Series
Rev. Jerry Hamstra
The Book of Esther
The Book of Esther
Sermons
Rev. Jerry Hamstra
Introduction to Acts
Introduction to Acts

Sermons

The LORD’s Question and Elijah’s Complaint

Read: 1 Kings 19:1-10
Text: 1 Kings 19:9-10

“So we have Moses asking for mercy and minimizing justice. And we have Elijah speaking of justice and saying nothing of mercy. This points to a tension in the Old Testament between the mercy and the justice of God. There is an awful lot in the Old Testament of the wrath of God against the sins of his people. But there is also the theme of God’s mercy that runs through the story. And these two aspects of God’s character are in tension with one another at least from a human perspective.”
— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

God Begins to Restore Elijah’s Soul

Read: 1 Kings 19:1-8
Text: 1 Kings 19:5-8

“So while the journey itself was not authorized by God, God was guiding it because he was going to use it to teach Elijah and renew him to his calling. This teaches us that even when we sin God can be directing events so as to teach us things that we need to know from our sins. It is not that God is ever responsible for our sin. But God is able to orchestrate things in such a way that we learn lessons from our sins.”
— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

Reviewing the Basics (3) “What Does it Mean to be a Sinner?”

“Our status needs to be changed. In order to be saved our status needs to be changed from guilty to not guilty – from guilty to righteous. But we need more than a change in status before God’s law. The kind of people we are needs to be changed. Our nature needs to be changed. We need to be changed from people who are inclined towards evil to people who are inclined towards obedience.”
— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

Discouragement and Endurance

“On the one hand, we have the revelation of God’s greatness and his power and his glorious promises to defeat evil and bring renewal, but on the other hand it often seems that evil has the upper hand. It often seems that any progress is tiny, and the advance of evil is massive. And that can be true in our individual lives and battles as well. The language of the Bible about the transforming power of salvation for believers is often so dramatic, while the experience of the transforming power of the gospel is often less than dramatic – it can be slow with many setbacks and discouragements.”
— Rev. Jerry Hamstra