Anchor Of Hope Christian Reformed Church

If Jesus is not your God, your Lord and your Savior then you are hopeless and helpless, dead in sin and destined for eternal death and destruction. To be separated from Jesus Christ is of more dire consequence than to be separated from food for more than one month, separated from water for more than five days, or separated from oxygen for more than six minutes. Let us hunger, thirst, and gasp for Jesus Christ all the more knowing that He is our everything! Amen!

The workmanship talked about in Eph. 2:10 is that of the finest craft and exquisite detail. God’s plan and will is perfect and we must trust Him completely in all things. We are saved by grace for good works that will give God all the praise, glory and honor. Being saved, reconciled, justified with God means we have been made alive to live for Him and freed from living only in enslavement to the fallen world, the devil, and our own sinful desires. Let us live to do good now that we have been made good in Jesus Christ! Amen!

Spiritually dead people can do nothing to bring about their salvation! This is a biblical fact. An unsaved person is not spiritually sick, or spiritually lacking something, or in need of something more than what they have to make them whole. A person who does not believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is dead, completely empty, and must be made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit in the new life of Jesus Christ according to the will and ways of God. This is why we boast in God and God alone. Amen!

Let us Praise God with honest lips and sincere hearts as we love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Though we have stumbled in sin God has made a way for our return to Him in His Son Jesus Christ! We say of Jesus what John proclaimed "behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" As we enter into a new year let us be wise and discerning through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us know Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life and the only way to the Father. Let us stumble no more in darkness, but walk in the Light of Christ! Amen!

I pray that you will hear the roar of the Lion of Judah this Christmas! The roar of God brings terror to those on the way of destruction; yet to those being saved the roar of God brings comfort that in Jesus Christ there is safety, love, protection, and peace. Jesus is torn so that we are healed. Jesus is killed so that we can have life. Jesus is condemned so that we can be forgiven. This is what Christmas is all about. God sends his son to be the savior of the world. Amen!

God is a loving father to Israel. God's just judgement against Israel's sin. A destroying lion tears. God's compassion grows warm and tender. A restoring lion roars.

Our rebellion against God and hatred toward His commands brings about our condemnation, death, punishment and enslavement to sin. We cannot and will not save ourselves! For us to be saved, God must save us. He does this in His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus buys us out of our slavery to sin and death by taking God's just judgement that we deserve on His perfect self! God is good! He is always faithful! Jesus is our king! Let us rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit! Amen!

A key aspect of God's grace to us is when he wakes us up from the slumber and death of the desires of our sinful flesh and makes us aware that without Him we have nothing. Though the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh makes endless promises of pleasure and fulfillment to us, they are nothing but empty and destructive lies. Let us pray that God will graciously remove all obstacles and road blocks between us and Him through His son Jesus Christ and the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray that God will build an impassable wall between our new self in Jesus Christ and the sinful desires of our old fallen and dead flesh. We are always better off with God! Amen!

As we enter into Advent 2017, let us consider what it means that God so loved, had so much mercy and compassion, on His elect, His vessels of mercy, that he sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ into human flesh. Hosea teaches us that we are sinners, unfaithful, law breakers, idol worshipers... who deserve God's wrathful judgment. Yet, God shows mercy on who He will show mercy and any of us who have received and believed in this mercy, grace and love of God can do nothing but give Him all the praise, glory, and honor. As we approach again this celebration of the coming of "God with us" let us boast in a God who is always faithful, even when we are unfaithful! Amen!

How gracious is God? How loving is God? How just is God? How holy is God? How merciful is God? Answer- "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" This is the life changing, pride removing, new life giving, reconciling, joyful, peaceful, glorifying truth of the cross of Jesus Christ. This is good news! Amen!

How great is the power of God for those who believe in Him? Immeasurable! How great is Jesus Christ? Immeasurable! If we repent and place all our hope and faith in Jesus Christ we die with Him and we will be raised with Him. We are absolutely secure in Jesus Christ! He is above all and the church is His body. Let us trust our all powerful, loving, gracious, holy God who is our all and all.

We need new hearts! The good news is that God gives new hearts to his children through Jesus Christ by the work for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes us alive to believe, gives us the gift of faith, and grows us in wisdom and understanding as we come to know God in all His glory, power, and love. Let us pray for an ever-greater knowledge of who God is, who we are in Jesus Christ and a hope fixed on the glorious work of Jesus Christ on the cross! Amen!

There are few things we can absolutely count on in this world. In Jesus Christ we can find everything that comes with an eternal guarantee. Eternal life, peace with God, forgiveness, love, all of God's promised blessings are in Jesus Christ and we long for he day he returns and we can enter fully into all that is in Him. Until then, the Holy Spirit dwelling within believers assures them of this guarantee. God is faithful, all the time and we can always count on Him!

How precious to me is the Blood of Christ? How much does "redemption through His blood" fill my thoughts, feelings, words, actions? Everything is in, through, by, and for Jesus Christ and we are His if we have been bought out of our slavery to sin, death, the devil, and the world through the price of His life on the Cross. Our salvation cost Jesus His life on the cross and He paid the price of being forsaken by His heavenly Father so that we could be forgiven and loved. Thank you Jesus for willingly shedding your blood for me!

In Jesus Christ we become God's adopted children. Our Father is the sovereign creator, sustainer, and redeemer who is all powerful, all knowing, holy. With such a Father who loves us so completely we need not fear any creature, circumstance, difficulty. Our Father knows. Our Father Cares. Our Father is able! Amen!

Where your hope, desire, love, and thoughts are is where the true allegiance of your heart is. God blesses us by giving us a new heart by making us alive to receive His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is our greatest treasure, our greatest treasure is in heaven, and that is where we are to direct our thoughts, desires, hopes, life. God blesses us before the foundation of the world. Amen!

Paul was sent out by God to be a servant and witness of the Good News of Jesus Christ. As we begin a new sermon series going verse by verse through the book of Ephesians, I hope that we will grow in the knowledge of the priceless riches of grace, salvation, hope, peace...found only in Jesus Christ. I pray that we will be faithful and gain a better understanding, through the work of the Holy Spirit, of the peace we have with God through the gracious gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Lord, open our eyes to see your power and forgiveness! Amen!

(message file truncated this week sorry!) God is gracious to us saved sinners! When we are naked and exposed in our rebellion and hatred of God He clothes us in the righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ. God makes it very clear that the only way of eternal life is in His son Jesus Christ. Believing in Jesus, trusting in Jesus, putting on Jesus, dying and living in Jesus, eating Jesus is the only source of life. Having faith that Jesus took our sin, paid the debt for our sin, satisfied God's wrath for our sin gives freedom and life. Thank you Jesus! Amen.

The wages of sin is death. We need a savior! Because of rebellion and disobedience there are curses, pain, suffering, sweat, and all of us will return to the dust in death. In the midst of this God brings the gospel. Romans 5:8 - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Though we die in Adam we can be made alive in Christ through faith by God's grace. Amen!

Because of sin, so often rather than loving nurture and loving respect -- marriages become torn through the desires of subversion and oppression. Marriage is to to be a living expression of Christ and His Church as Ephesians 5:22-33 makes clear. Jesus did not oppress, exploit or abuse the church, He gave His life so that it could have life, love, and forgiveness. The church is not to try to make itself more powerful than Christ or manipulate the Scriptures for it's own earthly desires. O Lord, let our marriages lift up this truth through your grace! Amen!