Tag: Reconciliation

OUR BLESSED ASSURANCE

Our human sinfulness alienates us from God our Creator, but the wonderful and amazing good news is that Jesus Christ gives us everlasting salvation from this self-imposed alienation, granting us reconciliation with God and eternal heavenly life. This is our blessed assurance in Christ! Thanks be to God!

This blessed assurance of God’s grace through Jesus Christ is not merely some broad, uncertain appeal to the generic mercy of God. Rather, through the compassionate life, sacrificial death and redemptive resurrection of Jesus our Lord, we have absolute assurance of our atonement and salvation with God. What good news indeed! What amazing grace this is!

Fully acknowledging and confessing that we are sinners who have alienated ourselves from God, we believe and trust that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised for our redemption. Therefore, by the power of his Holy Spirit, we profess him as our Savior who gives us renewal of life here and heavenly life hereafter. So now, in thanksgiving and praise for Christ’s gospel of salvation and eternal life, I would like to simply bless you with the following Bible quotations:

ROMANS 10:9-13

For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

SECOND CORINTHIANS 4:16-17

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure…

Brothers and sisters, this life is so brief, and, compared to a heavenly eternity with God, this life is really a fleeting bubble in a stream or flash of lightning in a cloud. And in response to the faith and hope and eternal salvation we have received through Jesus Christ our Lord, we seek to live this present mortal life in light of these great gifts, looking forward to the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Kingdom at the great Second Advent of Christ. With that in mind, I conclude this brief article with the words of the timeless hymn, Blessed Assurance:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Happy & Blessed Eastertide!!!  Pastor Tim

AN ALL-INCLUSIVE PRAYER FOR 2021

Almighty and wonder-full God, we are thankful for your all-encompassing, all-pervading and eternal Presence.

Our thanks and praise belong to you alone, O God of all, because you are the One Source of all being and goodness. In you we live, move and have our being, and by your sovereign grace we receive salvation, wholeness and renewal.

We thank you for the birth, life, teachings, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank you for the redemptive suffering of Jesus, endured by him from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross of Golgotha (a suffering which exposed the total depravity of our sinful human condition every step of the way), and we thank you for Jesus’ sacrificial offering of himself for our everlasting atonement and reconciliation. Moreover, we thank and praise you for the empty tomb and ascension of Jesus which declare your Final Word of life, light and love eternal.

Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — you are in charge and you lead the way. You never leave us nor forsake us, and your steadfast love endures forever. Whether we live or die, we are yours. In this life and the next, we are secure in your hands.

By your sovereign grace and divine will, you call us, claim us and draw us to yourself. You lead us on paths we do not yet know. There is a tomorrow we cannot see, and there are bends in the road we cannot know. But we know you will faithfully lead us according to your plan and purpose, because you are the Faithful One.

By your amazing grace, we travel the journey of this life. By your grace, we keep our minds focused on you. By your grace, we live God-conscious lives, a daily relationship of moment-by-moment dialogue with you. By your grace, we trust in you, no matter what happens or doesn’t happen. And by your grace, we follow you and abide in you.

By your grace, what joy and peace you give to us!!!

And in response to your infinite grace and absolute love, we live lives of worship, prayer, Holy Scripture study, tenderheartedness, lovingkindness, faithfulness, justice, hospitality and charity.

O Lord God, we pray for the world, this diverse arena you have created to work out your infinite grace and purposes for us and all things. We know that destruction and rebirth are a part of your creative will for the natural world. We know that you are in all creation and all creation is in you. Help us to use times of crisis as opportunities for serving those in need and sharing your truth.

O God, we know that you establish, disestablish and reestablish your earthly community throughout the ages. Beginnings, endings and new beginnings all flow from your creative and redemptive activity. We pray that in times of adversity you will draw us closer to you all the more.

Help us to see your Unity in the diversity of our world, O God, and help us to see that we are all united in you through your Holy Spirit. Help us to see we are of One Love and One Heart in you.

O God, for your universal glory and for our eternal benefit, help us to see and understand all of this according to the faith, hope and love of your Living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord.

You are Love… You are Sovereign… You are True…

Wonder-full God, the great “I Am” of the Scriptures, we pray all these things in the saving name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The grace and peace of Christ be with you all in 2021! Pastor Tim

HOLY COMMUNION: OUR WEEKLY PENTECOST

On Pentecost Sunday for 2019, I shared in my sermon about Martin Luther’s “Seven Marks of the Church” (a.k.a. “Seven Principle Signs of the Church” or “Seven Pillars of the Church”)…

  • 1) Proclamation of the Gospel – (the good news of Jesus Christ)
  • 2) Holy Baptism – (in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit)
  • 3) Holy Communion – (the Lord’s Supper)
  • 4) Absolution of Sins – (declaring forgiveness with Christ’s authority)
  • 5) Ordination of Leadership – (deacons, pastors, bishops)
  • 6) Praise of God – (public worship through word, prayer and song)
  • 7) The Way of the Cross – (charitable service and sacrificial love)

For this article, I will focus on the Third Mark of the Church (Holy Communion).

In ancient times, when a relationship had been broken, the offering of a meal was given in order to bring about reconciliation and restored fellowship. In fact, this was the whole basis for the sacrifices and sin-offerings of the ancient Hebrew Tabernacle and the ancient Hebrew Temple. These sacrifices were simply offerings of food (in a spirit of confession, repentance and forgiveness) in order to restore full fellowship with God.

Quite literally, the ancient offerings of food (especially some kind of meat) were offered to restore full Table Fellowship with God, bringing reconciliation and “atonement” (at-one-ment) in relationship to God. However, the problem was that there was no perfect offering that mere human beings could have given in order to permanently and everlastingly (once and for all time) restore full fellowship with a perfect, holy and pure Almighty God.

Then two thousand years ago, a perfect offering (that God himself provided to us) was given on behalf of all us imperfect sinful human beings — a supreme offering to perfectly restore our full table fellowship with God and with one another.  And as you already know of course, this perfect offering was and is the very life (body, blood, soul and divinity) of our Lord Jesus Christ, freely given and poured out for you and me and all people. Being fully God and fully human at the same time, Jesus was the perfect offering for the sins of the world. He’s the perfect “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) offered as the once-and-for-all-time sacred meal of reconciliation, atonement and renewal.

Being fully God, Jesus’ offering to restore us to fellowship with God was the most perfect of offerings. And being fully human, Jesus’ offering to restore us to communion with God was truly a real sacrifice on his part. Consequently, on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus connected the bread and wine of his Holy Supper to the offering of his life for us. So Jesus tells us that, as we partake of this bread and wine in remembrance of him, we are literally sharing in a meal of reconciliation and holy table fellowship with God according to his sacrificial offering of his body and blood for this purpose.

Therefore, although the Lord is omnipresent (everywhere present), we believe that Christ our Lord is uniquely and especially present with us and for us in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion to continually restore us to fellowship with God and strengthen us in faith, hope and love. In other words, we come to this sacramental meal (over and over again) to keep us in an abiding relationship with God, and to empower us to love one another and all people just as our Lord Jesus loves us.

When we receive the body and blood of Christ in the form of the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, we receive the grace and power of the Holy Spirit of God, which makes this sacred meal our weekly Pentecost. But Holy Communion is not only for our own spiritual wellbeing. In fact, the purpose of Holy Communion also has to do with the great Love Commandment of our Lord Jesus.

This is why the Apostle Paul got so upset at the Corinthian Christians who were sharing in the Lord’s Supper while simultaneously setting up distinctions and discriminations between one another. Basically, the wealthy congregants were being shown special favor within the Corinthian congregation, while the poor congregants were being marginalized. This outraged Paul, so he writes that we must not receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion while practicing discrimination and partiality within the Body of Christ (the Church). “For those who eat and drink without discerning the Body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves” (First Corinthians 11:29).

Through the Apostle Paul’s very strong words in First Corinthians 11, we can see the intimate connection between the Lord’s Supper and Jesus’ command to love one another and all people as he loves us. Therefore, the good gifts of God’s Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of the Altar (the Lord’s Supper) are for an inclusive purpose according to God’s all-encompassing love. In other words, Holy Communion is focused outwards as well as inwards.

From Holy Communion we are sent by the power of the Holy Spirit to bear the grace and love of God to all the world around us! Empowered by Christ’s sacramental offering and presence at the altar, we are to go out from this meal to serve and love (according to his Way of the Cross) for the sake of the world.

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim