Riverside Covenant Sermons

Joshua 6:12-21

Exodus 13:17-14:31

Sermon text: Genesis 45: 1-28

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This week we finished the book of Genesis in the E100 Bible reading plan. And I think it is important that we understand where we have gone thus far. Genesis answers for us several questions. It tells us how we got here and who created us. It tells us about when sin entered the world. And it tells us about how God began to communicate with us.

One of those primary ways of communicating that is very clear early in the story of God in Genesis, is that God intends to reveal himself uniquely to a line of people and he begins in a sense with Abraham. And Abraham becomes the first of the 3 biblical patriarchs. Isaac, Abraham's son is the second. The third is Isaac's son, Jacob. The God of Abraham becomes the God of Isaac and then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This provides a theme that became crucial in God's revelation to the Hebrews in Egypt, on their journey to the promise land, and is often repeated in the rest of the Old Testament.

Now this is important as we get to our passage this morning concerning Joseph because though it seems that these chapters are just about Joseph, they are in reality about Jacob and how Jacob ends up in Egypt. These chapters are designed to bring the details of Jacob's life, the third of the great patriarchs, to its conclusion. Throughout the story there is an underlying emphasis on matters relative to Jacob's approaching death and events related to it. Details about the death and burial of both Jacob and Joseph, together with their requests to carry their remains back to Canaan, eventually provide closure to the narrative.

Genesis 32:22-32

Sermon text: Genesis 11:1-9

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I have often imagined a world where everything and everyone were exactly alike. I have thought to myself I wish that everyone thought exactly like I do and that they had the same interests and the same desires. At the very least, I have thought, things would be perfect in my marriage. If only Dana wanted to watch all sports on television, if only the girls loved putting their seat belts on, if only I did not have to guess what other people were thinking, but they thought just like I do.

I have imagined this world where if everyone just had the exact same language, looked exactly alike and so on everything would be better . . .

This is pretty much the situation that the world had arrived at by Chapter 11 in Genesis.

Psalm 119:105

2 Timothy 3:10-17

Luke 2:1-20

Sermon text: Matthew 5:1-12

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Today we are going to finish our Advent Conspiracy series and as I mentioned earlier, the topic is “Love All.”

I hope you have followed the progression we have tried to make here. Our theme has been an attempt to return Christmas to its rightful place as a remembrance and celebration of Jesus' birth. We began by saying that no matter what our culture has turned Christmas into, for us to take it back we must begin with worship. Every movement of our being must be oriented towards the worship of Jesus. And when it is, and we faithfully assess our culture, we find some alarming things.

In the Advent Conspiracy we discover that Americans spend billions and billions of dollars more on stuff during Christmas than would be needed to provide clean drinking water for the world. And these stats could go on and on. So we discussed the importance of spending less and spending wisely. That our culture has robbed us and tricked us into believing that we would find joy in consumption.

Once we spend less, we are urged to give more. The Creator of the World, God, is a giver. He gave us Himself. And we are told repeatedly throughout the Bible that we are to be people of deep generosity too.