Sermons

“There is no salvation for him in God.” We may have heard similar comments in our culture today. Unbelievers may ridicule our faith as useless. From their point of view, our beliefs are merely a collection of outdated rules and myths. The Christian faith is thought to be just another religion among many

On this street corner alone, a thousand or more had gathered. But Peter didn’t just see a crowd. He saw faces, the lines of which told thousands of stories. Some, he knew. Others, he didn’t. But he wanted to. He wanted to know them all. And he wanted them to know Whom he knew.

We can fall into that trap too, can’t we? We trust in what we already know—in common sense, the voice of experience, the wisdom of the world. But God says to us, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19a)

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Why in the world would God care about us that much? We know it’s not because of anything wonderful in ourselves. After all, looking inside, what do we see? A mess of foolishness and trouble and mistakes, that’s what. A fool in need of wisdom. A sinner in need of a Savior.

The writer to the Hebrews provides the prophetic meaning of our psalm. Jesus, the Son of God, took on human flesh. He was born in Bethlehem and, for a little while, was “made lower than the angels.” For our sake, Jesus suffered and died on the cross, taking onto Himself the penalty of death for our sins and “tasting death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9).

Following Jesus means losing faith in every merely human director. Others try to direct us. But when some mere creature tries to take the burden of directing all the other creatures, this typically turns them into a tyrant, into another Napoleon.

One of the hardest things in life is when you believe, rightly or wrongly, that you are not loved. That’s incredibly lonely. Jesus understands this need, and He offers us what our hearts long for—love that is actually returned. Jesus says to us, “If anyone loves Me, He will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. … And the word that you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”

When God gave the first Christians the gift of the Holy Spirit, they needed some way to recognize that the Holy Spirit was working through them—some kind of gift, some evidence of His presence. What should God choose?