Volume 18, Number 5.
Pastor Tom Westra highlights the importance of Christ’s active obedience and how that shapes the rest of the elements of the sermon.
A Clean Set of Clothes
In place of our sin-soiled garments we receive a clean set of clothes—the perfect obedience of Christ.
Some Sundays it’s louder than others, but every Sunday it’s there. That voice whispering: “You? You are stepping onto that chancel to speak for a holy God? Are you kidding me?”
Sir, we would see Jesus.
Tell me that I am a sinner. Tell me that I am saved. And tell me how to respond. With every text we must ask where this passage fits into God’s redemptive plan.
I think I read it in a devotion book by Herman Gockel years ago; but it stuck with me. A congregation was getting a steady dose of law heavy sermons. One Saturday night the pastor found a note taped to the pulpit. It read, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus” (John 12:21).