About this sermon
Isaiah 52 announces the good news of the God who reigns and redeems his people. In Acts 10 God taught Peter that he shows no partiality, and Peter preached to Cornelius’s household that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name. The gospel Peter preached guards against reducing Christ to a moral example, against making baptism a condition of forgiveness, and against the idea that God accepts sinners without repentance.
Sermon transcript
Isaiah chapter 52 verses 1 through 12, a text of immense importance for the preaching of the gospel in the New Testament. And then from the New Testament, the actual preaching of the gospel is told in Acts chapter 10, the entire chapter. First then Isaiah 52, 1 through 12.
Here then, the word of God through the prophet. Awake! Awake, O Zion! Clothe yourselves with strength. Put on your garments of splendor, O Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again. Shake off your dust. Rise up. Sit enthroned, O Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.
For this is what the Lord says, You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed. For this is what the Sovereign Lord says. At first my people went down to Egypt to live. Lately Assyria has oppressed them. And now what do I have here, declares the Lord? For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock, declares the Lord. And all day long my name is constantly blasphemed. Therefore my people will know my name. Therefore, in that day, they will know that it is I who foretold it.
Yes, it is I. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, your God reigns. Listen, you watchmen. Lift up your voices. Together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns this iron, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
Depart. Go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Come out from it and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord’s temple. But you will not leave in haste or go in flight, for the Lord will go before you. The God of Israel will be your rear guard.”
So far the reading of God’s word from the Old Testament. And now the reading from the New, Acts chapter 10, one of the most delightful stories, I think, in all the New Testament, the story of Cornelius, an Italian, an Italian coming to faith in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel. Let’s hear then the word of the Lord.
At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing. He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius. Cornelius stared at him in fear. What is it, sir? He asked. The angel answered, your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a remembrance before God.
Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner whose house is by the sea. Then the angel who had spoken to him had gone. Cornelius called two of his servants and one of his soldiers who was a devout man. He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.
About noon the following day, as they were approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened, and something like a large sheep being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all sorts of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air.
And then a voice told him, Get up, Peter. Kill and eat. Surely not, Lord, Peter replied. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean. Surely he would have used the word kosher, not kosher. In that reply, verse 15 now, the voice spoke to him a second time, Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times. And immediately the sheep was taken back to heaven.
While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate. They called out, asking if Simon, who was known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the spirit said to him, Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them. Peter went down and said to the men, I’m the one you’re looking for.
Why have you come? The men replied, we’ve come from Cornelius the Centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man who’s respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.
Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests. The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the brothers came from Joppa and went along. The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. But Peter made him get up. Stand up, he said. I am only a man myself. And talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people.
He said to them, you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or to visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me? Cordelius answered.
Four days ago, I was in my house praying. Three in the afternoon, suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me and said, Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. Send to Joppa for Simon, who was called Peter. He is a guest in the house of Simon the Tanner, who lives by the sea. So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen. to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” Then Peter began to speak.
I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from every nation who revere him and do what is right. This is the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what was happening throughout Judea beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him.
We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree. But God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen, by us, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God has appointed as judge of the living and of the dead.
All the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few more days.
So far the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God. Well, we’ve had this series, haven’t we, on how various persons in the New Testament preach the gospel. We focused first on how Jesus preaches the gospel. And we saw those blessed lines that were selected by Mark and by Matthew and by Luke as the first sentences of the preaching of Jesus in those three gospel books. In Mark 115, the time has come.
The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. What time? the time of the fulfillment of God’s kingdom, the time of the defeat of evil, the time of the victory of God. And so repent and believe the good news. In Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 4, verse 17, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent. In Luke chapter 4, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. The reading of Isaiah 61.
And so in these texts, we see how Jesus preaches the gospel and preaches still by the words of scripture and by those who he has appointed as the ordained, the duly ordained clergy in the church that he founded. And then we extended the story until we find how Peter preaches the gospel. And for today, I was in two minds as to whether to preach how Paul preached the gospel or how Peter preached the gospel. But I thought I would just continue with Peter because there’s such richness in our Book of Acts regarding such things.
And so the thesis is, as last week, we must receive the Christ. as he’s presented to us in the gospel, not the Jesus of our own imaginations, not the Jesus of skeptical academic reconstructions, and there are thousands of those out there, nor the Jesus of American neo-pagan pop, yeah, pardon me, I meant to say pop culture. All right, that word didn’t come out right.
Okay, pop culture, yeah, a Jesus that does not require repentance, But the real Jesus, the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, the supernatural Savior, the Son of God from heaven, who came to save us from our sins and to lead us into a life of holiness. That’s the way we receive this Jesus. The real Jesus. The Jesus as He is presented to us in the Gospel. How much our world wants to remake Jesus into its own image. And that idolatry is in our own hearts as well, a latent power that would distort and silence and remold the Jesus who comes to us in the scriptures. That’s a temptation we must fight all our life long as we seek to be the disciples of Jesus. And so our story in Acts 10 tells us how a surprising person has a vision Now, to us, it’s not much of a surprise that a Gentile receives the gospel.
I suspect that everyone in this room has majority Gentile ancestry. I do have a Jewish great-great-grandmother on my father’s side. Maybe that’s how I got that Hebrew gene that leads me to teach that language as my profession. I don’t know. But I suspect that majority Gentile is our heritage, and it’s no surprise to us that, yeah, even Italians can be Christians. Cornelius identified as Italian in our story. In 40 AD, or whatever year this was, this was actually an astonishment.
Because as we read in Isaiah 52, how does that line go? Well, go out from them, touch nothing, nothing unclean. Come out from them, my people, and be separate. And the them in that story is, yes, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the pagan powers that had conquered the place and had ruled it for so long, come out of them and be separate, and Jerusalem shall be holy and nothing unclean shall enter it again.
Now a narrow reading of that story in Isaiah 52 actually distorts the meaning because by the end of that blessed chapter, the gospel of holiness comes even to the pagan nations. And in the book of Isaiah, even Assyria and Babylon and Egypt get swept up in the saving plan of God, and the salvation of God demonstrated before the eyes of all the nations who are invited to join in by faith and repentance. The next chapter in Isaiah, which I did not read, chapter 53, is the great chapter of the atoning power, the cross projected with massive precision and wondrous power and astonishing grace. Yes, so that even the kings of the earth wake up to repentance and thus they are sprinkled into the holiness of God’s kingdom.
How many of the Jews of the first century who were in the church did not understand that? Apparently a vast number. Because in chapter 11, what do we read? Chapter 11 of the book of Acts. Peter, verse 2, chapter 11, goes back to Jerusalem, and certain believers in Jerusalem identified as circumcised persons, that is, they were good kosher Jews, what do they say? You went to the house of uncircumcised men and you ate with them!
How dare you! And Peter has to defend himself by telling the story of a heavenly vision and a heavenly command. and how he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. And that sheep coming down from the sky, filled with unclean animals, make them pigs and snakes and scorpions, who knows what all, rise Peter, kill and eat. I myself have enjoyed rattlesnake a time or two. All right. Peter had never eaten such things in all his life. But the point was not the animals. The point was the men.
A Roman soldier and two servants of an Italian commander in Caesarea. Caesarea Maritima, a city built by Herod the Great. The greatest artificial harbor in the ancient world, a lighthouse 350 feet into the sky, burning 24-7 with flame, fueled by olive oil. And that great city, the Roman capital of Judea, that’s where Pontius Pilate had had his headquarters. That’s where the Roman governors will imprison Paul later on in their story.
That’s where this centurion is one of the major military commanders. The word centurion, of course, Like our word century, it means the commander of 100 men. That number could be, of course, greater or lesser. Basically, he’s a captain, a senior officer. And from that peninsula called Italy, the commander of the Italian cohort, says our text, or the Italian regiment. And the unclean thing symbolized by those animals in the sheet is actually Cornelius and his servants. And what does the text say? What does the Lord say from heaven? Call no one unclean, whom God has rendered clean. And so he dares to invent, to invite these men into the Jewish house.
Did you see how they respected the Jewish customs? They didn’t go into the gate. They called from outside the gate, respecting the kosher sanctity of the Jewish dwelling. Is Peter, Simon called Peter, is he staying there? They’re not entering the gate, which would be the ordinary practice. They stand outside it, knowing their unclean status. And what does Peter do? He invites them in. to Simon the Tanner’s house as his guest.
That is astonishing. And then more astonishing the next day. Peter actually enters into Cornelius’s house and becomes the house guest in a Gentile’s house. This is astonishing. What happened to Isaiah 52? Touched nothing and clean. Come out, be separate. The wall of separation has been changed. Now it’s not Jew versus Gentile. That was, yes, true. Old Testament style. A barrier of kosher versus un-kosher. Clean versus unclean. Acceptable versus unacceptable. That was the barrier for a while. But God has now changed it. Changed it on the cross when that veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
And now all people are to be addressed by the gospel of Jesus, who is the Savior of all, and of this the prophets have spoken.” How does Peter say it? He says, all the prophets have spoken, that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Acts chapter 2, quoting from Joel. And here, within this sermon, verse 43, which is actually the theme text of the day, all the prophets testify about him, that is, about Jesus, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. That’s Peter’s summary of the message of the prophets. A single sentence. Now, can you summarize all the prophets in a single sentence? Well, probably not. But that’s a pretty good sentence.
All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. That everyone does not pertain only to Jews. It’s also Gentiles. So call no one unclean whom God has read to clean. And that means that there is no limit those whom the gospel will address. No social barrier. No barrier of conduct or behavior or color or nationality or language or skin, whatever it may be. No barrier to those who are addressed by the gospel. The gospel is offered to all. It’s offered on gospel terms, but it is offered to all. And that is a lesson that some of these brothers in Jerusalem did not yet know. You went to a Gentile’s house at even eight? How dare you? Well, no. He was obedient to the heavenly vision.
And the cross of Jesus Christ rendered all those kosher laws obsolete when it made the temple obsolete. And so in Peter’s preaching, what do we find? we find the story of Jesus, who is the Christ who is identified as Lord of all, verse 36. And we find that this good news of Christ is a good news of peace, peace with God, peace with one another, a good news of peace through Christ, who is Lord of all. And we find that this was foretold by Israel by the prophets. And we find the story of this Jesus told in the kind of summary form that was actually followed by the gospel writers.
We call it the synoptic outline. And maybe you’ve heard the term the synoptic gospels. Synopsis is the word that describes a plot line. Maybe when you go to the theater, you see a synopsis of the play printed inside the cover of the program. And so the plot line that we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is also here. And so scholars think this is the beginning of the synoptic outline. That is that the way Jesus preached it is the way the gospel writers wrote it. And what’s the synoptic outline? Baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan.
Itinerant ministry of preaching and healing and exorcisms. and then rejection by the leaders of the people, and by the people at large, crucifixion, resurrection, and appearances to the chosen witnesses. We have it in six great points, the life of Jesus summarized. Lo and behold, how is the gospel of Mark organized? Six great points. Matthew and Luke follow suit. And so this Jesus, doing good, healing, delivering people from the devil’s power, crucified, resurrected, witnessed, becomes, then, the turning point of all history, the focus of the gospel message, and the source of the command to believe in Him and receive from God this great gift of reconciliation, forgiveness of all your sins.
And this gospel, Peter says, To all. To all. Yes, even Italians. In 40 AD that was a surprise. Even Italians. And so, gospel preaching. How does Peter preach the gospel? Well, let me say it again this way. That we must receive Jesus as he is presented to us in this gospel.
Not the Christ of our own preferences, not the Christ of skeptical scholarly reconstructions and they abound, not the Christ of American neo-pagan, here’s the word pop culture, I said it right now, okay, pop culture that promises you an easy guilt-free ride to heaven and a life of comfort and luxury here in the world. Yeah, that’s what they say. By the way, that’s not the prophet Joel, that’s just the false prophet Joel Osteen. But the real Jesus, the supernatural Christ from heaven, the Son of God, the Savior, who comes to redeem us by life and by death and by resurrection, and in redeeming us, enters us into a life of holiness that the Bible calls repentance. Now, there are all kinds of ways in which people mistake the message. Let me talk about a few of them. I have four on my list, but I can’t do them all. All right, so error number one.
Notice verse 38. He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. All right, so Jesus is the one who does good. How many of you have heard that the message of Jesus is essentially, do good? Yeah, we hear that a lot. It of course is true that we are to do good. Peter says in one of his letters, okay, following in his steps. Are we following the steps of the master?
But there is a way in which that teaching becomes insidious. In fact, a distortion of the gospel. In the 1970s, my high school choir sang a once popular American poem. Oh, brother man, maybe you were made to memorize that back in 1960 something. I was. That poem is now somewhat perished in popular culture now, along with most other elegant things. But the poem goes like this.
Oh, brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother. Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there. To worship rightly is to love each other, each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example of him whose holy work was doing good. So shall the wide earth seem our Father’s temple, each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall, the stormy clangor of wild war music over the earth shall cease, love shall tread up the baleful fire of anger, and of its ashes plant the tree of peace. What’s the poem mean? Do good, and God’s kingdom will be consummated upon the earth, and we become the saviors by moral life.
Any chance of that being true, Ed, for you and me? No. Thank you. Now, you and I are worse than all the others in the congregation, obviously. We can’t do it. No, no, we’re all the same. This is a distortion of the gospel. Yes, Jesus went around doing good. His holy work was doing good. Follow with reference, that’s the great example of him whose holy work was doing good. Yes, yes, yes.
But in the work of that particular poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, one does not read of the great redemption Jesus wrought upon His cross when He atoned for sin and reconciled us to God, who indeed was wrathful. We get the moral Christ, the Master, who gets presented as if He’s the first Christian. We don’t get the saving Lord. And a great deal of American piety is only that.
The poem seems noble, but it is pernicious. Noble, for it rightly exhorts us to live virtuous lives as Christ lived in service to others. True, true, true. Necessary, but pernicious. for it omits the greatest deed of Christ, His atoning work in the cross. And the cross becomes simply the greatest moral example of self-sacrifice. Our deeds, even the holiness, can never consummate the kingdom of God.
And yet we hear this more and more. And a great deal of evangelical preaching is essentially legalistic holiness preached, maybe in lighter form. Tithe only 7%. Lord’s Day, oh yeah, forget that. Watch the Steelers. All right. A lighter form of moral holiness. But still it is moralism and not gospel. Second error, often based upon Peter’s preaching.
Here in the book of Acts, a line we heard last time. Repentantly baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you’ll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises to you and to your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. We Presbyterians love that pair of sentences. The promise to you and to your children.
But there is a hyper-literalism that some Christians focus upon. By hyper-literalism, I mean being more literal than the text wants you to be. Often the text is, well, let me give you an example of a rather interesting hyper-literalism. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Who said that? Jesus. You know, better to go to heaven with one eye than to go to hell with two. And of course, your eye didn’t cause you to sin. And Christians are not really commanded to pluck out their eyes. Rather, the eye is the symbol of whatever it is that is dearest to you that leads you to evil. Get rid of it. Eyes don’t cause you to sin. Get rid of the real thing that causes you to sin.
And yet there are occasional examples of Christians in history who plucked out their eye in a false obedience to that apparent command. What’s the hyper-literalism here? Repentance first, then baptism. Repent and be baptized every one of you. Baptists do like to preach that line. And of course for the crowd there in Jerusalem, a crowd of still unbelieving Jews, That is the order of things, repentance and baptism. But as we read the Book of Acts more keenly, we understand that a great percentage of the actual baptismal stories we have in the Book of Acts are household baptisms. In Cornelius’ story, we find that he’s invited his relatives. and his friends. And we should imagine, what, 50 people? 60? 100? I don’t know. But this fellow Cornelius was a rich man. He was from the equestrian class and had Roman citizenship, a man of wealth and power.
And this household was probably a villa. And this courtyard where they would have been meeting was probably a rather large, spacious space enclosed behind the walls of that open-air courtyard. And we’re talking about people there with kids, almost certainly.
And when we read the stories in the Book of Acts, we find that when we can identify individuals being baptized, most of the time it is that person and their household. Cornelius and his household. In Acts 10, Lydia and her household. Acts 16, the Philippian jailer who’s unnamed but his household. Acts 16, Crispus the synagogue ruler, no doubt a man of wealth and power, and his household. In 1 Corinthians 1, Stephanus and his household.
And where we can identify some of these individuals, we know they had no household, the Ethiopian eunuch. Okay, he’s traveling alone, but he’s also alone in other ways, too. And St. Paul, Acts chapter 9, baptized, but Paul, of course, that lifelong bachelor. We find, actually, there are eight stories of identifiable individuals of baptism, cast out Ethiopian eunuch and Saul of Tarsus, and we really have only Simon the sorcerer left, who’s there without knowledge of whether we’ve got a household or not. And all the other stories are household baptisms. There is very strong testimony then, very strong implication that children were routinely included in baptism in the New Testament.
And so the hyper-literalism of the reading of that line from Acts goes wrong and ends up denying the last part of the line, the promises to you. and to your children. That is a blessed promise. Even those 3,000 in Pentecost, we often forget that those 3,000 are on pilgrimage, a lot of them with their families. And that Pentecost was a family festival in Jerusalem. And so we should think about families and children in that first sermon by Peter. When we count only the unidentifiable individuals in those stories of baptism, 83% of the stories are household baptisms.
That’s a great encouragement to Presbyterians, eh? Against those Baptists. But there’s a second, more pernicious hyper-literalism about baptism also at work in some churches. And I was ensnared by this for a time when I was in high school in my first year of college. Here it is. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins. How does the hyper-literalism go?
Repentance first, yes, then baptism after repentance, and only when both conditions are fulfilled, then forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever heard that one? the churches of Christ, the Christian church. In the past, the disciples of Christ, though they’ve departed from that now. In that sad error, only those who are baptized as adult believers are considered actually forgiven, and recipients of the Holy Spirit, and everyone else, including the vast majority of Presbyterians, unless they’re repentant Baptists, are damned.
That’s preached here in Beaver County. Are you in Beaver County? What county are we in? Allegheny Oak Vespers in Allegheny County. All right. And that point of view was invented here in western Pennsylvania by Alexander Campbell in the second decade of the 19th century.
The mistake here is to mistake the sign for the thing signified to locate salvation in the sacrament, or they would call ordinance of the church, instead of inside the living Jesus who is available to us in and only in the gospel, a gospel that promises forgiveness to all who, what’s the verb? Believe. To all who believe. And so that sad era becomes a horrible legalism that cuts people off from the mercy of Jesus. and from receiving one another as valid Christians.
Third error, as my time is passing by here, third error, that God accepts sinners without repentance. I’ve got a former student, a fellow who’s now a candidate for ordination in a denomination I will not name, working in a church, in a ministry in Texas, And this fellow is engaged to another man and a candidate for ordination in his church. He ministers in a hospital, in a cancer ward, to the dying. And he believes that he can be, well, he would say, gay, without it being any mark against his Christian status or the possibility of ordination. Can we be Christians without seeking repentance from the things that violate the declared rule of God in Scripture? And this fellow is proud, boasts of his status as a gay candidate for ordination.
Now God certainly accepts all manner of people. There is no limit of skin, or race, or nationality, or language, or social status, or wealth, or power, or poverty, whatever it may be. God accepts all sorts of people, all people, with repentance. But what is destroying a great many churches in this country, a great many denominations, is the refusal to preach the Bible’s message of repentance. And yet what does Jesus say in his first words? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repentance is defined by God, not by the inclinations of your heart.
And so we have the duty of getting the message right. We preach not the Christ of our own imaginations, Not the Christ of scholarly reconstructions that abound. Not the Christ of American pop culture that wants us to simply slide through life comfortably and without any guilt until death takes us to, well, that nice pie in the sky.
We preach the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of Scripture, who tells us to repent and to believe the good news. And we see that all the prophets spoke of him and their message, that everyone who calls upon him shall be saved. That everyone who believes receives forgiveness of sins.
And so, yes, John 3.16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. One of the greatest glories of the Gospel is that it does not leave us as we have been. It transforms us. into something closer to what He is. As the New Testament tells us, everyone who has this hope purifies himself as he also is pure.
Lord Jesus Christ, we worship and adore you, the true and living Savior, crucified for us, resurrected on the third day, ascended to heaven from whence you live and reign over all of heaven and earth, and from whence you will come again in great glory to judge the living and the dead. We thank you, Lord Jesus. that in this faith that you have granted us, you grant us a confidence that on that last and great day we need not fear, but we welcome you with joy because our salvation will at last be complete. So bless us then in this day and hour. Help us as we live this gospel to trust you supremely. to persevere in that blessed faith, and to share this way of life, this message, this gospel, in the way that you yourself preached it, in the way that your apostles themselves preached it, to declare the true and living Christ. And that reconciliation with the Father is only possible through faith in the name of Jesus Christ.
Hear our prayer, Lord. We pray it with deep gratitude. And in your holy name, Lord Jesus, amen. St. Paul says, if the trumpet sounds an uncertain note, hope, prepare for battle. That’s his metaphor of Christian preaching. Not the uncertain note, but the clear and compelling note of the trumpet sounding for war. Hymn number 392, blow ye the trumpet blow. Shall we stand? O ye, that trumpet blow, Let every solemn sound, Let all the nations know, To the three waters bound.
The year of Jubilee is come, Return, you ransomed sinners, Return, you ransomed sinners, His arms are raised by the east, and for the time is made, He will His Spirit send, in whom all souls be blest. The year of Jubilee is come, return ye ransomed sinners home. Return ye ransomed sinners home.
Explore the land of the Lord, the sacrificial land. Redemption through His power, throughout the world away. The year of tribulation is near. ♪ So sing a song of victory ♪ ♪ And sing a song of victory ♪ ♪ Sing a song of victory ♪ ♪ Sing a song of victory ♪ Return he has considered for. He who has hoped for more, your heritage above Receive it back, O Lord, the gift of Jesus’ love The year of Jubilee is come, Return, you ransomed sinners, home. Return, you ransomed sinners, home.
Arise, Lord, come and heal The wounds of every race, And save I am. God extends His blessing toward all those who trust Him through His Son Jesus. Let’s then receive the rich blessing of the Lord. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father Almighty, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be yours in rich abundance today and always. Amen. Oh
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