#sermon excerpt

Each year in the sanctuaries throughout the world, we repeatedly trace the path of Christ’s life, walking each Sunday from the tears and blood and sweat of fragile human flesh in His annunciation and birth, to the weeping and blood and sweat of fragile human flesh in His crucifixion in front of the roaring crowd.  We accompany Christ as we endure the pain, the trials, the betrayal; we steel ourselves with bated breath as we step closer and closer to the violence at the hands of those in power, the blood of the innocent, the death of the undeserving, We walk these footsteps again and again and again and again each journey through the liturgical cycle, just as we witness cycles of violence and oppression repeat each day.

But you see, what we often allow ourselves to forget is this: we walk this path knowing how it ends.

Hope.

It ends in hope, not as a naive, far-off dream, but as a promise and as a certainty.

“If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

We do not say this together each Sunday as an ask of plea, but as a renewal and re-commitment to that certainty. It is promise made to us that the violence of Empire, whether that of Rome or of those who seek to rebuild it today, two thousand years later, will not have the last word.

Beloved, the veil is torn. 

The hope that awaits us at the end of yet another Lenten journey assures us that the brutality of Empire’s oppression is not strong enough to hold us to the cross forever. The resurrection of Christ is promise that the best is yet to come ahead. 

An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will: there is no room for it.

by Aiden Wilson Tozer

"Self-righteousness exclaims, “I will not be saved in God's way; I will make a new road to heaven; I will not bow before God’s grace; I will not accept the atonement which God has wrought out in the person of Jesus; I will be my own redeemer; I will enter heaven by my own strength, and glorify my own merits.” The Lord is very wroth against self-righteousness. I do not know of anything against which His fury burneth more than against this, because this touches Him in a very tender point, it insults the glory and honor of His Son Jesus Christ."

by Charles Spurgeon

You cannot all preach, but you can all talk; and, if some preachers would refrain from rhetoric and tell their plain unvarnished tale, they would succeed better than they do now. Do you think that God meant his ministers to kill themselves in order come out on Sundays with one or two splendid displays of “intellect” and eloquence? Surely this is not God’s way of doing things. I do not believe that Paul ever preached a fine sermon, or that Peter ever dreamed of any display of intellect. I asked the other day of one who had heard a sermon if it was likely that sinners would be converted by it. He said, “Oh no; by no means; but it was an intellectual treat.” Is there anywhere in the Bible a word about intellectual treats, or anything approximating to such an idea?

The Bible often speaks about the Hand of God. In fact there are over 60 separate references to the “Hand of God” in action.

Right from the beginning however we need to understand that when the Bible writers refer to the Hand of God they are using an anthropomorphism. That is, they are taking an aspect of human life, body or experience with which we are familiar and using it to reveal to us something of the nature of God. See the Bible makes it clear. God is Spirit. God is not constrained by nor limited to this physical world. Thus he doesn’t literally have a physical hand. God is infinite – obviously he doesn’t have an infinite physical hand, but we use familiar words as metaphors to understand the way God works in our life. It is like a picture of his personal activity in our life.

To do a study on the Hand of God is very inspiring. I want us to grasp again the greatness of God and His personal activity in our lives. 

For example: The hand of God, and especially the right hand, is understood as a place of salvation, refuge, and protection It is the favored position for  the bride of the king ( Psalm 45:9 ), and for the chosen one who sits at God's right hand while judgment is rendered upon the earth (Ps  110:1 ; Jer 22:24 ). This is applied to Jesus ( Mark 14:62 ; 16:19 ). He sits at God's right hand, where he intercedes as a priest for believers ( Rom 8:34 ; Heb 8:1 ) and exercises authority over all powers ( 1 Peter 3:22 ).