Cutlerville East Christian Reformed Church
Episodes
584 episodes
May Your Name Be Sanctified
The Lord’s Prayer is one in which Jesus stresses the most important things to pray, the essence of our communication with God. He teaches us is to pray to “Our Father,” a reminder of our intimate relationship with God, as well as his promise to...
Defining the Relationship
We have seen how God created us to be in community with him, but we then broke community in our sin. Then came the tower of Babel incident. Has God now lost patience? Is his dream of community broken beyond repair? Genesis 12 tells us that God ...
May Your Kingdom Come
As we’ve been studying the Lord’s Prayer, we’ve learned that the context in which we pray is to our Father in heaven – God’s intimate relationship with us, tempered by the fact that he is the sovereign king. It means that God wants to listen an...
God is With Us
If we are honest, a simple reading of the book of Genesis shows that the Bible pulls no punches and glosses over nothing. These are not a bunch of pious stories; this is real life! Why be so honest and graphic? Mostly God tells us these stories...
A Big Change For a Small Man
This sermon looks at Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus and illustrates how God's amazing grace is available for all and dramatically changes lives.Scripture: Luke 19:1-10
Knowing God's Grace In Our Suffering
In Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Paul discusses his suffering and the fact that even in the midst of suffering God's grace is sufficient.Scripture: 2 Corinthians, 12:1-10
May Your Will Be Done
Last time we looked at the petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “may your kingdom come.” We noted that the kingdom is God’s active rule that happens progressively in the world and in individual lives. To pray that petition is to pray both Jesus, cont...
God the Deliverer
Everyone faces moments when they need help; sometimes we humbly accept it and other times we stubbornly reject it. If I’m lost, I often refuse to ask directions. We have the strange ability to live in the worst of situations and pretend everyth...
Give Us Bread for the Day
“Give us this day our daily bread.” This may be most familiar petition in this familiar prayer. But overfamiliarity with a biblical passage can lead to misunderstanding, or can reduce it to a cliche’. What is this petition saying and does it st...
God the Lawgiver
When it comes to our food and beverages, we are all in favor of purity. But when it comes to our own lives, we give ourselves a fair amount of latitude (“after all, we’re only human”). Our idea of purity is a far cry from God’s definition. God ...
Forgive Us Our Debts
Sometimes we believe the worst about God, that he won’t forgive. But at other times, we are too cavalier with forgiveness: “to err is human, to forgive divine” — as if forgiveness is merely God’s job. This petition gives balance. We often bring...
Lessons from the Wilderness
The wisest people learn from the example of others; sometimes the path to life, other times the path to avoid. We are going to look at some lessons from the wilderness wanderings of Israel, as God invites us to wilderness school, to learn wisdo...
Keep Us from Evil
The Lord’s Prayer mostly deals with our relationship to God, without much outside interference. But in this last petition, he deals with the force of evil, which can have a negative influence on our lives (from outside, but also within). This i...
Loving God’s Torah
Deuteronomy is quoted more than 80 times in the New Testament (only Genesis, Isaiah, and Psalms are quoted more). So it is a very influential and powerful book that turns our heart to the Torah of God. In Deuteronomy, we discover that God sees ...
An Enriching Attitude
There’s a certain irony that our country celebrates Thanksgiving on one day, and the next many go Christmas shopping on “Black Friday.” Are there two days more opposite each other? One focuses on God, the other on goodies. You could make the ca...
The Feasts of God
Imagine your Dad brings home a pet lamb, you name it and get to like it, and then a few days later it is slaughtered in your place for your sins and you eat it! Or that your New Year’s is marked not by a ball dropping in Times Square but a ram’...
All My Inmost Being, Praise His Holy Name
Scripture: Psalm 103:1-5Meditation: A Grateful Soul
In the Fullness of Time
This Advent series, we will be looking at the characters of the Christmas story as they experience the first Christmas in the shadow of Herod. But in Luke's Christmas story, the first person we encounter is Caesar Augustus! Why? Luke, writing m...
The Law of the First Step
Joshua God wants to bring the people of Israel into the land of Canaan, Promised to Abraham. 40 years later, they are still on the outskirts. The generation of Israelites who left Egypt had died in the desert because of their refusal to trust G...
Jesus...in the Shadow of Herod
While Luke set the Christmas story in the context of Caesar Augustus' reign (to show its cosmic, historic significance and fit his Greek audience), Matthew places it in Judea, under the reign of King Herod (a prophetic, divine significance unde...