Listen to our sermons posted weekly. We're a Christian church meeting in Libertyville Illinois and are passionate about God's Word, His Gospel and His People.
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The world needs saving. Creation has been handed over to death and decay, and so have we. We are harassed by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and left to our own devices we side with all three of them. Therefore, we need rescuing also from the...
Following a chapter in which John showed us the threat of the state and its accessories, he then shows us a vision of the holy opposition. However powerful the dragon and his tools are, the Lord has set Christ on Zion, his holy hill, and Christ is...
The next chapter of Revelation pictures the dragon summoning forth a beast from the sea, who in turn summons a beast from the land. Each guides the worship of the masses to its source, the land beast to the sea beast, the sea beast to the dragon. What...
Revelation now turns to the story of Christ and his Church, told through the image of a woman pursued by a many headed dragon. From the beginning, the Enemy has been seeking to see God‘s purposes miscarried, but nothing can stop the Lord’s redemptive...
We come now to the end of the seven trumpets. As before, God is revealed with thunder and lightning, the signs of Mount Sinai, and now the sign of the ark of the covenant appears in heaven. The passage describes the inbreaking of God's Kingdom...
John sees an angel who shares a likeness to Christ offering a scroll to be eaten. The scroll enables John to prophecy about “peoples and nations and languages and kings.” What follows is a vision of the Church as two witnesses, witnesses who on the...
In this passage, the things of Creation are plagued by fire. God‘s judgment takes the form of reversing Creation, not by a flood, but by smoke and stars falling from heaven and sulfur. Land animals and crawling things that should be under the dominion...
Prompted by a number of recent questions, the elders are taking this Sunday to consider the sacraments. Why did Christ give us these signs? Why is it important that a Church practices them? Does it matter how we practice them? Our hope is that...
With the seventh seal broken, our expectation is that the kingdom of God will now be unleashed. What we see instead is the preparation of seven trumpets that will intensify the judgment. In the middle of it all, the prayers of the saints are joined...
Paul writes his letter to the Philippians from a Roman prison. He realizes that this may be the end for him and that a painful death may be near. Looking not to contemporary slogans but to the biblical experience of Job, he engages in a very personal...
In Revelation 5, we met a paradoxical figure – a conquering Lion who is also a slain Lamb. In Revelation 7, we meet a paradoxical people – a conquering army that is also a slaughtered multitude. The two part-vision that describes this people...
For one kingdom to unseat another always means upheaval. This is no less true for the Kingdom of Heaven in Revelation 6, as the Lamb begins to open the seals to the scroll. The judgments predicted align with the events of the fall of Jerusalem in AD...
The activity in the heavenly throne room stalls on the question of who can break the seals of a mysterious scroll. The scroll contains the secret of history: what has all this chaos really been about, and who can bring history to a good ending? Only...
With the letters to the churches now ended, John is summoned up to the throne room of heaven to see “what must take place after this.” There he witnesses the worship of God, worship taken up by angels and by saints. The Lord‘s purpose in showing John...
The church in Laodicea is a church without zeal: they have a tepid faith, neither the bracing faith that refreshes like cold water, nor the scalding faith that cleanses and cooks. They are useless to Christ. Jesus tells them that the renewal of their...
Being a Christian becomes hard when we feel that certain sectors of social life are cut off for us because we are Christian. Maybe this is why we are so desperate to find and support parallel media or economies; it betrays that we actually feel...
What is the role of works in the Christian life? While we all agree that works cannot save us, do they play no role in how God completes his work in us? What happens when a church embraces what you might call cheap grace, the belief that grace...
The Church in Thyatira abounds in good works and in faith, but the Lord has something against them: they tolerate the presence of Jezebel. Drawing from the story of Israel's queen who seduced the nation into idol worship, Jesus warns the Church...
Pergamum is a church at risk. Situated in a city that Jesus refers to as the place of Satan's throne, they are beset by persecution. One of their members, whom Jesus refers to as his faithful witness, falls as a Christian martyr. But they are...
Jesus is the Sovereign Lord and conqueror of death and he warns his people that their suffering is about to get worse. In the warning is a promise, they will be tested and when they are found faithful they will receive the crown of life. His promise...
Here we begin the letters to the seven churches, starting with the church in Ephesus. It appears that in one sense the church in Ephesus was very strong. Jesus does not chastise them for staunchly guarding the doctrine of the Church; on the...
Christ is risen! Christ’s resurrection is the reversal of death and the beginning of hope. By it Christian’s learn no longer to fear, but also to go out into the world empowered with the message of what God has done in Christ.
Christ enters Jerusalem five days before the Passover, riding a donkey. The news that this Galilean preacher recently raised the dead in Bethany has expectations high that this finally is Messiah, announcing himself to the Holy City just as Zechariah...
John, like the prophets of the Old Covenant, receives a commission. He is told to "write what he sees," and send the message to the seven churches suffering in Asia. When John turns to see the messenger, he is given a vision of the glory...
Revelation is a letter, and like any letter in the first century, it begins with a formal greeting. John speaks on behalf of the triune Lord to a group of churches under profound pressure, and in all their hardship he announces to them grace and...
