why would he spend so much time saying, It's not about your obedience that saves you, and then demand our obedience? It's because to love God is to obey him. When we've responded to the gospel, obedience is a good thing. Paul is never against obedience. He's saying, Obedience in order to save is worth nothing. This section is actually almost a perfect retelling of John 14. Jesus is talking to his disciples, and over and over again, he says, If 'If you love me, you will keep my Commandments. ' 'Whoever has my Commandments and keeps them, them he it is who loves me. ' Verse 23, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him. ' I think I got another slide. Chapter 15. Later on, it says, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, it will be done for you. By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so prove to be my disciples. The point of our salvation, the point of being saved, is that we glorify God in obeying his Commandments, in obeying his word. Good works are what we were created to do. They are not what saved us, but they are what we were created to do. Ephesians 2:10 says this, For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. This is what Paul is saying in Galatians 6:9-10 of Galatians. Let us not grow weary of doing good works. And so then let us do good to everyone, and especially the household of the faith. Freedom creates a new community, persistent, patient, and doing good, especially to those inside the church. So Christian freedom is not a private possession. It is a spirit formed love that shows up in a church. Freedom looks like gentleness with sinners, humility about yourself, and a burden bearing love for one another. Main Idea Freedom in Christ expresses itself through spirit formed love Freedom in Christ expresses itself through spirit formed love. Freedom isn't about putting on an act. It's not putting on a performance. We can't dress up and play Christians. Galatians gives us no permission to do that. Freedom is believing the gospel and experiencing it through the Holy spirit. Too many Christians come to church because they know it's the right thing in their head. They believe it's the right thing, more of a knowledge belief. But our flesh becomes a salesman selling slavery advertised as freedom. Internally, too many people will come to church today in the global church, and they will sit in a service, and they will wish that they really weren't there, wishing that God's rules for them, God's call for them to be obedient was different. They wish that lying wasn't wrong, or wishing that God wasn't so strict about sex, or God would relax his rules on gossip or greed or coveting. Oftentimes, we wish that God would allow us to do the things that we desire to do in our heart, the wrong things. In some in some twisted way, we believe that that is what freedom is, but it's not. God's word is clear that that's not freedom. Paul calls it slavery in Galatians and in Romans, he calls it the wrath of God. When God delivers us over to the desires of our hearts, to the desires of our flesh. Paul calls that the wrath of God. Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever you desire. Freedom is the ability to say no to the sins that once were the master over us. Not new rules, not better habits. It is about total life transformation. There's a power through the spirit that comes into our life. St Augustine, he's an early church father in the 400s AD. Before he was a Christian, before he was a prolific pastor and author, he was incredibly sexually immoral. After becoming a Christian, after In his conversion, he later ran into a former lover who was passing him on the street trying to get his attention, and he was walking past her. Finally, she came up to him, trying to get his attention, trying to pull him back into some relationship. She goes up to him and says, Augustine, it's me. And he looks at her and says, I know. Yes, but it isn't me. That's what happens when there is a new power, when there is a power that comes through the Holy spirit. We do not have to say yes to the old sins that once mastered us. We get to look at the sins that once ruled our lives, and we get to say, yes, but it isn't me anymore. The Holy spirit's power allows us to see sin as something we mourn over. It's not about what we can get away with anymore. It's not about what we need to do to get right again with God. It becomes something that we wage war against. The first proof that the Holy spirit is at work is not its intensity, it's not our intensity, but it's love. Because the spirit does not just free you from sin, it frees you for others. Application Restore those who sin Galatians 6:1 I'm taking my applications right from the text. I feel like when Paul gives it to us this clearly, when God's word gives us applications this clearly, it's better than anything I can come up with. So let's go with what God's word says, and I think we'll be all right. Restore those who sin. This isn't optional because the gospel has restored you. If Christ moved towards you when you were caught, then we cannot move away from others when they are caught. Sin isolates, sin hardens people. Leaving someone alone is not kindness. It is spiritual solitary confinement. It lets the wounds fester. So practically, what this means for us is is that we move towards people who have fallen. We don't gossip about them. We speak truth plainly to them. We don't gloss it over. We don't try to hide it. We don't sweep it under the rug. We call for repentance, and we offer a path back, but we also stay with them on this path as they rebuild. We do this with gentleness, not minimizing sin nor crushing the sinner. It's why when this happens in the church, if this happens here at Prosper, we won't just hope that someone walks alongside with someone. We will dedicate one or two people to walk with them in love, in gentleness, because sin is truly bad for us. Do not believe that you are immune to certain sin Galatians 5:3 The passage says, If anyone thinks that he is something, he deceives himself. It is It's easy for us to see in our culture unspeakable evil. It is all over the news, especially now. And it's easy for us to look at that and say, there is no way that I could ever do anything like that. There's a story of a Jewish man who was part of a trial to capture and to convict one of the Nazis who had absolutely decimated his family, killed every single person in his family, all of his friends, one of the people who had served in the concentration camps. And it was later I think it was in the '60s or '70s. And this man whose family had been slaughtered by this man, he walked into court when this Nazi soldier was coming under trial. And this man absolutely wept. He became undone. And a reporter came to him later and said, why was it seeing this man again and the memories of all of your family and friends? And what was it that caused those emotions? And he told a reporter, it wasn't any of that. It was, I saw him and I saw myself. I realized that I am absolutely capable of doing everything that that man did. I am no better than that person. To look past someone's humanity, or to say that you could never commit whatever sin that they did, whatever crime that they did, is to look past their own humanity. Most brutal sins do not show up as random. They start off as small sins, and then they grow and grow. They are acorns. They are sin in acorn form. Then if we don't kill them early, they become full-grown oak trees. It's the minor sins that are all grown up. Small compromises, small secrets, small lusts, small dishonesties. Unchecked, they do not stay small. Whenever you say, I could never, you have fallen for the first lie of Satan. You believe that you are better than others. You believe that your humanity is somehow different than those wicked subhuman people who could do that. No, no, no, no, no, That temptation. That's how people fall. That's how people become corrupt, being overconfident and not watchful. There are so many stories in the Bible of people who in power end up becoming corrupted and falling. You look at the story of David who kills one of his best friends in order to marry that man's wife. You look at that and you go, well, look, there's a clear example of how all power corrupts, how all of this is wrong, how authority is somehow an evil thing. That is not why that story is in the Bible. That story is in the Bible to show even the greatest people can fall when they don't kill sin, when they are not absolutely vigilant to the small sins in their life. Paul says this, Keep watch over yourself. Stay humble. Take temptation seriously. And when you see someone fall, don't ever say, That could never be me. How do we resist the desires of our flesh, these sins that show up small? Maybe they've grown big. How do we deny our flesh? How do we die to our flesh? It took a better flesh, a greater flesh sacrifice. On the cross, Jesus gave up his flesh. In a moment, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and we're going to hear a familiar phrase. We're going to hear a familiar verse. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and broke it, saying, This is my body. This is my flesh broken for you. ' It took a better flesh. It is our flesh that should have been broken as a payment for our sin. And yet our savior, the word became flesh. Absolutely and totally for the single purpose of that flesh being torn to shreds, so that way we could have freedom over the desires of our flesh. Prosper Church. Freedom in Christ, expresses itself through spirit Let us not forget this, especially as we turn to the Lord's Supper. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

Can we trust the Council of Nicaea? Why can the church feel this way? Because men cannot create new — correct theology — men can only discover it. Men can invent new heresy, but not orthodoxy. Men and women today and in antiquity can only recognize it. And this is what the modern church should find confidence in. As noted above, the implications of this inform nearly every subsequent theological position the church has taken since. The council of Nicaea was moved by the Holy Spirit to... Heading 5 Can we trust the Council of Nicaea? Mitchell Leach June 9, 2024 It may be surprising to the average churchgoer that, the council that produced one of the most well-known creeds of the early church and solidified the orthodoxy — or theological position — of the trinity, has a bit of controversy surrounding it. Not everyone in academia can look back on this event with the love for the doctrines that came out of it, but with the weariness of the political and governmental influences that surround it. But contemporary Christians shouldn’t worry about this event being tainted by the forces behind its acceptance. Rather Christians should trust and even worship the beauty that was simplified and clarified by the work of the men who formed it. Main Issue The council of Nicaea was brought together — by the newly Christian[1] — emperor Constantine in 325 AD.[2]As Constantine came to power in the death of Emperor Galerius, Constantine found himself in a situation where he needed to unify the new republic of Rome. During this time theological divides seemed to be popping up in the newly legalized religion that Constantine allowed. So for the first time in the life of the church, pastors/bishops were welcomed without threat of persecution, to settle the division in the church.[3] The major doctrinal issue that backed by Arian — a talented Baucalis preacher — who challenged the view of the Bishop in Alexandria on his belief in Homoousion (or the doctrine that Jesus was of the same substance as God). Arian believed homoousion was Sabellianism,[4] and instead professed the belief in homoiosion (or the doctrine that Jesus was of a similar substance as God). To the modern outsider, this seems to be a minor bit of doctrine, that nerdy theologians like to debate in their free time. It seems like this is one of those fights that Paul warns against in Romans 16:17-18.[5] But the implications of getting this correct were critical for the church. Worship, and how it understands the God of the Bible, and many other practical parts of the church, hinged on understanding the person of Jesus correctly. In fact, this issue was so theologically important that is was impossible to look past each other’s view. Each side believed that the other’s view was so different that they were — ultimately — worshiping a different God. The implications of this were either — in Arian’s view — that Jesus was created, and that the son was not part of God.[6] Encouragement for the modern church During the actual council the view that Jesus was of the same essence as God was overwhelmingly adopted. Of the numerous bishops and clergymen in attendance at the Council of Nicaea (between 250-310), only two dissented. This was a huge victory for the ancient church but is also a huge source of confidence in the modern church. The modern church can look back on this event and find confidence that these men came out with the correct interpretation of scripture. Why can the church feel this way? Because men cannot create new — correct theology — men can only discover it. Men can invent new heresy, but not orthodoxy. Men and women today and in antiquity can only recognize it. And this is what the modern church should find confidence in. As noted above, the implications of this inform nearly every subsequent theological position the church has taken since. The council of Nicaea was moved by the Holy Spirit to see the Word of God correctly and identified Jesus as wholly God and wholly man. Whether that was the view of Constantine, or maybe just his wish, is irrelevant. The church can be confident in the beauty of the person of Jesus as stated by the Nicene Creed. If this were mere political pressure by Constantine, bishops would have revolted. They weren’t moved by fear of dissent. Here gathered at Nicaea were men who had been marked with scars from their previous persecution. They were not afraid of a man or the state. They feared God and in near unanimity, affirmed the truth of the Lord and Savior of the universe Jesus. [1] Or at least newly compassionate toward christian emperor. [2] Kenneth Scott Latourette, “Christianity Takes Shape in Organization, Doctrine,” in A History of Christianity, 4th ed., vol. 1 (Prince Press, 2007), pp. 154-156. [3] Bruce Shelley, “Splitting Important Hairs,” in Church History in Plain Language, 5th ed. (S.l.: ZONDERVAN, 2021), pp. 131-136. [4] Kenneth Scott Latourette, pp. 152. [5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 16:17–18. I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. [6] Kenneth Scott Latourette, pp. 154. "So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding buildup this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them”(Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.86). St. Augustine — accurately — describes that true comprehension of the Bible comes through a combination of prayer, faith, and an attitude of submission to God's will. It is by loving God and being compelled into action, Can unbelievers understand and interpret the Bible? 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

The staff of Prosper CRC. Including Pastor Mitchell Leach. See the more information on the staff. Staff & Leadership Elders Gary Gladu Elder Dries Dodde Elder Lyle Pratt Elder Henry Diemer Elder Gary Gandolfi Elder Keith Dick Elder Deacons Steve DeZeeuw Deacon Josh Dick Deacon Gary Gladu Deacon Craig DeRuiter Deacon Tyler Gernaat Deacon Alex Utecht Deacon Staff Learn More Mitchell Leach Lead Pastor Learn More Jolene Sullivan Office Administrator Learn More Gary Gandolfi IT Director Learn More John Baas Custodian Learn More Bonna Baas Custodian

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

Sin Prosper Christian Reformed Church Sin Gospel In Three Words Mitchell Leach Sunday, January 11, 2026 Audio Sin Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 39:27 Sermon Transcript Introduction As we look at this passage this morning, the idea of our guilt comes up throughout this. But we, as people, We are awful at dealing with our own guilt. We like to manage it. We like to try, at least, to manage it, because dealing with it would require honesty. And honestly, we would rather do anything else but reflect on what we've done. We are, as a people, really good at justifying the small things in our life, the smallipsies that come up from day to day, the things, the sin that bubbles to the surface. If we snap at our spouse, we're really good at justifying it. Well, it was a really hard day at work and the kids were crazy and I heard the wrong tone. Or maybe because you've gossip to you, you'd say, well, I'd say that to anyone. I'd say that in front of their face, knowing full well that what you're telling somebody, you're talking about somebody else, that you would never say that to the other person. Maybe you've lied to a friend because telling them the truth, being honest with them would hurt them. But it's easier to lie. You think, well, I'm actually being nice. If excuses were something that burned calories, I think all of us would be in the best shape possible. We'd never have any need for a gym. But the things in our lives, there are things in our lives that we know for a fact are wrong. There are things that we've done that we can't shake. We can't shake the feeling of guilt from those things. I want you to think about just for a minute. In your mind, the worst thing that you've ever done. I know how can you go from telling jokes to this serious, but it's a feeling of dread. It's a feeling of anxiety when you think about this. All of us can bring that thing to our mind. It's the thing we We hope that no one in here is a mind reader because they'd be crushed if they knew what we've done. All of us can think about this thing. We have at least one sin we hope never becomes public. It's one thing that owns us, causes us anxiety. There are some things we cannot justify, we cannot make right. So what do we do with them? That leads us to our big question this morning. Big Question: What can you do with your guilt? What can you do with your guilt? I think we try to do a couple of different things with them. One way that we try to deal with our guilt as a people is we try to justify it. We try to make up excuses for it. But oftentimes this doesn't work. We might go to a therapist who says, Well, you just need to have better self-talk. You need to accept yourself. But essentially, that's another way to deny or even to justify the guilt that you have. Another way that we try to deal with our guilt is to distract from it by using social media or our phones or games or watching the news or TV, maybe throwing ourselves headfirst into our jobs, always being busy, always doing something, trying to distract from this feeling of guilt. Another way that we distract from it would be to medicate ourselves, whether through prescriptions or non-prescription substances. We try to alter our state of reality to avoid our guilt. The last way that I think I see people do this is to try to make it right themselves, to try to atone for their own sins in some way, where you see someone who once had done something horrendous, now trying to live a perfect life, trying to live a life that makes up for the wrong that they've done. It's like a murderer who becomes a doctor to try to save lives. Might feel good. It might seem like the right thing to do. But yet, no matter how many lives you save as a doctor, that person doesn't resurrect. Not trying to lay guilt on us because there is a way for forgiveness. But I want us to see, to feel this tension that when we try to manage our guilt, when we try to manage our sin, there's nothing we can do alone alone. At the end of these things, our guilt still remains. There's not enough distractions, not enough excuses, not enough good works, not enough substances to make our guilt away. So the question remains, what can you do with your guilt? But fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us. So keep your Bibles open to Psalm 51. As we see this Psalm will answer this question, what do you do when you can't undo the things in your past, when you can't undo what you've done? David shows us that guilt can't be managed, but it must be brought to God for mercy, for cleansing, and for renewal. That's what we'll see in these three sections, Outline: A cry for mercy A confessing depth of sin Plead for renewal. David confesses his sin to God and pleads for mercy. That's what we see in this psalm. A cry for mercy So let's look at that first section, a cry for mercy, verses one through two. Before we get into the actual verses of this, we see that header that I read at the beginning of this. That is in the manuscript. This is part of God's word, and this gives us a context into what David is calling out and crying out to God. And David had been caught in sin, not just any sin, but he had been caught in a scandal so scandalous that it would make every evening news, it would make news forever. He murdered his friend in order to sleep with that man's wife. And all this comes to light in a shocking way. David writes this Psalm, though, as a way to show how truly broken he is over his sin and not just the consequences of it. And that's what we see in verse one. Psalm 51:1 says this, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. David It is crying out for mercy. Mercy is a word that we talk about a lot in church, and yet often we don't understand what it truly means. Mercy is more than just forgetting sin. Seeing mercy that way, or simply wanting to see mercy as a way to get sin to go away changes our hearts. It produces a spirit that is careless about sinning. Cheap grace minimizes sin, but true mercy exposes it and then carries it away. Seeing mercy as a way just to cover up, to make things better for right now as a bandaid, as a spiritual bandaid, makes it cheap. What happens is we will go on sinning, not really caring. We might even be tempted to sin and go, well, it's going to be okay because God's going to forgive me anyway. I know that this is going to happen. Mercy is a gift that God doesn't have to give us. Mercy is more than cheap grace. Mercy, theologically, we would say it like this, Mercy is God's compassionate and active love that withholds deserved judgment and offers forgiveness, healing and restoration to the undeserved, offering it to us. Martin Luther says it like this, "The mercy of God does not require merit or require good works from us, but it creates merits. It creates merit. Mercy finds us in our sin and calls us righteous in Christ." Which means that mercy never ignores sin. It transfers it. Mercy does not require us to be good people to get something from God. Jesus was good for us and traded places with us. Historically, the word mercy was used a lot more outside of a church building, outside of I don't know, religious vocabulary. Mercy was used in front of Kings. If you were charged with something or accused of something and you had no hope or you had an unjust or unfair trial Well, you'd throw yourself before the king asking for mercy. It was the last step. It was the last thing you could do before your life was taken. And David is crying out for that mercy in this confession. Notice what David appeals to, though, in this section. He doesn't appeal to his own marriage. He doesn't appeal to his own good works. He doesn't appeal to some promise in the future. God, if you do this and you forgive me, then I promise this will never happen again. He doesn't say that. He appeals to God's steadfast love, his covenant faithfulness, or the Hebrew word is hased, and it carries so much depth. It's littered all throughout the Psalms, this word has said. It means a commitment to his promise, God's commitment to his promise, regardless of how much it will hurt him when his people are unfaithful to him. The appeal is to God's own nature, not ourselves. St Augustine says this in commenting on this passage. "He does not say, David does not say, Have mercy on me because I deserve it, but because thou art merciful." This is part of who God is. David does not go to God promising some improvement. David knows that he has no leverage. He has no room to negotiate some better deal here. He throws himself in front of the mercy seat. He throws himself on God's mercy. The problem that is revealed in this Psalm for us is that sin does not require inspire us to find a new environment. Our problem with God isn't environmental. It's not that if we just worked harder on ourselves, if we had a little bit more commitment, we can't simply try harder. What this Psalm shows us is that it requires God to make things right. When our guilt is ever before us, we don't need a better plan. We need mercy. But that raises the question, how deep is our problem if mercy is the only solution? A confessing depth of sin And that leads us into our next section, Confessing Depth of Sin. David says something here that's almost upsetting when you read it In Psalm 51:4, he says, Against you, you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. But we know the context of this. David killed a man. And then he gets to say in Psalm 51:4, Well, my sin's really only against you, God. That's not what David's saying here. He's not discrediting what had happened. He's not saying that he hadn't sinned against people. What he was saying is this is the heart of the matter. He's saying that at the heart of it, it's a lack of trust of God. Anytime we hurt people in our lives, it's foundationally because we do not trust God. If we trusted God fully and desired him fully, the people in our lives would never be hurt. John Owen writes this, Every sin has in it a contempt of God. Sin is first theological, then ethical. Sin is first a distortion of who God is, and then that plays itself out in the rest of our lives. Oftentimes, when I talk with people in their sin issues, it's not essentially the people in their lives. It's not primarily against the people in their lives that this is an issue. Men who struggle with lust, it's not because their wives are unattractive to them. It's because they don't trust God to be able to provide the deepest desires of their heart. People don't shoplift because they need a piece of gum. They shoplift because they don't trust God to provide for them. We're not anxious people because our worry somehow protects us from the fear in our life or whatever we're fearing. We're anxious because we don't believe that God is sovereign. When we sin, in that moment, we believe that God is insufficient, insufficient to satisfy, protect, provide, or rule. It's the same lie that comes to us that came to Adam and Eve in the garden, that God doesn't really love you. He really doesn't want what's best for you. So The answer that we hear from culture from everywhere is, who better to decide what's right and wrong for you than you? Who knows you better than you? That's the first step into sin. That's not what this passage says. It says, Against you, you only have I sinned. David is not minimizing the damage. He's locating the source. Sin affects our whole person. That's what we see in Psalm 51:5. He says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. David's not saying here that his mother had done something wrong. What he was saying is, I have been sinful since I became a human being. In other words, none of us have to be taught how to sin, and everyone who's ever had a kid knows that. You don't have to teach a kid how to sin. They figure it out all by themselves. He's saying, I was sinful in my mother's womb. I was sinful from the time of conception. And any pregnant woman who's ever had bruised ribs understands that they're sinful right from the beginning, right? There isn't a moment that we exist, that sin does not affect us. The Puritan Thomas Watson has this to say, Sin is not only a wound, but a disease. I think oftentimes we talk about sin in church. We talk about it like it's the little whoopsies that we have every day in our life, the things that we commit every day. They absolutely are. Sin is absolutely that, but it also is something much more. It's not a wound. If it were just that, if it were just the simple actions that we do every single day, it would be a wound. It would be something that we could work on. It could be something that we ourselves could fix. But our problem is much bigger than that. Our problem is our sin nature, big capital S sin. Our problem is that we love sin in our hearts. Our problem is our hearts. Sinclair Ferguson, a modern theologian says this. Let's see. No. Says this, We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. The problem isn't simply a behavior that we have that we need to modify. It is who we are fundamentally. It's a reason why good works can't save us. It's because our bad works aren't the only problem. We need a whole new nature. It's why guilt won't go away with a better schedule, with being more diligent with being more disciplined. The problem isn't just what we've done, it's who we are. So what do you do with a problem that goes right to the heart? David doesn't promise to do better. He begs God to do what only he can do. Plead for renewal He pleads for renewal, and that's what we'll see in Psalm 51:7-12. David changes the tone of his prayer here from confession to a plea to be cleansed. And that's what we see Psalm 51:7. Psalm 51:7 says this, Purge me with hyssip, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. David is asking God to cleanse him, to cleanse him with hyssip. And that word cleanse is a really rare word in the Hebrew. And really what it means is to unsin me. It means to offer an offering on my behalf, to atone for me because I can't. David uses this word hyssup. It's not a word that we use hardly at all. Hyssup was used in the sanctuary to cleanse it, to make it clean. David essentially is saying, I want to be able to be in your presence again. I know what I've done has excluded me from that, has cast me out. But God, I desire you make me clean from the inside. And that's what we see in Psalm 51:8 when he He says, Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken, rejoice. It's a weird half of a sentence, half of a verse in this confession, in this plea. But What David is saying is a truth statement. Oftentimes, when a bone is broken, both now and in ancient time, if the bone healed improper or had time to heal before being set properly, a doctor or surgeon would have to break it again, to set it right so that way it would heal correctly. And that's what David is asking. He's saying, Set me straight, fix me, and I trust you to be the one who can do it. Make me whole again. God, I trust you to correct this, even if it means causing me more pain in the middle of it. I know I cannot fix myself, God. And then the prayer intensifies in its language. In Psalm 51:10-12, specifically in verse 10, he says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Create, when he says create, It's one of the only times that that word pops up in the Psalms, but it's the same word used in Genesis 1 when God created the heavens and the earth. David fears separation from God, not only God, but his presence and the loss of joy that comes with it. Martin Lloyd Jones has this to say, The worst thing about sin is not that it makes us unhappy, but that it robs us of a sense of God. David uses this word to create because he wants... He's pleading with God. He's saying, God, I know I can't create It's impossible for us as humans to physically make anything new. We can't make new matter. And as impossible as it is for us to create anything new, it is impossible for us to create a new heart in ourselves. That's why David says, Create in me a clean heart. David knows that his heart isn't scraped. It's broken. Broken bones don't need bandaids. Our problem is that we oftentimes treat our sin small. We treat heart surgery like it's a paper cut. We minimize it, we hide it. We say, It's not that big a deal. I can handle this. I can manage this on my own. Main Idea: But when we make sin small, we make the cross small And that's our main idea for today. When we make sin small, we make the cross small. And when we make the cross small, we're trying to save ourselves. Our natural reaction to sin is to try to minimize it, to try to make it smaller, to try to make it manageable enough for us to be able to deal with it. The problem isn't that we want it to go away. The problem is the way we go about trying to make it go away, that we try to hide it, that we become like Adam and Eve in the garden. We run from God. We become like Aaron in Exodus 20 or Exodus 32 with a golden calf. We become like Ananias and who minimize, they hide from their sin. What Psalm 51 teaches us is that we should want our sin to go away, but our solution isn't to make sin small, it's to run to God, the only one who can deal with our sin. As Christians, when we try to hide our sin, we're trying to save ourselves. We're trying to take care of it ourselves. Essentially, we're saying to God, God, it's not that big of a deal. I can handle it. Or really, God, thank you. Thank you for taking care of most of my sin. Thank you for doing most of it. I couldn't do it all myself, God, but now that you've done most of it, it's my turn to really put this in a way, really deal with it myself. I'm the one who's going to make it right. But that's not what this passage says. There are going to be some of us who want to live in this delusion where it is on us. It is on us to carry out our atonement, make it right with God. But that's not biblical. The Bible says that our sin is so big. The only way to make it right is for God himself to come and give us mercy. The only way to make our sin right is that the second member of the Trinity had to come to take on human flesh, to live a life that we couldn't and die trading places with us. In preaching this sermon, I don't want us to only feel guilty. I want us to feel a little guilty. I want us to feel that weight We can't make our sin small. We cannot be people who try to manage it, though. We're not made for that. We don't have big enough shoulders to bear the load that is our sin. And that's what makes us different than any other worldview. It's one of the things I find most comforting in our Christian faith. Is that when the world says, Try to deny it, distract yourself from your guilt, try to just push your guilt down. Christianity says, Our guilt was paid in full. Jesus himself was declared guilty on the cross in our place. Your one thing that we thought about earlier, that thing that lingers in the back of your mind, you can let go of because Jesus went to the cross for that and every other sin that you committed. And not only that, your sin nature. We don't have to feel the guilt any longer. The answer to What can you do with your guilt? Is that Jesus paid for your guilt. He has taken care of it. Your sin and your guilt was nailed to the cross with him. The Bible is emphatic that we are not the ones who can pay for our own sin. We cannot manage it. We cannot take care of it. It would be like standing on the pier at Frankfurt and trying to jump to Wisconsin. Sure, some of us can make it a little bit further, right? But whether you can make it one foot or 30 feet, we're nowhere close to the other side. We're nowhere near. It's not even worth talking about who jumped the furthest. Sure, there are times where we see more sin in other people, and it can make us feel good. But the reality is we are so far from God on our own. He's the who has to bridge that gap for us. We need a supernatural way to get ourselves across this chasm. We cannot do it. We don't need a new strategy to deal with guilt. We need to be rescued completely. This truth cannot just be good theological insight for us. It can't be just another way for us to develop our reformed worldview. It It can't just be spiritual encouragement. It can't just be pure motivation either. This has to change everything about us. This has to change who we are from the inside out. Application Call your sin what God calls it, not what makes you feel better First, call your sin what God calls it, not what makes you feel better. Most of us on our own, we're not trying to get rid of our guilt. We're just trying to cope with it, to rename it so we can live with it, to soften it so it doesn't crush us. We He didn't say things like it wasn't ideal or everyone struggles with that sin or I didn't really mean it that way or it was just a really hard season or whatever else we might say. But David doesn't say any of that. He says, My sin is ever before me. He doesn't try to manage it. He doesn't try to reframe it. He doesn't try to make it better. He doesn't try to dress it up in new clothes, hoping it'll look different. He doesn't wait for it to fade. He names it before God. And that's what confession actually is. Confession is not beating yourself up over it. That's trying to pay for it yourself. Confessing is saying to God what is actually true about us. John says it this way, if we confess our sin, not explaining our sin, not excusing our sin, not balancing them out, confessing them. Unconfessed sin lingers because it goes nowhere. It stays in the dark. It keeps working on us. It shapes our thoughts. That's why the guilt doesn't fade. It waits. So hear this clearly. Naming your sin before God is not the thing that's going to destroy you. We shouldn't be afraid of confessing our sin to God. The thing that will destroy us is holding it in, is holding on to it. And today, some of you already know what you've been hiding, what you've been avoiding. Maybe you've prayed about it, you've said to God, God, I'm really sorry, I'm never going to do it again, but you haven't really repented. But maybe you've never said that thing plainly before God. I don't want you to leave today with that being unnamed. Bring it to light before God. And if If you need help with that, we have elders here who would love to pray with you. I would love to pray with you. It doesn't have to be today. It could be sometime this week. Believe it or not, confessing your sin to a pastor or an elder is not only for Catholics. I can't be the guy who absolves you of your sin. Neither can Catholic priests, just to tell you that. But we can't walk with you through something that's crushing you. If we don't know what it is. I'm sure that I'm not going to get anybody who reaches out, but I'm also sure that there are people in here who really do need help. And I know for a fact, whether it's me or one of our elders here, we'd love to walk through this with you, not to shame you, but because we desperately want you free from your sin. All right, enough guilting you into it. Here's our next point of application. Let sin drive you toward God, not away from him. It's only the pharisees. It's only the spiritual pharisees who, when they sin, feel farther from God. Yes, sin does separate us from God. But when we are saved, when we are Christians, sin brings us closer to God. When we understand God, when we understand the cross, we throw ourselves to God because we know that he's the only solution. We become like a child with a broken toy who goes to their parents saying, I don't even know the first step to fix this. I don't even know what to do. That needs to be our heart posture. Repentance is the moment that we stop pretending like we can keep it altogether, that we know how to fix this. People who understand mercy, who know the gospel, know that it is the only thing that can save us from our sin, and therefore, we can actually grow closer to God. We can go to God saying, God, I know that I've done something terrible, but the only reason that I am not cast away from you and out of your presence is because of your goodness and your mercy. So what can we do with our guilt? We can't pay for it. We can't bury it. We We can outgrow it. We can bring it to the God who offers forgiveness, who can cleanse us from it. Here's the hope that our guilt, our guilt doesn't have the last word. God us. Jesus already dealt with our guilt. He was declared, he was condemned as guilty. So that way we don't have to bear our sin, our shame, our guilt any longer. Jesus died in my place to be my substitute on the cross, what I should have received so I can be his son. Jesus was treated like us so that way we could be treated like Jesus. When we say or think that it's not a big deal, when we say that about our sin, we're saying that about the cross, too. When we make our When we make the cross small, we make the cross small. The cross only looks unnecessary when our sin looks manageable. Let's pray Father God, we praise you for who you are, that you are good, and that you are good to us. God, I pray today that we would not leave here feeling condemned, but that we know that our sin is great, and because of it, the cross is even greater. God, give us a new passion for our salvation, for our forgiveness. Help us to stand before you and throw ourselves towards your mercy, because that's the only thing That's the only thing that can save us. Father, we love you, and we love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Would you stand and sing our closing song, Grace, Greater than Our Sin. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

The Day the Worst City Got the Best News Prosper Christian Reformed Church The Day the Worst City Got the Best News Jonah Mitchell Leach Sunday, November 16, 2025 Audio The Day the Worst City Got the Best News Mitchell Leach 00:00 / 37:45 Sermon Transcript My name is Dandy Kam. I'm one of the elders here. My wife and Mona and I pretty much all grew up in Prosper. We were gone for 20 years, but we've been back for the last five. We've been, thankfully, still here. This morning's scripture reading is Jonah 3. It's on page 921 in your few Bible. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breath. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, Yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. ' And the people of Nineveh believe God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, 'Let neither man nor beast, hard nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they had did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. Thus is the word of the Lord. Introduction After the American Civil War, many expected harsh punishments to be handed down for Confederate soldiers and leaders. But Abraham Lincoln repeatedly chose mercy. One man sentenced to death for desertion, had a sentence overturned by Lincoln, who said, I'm unwilling for any boy to die who sincerely wants to live rightly. He showed leniency on thousands hoping to heal the country. But his critics hated this. The people in the north cried out that these people don't deserve this, that they were traitors. Lincoln's mercy to them seemed unjust, as mercy often does. But that That's the same question that Jonah will wrestle with in this passage. How can God forgive people like them? Can mercy be just? And that's our big question for today. Is mercy just? Is the act of giving mercy a justified thing? In Jonah, God is showing us what his heart is like. He's showing and exposing Jona's heart and ours. The question is, do we pursue God's or just his benefits? Is the act of mercy an okay thing to do, or is it somehow wrong? Does forgiving people lead to more societal harm? You might think, why in the world would that be a question we'd ask? But It's an important question in our world and our country right now. Justice and mercy seem to be opposed. Those two words are important for us to understand. Justice is getting the thing that we deserve, where mercy is getting something good that we don't. Critics of this will say that giving mercy avoids accountability for offenders. It allows people who have done wrong, leniency, or to walk free from wrongs that they've committed. In America, this is a big thing, whether you're a Democrat or Republican. And it seems to be that certain offenses matter more to which side of the political aisle you're on. We forgive in the way that we vote. There are certain things that each party holds that we can't forgive and certain things that we see that we should forgive. When it comes to legal ramifications, hundreds of articles have been written about this. The idea that mercy or forgiveness is not a good thing for our justice system. An article titled The Limits of Forgiveness. There's a quote that says, There has to be a limit. There has to be a balance between between mercy and justice. What happens when we separate the two of those things? In the Book of Jonah, we see and we understand that the Ninevites are bad people. There's no excusing what they've done. They are evil people. So how can mercy be just? How is it right that God would forgive these people, that he would let them off? Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So if you would keep your Bibles open with me to Jonah Chapter 3. Let's see what this has to offer. We'll see these three points. Outline Jonah responds Nineveh repents God relents Context For context, chapters one and two, what we saw is that Jonah gets the word from God, and he revolts against it. He not only flees God, he flees from the presence of God. He gets into a boat and is thrown overboard and is saved by being swallowed by a fish. In chapter 2, Jonah, in the belly of the fish, praise to God, and rustles as he thanks him and still is prideful that he's being saved or that he's being forced to do this. Jonah seems to repent and thanks God for it. And that leads us to this chapter. In this chapter, we will see God, in his sovereign mercy, brings Nineveh to repentance through his word and withheld the judgment that they deserved. Jonah responds Let's look at this first section as Jonah responds, verses one through four. Notice this section starts with familiar language. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. This is how the book starts, how chapter one starts. Again, God sends his word to Jonah. And after realizing that God is the one who saved him, Jonah now does what he was supposed to do in chapter one. It's at this moment in the story that Jonah realizes that he's getting a second chance. He's getting something he doesn't deserve. He's getting God's mercy. Verses three through four, Jonah then goes into this great city. The Hebrew word for this great city is that it was an exceedingly great city. It was a city so big, it was preposterous to God. Some people have been critical of this passage saying that this is why the Bible isn't true, because a city that's three days in journey long, there's no records of finding one this big in the ancient near east. But the word that we understand as journey in this passage is important. Really, it doesn't mean if you started a stopwatch today and stopped it on Tuesday and you kept walking the entire time, that's how long the city was. What he's talking about is the city was three. It was so big, it took three days to properly get through it. Another way to say it would be, it was so big, it required Jonas to spend three days in it, proclaiming what God had told him to say. So what does Jonas say? Jonas says, Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. I don't know about you guys, but the first time I read this, I thought, this has got to be the worst gospel presentation ever. I mean, essentially, he's saying, 40 days and you're all going to die. No hope, nothing, right? I mean, that's not what I want to hear from the Pope. I like some hope. It seems like this is at least what he's saying. But the truth is that this is communicating what God wanted him to communicate. Biblical prophecy often works this way, warning people about judgment intending to usher them into repentance. If people repent, then God will relent. And that's laid out in Jeremiah 18. It says this, This is God speaking, If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it. And if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. Now, this isn't God's conditional grace. This isn't God making his grace conditional. But it's like a loving father coming to his child and saying, If you don't stop doing this, I will have to stop you myself. Nineveh understood this and repented. Jonah's sermon to them is short, but it works because the power isn't in the prophet, but in the word of God. Jonah obeys, but he doesn't yet share God's heart. You can do the right thing outwardly and still resist God inwardly. And that's what we see in this next section as Nineveh repents, verses 5 through 9. The people believe the word from God, from God's messenger, and they fast and repent. And then it gets to the king, and he repents. And then he issues a decree or a law that the entire city would have had to follow, that everything must repent, not just people, but the birds, the animals, everything, because the king knows what he's done. Look at verse 8 with me. The king says, Let everyone turn from his evil way, his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hand. Nineveh was an evil nation, an evil city. They knew what was wrong. And now they're being convicted of it. It's like if you have a friend tell you something that you already knew that was maybe going wrong in your life. Or if you go to the doctor, right, and you hear you got a bad diet or you don't exercise enough, and you're sitting there and you go, Yeah, I know that already, but it's nice to Now that a doctor tells me, I have to follow it or whatever lie we tell in our brains, right? Speaking of bad diet, why would they fast? Why would these people fast? Fasting in the Old Testament is often more than just a physical expression. It is a physical expression associated with mourning over sin. It's a desire for reconciliation with God. Joel, the Prophet Joel, writes this down writing down God's words. He says, Yet even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relents over disaster. This act of fasting that Nineveh does is an act of mourning and submitting to God, mourning over sin. See, fasting isn't a piece of some magic formula that we have in Christianity. We are not some voodoo where if we do the right rituals and we say the right things, then God will have to act in a certain way. No, fasting isn't the thing that God loves. God doesn't love the fact that we're hungry. That's not where he gets his satisfaction from. What God loves is true repentance. We fast not to make God happy. We fast because we hate the sin we once loved, and we love the God we once hated. Nineveh's fasting isn't about earning mercy. It's about expressing real repentance. And that's exactly what God wanted Noah to see. This moment isn't about Nineveh's sin, it's about God's mercy. This chapter shows us something deeper. It's not a story of a people or a city repenting or being saved or being changed. It's a story of a prophet being confronted. That's why this chapter is in this book. This chapter almost seems like a diversion from the overall story. The overall story is God is redeeming. He's bringing his prophet back to himself, changing his heart so that way he can see the heart of God, that he would desire to pursue his heart. Why do we have this story? It seems like this weird story that almost takes away from that narrative, right? Why do we have a story where it seems like the moral of the story is to be more like Nineveh because they repented? No. This chapter is to contrast Jonah. How many times did Jonah have to hear a word from the Lord? How many times did Nineveh? It would be easy at this point to make this passage, this sermon, about be like the Ninevites. They were the good ones. They heard the word of the Lord and repented. That's not why this story was written down for us. The story isn't to put ourselves anywhere in scripture, to put ourselves in the seat of someone who was obedient. Now, we are the Jonah in this story. We're the righteous ones. We're the ones who sit in church, who think that we're good. This isn't a call to be better. This isn't a call to be like Nineveh. It's a call to be like Jonah, to realize that we have some stuff in our own heart. It's a call to be honest, to ask ourselves, do we pursue God's heart or just his benefits? How many times do we need to hear God's word? We must be people who pursue God's heart. What's striking about the response to this, what's striking about the response to this is the King's attitude towards this message as he repents. Look at verse nine with me. This is what the king says. Who knows God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Nineveh decides to repent, not knowing for sure whether or not God's going to destroy them or not. God knew what he was going to do. Jonah knew what God was going to do, but Nineveh seemingly didn't know what was going to happen next. Nineveh wanted to do the right thing without knowing what God would do next. Too many of us need sure outcomes before we step out in faith. We say to God, God, I'll only go through this suffering if you get my tax situation better or you get us out of debt, or God, you help me with these relationships that seem to be broken, or you fix our family issues, or you fix my marriage. But if you can't do that, then I don't want to go through this. I'll only be faithful if you can promise something better for me. We take passages like this, like Jeremiah 29: 11. We take this and we apply it to ourselves. We read, For I know the plans I have for you, individual, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and hope. This is a lie that we believe from Satan that everything is going to turn out good for us. You might be sitting here thinking, whoa, this is God's word. How can you say that this is a lie from Satan? Well, I'd ask you this. Has Satan never distorted scripture before in tempting people? That's what we see in the garden. That's what we see with Jesus in the wilderness, Satan using God's word and just manipulating it. This passage is a beautiful passage, but intended for the people of Israel. I can't go too far on this, but this passage was intended for the whole nation of Israel, not an individual person. This passage today should be applied to us as the church, as the global church. God is going to give the church plans for welfare, not for evil, a hope in a future. Future. But for us to read this passage as an individual and to say that God's going to make my life better as long as I'm faithful. That's not always true. We can see that in the Bible. Look at Stephen, the apostle Stephen. What happens to him? Did God have plans for welfare, not for evil, to give him a hope in a future? Stephen was stoned to death. I think his plans were for good for him, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be what we see as good. Our suffering might have good outcomes for us, but it might not. We might end up like Stephen. But regardless of that, it glorifies God. We can't be Christians who only pursue God when it's convenient for us or when the benefits align for us, when the outcomes are sure and it looks good for us. Our faith isn't It's not about what we get out of it. It's not about what I want. It's not about my hearts and desires. It's about pursuing God's heart. Nineveh doesn't know how God will respond, but they turn anyway. That's faith or that's repentance, driven by faith, not driven by outcomes. We don't repent to get heaven. We don't repent to get anything from God. We repent Because we know that our savior, our God, the one who has redeemed us, sin is the opposite of him. The thing that he hates, the one we love most, hates, and we must repent of it. That's why we repent, not because we're promised anything. That's what we see in this last section in verse 10, the pinnacle of this chapter. This is the climax. This is the most important part of this chapter. It's not about the people repenting, but God relenting. We see what God sees. God sees true repentance from the Ninevites and relents. And it might seem for a second on the surface that God told a fib or wasn't telling you the truth. But the truth is that this prophecy was given as a prompt to repent. This was never This was never a sure thing that they were going to be destroyed. This was, again, a loving Father saying, I'm going to put an end to this evil one way or another. See, God eliminates evil in one of two ways. The traditional way that we think about it is Sodom and Gomorrah, God putting an end to destroying his enemies. The other way that God eliminates his enemies is by turning them into friends. Romans 5 says this, But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Here's the important part. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more shall we be reconciled by his life? When scripture says that God relented, it doesn't mean that he changed his character. It means that he acted in accordance with his mercy. See, mercy and justice are never in conflict for God. They perfectly meet in his heart. And because of this, God relents. When God relents, Jonah will be furious because Jonah wants a God who will only destroy his enemies and not one who delights in mercy. That's the tension of the book. Will Jonah align with the heart of God, or will he align with his own sense of justice? This is who God is. God is a God who relents. Exodus says that God is a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. This is who God is, not fickle, but faithful to his steadfast love. God doesn't want his people to die. He wants them to live. Jonah himself had already experienced the mercy from God when he was evil towards his own behavior. But the question is, will he be delighted when he sees the Ninevites and what they've experienced, that they've experienced the same thing? That question we'll answer next week, so make sure to come back for that. Shameless plug there. Here we go. That leads us into our main idea. Our main idea is this: trust God who sends his word to awake in repentance. Trust God who sends his word to awake in repentance. We trust God's word, not because this book has some magic pages. It's because what's written on them. This is God's word, the very voice of God. We get to see God's heart in and it. We can trust God's word because we can trust God. God's word never lies because God is God who speaks truth. God's word shows us who God is. God failed to see that the first time. He failed to see that when he received the word of the Lord, that when he was receiving that, he was receiving the very essence of God's heart. But we can trust God and his word. That leads us into our points of application. Our first point is this, Seek God for God and not just the benefits. We cannot be people who worship God, who seek God out of our own selfish gain. We can't be people who build our own kingdom, who seek God in order to add something onto our life. This is why we pray in the Lord's prayer, Lord, your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Building towards anything else, building towards anything else on this Earth is not only biblically foolish, but it won't last. The reality is we are not immortal. We will die. And maybe this is an uncomfortable thing for us to think about. And maybe this feels cold, but I want to drive this home. I want you guys to understand this. Our children, our grandchildren, and if we're lucky, our great grandchildren may remember us. But after that, most of the time we'll be forgotten. Say you're one of the outliers, right? You're one of the Napoleon's or Julius Caesar's who is remembered throughout history, right? You go down as one of the George Washington. We're going to be saying that name for the rest of history. In a billion years, the sun will expand and destroy the Earth. If all we're building here is our own Kingdom, if all we're doing is using God to make our lives better, the end result is that nothing's going to be remembered anyway. It's all going to be in vain. We absolutely need to do and obey God's word here and obey God. But it's not about getting something back out of it. It's following God because we love the God we know. We must seek God because it's the only thing that will outlast time itself. We don't add God into our life as some another version of a self-help book. It's not like, God, I've got this problem in my life, and if I try sprinkling a little bit of Jesus on it, then that's going to make everything better. God isn't an add-on to our life. He's either everything or nothing. And that's what we see in this next point of application. It leads us into our next point of application, loving mercy. God is either everything or nothing. If we love him, we have to love everything that he loves. We have to love mercy. Our default for this is that we love mercy for ourselves, and we love justice for everyone else, right? If you talk to a kid, there have been studies that prove this, that children enjoy seeing other children punished, and that might seem like a dark thing. The reality is we don't grow out of this as adults, either. We just get better at masking it. Our default is that we love justice for others, and we love mercy only for ourselves. If we are people who have been set free from sin, we must desire that other people would be set free as well. To pursue God's heart means that we love who he loves, even when that mercy offends our sense of fairness, like it did for Jonah. We must desire that people would be set free from slavery to sin. The reality is that this all sounds so nice. It's easy to get behind confessionally or to say this out loud. It's easy to say this, right? Yeah, we ought to love mercy. This sounds great. But do it. It's much harder. It's easy to admire mercy. It's another thing to love it. In our Christian circles, in our Christian bubbles, we can talk about loving mercy. We can say it's a good virtue. It's a good thing that we ought to love and to do. But doing it means that we have to rub shoulders with people that aren't like us or that might not act like us. It means that we invite people into our church not saying, in order for you to... It's It's great if you come into our church and you start acting like us and you start doing the things that we do. No, it's hard to invite people into our church and say, It's going to be messy. It might not look the same. We might have to change. We might have to accommodate people. It looks like sharing the gospel with people when it's uncomfortable, when it's someone you know, a family member, someone you've worked with for a long time. The fear of, Man, will they think I'm weird for saying this? Will they think that what I'm saying is It's too churchy or too Christian-y or whatever we think, whatever lie that comes into our heart? There's a difference between admiring mercy and loving it, and the difference is action. As we close, the question I want for us to think about is, why could God relent from destroying Nineveh? Let's look at verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from the evil ways, from their evil ways, God relented the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it. The reason that God could relent from destroying Nineveh wasn't because they repented. It was because on the cross, God saw what Jesus did and how he was innocent of all the evil ways, and yet God delivered him to disaster. He delivered him to destruction. This is why we can trust God. This is Why we can trust God? Because he sent himself to pay the price. In this chapter, he sentiona with his word. Later on, he would send the word made flesh. He proved that we can fully trust him, even when we feel like he's leading us astray. We all love Psalm 23. If you're here on Friday, you heard it in a beautiful sermon, in a beautiful ceremony, in a beautiful funeral. We love this passage that it says, Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. But who's leading us? Go back to the beginning of that. That psalm, The Lord is my shepherd. It's God who leads us through this valley. Are we willing to follow him? Are we prepared for the reality that God may lead you somewhere that makes feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter? Even when the path is dark, even when obedience costs you everything, we can trust the good shepherd because he is the one who leads you through that valley because he's already went through it himself. So what do we do? We turn, we trust, we stop running from God's heart and we run to it as people who have been redeemed. The Lord who sent his word to Nineveh sends his Holy spirit to you today saying, 'Come to me, turn to me, trust me, for I am gracious and merciful. ' Prosper Church, trust God who sends his word to awaken repentance. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are, that you are God who is rich mercy. A God who we can trust because you walk before us. God, I pray right now that you would comfort us. Not all of us are in a good place. Not all of us are in an easy season. God, I pray that we can trust you even in the midst of confusion. God, I pray for the Dick family as they've lost a huge pillar in this family. God, I pray that you would be near and tender with each and every one of them. God, as a community, help us to surround them. Help us to relish in the beautiful moments and the stories that we knew of Caroline's life. God, help us to love them like you've loved us. God, as we respond in worship, God, I pray that we would be changed people, not by the words that I've spoken, but the words that you've spoken through your word in scripture. God, we love you. We love to do your will. So help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Would you stand and sing as we respond in worship? Before the Throne of God above, I have a I know that while in there, there's a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest who's made his love, whoever lives and please for me. My name is proven on his hands, my name is written on his heart. I know that while in every sense, no tongue can bid me then steep art. No tongue can bid me then steep hard. No tongue can bid me then steep hard. When Satan tells me to despair and tells me of the field within. Upward I look and see him there, who made an end of my sin. Because the sinless savior died, my simple soul is mounted free. For God, the justice satisfied, to look on him and pardon me, to look on him and pardon me. Behold him there, the risen land, my perfect Godless righteousness, the great unchangeable I am, the King of glory and of Grace. For with His self I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood. Our life is in with Christ's on high, with Christ my savior and my God. With Christ, my savior and my God. Hear this blessing. May the Lord, who is rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love, send you out with hearts awakened by his word. Go in the strength of his spirit to the ones he loves, to show mercy and to walk in the freedom of grace. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen. With the peace of God, our heavenly Father, and the grace of Christ, the risen Son, and the fellowship of God, the spirit, keep our hearts and minds within his call. And to him we praise for his glorious way. From the depths of earth to the heights of hell, we declare the name of the land One slave, Christ eternal, the King of peace. With a peace which has his understanding, and his grace which makes us what we are, and this fellowship of his communion, make us one, spirit and be called. And this fellowship of this communion makes us one in spirit and in heart. And to him we praise for his glorious strength. From the depths of earth to the heights of hell. We declare the name of the land once slain, Christ eternal, the King of He. Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link

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

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