You are invited to join us for a Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols Service on Thursday, December 24th. The service will begin at 5:00 p.m. and will take place at the church building. We’ll celebrate the incarnation of our Savior Jesus Christ by hearing several Scripture passages and singing Christmas hymns from our hymnal. I’ll also bring a devotional message on the…
Posts from 2020
When the angel of God appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him that Mary was pregnant with a son conceived by the Holy Spirit, he told him to name the boy Jesus, “… for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:22). What if the angel had left off the last three words and had only said to…
Of all the prophecies given to the people of Israel throughout the centuries, this one spoken by Isaiah to King Ahaz must have been among the most mysterious and wonderful: “… Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). The Scripture records no obvious fulfillment of these words in the days of King…
You are welcome to join us at Mt. Rose on Sundays for in-person worship and Sunday School. Our Sunday worship service begins at 10 a.m., and the adult Sunday School class starts at 11:45 a.m. Currently, Elder Adam Gustavson is teaching a class on Christ in all of Scripture, using the book Walking with Jesus through His Word by Dennis Johnson. We’ll…
Now that we’ve entered the Advent season, I’m taking a break from preaching through Isaiah in order to preach a series of sermons on the incarnation and birth of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew. Last Sunday we looked at the genealogy that introduces the account of the birth of Jesus. To anyone familiar with the stories of the Old Testament, one…
Chapter 27 of Isaiah opens with this striking verse: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1). In the ancient world Leviathan was a mythical sea creature, a terrifying monster who was a source…
At the beginning of chapter 26 of Isaiah, the prophet tells us the words of a song that will sung by the redeemed people of God on the day of their deliverance. And in the middle of the song, as though they are speaking to us today, the people sing: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you,…
The prophet Isaiah describes a sumptuous feast that the Lord will prepare for his people in the day of his salvation: On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. (Isaiah 25:6) It’s enough to make one’s mouth…
In my sermon last Sunday on Isaiah 12:1-6, I said that the prophet puts words in our mouths as he describes the praise of the redeemed people of God. As Christians, we are those who live “in that day” (v.1) of the reign of Jesus Christ. And we are those who have been saved by his grace. So Isaiah gives us a…
Our church family lost a dear friend and brother in Christ on Sunday, when Glen Strouse entered into his eternal rest. I regret that I was not able to get to know Glen better before he passed away. I met him in person only a few times and occasionally conversed with him on the phone. Since Glen lived in a nursing home…