Sermons

Baptism of A van der Kolk. Gerald speaks about the importance of teaching our children, the next generation, about all God has done. We do not want to be like the Israelites, where generations quickly forgot how the Lord cared for them. We do this by teaching our children what is in the Bible, but then also by sharing how God has worked in our lives, so they may by God’s grace come to have a saving faith in Him.

God encourages Joshua to stand firm and to be courageous as he prepares to fight for the Land of Canaan. We all need to hear these words and to see how they were fulfilled in Christ.

This one-off sermon looks at an overview of the book of Judges.  Having been instructed by God through Joshua, the Israelites start to claim the land God has given them.  They are at first careful to obey his commands to drive out all the people before them so that they would not co-habit or share their land.  Judges, however, shows the gradual decline away from God’s commands to the point where the people did what was right in their own eyes. This is all compared for Christians today and the need to drive out sin from our lives.  We must never tolerate sin, live with it, co-habit with it or believe that it won’t have a strong influence on us.  We must be careful to live in a way which does not want “to know what God will tolerate, but rather what he desires.”

What does the church need today? The church needs men and women who are strong and courageous and in terms of Joshua 1, do not turn away from the Word of God, to the right or the left (Joshua 1:7). We especially need that of our leaders in the church. We need leaders who are determined to serve the Lord faithfully, sometimes at great cost to themselves.

Why did Rahab throw her lot in with the people of God? This “throwing one’s lot in” with the people of God wasn’t something that she did on a whim or because the spies had as much sex appeal as Ian Flemmings’ James Bond. She threw her lot in with the people of God because she knew that the Lord God had given the people of Israel the land of Canaan. In doing that she had turned her back on her own life, and her own people and indeed her own gods.