Month: December 2025

The king is coming, the king has already come, yet He is coming again.

”You are understanding the position of the world, of My creation. I have come – as a helpless baby, born in the most menial environment, dying in shame and disgrace. Many have said and will say – is that really a king? Can that be the King? The time is coming soon when all doubt will be removed and I will appear in all My glory. Every important person, king, ruler, Pope, judge, whoever, will have vanished and my glory will fill the world instead. So be patient – enjoy the foretaste of My Kingly rule as you celebrate My first coming at this time.”

As Christmas rushes up on us, I have decided to look at the passage I am going to preach on on Christmas Day today. So please read Colossians 1:15-22. I will be focusing on the potential that was wrapped up in the little, helpless baby, born under the most menial conditions. I believe many people will be stuck on the baby part and miss the fact that this was only the beginning, a most inauspicious beginning.

There are 4 things I will be emphasizing.

1 He was and is God: vs 15 “He is the image of the invisible God. Vs 19, God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him.” When this truth first hit me it changed who I was. Jesus, not just a great and holy person, but actually God Himself, in human flesh.

2. He created all things and sustains all things. Note the repetition of all, 6 times. This means from the furthest galaxies, thousands of light years away down to the tiniest atom or particle present here on earth. (As an aside, are you aware that each tiny atom is a picture of the stellar system, a nucleus with particles rotating around it?) Notice also in vs 17 In Him all things hold together. He is holding the strings of the whole world together. Nothing is out of His control!

3. Twice He is called the Firstborn vss 15, 18 This doesn’t refer to some sort of birth, it refers to His position of authority. He has authority, firstly over all creation and secondly of the “body, the church.vs 18.” Our church does not have a Pope or bishop or head of Synod as its head. There is only one head and that is Jesus Himself. We are made part of that only because we have been born into it, not by choice of membership.

4. What did He come to do? He came with a specific purpose – “to reconcile all things to God, whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross” vs 20. He has dealt with our alienation and enmity to God and brought us into a relationship, based on His bodily death on the cross. Vv 21-22.

Friends, as you read this passage it should shine and sparkle like the most beautiful jewel and fill you with absolute wonder. What a God we serve. I do so pray that every person who will be at our service next Thursday will catch a bit of a glimpse of who this little baby really was and is and that it will transform their lives. Will you all pray that God will make His word come alive at that service. God bless, till next week.

I will trust in You alone and Your endless mercies will follow me and lead me home.

“That Is what I desire from you, complete trust. I have put Myself out there and demonstrated My power, wisdom, love and grace in so many ways, even sending My Son to the Earth so you could see and meet Me in the form of a person. Yet all the time My actions and emotions towards you have been unseen – operating in the heavenly realms – so it calls on you to trust – to trust in that which I have told you about in My word and to give yourself completely to Me, in love to serve and follow Me till you join Me in glory. Make the most use of this advent season to share your solid belief in Me with others who will benefit from it.”

We read the short but very important piece in Romans 3:27-31 today. The subject of the law comes up again. Now remember last week we were told that God has given us a righteousness through the work of Jesus on the cross. Vs 24 emphasised that this justification came freely by his grace. Surely then it is obvious that there is no other way to acquire God’s righteousness than to receive it as a gift by faith? So what is the problem?

The Jewish believers had, for centuries believed that they could attain righteousness by following the law. So the law was held up as the means to entry and citizenship of God’s kingdom. We know in retrospect that it is impossible to keep the law to the perfection that Jesus did. The Jewish believers that would receive the letter of Paul in Rome however would still feel that the law plays a vital role in making them righteous.

What is the problem with adding a bit of their ability to keep the law to making or keeping them righteous? The problem lies in the little word boasting. You see obtaining the righteousness God gives focuses on Him and Jesus completely. Any contribution they may have felt they had made by keeping the law makes Jesus work and God’s grace void. If they feel they are succeeding in adding to God’s righteousness by obeying the law it could lead to them boasting that their effort had supplemented His grace, effectively nullifying it. Paul uses the same argument in Ephesians 2:8,9: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God – not by works lest we should boast.

But what does this have to do with us, we are not Jews? Our culture is so steeped in God’s law that every one of us is aware of at least certain aspects of it. The older generation was very focused on keeping the law as a way of life. Unfortunately often missing the real point, like focussing on keeping the Sabbath, instead of building relationships based on love. The danger lies in a subtle mindset that says that keeping the law makes us more acceptable to God. If we manage to perform according to the standards we have set for ourselves in our own minds we are ready to pat ourselves on the back, if we fail we feel awful, a failure and condemned by God. It is so important to focus on God and the completely free gift He gives through faith and not to rely on our own performance at all.

Is it not important to keep the law then you may ask? Of course we need to keep God’s law especially as it is redefined by Jesus. But we do that as a response to God’s love and acceptance of us in Jesus, not to try and gain His approval and perhaps make our salvation more certain. The focus should always be on God and His Son Jesus, not ourselves and our ability to keep the law, lest we may boast. We either serve God completely or mammon.

God bless till next week as Christmas approaches expectantly.

Oh mighty Cross! His sacrifice on Calvary has made that mighty cross a tree of life for me.

”Life – life In its abundance – true life is what I chose to bring to a world dying in its own squalor of sin. Against that dark background I raised a cross – a cross on which hung my beloved Son, His blood streaming down as He took the burden of the world’s sin upon Himself. That cross had and still has the power to bring life, true life to everyone who would look up at it and call out to Me. My promise is confirmed by the sight of an empty tomb 3 days later. In the same way I will give eternal life to everyone who believes. In the meantime there is abundant life in Me here on Earth as you wait and hope for eternity.”

Today’s passage – Roman’s 3:21 -26, is perhaps the clearest description of what Christ did on the cross in the whole of Scripture.

Let us take a step back to 1:17, the great statement of the gospel by Paul at the beginning of his discussion. It is all about righteousness. (For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.) For two and a half chapters Paul has shown how every person on earth is unrighteous. So the question is, “How do we become righteous”? Paul’s sneak preview in 1:17 is that there is a righteousness from God which has been revealed. We now come back to that statement in 3:21.

That righteousness is apart from the law and has now been made known V 21. Secondly it is from God Himself but comes to us through faith in Jesus to all who believe v 22. Remember 1:17; the righteousness that is promised is by faith from first to last.

Then Paul reiterates the universal need “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. But now they have been justified. (The word for justified is the same as righteous, in other words to be justified is simply to be made righteous) v 23. This comes as a free gift by God’s grace v 24.

It is so important to grasp the concept of God’s grace at this point. Nothing we have done or can do affects how God applies His work to us – it is truly free depending on His huge attitude of love towards all of us. Our part is simply to believe and receive.

Now the key verses: (24,25) we are made righteous by an act of redemption (this is a transactional statement that Jesus has bought our freedom through His death) which came as a result of God’s act of presenting Jesus as a sacrifice on the altar of the cross. Now the NIV uses the word “atonement” which does not carry the full power of the Greek word which means “propitiation”. Propitiation is powerful word describing a turning away of the wrath of God from us onto Jesus. V 25.

Now comes the great revelation. The next vv show how God has always had this method in mind in dealing with those who had faith in Him in the past. There is only one way to receive God’s righteousness and those who died before Jesus’ life and death on earth were also all forgiven in anticipation of Jesus’ death in the future. He has always been just and this is the only way of giving His righteousness to any human being. This goes a long way to explaining what happened to all the saints in the Old Testament.

Now notice, this righteousness is imputed to us. In other words it is placed as a description of our state in the eyes of God. It is not necessarily a description of how we will live our lives from that moment on. The aim of God is that we start learning to live righteous lives from then on and the rest of Roman’s is going to help us understand what that means.

We can only marvel. Our plight is as black as the night until the morning sun rises with Jesus to bring our redemption and not only freedom and forgiveness, but full membership of God’s family, adopted as sons and daughters for all eternity. Wow!

God bless you all as you enjoy this advent season in anticipation of Christmas day.