First Presbyterian Church Of Baton Rouge

The moment we turn to him, he turns to us. We don’t need to be ignorant of this. He is the God of second chances. The Lord is gracious, slow to anger, full of steadfast love and mercy. Here’s news beyond hope for those blindly groping for God. Not only is he real, but he is also your heavenly Father who loves you and wants to restore you, forgive you and fill you with his eternal life. Believe him.  

Jesus would bring a salvation beyond Jonah’s imagining. Jonah got rescued by a fish. The Son of God came and went three days and nights not only into the belly of a beast but into death and hell itself. Three days and nights he left this world. Then returned victorious to save the whole cosmos. Jonah spoke beyond his life to the truth of this story: salvation belongs to the LORD! What we most need belongs to God alone. But he freely shares with those who turn to him with their whole hearts. 

The invitations are still out. It is not too late. When the king enters the hall, how will he find us? The classic hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock,” contains the lines, “O may I then be found, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” Christ Jesus has a graceful robe of rightness and wholeness and peace to give us. He wants us at the feast. So for heaven’s sake, put your clothes on!

We celebrate today how a mother’s love is faithful, often hidden, persistent and ever hopeful. Good mothers reflect to all of us these qualities in our Lord. Our God seeking the lost coin of our humanity, got down on hands and knees to come find us. He laid aside his glory and took up the confines of flesh. He offered himself utterly, even to the last drop of blood on the cross.

We turn to the Word first and always on ourselves. Then, and only, then, out of our brokenness, out of the mercy we have received, out of our gratitude to God, do we dare to speak to others as God leads. In this way, we live within this text, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

Psalm 110 directs us to a mighty king who brings peace, a priest who offers bread and wine and blessing. He already exists and yet is coming. He will share rule with the I AM himself. Remind you of anyone? This swirls our minds. But we need to realize the depth of the person of Jesus. To know him rightly, we need to see how Jesus alone pulls all the threads of Scripture together. He is our savior. He is our Lord. He is also our priest who offered the perfect sacrifice to God: himself on the cross. He also continues in the role of priest, connecting God and humanity.

Sin isn’t a spiritual parking ticket, or a little too much dessert after a nice meal. Sin is adultery. It is a betrayal of our love, and a profoundly hurtful act. It’s saying we can be engaged to two fiancés at once, that the bloodshed, the life given up on our behalf is a laughable, somewhat provincial gift, and we’re trading it for the latest trending fashion to come across our phone. I’ve seen it happen to friends, parishioners, and fellow pastors. It seems so exciting and exotic for a moment, maybe awhile. But it leads to a “mouthful of gravel.”

These terrible pains, these days of falling into dark wells, get used by our gracious Father to create resurrection hope in us. They are not punishments. Our Father does not delight in them with some perverse pleasure in our suffering. But he has provided a way that they need not destroy us. In fact, our broken hearts can open a path to becoming compassionate people. Uniting what has been done to us to the cross of Jesus, we can find freedom so fresh it feels like resurrection. He makes us new, drawing us up from all the thousand ways of death. He restores us from the pit.

Jesus is the cornerstone on which our new lives can be built. Jesus is also the rock of truth against which we can wreck our lives. This is true if you’ve never been a Christian, someone joined to Christ. You can continue on your own, and never solve guilt, never solve loneliness, never solve death. Or, you can cry out to Jesus, “Lord, save! Hosanna” and discover that he answers all those questions. This is true if you’ve been a Christian forever, but you’re holding back parts of your life. Thats exhausting and futile. Peace lies just the other side of crying out, “Lord, save. Hosanna!”

Jesus understands fully our experiences of betrayals great and small. He knows the pain more deeply than anyone has ever felt. We can draw on the times we have been betrayed to connect to Jesus. To tell him we know a bit about what he was feeling. We can sorrow with him. We can tell him we would like to stay with him when others desert him. We share a bond of emotions with Jesus in his betrayal. But we don’t only use that bond for our comfort. We use it to offer Jesus devotion. To offer him love. To yearn to give him some care, some relief, some hope.

Jesus zeal for his Father led him to enter the city and bear the reproach of disappointing all those awaiting a military messiah. He who loved the Father with all his being would be slandered as a God-hater and a blasphemer. Jesus’ passion for his Father would lead him to take a heap of shame on his Father’s behalf.

The gospels recount historical events in Jesus’ life. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not mere reports. Something else happens when we read that record in reliance on the Holy Spirit. These events from two thousand years ago become charged with present power. We meet the Jesus who lived then right now. These stories have immediate potency.

God designed our souls for Jesus. Not just a divine Father, and not just a human friend, but God himself in human flesh. God himself, in the person of his Son, becoming one of us — God with us, as fully God and fully man, in one spectacular person.#beautyofchrist #firstpresbyterianbr #sermon #revelation #lambofgod #lionofjudah

Do freely more than is asked because you do it for Jesus. Serve the ones who demand, assign and expect. Do the work with joy knowing that only Jesus is the boss of you. He asks that you serve as a gift to him. With a good will and a great joy, do whatever you are asked and more. It all counts. It’s all for him. That’s the secret. Serving Jesus makes you free in every situation.