The Countdown has started for new beginnings

We are 15 days away from a new beginning. I know everybody is always talking about change now. It is said that everyone hates change but at the same time everyone seems to want it. It is kind of confusing. People want change for a variety of reasons. Some want change because they are bored with the present, they just want something new and they don't care what it is. Other's want change because someone else told them that it is the thing to be doing, if you are changing you are doing something right. Others want change because what they are doing right now is not working. That last reason is probably the best reason so far for change. But there is an even better reason for change. How about change so that you can start doing what you should have been doing in the first place? Change so you can do the right thing, the thing you were designed to do. Now there is change worth having. We are about 15 days away from starting that kind of change.
Actually we have already started the process. We have entered into an agreement with The Transforming Church Network. They are going to help us go through a congregational revitalization process. We have also begun writing a 20 year history of the congregation and putting other things in place. When this process is complete in about two years hopefully we will be a congregation that is fully integrated into our community taking worship outside of our walls and into our community. I am not talking about holding worship services in the park here. No I am talking about a church that is engaged in its local community, serving it and bringing it inside the church through interest groups and community events. A church whose people are found in different community organizations spreading their faith through their words and more importantly their deeds.
There will be a lot of training involved in this process both for me as the pastor and for the congregational leaders and even for the average member. We are starting that process the week of September 13 with new small groups studying "Why Are We Here? Motivation for Mission." This is a six week small group study. Then on October 30 through Nov 1 we will have a consulting team here to interview and train us for work in our community. It will be change at its hardest and best. No longer will we sit as a church and wait for people to come to us, instead we are going to go to them. Everyone in the congregation will be involved in small group ministry and everyone in the congregation will be working. No more pew, or chair sitting allowed.
Scared? I am. It is change from being a church with a sign out front to being the church that is found in the book of Acts. In other words this is a change to do and to be what God has called us to do and be. The countdown has started.

Pastor Fred

Cook off Challenge this Sunday at 9:30 service

Come one, come all we are having a food thrown down or challenge during the 9:30 service. Wisdom and Folly are the names of the two cooks. Both of them will be preparing a banquet of food, the question is which one is serving the best food? The basis for judging of this contest will be Proverbs 9.

Pastor Fred ( who will be intrepreting the results)

And a Little Child will Lead Them

This morning we had our first Wednesday morning chapel for the school year. We had lots of singing and Bible stories and puppets talking about God's creation. The best moment of the chapel though came without any planning. A video is always shown of a foreign country where most the population is not Christian. The video is shown to get the children to pray for the children of that country and get them interested in doing missions throughout their life, whether supporting them financially or going themselves as missionaries. After the showing of a video on Uzbekistan Miss Sue our director asked the children to pray for the children of that country tonight that they would come to know Jesus as their Savior. Out of the blue a little four year girl's hand went up and she asked if we could pray for them right now! So Miss Sue said sure and asked the four year if she would lead us in prayer. And she did, praying that God would lead the children of Uzbekistan to faith in Jesus.
Jesus said in Mark 10:14ff, "Let the little children come to me; and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Jesus knew who had the most faith in the community, and it wasn't the grown up adults.
What a fantastic way to start a new school year, led by a little child of God. May we be little children of Jesus this year.

Pastor Fred

Back to School

As a parent I am really excited about school starting next Monday. I love my kids but I also love it when they are in school and I can exhale a little bit. Today at Family of Christ is Staff Development Day. Which means all the staff and teachers get together and talk about the coming year. I will be doing a devotion on how we surrender to God and rely on his strength through the Holy Spirit to carry out the tasks he has for us this year. We will go over all the regulations and have a lot of time for prayer. Then we will have lunch. I'm really excited about that! I do love to eat. This is a time to re-focus though and remember why we are here and why we do what we do. We do not just exist to provide education so that our kids are ready for elementary school, but we also exist to share the good news about Jesus' love for us. We will do that in earnest this year. The children will hear the message of what Christ has done for them on the cross every day in the classroom. On Wednesday morning we always have a chapel service where the children worship God with passion. If you have never attended one of our chapel services you need to.
We have a really great staff this year. We also have re-started our Kindergarten. We are all looking forward to a school year of learning more about Jesus and rejoicing in his death and resurrection and the forgiveness and salvation that he has given us. Come and join us!

A Summer with the Old Testament

During this past school year we have had a number of sermon series, some better than others. As I write this we are finishing up a sermon series on the 40 Days of Love. Sermon series are a great way to get deeper into a subject than if you just preached one sermon on it. It focuses everything and connects everything together. But sometimes we need a break from series. So this summer the sermons will be on the Old Testament text for that Sunday. That means that every sermon will be a stand alone sermon, but there is some advantage in that. If you didn't like a particular Sunday's topic well next week will be totally different.
I choose the Old Testament because it is not something I preach from a lot. I spend most of my time preaching on the Epistle's and the rest on the Gospel. I have tended to stay away from the Old Testament through the years for a number of reasons. When I preached on the readings for a particular Sunday I found that most of the time the Epistle and the Gospel had something in common, where the Old Testament reading never seemed to connect with either one. Many times the Old Testament reading is kind of the odd man out. The second reason I didn't preach on the Old Testament was, to be honest, because it was harder to do. There is many times a depth and richness to the Old Testament that is hard to get your mind around. The Old Testament is a challenge because in some ways you have to connect it to the New or show how it is fulfilled in the New.
So I am taking this on this summer as a challenge. I am trying to wrap my mind around some of these Old Testament texts and bring out what they have to say to New Testament people like us in 2009. I hope that you will join me on this journey starting June 7th with Isaiah 6:1-8.

Learning Center Children Leading Worship

On Palm Sunday the children from our Learning Center will be leading our contemporary worship service. They will be presenting the Biblical story through a series of plays. As this is being put together it looks like it is going to be very exciting. The question of the service is, "What are You going to do with Jesus?" In their plays they will present the answer to that question by showing us what the Bible says. There is no greater faith than the faith of a child so this will not be service you will want to miss. Come and join us as God speaks through his youngest disciples.
Also mark your calendars for Thursday April 9th at 7 p.m. for our Maundy Thursday service with communion around the table. On April 10th at 7 p.m. we will have our Good Friday service followed by a showing of the movie, The Passion of the Christ at 8:15 p.m. It all comes to a climax on Easter morning when we will have a Sunrise Service at 6 a.m. and then breakfast at 7:30 followed by an Easter Egg hunt and then worship again at 9:30 a.m. See you there!

Pastor Fred

Sermon for coming Sunday Feb 8, 2009

Here is the sermon for tomorrow. I am posting it on the blog, because I will not be preaching in it in church. It is just too boring. In fact as I have looked back at the entire sermon series so far, it is all too boring to continue it. I never usually apologize for anything that I preach but I am apologizing for this particular sermon series, it has been awful. Thankfully Friday night I realized that as I was practicing it. It is also very long. So I decided to not preach it at all. I have no idea what I am talking about tomorrow I am just going to wing it. So you might want to come and watch, it could be interesting, hopefully for me in a good way. Again my sincere apologies for a very boring series. You guys are too long suffering at times. Well here it is in all its unedited unpolished glory.

THE PROPHECIES CONCERNING HIS LIFE
DEUTERONOMY 18:15, 18-19
FEBRUARY 8, 2009

If you look at a typical gravestone you see the date of the person’s birth and the date of their death and usually between those two dates is a dash. That simple dash represents that person’s entire life. But on the grave marker it looks pretty insignificant. The emphasis seems to be on the beginning and the end with no attention to the in-between. If you listen to many Christians and most of the messages coming out of Christian churches you hear much of the same thing. There is a real emphasis on his birth, the Christmas season. And there is a real emphasis on his death and resurrection, the Lent and Easter season. But all the stuff that happened in between is in many cases simply ignored or always put in the context of his birth and death and resurrection. In fact if you ask the typical Christian questions about Christ he can tell you in great detail the facts about Jesus’ birth and his death and resurrection but is not so sure or informed about what happened in between. It is as if it wasn’t that important. You know his birth well yeah that’s big, his suffering and death and resurrection, well yeah that’s huge. But his life, well maybe interesting but we need to keep our eyes on the big stuff. But Jesus life, the dash in-between is of huge importance for us today.

The Old Testament prophets certainly thought it was important, because they talked about it a lot. The New Testament writers certainly thought it was important because they wrote a lot about it. Paul certainly thought it was important as he stressed that Jesus living the perfect sinless life in our place was a must for our salvation. The birth yes important, the death and resurrection, yes important, but none of them would have meant a thing if Jesus had not lived the law perfectly for us, if he had sinned for instance then his death and resurrection wouldn’t have meant anything, he would have just been saving himself. Also there were many things that the Old Testament prophets said were important in the life of the Messiah, that he had to do these things to fulfill what God wanted. So today we are going to look at the Old Testament prophecies concerning the life of the Messiah and their fulfillments in the New Testament life of Jesus. There are tons of these but we are just going to look at the most important ones.

Moses is the first guy we run into this morning with something to say about the Messiah. Moses of course was the leader of the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt. He was the guy God has personally selected and sent to the people. Under his leadership the people were liberated from four hundred years of slavery under the Egyptians. It is said that no one has ever had a relationship with God like Moses did. God spoke directly to him in person and he was God’s man on earth to the people. In the book of Deuteronomy though he is getting ready to leave the people, in other words die. And this was a very traumatic event for God’s people. Moses had been the go to guy all these years, he had done everything, knew how to solve every problem, he was the one who God talked to and who God listened to when they had a problem. So what were they going to do? God understood their fears and so through Moses he makes them a promise, one that they can count on and know that they are going to be alright. In Deuteronomy 18 Moses says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.”

The immediate fulfillment of this prophecy is of course in the line of the prophets that follow Moses in Israel’s history. God always provided them for the people but the ultimate fulfillment is found in Jesus. In Luke 7 after Jesus raises the widow’s son from the dead the people were all filled with awe and praised God. A great prophet has appeared among us,” They said, “God has come to help his people.” And in Luke 24 after Jesus’ resurrection he is walking with some the believers on the road to Emmaus; they don’t recognize him yet but are telling him about Jesus, about himself in other words. They say, “About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.” The people themselves realize that Jesus is a prophet from God. And we see he is also very much in the way of Moses. Like Moses, Jesus delivers his people. Moses delivered the people from slavery in the land of Egypt and Jesus delivers his people from slavery to sin and death. He leads them out of the land of darkness and into the kingdom of God.

Jesus throughout his life though acted as a prophet. He proclaimed God’s word to the people and he warned them of the coming judgment and told them to repent. He also told them about God grace which was found in him and he told them what was going to happen in the future, both about the destruction of the temple and the second coming. In his baptism God the Father reiterated his command to the people about listening to his prophets. He said, this is my Son with him I am well pleased, listen to him.” Unfortunately many people of this day and of our day don’t listen to Jesus and his message of salvation. Just like the ancient Israelites used to ignore the prophets or even persecute them so it is today. Even sometimes in the church we don’t pay close attention to his words. For those that do though, there is comfort and good news.

Jesus was also very much not only the Son of God, but also a Jew. And because of that he will dedicated to his Father’s house. In Psalm 69:9 we read, “For zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.” Then in John chapter 2 we read about Jesus clearing the temple of the money changers. He overturns their tables and drives them out with whips. He says, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The house of God represented the presence of God among the people and that it would be defiled was like God himself was being defiled and for Jesus as God that was a personal insult to both him and more importantly to his Father who he loved. It’s like the story about Bob. Bill White of Paramount Washington tells this story. “Our church is in the heart of the city, so along with the great opportunities come some challenges. For example, our church building has been “tagged” a number of times – spray painted with local gang signs or the initials of the culprits involved. A few years ago our worship leader, Bob Olson, was in his office at the back of the sanctuary when he heard strange noises in the alley. Tired of having bad things happen to his place of worship, he decided to act. He burst into the alley through a barred door that hadn’t been opened in years. There stood two teenagers holding spray paint cans, initialing the building. “What are you doing?” he yelled, despite their being only fifteen feet away. They stood up and acted tough. One answered back, “What are you going to do about it, old man?” Bob’s hair is thinning, and he’s in his sixties. There were two of them, and they were young and strong. But as the Scripture says, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Bob started walking right at them. The guys stood their ground for a moment, but then they turned and sprinted down the alley. And Bob gave chase! He chased them around one corner, down a residential street, across a yard, and down another street. But Bob didn’t stop. After a two-block chase, he leapt at the slower of the two guys, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him to the ground. The guy struggled free, and made off – but not without leaving behind his jacket and his spray paint. Although the police caught the two of them on the next block, they might have been relieved to be away from the passionate worshiper with the thinning gray hair.”

All that zeal that Jesus has in our text comes from the fact that he truly is the Son of God. In Psalm 2 we read this prophecy, “I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” We see this prophecy explained as applying directly to Jesus in Matthew chapter three. As Jesus was being baptized God spoke. It says, “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” In Luke chapter one as the angel Gabriel is explaining Jesus coming birth to the Virgin Mary he says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” This is that incarnational fact that we celebrate every Christmas. God become man and yet remaining fully God. Jesus is more than just a mere man. He is more than just a prophet; he is God himself in the flesh living among us. That in itself is mind blowing, but it also leads us to some very important things. This Jesus has the power to do what he has set out to do, namely save us from our sins and give us salvation. In the midst of world of uncertainly and anxiety. In the midst of hard times that seem to get harder every time we check the news and see more lay offs, new diseases, death in of all places peanut butter. That this Jesus, our Savior is truly the Son of God, God himself is of great comfort. That God would go to the extreme lengths of actually become man shows us how much he loves us and that he will preserve us no matter what. And that leads us to the real gospel concerning the Old Testament prophecies about his life.

The first one is that the Messiah will be anointed to preach liberty. In Isaiah 61 we read the prophet saying this about the Messiah, ‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.” This describes in wondrous detail what the Messiah was going to do when he came. He was going to preach the gospel to the poor, and that was not just the physically poor, but the spiritual poor. He was going to proclaim freedom, freedom from sin and death and release sinners from their bondage to sin. He was going to proclaim the final coming of his kingdom and the end of the ages and was going to comfort all who mourn no matter what they mourn about. This was a fantastic promise that the Old Testament people held onto. It was something that they looked forward too. This Messiah was going to take care of everything. And so it was great amazement that in Luke chapter four we read that Jesus visits the synagogue and is given the scroll to read, and it just happens to be this particular passage that he reads that day. After he gets done reading it in front of the people it says, “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” There is no way to take the shock out of what they must have experienced at these words. Some rejected what he said but others it seems came to faith in him, and believed that he was that Messiah they had been waiting for. Here was the answer to all their prayers. He is the answer to all of our prayers and searching for help, deliverance and comfort.

These words of Jesus are a great comfort, but Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy with more than just words but also with his actions. For instance in Isaiah 35 we read this about what the coming Messiah will do in his life here on earth, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.” This prophecy said that the Messiah will heal people from various ailments, that in fact that would be a sign that he was the true Messiah. It was a clear way of identifying him. Then we read in Luke chapter seven about John the Baptist who is now in prison sending some of his disciples to confirm that Jesus really is the Messiah that John thinks he is, “Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who has come, or should we expect someone else? When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” In other words, “Yeah John I am it, there isn’t anyone else coming. I am the Messiah fulfilling those identifying prophecies in Isaiah. The life of Christ here on earth touched many people in very practical ways, but more importantly it gave a demonstration of the real healing and raising from the dead that he was going to do on the cross at the end of his life. Those other miracles were only temporary. Eventually all these healed people were going to die anyway, and even the ones he raised to life were going to die again some day. But the healing and life that won through the cross is forever, it is eternal healing and eternal life.

The last prophecy I want to look at today has to deal with Christ’s coming in victory in our world and in our lives. In Psalm 118 we hear the prophecy, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you.” This is talking about a victorious king returning from victory, the one who has defeated his enemies with God’s help in other words. We see this fulfilled in Matthew 21 when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ “Hosanna in the highest!” When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.’” The crowd was welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem like a conquering king. Maybe they thought he was going in to kick out the Romans, to set up a new kingdom of Israel that would be as powerful as it was in the past. If they thought that they were wrong.

Jesus did enter Jerusalem that day like a conquering king. He was coming into the city to get rid of the people’s enemies, but it wasn’t the Romans. Instead the enemies that he was going to defeat were Satan, sin and death. He would achieve victory not man’s way but God’s way through suffering and death. By the end of the week the victory would be his as he hung bleeding and dying on the cross. He had truly come in the name of the Lord and he had done God’s work. That work of God extends down to us today as we benefit through the forgiveness that receive through Christ’s death and resurrection. But that would not be the final fulfillment of this Old Testament prophecy in fact you could say were are still waiting for it to happen. Jesus himself prophesied that this prophecy would again be fulfilled in the future. In Luke 13 Jesus expresses he is great sorrow over Jerusalem. He foresees that the Romans are going to completely destroy it in 70 A.D. and it pains him to know the suffering that they are going to undergo because of that. So he says this, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This if course is referring the second coming of Christ that is talked about in Revelation chapter one, “Look, he is coming with the clouds and every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be. Amen.” That is a day that we are still looking forward to with great anticipation. That day as we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

The life of Jesus Christ was more than just a dash between his birth date and his death on earth date. It was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy identifying who he was and what he was called to do for you and I. His life was also the perfect life for us. Where the first Adam had fell into sin and dragged us down with him. The second Adam, Jesus Christ was without sin, lived the perfect life in our place, fulfilled the law for us and then through our faith in his death and resurrection gave us his righteousness and holiness and perfection. Like Moses he led us out of the land of slavery and into the land of freedom and perfection. This Jesus is our Messiah, our Christ, our Savior; he is the fulfillment of prophecy in this age and in the age to come. Amen.