Many Christians struggle with assurance of salvation, usually because they are looking too much at themselves and their failures and not enough at what Christ has done on their behalf. God wants us to be sure of being saved, so that we can live our lives in joy and peace, eagerly looking forward to our glorification. If God is the one who saves us, what or who could possibly undo God’s work?

Bible Passage: Romans 8:33-39

Pastor: Ryan Hemelaar

Today we start our travels with Luke as he meets people who actually knew Jesus. He met and interviewed people like Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah and many others over the years. Luke himself said he ‘carefully investigated everything from the beginning’ indicating he searched out many sources and compared their accounts before writing. He wasn’t interested in passing on rumours or second-hand stories. He offered a factual, carefully researched study of the life of Jesus. Why? So we may know the certainty of the things we have been taught. Jesus did live; Jesus did teach and perform miracles; Jesus did die and rise again. What we learn is that our faith in Jesus is grounded in reality, not myths and legends.

Bible Passage: Luke 1:1-4

Pastor: Jim de Witte

In Exodus 23 God finished giving commands to His people and then made promises regarding the Land He would give them and told them how He would do it. Here in Exodus 24 the people promise to do 'everything the Lord has said.' Moses and some others even enjoy a meal with God to celebrate the covenant God has made with Israel. This is the closest His people have come to living with Him. However, it is clear that there is still a barrier. Even after their pledge to live God's way only some can approach God, and only Moses can come close. Worse, it will only take 40 days for the people to fail the first and second commandment. They are enthusiastic in their desire to obey God, but they cannot. This is a familiar story. We long to live for Jesus and yet we easily forget, wander off and do our own thing. Exodus 24 points us forward to God solution to this problem and shows us how we can live with God.

Bible Passage: Exodus 24

Pastor: Jono Deenick

God has rescued a people out of slavery to be in relationship with him, to be his very own. He has led them, fed them and rescued them from danger. He has put up with their grumbling and complaining. He has revealed himself to them, communicating to them his character and nature. He has given them clear instructions for life within the community of God’s people. Now he is making them promises. He is going to lead them through the wilderness and bring them into a land he has promised to give them. He is promising victory to them. He is promising to fight their battles. He promises to care for their needs. He promises to bless them abundantly. As we reflect on the promises, we find three principles that apply to us in our journey through life to the Promised Land. Principles that remind us that, while the victory is in Christ, there is a sanctifying work we need to be involved in because the victory comes little by little.

Bible Passage: Exodus 23:20-33

Pastor: Jim de Witte

We all love justice. We love it when we experience it and we love to see it done in cases around us. But do we always act justly? Sometimes being just, or making sure justice is done can be costly. It means making sure we speak the truth about others. It means not siding with the crowd, or being driven by pity rather than truth. And, at the deepest level, it means doing good to those who dislike you or whom you dislike. These are the sorts of things God reveals to us in Ex 23. Join us as we think about the goodness, but also cost of justice.

Bible Passage: Exodus 23:1-9

Pastor: Jono Deenick

Once again we are looking at a passage of scripture that is “jarring” or very much in your face”. In the eyes of many non-believers in modern society these verses are out of touch with modern justice, and show that God is “spiteful”. These verses need to be studied in their historical and cultural context. Only then can we understand the purpose of a loving God to give a set of practical laws that can be applied to his newly chosen people now taken to the Sinai. All of his people were governed by these laws, and some of the concepts are very different to what they had previously experienced in Egypt. When properly interpreted the verses give principles that for the first time put in place a just but most of all loving society, reflecting God’s holding of human life to be sacred.

Bible Passage: Exodus 21:12-36

Pastor: Stephen Cheshire

Last week, with Pastor Jono, we looked at the general principle of being living sacrifices; to be transformed in thinking and behaviour so we no longer conform to wrong cultural norms. Now Paul, in Romans, follows that up with specific applications. He is giving some specific ideas and concrete ways in which we can carry out the principle. In the verses today, Paul focuses on the right way to think about ourselves. With that foundation laid, he moves on to right thinking about others, especially in relation to the church. Together we will explore these two life-transforming, counter-cultural ways of thinking.

This Sunday evening we are hosting young people from other Reformed Churches in our state and so we return to the 'Beatitudes'. 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.' It is an awesome promise. Jesus offers to fill us with righteousness, but what is that? And do we really hunger for it? My guess is, many of us have hungered and thirsted for all sorts of things this week, but for righteousness? How could we develop this hunger, a hunger that Jesus promises to fill, in our lives?

Today we reach a transition in the book of Romans. Up unto this point Paul has been laying out what God has done and is doing to rescue sinful people and reconcile them to Himself. It has been an incredible picture. But how do we respond? Given God's great mercy to us in sending Jesus to die in our place, though we were His enemies, what should our life look like now. This is the subject of the next 4 chapters or so. Today we begin with Paul's summary statement of what that life looks like. In short, we are to give ourselves completely to living for God. So much so, that Paul calls us 'living sacrifices'. This is can be scary but, as we shall see, wonderful.

What is the Bible about? The redemptive story of God, from creation to glorification. It is about Jesus, the central character in the redemptive story. It is the overwhelming revelation of God’s provision. It is, certainly in the Old Testament, the recurring doubt and disbelief of a people and the unrelenting, miraculous provision for God’s people. In Exodus 17 there is grumbling and testing again, raising the question: who is leading Israel? Moses or God? We learn again, in these two events of Exodus 17, that God is in charge and he is responsible to meet the needs of his people. Again, God demonstrates that clearly, despite the grumbling. These stories of grumbling and testing teach us something about ourselves, our nature, our predisposition toward disbelief, to pursue help in the wrong places…but they also give us the better place to look.