In Sunday’s sermon, “Someone’s Coming,” Ryan surveyed the story of the entire Old Testament, stringing together the narrative by looking for the resolution to God’s promise in Genesis 3:15, when God promised that one of Eve’s sons would crush the head of the serpent. This is why Mary, when she pondered the life insider her womb, rejoiced, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46).

There were a lot of details, names, and promises in Ryan’s sermon. So, in case you weren’t able to jot them down, here’s a list of the promises he mentioned, with the possible “someones” he mentioned along the way:

1) Promise: In Genesis 3:15, God promises a son of Eve who will crush Satan and sin

• Is it Cain?
• Is it Noah?

2) Promise: In Genesis 12, 15, and 17, God makes a promise to Abraham, that his offspring would be many, that he would inherit a great land, and that his offspring would eventually bless the whole world.

• Is it Abraham?
• Is it Isaac?
• Is it Esau?
• Is it Jacob?
• Is it Joseph?

3) Promise: Genesis 49:10 promises a Lion-like ruler from Judah whom the people will obey.

• Is it Moses?

4) Promise: Deuteronomy 18:18-19 promises a prophet like Moses.

• Is it Joshua?
• How about Judges?

5) Promise: In 1 Samuel 2:35 God promises to raise up “a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My
heart and in My soul” and promises to “build him an enduring house…”

• Is it Samuel?
• Is it Saul?
• Is it David?

6) Promise: In 2 Samuel 7, God makes a promise to David, “your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.”

• Is it Solomon?

7) Promise: Various texts indicate that God himself will be the promised one who comes to save his people.

• Isaiah 7:14 – Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
• Isaiah 9:6-7 – For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
• Ezek 34:11 – For thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep … I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them … I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest… I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick;
• Ezek 34:23 – Then I will set over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them; he will feed them himself and be their shepherd.

Then, after 400 years of silence, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatian 4:4, 5). And that woman, who was Mary, learned of what the Lord was doing in her own womb, and “treasured up all these things, [and pondered] them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Mary knew the Scriptures and knew that the great Someone of the Old Testament had come.

Last week, at our Lord’s Supper meeting, Ryan showed us the importance of thankfulness in the Christian life in his sermon, “Give Thanks to the Lord.“ Ryan drew from across the Bible to give us ten reasons to pursue thankfulness. They are listed here with Scripture references or brief explanations.

1. Giving thanks fights pride and fosters humility

Romans 1:21 “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

2. Giving thanks fights anxiety and gives perspective

Philippians 4:6 “…don’t be anxious about anything, but instead give thanks.”

3. Thankfulness is an overflow of Christ’s peace in our hearts

Colossians 3:15 “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”

4. Giving thanks is an overflow of the word in us

Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

5. Giving thanks is part of being watchful

Colossians 4:2 “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful with thanksgiving.”

6. Giving thanks is how we continue in prayer

Colossians 4:2 “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”

7. Giving thanks is right – It is the great reckoning with reality

1 Corinthians 4:7 “What do you have that you have not received?”

Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

8. Giving thanks (praise) is why we are saved

2 Corinthians 4:15 “…so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.”

9. Giving thanks induces more and more praise

In the same way that more and more sin produces more and more blindness and waywardness, more thanks grows into a habit of and a craving for more and more thanks.

10. Giving thanks will never be done, it’s never enough

We can never, ever fully acknowledge all that God has done, is doing, or will do. It is what we will do forever.

Ryan also showed us how we can do thankfulness by showing us five levels of thanksgiving from the Psalms. If grumbling and a lack of thanksgiving is your thing, it might be helpful to write down the first word in each of the following lines on a piece of paper to keep with you.

1. Identify reasons for thanks and remind yourself of them
2. Ponder your reasons for thankfulness
3. Feel thankfulness in your heart
4. Express thankfulness to God
5. Promote thankfulness in others

In Sunday’s sermon, “What’s Next?“, Ryan preached from Colossians 2:6-8 to explore what follows after we hear, believe and embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Paul puts it in these verses, “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him” (2:6). That simple marching order encompases all that is required of the believer in Christ.

In his sermon, Ryan gave us several simple reminders from this text that we need continually between the comings of Christ.

• There’s nothing greater in all the world than to know Christ, to be known by him, and to be “firm in faith.”
• You can’t grow where you’re not planted. Are you planted in Christ? Have you received him?
• The soil we’re planted in is Christ and his gospel – only and always Christ. We don’t need another soil.
• He planted us there – not we ourselves: “By his doing you are in Christ” (1 Cor 1:30).
• If we’re planted in him, he is growing us; he’s building us up…even when it feels like he’s not.
• Nevertheless there is genuine responsibility – we are to grow, to read, pray, give, serve, love, study/meditate, discipline ourselves, etc. Give yourself to these with all seriousness and effort.
• No insignificant part of the Christian life is to be overflowing in thankfulness. Work at it. Grow in it.

In Sunday’s message, “The Guts and Glory of Ministry,” Ryan preached from Colossians 1:24-2:5 to show us God’s purpose in the ministry of the apostle Paul, who rejoiced in his sufferings “for the sake of [Christ’s] body.” Paul had a decidedly word-centered ministry focused on the proclamation of the gospel of Christ, and suffering was always a means to more of the same. He was busy planting churches and spreading the gospel, but this section of Colossians shows us just how tirelessly Paul labored to strengthen the church in the gospel. Paul toiled and struggled in order to “make the word of God more fully known” to God’s people, to “present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:25, 28-29).

Paul’s commitment to strengthen the people of God reminds us that the church’s growth in maturity and number are not separate concerns with separate means. The gospel is extended into the world as the church is strengthened in the gospel by the word.

To make this point, Ryan quoted John Piper from his sermon, “The Role of the Pastor in World Missions,” who expressed well the mingling of these aims:

What then should a pastor do to promote a passion among his people to see God glorified by the in-gathering of his sheep from the thousands of unreached people groups around the world?

My answer: above everything else, be the kind of person and the kind of preacher whose theme and passion is the majesty of God. No church will be able to rise to the magnificence of the missionary cause of Christ if they do not feel the magnificence of Christ himself. There will be no big world vision without a big God. There will be no passion to draw others, near or far, into the joy of our worship where there is no passionate joy in worship.

The most important thing I think pastors can do to arouse and sustain a passion for world evangelization is week in and week out to help their people see the crags and peaks and icy cliffs and snowcapped heights of God’s majestic character.

I mean that we should labor in our preaching to clear the mists and fog away from the sharp contours of the character of God. We should let him be seen in his majesty and sovereignty.

…the majestic character of God needs to be seen week in and week out not in the context of casualness and triviality and Sunday morning slapstick, but in the context of exaltation and awe and solemnity and earnestness and intensity.

How will our people ever come to feel in their bones the awful magnitude of what is at stake in the eternal destiny of the unevangelized, if our homiletical maxim is to start with a joke and keep the people entertained with anecdotes along the way. How will the people ever come to know and feel the crags and peaks and snowcapped heights of God’s glory if our preaching and worship services are more like picnics in the valley than thunder on the ice face of Mt. Everest?

It’s Thanksgiving day, and there are many things for which to be thankful. As the people of God, our greatest cause for thanksgiving is this very vision of God in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).  That’s why Paul could give this imperative following immediately after Sunday’s text: “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6).

So, let us abound in thanksgiving for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and for the ministry of those whom God uses to teach us each week, who toil and struggle for our maturity in Christ, who make the word of God more fully knowing in and through the body at Desert Springs Church.

In Sunday’s sermon, “How God Reconciles All Things,” Ryan preached from Colossians 1:19-23 to clarify the nature of Christ’s work of reconciliation. At the beginning of his sermon, Ryan brought our attention to two apparent dilemmas in this text which require clarification.

One of those dilemmas has to do with the evidence of reconciliation in the believer. Verses 22 and 23 say that we have been reconciled if indeed we “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.” The question follows, Can a Christian truly walk away from the faith? Can a Christian loose their salvation?

This passage is not unlike numerous other warnings throughout the Bible. Hebrews 3:14, for example, says that “we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” But how does this fit with Jesus’ words in John 10:28, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand”? Are we not, “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13, 14)?

Into this tension, 1 John 2:19 is a helpful interpretive key. In his short letter about about assurance  John writes about those who leave the faith: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” That is to say, saving faith is not “plain” until that faith perseveres in faithfulness to Jesus Christ, who is the object of true saving faith. Still, the Holy Spirit did not write these things throughout our Bibles in order to cause believers to doubt our salvation, but in order that we might examine ourselves. John, for example, states his purpose in writing this way: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” So, we do not persevere in order to stay in God’s grace. We persevere in order to give evidence of the eternal life that we now possess by God’s grace.

For further study, consider the following resources from Desiring God:

• Is Your Doctrine of Perseverance a Contradiction?
• The Full Assurance of Hope
• The Full Assurance of Hope to the End
• God Abides in the One Who Loves and the One Who Confesses

In addition, Tom Schreiner has two helpful lectures on The Pastoral Function of The Warnings in Scripture, and a short book, Run to Win the Prize, which summarizes the Bible’s teaching on perseverance.