Providence Anglican Church

03/04/2025

https://rumble.com/v6rm6q1-abrahams-god-at-the-burning-bush.html

Exodus 3 presents the dramatic encounter of Moses at the burning bush. This video explores the connection of this story with a promise and a prediction revealed to Abram back in Genesis15.

11/04/2024

The Other Appearance of the Risen Messiah
“The Day of Resurrection, earth tell it out abroad,
The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God…”
Each believer no doubt has a favorite scene that comes to mind this season of the year. For some it is is the staggered Roman guards around the empty tomb where the stone was rolled away as the thunder rolled above. For others it is the ever-faithful women who went and wept and begged the supposed gardener, "Sir, tell me where you have laid him." We are uncomfortable for Peter and John who first took these reports as "idle words," but raced to find them true , and for Thomas who has ever since borne the title “doubting,” for his initial disbelief. Some of us imagine who the five hundred brethren were who saw him together, many of whom were still alive when Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, and our faith is strengthened by that reflection, but some of us also may have wished he would have appeared, say, to the assembled Sanhedrin for a quick, “I told you so!” Sure, they heard the report of their guards of being knocked flat when the angels came down, but that was something they could still deny in public. priests hushed it up and saved face via lies. Certainly, the faith of the disciples was restored and enlarged when Jesus appeared repeatedly to them, but where was the evangelistic leverage? For that there would need to be another resurrection appearance, not to a relative like James, or a disciple like Peter, but to an enemy of the Lord who not only doubted but lived for the destruction of the believing Jews. And there was such an appearance, but it was entirely out of season. It happened long after the last of the Passover matza was a distant memory, after the forty days of appearances to the disciples, and Messiah’s ascension to heaven. It happened after Pentecost and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the expansion of the church beyond Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It happened at the wrong time, and to the wrong kind of person. It happened to a self-described “Pharisee of Pharisees,” reared in Jerusalem, instructed under the famous rabbi Gamaliel. It happened to a man who had held the coats of the men who stoned the deacon Stephen and to a man who was at that moment conducting a kind of pogrom, ravaging the Jewish believers in Jesus, and imprisoning even their women. With warrants from the high priest in Jerusalem, he was on his way to Damascus to spread the persecution when Jesus appeared to him in brilliant majesty and knocked him as flat as the angels had flattened the guards around the grave. He was Saul of Tarsus. Jesus spoke to him, saying," Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Like little Samuel in the Temple, Saul did not know the Lord's voice, so he asked, "Who are you, Lord?" He answered: "I am Jesus." Blinded by the light of the glory, this leader of the opposition now had to be led like a child into the city he had intended to attack. There he was healed, and baptized, and there in the Damascus synagogues he began to preach that Jesus is the Son of God. At last, the church had a witness to the resurrection from among the official opposition, and this one could not be bribed quiet. This "other appearance" of the risen Jesus is repeated three times in the Acts of the Apostles, and the world is still rocking from the story of an apostle assigned out of season in the other appearance of the Lord.

05/03/2024

Reflections in Lent
"...if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."
Let us admire the straightforward honesty of Jesus. His calls us without equivocation to a pilgrimage that passes through this fallen world sans immunity from its bites, kicks, and scratches. The Christian life is not a cakewalk, and we had better be as honest as our Lord about that. Preachers who present Christ's way as something else, as a stroll through health, wealth, and prosperity would do well to recall that when Peter tried to back Jesus away from his own cross, "Get behind me, Satan..." was our Lord's response. Peter was not like Satan in every way, but he was like him in suggesting, as Satan had in the wilderness temptation, that the Messiah might have his kingdom without a cross. Let us recognize as equally satanic this idea that we might walk the course of his kingdom apart from that kingdom's crosses, his cross that accomplished salvation, and ours that reflect salvation in our willingness to suffer the slights of the malign, misinformed, and misguided whenever the priorities of heaven's kingdom so require. Onward, then, and upward we go.

20/01/2024

Bible Connections
Genesis is the story of how Israel came to reside in Egypt with his whole family. It was, on the one hand, the fulfillment of a prophecy given to Israel's grandfather Abraham, and on the other hand the result of Israel's sons selling their brother Joseph to slavers who sold him in Egypt. By divine providence, Joseph rose from slavery to become Pharaoh's prime minister. By that same Providence, he rescued Egypt from a titanic crisis. In gratitude Egypt's king welcomed all of Israel's family, giving them territory in his realm suitable to their occupation. There is a gap of hundreds of years between that event and the portentous words of Exodus 1:8, where we read that "... there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." That spelled trouble, but by divine providence, and again, according to a prediction given to Abraham, Israel, now a people more than merely a family, was delivered in the Exodus and let to the land divinely promised them.
By the time we get to Judges 2:10, the Israelites Joshua had led into the Promised Land have passed away, and we read words that are meant to remind us of Exodus 1:8:
And there arose another generation after them who did not know Adonai, or the work that he had done for Israel. The meaning here is the same as in Exodus; to "not know" means to be forgetful of, whether literally or conveniently so that the ones who "know not" are ostensibly free to do as they please apart from any historically derived responsibility to their "help in ages past."
When I lived in the city an old Israeli man named Yitzhak (Isaac) lived across the street from my office. He had some interesting stories about the wars he had experienced in his homeland (including one absolute miracle) and about helping catch 2nd World War criminals hidden in Latin America. He was, nonetheless, an atheist, a man like many of his generation who had forgotten what the generation after Joshua "knew not." I was pleased to learn though, that he had a bible and I asked him to help me with my Hebrew by reading with me. We began in Genesis of course, and when we got to chapter 15 he became agitated nearly to the point of apoplexy. It is there that Adonai promises Abraham's offspring the land, "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates," "How they can say zis is not our land?" he exclaimed as loudly as his hoarse smoker's voice would go. "Look, it says right here that He gave it to us!"
"Wait a minute, Isaac," I said with a grin, "You don't believe in Him, so this means nothing for you." Thankfully, what his generation had forgotten, a previous generation had written down for future reference and that chapterr closed the book on Isaac's atheism. He went from "I know not," to "I know now," and before long he knew better promises yet, promises that are standing him in good stead on Zion's highest hill with Zion's highest King. I hope to see him there as I have a friend who's preparing a place in that neighborhood for me. Maranatha.

28/10/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAW_ElbZC2o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAW_ElbZC2o

proper 25 A Saint Matthew 22:34-46 Sermon

08/03/2023

Kinsel celebrated his 106th birthday at his home in Lukachukai, Arizona. He's one of the last three surviving Navajo Code Talkers.

08/03/2023

In his recent Daily Wire documentary, "Logos & Literacy," Dr. Jordan Peterson visits the Museum of the Bible and discusses the impact of the Bible on literac...

07/03/2023

Reflection for Lent: Psalm 32:1
"Blessed is the man whose unrighteousness is forgiven,
and whose sin is covered."
"Covered" is a word that in English can be very positive, very dangerous, or somewhat suspect. If a friend at the restaurant says he's got you "covered," that's different than when a policeman says, "Don't move; I've got you covered," during a holdup. If a politician is covering his own tracks, that means something else again. What does it mean in the Psalm when we're told that the man whose sin is "covered" is blessed? Hebrew parallelism generally says the same thing twice in one sentence, which is convenient when one half or the other of the sentence seems unclear. In Ps. 32:1 Unrighteousness = sin, and forgiven = covered. Covered, then, means forgiven of unrighteousness and sin. This image brings to mind Genesis 3 where the first man and woman committed the first act of unrighteousness. They were suddenly aware of their nakedness, and in turn, felt ashamed. Soon they would be turned out "East of Eden" with consequences well known to every Sunday School child, but I seem to remember that they were not turned out naked. Their Creator "made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." The prophet Isaiah would later describe salvation in these words, "...He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). " The robe that covered Adam and Eve's shame was convenient for them, but it cost some sheep their skins, their blood, and their lives. Can we see in this a kind of foreshadowing of Good Friday when the lamb of God took away the sins of Adam's sons? He too was stripped naked like the sheep whose skins were flayed off to cover Adam and Eve. He was stripped we know, for the soldiers divided his garments among themselves a la Psalm 22, casting lots for his tunic. Thus did he bear our shame, hanging naked in our place, so that we might be covered before heaven and earth with his garment of salvation. "All we like sheep have gone astray, Says Isaiah (53:6) We have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all." Set aside the fig leaves of your excuses and denials. Call upon the name of the Lord, and he will clothe you in linen white and clean.+

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03/03/2023

Against the Wind...
"Children are a heritage, and a reward, and are so to be accounted, blessings and not burdens; for he that sends mouths will send meat if we trust in him. Obed-edom had eight sons, for the Lord blessed him because he had entertained the ark, 1 Chr. 26:5. Children are a heritage for the Lord, as well as from him; they are my children (says God) which thou hast borne unto me (Eze. 16:20); and they are most our honour and comfort when they are accounted to him for a generation." --- Matthew Henry

02/03/2023

"Put them in fear O LORD, that the heathen may know they are only men." Psalm 9:20 (2 March Morning Ps. 9-11)

The original temptation included the idea that by eating the forbidden fruit Eve and Adam would become like God in knowledge. That "wisdom" Eve saw she could gain was a wisdom assumed already in the very taking of the fruit, which act required her to reckon herself capable of choosing what is good apart from reference to the word God had given her. Thus the Psalmist's plea is a prayer against that original error universal to mankind of assuming itself adequate in reason or feeling to identify the good and the bad apart from the transcendent point of reference God gave through Moses in his word.