Redeemer Church of Waterford

On the Sixth Anniversary of the first service of Redeemer Church, Pastor Paul Edwards reminds us of the foundational standards which give stability to our life together as a church family.

We consider the Necessity of Regeneration and the Nature of Regeneration: God is the creative agent in our regeneration and the instrument he uses is always the Word of God, which produces a change in the governing disposition of our soul and a desire for and an understanding of spiritual realities.

The Apostle Paul mixes his metaphors, using one from agriculture and one from architecture, to make the point that our stability in Christian fellowship is dependent upon the depth of our love for Christ and one another.

God's eternal plan for the redemption of His people involves the activity of the Holy Trinity: God the Father devises salvation's plan; God the Son executes and accomplishes salvation's plan; and God the Holy Spirit applies, or makes effectual, salvation's plan. Regeneration is the very first step in God's saving of sinners. Why is regeneration necessary? What is the agent and the instrument used...

This love which Paul prays his people at Ephesus might be rooted and grounded in love is distinct from God's love for us or Christ's love for us. And while it has the characteristics of the virtue of natural human love, it differs significantly in that it is not sentimental, it is supernatural, it is sacrificial, it is symptomatic, and it is stable and strong.

The love which Paul desires to see in the relationships of the members of the church of Ephesus, and for which he petitions His heavenly Father, is not sentimental; it is supernatural, it is sacrificial, and it has some very specific symptoms which he identifies throughout his letter to these Ephesians. Do we have the symptoms of this love?

We apologize for the quality of this recording. The Apostle Paul prays that his people might come to comprehend and to know the love of Christ which "passes knowledge" in four dimensions: breadth, length, depth, and height.

The priority of Paul's prayer for the Ephesians is not their material needs, but rather that they might be "strengthened with might by God's Spirit in the inner man." What is "the inner man" and what are the means which the Spirit of God uses to strengthen it?

This is the second of Paul's Pastoral Prayers in his letter to the Ephesians (the first being Ephesians 1:15-23). Both prayers reflect the passion of every true pastor's heart: that the people whom God has given him to shepherd might have enlightened eyes to see all of what is theirs in the unsearchable riches of Christ.

God's eternal purpose is to redeem a people for Himself whom He has promised to the Son as an inheritance of nations who for all eternity will be to the praise of His glory. God's eternal purpose takes place in two spheres: in the eternal counsel of the Holy Trinity (Ephesians 1:11) wherein God chose a people to the praise of His glory for eternity ("before the foundation of the world - 1:4; and "...

You and I were saved to be a part of a community, a fellowship. The Apostle Paul calls this community, "The Fellowship of the Mystery" in Ephesians 3:9. In the context around Ephesians 3:9, the Apostle Paul discloses four agents that participate together in placing unregenerate sinners into the fellowship of the mystery: by the Spirit (v. 5), by the Gospel (vv. 7-9), by the Church (vv. 10-11), and...

God never intended for you and me to live the Christian life alone and isolation from others in the church. In Ephesians 3:6, Paul gives the identifying characteristics of those who belong to the Fellowship of the Mystery: "fellowheirs, of the same body, partakers of God's promises in Christ by the gospel."

In today's text, Paul is confronting the ethnic divisions between Jew and Gentile by revealing the means by which both Jew and Gentile move from "outside of Christ" to being "in Christ" at the initiative of God and by the operative effect of God's word in the dead hearts of sinners. He "time stamps" believers by describing what we were before Christ and what we are now in Christ.

In Ephesians, Paul uses several metaphors to describe the believer's relationship to the church: a kingdom, a family, a body, and a building.

We apologize for the distortion of the audio on this recording. The Apostle Paul says that our participation at the Lord's Table proclaims the gospel leading to reflection and repentance in anticipation of our reunion with the Lord at His return. But why do we eat bread and drink wine? What is the significance of these specific elements In John 6, Jesus says the bread is His flesh and the wine is...

Psalm 80 is a lament under the dark providences of God and appeal to God's character to shine forth in the darkness of His providence. How does God reveal Himself to us when our prayers go unanswered and our spirits are weighed down by God's absence?

Only those believers who persevere and endure to the end will be finally saved. The paradox in our perseverance is that God keeps us from falling but we keep ourselves in the love of God. Keeping ourselves requires discipline and effort on our part by the enabling of God through His grace. What does this discipline and effort look like in practical terms?

Only 8% of Americans say they have had a spiritual conversation in the last year. 74% of Christians say that they have had less than 10 spiritual conversations in the last year. The research is telling: believers in Jesus aren't talking about Jesus, God, or the Bible, either among themselves or with their unbelieving neighbors. Psalm 107 offers practical steps to talking spiritually with others.

The Bible views the life of the believer as characterized by both suffering and glory. The extreme of suffering is death and the extreme of glory is the resurrection from death. What is the biblical view of death? How are we to think about our own deaths?

How are we to treat the body after the soul is departed? The church's approach to death, the funeral service, and the treatment of the remains has been more and more shaped by pagan cultural influences than by Scripture. While the Bible does not prohibit cremation, the language of the Bible most certainly moves in the direction of burial of the dead rather than the burning of the dead.

How does God respond to the defiance of His people as they rebel against Moses and Aaron in tempting God to provide bread for them in the wilderness?

The children of Israel learn, as must we, that it is in the most difficult of circumstances from which God provides us with the exceeding riches of His grace in the unlikeliest of places.

David continues to recount the early history of the people of Israel focusing on the providence of God in uprooting Jacob and his family and relocating them to Egypt. How do we respond to the disruptions in our lives?

Most often, the paths of our lives include curves and detours we did not see coming. Some of those detours may even cause us to question God's care for us. In Psalm 105:16-22 we learn that the path to usefulness and glory for Joseph led him through the pit, the slave market, and the prison, yet in the background, God is present, fulfilling His covenant promises.

All that God is for us, He is for us in His covenant. To say it differently: all that God is for us, He is for us in Christ because all of the promises of God in Christ are "Yes" and "Amen," Our assurance is not based on our circumstances. Our assurance is based on God's promise to us that He will fulfill all of His word to us through Jesus Christ.