Turn with me to Hebrews 1 and we’re going to read some scriptures there about the supremacy of Jesus. The whole message of Hebrews is an argument about how Jesus is better than anything and anyone. The people who first heard this message were Jewish Christians who were under a lot of growing…
Imagine following in the footsteps of Moses – how huge a task that would be. Moses is probably the most important person in the Old Testament. It was through Moses that the nation of Israel was delivered from Egypt. It was Moses that led and judged the people for decades. It was Moses…
Turn with me to Luke 24:50-53 and then we’ll be headed into Acts 1. Luke and Acts are actually two parts of the same work, both written in about 60-70AD by Luke, a gentile, Christian doctor who travelled with the Apostle Paul and was commissioned by someone named Theophilus to write a history of…
A Farewell Address in the Upper Room On the night before Jesus went to the cross, He had a lot of things to say to His disciples in the Upper Room. Matthew, Mark and Luke give some of the story like what Jesus said and did, but it is the Gospel of John,…
Last week we looked at 1 Corinthians 15 in light of how critical the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to not only Christians but to the very meaning of life itself. We read it last week during the Easter service and I said that we’d be revisiting it today because there’s more to…
A lot of us are like those two followers walking down the road to Emmaus. They start out, perplexed, anxious, disappointed in how things have turned out, confused about God’s plan, talking to one another about things they don’t understand, and hoping that if they keep walking away, that somehow they will…
When doing any kind of experiment or making any kind of change, you need to establish a “baseline”, a starting point that serves as the one, known point of measurement that everything else will be compared to. Whether you’re studying climate change, time zones, altitude, typography, medicine, or physics, you need somewhere to…
If you recall back to the last series of weeks in our study of the Heidelberg Catechism you’ll remember that we’ve been talking a lot about the question, “Who is Jesus?”. This part of the Heidelberg is going through the Apostles Creed and we are on the second section that speaks of what Christians…
*Sorry, no audio this week. 😞 * One of the people in that video, the artist, Makoto Fujimura said that at one point in his life Jesus became real to him. He said, “This historic figure was no longer just this historical figure… and he wanted to reveal himself to me in a way I…
The question we’ve been answering for the past few weeks is “Who is Jesus?” We’re going through the Heidelberg Catechism, which, at this point, is taking us through a line-by-line, word-by-word study of the Apostles Creed, the oldest and most reliable summary of Christian beliefs we have. It goes all the way back…
Turn with me to Mark 8:27-33. This scripture occurs in the final year of Jesus’ earthly ministry as His focus has grown more steadily towards His journey to Jerusalem and the cross. He has already gathered His disciples and they have been with Him for a couple years. He has already done much travelling…
“Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins…
I’m consistently amazed how we can start studying something months ago, using commentaries written over a hundred years ago, studying a catechism written 450 years ago, based on scriptures written thousands of years ago – and how they all speak directly to our needs for today. Truly, our Lord, His Holy Spirit and…
We’re back into the Heidelberg Catechism and are now in Day 9. Just a quick review before we jump into it though. Our church, since last August, has been working out way through a teaching tool called the Heidelberg Catechism. It’s called “Heidelberg” because it was written in the 16th century by a man…
I’ve decided that I don’t want to be stuck in Day 8 anymore, so we are going to do one more attribute and then move on. But before I do that I want to give you a few tools for you to use at home to better explain what we are going through…
If you’ve been following along, you know that we’re a little stuck in Day 8 of the Heidelberg Catechism and that a bunch of the sermons I’ve preached over the past while are actually one, long sermon divided up into more manageable pieces. It started with a quick review of the Heidelberg and the…
Audio: Text: As I said a couple weeks ago, working through all the things that Day 8 of the Heidelberg Catechism wants to go through takes a lot longer than just one week. In fact, we’ve done four sermons on Day 8 and it’s going to take us at least two more weeks to…
Audio: Text: Imagine for a moment that you are sitting at home one night when you hear a weird noise outside your door, see a bunch of flickering lights, and then moments later hear a knock on your door. You answer it and there stands an alien family from outer space – there’s an…
Audio: Text: Our celebrity-obsessed culture struggles with understanding what it means to actually know someone. People seem to fall in love with, give their allegiance to, or utterly hate someone they’ve never met, simply because they’ve seen them in movies or on TV. Their agent and their publicist work hard to craft a certain…
Audio: Text: Theological Deduction I’m a fan of the mystery genre. I like shows and movies where the main character, or the team, has a big problem to solve and has to use problem-solving ingenuity and cool technology to try to figure out what happened. One of my favourites is when there’s a missing…
Audio: Text: Please open up to Romans 10:9-17 and let’s read it together, and then I have a short video to show you: “…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart…
Audio: Text: Turn with me to John 3:16-21 and we’ll read it together. We talked about this passage a little bit last week when I highlighted the exclusivity of the claims that Jesus was making as being the only one to have faith in, the one and only way path to forgiveness and restoration…
Audio: Text: I heard an ad on the radio for the Canadian Legion that started with something like, “Think of all the things you enjoy in life, like summer fun, going out with your family, kissing your kids goodnight. We can take these things for granted because a veteran didn’t. They fought so we…
Audio: Text: The more I study the Heidelberg Catechism, the more I like it. It appeals to me on so many levels – it’s beautifully written, theologically rich and complex, but is also laid out in such a logical way that it’s very readable and straightforward to follow. I wish that I had been…
Audio: Text: Pastor Al Do You Really Believe in a Magic Talking Snake? I want to start this morning with a little bit of apologetics. Last week we talked about the Fall of Man as presented in Genesis 1-3 and there’s one part of that story that keeps coming up in the secular world…
Audio: Text: We’re on Week 3 of our way through the Heidelberg Catechism. If you recall, the catechism is divided up into three sections: The first part speaking of the problem of sin that has separated us from God, the second how Jesus delivered us from that sin, and the third how our lives…
Audio: Text: If you recall last week, question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism told us how a Christians greatest comfort is found in life and in death is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ, and then question 2 asked, ““What do you need to know in order to live and die in the…
Audio: Text: Introduction Most of you know that my family has been going through a tough time lately, but I know we’re not alone. Many people here today are going through difficult, confusing, painful times. It’s been heartening for us, as a church family, to spend time talking to one another about the struggles…
Audio: Text: Please open up with me to 1 Timothy 4:6-16 and let’s read it together. What we are about to read are the words of the Apostle Paul written either from prison, or right after he had been released from prison, and was writing in order to counsel his young co-worker Timothy about…
Audio: Text: I’ve said a few times over the past years that one of the driving thoughts behind my life and ministry is that there is great comfort in good theology. I believe that with every fibre of my being and it informs every part of how I conduct myself as not only a…