Madison Reformed Church

1 Peter 3 makes a connection between Christ’s work of salvation and the flood of Noah. In fact, he gets even more specific. He says that Christian baptism has a correspondence to the flood and to Noah’s family being saved through the waters. In this passage we learn that even as God was wiping away the seed of the serpent in the flood, he was also preserving for himself a community of worshipers,...

Exod.19:7–9  Ps. 71:1–6  Lk 8:9–15  Heb. 4:14­–16  John Brown of Haddington was a Reformed pastor in 18th century Scotland, said that a minister who teaches on "faith" wrongly "tends to pervert the glorious gospel." But to grasp what faith is brings freedom to every Christian conscience, like balm on a wound. In this catechism message focusing on Lord's Day 7 of the Heidel...

Noah was a “herald of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5 ) and his ark-building was not just an act of obedience, but a message of condemnation to the unbelieving world and  righteousness to those who believe (Hebrews 11:7). In this passage , we are given a grand picture of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who builds the kingdom of God as Noah built the ark, and proclaims a message both of warning and...

Deut. 30:1–6  Jer. 32:36–41  Matt. 5:17–20  Rom. 13:8–14  This series in Covenant Theology comes to a close by looking at three aspects of living in God‘s covenant: how the covenants equip us to read our Bibles wisely, to clarify our daily obedience, and to take in the great love of God that he has for sinners.

This passage describes the generation before the flood that destroyed the earth. Listen to what the Lord Jesus says about this time period, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt. 24:37). What were those days like? Verse 5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil cont...

Pentecost 2024: in which we meditate together on what "keeping in step with the Spirit" is and is not . Imagine a dance routine in which one of the dancers can’t hear the beat, and so he’s out of step the whole time. In this passage, the Apostle Paul uses images like this to talk about how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of believers. Verse 16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit …” And ve...

Deut. 8:7–10  Isa. 65:17–25  Jn. 14:18–24  Rev. 21:1–8  Believers already enjoy the blessings of the New Covenant. But there is still much more to come in what theologians call the "consummation." In this message on Covenant Theology, we learn what Scripture teaches about the final state of God's people, place, and presence.

Gen. 12:1–3  Ezek. 37:24–28  Lk 22:14–23  Heb. 7:20–28  In New Covenant, God has brought about what he had promised all along, by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And the Holy Spirit takes the benefits of these things that Christ has done, and gives them to the believer. This sermon focuses on three ways in which the New Covenant is new and better than what has come before.

Genesis 5 jumps back in time all the way to Adam (v. 1) and then forward in time as it follows his godly descendants all the way to Noah (v. 28). In other words, ch. 5 tells us why there’s a remnant of godliness in an otherwise wicked world as the flood approaches in ch. 6ff. It is through Adam, through Seth, and through Enoch that God has preserved the faith and true worship. This otherwise obscu...

Psalm 24 is an Old Testament picture of the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. It teaches us that our ascent to the presence of God is only through Christ, the Man of clean hands and pure heart. In this homily to commemorate Ascension Day 2024, we meditate upon what it means to seek the face of Jesus, whose human nature is truly away from us in heaven.

Lev. 26:9–13  Jer. 31:31–37  Jn. 6:45–51  Heb. 8:1–13  In this message, we learn what the New Covenant looked like from the perspective of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The New Covenant is that unfolding of the grand Covenant of Grace in which we live in this age, since Christ has come and the Holy Spirit has been poured out from heaven. And in this covenant, the people are forgiven, the place is...

In this passage, there are two family lines leading to two cities: The city of man is where our earthly citizenship is and the city of God is the heavenly city. And believers must learn to live in both. How do we do that? This passage teaches us to us cling to this faithful God, not only as the way to become citizens of the city of God, but it also to spend our days in this earthly city of man off...

Deut. 17:18–20 1 Chron. 17:1–15 Lk. 1:26–33 Eph. 2:18–22  The Davidic Covenant is the agreement in which God promises an everlasting Kingdom to His righteous King. In this sermon, we apply that description to the three promises we’ve learned in past weeks: People , place , & God’s presence . It’s through this royal covenant that we begin to see that God’s central promise (“I will be your God a...

The story of Cain and Abel highlights the problem of ungodly rivalry  among God’s people. There are, of course, harmless rivalries, like between competing teams. But the rivalry that the Bible speaks of has to do with selfish ambition, and the desire to have or get more than others. In the Church, such rivalries are out of step. We are called, rather, to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper, and t...

What rings true to most people about Genesis 3 is the description of a painful and toilsome life. You can put so much thought and work into something, only for it to backfire. So that part of the story of Genesis 3 checks out immediately in our experience. But what about the rest of it? Today’s passage teaches us that even though we all live our lives in the wilderness outside of Eden, Christ make...

Exod. 24 Neh. 1:7–11 Jn 1:14–18 Heb. 9:18–26 The phrase “the old covenant” shows up in the NT in 2 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 8. It’s important to remember that the Old Covenant actually began at Mount Sinai. It’s an agreement between God and the Israelites, with Moses as the go-between, where God promised a people, place, and his presence if the people obeyed his commandments. This whole set-up sh...

Genesis 15 is one of the most important chapters in the whole Old Testament, but it’s not really in children’s storybook Bibles and many lifelong Christians hardly know about it. Why is that? It's an ancient Near Eastern covenant. But by looking into it, we see the glories of our redemption. In this message on the Abrahamic covenant, we learn that God's promise of a  people, a place, and...

In this passage, the curses that God pronounces against the serpent, woman, and Adam bring us back to the original callings he placed upon image-bearers. We are to be fruitful, but sin now twists this calling. Ecclesiastes calls the result “vanity, and a chasing after the wind.” Paul in Romans calls it “futility.” We try to work, and produce, and live—but the curse brings toil, pain, and eventuall...

This passage is in two parts: God confronts Adam and Eve (vv. 8–13) and God judges them and the serpent (vv. 14–19), but it’s all held together especially by the promise in v. 15: God’s original gospel promise. This passage teaches us that sin not only brings judgment, but leads us to think that we don’t deserve it. But brothers and sisters, Christ has been bruised for our sins. And when we recogn...

Gen. 8:20–9:17 Jer. 33:19–26 Matt. 5:43–48 1 Pet. 2:13–17 In this sermon in our series on the Biblical covenants, we turn to a different kind of covenant—not saving and redemptive, but common and applying to everyone. It was made just after the flood, and so it is sometimes called the Noahic Covenant, which is uninterrupted, universal, and useful to every part of common life.

 In Luke’s record of what happened on the Sunday morning of Jesus’ resurrection we learn the announcement of the resurrection "seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  In this Easter 2024 message, we find is that our Lord’s rising from the dead calls upon all believe to remember , believe , and marvel .

Gen. 3:14–15  2 Sam. 7:22–26  John 20:1–18  Rev. 21:1–4   In this message we turn to the third overarching biblical covenant, which is typically called the Covenant of Grace. This is one big covenant that develops over history through several smaller covenants. We learn the core promise that the seed of the women will crush the head of the serpent, that this promise develops over the course of the...

The "Get to Know MRC" gatherings are  Wednesdays meet-ups in March 2024 for people interested in the church, but who want to know more before getting into membership classes. WEEK 4 (final): The doctrine of worship Sacraments as "means of grace" and why we baptize the children of believers.

In this Good Friday message, we look at the reactions of two criminals being crucified on either side of Jesus—one hard-hearted, the other repentant. In the end, we find that being with Jesus is all it takes for scoundrels and sinners to make it into Paradise.

The "Get to Know MRC" gatherings are  Wednesdays meet-ups in March 2024 for people interested in the church, but who want to know more before getting into membership classes. WEEK 3: The doctrine of the Church: its institution, its attributes, its leaders Membership in the local church