Sermon Video: Immanuel, "God with us" - Matthew 1:22-23

The entrance of the Christ child into God's redemptive story is an amazing true story. The Son of God, the rightful king, born in a humble setting. Jesus' story begins, purposefully, with humility. And yet, within the humble setting lies an awesome truth, the child of the Virgin is the very Son of God, literally he is Immanuel, "God with us". Why? Simple, only God himself could save us. The entrance into the human story by God is incredible, but God is just getting warmed up, stay tuned until Easter to see how God temporarily left the stage, only to return in triumph. Christmas is sublime, but Easter is a sequel that surpasses it.

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Sermon Video: "Persuade me to be a Christian"? - Acts 26:17-32

As his defense before Agrippa continues, Paul explains that God gave him the mission of leading people from the darkness of rebellion and sin, to the light of forgiveness and sanctification by faith.  Paul was opposed for this effort, because it included the Gentiles, even though it was a continuation of what God had previously spoken through the prophets and Moses.  Having said this, Paul confronts Agrippa with the key question, "do you believe the prophets?"  While Festus think that Paul is out of his mind, Agrippa knows the validity of the words of the prophets and interprets Paul's question as an invitation to become a Christian, which he declines.  Agrippa's response raises important questions.  How does someone become a Christian?  Is it an intellectual, emotional, or spiritual pursuit, or some of all three?  Can a person be persuaded, making it partly a matter of human freewill, or is it solely a matter of the will of God?  In the end, Paul proclaims that he will continue to hold out hope, and pray, that not only Agrippa, but everyone listening to his words will accept the gift of God's grace in Christ Jesus.

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Sermon Video: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace - Isaiah 9:6b

What's in a name?  The Messiah promised by the prophet Isaiah is given many names in Scripture: Jesus, Emmanuel, Son of Man, Son of God, Lamb of God, and Man of Sorrows (among others).  Here in Isaiah 9:6b, the prophet adds four titles given to the one who will bring God's salvation to earth: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Each of these in turn further explains who the Messiah will be and what he will accomplish.

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A Brief Summary of My Life Thus Far

I was raised in a Christian home where my parents were always active in our church, Galilee Baptist Church (Saranac, MI). When my grandmother asked (via tape from Alaska) if I had been “saved” yet, I asked my parents what that meant. At the age of six I committed myself to the Lord and have continued in that commitment throughout my life. I continued to grow and learn at Galilee where I was involved in Awana and the youth group. I was baptized as a young teens at Galilee using the total immersion that most Baptists are known for. I eventually became involved in a H.S. Bible study at a teacher’s home where I eventually became a leader of the group. Following H.S. I knew that I should be doing something related to the ministry and began my studies at Cornerstone to pursue that calling. After graduation, I worked as a youth pastor for the Caledonia United Methodist Church and the Oakview Reformed Church. I am currently the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Palo. Throughout my life I have continued to pursue my Christian walk through good times and bad, always knowing that the truth that I learned in my earliest years was the rock upon which I could stand.
* additional info: My father, Walt, has worked as a supervisor with Amway for over 40 years and is currently also the head of the Ionia Chapter of The Gideons International. My mother, Kathy, has worked as a daycare provider for much of my life. My older brother, Brian, is a sixth grade teacher at Ionia Middle School where his wife, Nicki, is a speech therapist. My younger sister, Tara, is an elementary teacher at Saranac, and her husband, Joe, teaches at Williamston. My wife, Nicole, taught English (and Drama and German) at Saranac and Pewamo-Westphalia before deciding to try a new path. She is now currently working as a kennel attendant for McKenzie’s Animal Sanctuary (Clarksville), but just interviewed for an adjunct professor position with Grand Rapids Community College. At this time we do not have any children (in large part because our insurance has always been through my wife while I was working multiple part-time jobs), but I am of course hoping to be able to be our primary wage earner and allow my wife to work part-time.
The following is from the introduction to my book…
I grew up a devout Baptist in a Midwestern small town church. I anticipated marrying a good Baptist girl, or maybe a girl from one of the many non-denominational churches in West Michigan. I dated one of these girls in high school, I dated another in college, and then I did something unexpected; I married a devout Catholic girl. She didn’t become a Baptist, I didn’t become a Catholic. My marriage has become a microcosm of the modern Ecumenical movement. The Christian church today has some notion that it needs to work together, that the animosity, hostility, and even warfare of the past can no longer be, but working out the details of just what that means continues to perplex us. Fortunately for my wife Nicole and me, we’ve managed to work these issues out as they apply to our marriage. It is my hope that this study of I John will in some small way help the church find its way through these issues and back toward the unity of Spirit that the body of Christ deserves.
My early experiences with Catholicism were largely negative. The small town of Saranac, Michigan that I grew up in has only one Catholic Church. There are a half dozen Protestant churches and most of the people I knew went to one of them. There was a Catholic girl that I had a crush on in middle school, but she wasn’t interested (I was skinny, short, and a bit geeky at the time) so I didn’t have to wrestle with the theological implications that I was only dimly aware of at the time. Most of what I heard about the Catholic Church came from several members of my Baptist church, Galilee Baptist, who had previously had bad experiences growing up in the Catholic Church and whose testimony confirmed the latent suspicion that most Protestants have of the Church of Rome. There were also reports from missionaries who had serious difficulties in Europe and Latin America in their dealings with the Catholic Church. There were intra-Protestant services (mainly tent meetings) and organizations (like a softball league) that Galilee belonged too, and good fellowship amongst Protestants, but no connection at any level with the Catholic Church. That was my early experience with Catholicism in a nutshell.
My own intellectual and spiritual maturity gained much momentum from a student Bible study that began at my high school English teacher’s home following some discussions in class regarding religious matters. She invited us to her house for a Bible study; I was one of the two who came that first week. During the remainder of my time in high school we met weekly to systematically read and study Scripture. The group grew to average almost twenty people. No one person led the group, I was one of a handful of church kids who made comments and helped answer questions. This process of working our way through Scripture, having to figure out what each chapter and verse meant, was invaluable to me. I had had very good Sunday school teachers, had attended AWANA (a youth Bible program) weekly since kindergarten, and had learned much from the expositional sermons of Galilee’s pastor, James Frank. These were all important foundational experiences, but we had to sink or swim at Bible study, so swim we did.
When I graduated from high school I was unsure of what I wanted to study in college so I spent a year at Grand Rapids Community College while I figured it out. During that time I continued with the Bible study, most of my fellow “leaders” had graduated and moved away, so I ended up leading the group by default. We continued with our studies, wading through Revelation, and dealing with a wide variety of issues. The issue of who is really a Christian came up from time to time. At this point in my life I knew a lot less than I do now, but I was certain of a good deal more. The young are usually this way, experience hasn’t taught them otherwise, but Socrates was right when he said he was wise because he knew how much he didn’t know. One of the things that I was certain of was what I thought of the Catholic Church. I knew that some Catholics were Christians, but I was sure that most were not; I said as much in our Bible study group. At the time my former English teacher, Mrs. Sanford, had spoken to me privately and asked if I wanted to tone down my comments about the Catholic Church because a couple of those attending the group were Catholics. I hadn’t been aware of that, but at the time I was too convinced of what I knew to be true to be willing to change.
I arrived at a decision that year, in Baptist circles we call it a “calling”, that God wanted me for the ministry. After all, that was what I was best at, and I was certainly interested in it. After prayer with Pastor Frank I enrolled at Cornerstone University and began to study religion, philosophy, and Greek. Almost all of the professors at Cornerstone are Baptists; the remainder having all signed a Baptist confession (stating they agree with Baptist teachings). A majority of the students were Baptists too, the rest a smattering of various Protestant denominations. I learned a great many things from my professors, and in Socratic fashion , the absolutism of my youth was one of the casualties. Now before I go any further, let me assure you that we weren’t debating that salvation is found in Christ alone. Cornerstone has always been very clear on that, and I couldn’t agree more. The debate that was moving the university, and me along with it, focused on the very narrow view of the Christian Church that the Baptist movement has been famous for. Cornerstone University was beginning to open itself up to a larger portion of the Church, and so was I.
Christians often say, “God works in mysterious ways” when they really mean “I have no idea what’s going on here”, or “I don’t know why this is happening to me.” It’s a statement that has held true for me. God certainly has worked in mysterious ways in my life, on two occasions using women whom I fell in love with. You already know that my wife is Catholic; that certainly qualifies as “working in a mysterious way”, but long before I met my future wife I dated a good Baptist girl in college. We started out as friends, working together as camp counselors at Lincoln Lake Baptist Youth Camp. Then we “bumped” into each other at the NCCAA cross-country nationals at Cedarville College (in Ohio) where I was running for Cornerstone, and eventually a relationship developed. The mysterious part of this relationship for me was how it impacted the direction my life was heading. The girl in question had been committed to becoming an overseas missionary since she was a child. I was studying for the ministry, so this wasn’t a problem, but I had always felt a deep need to help the church in America. The issue simmered between us and finally came to a boil during a mission trip we took to Guatemala before our senior year. The trip was partly to help me decide if foreign missions were for me, and I had an amazing time on the trip (even preaching in the two Protestant churches in Chichicastenango where we stayed), but a tear filled conversation between us confirmed that we were heading in different directions. We broke up a couple months later, ok, she broke up with me, but that conversation ensured it would happen.
I spent my senior year in college wondering what it was that God wanted me to do. In the end, I started looking for work as a youth pastor here in West Michigan. Eventually I was given my first job as a youth pastor by Caledonia United Methodist Church. I had never been to a Methodist church, and now God was taking me one more step out of my comfort zone and letting me see more clearly who the Church really is. Methodists have different styles of worship than Baptists; they take communion differently, and have a different church leadership structure. But the year and a half that I spent working with the youth of Caledonia United Methodist convinced me that the Church does indeed extend to those who have a different style than the one I grew up with. I also worked part-time with the teens of Oakview Reformed Church in Grand Rapids while I was working at Caledonia UMC, but Baptists have a lot in common with the Reformed tradition, so I didn’t have to stretch too much to fit in there.
My definition of who is a Christian had been stretched, pulled a bit here and there, but I still had the doubts that I had grown up with about the Catholic Church (and frankly hadn’t given much thought at all to Orthodox Christians). That was all about to be thrown out the window because God, who does indeed have a sense of humor, had decided to bring a new girl into my life, Nicole Brzezinski. I met Nicole while working as a substitute teacher at my old high school in Saranac where she was fighting through her first year as an English teacher. We became friends and began to spend time together, and she eventually convinced me that I should help her write the spring play. By the time the play was written (ironically, a romantic comedy about two friends who finally get past their hang-ups and get together), life had begun to imitate art; we were in love.
I had never dated a Catholic before, hadn’t really needed to sort out the implications of falling in love with one, and here I was dating a devout Catholic and the “m” word was in the air. Could we get married? How would we work it out? What about our families? Needless to say, these topics were covered at length by Nicole and I as we tried to figure out for our own lives the same issues of Christian brotherhood that have become the modern Ecumenical movement. During the summer of that year, while Nicole and I were dating and considering marriage, I took a New Testament theology class at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. The issue of who is and who is not a Christian was weighing heavily on my mind so I decided to use the opportunity to write a paper that would help to satisfy my personal questions as well. I chose the letter of I John for my study because my pastor (Pastor Frank) had preached through it recently and I knew it contained much that would bear on this topic.
The study of I John helped to solidify several ideas that had been floating around in my mind during my years of “stretching” at Caledonia UMC and now dating Nicole, and helped me to realize that much of the debate regarding Christian fellowship that the various Christian denominations had been having was often based upon criteria and standards that lacked Biblical support. The question of who makes up the body of Christ is addressed by the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and those of John as well. It’s more than a little unfortunate then, that there are those who would define Christianity by rules that bear little resemblance to what the Bible says. There are some whose definitions are far too narrow, others who are far too broad. We as Christians need to make sure that our definition conforms to Scripture.
For the record, Nicole and I were married on June 30th, 2001 at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church. Our marriage shows signs that this endeavor is not without hope. We may not always understand each other, but we have indeed become one in Spirit. My hope is that the myriad parts of the Church today can also work toward being one in Spirit.