Anchor Of Hope Christian Reformed Church

We owe God everything! He is to receive all praise, glory, honor, love, and worship!We should seek to follow His word and serve Him out of gratitude and thanksgiving as the Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. Jesus is the only way, truth, and life -- to live in Him is to have eternal life -- to live outside of Him is to be dead. If we neglect such a great salvation then we will be destroyed.Let us believe in, live in, live out, and proclaim Jesus Christ, the only way of life.

Jesus Reveals Every Heart! Every thought, word, and action is peeled down to the deepest core and center -- exposing what is our greatest treasure, desire, passion, and love. If our greatest love is Jesus, or some idol we have fashioned in our hearts. Praise God that Jesus gives us a new heart so that we can worship Him and love Him more than any one and any thing else! Amen!

Matthew 2:19-23 New International Version (NIV)The Return to Nazareth19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

The darkness will never overcome the Light of the world! No one and nothing will thwart God's plan to save His people through the perfect life, atoning death, victorious resurrection, ascension to His right hand and glorious return of His Son Jesus Christ!God is sovereign over every moment and every detail of His plan of salvation. We who are saved in Jesus Christ can boldly live out the gospel knowing that with God for us, nothing can be against us! Amen!

Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords.He deserves all the praise, glory, honor, worship, love, and devotion from all people of every nation, tribe, language, and people. The wise men rejoiced at the coming of Jesus Christ and fell down and worshiped Him. This is what Christmas celebrations are to be all about: joy-filled gratitude and thanksgiving for Jesus the King who came to serve not be served and gave His life as a ransom for many. What a King! What a Savior!

Everyone needs a savior! Only God can save.  In the incarnation we see God the eternally begotten Son of God so humbling Himself that he takes on flesh and is born. Our sinfulness brings about our death and we are under a curse. Jesus is born under the law so that he and only he will keep the law perfectly so that he can take the curse for us. The greatest gift we can receive is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Trust Him! Believe in Him! Love him! He is Immanuel, God with us.  

In our unsaved sinful condition we are poor, helpless, hopeless, in shame, and in reproach, under condemnation, children of wrath, dead and heading for eternal punishment. We needed a savior!Jesus washed away the sin and filth of our rebellion against God in His atoning blood poured out for the elect on the cross. For those so saved, our lives are then marked by gratitude, praise and honor for God as our only comfort, strength, protection, and hope. Amen!

O Lord, please humble us so that we will look to you for our life, peace, hope and not in our self or in any other created thing. Humble us so that we will trust in Your will, Your ways, Your timing. Humble us so that we will seek you, believe in the the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, and live for your glory and not for our own. Please humble us through the power of your Holy Spirit! Amen.

There is only one God! This one God -- God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is the source of all life, light, truth, peace, hope, love, goodness, holiness...Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life -- not a way, a truth, or a means of life. Jesus -- his sacrificial life, death, and resurrection is the only way to eternal life with God. God is so gracious and merciful and loving that he will pierce the darkness of death for His elect of every nation, tribe and people so that they can walk in the light of life the light of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit! God is God! God is good! Amen!

We must be refined! We must have our sin burned away by the refining fire of God's holy love and justice. We need to be made righteous and we cannot do this ourselves. This is why God made Jesus to be sin though he knew no sin so that we could be made righteous with His righteousness. God is both just and justifier! Praise God for the good news of Jesus Christ!  He is our only hope!

We need a savior! We need to be delivered from our guilt. We need to be washed and cleansed from our sins. There is one way for us to be made new, made clean; and for God to be pleased with and delight in us. The Way, Truth and Life for us to be forgiven by God and to have our sins paid for is the life, death, resurrection, ascension and future return of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. God has made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.  Amen!

God commands obedience!He is God; and His ways are true, just, perfect, life giving. To disobey God is to do what is false, unjust, imperfect, deadly and destructive. It does not work to try to deceive God, others, or ourselves with a surface level religion, devotion, or lip service toward faith and belief in God. God is always able to look under the surface and fully expose the heart with His all-penetrating light. We must humble ourselves and be cleansed from the inside out and not "play" or "pretend" being a Christian while all along clinging to the idols of pride, immorality, disobedience...Cleanse us o Lord!

It is an amazing truth that God is the absolute sovereign creator and redeemer. God makes everything. He makes each and every one of us. God makes for Himself a people. He starts them from an elderly couple and a barren womb. God then frees them from enslavement in Egypt and gives them a land, defeats their enemies, teaches them, guides them, yet most of them rebel and turn away from God living according to their sinful disobedient and prideful desires.Where is the humble gratitude? It is only through the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we who believe in Him can enter into the humble gratitude we were elected for.  Save us Jesus!

I am excited and hopeful as we begin our sermon series in the book of Isaiah. King Uzziah is a great example of the overall problems with much of Judah and Israel.When Uzziah feared God and sought the Lord, God made him prosper. Yet, when Uzziah was strong, and rather than remembering it was God who made him strong, he grew prideful and forgot his need for God. This brought about his destruction. It was the same for the people of Judah, the people of Israel, and for us. Let us seek God and learn from the prophecies of Isaiah as a reminder of our need for a savior (Jesus Christ) and our powerlessness without him. Amen!

The Church is the Body of Christ with Christ as its head. The Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ and The Father work through the church to encourage the hearts of believers. God fills us with His peace and our love is to be rooted and founded in faith in Jesus Christ. It is the love God has for us in Jesus Christ and the love we grow into as children of God that is love incorruptible.  The love we have in Jesus Christ will never end, diminish, fade, or fail in any way. Praise God!

The best way to stay alert and persevere is to be in a constant communion and fellowship with God in prayer. It is in times of forgetting about, ignoring, and not taking God into consideration that we most find ourselves wounded and stumbling in sin and fear. The Spirit prays for us and groans on our behalf when we do not even know what to pray. The Spirit also empowers us and our continual prayer is that God will enable us to proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ in boldness without fear no matter what our circumstances, even in chains! Help us Lord!

God's Word makes us alive! It is living and active and the Holy Spirit uses the word of God, the gospel, as it makes alive God's elect. Faith comes through hearing, understanding, believing in, trusting, and living out the word of God. God's word not only makes us alive to repent and believe in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, it also enable us to grow up into the likeness of Christ! It is only with this sword that we can do battle against all the deceitful schemes, deceptions, and lies that continually come against us. Praise God for His word!

Much of the battle we face in standing in the faith is waged within our thoughts. We must have transformed minds through the power of the Holy Spirit that enable us to continue to have our hope fixed in Christ no matter how difficult the circumstances. It is by holding fast to our hope in God's promises to us His children that we will have a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul enabling us stay fixed in Him no matter how strong the storms. Amen!

Our three enemies: the devil, the fallen world systems, and our fallen flesh want us to doubt and call into question the goodness, holiness, justice, love, and truth of God. This is why we must stand with the shield of faith always before us; for it is only with a sure hope and conviction that we will be able to continue to stand against such a continual attack. In the midst of the fiery trials we continue to trust, believe and obey Jesus Christ knowing that He is our everything. Amen!

It is the knowing, believing, trusting, and having faith in the Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ by God's grace that enables us to stand and walk into and through any circumstance and situation. It is knowing that God is for us and not against us because the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf on the Cross that enables us to understand Romans 8:31b-33 ...If God is for us, who can be against us? (32) He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (33) Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. This peace enables us to be ready for anything! Amen!