Reverend Michael Malanga

We live in two worlds. Jesus Christ is the Lord of both. Just as Jesus occupies a position of power and privilege in the heavenly realm so, too does He occupy the same position of power and privilege in our heart and mind.

Soon 2019 will be history. We can savor its joys but we cannot relive them. We can remember the sorrows, but we cannot relive them either. Onto 2020. Just as God gave us our daily bread in 2019 so He will give us what we need every day during 2020. Since He will give us what we need to live through 2020, we can trust Him to give us what we need in the future. We live by faith in future grace. By faith we believe the future is as bright as the promises of God. By faith we believe the promises of God are the foundation of a life built by trusting Him.

We live in a world starving for good news. We also live in a world drowning in good advice. And lest there be any confusion, they are not the same thing. Where good advice is information you decide to be either useful or useless, helpful or harmful, true or false; good news is information about an event which is true whether we choose to believe it or not.

You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to recognize the dominant image in this passage is that of a stump. Yet when Isaiah delivered this prophecy, the nation of Judah was doing well and King David’s family tree, firmly planted in Jerusalem, was otherwise healthy and bearing fruit.

Every Advent we are reminded of a fundamental contrast. The same season in which we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ as the Light of the world happens during the darkest season of the year.

This the heart and soul of the gospel. Jesus was born to redeem us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. This is the good news about which we are reminded every year at Advent.

The more we know the gospel the more we’ll trust in the trustworthiness of God. Just as the Galatians trusted the gospel and believed they were declared righteous by hearing with faith not by works of the law.

Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit uses experience to make the gospel come alive for us, our faith is not built on our experience. Our trust in Christ is founded on what the Bible says God says about our standing before Him.

As Paul uses it, calling the Galatians foolish implies they were not thinking clearly. They were neither idiots nor unintelligent, just very lazy intellectually. To quote that noted theologian Dr. Phil, the Galatians were guilty of stinking thinking.

Reformation Day celebrates more than just the recovery of the gospel as the true treasure of the Church. It celebrates the recovery of the one doctrine long considered to be the cornerstone of the Reformation—justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.