Willetton Christian Church

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The covenants God makes with his people (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus) help us make sense of the storyline of the Bible as a whole. God makes special promises to be our God, and we, God’s people, his people commit ourselves to the conditions of the covenant: to live as God’s people. But how do we hold on to God’s promises when we don’t see any evidence that God is going to fulfil what he’s promised? And if we know in advance that we’re going to fail to live up to the conditions (we’re sinful), how can we have hope that we’ll receive what’s promised? This morning, we focus our attention on God’s covenant with Abraham as we discover exactly how it is we can trust God’s promises when questions arise in our minds if God will do what he’s said. More than that, in a very strange and unusual ceremony in Genesis 15, we discover we can have every confidence that God will fulfil his promises to us despite our inevitable failures.

Do we unknowingly treat God as a vending machine – that if we fulfil certain conditions and then God will be certain to give us some form of blessing? Do we think that if we only pray hard enough, serve long enough, be devoted enough, evangelise enough, that God should (maybe even be obligated to!) answer our prayers and requests to him? That was how the Israelites were treating God in the first half of 1 Samuel 4. They were in a battle against the Philistines (and it won’t be the last time). They were losing the battle and decided to bring the ark of the covenant to the battlefield, thinking that God will be with them this time. They lost and the ark was captured. Hophni and Phinehas were killed. This was God fulfilling his judgement mentioned in the previous chapter. When news of that devastating battle reached Eli, he collapsed and died. Then the wife of Phinehas gave birth to their son, in which she also died, she named their son “Ichabod”, meaning God’s glory has departed. The

Hannah’s prayer is surprising to many of us. Remember that she has struggled for many years on her lack of a son and being provoked about it by Peninnah. However, God answered her prayer by giving her a son, and so she responds to God in her prayer. However, in her prayer, it is remarkable that the focus is not on herself, nor the son that God gave her, nor even her own situation. It is a remarkably God-centred prayer from Hannah. She begins her prayer by rejoicing in God for his deliverance. Then she very quickly moves on to the different characteristics of her God – his holiness, sovereignty, grace, and justice. Hannah recognises that her experience with God is a small display of the kind of God she worships and prays to. This is what he is like – he brings life out of death, humbles the proud, exalts the humble, accomplishes his great salvation in the most unexpected way. This is exactly the pattern that we see with Christ – humbling the proud, exalting humble sinners, and acc

Many people today believe that there is a crisis of leadership in our world. The reality is that often leaders are not trusted by those they are called to lead. The image of biblical leadership is most often portrayed as shepherding leadership. It is the exercise of leadership that leads by example and leads in a sacrificial manner. The Apostle Peter writing to the elders of the church states, “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them…not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:1-3).

Much ink has been spilled over the topic of the Lord’s Supper during the Reformation than we think. Martin Luther, the German monk who started the Reformation, was famously willing to split the church over this issue. Just what it is about the Lord’s Supper that is so important? Isn’t it just mere “bread and wine”? There are two traps that we can fall into with regards to the Lord’s Supper – thinking that it is “magical” or a “mirage”. Some have thought it “magical” to the point where if we take the Lord’s Supper, we will receive God’s blessings and healing in our lives. Others merely think of the Lord’s Supper as a memory aid for us to remember Christ. The Lord’s Supper is important because it is ultimately about the Gospel message of Christ and how we take hold of God’s promises. Celebrating the Lord’s Supper has been done within the Christian church since its beginning. It has deep spiritual significance for us as a church when we celebrate it – it unifies us in Christ, helps us

The people of God has always been set apart from their surrounding nations. Ever since God gathered his people around him, he has called his people to be different, because he has rescued and redeemed them. The New Testament continues this pattern with Jesus Christ. We are gathered around Jesus, set apart for him because of the redemption that he purchased for us. The church is a people that God has rescued through Jesus Christ. We are saved into a people, therefore our faith has never been a merely private experience, but one that is lived together with others who are in Christ. Membership in the local church is a way of expressing that reality we have in Christ. We belong to the universal church – the people saved by Christ. This is expressed by belonging to the local church. We belong to our local church family, helping each other in our discipleship to Christ, under the leadership of the elders. We all help each other in our Christian discipline, so that we grow in our love and

We are starting our new sermon series this weekend on the Rhythms of Grace. Each Sunday as Christians, we gather at the church building. In that gathering, we have different elements of the service that we go through – we sing, we pray, we give, we serve, we listen to preaching, etc. Going through all that becomes a rhythm in our lives, like a constant beat for a piece of music. It keeps our Christian lives in sync and provides a pattern for the rest of our lives. However, if we do not re-examine why we do what we do weekly, we can become complacent or lose sight of the purpose of each element. We will be going through each element, starting this weekend with preaching. As we dig into what the Scriptures, we will find that sitting under the preaching of God’s word weekly is too important to give up. In fact, this rhythm or pattern has been going on for almost all of 2000 years of church history – there has to be a good reason for that.