With an abundance of caution, we have cancelled  services today. With weather and road issues we want people to be safe and off the roads. May God bless you.

It’s that time of year again to make some New Year’s Resolutions. Unfortunately, many people find that just a few weeks into the New Year, their resolutions have fallen by the wayside. For example, making the resolution, “I want to exercise more” is a good resolution, but it’s too vague. It needs to be accompanied by a plan with bite-sized steps. Similarly, maybe you’ve made a resolution that goes something like this: “I want to read my Bible more next year.” Like the example of exercising, this is a good goal to have. It just needs to be made more specific to include a plan with actionable steps. And this is where a Bible reading plan becomes useful. A Bible reading plan takes your overall goal (“reading my Bible more”) and breaks that down into a series of steps that you can do. Without a Bible reading plan, you might not be sure where to begin and it would be easy to get bogged down in some of the Old Testament passages that are full of hard-to-pronounce names. But a Bible reading plan gives you the structure and accountability needed to accomplish your goal.

So whether this is your first time reading through the entire Bible or you already have a habit of Bible reading, I’m challenging you to commit to the Bible reading plan for 2025 that I have posted here on our website. I’m going to commit to following this reading plan in 2025 and I hope you will too. The plan is very manageable. It is 4 chapters per day most days (some days it is 5). In one year, you will read all the Old Testament more than once (you will read the Psalms and Proverbs twice) and you will read all the New Testament more than once (you will read the entire New Testament by September and then actually spend the last three months of the year rereading some New Testament books).

God promises us that his word is powerful and will accomplish what he intends it to accomplish. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword… discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). “My word… shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). When we are regularly reading and thinking about the word of God, it will change us. He will use his word to make us more like Jesus. So, whether you are already in the habit of Bible reading or whether you don’t have a Bible reading plan yet, I challenge you to join me in 2025 in committing to this Bible reading plan and seeing how God will use it to grow our relationship with him.

Isn’t it terrible to be separated from someone you love? Perhaps your spouse has served a deployment and you were separated by thousands of miles for months on end. Maybe you live far away from your family and feel separated from them. Or perhaps you have experienced the separation that death brings between you and those who were closest to you–your father, your mother, your spouse, or a child. That last type of separation in particular is such a painful reminder of the effects of sin in our world. Sin and death divide families, ruin relationships, and tear loved ones apart. Sin also estranges us from God. When we live in sin, God is not with us, not because he abandoned us but because we abandoned him. But the beauty of the message of the gospel is that through Jesus God is with us again. In fact, the name Immanuel that was given to Jesus means ‘God with us’ (Matthew 1:23). 

Under the Mosaic Law, the Israelites were constantly reminded of the fact that sin separated them from God. God’s presence was among his people in the tabernacle (later in the temple) but the priests had to offer animal sacrifices and be ritually clean in order to approach God in their temple duties. (See Hebrews 9:6-8).

So imagine the Jews’ surprise when Jesus began teaching that he was the Son of God (making himself equal with God). They thought that God was in the temple, hidden away and separate from the people. And yet here was this man, walking through the cities of Judea, teaching the people, and performing miracles, and he claimed that he was God. This is the miracle of the incarnation: that God the Son became human, without losing any of his divinity whatsoever. He was born by the virgin Mary who miraculously conceived him and he experienced the hurts and pains and temptations that we experience. Because he was fully human, he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrew 4:15). And because he is fully God, the sacrifice of his perfect and sinless blood satisfied the demands of justice and opened the opportunity for all people to be justified by faith in Christ (Hebrews 2:17, Romans 3:21-26).

Jesus Christ was God the Son who walked among us. He truly was God with us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have peace with God and access to him (Romans 5:1-2, Hebrews 10:19-22). This Christmas, let your mind wander back to that little city of Bethlehem where some 2000 years ago a baby was born and was laid in a feeding trough. He was no ordinary baby. He was and is Immanuel, God with us, the Lion of Judah, our Savior and our Lord. Let your mind wander back to that scene and give thanks and praise to God for the miracle of the birth of Jesus.

Over the past several weeks we have seen that the Proverbs of Solomon are filled with wisdom for many different aspects of life, including our work, friendships, words, and attitudes. But ultimately, the Proverbs point us to one central teaching: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In other words, not only do the Proverbs show us what it looks like to apply wisdom to certain areas of our life, but they also point us to the root of all wisdom, which is the fear of God.

Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” To fear the LORD is to recognize who he is and to have an accurate understanding of what he is like. To have the fear of God within us means that we recognize that he has the right to punish us for our sins and that his choice to save us through faith in Jesus Christ is the greatest act of grace that has ever been shown. To fear him is to give him the reverence and awe that he rightfully deserves and to show our reverence for him by living according to his standards.

But we do not fear him with the same kind of fear we feel in the presence of great evil, for there is absolutely nothing evil in God. We recognize that we are completely helpless before God and totally at his mercy. To say he is greater than we are is the understatement of the ages. How could we not fear the great, holy God of the Universe? And according to our verse, to fear God and give him the proper reverence and honor is the beginning of knowledge. That means that if we do not understand who God is, we do not rightly know anything else. God is the starting point and the reference point for all knowledge. If we get him wrong, we get everything else wrong too. 

Additionally, Proverbs 9:10 tells us that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” Here we learn that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. If we do not understand God rightly we neither know anything else properly nor do we know how to use knowledge and apply it to life. What this all makes clear is that if God is not at the center of our life and if we do not understand him as he reveals himself to us, we mess up everything else in our lives. Put God at the center of your life. Understand who he is and know who we are in relation to him. He is the God of the universe and we are his servants. Fear God and give him the glory he deserves. 

You may be in the habit of paying attention to the health of your physical heart, but are you also paying attention to the health of your spiritual heart? Scattered throughout the Proverbs are warnings about the dangers of certain attitudes that can infect our heart. The Proverbs also describe other attitudes that we should display.

On one hand, the Proverbs warn us about dangerous conditions of the heart. Proverbs 18:12 says “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” If your body is ill, your spirit can still sustain you through that illness and see you through to the other side, but if your spirit is ill (i.e. broken or discouraged) that is truly a hard burden to bear. Be on the lookout for those who have a broken spirit and help them bear their heavy burden. As terrible as a broken spirit is, the Proverbs also warn us about an even more dangerous condition of the heart: pride. The proverb that we are all familiar with warns that “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Not only does pride incur terrible consequences, but it is also sinful. Proverbs 21:4 says “A haughty look, a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked are sin.” The biblical warnings against pride should awaken us to the seriousness of the physical and spiritual consequences it brings. Let God take away your pride and replace it with a strong dependence on him.

On the other hand, the Proverbs tell us about the blessing and reward of other conditions of the heart. Proverbs 15:15 tells us that “All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.” “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones,” (Proverbs 17:22). As Christians, we have every reason to rejoice. We don’t pretend that everything is good in the world (in fact we recognize and mourn the presence of real evil around us) but we do have an unshakeable hope in our Lord Jesus Christ no matter what happens in this life. Furthermore, we know that God gives us good things in this lifetime to enjoy as a sample of all the wonderful blessings he has in store in heaven (see 1 Timothy 6:17 and James 1:17). The Proverbs tell of one more heart condition that should characterize our entire life. It is found in Proverbs 28:14, which reads, “Happy is the man who is always reverent, but he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity.” The proverb announces that the person who is always reverent is happy, which is another way of saying he is blessed. This week, ask God to heal any brokenness in your spirit, to humble your pride, to fill you with joy in Christ, and to deepen your reverence for God.

Are you working hard or hardly working? There is an enormous difference between the two, isn’t there? Work is not one of those ‘Bible-y’ words or a religious term, but it is nonetheless something that God says a lot about in the Bible; evidently, he cares about it a great deal. In Genesis 2:15 we learn that Adam’s job was to work the garden of Eden (in other words, to care for it). This was Adam’s job before the fall. Therefore, work is good. Work did not come as a result of the fall, for it was commanded by God and performed by Adam prior to his sin. However, after the fall, work became more difficult. The ground was cursed for Adam’s sake and began to bring forth thorns, making his job harder (Genesis 3:17-18).

Because work is good, it means that we can honor God by working hard at honorable tasks. God designed us to be working, productive creatures, so we fulfill his design for us in part when we work hard at honorable tasks. But because work was made more difficult as a result of the fall, we are tempted to not work hard, or maybe even to hardly work at all. Whenever we feel tempted to not work hard or to hardly work at all we should remind ourselves of what God says on the subject. The Proverbs of Solomon are packed with timeless principles about the importance of diligence and hard work and the dangers of laziness and idleness. 

The Proverbs teach us that honest, hard work leads to lasting reward, but by contrast, wealth that is gained hastily or by fraud will diminish (Prov. 13: 11, 21:5). The wise man will be on guard against laziness, for it can quickly overtake a man and ruin him: “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like an armed robber…” (Prov. 6:10-11, also 24:33-34). The Proverbs invite us to take a look at the ant and think about the lessons he teaches us about work. Even though the ant has no boss looking over his shoulder and no time clock to punch, he works hard to gather food and stores it up for a later time when he will need it (Prov. 6:6-8). We stand to learn an important lesson about diligent work from the little ant, such a small and seemingly insignificant bug. Let’s all strive to be more like the ant that works diligently. Yes, work can be mundane and tiresome but remember that work is good and that we honor God by doing honest work with a cheerful attitude.

Parents, a spouse, children, grandchildren, neighbors, friends—the people around us are often the greatest blessings in our lives, filling our hearts with joy, laughter, and companionship. Yet, ironically, the same people can also be some of the greatest sources of hurt, disappointment, and frustration we will ever experience. While it is impossible to prevent all hurt and conflict, our relationships with other people can be much more meaningful if we apply God’s wisdom to those relationships. The Proverbs contain wisdom for many types of relationships, but let’s take a moment to consider the wisdom of the Proverbs specifically for friendships.

The Proverbs teach us to choose our friends carefully. “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray” (Prov. 12:26). When choosing friends who will be your inner circle, it is imperative that you choose carefully. The consequences of choosing unwisely could be disastrous and you could be led away from the right path. In another Proverb, the same point is made with a specific example. “Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul” (Prov. 22:24-25). We must carefully choose friends who will assist us in our pursuit of holiness. This is certainly not to say you cannot have friends who are not Christians or who have sin issues to work on. Indeed, we all struggle with many things. Rather, this is to say that your closest associates should be those who are on the same trajectory of godliness, because if you make friendships with violent or angry or wicked people, you could all too easily be ensnared in their wicked ways.

We often emphasize this truth about choosing friends carefully to teens and young adults, and rightly so, for teens can be especially susceptible to peer pressure. Nevertheless, this applies to adults just as much as it applies to teens. We never outgrown the need for friendship. If you have godly friends in your life, do not take them for granted. Be the friend who loves at all times (Prov. 17:17) and refrain from doing foolish things that could ruin that friendship (Prov. 17:9). If you do not have godly friends in your life, make every effort to seek and cultivate a godly friendship today. And remember, if we want to have friends, we have to start by being friendly ourselves (Prov. 18:24). It will take time and effort, but a good friendship is worth investing in. And when we apply godly wisdom to our friendships, they can be so much more than mere social structures for doing fun things together. A godly friendship can be a comfort to our soul and a catalyst for your growth in godliness. This week, I encourage you to invest in your friendships and to thank the people who have been a godly friend to you.

Thomas Yukich

Acts 27:23

Have you ever been on the sea or the ocean during a storm? I cannot imagine the type of storm that the apostle Paul and his companions experienced that is described for us in Acts 27. Paul and Luke (maybe other companions, too) were sailing from Caesarea to Rome where Paul would stand on trial before Caesar. Their travels were slowed because of bad weather (Acts 27:7-8) and Paul warned the captain of the ship and the Roman centurion to stay put in a certain harbor. Nevertheless, they made the decision to forge on ahead with the trip, even though it was a dangerous time of the year to sail (Acts 27:9, 12). Before long, Paul and the ship encountered a terrible storm. It was so bad that the sailors threw the ship’s cargo and tackle overboard to lighten the ship. The storm would last for fourteen days (Acts 27:27). The rest of the story is fascinating, but in the middle of the account Paul says a few words that hold a lesson for us.

Sometime in the middle of that storm, Paul stood up and urged all his fellow travelers to “take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid Paul; you must stand before Caesar, and behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told” (Acts 27:22-25). Did you notice what Paul said about God? He called him “the God to whom I belong and whom I worship.” Although this is not the main point in the story, it is incredibly important. With these simple words, Paul is stating two great truths about God.

First, God is the One to whom Paul belongs, and by extension, to whom we all belong. We belong to God in more than just one way: we belong to him because he created us, and we belong to him because he saved us and called us to be his children. There is no doubt in Paul’s mind; he knows that he belongs to God. Second, God is the object of Paul’s worship. Truly, God is the only rightful object of our worship. Nothing else and no one else deserves our worship. Yet God is entirely worthy of our worship, for he is perfect, holy, just, and loving. He is a jealous God who will not give his glory to any other, meaning that it is an insult against God to worship anything other than him. Paul knew that God is only One who deserves worship. Do you have this same clarity in your life? Let’s take a lesson from Paul by remembering that God is the only One to whom we belong and whom we worship!