In the beginning there was God and nothing else. God has, from the beginning, been three persons but one God; a great mystery to us but no mystery to God. God created the heavens and the earth and created humanity and all that we experience and know. God chose to be in relationship with humanity and set the parameters of that relationship. These parameters are revealed in the Scriptures which we call "the Bible".

 

In the Garden Story we learn that humanity rejected God’s parameters for an open free and healthy relationship with God and so sin entered the world. In doing so we rejected God’s place as our Lord. From that point forward humanity has been in some degree of rebellion against God and God has responded throughout the ages in love and justice which includes God’s wrath. God is a just God and our injustice has demanded a response.  This history is recorded accurately and infallibly in the Holy Scriptures; the God breathed Word, given to humans through the power of God through the work of human hands.

 

These Scriptures are the sole rule for life and faith. They reveal to us the work of God the Father to maintain relationship with humanity. The Father's sovereign reign has been subverted by our sins but His work to restore relationship with us is perfected in the coming of the person Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, and the Messiah. Jesus lived among us as both fully human and fully God simultaneously. The life, death, and resurrection from the dead of Jesus are all part of a process that gives humanity new life. The Church calls this “salvation” it is the act of God to once again make relationship available to us by forgiving our sins or “covering” them by the blood of the Lamb.  At the same time, through Christ, justice is fulfilled the wrath of God is turned away.  The Church calls the work of gaining forgiveness of sins "atonement" and this is accomplished because Jesus is the perfect Lamb of God.  Jesus the only begotten son of God has also worked to see that we are adopted into the family of God as children.

 

The salvation, that only comes through Jesus Christ, creates a family of God on earth. This family is called the Church. It is called into being by God alone. It exists everywhere Jesus is proclaimed “Lord” through the reading and preaching of the Bible; the true Church exists where the sacraments (Baptism and Communion) are rightly performed; it exists where holiness is displayed in the life of the family of God through discipline and sanctification.  That family is simultaneously the beginning of God's Kingdom on Earth which he will return to rule fully at the end of days.

 

In our times there are great moral confusions. Only the Bible supplies our source of understanding the solutions to these problems. The Bible is rightly interpreted by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings life to the Scriptures so that they glorify Christ, and reveal God but the Holy Spirit is not the same spirit that teaches us to alter the plain meaning of the Scriptures; that spirit is the spirit of this world. It is the Enemy, the deceiver; it is the spirit of the Devil and should be confronted for that spirit destroys relationship with God and attempts to destroy the unity of God's family.

 

The family of God – the Church - looks forward to the day Jesus returns to earth as the glorified Lord, the Church works in the meantime to give example of the Kingdom of God on Earth now. The Church is not a human institution; although human institutions called “denominations” exist to promote the mission of the Church, only God knows the true Church.  I believe that the true Church of God is present and working in the world for the glory of God and we pray that the Church will spread the Good News of God’s desire for relationship throughout the earth. Amen.