Calvary: the Hill Sermons

We all want success, and we all define it differently. We also all want a full life. The problems arise when we equate the two. Jesus offers us a full life, and a success story that might look different than we expect. But it's a true life that is lived with him at the center.

God's great plan on earth is to build a Temple through his Spirit and bring everything under Jesus as head. Paul calls us here to participate in that work, knowing that what we do matters.

Paul exhorts us to walk in wisdom. Why does God care about us living wise lives? Because Jesus is king over all of life, and we should seek to glorify him will all that he has given us and every opportunity he has set before us.

Jesus referred to himself as the Light of the world. He also called his followers the light of the world, but how does that work? Paul calls us to live out our new nature in our new relationship with Jesus, extending his light into the darkness around us.

What does it look like to be a child of God? It means to walk in love, like Jesus did, and to no longer walk in other ways. To do so we need to understand our identity as God's children, be satisfied in his love, and know his truth.

What happens when we look at the Resurrection through the eyes of Doctor Luke? We get a better understanding of just how significant the Living Jesus is. God is doing something new in our world, and it changes everything.

Paul has laid out a paradigm for Christian change by putting off the old and putting on the new through the renewing of our mind. But what does that look like in life? Here, Paul gets concrete and shows us what the New life in Christ should look like, and the truths that lead us there.

The Christian walk involves both a crisis and a process. Because we have died and been raised with Christ we have new life, but we must continuously apply that new life in Christ by putting of the old, renewing our minds, and putting on the new.

We have seen that the church is to grow more like Christ, but how does that happen? By more and more becoming a community that speaks the truth in love to one another. It is the two together that grows a Christian, and the two together that grows a church.

There are certain gifts that Jesus has given that take priority in the church. This is not because they are more important, but because they are foundational. Evangelists, pastors and teachers exist to equip the body so that the whole body does the ministry and become a mature body of Christ.

God has made the church one, but we must constantly review what it is that makes us one church. Paul lists what defines the body and therefore what unifies it.

Paul begins his exhortation (based upon all the truths of his letter so far) with a call to social virtues that will sustain the new community God has formed in the church. We need to cultivate humility, gentleness and patience as a proper response to what God has done for us and what he has called us to.

Another reason we need the wilderness is because it is a place of repentance. Hosea gives us many reasons why we should repent, but at the heart of all of them is the loving God who awaits our return.

God himself is the original desert father. In the time of Israel's wilderness wandering he was at work. By learning what God does in the wilderness we can cultivate a desire to go into the wilderness ourselves knowing that God will be found there.

Paul's doxology here is central not just to Ephesians but to all of Christian life. For us to live the Christian life we must remember that it is a life of worship, dependence and relationship with Christ.

What is God doing in our lives and how does it work? We can reverse-engineer Paul's prayer and discover that we need God's help to understand God's love so that we can become more fully what we are; the temple of God.

The message of welcome is indeed surprising, but the surprise doesn’t stop it being admitted into the kingdom of God. It continues when God invites us to actually participate in a ministry welcome. He graciously give specific callings to be fulfilled through the church, by and for Christ.

The essence of the Christian message is an invitation. It is a free gift, a new identity, a twist in the plot, a windfall inheritance and a news-worthy happening. In short it is the gospel; the good news of our surprising welcome into relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Paul had been talking about what God has done; he brought us near and made us one. Now he turns to what God is doing, making a people into his temple built on the scriptures, focused on Jesus, preaching the gospel, empowered by the Spirit, to the glory of God.

The salvation brought to us in Jesus Christ is not just spiritual but social. In Jesus, true peace between divided and hostile communities is made because Jesus put the hostility to death. We are called in all our differences to be one new family in Christ.

Jesus was both the expected Messiah and the unexpected incarnation of God. At the moment of Jesus' birth, everything changed: God had become man and all would be well. Because Jesus came as God with us, we now can be with God forever.

Solomon, the son of David, ruled over a glorious kingdom. But it was temporary, and flawed. Like all the kingdoms of the earth is was a glorious contradiction. Jesus however was glorious in paradox, and is therefore worthy of being the King of Kings and Lord of Lords as the true son of David.

For a story we associate with Joseph, the narrator sure spends a lot of time on Judah. As it turns out, The author does this to push our gaze beyond Joseph to the one who would come who would be the greatest and truest example of God's providence and reconciliation.

Noah was prophesied to bring rest from the curse, but the real rest had to wait for the coming of Jesus. Although Noah was indeed a son of Adam, in him God only gave the world a new start. In Jesus, God is not only making a new world, but a new people.

How does the fact that we are saved by grace impact our daily life? Much and in every way! God has graciously given us a life of purpose and a story which He is writing for us to walk in every day.