Category: Sermons

Jesus Is Israel: Gospel of Matthew Sermon No. 1

The following is the first sermon in our series on the Gospel of Matthew. It deals with the reality that Jesus is true Israel. I know many claim to be Israel, as in the modern nation. But as Paul astutely and divinely wrote: not all Israel is Israel. To be the true, and lasting Israel, one must be in Christ, who replaced Israel and the true Son of God.

Next, I also deal with the date that Matthew wrote his gospel. Modern scholarship seems to think that the gospel was written in 60 AD or 70 AD. But this makes no sense. Why would Matthew, who was use to taking notes all the time as a tax collector, and a Pharisees, wait 40 years before writing the gospel. I make the case, along with others, that Matthew wrote the book within a few years of Pentecost. After all, this is when there was the greatest need, with all the Jews coming to know Christ on the Day of Pentecost.

I then turn to the central point of Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

For more information on Waco Reformed Church, go to our website here, or our Facebook page here, along with our Youtube channel here.

Early on in my pastoral career, I had a crisis of belief. This is not uncommon for pastors, or to Christians everywhere, however, for me, I thought at the time that something was clearly wrong with me.

I was right. There was something clearly wrong with me, and Jesus was working some of that wrong out of me through the crisis.

It was not only a crisis of calling, but also a crisis of understanding. For when I took the pastorate of that small, dying Baptist church, I thought for certain, I had what it took to right that ship, and get it going on the right direction.

This is what seminary does for a fella.

Yet, in that, the LORD continued on in His faithfulness toward me, and one of the things that He took away from me, was my fleshly understanding of His Kingdom.

He did that through one verse.

Matthew 2:14-15

14 When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, 15 and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

 It was actually two verses, but verse 15 was the key. “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

What Matthew was doing in this verse is showing that it wasn’t the people who were His Son, but Jesus Christ. If you look at Hosea 11:1, we see where Matthew found the quote.

“When Israel was a child, I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.

Now when you first look at that verse, it seems simple enough. Hosea made the prophecy that the Messiah would be called out of Egypt, and we will see that He does go to Egypt for a time. (This also shows that Jesus makes the same journey as the patriarchs did, and the people during the Exodus. But will get to this in a few weeks.)

When Matthew quotes from Hosea, he knows that his audience will know Hosea 11 and what is found there. It is not just a prophecy about the coming Messiah, but a description of Israel at the time. They had fallen into idolatry, and rejecting the loving hand of YHWH. (Go to the text ).
2 As they called them,
So they went from them;
They sacrificed to the Baals,
And burned incense to carved images.

What Hosea 11 actually shows us is that the nation of Israel, was and is not true Israel, Christ is.

Listen to the full sermon.

 

 

 

Baptism for the Dead

Here are some of the things discussed in this sermon:

Just to Be Clear

Since baptism is such a controversial topic…some thoughts on baptism.

First, Doug Wilson writes:

Of course this baptism does not automatically save the one baptized; there is no magical cleansing power in the water. We reject the Roman Catholic notion that saving grace goes in when the water goes on. We deny any ex opere operato efficacy to the waters of baptism. We also deny the modern Protestant reductionism that says that when the water goes on, somebody gets wet.

Let me put it this way: our baptism has meaning. It is used by God in our lives. It is not just an empty ritual that we do because Christ told us to do it. It has a real effect in our lives.

  • The sacraments do not depend on the godliness of the minister. This refutes the false notion of sacerdotalism, in which it was believed the priest had special powers. The effectual nature of baptism comes from the word of God and the Holy Spirit.
  • The sacraments confirm the Word, though they are ineffective without the Word, but the word cannot have its full effect without the sacraments. The refutes the notion that the sacraments are sacerdotal as well.
  • The sacraments are covenantal and relational.
  • The sacraments are performative acts. They do something. Just like a man saying “I do” in a wedding ceremony. It means something.
  • Baptism admits a person to the covenant community, regardless of faith. Just as a man who says “I do” is still a husband in a marriage, and may be a faithless husband, so too can one be baptized and be a faithless Christian.
  • Sacraments bring both blessings and curses, just as they did in the old covenant. Blessing come to those who come to the sacraments in true faith, and curses to those who don’t believe.
  • The non-elect do not receive what the sacraments signify for blessings.
  • We deny that the sacraments automatically save. We deny ex opera operato.
  • We deny Protestant reductionism… that it simply means someone gets wet. Far more than that.
  • Baptism accomplishes something. “I do.”

The first part of the sermon deals with what was probably meant by being baptized for the dead.

 

 

The Ascension According to John, Part 2

All of heaven waited patiently for the arrival of the Son of Man. The angels in heaven watched over Him for 33 years after making the announcement of His incarnation. They sang above the manger and tended to Him in the wilderness after His first victory over Satan. They witnessed His death and burial, announced His resurrection, and finally watched and waited with the rest of the host of heaven for His arrival.

The Son of Man was returning to the Father. Heaven waited.

Before He arrived, John was called up into heaven to witness the arrival. As we saw last week, John saw the Ancient of Days, sitting on His throne. He saw the four living creatures, all worshipping the Ancient of Days. He saw the 24 elders on their thrones, then falling down before the Ancient of Days and casting their crowns at His feet.

He was witnessing worship in the true Temple.

But there was One who was missing.

Did John realize what He was witnessing? Did he understand he was seeing the flip side of the ascension? Did he remember what Daniel had written about the arrival of the Son of Man before the Ancient of Days, and the bestowal of power, glory, and dominion, along with an everlasting kingdom?

Probably so.

Therefore, John continued to look for one like the Son of Man, as Daniel had seen. He saw that the Ancient of Days held a written scroll in His right hand, a scroll with writing on both the front and the back, and the scroll was sealed.

The Ascension According to John, Part 1

Based on Revelation 4.

Now… when it comes to The Revelations of Jesus Christ, which should be the proper name for the book, people have two responses. First, they either ignore it all together, or secondly, they grossly misinterpret it and use it for all kinds of fabricated sensationalism.

In the Reformed circles which I have traveled in, most of the pastors I have known are amillennial who tend to ignore the book all together.

The other camp that abuses the book are those who are Dispensational. Dispensationalists have taken the book, and its central message, and blown it to smithereens by their insistence that the book wasn’t written for First Century Christians under persecution from the Great Harlot. They make the book all about themselves, thinking that Babylon the Great, and the Great Harlot are in action now.

Dispensationalists are futurist, and see the entire book as something that will happen, but has not yet done so. They believe the Revelation of Jesus Christ wasn’t written in the First Century for those in the First Century. They believe that all the events were written for those in the 18th Century when the first Dispensationalist accurately placed all the events of Revelation in their day, and accurately predicted the coming of the rapture.

NO Wait!, Dispensationalist made a mistake in the 18th Century, they meant the 19thCentury, when all the events of Revelation were finally manifesting themselves and the rapture was accurately predicted to occur.

20th Century! They meant the 20th Century and had a multitude of books on the topic, predicting the events of the 20th Century as those in the book of Revelation along with multiple accurate and true predictions of when the rapture would occur.

And here we are in the 21st Century, and they are making the same false claims and false predictions about the events depicted in the book of Revelation and the rapture.

So then, how are we to deal with The Revelation of Jesus Christ?

Here the entire sermon:

40 Days

If you were given 40 days to live, what would you do? Would you party like there is no tomorrow, until there really was no tomorrow? Or would you spend the last 40 days of your life doing something more substantial, like being with family and friends?

If you did the latter, what would you want your family and friends to know?

While Jesus wasn’t going to die again, since death could no longer bother Him, He did spend 40 days with His disciples before He ascended to the throne to His Father. The following sermons looks at some of the things He did and said to His disciples. He didn’t party. He instructed. He taught. He encouraged.

Listen for more.

“I Came to Send Fire”

My sermon at Waco Reformed Church on March 10, 2024.

This morning, we are going to see that His steadfastness goes beyond the cross. He is not just seeking to save us. He is seeking to establish a Kingdom, in which those who are saved are made citizens. In establishing His Kingdom, He is also exercising judgment over all the other kingdoms of man, including Jerusalem.

Whenever God brings abundant grace to His people, He also brings abundant judgment to those who reject that grace, and this is what we see in our text. It has eschatological implications, both for those who belong to Him, and those whom have rejected Him.

For His hearers, the implications were more immediate for the judgment was coming to the fruitless fig tree.

 

 

The Death of a Fool

We come to the last sermon from 1 Samuel 25, in which we look at the death of a fool, namely Nabal. In a sense, he dies three times in our text: drunkenness as a form of death, his heart turning to stone, in the second form, and finally death itself, for the third form.

But like all fools, it’s not the last death Nabal faces. There is one more death he faces, known as the Second Death, according to the Apostle John. It is the worst death, for it never ends, never ceases, as the LORD tells us.

 

David, Abigail and the Fool — Part 2

In this sermon, I continue showing that feminism has no place in the Christian life, for its roots are in the fall and in Satan himself. While feminist are deceived by Satan, not all are. Abigail is one such woman. She seeks to remain in the sphere in which God placed her, serving her husband, even though he is a fool, and persuading David against murder.

Enjoy the sermon.

 

David, Abigail and the Fool

Here is my second sermon on the role of women in the church. See last’s week’s sermon, Let Your Women Keep Silent. I recognize that this may not be a favorite topic of many, but what I’m preaching is what God’s word declares about the role of women in the church and the family, and subsequently, the role of men in both these spheres. This topic is most necessary. The evangelical church has given itself over to feminism, which is rooted in Satanism (see part of my sermon below). This should not surprise us since the goal of feminist is to exalt the woman over and above men, to have women serve where men serve, and force men to serve where should serve. The Church been doing this faithfully, for the feminists, for far too long. It’s time for the Church to be faithful to God’s calling, God’s created order, God’s roles for men and women, and return to what Scripture declares. No amount of camouflaging feminism, by calling it complementarianism will do. We must return to biblical patriarchy, for God is the ultimate patriarch, and His word is patriarchal.

Please enjoy the sermon below.

 

Feminism is Rooted in Satanism

What I didn’t say, because this is new to me as well, is that modern feminism is actually rooted in Satanism. Augusto Zimmerman, in his article Women Under the Spell, shows that early feminist were all committed Satanist, in that they saw Satan, or the Serpent, as the hero of Genesis 3, and not the villain. They looked to Satan to free them from the shackles of God and the patriarchy He established in society.

He wrote… “leading figures of the early feminist movement, such as the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the poet Renée Vivien, viewed God as the precursor of patriarchy and Satan as an ally in the fight against it…”

“Nineteenth-century feminists singled out Christianity along with the state as a key institution supporting the subjugation of women. In such a view, “the Christian ideal of wifely obedience, and marriage as such”, was seen as “incompatible with woman’s right to govern herself”. So they viewed Satan as a positive figure and Christianity was an obstacle that had to be removed for women to be emancipated.”

In other words, early feminists, wanting to throw off the shackles of God (see Psalm 2), aligned themselves with Satan in order to gain their freedom from God’s ordain order in society. They took the story of Genesis 3 and turned it on its head.

It’s OK though. The bible does speak to the feminist:

She was loud and rebellious, Her feet would not stay at home.

For she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death (Proverbs 7:11, 26-27).

 

 

 

A Sermon: Run in such a way that you may obtain (the crown).

Preached on January 29, 2023, at Waco Reformed Church.

Calvin points out “that many descend into the arena, but he alone is crowned who has first reached the goal, so there is no reason why any one should feel satisfied with himself on the ground of having once entered upon the race prescribed in the gospel, unless he persevere in it until death.”[1]

[1] Calvin’s Commentary, p. 308.