Reformation Hope Church

“Once saved always saved.” This true statement is not sufficient to properly teach people. It gives people the impression that they can live their lives as they please. As James says “Show me your Faith without your works, and I will show you my Faith by my works.” We cannot live as we please; there are standards that are required of us: both in what we must refrain from doing and in what we are obliged to do.

Our American Forefathers, contrary to popular belief, did have a love for Christ, which brought a heavy influence of Christianity upon this continent and its laws. In the word of God, Hope is mentioned. And it is vital that hope is nurtured and watered. As Paul states in the Love chapter of Corinthians 3 "Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is love." In this sermon, Dr. Reverend Wayne Sedlak probes in and develops how Hope is established. There are three ways God develops Hope as pastor explains in this sermon.

In every discipline known to man, the goal is not merely to learn what is already known, but to build and grow the discipline. All of modern mathematics is built on nine axioms, which are unchanging, but "new" math is being discovered every year. The Church's goal also should be to create "new" applications, to become more mature in the Faith. It is not that the old principles are not good, it is that the old are not sufficient to handle the new tasks. This is not to say that the new principles did not always exist, the Church just has not dug in yet and found them.

Order in everything we do is essential. The alternative is spontaneity, which means not having a plan. Order in for example ones finances (aka a budget) allows split second decisions to be made almost automatically: is it in the budget or is it not? Order with respect to worship and prayer are likewise important. In general planned order provides us with a way to not get drawn down in as many details, but worry about the "big picture" or the end goal and the larger steps that need to happen to get there. In prayer it is important because the alternative is filling the extra space with meaningless repetition (or worse, in the multitude of words, sin).

Psalm 119:131 "Look thou upon me and be merciful as you have done to those that love thy name." Prayer is a mercy: Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. We are NOT worthy, to come to God, to ask for anything, much less ask for mercy. Psalm 119:133 "Order my steps....in everything." Prayer is a Mercy of God.... Psalm 39:9 "I opened not my mouth: because thou didst it."

Reformation Hope Church

Jonah, being forced to go to Nineveh, preached to the Ninevites, who repented. Outwardly, this appears to be a good work, but from reading Jonah 3 and 4, it is clear that Jonah, did not do it willingly. In fact, he did not go the next step and condemned the Ninevites, a people who, “cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand” (Jonah 4:11), without the proper teaching that they needed to build. This begs the question, how do we judge “good” works?

God is long-suffering, but he does not clear the guilty; instead his long-suffering is a call to repent and restore what was destroyed by sin. If no repentance appears, eventually the long-suffering will end. the question then becomes, how lung is "long?" First of all, don't find out he hard way, by waiting till it ends. But the barometer which you can use to measure his remaining long-suffering is by measuring the means of Grace available. In the end God will not come to us directly and tell us to repent, he will do so through intermediates, such as the prophets of the Old Testament. If there are no such means of grace, it means He has stopped giving us a change to repent, and is getting ready for Judgment.

God often curses the progeny of those who sin. Gehazi's entire line was cursed with leprosy because of his theft, Eli's entire line was cursed to die young, and this isn't even mentioning Adam's line that fell in his sin. The flip side is also true: the faithfulness of Ruth and Boaz led to a long line of faithful men, including Jesse, David, and eventually Jesus. He even says as much "for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." The thousandth generation of those that love Him will still see some mercy as a result of their fore-fathers. The good (or bad) works we do today, will have lasting effects into our children's futures.

God tries the Righteous (Psalm 11: 5), but not for His own benefit. It is for the Righteous so that they can see their faults that otherwise they would have avoided noticing. One of the trials that God puts in front of is building His Kingdom before our own.

Reformation Hope Church

Reformation Hope Church

Often we are tempted to believe that those that were once Christian lost their Salvation. Whole sects of Christianity believe this is possible. In reality, there are two types of faith, both of which are good, but only one of, which is saving. Abraham, who communed with Melchizedek and became a prince in the Earth, did not have Salvation until later (as we know from Paul's commentary, in the New Testament), although he obviously had some kind of Faith. We need to go from Preparatory Faith to Effectual Faith.

The Christian Faith is not a "leap in the dark." We are supposed to "try the spirits whether they are of God." This means that we are to trust that the 10 plagues visited Egypt, but we also are to do the archaeology necessary to find those 10 plagues in the ruins. This will lead us to such things as the Ipuwer Papyrus and other tokens of God's presence in history.

Reformation Hope Church

Reformation Hope Church

Ecclesiastes 4 and 5 show us a nation, people, city or region left to itself in the vanity of sin and corruption will ALWAYS move on to oppression. Both chapters highlight the horrid results of oppression. However, in the midst of these two chapters, there is a pause. Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 highlights the only real solution that breaks the mold of sin- oppression- corruption: and that solution is the house of God, the Congregation of the Lord. God's people are warned in Ecclesiastes 5 to "guard their steps when they enter the house of God." The Hebrew word for guard is shamar. Just as Adam was to guard the Garden and failed, so God's people are the ONLY solution to the corruption to oppression of the world. As you will see in this message, "guard your steps as you enter the house of God" calls for a peculiar stewardship and responsibility for the Christian. The passages warns us that for failure to "guard our steps" the loss can be severe, because of the angels. The angelic host is God's police force. They are

Sin is a deadly enemy, with which we are told to not play "so that grace might abound". But it is also used as a tool in God's arsenal for our personal growth as well as what He will use as the downfall of the wicked. "All thing work together for good," implies God's handy-work in it all. We need to struggle with sin and from that struggle learn about the world and how to overcome it.

Individually and corporately Christians tend to be perfectly fine with sin. We manage to do mental gymnastics to figure out how to justify it. the end goal in all of this is to convince ourselves that God is okay with what we are doing. Unfortunately, in doing so we often completely ignore the consequences that God puts forth as the due reward of our sin, but in the end the Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain (as we do when we call ourselves Christian).

John Calvin not only was a preacher in Geneva. His love was far reaching enough that he was highly involved in its government. Negotiating border disputes, reforming their judicial system, and sitting on committees day in and out were only some of his contributions. He believed that he needed to help clean up the rotten society that was a product of the Middle Ages. The Church is called to help clean up society, not only by preaching, but by its other actions.