Even in our darkness, we have hope that the sun will come up soon and it will be light again. We light up the Christmas tree and we light up our houses. Light gives us hope in the midst of a dark world. Isaiah gives us that kind of hope. He spoke of the returning Messiah, one who would come to lighten our burdens, to right the wrongs, to restore all things to the way they were meant to be. This Messiah would be for everyone-Jews and Gentiles.

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Have you ever noticed that life is made up of decisions? Decisions reveal the inner nature of a person. People make decisions based on conditioning that is determined by their goals and priorities.. We are responsible for our own decisions, but we are also accountable to God.  

Jesus presents three very significant contrasts in Matthew 7:13-21. They are:
  1.      The broad way  and the narrow way.
2.      Bad fruit and good fruit.
3.      Doing and failing to do the will of God.  

The first contrast-the narrow way and the broad way-is a contrast between the abundant life which Jesus offers and the way of selfishness, which has no restraints. Jesus consistently teaches how hard it is to follow Him. The two gates in verses 13-14 represent every person’s choice: Following Jesus or following any other path. Only the more difficult, less-chosen gate to follow Christ leads to life.

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Today’s society can own this psalm as its own. Stress helps us realize how much we need God to steady our lives. We also need God’s forgiveness, because we have also turned our backs on God. We worship things like money, power and sex. Chaos and sin are running wild in this world. If you don’t believe me, look as what has been happening in the United States since Donald Trump returned to the White House. We need to atone for our sins and those of our ancestors. We need God to hear the cries of the prisoners, the oppressed, those bound in Satan’s darkness and the darkness of their own compromised theology. We need God to glorify His name and vindicate Himself against those false idols who blaspheme Him and reproach Him and His Son. When we pray about something for the sake of God’s name, we urge Him to act in order to defend His reputation, to make His glory known, to honour Him, and to let others see His majesty and greatness.

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We as Christians live in the tension between faith and obedience, worship and work. One must lead to the other or we will have half a gospel. Psalm 50 demands faith that acts. It calls for worship that works. 

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In Matthew 12:1-14 we read about two incidents that took place on the Sabbath. These incidents illustrate what Jesus meant when He invited His followers to find rest in His way of life. In each account, Jesus shows that the “burden” of the Sabbath is to do good by meeting people’s needs. The word “lawful” is important in this passage, in which Jesus had disputes with the religious leaders of the day.

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A plumb line is a builder’s tool for determining that a surface is straight. All sin and its resulting judgment is measured against the holiness and righteousness of God. This new understanding enabled Amos to fearlessly stand as God’s spokesman and accept Israel’s coming judgment as both necessary and just.

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God asks us the same question He asked Elijah: “What are you doing here?” What motivates us to be in church, a minister’s study, a particular job, a particular church activity, or a retirement hobby? What will we do with our lives, short as they are compared to God’s timeline? What are we afraid of? What keeps us from claiming our divine destiny? When life questions us, we may discover new sides of ourselves and the divine-human presence in our lives.

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For most of us, the idea of strength in weakness doesn’t make any sense. Strength and weakness are opposites. They don’t go together at all. Weaknesses are bad and are to be avoided at all costs. Strengths are good, and something all of us want. That explains why most of us do everything we can to avoid, overcome, or conceal our weaknesses. They make us feel vulnerable. They can even frighten us.

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Have you ever wondered what it will be like in our heavenly home, also known as New Jerusalem? John uses the image of the city in the passage we heard from Revelation as an image of the qualities of life that make up the new heaven and the new earth.

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Several years ago there was a renewal of worship in the church. It was not a renewal of the liturgy. It was based on a liberal theology with a resulting change in language and theatre. It was not based on the Holy Spirit. It was a change on the outside rather than on the inside. Its centre was first in the Jesus movement of the 1960s. It brought in many “flower children” and their hippie culture. They were also responding to cultural change.  

The heart of this renewal was the recovery of biblical praise. Churches returned to using open Bibles as the lyric sheet. The most important part of this renewal was the insistence that worship be directed to God Himself, rather than to the congregation.  For example, the chorus “He is Lord,” became real worship with the change to the second person singular pronoun. The new chorus became “You are Lord.” Before we are ready to worship, however, we must know the God to whom we are to direct our praise. This is revealed in Psalm 113

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