Dear Family at Christ Community,

     In worship this Sunday, we have the joy of celebrating the baptisms of Jack and Caleb Clemens after which we will join them at the Lord’s Table. Their baptisms will bear witness to the redemptive power of Jesus Christ to repair the various relationships fractured in the Fall. This will prove especially fitting given our sermon text from Genesis 4 in which God’s faithfulness continues despite the family suffering the heart rending effects of sin east of Eden. We have the blessing of hearing the story of Cain, Abel, and God’s refusal to give up on His children on this side of Christ’s first advent as we await His final return to make all things new. We know that through the death of Christ that we have been delivered from the violent effects of sin that threatened to separate us from God for eternity. Even more, we live in the power of His resurrection to walk in newness of life so as to participate in the in-breaking reconciliation between the advents. As the author of Hebrews writes in 12:22-29:  

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven….Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

     Pray for the Holy Spirit to help you to improve upon all of this that is signified in your baptism and to nourish your faith as an ambassador of reconciliation through the bread and cup. Give thanks for Christ’s reminders of His victorious finished work. Praise God for His unchanging faithfulness in redemption. Celebrate with gratitude from being an heir to the kingdom that cannot be shaken with reverence and awe!

In Christ,
Cameron