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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