GOD please bless HOLY FAITH,

Let us a lighthouse be,

Shining the Gospel Light

In our Community.

Help us each to care,

And always do out part,

To serve our fellow man,

With kind and loving hearts,

May we reflect You, Lord,

In everything we do,

For as we do unto others,

We do it unto You!!!

Let us give You all the Glory,

And our hearts be full of Praise,

As we walk with You our Savior,

Until the end of days.    Amen!!

A picture is worth a thousand words…

The stone was rolled away to let us in and to get us out into the world with our Easter Happy Dance!  Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!  Share your Resurrection Joy any way you can!  Live God’s “Yess!” as His Resurrection People!  Easter Peace, Pastor Craig

Holy Thursday, April 6, 7:00 p.m.
 

Good Friday, April 7, 7:00 p.m.

Holy Saturday, April 8, 7:00 p.m.
 

 
Easter Sunday, April 9, 8 & 10:45 a.m.
Easter Breakfast and Egg Hunt between the services!!

 

What a blessing it is to walk with our Lord, living our lives in His Word each day during this time of Lent.  I hope to share thoughts about the daily readings from Hebrews and Matthew.  (Past posts may be accessed by clicking the Home page footer “Lent:  Walking with Christ.”)

In chapter 11 our dear Savior deals with doubt.  John the Baptizer, his greatest supporter sent to prepare His way, is really troubled.  John had been imprisoned by Herod Antipas for speaking the truth, callling everyone to repent especially Herod.  Herod had taken his brother’s wife as his own and John had not minced words in revealing Herod’s sin.  Jesus was doing all these miracles and yet John remained in prison.  Perhaps John’s supporters (and John himself) were discouraged and filled with concern whether Jesus is really the one! 

Certainly John and his followers had their doubts.  “Who doesn’t” I can hear you thinking!  They had not necessarily rejected Jesus.  Doubts arise when faith is present.  Doubts do not negate faith.  In the face of doubt, faith spurs us on for reassurance and strength.  John did exactly what we need to do when we doubt:  God to Jesus.  When heaven seems too good to be true, when we have those moments when we think Jesus could be nothing more than a myth, when we are imprisoned by our circumstances that cause us to blame God, we need to go to Jesus for reassurance.  Just as with John, Jesus will not turn us away.  When He points us to everything He has endured for us, everything He did to demonstrate His divine powers – His voluntary death in our place, His victorious resurrection, His presence with us through thick and thin – we are reassured that we can rely on all His promises and trust Him to carry us through and safely bring us home one day to heaven.  John was a great man indeed!  But Jesus points to lesser ones in God’s scheme of things that He makes great as they trust in Jesus.

Jesus offers rest to the weary!  Sure, that’s you and me!  Jesus is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:26-30).  Faith isn’t an accomplishment possible only for the educated folks of our world.  It is God’s gift by the Holy Spirit for the least, last and lost.  Even a little child can believe and be saved.  Worldly wisdom can become an obstacle to such faith, but little kids don’t have that problem.  We too should remind ourselves that our heavenly Father is pleased to deal with us that way!

The weary and burdened are the ones to whom Jesus chooses to reveal the love of the Father.  These are the same people Jesus described earlier in Matthew as the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Mt. 5).  Those who acknowledge their sinfulness and realize that it’s a burden too heavy for them to bear, they are the ones Jesus promises rest.  He turns us to His Word and Sacraments.  This rest is His gift that only He can give!

We are yoked to Jesus!  That yoke we have received is the whole of Christian life and hope.  We have Christ in our lives so that His commandments are no longer a heavy burden that weighs us down.  Instead, they are expressions of God’s will in which we delight.  With the forgiveness and strength of Jesus, we seek to live according to them as expression of our love for Him.  We will bear some crosses along the way, but they become faith uplifting as they help us to understand what Jesus endured for us.  We have his promise of strength to lead us through and the truth that good things will come even in the midst of challenge!

May the words of the hymn by William Dix be prayful reality for us…

“Come unto Me, ye weary, And I will give you rest.”

O blessed voice of Jesus, Which comes to hearts oppressed!

It tells of benediction, O pardon, grace, and peace,

Of joy that hath no ending, Of love that cannot cease.

“And whosoever cometh, I will not cast him out.”

O patient love of Jesus, Which drives away our doubt,

Which, though we be unworthy Of love so great and free,

Invites us very sinners To come, dear Lord, to Thee!  Amen.

Jesus Christ, Superstar!  Do you remember the Rock Opera from from the 70’s?  As Jesus comes down from the mountainside that’s what the following crowds thought He was!  He spoke with authority and now His Words will take action.  After all, talk is cheap, but when they are backed up by loving, powerful action, you have Jesus Christ, Superstar!

First Jesus heals a leper.  Outcast, prohibited to be with those he loved with the incurable disease of leprosy, Jesus was his final hope.  His words to Jesus is a model prayer:  “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  So we pray to our Lord, “If it be Your will.”  Whatever He decides will be right for us.  Jesus quickly and powerfully revealed that His will was also the lepers will.  He said the words, “be clean” and the leper was healed.  What compassionate power!  That’s the Savior to whom we pray!  Whatever our prayer we can lift it up to Jesus and according to His will, He works all things together for our good (Romans 8:28).

Second, the centurion (commander of 1000 soldiers) was awestruck by his and our Super Savior.  A humble man who truly understood authority had a servant at home suffering with illness.  Luke tells us in his account that this centurion, despite being a Gentile, had helped in building the Jewish synagogue in Capernaum.  Could he have been a believer?  Jesus Himself affirms that He has not seen such great faith anywhere in Israel.  Jesus came for Jew and Gentile alike!  The centurion certainly knew his own sinfulness, not even wanting Jesus to come to his house.  The centurion’s faith speaks, “Just say the word and he will be healed!”  He shared his need with Jesus and trusted Him to do what was best!  So can we!

Third, He continues on showing everyone that He is the Son of God, not only through what He spoke but the miracles He performed.  He has the power of God to heal physically in temporal time and to save for eternity.  He heals Peter’s mother-in-law.  Yes, Peter was married!  His wife was a recipient of Jesus healing.  Don’t you just love how she is healed immediately serves Jesus as if she had never had the fever.  I would love to see us do that after recovering from the flu!  What a Super Savior who has carried us through Covid 19.

He goes with His disciples across the sea of Galilee in a boat!  When I visited Israel in 2017 I had opportunity to do the same.  True to the lake’s reputation, our trip started on calm waters which quickly became rough.  With Jesus in the boat, no matter how rough the waters, all He has to do is speak the word and the storms cease.  We have the advantage over those disciples of old who were in the boat with Jesus because we know that He is the Son of God, our Super Savior who willingly died for our sins, rose again on the third day!  He has said the Word for our lives so that through faith we will come through every storm through life.  He has promised that one day He will come again to take us and all believers to Himself in heaven.  Our arrival at our heavenly destination is just as certain as was the disciples’ safe arrival on the opposite shore!

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, You are our Super Savior!  Through the storms of life lead us to present to You in prayer our every need, knowing that according to Your will, You will work all things for our good.  In Your precious name we pray.  Amen.

What a blessing it is to walk with our Lord, living our lives in His Word each day during this time of Lent.  I hope to share thoughts about the daily readings from Hebrews and Matthew.  Please share your thoughts with me via email at holyfaith@verizon.net!  (Past posts may be accessed by clicking the Home page footer “Lent:  Walking with Christ.”)

Matthew 5 and 6 takes us into Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  No doubt it is the most famous and often quoted sermon ever preached.  It is perhaps also the most often misunderstood as well.  It is not a summary of the whole Christian faith.  As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that a person who claims to find all their religion in the these chapters is misguided.  If we read this sermon without an understanding of the rest of the Bible will lead us in dangerous directions.

 An unbeliever is likely to interpret Jesus’ words as a prescription for making oneself righteous and earning a place in the kingdom of God.  When he takes a close look at the requirements, he may decide it isn’t worth the effort.  Or he may take only a superficial look and convince himself that he is capable of saving himself by his own efforts.  There is no way that we can produce the righteousness God demands of us.

Take the Beatitudes (statements of blessing) that introduce this sermon.  They don’t tell us how by our own effort to become blessed.  Instead they describe the blessedness that already belongs to all who believe in Christ.  They don’t describe eight kinds of believers.  They present eight ways in which all Christians are blessed because of Jesus.  All Christians are poor in spirit.  They all mourn and are meek.  They all hunger and thirst for righteousness and are merciful and pure in heart.

As we examine ourselves, we have to confess that we possess these characteristics only to a limited extent.  We are made to realize that we forfeit many blessings because of our sin, failing to live up to the ideals Jesus expresses here.  Jesus is perfectly each of these.  With faith in Him, we are better able to possess these blessings and to grow in our walk with Him.

Chapters 5 and 6 are full of so many truths for us.  I love Jesus’ use of salt and light to describe His disciples.  Jesus has salted our lives with His forgiveness and grace.  As we possess His love and forgiveness through faith and practice those blessings in our lives, we season our families, our relationships, our church and so on.  As Jesus is the perfect Light of the World and especially the Light of our lives, He enables us to let our light shine before others as they see the good works the Father causes to happen through us that they then praise Him (5:13-16). 

How about Jesus’ admonition for us to love especially our enemies (5:43-47)?  No small task, right?  Just look how Jesus loved his enemies.  As he was lifted on the cross the first words of His mouth were “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”  Wow, compassion despite the pain!  We can never love our enemies to Jesus’ level.  That’s why His words really hit home, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Jesus makes us His friends with His forgiveness and empowers us to pray for our enemies.

So many other gems from our Lord.  Jesus teaches His disciples to pray (6:5-14).  He blesses us with the perfect prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus reminds us of the treasure of heaven and the challenge of our hearts being open to the Lord instead of the world.  Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

He then ends the teaching shared in His Sermon on the Mount with the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders.  May we not only read these words of Jesus.  We need to put them into practice.  We are saved by faith in Christ alone, but saving faith always finds ways to give witness through good works.  It’s like a person who builds his house on the rock.  The foundation is firm and solid, not like sinking sand!  1 Corinthians 3:11 says, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  May we receive Christ’s forgiveness and grace and put His words to work with His compassionate heart within us!

May the words of “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” be the prayerful conviction of our hearts:

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness

No merit of my own I claim But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.  Amen.