20251228 Grow in Grace 2026
Grow in Grace • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Welcome to Vertical Church
Good morning.
Let Us Continue to Worship God
Join me in prayer
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. 10 With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me stray from Your commandments. 11 Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You. 12 Blessed are You, O Yahweh; Teach me Your statutes.
18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
Introduction: Grow in Grace 2026
This is the last Sunday of 2025. It is also the Sunday in between Christmas and New Years.
For me it’s aways been a strange kind of year. The school boy me wants to spend the week doing nothing. The working man me who has to work wants to spend the whole week doing nothing.
But as we move toward the new year, there is something that we need to do: we need to reflect on the past year, we need to recharge as we head into the new year, and we need to recommit to those things which have helped us in 2025 and will help us in 2026.
(1) Reflect on the past year
2 “And you shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
5 “Thus you shall know in your heart that Yahweh your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.
11 “Beware lest you forget Yahweh your God by not keeping His commandments and His judgments and His statutes which I am commanding you today;
17 lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’
(2) Recharge as you head into the New Year
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. 10 With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me stray from Your commandments. 11 Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You. 12 Blessed are You, O Yahweh; Teach me Your statutes.
(3) Recommit to those things that have helped you in 2025 and will help you in 2026
42 And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.
24 And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
The means of Grace:
The means of grace are God’s appointed methods by which the Holy Spirit enables believers to receive Christ and the benefits of redemption. Although He could have chosen to reveal Christ immediately to His people, He has determined instead to do so through certain means. God assigned the Word, sacraments, and prayer to be the foremost means by which He communicates Christ and His benefits to believers.
In His grace and in His wisdom, God has provided ways by which we can regularly have our faith in His promises fortified. Historically, we have referred to these ways of strengthening our faith as the ordinary means of grace. Prayer, the preaching of the Word, and the sacraments are not elaborate or fancy methods of giving us what we need to confirm our trust in Christ. To an outside observer, they do not seem special at all. After all, they make use of rather common things such as human speech, bread, wine, and water. But by faith and the work of the Spirit, these common elements are used to do an uncommon work — the confirmation of our trust in Jesus and the strengthening of our wills to flee from sin and rest in Christ alone.
The words of Revelation 2:4-5
4 ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. 5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first. But if not, I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.
Remember, Repent, Return
Let’s pray
Let me leave you with this good word
10 And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, strengthen, confirm, and ground you. 11 To Him be might forever and ever. Amen.
