CREC Reformed 2- Glory to God Sermon Notes

CREC Reformed 2- Glory to God

Sermon Notes

Listen

Ephesians 1:1-23

11/26/2017

Lynchburg, Virginia

EXHORDIUM

We are Reformed Christians. I have mentioned in previous sermons where that heritage arises. Some have called us Calvinists. We are Calvinists, in the sense that we have embraced the system of theology espoused by John Calvin, most notably in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. However, Calvinism, as understood on modern terms, generally refers to the Five Points of Calvinism.

We embrace those five points but we insist that Reformed theology and practice is much broader than this designation. That is why I started this series of sermons discussing God’s Covenant with man in an attempt to understand the overarching covenantal theme of the Bible.

Confess Forgetting

Our Father, one of our chief sins is forgetting. We confess our failure to always remember Your great grace and mercy and Your faithful provision for our every need. Make us a people of gratitude who daily remember Your manifold blessings and who trust You to provide for us this day and in the future. Amen.

In Everything Give Thanks

Our central Christian virtue is gratitude. Without God we are without hope in the world. We were born in sin and confirmed in sin , and by nature objects of wrath. But God, in His kindness and mercy, and His love in which He loved us while we were yet sinners, reached out to us to draw us to Himself. He did this out of His own mere good pleasure.

         The only response to such kindness is gratitude. And that sort of gratitude should repeat itself often in our lives with one another. As we look around at our blessings, we understand that things could have turned out very differently. Even if your life is difficult and a struggle, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse. And that is a reason to be thankful. And that thankfulness keeps us from stewing in our own bitterness, towards God and towards others.

         Cultivate gratitude and a host of evil shall not prevail against it. For the truly grateful are abundant in the Kingdom of God.

Praise

Our Great and Mighty God, we praise Your Holy Name. You have always sustained Your Church through the ages and will do so until the very end of the age. We praise You on this 500^th year of the outpouring of Your Spirit in the Reformation. We praise You for returning Your Church to the sufficiency and infallibilty of Scripture, to the primacy of preaching, to the proper administration of the sacraments, and to the universal claims of the one true and holy universal church, of which all Your saints through the ages are members. You are ever faithful. Grant us eyes to see this truth in the pages of history and the faith to see it in the years to come. We pray that You would glorify Yourself by using us to advance Your kingdom to the ends of the earth, for Christ’s glory. Amen.