For the first Sunday of 2022, we will be tuning into our home church’s home church to listen to the vision message for this year.

With one week left in 2021, we should take a moment to prepare our hearts for the upcoming year. Not only should we await positive changes in our resolution, but we should also prepare for unanticipated storms waiting around the corner. But we know that when we encounter these storms, when we choose to devote a firm faith in our God, He will bring back our calm and peace.

In the 1940’s, business leaders employed “mystery shoppers” as individuals hired to assess how the shop was doing, while under disguise. The jobs of these “mystery shoppers” were to evaluate employee performance while the boss was not around.

As we near Christmas, we remember the celebration surrounding the birth of Christ. The birth of Christ is symbolic for it is the beginning of when the work of Jesus began on earth. In remembrance, today’s sermon will speak on the person of Jesus Christ: what He is and what He has done.

In today’s text, we are introduced to the character Elisha who God calls to be the next prophet after Elijah. Elisha is essentially receiving the spiritual baton from Elijah to become his successor. For us, how do we prepare to pass the spiritual baton to the next generation? How do we prepare to receive this baton as the next generation?

Last week we saw how God provided rest and nourishment for Elijah when he was going through spiritual depression. In the article “7 Things to never say to a depressed Christian” by C. Michael Patton, Patton lists several statements of “advice” that when spoken to depressed people, can inadvertently cause more harm than help. We may not always recognize the complications of spiritual depression, but in today’s story we can see how God lovingly restored Elijah.

Spiritual depression can come upon anyone in any way. Last week, we witnessed a climatic point in Elijah’s life and ministry: he won a mighty battle in the Name of the Lord against the false prophets at Mount Carmel, courageously declaring the power of God. In rain and fire, God had answered Elijah’s prayer. Though Elijah had personally experienced the sovereign might of God, he is quickly brought very low in the next few verses. Does this drop from a spiritual high sound familiar to you?

No one is immune to going through lows no matter how on fire they are spiritually. Today, we’ll be looking at some of the causes of spiritual depression, symptoms, and our response as God recovers and restores us.

In today’s passage, we read about the encounters of two individuals who desperately needed Jesus’ help. One of them was a man with leprosy who was an outcast because of his condition. The other, a paralyzed man who had no physical way of making his way before Jesus. Yet in both stories, we see that it is not what we offer nor who we are that Jesus is looking at, for Jesus looks at our heart and desires to heal and restore us. 

Do you remember the last time you struggled to withhold yourself from something you knew was bad for you?  That’s temptation, and that’s something we as humans dearly struggle with.

The Bible is full of stories of failures and consequences when dealing with temptation.  Jesus was also faced with temptation, and today we’ll look at 3 different temptations Jesus faced to understand some characteristics of temptation and how to overcome it as followers of Christ.

Jesus brought about a counter-cultural way to live life, with God’s Kingdom as the aim of it. We see how God’s plan to redeem His people started from the very beginning: from creation, into the fall with Adam and Eve, to them being banished from Eden, to God’s covenant with Abraham to bring about restoration for His people – all culminating with the Word as found in Luke. 

“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.” (Luke 3:4) 

With the coming of the Lord, all will be turned upside down. Those who are prideful, powerful, and comfortable will be brought low. Those who are poor, weak, hungry, and humble will be lifted up. 

Job interview results, college acceptance letters, promotion results, the waiting game is hard for many of us.  Even in the Bible, Israel had to wait 2000 years since God’s promise to Abraham to enter the promised land.  They had to wait 1000 years since God made a promise to King David that his descendent would secure the throne and His kingdom would reign forever.

We as Christians are also in a waiting period: Is God really going to come again?  When is it going to happen?  When is he going to work in my life?  Today we go over what happens when God comes and how do we prepare for it.

In today’s culture, marriage is commonly viewed as an old social custom centered around happiness and fulfillment.  This newer view of marriage has also consequentially made divorce more common practice and acceptable.

However, in the Bible, God designed marriage for the ultimate purpose of glorifying Himself.  Marriage is a holy act between two partners and in today’s sermon we’ll look at 2 essential attributes that constitute this sacred practice. 

We continue off from learning that in God’s eyes, worship without justice is worthless. We defined justice as “giving people what they are due, whether it is punishment or protection or care”. This refers not only to personal justice but also to our neighbours.

There are many of us who think if we do right by our personal justice, this is enough. But God is pleading with us through today’s passage that we are called to stand up for those around us and work to make right the things that are unjust in the world. For the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to transform and restore all injustices, brokenness, and forces of evil that are against the people of God.  

We look at the wisdom of justice, for how we respond in the face of injustice reveals a lot about who we are and the God we worship. As Christians, our lives are no longer lived out for ourselves. We care not only about our personal injustice but also the injustice we see from other people. 

Within the biblical context, justice is more than just punishment for doing wrong. The Hebrew word for justice is “mishpat”. Timothy Keller describes this word as “… giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care”. We look deeper into the scriptures to see what justice is and what our role in bringing about justice in the way of Jesus looks like. For worship without justice is worthless. 

In Greek mythology, there was a king named Sisyphus who was punished eternally to roll a boulder uphill.  When he finally reached the top of the hill, the boulder would fall off and Sisyphus would have to roll the boulder uphill again. In our lives, we encounter the same outcome where the task seemingly is never finished. Whether it is an empty laundry basket, an empty inbox, or no more obligations at work – our experience is that the work is never finished.

However, just because work does not stop doesn’t mean we can’t stop. We are required to stop so that we may receive sufficient rest for our souls, for the sake of our families, and for the sake of the world. We will be looking into why ultimately, we don’t keep the Sabbath, but the Sabbath keeps us.

You might have heard of the term “Sunday night Blues”.  It’s the unease that comes as the weekend winds down, anticipating the next day as Monday and the start of another work week grind.

Many of us may be able to relate to the dreaded feeling of going back to work, and statistically, many of us are dissatisfied with our work.  However, the Bible tells us that work is a form of worship and that we should connect work with our Christian living.

As we continue from last week’s sermon on receiving correction in areas of foolishness, we now look at the theological solution.

The theological solution is that we need the Gospel. The Gospel says Jesus Christ is Lord and simultaneously has us surrender our pride to see we are not. With Jesus as Lord and the foundation to our identity, the truth of the gospel gives us the freedom to have room in our hearts to receive and accept correction without feeling personally offended.

It is safe to say that for most of us, if not all of us here today, receiving correction is not something we do well in. From the time we are little children until the day we die, we do not like to receive correction.

Mockers and fools do not accept correction – they resolutely refuse to change their ways.  But God calls us to be wise, approachable, teachable, and humble, in choosing to set aside our pride and live in the way of wisdom.

With this weekend being Mother’s Day weekend, we look into the wisdom of honouring our parents. For some of us, we may have had great relationships with our parents; others of us, not so much.

Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we say the things we say?  Why do we see things and hear things the way that we see and hear?  We tend to think as human beings that if we can change our circumstances, then things will be better.  However, the Bible teaches us that circumstances only reveal what is in our hearts.