Calvary Evangelical Free Church

Calvary Evangelical Free Church
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Listen to our latest weekly messages from Calvary Evangelical Free Church located in Rochester Minnesota. Calvary’s Mission is to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus who live out passion for Christ and compassion for people.

  1. 6D AGO

    Kingdom Come

    Jesus teaches us the mystery of his second coming so that we will keep our lives focused on pursuing his mission. Well, as you can hear from our reading today, we are going to spend our time in the Word this morning in the area of eschatology, which is the theology of last things. And even as I say the word eschatology this morning, there’s probably a few different reactions happening in the room right now. Some of you are very excited to just talk about eschatology; you’ve been waiting for this, you love to search the scriptures, to learn about Jesus second coming and the new heavens and new earth, and the culmination of the kingdom of God. But sometimes, for some of you, maybe you’re a little too excited, huh? I mean, is that fair? Maybe a little too excited about it. And then on the other end of that spectrum, some of you are not excited at all. In fact, you heard the word eschatology. You just tuned out. You’re already tuning out right now, probably because you’ve interacted with too many people who have too much zeal and certainty on their views. They’ve got a chart. They’ve identified the Antichrist. They have awkward rapture ready conversations with you. And you’re just not into it. But this has caused you to pull away from what the Bible has given us in His Word on this topic, God’s Word on this topic. And there’s part of the Bible that you’re ignoring, and that’s not good either. Some of you are more in the middle in a position that I will label curiosity. You’re far from certain, but you’re not checked out either. Your certain Jesus is returning. You’re not certain how it will happen. I’d like to invite all of us this morning to take a little step closer to that middle position. Today we live right now in between Jesus first coming and his second coming. So, we believe in linear history. Some worldviews are circular. Some have no ending and no beginning. Christianity teaches a clear beginning to our universe, and a forward advancing timeline that culminates in the return of Jesus. So, while we don’t have endless information on exactly what Jesus coming second coming is going to look like, we do have substantial information. And as part of God’s Word, those passages are intended to shape the way that we as Jesus disciples live our lives today. So, eschatology is about the future, but it’s not given to us just so that we can speculate about the future. It’s given to help us to think and to live for Jesus today. So, while we should never claim to have certainty about Jesus return and become overly fixed on it, neither should we ignore it and act as if it doesn’t matter. Luke chapter 17, verses 20 to 37 is Jesus teaching on his own second coming and the judgment of sin that comes with that. It’s a detailed, detailed story. A lot of imagery and metaphor in it. Some of that imagery is clear. Some of it is mysterious. The portions that are mysterious are meant to be. Because part of Jesus point about his second coming is that we’re not supposed to have all the information that we want to have about it. That’s part of his teaching. Did you know that there there’s a part of Jesus teaching where he taught us that we’re not going to know everything that we want to know? It’s like, if I were your math teacher and you came into class one day and I had a math problem on the board, and I said, sit down. Today’s lesson is you are never going to figure this out, right? That would be odd. Now, the mystery, though, is not taught to us for no purpose. On the contrary, Jesus teaches us the mystery of his Second Coming so that we will keep our lives focused on pursuing his mission. Today, this life is fraught with meaningless directions. Some of them are worldly, and they end up in judgment. Some of them simply make followers of Jesus ineffective. And we’re going to see some of that today. But with eschatology, God keeps us on track. That’s the point of eschatology. It is God keeping us faced in the right direction and properly on track. So, I encourage you this morning, keep your Bibles open to Luke chapter 17. It’s a long passage, so it’s not going to be up on the screen this morning. We’re just going to walk through Jesus teaching beginning to end. And it has two parts to it. The first part is short. It’s addressed to the Pharisees, and it concerns the beginning of the kingdom of God. The second part is longer. It’s addressed to Jesus disciples, and it concerns the culmination of God’s kingdom that comes when Jesus return. So, we’re going to start with the beginning, and then we’re going to look at five things to know about Jesus second coming. So, here’s the beginning. It starts in verse 20 and 21. Jesus is once again he’s speaking to the Pharisees, who were Jewish leaders, mostly in opposition to him. I say mostly because some Pharisees did eventually put their faith in Jesus. Did you know this? Nicodemus famously, is one of these Pharisees that that came to trust in Jesus? Joseph of Arimathea might have been a Pharisee. He certainly was a leader in the Jewish world. Clearly, Jesus teaching was having some positive effect on these men who knew their scriptures well. And here it doesn’t say that they were trying to trick Jesus. A lot of times we’re told straight up, these Pharisees were trying to trick him. Not here though. It just says that Jesus was asked about the arrival of the kingdom of God. They want to know when that’s going to be. So implied in the question is that the kingdom will come sometime in the future, and they just want to know when. Which makes Jesus answer very intriguing. The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you. That’s present tense right now. The Kingdom of God is here with us on this hill or wherever they were when he was teaching this. See, they’re asking, when is it going to start? And Jesus says, it’s already happening, guys, you’re just not aware of it. How did they miss that? Well, it’s because the kingdom of God is coming in ways that can’t be observed. Now, to understand what Jesus means here, when he says it’s coming in ways that can’t be observed, we have to quickly review what these Pharisees were looking for when they wanted to know the start of the kingdom of God. What did they expect to see this kingdom be? They were looking for the re-establishment of the nation of Israel through the coming of a Savior who would wipe out the Roman occupation. In other words, they were waiting for a kingdom. You could definitely see a final, permanently established Israel that had, uh, have a kingship and a priesthood. All those things that the Old Testament describes, they’re looking for a visible kingdom. So, to them, whatever kingdom Jesus is talking about would have to be after this moment, because it’s not there yet, hasn’t arrived. But Jesus corrects their misunderstanding. You think? You think it’s going to be an observable nation? You think people will be able to point at it and say, look, there it is. But the actual kingdom of God is not only not observable physically, it’s right here in the midst of you, and you don’t even know it yet. Jesus is referring to himself when he says this. He is the beginning of the Kingdom of God. He is. He is the one who embrace the Kingdom of God onto the earth. The gates of the Kingdom of God have been opened since the start of Jesus ministry, and these Pharisees could enter it at any time simply by putting their trust in Jesus. We saw this last week with the ten lepers. Nine were healed and they took off and they just went back to their old lives. But one of them realized what had happened and turned around and came back. To do what? To worship Jesus. And Jesus told him, your faith has made you well. This, guy saw the unobservable kingdom of God in Jesus while the other nine guys didn’t. And these Pharisees are like the other nine guys. They can see the miracles of Jesus is doing, but they refuse to believe that they are observing a spiritual kingdom. Jesus didn’t come to overthrow the Romans and establish an earthly kingdom. He came, as he tells us, to overthrow Satan and establish an eternal spiritual kingdom. These guys, just can’t see that what Jesus is describing here has a big, fun name to it that will make you sound really smart around all of your theology nerd friends. All of them. It’s got a great name. So, here’s the phrase okay. The phrase is inaugurated eschatology. Isn’t that fun? Write it down. Inaugurated eschatology. Eschatology, like I said earlier, is the study of last things. It’s the return of Jesus, the millennium, all that, that kind of stuff. All the stuff that’s coming in the future. Inaugurated refers to something that has begun, usually with a big moment. Think of a presidential inauguration. Inaugurated eschatology, then is it refers to last things that have begun. Last things that have begun. The last days have started. This is what Jesus is saying. His ministry marks the beginning of the final establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. Now this Kingdom of God will become more observable over time, but again, not in the way that you might think. It’s not going to be a nation with borders. Jesus death and resurrection will defeat and crush Satan for all who believe. Those people will then be filled with the Holy Spirit, and they’ll preach the gospel, and they’re going to form local churches. They’re going to spread to every nation. The kingdom of God will be represented among all people everywhere. The Jews will be included, but it will not be limited to the nation of Israel. The church, as the body of Christ, will be outposts and ambassadors representing the spiritual kingdom of God, And the more it grows and spreads, the more visible the Kingdom of God becomes, until eventually there will be a culmination of the Kingdom of God at Christ’s Second Coming. So, the first time Jesus

    30 min

  2. FEB 1

    Ten Lepers

    The purpose of God’s compassion to us is to turn us into worshipers filled with joy and thanksgiving for Christ. We have a surprising story from Jesus ministry to consider this morning. It’s a story of Jesus miraculous healing, which is not surprising at all. We’ve seen plenty of that throughout the Gospel of Luke. What’s surprising about this story is that it wasn’t given to us primarily to teach about Jesus power. It does display Jesus power. And so we’ll talk about that. But this story is primarily about the reason Jesus does anything miraculous or kind or generous at all. When I was a missions pastor in Pennsylvania for, I guess about 15 years ago now, I worked a lot with the poor in our downtown community. We had a program called Circles, which partnered people from our church with those who were taking steps to work their way out of poverty. It was a fantastic program. I made a lot of friends. We saw whole families become financially independent and sustainable over time. And I got to share the gospel with a lot of people. At the same time that I was working in this, this ministry, I was also studying at Westminster Theological Seminary, writing a dissertation on the topic of how culturally middle class churches can lovingly embrace and include the generationally poor. And what I ran into over and over again in my research was the complex relationship between preaching the gospel and making disciples of Jesus on the one hand, and meeting the physical needs of people on the other. There’s a slew of literature out there written for church consumption that says things like Jesus loved without an agenda, or Jesus calls us to be his hands and feet, implying that we are not also his voice as we share the gospel. And these writers focus on the parts of Jesus ministry where Jesus meets physical needs, but they generally leave out what Jesus has to say about his own ministry. For example, here’s what Jesus says when he’s confronted with Jewish authorities in John chapter five. “For the works that the father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the father has sent me.” So Jesus is very clear that everything he does throughout his ministry does, in fact have an agenda. He did not come simply to perform good deeds and to help people out of their problems as an end in itself. God the father gave Jesus these works to do to testify to the identity of Jesus as God the Son. They are pictures of a restored creation in the Kingdom of God over which Jesus reigns as king. So the intention is that when we look at the works of Jesus, we will not just see compassion for the sake of kindness, but we will see Jesus and some aspect of his gospel, some aspect of his good news. And the good works that God has prepared for us to do according to Ephesians chapter two should do the same. They are also intended by God to point people to the wholeness, healing, love, and forgiveness that is found exclusively in Jesus. But as we’ll see today, the purpose of Jesus ministry doesn’t even end with seeing him for who he is. There is a step beyond that, even in what Jesus wants to see happen. The purpose of God’s compassion to us is to turn us into worshipers, filled with joy and thanksgiving for Christ. That’s what it’s about. It’s turning us into worshippers. Now, you might feel some tension with some of the things that I have to say today. But what’s new? Really? Right. What’s new? If you have developed over time a very strong feeling that a truly loving act would never have an agenda behind it. I understand that impulse in you. I understand, I get it. As a Christian. But let me just say, it’s not biblical. It’s not biblical. If we truly want to become like Jesus in every way, that would have to include seeing and doing compassionate work the way he sees and does it. And I believe that when we adjust our minds and our hearts to include Jesus purpose for his good works, we become more compassionate, not less. So when we’re in Luke chapter 17 today, we’re going to be in verse 11. I’ll take us through what happens in this account. I’m going to show you Jesus response to what happens. And then we’re going to I want to end with a couple of thoughts on how this should impact our compassionate work as Christians. So, here’s what happened on the way to Jerusalem. He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered the village, a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. So Jesus is traveling through the regions of Samaria and Galilee on his way south to Jerusalem, which is in Judea. So think of three regions. You got Galilee in the north. It’s pretty good. You got Judea in the south. That’s even better. And then you got Samaria in the middle. And that’s terrible. Nobody likes Samaria in that day. Many Jewish travelers even would avoid Samaria because they were racist. Jesus does not avoid it. Jesus does not avoid Samaria at all. He travels right through it because he isn’t racist, and because the message of the good news of salvation is just as much for them as it is for anybody else. So there’s a lot we can learn from Jesus about how we as Christians should treat all people. And this is a good this story is a good example of that. So he enters a town near the Galilee Samaria border, and he’s met by these ten lepers. Now, these guys could not come near to Jesus for healing like so many people had come. Many people came right up and touched Jesus. They couldn’t do that because their skin disease required them to stay away. It’s a contagious disease. That was a big deal back in the first century and in ancient Israel as a whole. And in addition to being fatal, leprosy separated these people from being able to function within the community. So, these men would have been beggars on the street. No one would have wanted to come near to them. And that’s not just because people didn’t want to get sick, they didn’t want to get sick. But that wasn’t the only reason. They also didn’t want to become ceremonially unclean by touching these guys. To be unclean in the Jewish community meant that you couldn’t enter into worship at the temple. Now, that doesn’t mean that these men were unsaved the way we might talk about it or that that, they were, in some sense a god that God didn’t love them or something like that, but it meant that they couldn’t fully participate in worship. And that’s an important note. Okay. Remember that they’re not right now able to fully participate in worship. So, these men, they see Jesus. They’ve surely heard about his ability to heal. So, they keep their Distance and they call out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Jesus, you can see our predicament from where you are. You can see what’s going on with us. We know you have the power to change us. Show us your power like you’ve shown to so many others. See, with leprosy, the typical scenario would run like this A person is diagnosed with the skin disease. By the way, if you’re really interested in all the details on this, check out Leviticus 13. Okay, step by step instructions as to what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this. The person would be diagnosed. The priest would examine the skin and determine if it’s leprosy or not through, through a series of quarantine periods. I’m sorry if that brings back flashbacks of Covid 19 for you. Okay. But there was there was this sort of a quarantine process they would go through, and the priest would see if it heals up, then he would declare that person clean again, which means that he can resume normal life and worship with everybody else. And that’s the scenario that everybody hoped for. However, those with incurable chronic leprosy would eventually just sort of slip into the homeless margins of society, and they would eventually die. And that’s where these men are. They’re out on the street. They’re in that incurable stage. They keep their distance from Jesus, not because he’s special, but because they’re made to keep their distance from everyone. They need God’s mercy. There is no hope for them other than God’s mercy. And Jesus does something for them. And it’s fairly unique what he does for them. Usually people with leprosy would experience healing, and then they would go to the priest to be tested. But in this case, Jesus sees these men in their leprous state and he tells them to go to the priest. Notice that he doesn’t heal them and then send them. He just sends them, and on their way it says to the priests they are cleansed. So, faith in Jesus ability to heal came prior to their actual experience of healing. Basically, they’re saying we trust Jesus. We trust him. We don’t. We don’t need Jesus to prove himself before we listen to him. We listen to him because we trust him. And so as they are on their way to show themselves to the priest, they experience the mercy that they trusted Jesus could provide for them. And that would be a heartwarming story, wouldn’t it? If it ended there, if it ended there, that would be. We’d all feel good. We’d go out feeling warm on a cold day, right? We’d all feel much better about it. But not only does the account not end there, if it did end there, it would be incomplete because Jesus has more in mind than just helping ten guys out with their problem. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Okay, so one of these guys turned back. The way that it’s phrased, it sounds like he realized that he was healed as he was heading toward the priest. He t

    32 min

  3. JAN 25

    Unworthy Servants

    A disciple serves the Lord with the humble heart of a servant doing his duty, not with an expectation of exaltation. Today, we’re going to conclude a short section of Jesus teaching, where he teaches some pretty deep lessons to his closest disciples. They’ve been challenging, but in in my opinion, this today is the most difficult yet. First he told us to rebuke each other and to endlessly forgive each other when we’ve been wronged. Paul Tripp defines forgiveness as a vertical commitment with God, followed by a horizontal transaction with the offending party. In other words,  it’s because I have a commitment to God who graciously forgives me that that gracious forgiveness is the currency that I use to transact with others. Then Jesus told us that our faith is powerful, not because we have a lot of faith, but because God works powerfully through the faith that we have. So if we have Jesus, we have everything we need to see God work powerfully in us and through us. Now, just those two teachings alone, if we were to fully embrace them, fully bring them in and live them out, they would make us into very different sorts of people in this world. And that’s what discipleship with Jesus is. It’s designed to contrast us against the background of a broken world. We should not seem to fit. Okay. If you if you feel like I just don’t really feel like I fit, you’re probably doing it right. We’re not supposed to. If sin saturates everything and it does, then sin is what feels normal. Jesus makes us abnormal with his righteousness, and that’s a good thing. Now, with that in mind, let me take you to a parable that I would guess is going to sound brand new to many of you. Like Jesus just came out with another album. Okay, so is this his new stuff? No, there is no new stuff. This is just a teaching of Jesus that is very rarely shared and discussed in the church. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that even many of you who are strong Bible readers who have certainly read this parable at some point, I’m going to guess that many of you have never really wrestled with it. Jesus is going to tell us a story to explain the kind of attitude that we are to have as servants within God’s household. He’s going to particularly focus on how we see ourselves, and what should we expect from God in return for being obedient and doing what he commands. And the attitude he tells us to have is so wildly out of sync with the attitude that most of us have, and that our culture celebrates and that feels good to us. It’s no wonder that this teaching is not well remembered. We are conditioned in our minds to be praised and rewarded for accomplishments, aren’t we? We accomplish something. You think I’m going to get praised, I’m going to get rewarded for this. And there’s nothing wrong with celebrating accomplishments. But there’s a big difference between receiving praise for a job well done and doing your job well so that you will receive praise. You hear that? You hear the difference there. That’s true everywhere, by the way. That’s true at work. That’s true at home. But nowhere does this shift in attitude and motivation do more damage than in our walk with God. Jesus is going to explain that a disciple serves the Lord with a humble heart of a servant, doing his duty, not with an expectation of exaltation. We’re in Luke chapter 17, verses 7 to 10 today. What I’m going to do is I’m going to read the parable in full, because I want you to feel the full weight of Jesus whole argument, and the weight of the humility that he places on us. And then I’m going to go back and I’m going to explain the story. And then finally, I have five attitude adjustments that we should make from this passage. So here’s the parable. Will anyone of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and recline at table? Will he not rather say to him, prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink? Does he thank the servant, because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. You can hear immediately. Why this parable isn’t very popular, can’t you? It just. You just. You could feel it. You’re like, wow, that is that is not something I like to hear. This teaching presents a direct attack on the tightly held, I would might even say, beloved popular idea that we are all autonomous captains of our lives and deserve the praise for everything that we’ve accomplished because of our personal greatness. It’s directly against that idea. Trading that out for a lifetime of being an unworthy servant for most people, no thank you, I’ll pass. This is why we need to pay such close attention to what Jesus is saying here. If you really want to follow Jesus closely, it’s in areas like this where even mature believers need to grow. Even those of you who’ve walked with Jesus for a really long time, this is an area where most of us need to grow. Jesus asks two rhetorical questions here. Both assume a no answer. So, Jesus is picturing a large farm with many servants who work for the owner. This is a typical part of the economic system of the first century. Servants would work in the household to serve the owner, and then their lives and their families would be sustained by the income of the estate. Jesus puts us in the position of the owner for these rhetorical questions. It’s a little hard for us because our culture is so different from what Jesus is describing here that we would probably say yes to both of these, these questions, but we need to put ourselves into a first century mindset just a little bit, so that we can understand what Jesus is saying about discipleship. The first question is whether we would invite a servant to come in from the field and put, pull up a chair and have dinner with us. Is that the master himself would have been the one who prepared the meal for the servant, because he says to the servant, come in at once. Sit down for dinner. It’s already prepared for you. Jesus says, who among you would do this? Now the disciples that are listening to Jesus here in this moment, they would have thought none of us, none of us would do this. This is, of course we’re not going to do that. That’s not how things are done. It’s a servant’s job to make sure that the master’s needs are met. Not the other way around. The master would instead instruct the servant to prepare the meal and then dress properly. Take off all those sweaty clothes from the field, put on proper clothes, serve me the meal, and then watch the master have his dinner. And only then would the servant have his own meal. Now, if you’re feeling uncomfortable with this, I want you to remember that this is how their economy worked. This is how a servant would have his livelihood. And it’s hard to find parallels for us today. But let me just say, every time that you go to a restaurant at dinner time. Okay. And you go to a restaurant at dinner time, you are served by someone who does not get to eat at dinner time. Okay. That that person is that that that server, that waiter, the cooks in the back, the dishwashers, those folks, they have to eat on a break. But they do that because that’s how they make their livelihood. And it’s the same sort of thing here, but in a very different sort of economic arrangement. If that first question about will you allow him to pull up a chair and have dinner with you, if that question makes you squirm just a bit, the second question is only going to increase the discomfort. Jesus asks, does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? Does the does the owner of the estate even? Oh, thank you to the servant who carries out his household duties. Now we are squarely outside of our culture here, right? Because we would all say, well, yes, of course you’d say thank you. Of course you’d say, no matter whether it was their job or not, you’d say thank you to somebody for helping you out and doing what they did. But we need to follow Jesus argument here because he’s making a very technical argument. He’s not asking whether it would be nice to say thank you. He’s not saying, would it be kind to say thank you. He’s asking whether this thanks is owed as a debt to the servant who is merely doing what he’s been commanded to do. In these two questions, Jesus is asking whether a servant should expect to be celebrated and praised and rewarded, and even in this case served by the master for simply doing what a servant is supposed to do. And the answer is no. No, it’s not owed. If it’s your job, then what is there to praise? Jesus says, even if you do your job exceptionally well, it’s the, it’s to be expected that you would do your job to the best of your ability. This doesn’t mean you can’t be praised and rewarded. It doesn’t even mean that you won’t be praised and rewarded. But if someone does their job with the expectation of being praised and rewarded, then they’re doing it with the wrong motivation. And this is why this is such a hard aspect of discipleship under Jesus for us to grasp. We very often do things for credit. We do it because we want to be seen. We want to be heard. We want to. We crave the praise. We want the raise. We want people to tell us how great we are at what we do, how well we do our job, and it’s because there are very appropriate times and ways to build others up, to encourage people to show love and to show thanks. There are those times. By the way, we as a staff just received this week our love gift from all of you. And let me just say on behalf of all of our staff, wow. Thank you. What an incredible thank you for all this generosity. We certainly feel the love that you as a congregation have for us as a

    32 min

  4. JAN 18

    The Power of Faith

    The presence of faith in Christ in your mind and heart, no matter how small, if it is genuine, will accomplish great things.   Time in the Bible this morning is exciting to me because of the little bit of theology that we’re going to look at. It’s a corrective to one of the more damaging theological trends of our time. It’s a small passage, but it packs a big punch. You know, sometimes when, when, when you think a certain way and then one small observation comes along, or one new fact, it turns it all around. That’s kind of what we’re going to have happen this morning. There’s been a theological trend that has built steam over the last few centuries of the church. That has had a devastating effect on both the core tenets of the gospel and on the practices of the church. And if you walked with us here at Calvary for a while, you have heard us teach a very high view of God’s power and presence and control of all things. This includes his blessings and the happiness and peace that we experience in Christ, and the joy of knowing our sins are washed away. And this is not because of anything that we’ve done. We are not special people. We are not highly skilled people. Or at least of all. Are we deserving people? God has chosen us to redeem us simply because he wanted to. That’s God’s grace to us. And now we point other people to that grace, and we rest. We rest in the firm knowledge that the God who has chosen us and redeemed us and brought us into his family is now working in all circumstances to shape us into the men and women that God has called us to be. That includes both blessing and tragedy. That includes health and sickness. It includes having a lot of things and not having enough things. God uses all of it to shape us, to be like Christ. As James said, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect. They may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. The Apostle Paul talked about this in numerous ways throughout his ministry, but maybe nowhere so clear as when he wrote about the thorn in his flesh, which was some kind of an ailment or a problem that dogged him throughout his life. He said, three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. So, James and Paul knew their faith was powerful, not because they were powerful, but because God worked powerfully through their faith. Now imagine a type of theology that changes faith into something that we produce, and that we strengthen and expand on our own. Picture a God who is who is not strengthening our faith through hardships but is instead sending those hard things into our lives because the quantity of our faith wasn’t enough to earn his blessings. This God would say something like, I have all this wealth waiting for you, healing from your sickness. I have it. It’s waiting for you. I have it all. I’ll give it to you if you can show me that you have enough faith that is called the prosperity gospel. Sometimes it’s called the health and wealth gospel. It’s not a gospel at all. See, gospel means good news. This is not good news. This is terrible news that robs Christians of their confidence in God, because it makes faith into a kind of game. If you have gathered up enough faith, if you force God’s hand to give you the thing that you want. And so, the whole Christian life becomes this mental game of trying to show how sincere and pure your faith is, so that you can claim the blessings that he has for you. And so, when those blessings do come to you, it is a triumph of your faith. And conversely, every failure to get the good thing in your life is an indictment of your faith. You weren’t strong enough in your trust in the Lord, so you couldn’t give God couldn’t give you what he wanted to give you. This is an unbiblical, damnable, heretical teaching of a false church that has spread all over the world. Did you know that? It’s all over, all over the world. As I mentioned, it’s been around for a couple hundred years, but it really gained steam in the 80s when TV preachers became a big thing. That’s when this thing really took off. The so-called word of faith movement roped unsuspecting people into this nonsense from the comfort of their couches. Desperate people heard a false teacher tell them God’s blessing is waiting for you if you have enough faith. And wouldn’t you know it, the amount of faith that a person had was measured by the number of zeroes they put on the check that they sent to that false teacher. Wow, what an incredible coincidence. But I’m telling you, church, you know I’m not up here this morning with a bone to pick about 80s preachers. That would be strange, wouldn’t it, if we spent our morning doing that? That’s not actually the real problem. There are a lot of people struggling under the weight of a false view of their how their faith works. There’s a lot of people that have bits and pieces of what I just described that they carry with them. There are folks here in our church bearing spiritual burdens because they don’t understand where the power of faith comes from. Our passage this morning is a wonderfully freeing passage from Jesus. It’s a message from Jesus that will set you free. And ironically, it’s a passage that prosperity gospel advocates use because they misread it. I want you to be really encouraged today as Jesus briefly rewires our thinking on genuine faith. The presence of faith in Christ in your mind and heart, no matter how small, if it is genuine, will accomplish great things. We have just two short verses today because I know you love it when I take my time through the Bible. So, we’re in just Luke 17, verses five and six. Today the apostles make a request to Jesus, and then Jesus answers them by correcting their assumption and explaining the power of genuine faith. Here’s the request the apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith. That’s enough. Let’s stop there. Apparently, the apostles were challenged by what they had just heard from Jesus. If you were here with us last week, you’ll remember that Jesus just told his group of disciples that their job is to look out for each other. Remember that? Look out for one another. When we see a fellow Christian wandering off toward sin or off toward temptation, we’re supposed to rebuke. And if the sin is against us, we’re supposed to forgive. And this forgiveness is not supposed to end. Jesus said, you might even do it seven times in a day. Which is to say, all the time, every time you’re going to forgive. Christians are to be an endless well of loving correction and gracious forgiveness for the benefit of other people, which in times like these is incredibly rare. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the impact we would have in our culture if living? By contrast, we were endlessly, lovingly correcting and endlessly forgiving. We would stand out in this world. Well, this call to endless forgiveness had an impact on the apostles who were listening. Here Luke switches from disciples. In verse one. He starts to talk about the apostles in verse five. Now back in chapter six, Jesus named the 12 of his closest disciples apostles, which means they are the sent ones. These are the tactical missionaries that he’s training up. So, some or all of these apostles recognize the difficulty of what Jesus is saying to the disciples about rebuking and forgiving. And so, they step forward and they speak up and they say, increase our faith, increase our faith. This appears to be a declaration of exasperation. How are we going to do this? God, how are we going to do this? Jesus. Are we hear what you’re saying? How do we make it happen? We don’t have what we need to keep up that level of faithfulness. You ever feel that way? You ever feel like you can’t do it? I think we all do at times. You’re reading the Bible and you come to some part that just slaps you in the face and you say, how am I ever going to get there? I do not know how to become the kind of person that this Bible is describing that I ought to be. And then you go to God in prayer and you say, Lord, if I’m going to be this person that you’re describing in this Bible, you’re going to have to make it so. You’re going to have to do the work. You’re going to have to change me by force. That’s what the apostles are saying to Jesus here. Change us. Notice they’re asking Jesus to increase their faith. They realize that to become the kind of person that Jesus is describing, that’s going to be beyond their natural ability. They’re going to need some help. And this is the part of this that they get exactly right. They get a part of it wrong, too, as they often do. We’re going to look at that here in just a minute. But they are totally correct to ask Jesus to work the change that has to happen to become the person that Jesus is telling them to be. Now we can take a cue from these apostles on how to pray differently when it comes to our own personal growth in Christ. So, when we sin and we feel God’s conviction and we repent, sometimes our prayer Sounds like God. Please forgive me. I’ll do better next time. Right. We’ve all prayed that, haven’t we? Or we’ll say I’ve failed again. I need to work on this. Please forgive me, God. And let me just say that’s fine. That’s fine. It’s fine to pray that way. It’s partially correct. And. And God doesn’t need us to wordsmith our prayers before he’s willing to listen to us. He doesn

    31 min

  5. JAN 11

    Looking Out for Each Other

    You serve a vital role in the development of the faith of the people God has brought into your life.   Well church, we are off and running on what will be surely another exciting year with the Lord. Of course, I have no idea what exactly he has in store for us barring his return, but I do know that he is God. He is sovereign over everything, including the calendar. That he has a mission, and we are on it. What? What that means for us is varied. Lots of things. That means there are people to reach with the gospel. In our community, there are people who are struggling to find purpose. People are wrestling with anger and addiction. There’s relational breakdowns. Anxiety is on the rise. And through it all, the gospel provides the unchanging answer and the hope that fills every need. And we’re part of the team sent to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to people who need to hear it. We’re there to declare that Jesus died for our sins, that he rose to secure our salvation and our eternity with him. That’s what we’ll be doing with our 2026. And I’ll let you in on something a little bit fun. In case you haven’t heard about it yet, you might have heard it through the grapevine, but our elders and lead team have been contemplating what to do for Easter. Last year, we maxed out three services in this room, and there’s only so many hours on an Easter Sunday morning. I’m not sure where to put another one. And we had even more people come out for Christmas this year. And so, for this year, we’re going to try something new. We’re going to have one big, massive service for all of the people who call Calvary home. And all of our guests. This Easter, we have rented out the 1750 seat auditorium at John Marshall. And we’re going to have one. Yeah, someone’s kind of freaking out down here about that. It’s going to be a great time. Really, really excited about it. I’m sure. I’m sure, even as I say that you’re like, well, did you think about. Yes, the answer is yes. We are thinking about everything that goes along with that. Um, and so there will be more details to come on that. But that’s something very exciting here in the next couple of months to look forward to. This morning, we are in Luke chapter 17. There’s a section at the beginning of Luke 17 where Jesus turns to his closest disciples and he goes deeper in some areas, he goes deeper with them on the need for accountability, for the strength of our faith, for the attitude of a servant. And it’s just ten verses before Luke gets back to talking about Jesus public teaching, the teaching he gives to everyone. But this section has such depth to it that we’re going to we’re going to look at it over the next three weeks. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and your desire is to grow deeper and stronger and broaden your walk with Jesus, you’re going to find what you’re looking for in these verses. If that’s not you, if you take more of a sort of a casual, not so serious approach to Christianity, let me suggest to you that it’s possible you haven’t really listened to Jesus on this, which is to say, you haven’t heard Christ on Christianity, which seems like a pretty obvious oversight, doesn’t it? When you have an active living relationship with Christ, it is constantly developing. It’s not stagnant. It’s not a thing that stands still if you’re not developing an ever-deepening relationship with the Lord, informed by His word, guided by his spirit. That’s a good indication that to you that that you don’t understand what it means to be a Christian in the way that Christ himself described it. So let me show you. That’s what we’re going to look at today. This morning, Jesus is going to show us how much we need each other and how we’re supposed to interact with each other when we follow him. And for some of you, this topic in particular is, is going to be difficult because you don’t like having spiritual conversations. For some of you, that’s true. You just you don’t like you don’t like talking about spiritual things. You don’t like talking about your own spirituality. You don’t like talking about spiritual things with others. You don’t like confrontation. You’d rather just look the other way when it comes to things about sin. But as we’ll see today, Jesus says that we should confront sin head on and that we need each other because spiritual growth requires us to have others guide us and that we would then be guides for others. You serve a vital role in the development of the faith of the people that God has brought into your life. Do you know that you serve a vital role for them? You can open your Bibles to Luke chapter 17. I’ll also have it on the screen here this morning. Jesus is going to show us two ways that we interact with each other on issues of sin. First, he’s going to show us the wrong way that comes from the world and then the right way. That’s vital for our spiritual growth. So, let’s start with the wrong way, which includes one of the strongest warnings that we find in Scripture. And he said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. You know, one of the aspects of the Bible that I, that gives me a lot of confidence that it is God’s word is how true to reality it is. Sometimes Christianity gets painted as sort of a, a state, a state that you achieve where people get to a place where sin is no longer an issue for them. I had a pastor friend of mine one time, a guy that I really respect, tell me that he’d done an inventory of his own heart and mind and that he’d found that there was no sin anymore there and no inclination to sin. Pride, maybe I don’t. I don’t know about him, but that’s not me. That’s not how it is for me. I face temptations to sin every day. I fail every day. By God’s grace, I see increasing victory over my sin. That through the Holy Spirit’s work in my heart and mind. But the temptations are there all the time. And here Jesus says, yeah, I know, I know that the temptations are there. Temptations are sure to come. It’s not a question of will they or won’t they. They are coming. They will be there, present in your life. Jesus doesn’t describe discipleship as some sort of a state of release from all sinful temptation. Discipleship in Christ is what helps us overcome, to battle through, to defeat sin with the help of our friends, as we’re going to see here in just a minute. But then Jesus goes in a direction that I wouldn’t have expected here. See, when he brings this up, I would expect that he would now spend some time describing how to overcome these inevitable temptations that are that are on the way. But instead, Jesus addresses the source of the temptation. He turns his attention to the person who tempts others to sin. Now, why would he do that? Well, it’s because of Jesus topic here. Jesus is not here addressing sin per se. He’s talking about our interactions with each other, and one of the ways that we can interact with each other as people is in a devastating, destructive, soul crushing way by being a tempter of the other person. Woe to the one through whom they come. So, what Jesus is picturing here is a person who either knowingly or carelessly misleads a person to violate God’s commands to sin against him. I say, knowingly or carelessly, because it could be either one of those. You could know you’re trying to corrupt a person and get them to choose to sin. Or you could just not care enough about God’s Word and mislead them in the same direction. Either way, the tempter is the cause. Do you see that there in verse two? The cause? There’s a source to every temptation. And if and if the source is another person, that tempter, Jesus says, is in a very dangerous place spiritually. He says it would be better, better for a person to die at the bottom of the sea with a millstone tied around their neck, than to be the cause of someone else’s sin. Now, our immediate reaction to that from our sort of limited human perspective is no, it’s not. No, it’s not. That’s not better. How could that possibly be better? This sounds like hyperbole. And Jesus does often use hyperbolic language. Sort of over-the-top illustrations to make a point. But is that what he’s doing here? I think he’s using the same kind of gripping language that Jesus usually uses. But this is different because here he’s talking about death and eternal destiny. Jesus is saying it would be better for a person’s life to end than to face the consequences of being a person who misleads others into sin. I believe Jesus is talking here about degrees of punishment in hell. He’s saying you’d be better off dead immediately than to add tempter to your list of crimes against God. That’s the sense in which it would be better. That’s how serious this is. It’s better to face God’s condemnation with just your own sin than to stand before God, having enticed others to sin. The reason that temptation or tempting others to sin is, is such an egregious affront to God is that it’s false discipleship. It’s really what it is. Temptation is false discipleship. It is literally pulling people away from the truth and sending them on a path of destruction. In John chapter 14, Jesus describes making room in heaven for his faithful disciples who are part of God’s family. He says that that that he is the way and the truth and the life, and that to be part of God’s eternal family and to be in this, this room that he’s preparing for them, they have to trust and they have to follow his way, the way that he has made. The temptation is an offer of a different path. Temptation is sending someone down a different road. When we give into tem

    34 min

  6. JAN 4

    The New Life in Christ

    Now that we have a new life in Christ, what does living that out look like following His example? Good morning, Calvary. My name is Josh Laack, and I have the honor to serve as one of the elders on your elder board team. I like to make this announcement whenever I can. I’m always open for, as Brian, pastor Brian would say, questions, comments, or wisecracks. So, if you see me in the hall or in the gym, or if you want to send me a note, I’m always happy to connect with you and chat about the church or about faith or any of those things. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had three different messages. Pastor Kyle preached the last message of the Advent series, then preached for services on Christmas Eve. And then, Jason, another member of our elder team, preached the last message of the year on the 28th and first, Kyle talked about the righteousness of Christ and how that becomes ours. Because of God’s plan and our need, in turn, we become a new creation in Christ. Then on Christmas Eve, the Christmas message of how and why Jesus came and how we can accept him went deeper into how we gain this new life in Christ. Last Sunday, Jason gave us a message on peace with God and hope for the future, because we are now reconciled with God through Christ. And that all leads us to today. In this first message of the New Year and thinking in this new year about this new life that we have in Christ, how should being reconciled to God through Jesus affect us? How should we commit to living in Christ? And this seemed very appropriate for me to talk about today, because I am terrible at committing to new ways to live. Um, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore, and I think I’ve probably mentioned that here before, but I don’t make them because I’ve never had one survive past January. The problem isn’t just with New Year’s resolutions. I have this bad habit of getting excited about new things and starting them and not finishing them. I watch hours of YouTube videos on how to do a new thing, and I will read books and articles and just about everything I can find. And I will be so excited and I will burn out very quickly in the project. To my shame, I have a pile of things all spread out throughout my basement and shop, some of which I moved from my last house into this new house and they still sit there. The first time I brought Kate, my wife, to my house, I told her I had remodeled the whole thing and so she drove to this house expecting to be impressed. And pulled up to a home that had siding missing and falling off all over the place because I had done an addition and finished most of the inside so I could live in it and hadn’t gotten around to doing the rest of the siding. Sometime later she begged me and I did go back and do the rest of the siding, but since she knew this about me, we started a new project together in which I told her I needed to build a house, and she told me no. Um, she did come around, but she had some stipulations. And one of those was very wise, in which she said, there will be no projects left in the main part of the house, or we will not move in. Now, I share all that at the beginning here, thinking of this new life in Christ, because the interesting thing about that project is that I learned that I could do it. I learned even with a complicated project and a long time window. It took me 18 months to build this house. I completed it and actually mostly on schedule. So what was different about this project than all of the ones that still sit in my basement? Two things come to mind. One, I was strongly invested in the outcome of living in my future home. And two, I was motivated by the example of and the accountability to my wife Kate. And in Christ, we have a very similar thing. We have a new life that we are meant to live, and we live that way. Following the example of Christ and accountability to Christ in that life as our Savior. My point for us today is this the new life in Christ is not just a momentary spiritual change, but a new life lived out both now and for the future. The new life in Christ does begin with a momentary spiritual change, which is the gift of God given to us by faith. But life is not just the moment it begins. Life is something that is lived. In other words, we have a new life and all that that entails in Christ. And then we can’t continue to live as if we were still part of the old life. Today we’re going to explore why we should want to live a new life in Christ, how we actually do that. And we’re going to look at the example of that life lived out by Christ himself. And we’re going to find those today in our passage from Philippians two starting in verse one. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy. Now the context of chapter one is Paul speaking of how the church at Philippi should live, whether Paul is there to see them or not. And Paul’s hope is that the church will stand firm in the spirit, that they will live out the gospel, the good news that they have both heard and received in Jesus. The readers of the letter Paul identifies as the saints at Philippi. Paul recognizes these men and women as people who have begun this new life in Christ that they have received from Christ. This momentary spiritual change. And now he’s trying to tell them to teach them how they live it out. And he’s asking a rhetorical question here, phrased this way, to encourage the church to consider the reality of this new life that they’re in, the experience that they have already begun to receive and to and to have in this new life, so that they will recognize that the call that follows the instruction that follows is meant for them because they have received this experience. They know that the teaching is also for them, and that applies for all of us as we think about our new life in Christ, and we think about what we have experienced, the changes that have begun in our life because of our relationship with Jesus, then we can know that this teaching that’s about to follow is also for us to live as well. And Paul lays this experience out here, I think, in the perfect way. He lays it out in the order in which we experience it. As we make the change from our old life to the new life in Christ. And while we are in the flesh before we know Jesus, our life is nothing but discouragement as we discover time and time again that the things of the flesh, things of the earth, they cannot satisfy. Food is good, but we’re hungry again very quickly. At least I am. Wealth. Happiness, pleasure. All of it is fleeting. The older we get, the more we recognize how fleeting those things really are. When we experience life in the flesh and in the world, we inevitably will be discouraged. Eventually, we discover the same thing that Solomon discovered as he explored all of the earthly things he could and came to a conclusion. And Solomon tried it all. He tried more wives than any person should ever possibly consider. He tried all the food and wealth and power and privilege and all of it. And here’s what he said in Ecclesiastes one verse 14, I have seen everything that is done under the sun. It’s a lot of things. And behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. Solomon found the truth that there is no lasting value in the things and the experiences of the earth. It quickly fades away like a wind that gusts and then is gone. All that you have earned. The beauty of youth. The storehouses full of grain. The wisdom you have gained. It all wastes away. Becomes irrelevant or dies with you. Now imagine into the midst of this search for value in anything someone comes and says, I can offer you something that will last for this life and for the life to come, for an eternity to follow. That is the encouragement, the hope that we find when we first learn about Jesus and about what he can offer. The hope we find when we know that there is a good God who cares about us and wants something better for us, a God who has promises that will last for eternity. And the first light of hope. Encouragement shines in our lives Now knowing that there is a way to have a life of meaning and that there are promises available is encouraging. But encouragement is not enough. We must experience the result of the love that God puts into our lives. And Jason shared with us last week from Romans five verse eight, that God’s love is displayed for us in that Christ died while we were still sinners. Not just that he died, that he died specifically for us. When we accept Jesus as the only way to have a life of meaning, Paul is suggesting that the experience is this experience of comfort from love. Love that is poured out freely toward us. And this is the next step of walking into this new life in Christ. Jesus expressed this self-sacrificial love when he went to the cross. We experience it when we enter into a real and personal relationship with him by believing what he has shared and the good news that we can know and have a life in him. Accepting this good news means that we have moved from death to life. We don’t just have encouragement now, we actually have life. We were dead in our sins before Christ, destined only for destruction. But now, in the love of God, we have become heirs with Christ of eternal life. But we still must live in this world, this life, for now. So God does not abandon us to try to live this new life in our own strength. Rather, we are provided with a helper, the Holy Spirit. And Paul says here that the next thing we experience, the next thing that happens after we receive the love of Christ, is we receive participation in the spirit, the helper who can help us to live out this life as we are meant to. And the final thing we experience now that we have the Holy Spirit in us, guiding us as we begin to have a mindset shift away from ourselves and toward affection and sympathy

    35 min

  7. 12/28/2025

    Peace, Hope and Reconciliation

    Peace and hope are found in Christ alone, who has reconciled us to God. Good morning, Calvary. It’s so good to be with you here. Thanks for braving the snow. I’m Jason O’Grady, I’m one of the elders here, and I also am privileged to be on the preaching team. I’m so grateful that I’m able to be with you here on the December 28th, just a few days after Christmas. Hopefully you all had a blessed time. I know that maybe you spent some time with family. With friends. And as you could probably hear, I got a Christmas present I wasn’t expecting, this viral thing. I didn’t want to unwrap it, but it unwrapped itself, shared with me by my family. So hopefully you’ll give me a little grace today as I power through. I know that sometimes these holidays can also be difficult for folks. And so, I wanted to acknowledge that maybe you’re missing a loved one that’s been gone on to be with the Lord, or maybe there’s some broken relationships that haven’t been mended yet, or you’re dealing with health issues yourself. And these times can also be difficult for you. But I’m hoping that today, as we read God’s Word together, that you would be able to be comforted and find peace with Jesus. How many of you have a nativity scene at your house? Okay, good. So this was closer to the 8:00 service. So about half of you have a nativity scene. So this here is our nativity scene. And so some of you are probably looking at this and thinking a couple of things. First off, yay! Jesus should always be in the center of the manger. He is the center of all that we do. And then some of you also may be wondering, okay, what is going on with those wise men? So my nine-year-old actually put all these together, and because she desires to be theologically accurate, she said that, you know, the wise men were not there at the birth of Jesus. So we need to put them far, far away. And that’s exactly what she did here. Some of you may also be wondering, wait a minute, there’s only two wise men. I thought there were three wise men. Well, go check your scriptures. We don’t know, actually, whether there were three wise men. We know there were more than one, but to be perfectly honest with you, this box did have three wise men but the third wise man is missing his head and is still in the box. But that’s a story for another sermon. The reason that I’m bringing this here is because what we do know from Scripture is that they brought three gifts. The wise men brought three gifts gold, frankincense, myrrh. And I want to have three gifts to unpack today from Romans for us. And that’s peace, hope, and reconciliation. So if you turn in your Bibles with me to Romans five, that’s where we’re going to be for the majority of our day today. Before we begin, are you okay if we pray together? Father, thank you so much for your goodness. Thank you so much for your son. Thank you that we can worship together here on this snowy Sunday. Lord, I pray as we delve into your word that you would open our eyes to see your truth, that you would use your word to convict us, to guide us, to give us comfort. Lord, I pray that you would give me strength today, that in my weakness you would show your power. And father, above all, I pray that you would be glorified. We thank you so much for your son, who we celebrate in this season and truly every day. It’s in Jesus precious name we pray. Amen. So the first gift that we want to unpack today is peace. In Romans five verse one, it says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Any time that it begins with, therefore, we need to figure out what came before. So we know what the writer is referring to. And in this case, I’m just going to do three different verses from Romans three and Romans four to show you exactly what he’s talking about here. Romans three verse 28 says, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. And further, in Romans four verse two, it says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And then in verse 13, for the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. So therefore, what he has been talking about this entire time is that Abraham, his righteousness was credited to him because of his faith, not because of anything that he had done or because of who he was, but because he had faith in the promises of God. And we see in verse one it says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we hear about that word justified, often justification. What does that mean? You see, I’m a sinner, and because of my sin, I am eternally separated from God. And there’s nothing that I could do or earn to get into God’s good graces, to be reconciled because of my sin, the debt is too great to pay. So God had sent his only son so that his righteousness, his sinlessness, could be mine. And so this justification really is a legal term, that is Jesus debts, which were none, were given to me in place of all the debts that I have. And because of how this justification happens, I am now, right before God, so justified by faith. Paul further notes this in Ephesians two. You don’t have to turn with all these passages that I’ll have today, you can just write them down and read them later if you want to further delve into God’s Word on your own. Ephesians two verse eight, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. So we have been justified by faith. Therefore, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Before we delve into what this peace means, I want to highlight what it says there through our Lord Jesus Christ. John 14 six says, Jesus is talking, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. It is only through Jesus that we can have this peace with God. We may try a multitude of other ways, whether it be relationships or family or friends, or money or success or substances. I can tell you that all of those things won’t bring peace, only peace through Jesus Christ our Lord. But what do we mean by peace? It’s not just an absence of conflict. J.I. Packer said it this way the peace of God is first and foremost peace with God. It is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us. No account of God’s peace, which does not start here, can do other than mislead. The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God. The prophet Isaiah said it well in Isaiah 26, verses three and four. You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. We can have God’s peace. We can trust in that everlasting rock. We can have that peace that passes understanding. Paul in Philippians says it this way. Philippians four verse seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This peace that is from God guards our hearts and our minds. Jesus spoke about peace often. I just wanted to pull out two passages from John where he spoke of this peace. John 14:25, these things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the helper of the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives to you do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And then in John 16:33 he says, I have said these things to you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart I have overcome the world. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But some of you might be saying, well, wait a minute. Wasn’t there a time when Jesus said he did not come to bring peace? And I wanted to respond to that. Yes, Jesus did say that in Matthew ten, but he talks a little bit differently about it, and I wanted to piece that out for us today. Matthew ten verse 34. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. You see, this gospel of Jesus Christ. Both can provide our personal peace, but it can also be quite divisive. And we’ve seen that, unfortunately, in our world. It started wars and, in our families, maybe you’ve had families or friends that came over, even over Christmas, that think this manger story might be a folklore or myth, and they might ridicule you for it. You see Jesus in his holy sinlessness. There’s no middle road with him. You’re either going to fall deeply in love with him because of all that he has done, or you’re going to reject him, and that rejection of him is going to cause that sword that he spoke about in Matthew ten. But we can have that peace because of what Jesus Christ has done. So let me ask you today, have you received that gift of peace? So we’ve unwrapped the first gift of peace. Let’s unwrap the next of hope. Hope. This word hope is used 58 times in the New Testament. But let’s look about this time in Romans five. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. A few things here that I wanted to tease out for you. Through him we have obtained access through faith. He is our intermediary, our high priest. It hearke

    27 min

  8. 12/24/2025

    Best Christmas Ever

    What happened here, in this simple manger, in a small town, in a tiny corner of the world, on an ordinary night, would become the center of all human history. Let me tell you about one of my best Christmases ever. It was 1999. Rachel and I were still in college and had been dating about two months when we decided to take a day trip to Chicago at Christmas. Now, when you’re an unmarried couple like we were, you got to do it all in one day. And so, since we lived in West Michigan, that meant seven hours on the road for five hours in the city. It was dumb, but exciting. So we did it. It was fun. And we went, and we shopped like two broke college students, mostly with our eyes. She bought me a watch. I bought her a sweater. We stopped off at a fancy little coffee shop. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Starbucks saw our little place. And, at one point, somewhere on the Magnificent Mile, we, I saw a Christmas tree ornament for sale, and I bought one. For us fellas, side note, if you ever find yourself shopping for a Christmas present for your girlfriend and you decide to buy a Christmas ornament for us, you might as well just go ahead and buy the ring while you’re right there at the store anyway. Save yourself some time, because a tree ornament for us implies that we have a Christmas tree for us, which we didn’t. Where do you hang it otherwise? At least not yet. In her mind, we didn’t have that Christmas tree, right? I’m just saying, if you buy shared home decor, you’d better know what you’re doing. Okay, but I did know what I was doing. We were engaged the next month. We were married the following Christmas, and we just celebrated 25 years back in Chicago. This Christmas. So, here’s the ornament that I bought for her. It’s a little, little manger scene. All the little lambs are looking at the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. I was 21, and I was a brand-new Christian at the time, but even I knew then that if Rachel and I got married, what we see right here in this ornament was going to need to be the center of our marriage. Because what happened here in this simple little manger in a small town in a tiny corner of the world, on an ordinary night, would become the center of all human history. The God who created our world had entered into it. He physically came vulnerable, helpless, and weak to save those who are spiritually vulnerable, helpless, and weak. And the work he came to do to die in the place of sinners in need of a Savior would bring about the greatest spiritual transformation that the world has ever seen. You’ve heard the Christmas story read from Luke chapters one and two. Let me briefly show you four things that we learn about our Savior, Jesus, from this story. The first is that he’s a Savior for all. One of the most famous parts of Christ’s birth story is that he was laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And this part of the story has been expanded over the years to include a heartless innkeeper who turns away Mary and Joseph, probably because he hates Christmas, right? He’s twisting his evil mustache. I don’t know why people have inserted all sorts of meaning into this housing issue. Things like Jesus was homeless. He wasn’t. They were on a trip to Bethlehem. His home was back in Nazareth. Or they’ll say Jesus was poor. He wasn’t. Although he certainly did love the poor throughout his lifetime. Joseph was a carpenter. He had a pretty good job. Now. Jesus was not turned away at the end and laid in a manger because of some evil done to him, or to identify with some problem in the world. We don’t have to leave the story to learn why this manger was used. A sovereign God orchestrated that night precisely to show that this is a Savior for everyone. Now, in a moment, the shepherds are going to show up. Let me ask you, if there had been room in the inn, how would the shepherds have ever found Jesus? I imagine the angels instructing the shepherds, and you will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying at one of the ends. Or perhaps a guest room. You’re going to have to knock on some doors, right? It’s not going to work. Listen to the angels say why. Listen to the angel, and this will be a sign to you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. You see these shepherds with, with, with no attachment to this family had to find this baby, and they had to know when they found the right baby. And so, God gives them a unique, publicly accessible location to find the promised Savior. And this is such an important aspect of God’s plan of salvation. When a baby is born, most of the time, the people that show up are our friends and family. Random strangers don’t usually just run to the hospital to see who’s been born. I assume they discourage that down at Mayo, right? People just showing up. Hey, what do you got in there? You know they’re not going to let you in there. But in this case, God has orchestrated the exact details of Jesus’ birth to show the world that all should rejoice, that all are invited because Jesus and the salvation he brings is for everyone the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus will eventually expand across the globe. Everyone is invited to come and to see him, and to meet him, and to find peace in him. The second thing I want you to see is that he is a Savior who brings glory to God. Maybe the most famous line in all of Luke chapter two are the words of the heavenly host of angels praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Now, usually when we think about this verse, we focus in on the peace. Jesus came to bring us peace, and he certainly does that without Jesus coming into the world as a man and living a sinless life and dying on the cross to bear our sins, punishment, and rising again to conquer death. Without that, we would have no hope of peace with God. We would not have it. But if you trust in Jesus, you have peace with God and hope for eternity because of it. That’s how Christmas impacts us. Okay, that’s what it means. That’s what it brings to us. That’s what it means for us. It reconciles us back into a peaceful relationship with God. But we don’t want to lose sight of the even greater purpose of Christ’s advent, which is to declare the glory of God. Now, if you’ve spent any time here at Calvary, you’ve heard me define glory before. Glory is greatness on display. Okay, the greatness of something made visible. It’s the greatness of something or someone. You can see it because of the praise of others. So when you clap your hands, when your team wins on the field or after a theatrical performance, you are making the greatness of the thing you just watched audible and visual. When Jesus comes into the world, what do the angels declare? Glory to God in the highest. The Savior who’s been born is first and foremost a display of the glory and the greatness of God. Christ is the culmination of a redemptive history that a sovereign, powerful God has been unfolding for years up to this point. A promise was made in Genesis chapter three that Satan would be crushed by the descendant of Eve. A promise was made to bless the whole world through the nation that he would form with Abraham. A promise was made that there would be a king who would always sit on the Davidic throne, ruling over God’s people. A promise was made that a man would come and die in our place for our sins, that he would be a sacrificial lamb taking our punishment. And all these promises, all these promises are made by God. They’re not human promises. They’re not. They’re not things that we came up with. God said, this is my plan. I’m the one that’s going to bring this about. Let me just pause here and say, aren’t you glad that these are not man-made promises? Think about man-made promises. We have a particular problem with promises, don’t we? We tend not to keep them. But the Lord is neither a liar nor a failure. Every part of every promise of every stage of his plan hinged on God becoming a man, being Emmanuel, which means God with us. It hinged on him coming into his creation. Christ’s birth is a powerful, dramatic moment in human history where the glory of the Lord is what’s on display. So, when we think of Christmas, we shouldn’t allow our view of what we’re celebrating to become too small. We can become too focused on ourselves at Christmas time. And I’m not. I’m not referring to that, that selfish way that we’ve commercialized Christmas. I mean, we have done that, but that’s not what I mean. I’m saying that we can get so focused on what God has done for us in Christ that we lose sight of the fact that Christ glorifies God, not us. In fact, what happens to us when we’re saved through faith in Jesus is that we become part of the God-glorifying chorus. That’s what we’re doing here tonight. We’re joining in the God-glorifying chorus. I’d like to say that we become part of God’s audiovisual department, and you can see that in the other two items that I want to show you here from, from Luke chapter two. The third is that Jesus is a Savior to be shared. So the shepherds find Jesus in swaddling clothes. He’s laying in a manger just like the angel said he would. I like how it says that they went with haste. I bet they did. I bet they did. I’ve never been confronted with a chorus of angels, but I imagine if I did, it would put a pep in my step. Right? So I’m. I would be rushing there as well. And when they get there, it says they make known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. If you look at verse 18, it’s up on the screen there. Do you see where it says all who heard it, all who heard it? This implies a crowd is gathered around. If it was just Joseph and Mary there, they wouldn’t write all Luke wouldn’t have writte

    21 min
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Listen to our latest weekly messages from Calvary Evangelical Free Church located in Rochester Minnesota. Calvary’s Mission is to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus who live out passion for Christ and compassion for people.

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    Calvary Evangelical Free Church
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    2025 - 2026
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