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9/6/20 - Pentecost 14 - Joshua 4:1-9 - The Church will stand forever.

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The Season
After reliving the great events of the life of Christ, the worshipping Church spends half a year focusing on the teachings of Christ. The Spirit uses those teachings of Jesus to grow the faith of believers. The appointed lessons of the first five weeks teach us the characteristics of the Holy Ministry

The Sunday
The Church will stand forever. Nothing can keep our Redeemer from upholding his promised salvation. Neither false expectations nor the gates of hell, neither an Egyptian army nor a flowing river, not even the great tribulation of the end times will keep our God from preserving his Church.

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First Lesson - Joshua 4:1-9
Twelve rocks told the story God’s grace and preservation to generations of his people. Through the Word, they still speak to us today. As he once used his might to halt a river in its place to preserve his people, so today God still preserves and protects the new Israel, his Holy Church. Today, rocks still speak. Not stones in a river, but people like Peter, little rocks who proclaim the Rock on which we stand forever.



Second Lesson - Revelation 7:1-8
God doesn’t just hold back rivers, but he even holds back the winds of destruction until every one of his elect is safely sealed. Ezekiel 9 gives an interesting prophesy of such a seal. The believers are marked with the Hebrew letter Taw. It’s intriguing to think of the image that would have formed in the mind of the people of Israel. The Hebrew script at the time would have marked each forehead with † or + or X. Thus sealed with the seal of the living God, the whole Church is preserved forever (122 x 1 3 = 144,000. The number of the Church is 12; the number of completeness is 10; multiplication intensifies the symbolism).



Gospel - Matthew 16:13-20
Who do people say the Son of Man is? That question is as applicable today as it was in Matthew’s Gospel. As the disciples rattled off the popular misconceptions, one is struck by how illustrious that list actually was. There were no slouches in that group. But they didn’t even begin to compare with the truth. Many people today give similar answers: they call Jesus a teacher, a philosopher, the founder of a religion, an agent of change. Their answers miss the mark as widely as the answers of the people in the Gospel. Only disciples of Jesus, through the work of the Spirit of God, can confess him as he truly is. Could Peter’s answer be any better? You are the Anointed One, the one set apart by God and prophesied by Scripture, the Promised Seed who would save us from sin. But even more than that, Peter showed that the disciples confessed him to be the Son of the living God. Now here, in the flesh, stood the Son of the living God whose mission was to restore life to this world of death. This truth is the rock on which the Church stands. Because it stands on the rock and not on the pebbles of men who serve it, the Church will stand forever: its message is changeless; the ramifications of its work are eternal.




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