A Christmas Essential: The Mercy of God - Luke 1:46-56 - Pastor Tito Lyro

A Christmas Essential: The Mercy of God - Luke 1:46-56 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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Christmas Essential: The Mercy of God - Lk. 1:46-56; Ps. 103

Introduction  By now you have grown used to the idea that you are not getting a Kindle Fire this year and have come to terms with being satisfied with kindling for fire instead. All joking aside, you know that there are very few things that essential for a happy Christmas. So far we have seen two essentials, two truths that are fundational for a happy Christmas: Jesus Christ is the God-Man who came to save us from our sins and Christmas is all about the glory of God.  This morning we will consider a third essential: the mercy of God. Mary says that the coming of Jesus has happened because of the mercy of the Lord (54-55). Psalm 103 helps us understand God's mercy, which is his covenant faithfulness to us and that is where we are going to spend our time today.  This Psalm teaches us that the Lord is the soul's all-sufficiency. In it the Lord reveals himself as the merciful Lord who keeps covenant with his people. In response to whom he is, the entire creation must worship the Lord.  I. The Soul's All-Sufficiency, vv. 1-5  A. The entire being is to bless the Lord, v. 1  B. The entire being is to bless the Lord because of whom he is, vv. 2-5  II. The Lord's Mercy, vv. 6-19  A. The Lord is the executor of righteousness, v. 6  B. The Lord makes his ways known to his people, v. 7  C. The Lord is merciful and gracious, v. 8a  D. The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in mercy, v. 8b-9  E. The Lord is forgiving, vv. 10-12  F. The Lord is a father to his people, vv. 13-14  G. The Lord is a loving God, vv. 15-18  H. The Lord is a reigning king, v. 19  III. The Creation's Response - Worship, vv. 20-22  A. The angels  B. The heavenly hosts  C. The servants  D. The works  E. At the end, David brings the attention back to the soul of the forgiven sinner.  Conclusion  Let us remember the mercy of the Lord. Let us remember that we are sinners forgiven by the grace of God.

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A Christmas Essential--Glory to God- Luke 2:1-14 - Pastor Tito Lyro

A Christmas Essential--Glory to God- Luke 2:1-14 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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A Christmas Essential: The God-Man - John 1:1-5 - Pastor Tito Lyro

A Christmas Essential: The God-Man - John 1:1-5 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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A Christmas Essential: Why the God-Man? - Jn. 1:1-5

Introduction      Every year we are inundated with a barrage of commercials and ads telling us the things we must have in order to have a happy Christmas. There are lists of Christmas essentials everywhere! According to the website brainz.org, the most essential Christmas gift of the season is the Kindle Fire. That's the one essential thing you have to have in order to have a good Christmas.     The truth is that there are very few truly essential things that we must have in order to have a happy Christmas. Perhaps the most essential thing of all is a right understanding of the necessity of having a Savior who is both God and man. One of the most important books, and likely least read books, in Christianity is a book by the title Cur Deus Homo? (Why God Man?) by Anselm of Canterbury, written around 1094, in which he attempts to explain why our Savior must be both fully God and fully man.     So this will be first of three Christmas essentials we will be consider in the month of December: a Savior is only a Savior if he is both God and man in one person. This teaching is a hard one for us to wrap our minds around, but it is worth spending our time to understand.  I. Jesus Christ as fully human.  A. The earliest heresies concerning Christ involved a denial of the humanity of Christ.  B. Jesus Christ existed before the incarnation and he became fully human at the incarnation.  C. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ was a man.      1. He is called a man.      2. Jesus possesses elements essential to humanity: a human body and a human soul     3. Jesus experienced normal human needs and emotions – hunger, thirst, weariness, compassion, love, grief, anger, etc.      4. Jesus suffered and died.  D. In more recent centuries, there hasn't been as much trouble in understanding that Jesus was fully human.  E. There have been, however, lots of struggles in acknowledging that he is fully divine.  II. Jesus Christ as fully God  A. It is the teaching of both Old and New Testaments that Christ the Son of God is indeed God the Son, Jn. 1:1-3.  B. Besides John 1, there are plenty of passages that speak of Jesus as God.  C. The Bible commands us to worship Jesus.  D. These two truths about Jesus Christ – he is fully human and he is fully divine – make him the perfect Savior.  III. Jesus Christ as the perfect Savior as God and man.  A. The reason Jesus must be both God and man in one person is that he represents both God and man in the Covenant of Grace.  B. Why does Jesus need to be fully man? So that he can represent us in life and in death.  C. Why does Jesus need to be fully God?      1. That God may receive all the glory for our salvation.      2. That God may reserve the supreme sacrifice to himself      3. That God's justice would be satisfied  Conclusion  We come full circle back to Anselm's Cur Deus Homo? Why did we spend a perfectly good 40 minutes on this topic? Because without a right understanding of whom Christ is, what he did for us becomes utterly insignificant. R.C. Sproul says:  At the heart of Anselm's answer to that question was his understanding of the character of God. Anselm saw that the chief reason a God-man was necessary was the justice of God. That may seem to be a strange answer. Thinking of the cross and of Christ's atonement, we assume that the thing that most strenuously motivated God to send Christ into the world was His love or His mercy. As a result, we tend to overlook the characteristic of God's nature that makes the atonement absolutely necessary—His justice.  God is loving, but a major part of what He loves is His own perfect character, with a major aspect being the importance of maintaining justice and righteousness. Though God pardons sinners and makes great provision for expressing His mercy, He will never negotiate His justice. If we fail to understand that, the cross of Christ will be utterly meaningless to us.  So this is a Christmas essential Jesus Christ, the God-man who came to save his people.

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Time and Change - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 - Pastor Tito Lyro

Time and Change - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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Time & Change - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

Introduction  Do you realize that change is inevitable? Consider just a couple of changes we know are coming. Jacob is leaving on Tuesday and will likely not come back to live around here. That will be a change for him, for the Hugheys, for his friends, and for us as a church. The Leamans will be leaving soon as well. That will be a big change for them and for us. Not too long ago the Petersens dropped their baby daughter at a far away college. I'm sure that was a change for them.  Life is constantly changing. Think for a moment of all the changes that happened in your life just this past week: changes in schedule, relationships, at work or school, etc. The unavoidable changes in life teach us something about God and something about us.  I. What is change?  A. Change is to make or become different.  B. Change can be something very fearful.  C. People respond to change differently and most people have a default setting for interacting with and reacting to change.  II. Everything in life may change, but God will never change, 14.  A. This is a very comforting truth in view of all the changes in our lives.  B. No matter what change in our lives, we believe in and serve an unchanging God who will fulfill all his purposes and promises.  C. God is dependable and trustworthy because he never changes.  D. We, on the other hand, experience change at several levels.  E. We are all in seasons of change.  III. We should expect changes in our circumstances, 1-8.  A. This poem is a powerful description of changes in our circumstances.  B. God appointed each season to be lived to its fullest, 1.  C. I want us to see also that all change is redemptive to the believer because it is brought about by a sovereign and good God.  D. So, we must be rooted on the fact that change is the normal experience of life and God, who is good, is sovereign over all change.  IV. As Christians we are always changing because we are being sanctified.  A. Sanctification means progressive change.  B. The Gospel produces change in our lives.  C. So the desire that every thing remains the same is not necessarily a good desire – we not always called to conserve (be conservative).  V. One last word about change: because of the Gospel we will ultimately be completely changed.  A. This longing for eternity is programed in us, 11a.  B. We live through changes in this life longing for the ultimate change in glorification.  Conclusion  We all live in seasons of change. But every change is governed by our good and sovereign God, who makes every season beautiful in its own time. Praise be to him!

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Church Discipline - Part 2 - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro

Church Discipline - Part 2 - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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Church Discipline, Part 2 - 1 Cor. 5

Introduction  The Corinthian church did exactly what most churches do as far as church discipline goes: NOTHING! As we saw last week, God has established three marks, three characteristics, that are essential for the existence and well-being of his Church: the faithful preaching of his Word, the proper observation of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and church discipline. Remove one of these marks and you no longer have a true church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  By refusing to practice church discipline, the church at Corinth was acting as not a church. It was also being cruel and unkind to the people who were overcome by sin. Notice that in our passage Paul does not spend a lot time correcting the man who had acted immorally toward his stepmother. As grievous and serious as that sin was, the fact that the church was doing nothing about it – even more, the fact that the church was proud about not doing anything about it – was much more serious.  I. A Brief Review: Why Is Church Discipline Important?  A. Because it preserves the honor of God in his Church and in the world.  B. Because it preserves the purity of the Church of Jesus Christ.  C. Because it restores a wayward Christian.  D. Because it restrains sin.  E. Because it establishes a clear line of demarcation between the Church and the world.  II. What Is Church Discipline?  A. It is the process by which the boundaries of the Visible Church are established.  B. Paul speaks about these boundaries when he teaches that there are those who are "inside" and those who are "outside," vv. 12-13.  C. We can re-word our definition of church discipline as the process of being admitted into and removed from the membership of the church.  III. What Should the Corinthian Church Have Done?  A. What they should have done and what we must do is clearly described by our Savior in Mt. 18:15-17.  B. The very first thing we must notice about this passage is that it introduces the theme of restoration, not condemnation.  C. Notice also that before it becomes an issue that the whole church is drawn in, it involves a much smaller circle or people.  D. This passage implies earnest pursuit.  E. What if the brother/sister refuses to listen to me? Enlist the help of one or two other Christians to come along with you.  F. If there is no repentance, the rest of the church must be involved.  IV. The Last Part of Our Lord's Instructions Brings Us back to 1 Cor. 5: Treat Him as a Heathen and Tax Collector.  A. Treating the one who was named a brother as a heathen and a tax collector is equivalent to handing him over to Satan, 5.  B. It is worth repeating that even at this point the goal is restoration – that his spirit may be saved.  C. This is an authoritative declaration – it is done in the name of Christ, 4.  D. It is a public declaration – when you are gathered, 4.  E. It is a binding declaration – it requires the whole church to act in a certain way, 11, 13.  V. A Word about Being Turned over to Satan Is Necessary at This Point.  A. The Bible speaks of the created moral order as divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Jesus and the kingdom of Satan.  B. When a person is turned over to Satan or placed outside of the church, this act does not cause eternal damnation or eternal salvation.  C. It does declare that the Visible Church has no reason to think that this person has credible profession of faith and that the person himself has no reason to think that his faith in Christ is genuine.  D. Being placed under Satan is a dangerous place to be.  Conclusion  Our God, who is jealous for his honor and the good of his church, has appointed this process. A painful process, to be sure, but one that drives us to Christ because it shows our insufficiency. We serve a Savior who loves to help us obey him in our weakness and who is purifying us every moment. Even church discipline is a loving instrument in our Redeemer's hand.

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Church Discipline - Part 1 - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro

Church Discipline - Part 1 - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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Christ Our Passover - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro

Christ Our Passover - 1 Corinthians 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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Christ Our Passover - 1 Cor. 5

Introduction  As you remember, Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in response to a letter that some members of the Corinthian church wrote him. These members wanted Paul to settle several disputes. In the types of things that they were making of first importance, Paul saw that there were serious spiritual problems with them.  In addition to that, some people on their own had come to Paul and expressed more important spiritual concerns regarding the state of the church. This situation that Paul is dealing with was reported to them by one of these two groups, 5:1.  You also remember that one of the themes of 1 Corinthians is holiness, both personal and corporate. This is something that the Corinthian Christians were not too worried about.  I. The Problems: Three of them, 1-2, 6a  A. Sexual immorality, 1.  B. On top of that, the Corinthian church was proud of their openness and accepting attitude, 2, 6a.  C. Because of this proud attitude, they were doing nothing about the situation, 2.  II. The Danger: A little bit of unchecked sin affects the whole church, 6.  A. Paul is not saying that this sexual sin a just a little sin.  B. He is saying that even a little sin, when the church finds herself ok with it, will affect the whole body.  C. Now, this is not saying that unless everybody in church is perfect we are going to be in trouble.  D. Sin will always be present in us and among us.  E. The issue is how we think and deal with it.  III. The Solution: Purge out sin because Christ has already done that for you, 7-8.  A. The reason why sin must not go unchecked is that it doesn't have to, 7.  B. Paul illustrates this truth with the concept of the Passover celebration and significance.  C. Paul says here that all of that is fulfilled in Christ and that he is our Passover.  D. Because Christ has done all of this for us, sin no longer has to go unchecked, 7b.  E. So we purge the old leaven that is not part of who we are anymore, 8.  Conclusion  So we keep the feast. Not with a lamb and bitter herbs, but by faith in the Lamb of God. We keep the feast through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ whose blood covers us.

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A Serious Call - Hebrews 3:12-15 - Pastor Tito Lyro

A Serious Call - Hebrews 3:12-15 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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A Serious Call - Heb. 3:12-15

Introduction  It is always a celebration when new members join the church. This celebration of our mystical union with Christ and one another is a Gospel celebration. It is a celebration of our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. As people are willing to commit to each other by way of covenant, the body of Christ is strengthened, the Gospel is illustrated, and Christ is glorified.  Joyous occasions as this one provide us with the opportunity to remind ourselves how important life in community is for the follower of Jesus Christ.  I. This warning is given to those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.  A. We see that in the word brethren in v. 12.  B. It is also evident in v. 14 where these people are called partakers of Christ.  II. This is a serious warning  A. Strong beware in the beginning of v. 12.  B. The seriousness of the warning is also seen in the consequence of not listening to it – hardened hearts.  III. This warning describes the progressive steps in the hardening of Christian's heart.  A. What we read here is a picture of what sin does if undetected, unexposed, and unforsaken.  B. It all begins with my giving way to sin in my life.  C. When we deceive ourselves and call good what God has called evil, the next step takes place: unbelief, 12.  D. The third part in this sad progression is departing.  E. Where we finally end is with a "hardened" heart.  IV. The question that every one of us should be asking at this point is how can these scary steps of hardening take place in the life of a Christian?  A. This takes place because sin is fundamentally deceptive.  B. Sin deceives ten out of ten people.  V. It is because of our blindness to our own sin that the Holy Spirit gives us this essential call to exhort one another.  A. The call is to encourage each other daily.  B. The blinding ability of sin is so powerful and persuasive that you and I literally need daily intervention.  C. What the writer of Hebrews is crushing with this warning and call is any allegiance we might have to an isolated, individualized, "Jesus and me" Christianity.  D. The grace of having our lives interrupted by the insight-giving ministry of others protect us from becoming spiritually blinded to the point of the hardening of our hearts.  E. This means that Christians who convince themselves that they are able to live outside of God's regular system of help and protection are in danger of becoming increasingly blind and hard of heart.  Conclusion  But God in his infinite mercy and grace did not leave us to go through this life alone. He brought us into his church so that together we would grow in faith. Each one of us is a gift of grace to the others. To ignore our spiritual need for one another is to set out on the path that ends in a hardened heart toward Jesus Christ. So, let us exhort each other in the grace of Jesus Christ as long as it is today, so that we all might grow into the fullness of our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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The Lamb of God - Revelation 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro

The Lamb of God - Revelation 5 - Pastor Tito Lyro If you find these lessons helpful, or if you have questions please write to us at contact@olympiabp.net. We would love to hear from you and learn how we can serve you.

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The Lamb of God

Introduction Throughout the New Testament, Jesus Christ is portrayed as the Lamb of God, the Lamb that was given to atone the sins of the world. All these references point to the lamb that would die as a substitute for the sinner in the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, but above all they pointed to the Passover lamb whose blood kep the Angel of Death from taking the lives of the firstborn.  Christ is that Lamb.  The Firstborn of God covers us with his blood so that we may have life and life more abundant. This chapter gives us a glimpse into this heavenly scene in which the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb slained from the foundation of the world, is commissioned by God the Father to unfold the history of redemption from his death and resurrection to his coming again.  This is a majestic scene that takes place in the throne room of the courts of heaven where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come together to open the scroll of human redemption I.             Who Shall Open the Scroll? 1-4 A.   The first thing we see in this vision is God sitting on his B.   But, there is a problem – the scroll is sealed! 2. C.   John despairs because he looks around heaven and earth and II.          The Only One Worthy to Open the Scroll, 5-7 A.   One of the elders comforts John by saying that there is one B.   When John turns to see the Lion, what he sees is a Lamb, 6. C.   The Lamb received the scroll from the Father, 7. III.       The Praises of the One Who Is Worthy to Open the Scroll and His Father, 8-14 A.   When the scroll was handed to the Lamb the heavens broke out in worship, 8. B.   The four creatures and the 24 elders sing a new song, 9 C.   The Lamb makes those for whom he died a kingdom of priests, 10. D.  The worship of the Lamb continues, but now the choir has millions of voices, 11-12. E.   The scene ends with the entire created order worshipping both the Father and the Son, 13-14. Conclusion This Lamb is the Lord Jesus Christ.  God the Son who came in the flesh to obey the Father in life and death.  He is the one whose blood was shed on the cross on behalf of all who trust in him.  He is the one who conquered the last enemy, death itself, by being raised from the dead on the third day.  This is Jesus Christ the only Savior of humanity who stands with the scroll of human redemption in his hand.  He is the only one who can save you.  Fall down before him and worship him.

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