Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church

Last week we saw how God gave Goliath, the Philistine giant into David's hands. The focus of the story in the Bible is not to bolster self-esteem, but esteem for God! David was disturbed that God's name was being dishonoured. His trust was in God. Today, in 1 Sam 18, we see how God begins to raise up David as a faithful leader. We learn God's way of raising up leaders to bless His church.

God's way of making Christ known to us is through the word of the Apostles. So John and the others spoke and wrote that we might know God whom they know, that we might have fellowship with them whose fellowship is with Jesus Christ.

Many people who know next to nothing about the Bible know this story. It charms and encourages them. If David can conquer and overcome, so can they. The story is constantly misapplied to be about self-esteem. It is about God-esteem.

Our new sermon series on Sunday afternoons will be from 1 John. I plan to preach twelve sermons in this series. The telos or purpose of this book is to instruct us about knowing God. Today, in the first four verses, we see that John tells us how we know God. This is a very important topic to me personally. I did not come to know God in a saving way until I was in my third year of university. In 1 John, John speaks specifically about what it means to know Him. He opens his letter by telling us how we can know Him. His answer is that it is through the Word of life revealed.

Since we have three new communicants and three new members that we are publicly welcoming today, I thought it would be a good time to have a message about what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. What is actually involved? Essentially, a disciple is one who comes to follow his master and to be like him. When you come to be Jesus's disciple, He teaches you how to live in harmony with God. He came to restore us to God, and that is exactly what He does.

Today I am going to finish up our Mountains of Bether Sermon Series. For the final sermon in the Mountains of Bether series, I wanted to present the great barrier that is described in the Song of Songs itself. It is the barrier I am going to call: Ignoring Christ. Let's go to our scripture reading, where we see this barrier of ignoring Christ. Remember that in this Song, Jesus is the Husband and we, the church, are His bride. Listen and see what happens when we ignore Him and His gracious advances.

Today, we are going to look at the contrast between two anointings. One is an anointing with the Holy Spirit. The other is an anointing with a demon. Our goal will be to learn about how God anoints His people that we might cherish His anointing with the Holy Spirit—that we might understand it and desire it for ourselves and others; and that we might see the horror of His anointing with a demon and dread it for ourselves and others.

In our Mountains of Bether Sermon Series, we have been looking at the mountains that stand between us and the Lord with a view to asking Him to remove them. The barriers we have been looking at recently are inattention to the means of grace. This week, the barrier is inattention to the Lord's Supper.