Podcasts about biblical themes

Join Summit Church and Pastor Wayne Hanson as we launch into a NEW SERIES today on 1st CORINTHIANS. Pastor Wayne will be giving an overview of Paul's letter to the church at CORINTH and sharing a study called: "God's PLAN." Many times we MAKE OUR OWN PLANS but it is GOD's PLAN that will prevail. You'll be challenged and encouraged today! Join us IN-Person or ONLINE for this ENCOURAGING message and bring a friend along with you! You can also find out more about Summit Church by visiting: www.MySummitChurch.com Join us for IN-Person Worship, 10:30am Sundays at 4240 N Perry Park Road, Sedalia, CO 80135 Or across our many Social Media Streams. #Church #DrWayneHanson #BibleTeaching #SummitChurch #Jesus #Praise&Worship #WayneHanson #Culture #Politics #Celebrity #Humility #Recovery #ARCchurch #Priorities 3 Ways to Give There are 3 ways to give at Summit Church today. You can give by envelope, give online at www.MySummitChurch.com and hit the DONATE button or TEXT your gift to 303-625-9434, follow the prompts on your smartphone (this method is FREE and there is no carrier charge to give by phone)! Mail Your Donation to Summit Church 200 S Wilcox St #243 Castle Rock, CO 80104 https://www.facebook.com/summitchurch... Want to Learn How to Start a Relationship with God? visit: www.29Minutes.org CCLI License - Summit Church CCLI Streaming Plus License #20939176 CCLI Church Copyright License #11543919 Join Pastor Wayne and Summit Church for this week's teaching in the "God Songs Series" with a Message called, "From the Inside Out." In a time when many of our musical and cultural heroes are failing us, there is ONE who never FAILS. That One is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What should a Christian do about an artist or worship leader that has failed? What about "Cancel Culture?" Pastor Wayne will discuss these difficult questions as we look at the song and the BIBLICAL THEMES of GRACE in this weeks' message. You'll be challenged and encouraged today! Join us IN-Person or ONLINE for this ENCOURAGING message and bring a friend along with you! You can also find out more about Summit Church by visiting: www.MySummitChurch.com Join us for IN-Person Worship, 10:30am Sundays at 4240 N Perry Park Road, Sedalia, CO 80135 Or across our many Social Media Streams. #Church #DrWayneHanson #BibleTeaching #SummitChurch #Jesus #Praise&Worship #WayneHanson #Culture #Politics #Celebrity #Humility #Recovery #ARCchurch #Priorities 3 Ways to Give There are 3 ways to give at Summit Church today. You can give by envelope, give online at www.MySummitChurch.com and hit the DONATE button or TEXT your gift to 303-625-9434, follow the prompts on your smartphone (this method is FREE and there is no carrier charge to give by phone)! Mail Your Donation to Summit Church 200 S Wilcox St #243 Castle Rock, CO 80104 https://www.facebook.com/summitchurch... Want to Learn How to Start a Relationship with God? visit: www.29Minutes.org CCLI License - Summit Church CCLI Streaming Plus License #20939176 CCLI Church Copyright License #11543919 To Grab Tickets for The JESUS TAXI Gran Prix Event on Oct 6th at K1 Speedway visit TicketBud: https://ticketbud.com/.../4e00e602-5d38-11f0-b58e...

Join Pastor Wayne and Summit Church for this week's teaching in the "God Songs Series" with a Message called, "From the Inside Out." In a time when many of our musical and cultural heroes are failing us, there is ONE who never FAILS. That One is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What should a Christian do about an artist or worship leader that has failed? What about "Cancel Culture?" Pastor Wayne will discuss these difficult questions as we look at the song and the BIBLICAL THEMES of GRACE in this weeks' message. You'll be challenged and encouraged today! Join us IN-Person or ONLINE for this ENCOURAGING message and bring a friend along with you! You can also find out more about Summit Church by visiting: www.MySummitChurch.com Join us for IN-Person Worship, 10:30am Sundays at 4240 N Perry Park Road, Sedalia, CO 80135 Or across our many Social Media Streams. #Church #DrWayneHanson #BibleTeaching #SummitChurch #Jesus #Praise&Worship #WayneHanson #Culture #Politics #Celebrity #Humility #Recovery #ARCchurch #Priorities 3 Ways to Give There are 3 ways to give at Summit Church today. You can give by envelope, give online at www.MySummitChurch.com and hit the DONATE button or TEXT your gift to 303-625-9434, follow the prompts on your smartphone (this method is FREE and there is no carrier charge to give by phone)! Mail Your Donation to Summit Church 200 S Wilcox St #243 Castle Rock, CO 80104 https://www.facebook.com/summitchurch... Want to Learn How to Start a Relationship with God? visit: www.29Minutes.org CCLI License - Summit Church CCLI Streaming Plus License #20939176 CCLI Church Copyright License #11543919

In this episode, there are different lessons of how we have to be fixed to see Jesus first, and let God come to satisfy your new self in Heaven

Discover how understanding historical context and background transforms Bible reading into deep spiritual nourishment, with help from Christian author Betty Johansen and her contextual guidebook, "The Bible In Brief." Visit https://bettyjohansen.com/ for details. Wordsmith World City: Big Spring Address: Texas Website: https://bettyjohansen.com/

The boys jump on the hype train with a Sinners Spoiler Free Review! What did they think of the highest reviewed film of the year so far?Jamie goes on an epic rant about the cinema experience....02:27 Discussion on Recent Films Watched05:23 Exploring the Film 'Real Pain'08:25 The Importance of Going in Cold to Films11:30 Buffy and Angel: A Nostalgic Dive14:23 Transition to 'Sinners' Review17:34 Overview of 'Sinners' and Its Themes27:27 The Struggle for Respect and Freedom. 28:29 Choices and Predestination in Life30:46 The Cultural Significance of Blues Music35:33 Exploring Identity and Heritage37:38 The Role of Music in the Narrative43:23 Visual Storytelling and Cinematic Techniques51:42 The Vampire Metaphor and Societal Commentary57:17 Biblical Themes and Character Names59:04 The Moral Implications of the Story01:00:16 Character Development and Redemption01:02:08 Genre Blending: Horror and Drama01:04:12 Sequel Speculations and Future Directions01:07:23 Cinema Experience: The Good and the Bad01:11:51 Audience Etiquette and Cinema CultureSearch Moviesinapodshell all one word to find us on all of your podcasting services!https://twitter.com/inapodshellThe Instagram- @MoviesinapodshellJon's Instagram- @jcb.videoYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/@MoviesinaPODshell/videosOur merch shop is now OPEN! You can buy a t-shirt from the link below.https://moviesinapodshell.sumupstore.com/

Series :: Exodus - Part 3: Show Me Your GloryExodus 34:29-35 :: Andrew Rutten03–09–25 :: Sunday Gatheringprovidenceomaha.orgFacebook InstagramYouTube

For Lincoln's birthday month this year, we unpack Biblical themes in a crucial speech he gave at the end of his life where he interprets the Civil War entirely in Biblical terms. The Republican Professor is a pro-correctly understanding the Bible and Politics podcast. Therefore, welcome our first Republican president to the podcast, Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Professor is produced and hosted by Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D.

The Book of PsalmsSermon Preached by Steve DuBransky on February 2, 2025 Foothill Church exists to glorify God by living as disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus. https://foothill.church Learn about our For the Sake of His Name 2-Year Discipleship Journey: https://foothill.church/FTSOHN→ Check out more sermons

Join us for our continuing visit with the talented artist and sculpturist Deborah Samia! With a God-given gift for art, she's been creating since she was a child. We've been talking with her about her exploring how to combine her art and her faith, "but communicating in a language that is not just for people who know the stories of the Bible!” 

Join us as we dig through some of the more recent Godzilla and King Kong movies to see the Biblical themes that Hollywood is using. Is it a subconscious indoctrination or innocent use of a Biblical narrative for entertainment? You may be surprised!

Join us as we dig through some of the more recent Godzilla and King Kong movies to see the Biblical themes that Hollywood is using. Is it a subconscious indoctrination or innocent use of a Biblical narrative for entertainment? You may be surprised!

In this episode, we dive into Gary Schnittjer's insightful and engaging book, Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch. If you've ever felt that the first five books of the Bible are daunting, this book (and our review!) might be just what you need. Schnittjer offers a fresh way of approaching Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with clarity, curiosity, and a pastoral heart. We'll unpack his key ideas, explore how he makes the Torah feel relevant for today, and share why this resource is a must-have for students, pastors, and curious readers alike. Plus, you can win a copy for your very own!!!Featured Resources:Gary Schnittjer - Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the PentateuchBig thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram.Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon. 

Join Pastor Josh Slautterback and Pastor Craig Stephens as they dive into the heart of the Christmas season in this new three-part podcast series. In the first episode, they'll explore the themes of Christmas through the lens of Scripture, uncovering how the story of Jesus' birth not only shapes our celebrations but also reveals the ultimate hope and joy found in our Savior. As we reflect on these themes, they'll share practical ways to weave them into meaningful discussions with loved ones during the holidays. These conversations can spark opportunities to share the love and message of Jesus, making this season even more impactful. Whether you're decking the halls or reflecting on the wonder of the season, this episode will inspire you to celebrate the true reason for Christmas: the birth of Jesus Christ.

162 - Join us here - https://locals.com/member/LoriandMichelle And READ through the WHOLE bible with us - starting Dec 1. Here are some ideas of Biblical themes to track: light dark water covenant righteousness sin 3rd day seeing We list more inside our locals community page. Also check out the Bible Project for ideas. When we 1st read through the Bible - https://youtu.be/722MCGT9moE Mistakes and regrets with writing in our Bibles - https://youtu.be/jfbyEBgWBPg The Bible translations we use to read the Bible - https://youtu.be/h6MT4SfRPGM Podcast episode Michelle mentioned - A Word Fitly Spoken podcast - God doesn't whisper with Jim Osman ♡ If you enjoy our content, please consider helping support our channel - here are 2 ways: ♡ https://loriandmichelle.locals.com (Locals allows you to join our community for a small donation where you'll receive access to bonus material and exclusive content.) ♡ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/loriandmichelle We appreciate any and all support as it helps keeps us going and able to produce content for you. Thank you. ♡ Give this video a like, comment, share the video and subscribe to our channel. //MORE VIDEOS// Our testimony back to Jesus from LOA| new age- https://youtu.be/znjZd94XMRA #biblestudy #bibletalk #newagetojesus #homeschool KEEP UP WITH US: ♡ Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@loriandmichelle ♡ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loriandmichelle ♡ Rumble: Lori and Michelle ♡ Our Podcast: Lori and Michelle Podcast Spotify -https://open.spotify.com/show/2vywzqtDiLhPEudJBMSsy1  Bible study with us: ♡ Our Podcast: Sister and the Bible Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2h6KoMUBT8RELAWqpBPGjl ♡ Rumble: sisters and the Bible ♡ CHECK OUT OUR AMAZON storefront https://www.amazon.com/shop/loriandmichelle (if you use our link we may receive a small commission. Thank you for your support of our channel.) Songs from Epidemic Sound. We appreciate any and all support as it helps keeps us going and able to produce content for you. Thank you. Disclaimer: Please remember this is our first time reading and studying the Bible, so we don't know everything and we will continue to learn and grow. We do our best to speak God's truth. Here to encourage you to read and study God's word. Purelytwins, Lori and Michelle, will not be responsible or liable for any injury or harm you sustain as a result of our videos and information. This video is for informational purposes only and the author does not accept any responsibility for any liabilities. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transcribed, , in any form, without the written permission and signature of the author. We are not Bible scholars, pastors, or teachers. We are sharing what learn from reading and studying the Bible for the first time. Thanks for your understanding and for your support. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lm-podcast/support

In this episode of I Love to Tell the Story, the hosts explore the transition from Exodus to Samuel, focusing on the story of Hannah. They discuss themes of God's promises, the important role of women in biblical narratives, and the theological significance of Hannah's prayer and song, which sets the stage for the anointing of kings and the unfolding of God's plan through the prophets. Commentary on 1 Samuel 1:9-11, 19-20; 2:1-10 by Jacqueline E. Lapsley: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/god-answers-hannah-2/commentary-on-1-samuel-19-11-19-20-21-10-3. Overview to Year 3 of the Narrative Lectionary: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/introduction-to-year-3-2/47470. Watch the Full Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eTyB_53F12I.

In this episode, Jenai Auman covers her personal experience of feeling othered within the church, and how that led her to write the book "Othered". She discusses the biblical themes of othering and marginalization, and how God pursues and cares for the marginalized. Jenai also shares insights on building healthy communities that welcome and embrace those who are different, centered on the "hesed" or steadfast love of God. We talk about the importance of self-compassion, forgiveness, and creating space for people to be in process as they journey together. Whether you've been othered or are learning how to see the marginalized, this is the episode for you.Jenai Auman is a Filipina American writer and artist. She draws from her years in church leadership as well as her trauma-informed training to write on healing, hope, and the way forward. She is passionate about providing language so readers can find a faith that frees. She received her bachelor's degree in behavioral health science and is currently pursuing a master's in spiritual formation at Northeastern Seminary. Jenai lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Tyler, and their sons, Quinn and Graham. Jenai's Book:OtheredJenai's Recommendation:The Lord of the Rings as read by Andy SerkisJoin Our Patreon for Early Access and More: PatreonConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads at www.facebook.com/shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/shiftingculturepodcast/https://twitter.com/shiftingcultur2https://www.threads.net/@shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/@shiftingculturepodcastConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowSupport the Show.

The intersection of many Biblical themes. Celebrating the eternity of a great city after a tremendous victory... yet sowing the seeds for future calamity. Text here: www.sefaria.org/Psalms.48

Making sense of judgment and de-creation in the Bible isn't easy. Oftentimes, it can cause us to question God's character or simply leave us confused. In this episode, we unpack the theme of judgment in the Bible, asking questions like:Is judgment good?What would be true about God if he didn't judge?How do we escape this judgment?Links- Sunday Exodus Sermons

Why is circumcision such a big deal in the Old Testament? In Exodus 4, it seems as if God is going to take Moses' life because of a failure to circumcise his son. Join us as we discuss why circumcision is so important for God's people and what implications does it have for us today.Links- Sunday Exodus SermonsBible Reading Tip- Write down different passages and / or questions as you are reading scripture. What comes to mind? How could that be connected?- Is the idea of circumcision used one or two times? No, it is used a lot. So, let's look at the stories that mention circumcision and see how, overtime, this idea is explained to us.

In this episode we seek to trace the theme of trusting God's means of salvation by looking at the ark in the stories of Noah and Moses. Links- Sunday Exodus SermonsBible Reading Tip- Ask yourself, "Have I seen something like this before?" When you recognize a theme or similar story in the Bible. Then, rest in it. Meditate on it and what God could be saying to you.

In this episode we seek to trace the theme of choosing/fearing God, or choosing evil. From Eve in the garden, to the midwives, to prophets, to Jesus, we see choices for good or evil throughout the Scriptures. And we too have a choice - trust God or trust the snake's deception.Links- Sunday Exodus SermonsBible Reading Tip- Ask yourself, have I seen something like this before? When you recognize a theme or a strange story in the Bible.If someone is struggling in their awe and reverence for the Lord and choosing to please man, where should you start?Pray that the spirit would convict you of sin and reveal Jesus to youJust do the hard thingRead some helpful books on God's natureKnowing God by JI PackerGive yourself some time to build the muscles of choosing God. You have to start to consistently do it.

*****LINKS AND INFO IN THE DESCRIPTION BELOW***** What is the most trusted source for us to use when trying to find the meanings of Hebrew idioms or phrases? #biblicalthemes #scripture #interpretation Contact Ken Email: askbible4family@gmail.com Phone: 401-47-BIBLE https://www.bible4.family *****Support This Channel*****Paypal: https://paypal.me/jimivision?locale.x=en_USMonthly Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JimivisionCash App: https://cash.app/$JimivisionVenmo: https://venmo.com/Jimmy-Cooper-17 Mail To:Jimmy CooperJimivision MediaP.O. Box 654Hixson, TN 37343

Is the sun going to be darkened, the moon stop giving her light, and the stars fall from the heavens in the last days? What is meant by this in Matthew 24:29? #Matthew24 #biblicalthemes #Jesus Contact Ken Email: askbible4family@gmail.com Phone: 401-47-BIBLE https://www.bible4.family *****Support This Channel*****Paypal: https://paypal.me/jimivision?locale.x=en_USMonthly Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JimivisionCash App: https://cash.app/$JimivisionVenmo: https://venmo.com/Jimmy-Cooper-17 Mail To:Jimmy CooperJimivision MediaP.O. Box 654Hixson, TN 37343

Welcome to part 4 in our theme study. In this episode we will be talking about water, and specifically how we see water used scripturally within the context of judgement and also within the context of salvation, which we call the water of life. Both reflections of this one thematic image pervade all scripture from beginning to end, and like every good theme culminates in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Join us as we dive into the scriptures and learn about how God uses water to tell the story of the gospel. Grab a drink and enjoy. 

Welcome to part 3 in our themes study. In this episode we discuss the theme of trees  in the Bible. When trees appear in scripture, we're tempted to just see them as mere details in the story. Our argument, however, is that is most certainly not the case. Trees play important roles in the story of the Bible and play a significant role in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Join us as we dive into the Old and New Testaments and discuss the theology behind the imagery of trees. Grab a drink and enjoy. 

This is the second part, but third episode, in our new themes study. In this episode we discuss the theme of wilderness in scripture. Throughout the Bible there are multiple stories where the author wants to depict spaces where human life does not flourish. These are the chaos spaces or "wilderness" places, which are adverse to the ordered world humanity needs in order to live. The great surprise of the theme is that in God's loving kindness He chooses to enter those spaces to rescue His people. During these moments in the stories we see the workings of the Gospel message being worked out before Jesus arrives on the scene to perform His grand Exodus as our new Moses.Grab a drink and enjoy. 

In this episode we trace the theme of fire throughout scripture. Fire is an important image that appears in the early parts of scripture and get's developed throughout the Bible. We see it in Eden, in the priestly duties, in judgement moments, and even in the spiritual beings. The theme culminates in the person and work of Jesus. Join us as we discuss how the fiery moments of scripture help to inform the Gospel message. Grab a drink and enjoy!

The Bible is made up of 66 books, but each book fits seamlessly into the Great Story of the Scriptures. In her latest Bible studies, Kat Armstrong invites us to step back and look at the big picture by tracing themes. You'll never look at sticks, stones, mountains, or valleys the same way again!Find Kat Armstrong at https://www.katarmstrong.com/.Order Kat's Bible Studies: https://www.katarmstrong.com/the-storyline-projectFollow Kat on the socials: @katarmstrong1If you enjoy the show, would you please consider rating and reviewing Honestly, Though? Those reviews help others find us in the PodUniverse, and we deeply appreciate the love! Also, you can reach out to us personally to join the conversation on the following platforms:Rebecca Carrell: https://www.rebeccacarrell.com/ ; IG - @RebeccaCarrell ; Twitter: @RebeccaACarrell ; FB - Rebecca Ashbrook CarrellLiz Rodriguez: IG: @lizannrodriguez ; FB - Liz Rodriguez - https://www.facebook.com/liz.rodriguez.92775Nika Spaulding: stjudeoakcliff.org ; IG - @NikaAdidas ; Twitter - @NikaAdidasWe have the world's best producer! Are you interested in podcasting? Do you know someone who is? Taylor Standridge can help with audio engineering, production, editing, show mapping, and coaching. Connect with Taylor at taylorstandridge1@gmail.com or on Twitter: @TBStandridge

Mark continued BBS Better Better Study focused on the theme of sacrifice. The Bible was built over time, and associations are built into it. Mark defined sacrifice as the destruction or surrender for the sake of something else. Marks presents this lesson with two points: 1. Lessons on sacrifices from more obvious passages like with how Moses explained how sacrifice association are built into the Passover regarding unintentional sin. 2. Lessons on sacrifices from less obvious places noting that defiant nor intentional sins were covered by sacrifices. Points for home: Jesus was always Plan A. Let's live like we were Plan A Let's worship like we were always Plan A Homework.  What do you find as biblical themes of the Messiah? Listen to Mark teach the biblical theme of association with sacrifice and how Jesus fulfilled all the criteria for sin with His ultimate sacrifice for all time, past, present, and future. The blood of Jesus takes the abnormal and makes it normal. Join us Sundays at 9:30am CST! Links below: YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCfocCxLc8BFCta-NO4JkTcA?view_as=subscriber CFBC Website: championforest.org/worship/watch/biblit.php

5 Biblical Themes from VBS

Phil Soussan is a bass player, songwriter and music producer.  He has worked with some absolute legends including Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Page and Billy Idol. His latest project, Last in Line has a new album out on March 31st titled “Jericho.” We discuss the new album, songwriting process, satanic themes in music, working with Jani Lane & Vince Neil and more! 00:00 - Intro 00:50 - Technical Difficulties 01:38 - New Last in Line Album 03:50 - Progression of the Band 05:18 - The Evolution of the Songs 07:58 - Songwriting Process 11:35 - Biblical Themes & Positive Message 14:28 - Satanic Imagery in Music & Ultimate Sin Cover 16:35 - Music Bringing People Together & Challenges 18:20 - Work with Jani Lane 19:20 - Common Thread Among Superstar Frontmen 20:40 - Phil's Continued Success & Taking a Break 24:25 - Phil's Work with Vince Neil 26:05 - MusiCares & Randy Castillo 27:38 - Paralyzed Veterans of America 28:40 - Outro Phil Soussan website:https://philsoussan.com/Last in Line website:https://www.lastinlineofficial.com/MusiCares website:https://www.musicares.org/Paralyzed Veterans of America website:https://secure.pva.org/Chuck Shute website:https://chuckshute.com/Support the showThanks for Listening & Shute for the Moon!

C. S. Lewis wove dozens of Biblical themes into his Narnia Chronicles. But some of them may escape our notice. Christin Ditchfield has written a helpful guide so we don’t miss them - and can teach them to our children and grandchildren in delightful ways. Recommended Resources: Christin's Website A Family Guide to Narnia by Christin Ditchfield Biblical Truths in Narnia

In this episode, we continue our mini series on Biblical themes and discuss the "King and Kingdom" theme we see throughout the Old Testament. We'll chat about what this theme looks like, how to recognize it, and how to apply it to what you're reading.

God's promise to be with us... doesn't that sound nice? But when you think about the Bible, where is this promise apparent? In this episode, we discuss covenants, how they are God's promises to us, and how they can give us security in knowing fundamental truths about Him.

The more we read our Bibles, the more layers we start to uncover. If this hasn't happened for you, or you find yourself thinking that you've already learned everything there is to know about a passage, let me encourage you to start thinking about biblical themes. The themes in the Bible connect the dots in amazing ways. Not only do they cross over from the Old to New Testament- but they also cross over between different biblical genres. Today we'll look at a theme in the Bible that crosses between Genesis, Proverbs, and Revelation. Two different testaments and three different genres. Let's connect the dots and enhance our Bible reading!Support the show

This is the beginning of our mini series, exploring different biblical themes that help us understand the story of God. In Genesis 3-11, we see the world's conflict in God's story. People are sinful, broken, and need restoration. Genesis 12 is God beginning the restoration work on humanity through a promise to Abraham. God's promise is centered around 3 areas: people, place, and presence. God promises Abrahamto build a new community of peopleto give them a place to dwell inthat  His presence will be with themThis is the ultimate work of God in redemption: creating a people in a place with His presence. In this episode, we look at that promise, how it plays out in the gospel, and why that matters to us today.

In this opening sermon of our series on the Book of Acts, Pastor Josh explains the importance of authorial intent when interpreting God's Word, what the Book of Acts is not, and the 4 main themes of this second book written by Luke.

The Old Testament is often thought of as confusing, hard to understand, and difficult to follow. Sadly, that can be all but true if we don't know the full story. Thankfully, earlier this week, we realized that there is a cheat sheet to remember the stories leading to Jesus. This cheat sheet lies in the place many of us tend to skip—a genealogy.In this episode, we look at Matthew 1; Just as a movie trilogy has three parts, so too, does Matthew organize the Old Testament story into three parts that lead us to Jesus. By understanding this trilogy of sorts, it will allow us to better understand the Old Testament in deeper ways.

There are so many epic story themes in the movie Top Gun: Maverick - from love, to honor, courage and bravery, even sacrifice. Truth is, nothing moves the human spirit like the stories we see on our screens! But is there a spiritual point to the movies and shows we watch? In part 1 of Liquid Church's annual At The Movies series, Pastor Tim Lucas explores the Biblical themes and lessons behind the movie Top Gun: Maverick. There are actually 3 spiritual lessons we can observe from Top Gun: Maverick to become a relationship ace: Agape love for your enemies, Commit to pray for your enemies, and Extend forgiveness to those who hurt or disappoint you. "This message features short clips from the critically acclaimed film Top Gun:Maverick which was produced by Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media. No copyright is claimed for Top Gun: Maverick and we assert that use of the short clips within this sermon is permissible under fair use principles in U.S. copyright law.” At The Movies Series | Pastor Tim Lucas| Liquid Church #TopGun #Maverick #Spiritual #Bible #Movie #Gospel #God #AtTheMovies #LiquidChurch #TimLucas #Christianity #ChristianChurch

Forefront podcasters Rich, Cody, and Heather, plus returning guest Dan Becker, discuss all things Stranger Things. Note: the first 20 minutes are spoiler-free, but spoilers abound after that. 02:19 - When Did You Start Watching Stranger Things? 05:59 - What Made Stranger Things Successful? 20:08 - Spoilers Begin / What Did You Think of Season 4? 28:14 - Should Everyone Watch Stranger Things? 34:56 - Biblical Themes in Stranger Things 01:02:09 - Favorite Character / Which Song Would You Play?

In this episode, we take a deeper look at our Hymn of the Month, reviewing its doctrinal themes and intriguing hymn background. We also look at another hymn that teaches many of the same biblical truths. Enjoy! - KristenLinks & Resources:Learn how to share a hymn testimonial on the podcast here.Go to our HOM resource page here.Start your Hymns Illustrated membership here.Get your free devotional guide for the hymn, "How Firm a Foundation."Support the show

The final installment of our series on Biblical Themes! We wrap up by exploring the theme of the Messiah.

Join us for week 4 of our sermon series on Biblical Themes as Pastor Adam teaches on the theme of Holiness in the Scriptures!

Introduction Directions Back to the Lord Almighty Turn in your Bibles to James 4. We're looking this morning at this incredible passage in the Book of James. Last summer, I had the joy of going on a graduation trip with my son, Calvin. And the day that we were to leave was complicated for me because I was speaking at a conference in the New Jersey area, and I had to fly back to Raleigh, Durham and I was going to meet him and we were going to drive back up the Eastern Seaboard. Kind of inefficient, but it was exciting. We were looking forward to that. However, my flight was delayed, and then delayed, and then delayed some more so we got quite a late start. And as we drove that late afternoon and on into the evening, we were to have stayed at a hotel outside Philadelphia, but we were supposed to get there around 11 o'clock in the evening and it was actually two in the morning. And when we arrived at the location, there was no hotel or a motel or anything like it in that place. And so, there we were in the dark, outside Philadelphia. And thankfully I had my smartphone with me and there was an amazing device on there called the GPS navigational system, which many of us did not grow up with. We had to stop at gas stations and get maps. Some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about. The maps that would fold out. But now all you have to do is type in a location for the nearest motel where we could stay. And though we did not know anything about where we were, though it was dark, we didn't know the road we were on, we knew nothing, the device was able to navigate us from that situation to a safe destination. Relatively safe. I won't tell you about the motel; it was an interesting place. But we spent the night and we're fine. Got started early the next morning. For us, in the Christian life, the Christian life is a journey, and we are in the process of being sanctified. We're on a spiritual journey, and it is very likely that at some point we are going to stray from God. We're going to stray from Christ. You think about the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” and I wrote at the lyrics while I was sitting in my seat and I remember them. So powerful. "Oh to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above." How many of us who have been walking with the Lord a long time can say, “amen” to that line, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it." But when we wander, we're going to find ourselves, sometimes, in a place that's unfamiliar. And we're going to wonder, how will we get back? Is there a GPS navigation system? Is there a way whereby we can get out of that mess that we've sinned our way into, and find our way back? In Pilgrim's Progress Christian and Hopeful got off the path because they found, they thought, a better path alongside the way. And one of the basic rules of the road in Pilgrim's Progress is: Never leave the path. Every time they did, they got in trouble. And they ended up in the land of a giant called Despair, and they didn't know where they were and it was rainy, and it was windy, and it was dark, and as they tried to get back some other individual that was a minor part of the story, they didn't even know him, was ahead and he fell into a pit and died. And so they decided just hunker down, and they ended up having the worst trial they ever had. And what about you? If you can say, “amen” to that statement about your soul, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it," and you will sin your way into some great difficulty, how will you get back? And I want to commend to you the text that we're looking at today, as a way to get back to God. There are going to be specific steps James is going to tell you to take. And we are going to look at those steps today so that you can find your way back, through the grace of God, to a healthy walk with Christ. That may be your situation today. You may be saying, "Pastor, I feel like you've written this sermon exactly for me. I am in a bad place spiritually. I'm in a bad place. It's my own fault, but I'm in a difficult way. How do I get back to a healthy, joyful walk with God, where the fruit of God is at work in my life?" This text is for you. The Journey of the Christian Faith Now as I think about the Christian life, I think, as I said, about the journey of the Christian faith. I think about the Gospel and how privileged we are to understand the Gospel rightly, to have the Word of God unfolded for us. And for me, as a church historian, I know that a key moment in redemptive history was the moment that Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation and nailed the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle, and that was the beginning of the Protestant reformation that reclaimed, that found again the Gospel, justification by faith alone apart from works of the law, which had gotten covered over by all kinds of false teachings and idolatries and superstitions. And just through the word of God. Now, the first of those 95 theses that Luther wrote, 95 theses were just concepts for debates that he wanted, and he put it up there on the door. That was a place like a public community bulletin board. And the first of the 95 theses reads this: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ said ‘repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” You don't just repent at the beginning of your Christian life, you repent and repent some more, and then you repent even more, and you keep repenting. Your whole life is a life of repentance. Now, justification is the beginning of the Christian life, the way by which a sinner is made right with almighty God, the way by which we are forgiven of our sins. And the Gospel is clear on this, we maintain, Romans 3:28, that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Not by works but by faith, we are forgiven, we are made right with God, always. But what kind of faith justifies? What Kind of Faith Justifies There are lots of different kinds of faith, and the Book of James is written, uniquely, to answer that question. As we saw in the second half of James 2. It's not dead faith, or useless faith, or fruitless faith, or demon faith that justifies. But there's a genuine faith worked in us by the Spirit of God that inevitably produces works in keeping with repentance. The fruit of good works that keeps with repentance. Now, I've said many times before, I find this to be a helpful statement: "Faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future." Ephesians 1:18 mentions the “eyes of the heart.” "May the eyes of your heart be enlightened... " I think the eyes of the heart refers the ability of the heart to see spiritual things, that is faith. And saving faith, as I've studied it, has two sides to it. There is an attractive, beautiful side to what we see. The attractional side of faith. And there is a repulsive side to faith, and both are necessary for salvation. So, attractionally, we see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God. We see in the face of Christ, the glory of God shining. We see his radiant beauty in his virtues and the attractions of his person. We see his love, his power, the perfection of his work and his death on the cross, we see to be glorious and beautiful and radiant. And we see his mighty resurrection from the dead. We see him, the author of Hebrews said, by faith we see him seated at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven. All of that's beautiful and attractive. Not only that, but we see Heaven, we see the glories of Heaven, we say how beautiful it will be. That's the attractional side of faith. But there's also a repulsive side to faith as well. And in that, we see ourselves. When we're justified, we see ourselves rightly for the first time. You see who you really are and it's repulsive. It's wretched. Like “Amazing Grace” said, "That saved a wretch like me." We see ourselves as genuinely, to the core, polluted by sin and depraved and sinful. And in that we see that we deserve to die for our sins, and that Christ's bloody death on the cross under the wrath of God was as a substitute for us. We deserved to die that death. We see that. So, that's what saving faith is. We see both sides of that. It's the eyesight of the soul. And as we go on in the Christian life, we see both of those things. If we're healthy in the Lord, and we're taking in the Word of God, we see both of them more and more and more clearly. So what's going to happen is, as you go on in a Christian life, you're going to see Jesus more and more beautiful, and more and more attractive. And you're going to see the holiness of the Christian life more and more attractive. You're going to see the beauty of Heaven more and more beautiful and attractive. But the flip side is you're going to see your own sin and you're going to hate it more and more. And you're going to say like with the Apostle Paul, after years of walking with Christ, "I am the chief of all sinners." I. The Need for Continual Repentance The Reality of Indwelling Sin So that's what's going on, and that's what I think James 4:1-12 is all about. We have the need for continual repentance displayed for us here. Now, not just Martin Luther in the 95 Theses, far more important is the Lord Jesus when he began his public ministry. And when he did, in Mark 1:15, he said, "The time has come, the Kingdom of God is near, repent, and believe the good news." So there's the negative and the positive side. Repent of your sins and believe the good news of forgiveness. Now that just begins at the moment of justification. The moment you're born again, that starts and then it continues. And why is that? Because of the reality of indwelling sin. The reality of indwelling sin. We have battling within us both beautiful good desires and corrupt evil desires. We have that indwelling sin. Paul said it most clearly at the end of Romans 7, and there Paul said, "I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is," listen to this, "sin living in me that does it." That is nasty. That's disgusting. Some time ago, I read an article on the body's immune system. They had remarkable scanning electron microscope pictures of viruses, and bacteria and other pathogens, the parasite that causes the disease malaria. And you could actually see it and it was disgusting. Imagine if you were shown all of the pathogens there were in your body right now, how much that would freak you out? Isn't it better not to know? As I've said to my wife before, as she talks to me about my diet sometimes, I said, "you gotta die of something." So that's not very satisfying to her, but I don't want to know. But here, Paul says, "sin living in me." And so we have these evil desires. Look at verses 1 through 4. This is a diagnosis. On the GPS journey, you have to begin by knowing where you are. Where are you spiritually? What's going on? The Effects: Fights, Quarrels, Worldliness Look what he says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. And when you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." So that's verse 1 through 4. And so James is writing to these local churches, and this is going on. Fights and quarrels among you. And then again at the end of the passage, verses 11-12, "Brothers do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him, speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you're not keeping it, but you're sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able both to save and to destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor?" So this is the kind of corruption that's going on in the hearts and minds of the people and in the church. And it comes in families, it comes between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between neighbors, between co-workers, between leaders in the church, pastors and elders and the people in the church. This is just going on, these battles, this corruption. And the root cause of all of this is what he says in verse 1, "your desires that wage war within you." We have conflicting desires. And we've already seen this in James. The reason for all temptation and then of sin, is lust, evil desires. James 1:14-15, "Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." So, it was Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount, that zeros in on the heart. What's going on in the heart? So he says, "you have heard that it was said, 'you shall not murder, and anyone murders is subject to judgment,' but anyone who is angry with his brother will be in danger of the fire of Hell.” So the root of murder, that James mentions here, is anger. A heart condition of anger. Jesus said the same thing about adultery, the root of adultery is lust, it's the internal desire of the heart. And so James says, "you kill and covet." So you're desiring, you're coveting, you're looking on your neighbor's life. Looking on your neighbor's wife, his house, possessions, his privileges, all of those things that he has, and you covet it and you want it. That's where the desire comes from. And he says, "you quarrel and fight." The bickering, the arguing, the brokenness in human relationships. It's amazing. If you look at the acts of the flesh in Galatians 5, which is right before the famous fruit of the Spirit, so many of those things are just person-to-person bickering. “Factions and divisions and dissensions and fits of rage.” There's all this relational brokenness. Prayerlessness James also zeros in on prayerlessness. Look at verse 2, he says, "you do not have, because you do not ask God." That's such a great verse, isn't it? It's like prayerlessness. Prayerlessness is a tremendous diagnostic. What things do we not commit to God in prayer? In those areas, we are self-reliant. We're not inviting God's wisdom in, we're not inviting God's power in. We're on our own, we're fine. For me, a matter of sanctification is to become prayerlessness in less and less areas of my life. I don't want to be prayerless when I drive, I don't want to be prayerless when I come to work, when I go home, when I sit, when I rise. I want to bring God into everything and lose this, this self-reliance, this arrogant self-reliance. And so, James says, "you do not have because you do not ask God." And then he says, even when you do pray, you don't receive. Look what he says in verse 3, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." So if I can just summarize verse 1 through three, James are saying, "you folks are seriously messed up." And we all are like this, we can't read that and say, "Well I'm glad that's not happening in our Church. I'm glad that's not happening in our family. Nothing like it. We are not like this at all." It just isn't so. We've got this sin problem. II. The Spirit’s Deep Longing for Our Repentance Our Worldliness is Spiritual Adultery Now we see the Spirit's deep longing for our repentance in all of this. The force taking hold of us and causing us to take that spiritual GPS journey back to righteousness is the Holy Spirit. Now, our worldliness, the Spirit is saying, is spiritual adultery. Look at verse 4, "you adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." So when we talk about being a friend of the world, that's not planet Earth with its populations of human beings, that's not what the world is. God loves the world and sent his only begotten Son, John 3:16. “The World” No, no. He's talking about the world system, the evil, corrupt, satanic, demonic system that pulls us away from God. The reason that our hearts are prone to wander, is because of the magnetic attraction that comes to us through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. That's 1 John 2, that's what the world is. And James calls it spiritual adultery. He calls them adulterous people. They're hankering after the world, they're claiming to be part of the Bride of Christ, but instead they're wandering in their minds after the world. They're a spiritually adulterous people. And he says, "you're aligning yourself with the enemies of God, those that are deeply hostile to his person.” They are setting themselves up to be God's enemies. You don't want God to be your enemy, but the people of the world think like enemies of God. “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, that sinful mind, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot,” Romans 8:7. So you're lining yourself up with that. The enemies of God. Now, Jesus one day will crush all those enemies. As the Father said to the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." You don't want to be Christ's enemy and God's enemies. At one time, we were his enemies, but we were rescued from the dominion of darkness and we have become like Abraham, God's friend, James 2:23. Well, how then can we now join in with Christ's enemies? How can we through worldliness become an enemy of Christ? Peter’s Betrayal Do you remember the night that Jesus was arrested? Do remember how, earlier that evening, Peter said, "I am, of all of your followers, I am the most loyal." he didn't say those words, but effectively, he did. “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” Remember? Remember the boasts he made? And Jesus said, "This very night before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he swore up and down that it would never happen. We remember what happened. Jesus orchestrated the escape of all of his apostles, that they should run away, John 18, he orchestrates that they should go away. "If you're looking for Me, then let these go." he wants them to go, because they're not ready to be arrested, not part of God's plan yet, and they all run away except one person, Peter. Follows at a distance because of all of his arrogant boasts. He tries to go into the courtyard where all of Jesus's enemies are, and there is a servant girl there at the door, remember? "You're not one of his disciples, are you?" "No, I'm not," there's his first one. And once you tell one lie, you're going to double down with another lie, and there he is standing with Jesus's enemies by a fire warming his hands. Even though Jesus had orchestrated his safe escape that very night, there he was standing with Jesus enemies and it gets worse and worse to the point where finally he calls down curses on himself if he even knows Jesus. I remember one preacher was talking about Peter that night, and he said he had warm hands and a cold heart. Standing with the enemies of Christ. We don't want to be like that, we don't want to be spiritual adulteresses. Hosea’s Unfaithful Wife Remember that tragic story of Hosea the prophet in the Old Testament? Remember that? Where God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, a woman named Gomer, to model the agony that Almighty God was feeling over the nation of Israel's spiritual adultery, going after the Baals and the Ashtoreth. And so Hosea marries Gomer, and at one point God commands Hosea to go buy his wife back, to buy time with his wife, the prostitute. Hosea 3, it says, "The Lord said to me, go, show your love to your wife again even though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and lethek of barley." It's one of the most tragic verses in the Bible. “I had to go buy her.” "And then I told her, you are to live with me for many days. You must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man and I will live with you." So as I was memorizing Hosea, going through all that, I was like, "Lord, what are you saying to me? Who am I? Do you have to buy my affection with stuff or I will not follow you? Do I really love you, Jesus, the way I should, or am I wandering?" The Spirit Deeply Longs for Our Hearts And look at verse 5, this lines up exactly with what we're talking about from Hosea. "Do you think the scripture says without reason that the Spirit," I think we should capitalize that, like the Holy Spirit, "the Spirit that he caused to live in us envies intensely, or is jealous over us." He has a strong desire over us. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity who lives within us, deeply yearns over our hearts to love him. Remember how it said of God, in Exodus 34:14, "Do not worship any god, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God." he actually says, "One of my names is Jealous." One of my names is jealous. And so the spirit, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives within you, and if you wander into spiritual adultery, into worldliness, you wander into that, he yearns for you and is jealous over you and wants you back. He knows your heart, he knows your mind, he knows what you are made for. And you were made to worship God in your intellect and in your mind, to understand the story of God and to see the evidence of God, and to know and to have your heart go after him so that he would be uppermost in your affections. There would be nothing you love more than God, the triune God. That's what he yearns for. The Spirit Works in Our Hearts But we are by corrupted nature, idolatrous, and so we reverse the order. God is not uppermost in our affections anymore, some created thing, some creature, is. And that's the essence of idolatry, worshipping and serving the created thing rather than the Creator. And so he wants us, he yearns over us, that our hearts would be on fire for him, that we would love him and go after him, but the world creeps in and pulls us away. And so the Spirit works within our hearts. He works genuine fiery repentance and jealous love, and he will orchestrate, if you're one of the elect, and your straying, he will come get you and he will do things in your life. Hosea 2, Hosea, speaking about his wife, but then by way of allegory or analogy to Israel, "Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived her children in disgrace. She said, I will go after my lovers who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes, I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers, but not catch them. She will look for them but not find them. And then she will say, I will go back to my husband, as at first, for then I was better off than now." Blocked in, walled in, still corrupted in the mind, and then she has no choice but to turn in a certain direction. Is that you? Does God have to buy your affections? Does your heart continually wander after the “lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life?” Do you act like an enemy of God? The text stands over all of us, when we sing, "prone to wander, Lord, I feel it," this is what the text is saying. Do we hate that? Do we say, "I don't want to live my life like that"? Is the Spirit filling your heart with a longing after God? So God, in his mercy, gives us the gift of continual grace for repentance. III. God’s Gift of Continual Grace for Repentance Look at verse 6, "He gives us more grace." Hallelujah. He gives us more grace. That is why scripture says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." To save us, God must give us more grace, and then more grace, and then after that, even more grace, and more grace, and more grace. And so we need a steady stream of that. And you need to say that in your mind, say, "Oh God, give me more grace. Fill me with grace." May there be grace to you through the ministry of the word of God. You need a steady stream of grace. Not like grace, born again, forgiven and done with grace. Not at all. You need a steady stream of God's sovereign grace every moment. Bunyan’s “Fire Against the Wall” In Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan's classic about the Christian life, there is this powerful image in Interpreter's house. He goes to Interpreter, and he gives him a bunch of allegories and stories that give aspects of the Christian life, and they're acted out, and you can learn things. Bunyan thought in pictures. And so there is this one allegory of the fire burning against the wall, and he said, "I saw in my dream that Interpreter took Christian by the hand and led him into a place where there was a fire burning against a wall." So, picture like a marble wall, and a marble hearth and a fire in it. It's burning. "And one was standing by it, always casting much water upon it to quench it. Yet did the fire burn higher and hotter." So picture this fire in a hearth and there's someone just pouring water on it, but the fire's not going out. Then said Christian, "What means this?" What does this mean? The interpreter answered, “'The fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart, and he the casts water upon it to extinguish it, and put it out, is the devil. But then that thou seest the fire not withstanding, burn higher and hotter, thou shalt see also the reason of that. So he had him around to the back side of the wall where he saw another man with a vessel of oil in his hand of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.’ Then said Christian, 'What means this?' The interpreter answered, ‘This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart by the means of which, not withstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove more gracious still. And then that thou sawest that the man that stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, that is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is actually being maintained in their souls.’" God Opposes the Proud but Gives Grace to the Humble So that's such a powerful picture. If you're born again, God lights a fire within you, a work of grace. And that fire is going to keep burning and there's nothing the world, the flesh and the devil can do to put it out, praise God. But the only way it doesn't get extinguished is more grace, and that's why James 4:6 says, "He gives us more grace." But he gives it to the humble. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." I remember when I was teaching this verse to my kids and we used to do much more physical things that we do now. We used to play wrestling games until I broke a rib and then I retired. My kids were getting bigger and bigger and they just consistently won. The game was to get me off the couch within five minutes. That's all they had to do, just get me off the couch. It got pretty violent. Lamps were getting knocked over. It was not good. But I wanted to teach them God opposes the proud. So I stood in the way and I told them to go through a door, and I opposed them, and I was much bigger than they were at that point. They're much bigger than me now. But at that point. So you don't want God, Almighty God, opposing you. You don't want God, the omnipotent God, fighting you. But he gives grace to who? The humble. And so, the grace of God comes and makes you a spiritual beggar, makes you, like the beatitudes say, it makes you mourn over your sins, it makes you hunger and thirst for righteousness, it makes you humble. And so you are humbled by your sin, you're humbled by your condition, and you go toward Christ, you go toward God and you say, "Give me more grace," and he will. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And here we see the nature and fruits of true repentance. IV. The Nature and Fruits of True Repentance Nature and Fruit Intertwined: What God Commands He Works in Us When he's doing that, what does he do? He grants repentance, and he works in us repentance. God gives us what he commands. He commands us to repent, and then he works repentance in us. Now the commands given here could be given both to unsaved and saved people alike. If you're here today, and you are as yet not a Christian, these words can stand to you. And they say, "Submit yourself to God, take Jesus's yoke upon you and learn from him. Submit to his kingly reign, stop fighting him. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands in the blood of Christ, trust in him and you'll be forgiven." This is the Gospel invitation to anybody to believe in Christ. And so if that's you here today, then God brought you here by his grace to hear, for this moment, that all your sins can be forgiven. All you have to do is trust in him, apart from works, just by trusting in Jesus, all your sins will be forgiven. But these words are written to Christians and so we need to hear this too. And so, maybe you see worldliness creeping in. Maybe you've defiled yourself through some pattern of sin this week. Maybe you're locked in some addictive pattern. Perhaps you're a married couple constantly fighting and quarreling. Maybe you're a teenager, and you're rebelling or fighting against parental authority. Maybe you see an overall pattern of worldliness in your life where you're living for the things of this world and not for the things of God. And you say, "What do I do now, how do I get home?" James 4:7-10 tells you how, tells you what to do. Submit Yourselves Then to God First of all, submit to God. “Submit yourselves then to God.” Kneel before God as the king of your life. Kneel before him right now, in your hearts. Kneel before King Jesus. Take his yoke, his kingly yoke upon you, and stop fighting it. Maybe when you get home physically, literally kneel before him. Paul did. In Ephesians 3 he said, "For this reason I kneel before the Father." Sometimes we just, with our bodies, we want to say, "You are my King and I yield to you." So submit yourself to God. All salvation is of, in essence, bringing us into the kingdom of God and yielding to his kingly reign. Resist the Devil and He Will Flee From You Secondly, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Say no to what the devil is tempting you to do. Say no to the devil's schemes of temptation. Ephesians 6, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand in the day of testing." In the day of temptation you've got your armor on, you're going to say no to sin. Resist the devil. And then amazingly, he will flee from you, as though he's afraid of you. Friend, he's not afraid of you. He's not afraid of you at all. He is so much more powerful and experienced than you are. Is he afraid of something? Yes, he's afraid of Jesus. He's afraid of Jesus. We're going through men's Bible study on Thursdays. We just got to the account, you remember where Jesus drives out Legion, the legion of demons from the demoniac of the Gadarenes, remember that? And there's this demoniac breaking chains, literal chains that could not hold him. Naked, cutting himself with stones, howling at the moon, no one would go near him. He's terrifying, absolutely terrifying. And then he is terrified of Jesus. Begging Jesus, "Please don't torment us before the appointed time. If you drive us out, please send us into the herd of pigs." And Jesus just says, "Go," and they go. They are terrified of Jesus. So what ends up happening? You're resisting the devil, the devil's tempting you, the demons are assaulting you, you're being tempted and you say, "No. No, by God's grace, no." And then the Spirit of God gets around you and puts the devil to flight. I love the image and the promises in the Old Testament about Israel's armies. They will come at you in one direction and flee from you in seven. Isn’t that a great picture? And so putting the devil to flight, all you have to do is just put on the spiritual armor, and stay and stand firm in holiness, and say no, and he will put the devil to flight. "Come Near to God and He Will Come Near to You" And then, "Come near to God and he will come near to you." Our sins have made a separation. That's the distance. That's where the GPS comes in. We need to get back to God. We feel distant from him, and that distance is a spiritual reality. It says in Isaiah 59:1-2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear." And so we feel distant from God. Well, then come near to him. Like one of the minor prophets said, "Take words with you." I love that. So what words? Psalms. "Well Pastor, do you have a Psalm in mind?" I actually do. Can I recommend Psalm 63:1-3? "O God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you." Say those things to God. "I feel so distant from you. Other things have crept in, and I've loved them. Now I want them out and I want the love of God in me. Your love is better than life, it's better than any created thing. I want to be close to you, oh Lord." Say that to him. Draw near to God. As it says beautifully in Jeremiah 29:13. "You will seek me and you will find me if you seek for me with all your heart." So I just commend Psalm 63:1-3 or some other passage like it, and just say that to God. And let your heart be heated up and you will find that he will draw near to you. "Wash Your Hands, You Sinners" And then he says, "Wash your hands, you sinners." We come to Christ's cleansing blood. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” So we get spiritually cleaned. But the hands are practical, they do things. The hands are attached to the heart and so we need clean hands and a pure heart, and so we purify our heart by the Word of God. But then, what about your habits? What about your behaviors? What about what you're doing? Wash. And you do that by holy resolutions and by living up to those holy resolutions. "Lord, I've been doing this, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to fight that sin pattern. I'm going to wash my hands. I'm going to bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. I'm going to put this sin out of my life. If my right hand is causing me to sin, I'm going to cut it off and throw it away. If my right eyes is causing me to sin I'm going to gouge it out and throw it away. Jesus told me to deal seriously with sin. I am going to wash my hands by the grace of God. I'm going to change the way I'm living." "Purify Your Hearts, You Double-Minded" And he says, "Purify your hearts, you double-minded." It ultimately comes to that. As I've already mentioned, the bottom line is, what are you doing? Double-mindedness is like, "I'm going after the world, I don't want to do that." So, what are you feeding in your mind? So feed on God's Word, meditate on scripture. Stop thinking those worldly thoughts. "Purify your hearts," he said, "you double-minded". And then, “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Long ago I stopped asking for a show of hands and sermons. I don't do that anymore, but if I were to ask for a show of hands, how many of you would say this is your favorite verse in the Bible? How many hands do you think? Well, this is my favorite: “Grieve, mourn and wail, change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom." It's nobody's favorite. Let me tell you something, it's part of the journey back. Grieve, Mourn, Wail We American evangelicals, we like a kind of Christianity lite. With chipper sermons designed to make you laugh and feel good about yourselves. John Piper is speaking of churches that try to create an atmosphere of bouncy Chipper, frisky, lighthearted playful worship. Well, that's not what James is talking about here. Not at all. Now, obviously we don't want a Christianity that would be characterized by these words. Morose, gloomy, sullen, dark, heavy, solemn. Jesus did come to bring us joy unspeakable and full of glory. And we're going to a place where there will be for all eternity no death, mourning, crying or pain. We will not spend a moment in Heaven grieving, mourning and wailing over sin. None. But we're not there yet, dear friends. We're not in Heaven yet. And sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is to join the Holy Spirit in grieving over your sin. Join the Holy Spirit in grieving over your sin. Do you realize the third person of the Trinity grieves over sin? It says in Ephesians "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God with whom you're sealed for the day of redemption." It says in Isaiah 63:10, concerning Israel, "They rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit." And so what happens is, we're going along, we get tempted and we have the temporary pleasure and joy of sin, but the Holy Spirit is immediately, instantaneously grieved. So we're up here in terms of the happiness thing, and he's down here and grieving over us. Then by the power, the sovereign power he exerts over the redeemed, he pulls you down to his level of happiness, which is grief, and then together, you go back up to the joy of the Lord. "Restore to me the joy of my salvation," David said. And so he does that. But there's a process. “Grieve, mourn, wail. Change your laughter to mourning and joy to gloom.” Don't go too quickly to feeling good again after you've sinned. Take the time to go and think and pray, and say, "God, would you please show me what you felt about my sins? Show it to me. And I will join you and grieving over it." Do you remember when the Lord was working with Peter that very night? Do you remember? And after he had disowned him for the third time, the rooster crowed and the light went on, remember? And at that exact moment, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus was being moved from one place to another on his night of trials, and he had the opportunity, sovereignly ordained by God, to look right at Peter, right as a rooster was crowing. What do you think that did to Peter? It must have been like a javelin thrown through his heart. And you know what he did, we know what he did. He went outside and wept bitterly. And after the resurrection of Jesus, he pulled Peter aside and asked him, "Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me?" And it says in the text, Peter was hurt because he asked him a third time. "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you." he said, "Then, feed my sheep." Was he intending to hurt him? In one sense, yes, but not as an ultimate end. But to cause him to repent and to turn away, because someday he would be martyred for Jesus and he had to lose that fear of death and fear of man and preach boldly and he had to be healed from his sin. And so, humble yourself before the Lord. Humble yourself, like the tax collector. Stand off at a distance, beat your breast and say, "Be merciful to me, oh God, a sinner." And you will go home justified. You'll be forgiven, you'll be restored. And then it says plainly, "He will lift you up." Humble yourself before the Lord and he'll lift you up, he'll fill you with joy, he'll give you the peace of justification, he'll give you the joy of your salvation again. Prayer Close with me in prayer. Father, you have taught us here in these verses, you've taught us the way back. And there are some of us here today that know immediately, they know directly what you're talking about. They feel it in their hearts, they know that they're sinning. They know that there's a pattern of sin that's corrupting them. And you are working by grace that the fire of grace would not go out in their hearts, that Satan's pouring water on it, but you will not let it go out. Father, I pray that if there's a brother or sister here that needs to just take these verses and go quietly into a room somewhere and kneel down and pray, step-by-step, until they have been restored to you, Oh God, give them strength to do it. Thank you for the Word. Thank you for its truth. In Jesus's name, Amen.

Introduction Jesus’ Parable of the Hidden Treasure My sermon title is, “Joyful Perseverance in Trials Produces Spiritual Maturity.” Jesus told a parable saying, that, “the kingdom of Heaven is likened to treasure hidden in a field. And when a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, sold everything he had and bought that field.” There is no more precious commodity in this world than salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the most precious thing that there is, and it is real. We, who are Christians, we know that that salvation is real because God is real. Though we cannot see Him, we know that He created the universe and by faith we understand that, and by faith we know that Heaven is real, and that salvation is real. But what if our claim to that treasure, what if our claim is counterfeit? That man went out and sold everything he had and bought that field, but imagine he bought it from a fraudulent salesman and that the title deed he had to that field was fraudulent. What if it was a fake? Speaking more directly, how can we know that our faith in Christ is genuine? How can we know that we have the kind of faith that will save our souls? There are frauds. Fraudulent Faith There are counterfeits in everything. You can think of fake rolexes. You can think of even fake hiking and mountaineering equipment. I saw in Nepal, there were name brands, and the name was spelled slightly differently than I'd seen before. They have WcDonalds in China where the M is upside down. And so there are fraudulent things. Probably the most lucrative fraudulent businesses is in art. I was reading recently of a painting that was sold supposedly from the 16th century, a painting of Saint Jerome, and it was so realistic looking at had actual cracks of age that followed a certain pattern that was characteristic of the 16th century, it was that accurate. But the painting sold for almost a million dollars contained some pigments, some chemicals that were impossible to be from the 16th century. In the end it was exposed as a fraud. Now, the art collector that bought that was out $860,000. We're talking about something infinitely more valuable than that. We're talking about your eternal soul. We're talking about, whether you'll spend eternity in Heaven or in Hell. And therefore it is vital for us to know whether our claim to Christ is fake or genuine. Some have told me before, and we're going through the Sermon on the Mount, in men's Bible study on Thursday. And one of the scariest passages in the Bible, is in Matthew 7 where Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But only those who do the will of my Father, who is in Heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles.' And then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers.'" People tell me that's a scary verse for them because they are aware of the possibility of being self-deceived, they're aware of the possibility of a fraudulent faith, and I think that's a good thing. Be Willing to Evaluate Yourself The New Testament encourages us to evaluate ourselves to test ourselves. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless, of course, you fail the test." So we are told by 2 Corinthians 13, and many other passages to evaluate our faith, to test ourselves, to not make assumptions. Now, the consistent answer the New Testament gives to the question, “How can I know if my faith is genuine?”, is the issue of fruit, or works. There's different ways of saying it, but it's the same answer. If there is fruit, genuine fruit, then there is genuine life. If there is not genuine fruit, there is not genuine life. Then you may wonder "Well, what fruit, should I be looking for? What is the fruit that God wants to see in my life?" Again, the Lord has not left us as orphans on that question, He has told us what He wants us to be and do. The New Testament defines the healthy Christian life. But one book in particular, zeroes in on good works as proof positive of the kind of faith that saves and that is the book we're about to study the Book of James. The Practicality of James Now James is a book that's hard to synthesize into one overarching theme. It actually reads somewhat like a Christian book of Proverbs, taking on various topics and sometimes even it seems changing the subject, and now we're on to another topic and it's hard always to connect the dots. It's a very practical book. However, one could argue that the theological center of the book is in James 2. A James 2:14 says this, "What good is it my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such a faith save him?" It's an interesting phraseology in that translation, "Can such faith save him?" That kind of faith. “Can that faith save him?” So, what that raises is the question of, “What kind of faith is genuine, what kind of faith saves souls?” And James says there in that chapter, the faith that produces good works will save your soul, but the faith that does not produce good works is not a genuine faith. It is a dead faith, it's a demon faith, it's worthless. And he'll go through all that in Chapter 2. So it is a diabolical thing to be deceived by Satan, for Satan to lie to us about our true spiritual condition. But to some degree, it's even more diabolical when he enlists us in that process where we deceive ourselves, where we lie to ourselves about what's really going on. And so, the whole Book of James is written, I think to help us not do that, to expose fraudulent faith while there's still time to do something about it, to show us what the kind of faith that saves our souls really looks like, and this first sermon will fit right into that as we look at joyful perseverance, in trials, and how that will prove faith to be genuine. I. An Introduction to James: The Man and His Letter (vs. 1) Who is this James? So let's begin with an introduction to James both the man and his letter. That would be the first heading in my outline and look at verse 1, "James a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations. Greetings". So who is this James? Well, there are four James’ mentioned in the New Testament. Two of them we can remove right away, that leaves James, one of the 12 Apostles, the brother of John one of the three inner circle with Jesus. The problem is that he was the first martyred among the apostles. And so, would have died too, soon, I think, to write this letter. Most scholars zero in on James, the half-brother of Jesus. Now Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, but she did not remain so. She and Joseph had a normal healthy married life, and so she gave birth to other children. And at one point, Jesus's enemies in Nazareth say of Jesus, "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't His mother's name Mary? And aren't his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Aren't all his sisters with us?” So, there's clear textual proof that Mary had other children. Now they would have been half-brothers and sisters of Jesus because only Jesus had God as His true father while they all had Joseph as their father but the same mother. James’ Journey of Faith Now this man, James, had a journey of faith. It's very plain in John Chapter 7, and 5 that Jesus brothers did not believe in Him while He was ministering, they did not believe in Him, John 7:5. However, after the resurrection of Jesus, James is there with his brothers, and Mary in the upper room, waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit. So what happened? What changed? Well, I believe 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 7 makes it plain, that Jesus, as Paul's going through the evidence of the resurrection on how Jesus appeared to Peter and then to the 12, and then to 500 people. It says after that, He appeared to James. So think about that, a private appearance by the Lord of the universe, to you. And at that point there's no doubt in James’ mind who Jesus was. And his role as biological brother Jesus just disappears is not important. It was a historical note of some interest, but what really mattered is that Jesus was James' savior, and James believed in Him, became a genuine follower of Christ, and became a leader in the church in Jerusalem, became what Paul calls in Galatians chapter 2, a pillar of that church, in Acts 15, he led the Jerusalem Council as they discussed the role of circumcision for the Gentile converts. James was a leader, a pillar of the church in Jerusalem. So that I believe is the author of this book, the half-brother of Jesus. Who is He Writing To? Now, who is he writing to? Well, he's the leader of the Jewish church in Jerusalem. These were Jews who had come to a genuine faith in Christ, but he writes, he says to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations. Now the Jews were very aware of the scattering that went on after the exiles. They were the exiles by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and they were scattered throughout the Gentile world. So that would have been the Roman, the Greco-Roman world, and they could have just been in the diaspora, the scattering at that point, or there might have been a specific scattering that happened with Jewish Christians. As we learn in John Chapter 9, that the Jewish authorities had already decided while Jesus was still ministering that if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah promised by God, you would be kicked out of the synagogue as the blind man that was healed was. Kicked out of the synagogue, by believing in Jesus. And so what that would mean for you economically as you couldn't carry on a business if you're a tradesman or craftsman or a merchant. No one would buy your wares. They wouldn't sell to you, you'd be ostracized financially, and so you would become poor, poverty-stricken, and you might have had to flee from Palestine, from Jerusalem just for economic reasons. So we don't know for certain why they were scattered, but it might have been those reasons as well. II. Joyful Perseverance in All Trials (vs. 2-4) The Suffering of Trials Now, in verses 2-4, we get to the first urging the James gives. Joyful perseverance, in all trials, that's my heading of the second part. Joyful perseverance in all trials, verses 2-4. Look at the verses, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, Perseverance must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." So we come to the issue of the suffering of trials of afflictions. And so, the first test of the Christian faith is how you respond to trials. Remember the parable of the seed in soils and only the genuinely rooted, grounded in the true soil of a noble and right heart endures and perseveres and bears fruit. But there is that rocky soil that as soon as any trouble comes because of the Word they quickly fall away. So, falling away is a clear evidence that the faith is not genuine. So how do you behave in trials? Now James does not specify what sorts of trials he's talking about, he just says trials of any kind. Anything you find difficult anything that afflicts you, that crosses you, that you find challenging, we could, as Christians, put those into two categories. Those afflictions and trials that are common to the human race that we share with all human beings, and then those things that are specifically focused on our Christian testimony. So the first would be sickness, injury, pain, accidents, the death of loved ones, poverty, financial challenges, economic issues, natural disasters, troubles in the family, difficulties in the family, or conflicts at the workplace, or in the neighborhood where you live, these are common to all people. They just have to do with us living in a sin-cursed world. Everybody has to face those. And the world needs us Christians to be evidently, clearly filled with hope at times like that. When we get that diagnosis of cancer that we would have a radiant hope that we're going to live forever. And it's a hope that the other people with the exact same malady, the same diagnosis but not the same faith, not the same Lord have to go through alone stripped of any hope that they would see in you, a hope that they have no earthly answer for, they have no understanding of why, what's the root system of that hope. And they might ask you to give a reason for the hope that you have as 1 Peter 3:15, says. They need you to be evidently filled with joy and hope. But then there are also trials that come because of our Christian testimony as well. Afflictions and persecutions that come some more in other parts of the world than in this one, where there's religious freedom. Persecution, economic isolation as I mentioned already with the Jews there in Palestine, a boycotting confiscation of property, loss of personal freedom, incarceration, and perhaps even martyrdom in very rare cases. Jesus said these trials, must come really of both categories. They must come. John 16:33, Jesus said, "I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world." Trials Will Come So it's a new year, 2020. Doesn't feel like a year name to me, I'm still not used to that, but it's a new year. And who knows what will come, but I can tell you this, congregation of 500 plus people, there's going to be a lot of suffering in this community over the next 12 months, but we don't know what it's going to be, but isn't it a beautiful thing to not have to go through that alone, to not have to go through that alone. The more faithful we are in our Christian witness, the bolder we are in our Christian testimony, the more trouble we're going to have in this world. It says in 2 Timothy 3:12, "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." And so the bolder we are in testimony, the more persecution. That's in our context. In other contexts, like in North Korea, just to be a Christian, just to assemble together, you have to be watching at all times, for the governmental police, the authorities to come in, or in the controlling government of China, same kind of thing, where brothers and sisters are arrested frequently, or in the fundamentalist Islamic states like Iran and Saudi Arabia where our brothers and sisters live under the constant fear of persecution from Muslim family and friends and neighbors and the authorities, or the fiercely nationalistic situation among Hindus in India, persecution comes much more vigorously in those places. Well, James is not specific about the trials. He speaks of trials of various kinds. Whatever they are, expect them, they will come. And he actually uses this language, "Whenever you fall into trials of various kinds." Sometimes it feels that way, doesn't it? You're just moving along in your life and then suddenly you're in a dark pit, metaphorically, you're in a dark pit. And how did I get here? And the light seems so distant, and you're injured by the fall, and you're there wondering, what to do, how to get out of it, what to do next, when ever you fall into trials of various kinds that are going to come. Now, we should understand that our heavenly Father's quick carefully orchestrating all of these things, isn’t that encouraging? You don't fall into anything. It's not an accident, it's not like you're going to God in prayer, and He's saying, "Wow that happened to you. Wow, I wasn't watching at the time." God actually carefully orchestrates our trials and temptations “lest we be tempted beyond what we can bear” as we've already learned, in 1 Corinthians 10. But God is orchestrating these things. Our Response to the Trial is Everything The thing is you can't control it. You can't control your life's circumstances, the only thing you can control is your response, your attitude, your demeanor, and what James says is that you are to, “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds.” Literally, “all joy.” Consider it all joy, or joy through and through, joy straight through. Now, we should not think that James is saying that we should minimize it like it's not happening. That would be weird, it would not be a good witness. It's like, "Do you not understand what's happening to your loved one, what the diagnosis is?" “Well, no. Now I am happy all the day!” No, it's a real rooted, grounded awareness like in Romans 4. Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a 100 years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead. They did not waver through unbelief. So you know what's going on, you're aware of it. And you take I think the eternal perspective. I think exactly like the attitude that Jesus had about the cross in Hebrews 12:2, "We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfect or of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God." What was the joy that was set before Him? I'll tell you what it was. It was us, a multitude of the redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation, won by His suffering, won by His blood to eternal joy and bliss in His presence. That was the joy that was set before Him. The cross was still physical and spiritual agony. But there was a joy beyond it. I think we're supposed to see it the same way. These trials that are coming are working in us and for us, “an eternal glory that far outweighs them all,” Paul tells us in Corinthians, that's the joy. So we have joyful faithful submission then to the trial. What Joyful, Faith-filled Submission to Trials Produces What does that produce? Well everything starts with knowledge. Look at verse 3, "Knowing that the testing of your faith develops perseverance", or endurance. The testing of your faith, that's the testing, the trying, the assaying of it to separate out the true gold from the fool's gold. So there's assaying, but there's also a purifying of our faith. Now, the trial reveals our faith to be the true thing if we stand firm through it and are not cast away. So, if we stand firm. More than that, however, the actual process of the suffering of the trial produces a stronger faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen,” so what happens is we become more reliant on the invisible God, more aware of the presence of the invisible Christ, more mindful of the invisible death of Jesus centuries ago on the cross for us, more mindful of the invisible New Heaven and New Earth that are coming, more mindful of the glory that we will have in our resurrection bodies. All of these invisible realities become much more intense, stronger, if we walk well through the trial and the affliction. That's its purpose. Just like some of you have begun a time in the health center and the weight rooms, because it's January, after all. And so you're on the treadmill and you're working the weights, and you're working off whatever it is you may have eaten in the last part of last year. And you're working the muscles, and the weights oppose the motion, and cause the muscles to get stronger, and so these circumstances cross you and oppose you, and cause your faith to get stronger. Now, what is the end of a Christian endurance? It says in verse 4, "Let endurance have its full effect so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." So as we stay steady, under God's working, steady under His hand. He will work on your souls. There's a clear grammatical insight here that some translations omit. “Let endurance have its full effect.” You're being told to allow endurance to work in you or even better, “Let God do His work in you.” Stay calm and steady under His surgical touch. Imagine a situation where someone has a serious gash somewhere in their body and they're away from medical treatment, but there happens to be a doctor, a skilled doctor there with the necessary tools to disinfect the cut and to sew it up. But imagine the person is skittish and flinches and twitches and yells at the doctor and pushes the doctor away. The doctor is like, looking around saying, "Someone strap him down. You got to hold your hand steady, so I can help you." And so, if we're like that spiritually, and you're going through the trial, it will not have the right effect in your soul. “Let God do His work in you.” That's what it's saying in Verse 4. And what does perseverance produce? Well, one translation says that you'll be “perfect.” I think a better translation is “mature.” We're not going to be perfect in this life, but the word is more Christ-like. That these trials will produce Christian virtues in you, the fruit of the Spirit, love. You'll be more loving if the trial does its work in you. More patient, more joyful, more hopeful, bolder, more compassionate to others that suffer like you are. It just makes you more like Christ. It conforms you, and these things do not happen automatically. They happen because God is working, and what happens is there's a feedback loop here, where you start to realize "I'm not going to fall away. I love Jesus more now than I did six months ago, I'm real, I'm a real Christian. And that proven character, Romans 5 says is the ground of my hope. I know I'm going to Heaven when I die, because of how I reacted how I responded. I'm actually more in love with Jesus, more strong in Him that I was before the trial. Praise God, I'm real, I'm genuine, I'm going to Heaven." And so, that's what happens with endurance, and you'll see it says “mature and complete, not lacking anything.” So my geeky engineering mind at one point turned that whole thing around. Well, I guess what that means is, without the trials we'll be immature, incomplete, and lack things. Exactly! And that's how we start in the Christian life. We're immature, we're incomplete, we lack some things that we need. Justified, yes, forgiven adopted. But you need to grow up. And the only way that's going to happen is with trials. III. Seeking Wisdom from a Generously Wise God (vs. 5-8) Now in Verses 5 through 8, he turns to the topic of wisdom. Look at those verses, it says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind. That man shall not think he will receive anything from the Lord. He's a double-minded man unstable in all he does." So my third heading is, “Seeking Wisdom from a Generously Wise God.” A Timeless and Universal Promise Now I think these verses, verses 5-8 give a timeless universal principle, that you can use at all times, whether you're suffering or not. But I also think it's helpful to see them in context too. So I think we'll do both. First, you just need to ask God for wisdom more than you do. You should not say, "Well, some days I like wisdom, but other days I'm perfectly fine when it comes to wisdom." You can imagine your Heavenly Father saying, "Are you sure there's nothing you might, no insights you might need from Me?" But that would just pose Him as a counselor, He's more than that. He's your king, and you're not your own you're bought at a price, and so you should, in your daily morning quiet time, be asking your king what He wants you to do today? You should go to Him for wisdom. God, what should I do today? What should I do next? You should have this incredible humility about you saying, "I lack wisdom, I lack wisdom, I lack wisdom and you're just going in God, the Ancient of Days, who knows you from your mother's womb, who knows everything that's going on, He will give you wisdom about anything. And so, we always need wisdom. But then there are those big moments in life. Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should we move to this city? Should I go on this mission trip? Should I contribute to this or that or the other Christian ministry, and how much? There's so many things. What are my spiritual gifts? What ministry should I do with my spiritual gift? There's a lot of those big moments. The Purpose of Wisdom in a Trial But we also, I think, should see these verses in context. James said that, "If you stand firm and are steady you will be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Next verse, "If anyone lacks wisdom." So there seems to be a link between verse 4 and 5. So verses 2-4 is all about afflictions. I think that fits very, very well in terms of the afflictions. One of the number one questions that comes up when we're in afflictions, is, "Why is this happening to me?" Whenever you're facing pain and suffering, "I don't understand God why you're doing this to me?" "Why is God not hearing our prayer for the healing of our little girl? Why not?" Or even "Why did you take her from me,” if in the end she dies? "Why is this chronic ailment in my life not responding with the treatment when usually it responds well in other cases?" Or in persecuted countries, “Why do the wicked prosper? Why are the wicked in charge? And then our Godly pastor got arrested last month, and he's being tortured and we have to hide from the authorities. Why is this happening?" Or, "Why in a natural disaster did you allow our home to be destroyed and then those homes were spared?" It doesn't seem to make any sense. And so, if you are in affliction and trials of various kinds, you should bring your questions to God, you should ask Him for wisdom and He will give it to you. He'll tell you why you're going through this trial. Very clear example of this is Paul's thorn in the flesh. Remember in 2 Corinthians 12? Paul talks about some incredible vision he had, where he was caught up to the third heaven and he saw indescribable things. He saw heaven, he saw God on His throne. But then the next thing he says, "To keep me from being conceded because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I sought the Lord that it be removed from me, and He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness', therefore I will boast in my weaknesses." You see what's happened there? He didn't know why this thorn in the flesh, this messenger of Satan had come to him. He was told, "It's to keep you from being arrogant Paul, it's to keep you humble, to keep your feet nailed to the ground after you ascended to heaven and saw heavenly the things you're not allowed to talk about.” And you're like, "Wow would Paul ever become prideful arrogant?" All of us are prideful. We all, we all could be conceded and Paul needed that help, he needed the pain, the suffering, that God did not heal. So, he's healing other people but he's not healing himself, but he had understanding. "Alright, I get it. My strength is made perfect in weakness. I'll keep praying I'll keep trusting, I'll walk in agony and in pain until God chooses to heal it, or until I die." But he got the insight, he got the wisdom of what the reason for it was. And God doesn't tell everything in this world, but He gives you enough wisdom. Seeking Guidance for Your Lives Now you need to seek guidance in your life more than you do. I do too. We are so independent aren't we? We're like, "I know what to do, I got this one, God. I know exactly what to do." If any of you lacks wisdom, it's like, "Well that's not me, I'm on it, I know what I'm doing." But when big decisions come along many decisions we need some guidance don't we? Now, I could give you the guidance of the famous philosopher, Yogi Berra, the catcher for the Yankees. He said, "Whenever you come to a fork in the road, take it." I don't find that incredibly helpful. I guess, at least I know I'm not turning back, so at least that. But I don't know, right or left, but God wants us to express our dependence on Him. He has searched us to know us. He knows all the days ordained for us, He knows exactly what way we should take and He wants us to ask Him. And then we hear in Isaiah 30, in verse 21, "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’” Don't you see the gift that is from God? You won't have no idea what to do in life. “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God. But when you ask, you should believe and not doubt. You should believe that God will give you the wisdom. He'll tell you what to do, He will guide you.” So you're asking has to be in faith, because if not, then James says, you're a double-minded person, you're going back and forth. You believe, you don't believe. You believe, you don't believe. You're acting like a believer, then you're acting like God doesn't exist. James also, later in chapter 4, uses double-minded people to speak of those that are worldly. They're after the world's golds, the world's applause, the world's power and position. And so you're not getting wisdom because in James 4, "You're asking, but you're not receiving because you're asking wrongly. You're asking like a double-minded person." And so you have to go as a faith-filled disciple of Christ and He will give you the wisdom that you need. Seeking Wisdom by Faith Now how does He do that? Well, He gives it through the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God's direct minister to you, to guide you in your life. Now the Spirit speaks primarily through the scripture. The more you study the word of God, the more you memorize Scripture, the more tools the Holy Spirit will have to get specific in your life and guide you and you'll know what to do. You'll know the big picture of what God is doing in the world and you'll know details about spiritual gifts, or various ministries. You'll just know what to do more and more. Even then there's some things that are pertinent to you, and the Holy Spirit will guide you by counsel from friends, disciplers, men and women that speak wisdom into your lives, and you also have internal impressions. Be careful about those internal impressions. I've studied them for my entire Christian life. When I got down on my knees and asked the Lord in my PhD office at Southern Seminary, "Should I come to Durham as pastor, senior pastor of this church?" I felt that I needed an answer. I felt that the search committee needed an answer. It was only polite to give them an answer. “God I met the fork in the road, what do you want me to do?" And I had a strong impression to come here. Now, here's the thing about impressions. They're from one of three sources. They're from God through the Holy Spirit, they are from the devil as he deceives us and they're from you as you talk to yourself. And some of the wisdom you give yourself is pretty good. And some of it isn't. I remember once seeing a man wearing this t-shirt saying, "I do whatever the voices in my head tell me to do." That's not the way to go. But we need to believe that God is able to guide us in those key moments well, without becoming erratic and strange following voices in our heads. IV. Temporary Wealth vs. Eternal Wealth (vs. 9-11) Verses 9-11 in Connection with the Rest of the Chapter Now in verses 9-11, James addresses temporary versus eternal wealth. To some degree, you could almost see a seam here, is there's a whole, new topic. James is like that. Sometimes we don't know, are we getting to a whole new issue now that he brings up? But I think it's possible even here to see some points of connection. Look at Verses 9-11, "The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position." By the way, that's not talking about Andy Winn preaching on the third floor. I told him that this morning. He said, "It's right in the text." I said, "Bad exegesis." So he's in the high position. We're in the low position. Tell him what I said about that whenever you see him. "The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position, but the one who is rich should take pride in his low position because he will pass away like a wild flower, for the sun rises with scorching heat, and whithers the plant its blossom falls, its beauty is destroyed in the same way the rich man will fade away, even while he goes about his business." So what is the connection? It could be that the connection is just economic suffering that the Jewish Christians are doing, that they're poor. They're poor. They can't make a living they've had to flee their homes in Palestine, and they're in new cities and people even then aren't really buying their wares and they're suffering, they're struggling, they're poor. And as with the advice he's going to give, I think this section is best to read it as rich and poor Christians except toward the end. Whereas in James Chapter 5, the rich are clearly oppressors who are murdering people, that's a different matter. So I think it's best to read this as rich Christians, and poor Christians except at the end, he changes just a little bit. Eternal vs. Temporal Wealth In any case, we should all have an eternal perspective on physical, material wealth. Its advantages yes, but it's limitations. And so both poor and rich, Christians need to be very clear on the limitations of earthly wealth. Poor Christians need to realize that the money and the possessions that they lack in this life are actually a very limited value. The poor can be led by their circumstances, into bitter coveting, bitterness against God, tempted even toward crime, they can become materialistic, and this will only make their trial in poverty much worse. James says that poor Christians should focus on their exalted position as adopted sons and daughters of the living God and heirs of Heaven. That's their true wealth. They're storing up there in Heaven, every day by their faithful service. Set their minds on things above and things to come, not on earthly wealth, because it's not going to help their lives as much as they think it is. They should boast. "Let the wise man, not boast in his wisdom, or the rich man boast in his wealth or the strong man boast in his strength, but let him who boast, boast in this, that He knows me." Jeremiah 9. And so, boast in God, boast in Christ, boast not in your material situation because it's nothing. It's dust in the wind. That's what he's saying. Conversely then, rich Christians should focus on their humiliation as Christians in this life. They serve a Lord who was rejected by society, who was cast out from Jewish society, who was crucified outside the city gates. And the author to Hebrews there invites us to stand under the bloody cross and join with Him in suffering the reproach of the name of Christ. So you can see how rich Christians, might have business connections which would be jeopardized if they're very honest about their Christian confession. Rich Unbelievers Fade Away in the Midst of Business Don't do that. Don't do that. Be humble in this world as a Christian. Be willing to be named by the name Christian, and take whatever comes. Now rich unbelievers, I think he shifts a little bit there. He says, "The rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business." It's like Isaiah 40 says, "All flesh is like grass and all their glory is like the flower of the field, the grass withers, and the flowers fall, when the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are like grass. “The grass withers, and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” And so, those rich people we know we hear stories, they're going about their business. They're just moving along and then suddenly they grab their chest and fall dead. Or suddenly there's a car accident, or suddenly some other malady, a sudden fever, something comes and then they're gone, even while they're going about their business, they're dead. Proverbs 11:4, says, "Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, the righteousness delivers from judgment." So wealth isn't going to help you spiritually, in this world and it's certainly not going to help you on Judgment Day because the Judge of all the earth cannot be bribed. He judges justly. He judges to the glory of God. Well, verse 12 wraps up this whole first section, "Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because when he is to the test, he will see the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him." So that goes back to the issue of perseverance under trial. Sums up this whole section. Speaks of blessing of eternity on you. If you persevere, look what you're going to get. You're going to get a crown of life, that God's going to hand you and that really is just eternal life, just being alive forever and ever, but also the rewards of your faithful labor. He will give it to you, if you love Him. And you love His appearing. Application Get Prepared for Your Last Day on Earth So, applications. First and foremost, just all I can say to you is come to Christ, come to Christ. This week some of you know my mother died. Don't have any clear assurance that she was a Christian. Had the opportunity, the responsibility of preaching the Gospel to my unsaved family. Many of you prayed for me in that regard. About two months ago, my mother asked me, "How can I prepare to die." Coming from a mother that had never made a testimony of faith in Christ, I looked on that as a golden opportunity. Probably the 100th time I could have shared the Gospel with her, but it was a gift to me, and I said, "Mom I want you to think about the thief on the cross, when Jesus died, he didn't die alone, but two other thieves were crucified with Him. And they began insulting and reviling Jesus, but at one point, one of them realized what was happening, and he stopped and he said, 'Don't you fear God?' He said that to his other thieves, 'Seeing we are into the same judgment. And we're only getting what we deserve, but this man here, Jesus has done nothing wrong.' And then he turned to Jesus and said, 'Remember me when you come in your kingdom.' To be able to see, in a crucified dying man, a coming King is a gift of faith. He already had faith. He hadn't done any good works. He couldn't. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross. But by simple faith in Jesus, he was able to be saved to have all of his sins forgiven, and to spend eternity with God in paradise.” I said, "Mom. That's how you get ready to die." I said those exact same words at the grave site on Monday. Do Not Assume Your Soul is Secure My desire is that any of you that came in here today, unsaved that you will hear the wise words that James is giving and understand what God is doing, and the ultimate gift of salvation, and trust in Christ. For those of you that are already Christians, just test your faith to see if it's genuine. Don't assume. Just say, "Lord, what is the fruit of my life? What's happening in my life. Is there fruit? Are there good works? Do I see that in my life?" Don't just assume. And especially zero on how you respond to trials and afflictions. Many of you have expressed a desire to be more evangelistic. It could be that God will make you more evangelistic by putting you into suffering on a platform of suffering, so that other people who have the exact same diagnosis as you can see how you behave and will ask you to give a reason for the hope that you have. Suffer Well Suffer well. Suffer well to the glory of God. And just generally, if I can urge you, in the year 2020, seek wisdom from God more than you've ever done it before. I would just say every day in your quiet time, just get up and say, "You're my King. I'm not my own, I'm bought at a price. What do you want me to do today?" And then listen, and let Him guide you by His Scripture, and by His word. And finally, to wealthy Christians, which is all of us who are Christians. We are amazingly wealthy. Let's realize the limits of our material wealth. Let's be generous, let's give to the needy. Let's give more than we've ever given before realizing our true wealth is Heaven. It is a benefit for us to have material blessings, but let's be generous and faith-filled with it and realize, either way, we're going to fade away, or pass away when the Lord says. Let's be ready for that by faith in Christ. Prayer Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to be here. I thank you for all of the gifts of the spiritual gifts of this church. I thank you for the love that me and my family received from this church. I thank you for the gifts of those that like Wes and his team are so excellent leading worship, I thank you for those who are so good at logistics to be able to plan this whole double worship service with such skill. Lord, I pray that in 2020, we would more than ever before walk in wisdom asking you what to do and seeking Your guidance. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction This morning as we continue in our study on spiritual gifts, I'm going to zero in on the gifts of prophecy and healing to try to understand those spiritual gifts. As I do, I think about this season of the year, and I think about the Christmas hymns that we sing and how many of them mention fulfilled prophecy in reference to the birth of Christ. One of the clearest is a hymn written by Charles Wesley in 1744, "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus," one of my favorites. And he wrote it with these words, "Come Thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free, from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art. Dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart." Well, why was Jesus long expected by the Jewish nation? Well, it's because God told the Jews through the prophets that He would come and He gave many details of the birth, and the life, and the death and the resurrection of Christ through the prophetic gift. How prophets with the eagle eye of prophecy were able to look down through the long corridors of centuries before they even happened, were able to give us details. A supernatural vision ahead of time, even centuries ahead of time of what the Messiah would be like. The Gift of Prophecy Distributed To Many This gift of prophecy was given to many different individuals, at many times in various ways. One example is Balaam, who's a fascinating study in prophecy, and he spoke of the coming of Christ in this powerful visionary kind of language. In Numbers 24:17 he said, "I see Him, but not now. I behold Him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel." So there's that visionary work of the prophet, how he can see the Messiah who was to come, a star rising up out of Jacob, but He was not near, He was far away. Seven centuries before Christ was born, the same kind of visionary gift was given to the prophet Isaiah and he spoke with these powerful familiar words, Isaiah 9:6, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders, and He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." These words are sung in Handel's Messiah and in other hymns, and sermons that are preached. Seven centuries before Jesus was born, that level of clarity on the incarnation was given to Isaiah the prophet. At the same time as Isaiah was prophesying, another prophet, Micah, predicted the exact location where Jesus would be born. In Micah 5:2 it says, "But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, although you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel," listen to this, "Whose origins were from of old, from ancient times." And so the origination of Jesus was before the foundation of the world, in the councils of the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit. But little by little, God, through the Holy Spirit, paid out some information through the prophets, so that Jesus was long expected. This stunning ability to see the future, this prophetic gift sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. God alone has the power to see the future. He's the only one that can do it, He's the only one who knows the future, only God and those to whom God reveals the future and those who believe those revelations. God makes His boast in Isaiah the prophet over against the false gods, and goddesses, that Israel was wandering after in Isaiah's day. And God challenged those gods to a duel. And the contest would be a prediction of the future. Listen to what He says in Isaiah 41, "Bring in your idols to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what the future holds, so that we may know that you are gods. Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear. But you are less than nothing, and your works are utterly worthless. He who chooses you is detestable." In other words, God challenges the gods, the idols, to a duel and He knows they can't succeed. God’s Sovereignty to Determine the Future Now the reason that no one but God can foretell the future is that God is sovereign over the future, He's sovereign over everything that happens on planet Earth. And as the Book of Proverbs says, "Many are the purposes of a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." And so, if individuals predict the future and God says, "Yeah, no, it's not going to happen," then it's not going to happen. There's a clear example of this in Isaiah 7, where the kings in the area are conspiring to topple the Davidic seed, the son of David that's on the throne in Jerusalem, and they're making all these plans and schemes, and God says, "It shall not take place, it shall not happen." Conversely, He says of Himself in Isaiah 10, "The hand of the Lord is stretched out and who can turn it back?" When God decrees to do something, no one can stop Him. That's why God alone knows the future, He also knows the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end because He is eternal. So what that means is that prophecy and fulfilled prophecies in particular, have always been the centerpiece of our presentation of the Gospel to unbelievers. It's the center of our apologetic, our defense of Christianity. Fulfilled prophecies set Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. There are no Muslim predictions of the future. There are no Buddhist predictions of the future, no Hindu predictions of the future. The cults that tried to predict the future, failed and should have ended that day. I speak of the Jehovah's Witnesses that predicted at different times the end of the world. Didn't happen. I would think that would end it, but it didn't. So the ability to predict the future rests alone with Christianity. Christianity’s Fulfilled Prophecies Josh McDowell in his apologetic book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, speaks of the fulfilled prophecies around the life of Jesus from His birth through His life to His death. There are 61 prophecies that Josh McDowell lists. Sixty-one! The theme of promise fulfillment was central to the way that the apostles presented the Gospel in the synagogues, trying to persuade unbelieving Jews to cross over into faith. Again and again, they would point to the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. They learned this promise fulfillment approach from Jesus Himself. As Jesus began His public ministry in Nazareth, you remember the scene, how the scroll of Isaiah the Prophet was found. He opened up the place in Isaiah 61 where it says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor," and after reading that prophecy rolled it up and set it aside and sat down. And He said, "Today, in your hearing, this Scripture is fulfilled." Now you can imagine how electrifying that must have been there in Nazareth that Jesus was claiming to be the long-expected Messiah. Promise and fulfillment. So that's how God has used prophecy in the past to identify Jesus as the Christ, the Savior of the world. Born the son of Abraham, in fulfillment of prophecy. Born the son of David, in fulfillment of prophecy. Crucified with His hands and feet pierced, in fulfillment of prophecy. Raised from the dead on the third day, in fulfillment of prophecy. And since that time, the Gospel has spread from Jerusalem through Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth, in fulfillment of prophecy. And we still have more prophecies to come, especially the second coming of Christ, so Jesus is still the long-expected Jesus, He's the long-expected Savior. One of the last things Jesus said to us through Scripture is, "Behold, I am coming soon." And so, we've been waiting for 20 centuries, and we still wait for the fulfillment of that prophecy. Dealing With the Charismatic Gifts Now, what does all this have to do with spiritual gifts? Well, we've been trying to answer one of the more perplexing questions that faces Evangelicals, and it's been divisive in Evangelicals and it has to do with the sign gifts or the miraculous gifts, some call them the charismatic gifts. And the question is: Are all of the gifts listed, that you heard Topher read about a few minutes ago, that you read about in 1 Corinthians 12, are they all still active today, or have some of them ceased? We zeroed in specifically on five in particular, the gift of prophecy, the gift of healing, the gift of miracles, speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues, these are sometimes called the sign gifts. Last week I traced out the history of the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic movement, beginning in Topeka, in 1900, Topeka, Kansas, and then in 1906, at the Azusa Street Revival, and we traced out how Pentecostalism, the movement of Pentecostalism grew. And then a subset of that, the Charismatic movement, similar but different in some ways, grew and spread, and we talked about how widespread in the world it has been and it is. Probably at this point, over 600 million Pentecostal plus charismatics in the world. It's hard to be an evangelical at any length of time without bumping into this issue and questions that arise. And so the goal for me here is to do the best I can, as I did last week, in seeking to address that question. The divide in Evangelicalism between cessationists, which are people who believe that the Scripture teaches, and it's clear that these sign gifts have ceased. So they're cessationists. Versus, broadly speaking, continuationists would be the opposite, that those gifts continue. And there are different flavors really of both. Now last week, we walked carefully through 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, which is the clearest text on the end of the gifts. And it does say that the gifts will end. It says, "Where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfection comes, the imperfect is done away with or passes away." “Imperfect” is not a great translation. The “partial,” the “in part” would be a better translation there. And so, we walked through that. And what I sought to do last week is show that this is clearly talking about the Second Coming of Christ, an eternity in which we will see God face-to-face. And that level of knowledge of knowing God face-to-face, that's decisively what Paul's saying, when the gifts will cease. So rather than teaching I think a clear cessationism, it actually points more clearly to continuationism, but that leaves some questions in front of us, and those are some of the questions I want to seek to answer today, some practical questions. As we address this gift of prophecy, let me just lay out my cards on the table as I've thought about it. This sermon like last week's was a work in progress right until the time I walked up here, so I have no desire like last week to be a fog machine here, pumping out uncertainties and “inclarities”. That's not even a word, "inclarities." Anyway, you know what I mean. What I'm trying to do is help you think through how you would address this scripturally. Four Convictions Concerning Prophecy So these are four convictions I have right now about prophecy. Number one, the New Testament points to a kind of prophetic gift that is less authoritative than scripture. That's a key divide between, let's say, me and a cessationist. Number two, I believe there is not sufficient scriptural clarity or evidence to support a hard cessationism, to make the absolute statement, “Prophecy cannot happen today.” I looked at the clearest Scripture that they have 1 Corinthians 13, and I don't think it's clear enough. To be that ardent and clear, I think, is not helpful. Third, this kind of prophetic gift, if it still functioned today, would be very helpful in our lives, both for personal holiness and for the spread of the Gospel. But now hear me clearly, on this fourth point, unless and until, an individual predicts the future and that prediction comes true, I will not know, and I don't think the church can know that that person's a prophet. And that would make me very different than most continuationists. I think it's reasonable to expect a prediction of the future in order to mark someone as a prophet. The Gift of Prophecy The Beginning of the Office of Prophet So let's walk through this, let's talk first about the beginning of the gift of prophecy and where it started in the Old Testament. The first time the word is used, it's used of Abraham, in that rather scandalous encounter he has in Girar, remember when he lied about his wife, said “She's my sister,” not a great moment for Abraham. And the king of Girar wanted to take her as his wife, and God came to him and warned him in a dream, and then said this to him in the dream, "Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, he will pray for you, and you will live, but if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." So that's the first time and the actually the only time the word prophet appears in the book of Genesis. However, it definitely appears in the Exodus and beyond. And the key moment there, let's skip ahead to the key moment, and that's Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, God descends in fire on the top of Mount Sinai. There's a terrifying earthquake, there is this unearthly supernatural darkness, and God descends in fire on the mountain and begins to speak to the people, and the people are utterly terrified of God's voice. God speaks the Ten Commandments to the people in the hearing of the people. Deuteronomy 5 talked about that moment, Deuteronomy 5:23-31 says this, "When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leading men of your tribes and your elders came to me and you said, 'The Lord our God has shown us His glory and His majesty, and we have heard His voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a man can live even if God speaks with him. But now why should we die? This great fire will consume us and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. For what mortal man has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire as we have and survived? Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says, then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.' The Lord heard you when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, 'I have heard what this people has said to you. Everything they said was good. Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commandments always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever. Go tell them to return to their tents. But you, stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.'" Well, that is the formal beginning of the office of prophet in the nation of Israel. This is the beginning of the office. Later in Deuteronomy 18, He makes it clear that that office would continue after Moses was gone. In Deuteronomy 18:15-20, it says, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers, you must listen to him, for this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, 'Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore or we will die.' The Lord said to me, 'What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account, but a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death." So that clearly establishes the opening of the office of prophet, and also what the nature of the work was. The prophet would effectively stand spiritually in the presence of God, God would teach the prophet the words to say and the prophet would then deliver them to the people. That was the essence of prophecy. That pattern continued. Throughout the history of Israel, God raised up what He called "My servants, the prophets," and they would come and they basically would press, effectively press the Mosaic covenant onto the consciences and the hearts of the Jewish people and show where they were failing to keep it. That was the centerpiece of their work, although they did other things. And so God would speak, and this prophet would listen. You see this pattern with the little boy Samuel, remember that when God was raising him up to be a prophet, and he was sleeping in Eli's house and he heard God speaking to him, and he had to be instructed to say these words, "Speak Lord, for your servant is listening." And so that was the essence of the prophecy, and the prophet, the office of prophet. And so, he would hear the word of God and he was like a table waiter, bringing the words that God spoke directly to the people. It says in 1 Samuel 3:19, "The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground.” So he successfully delivered to the people everything that God told him to say. So, again and again, we have these individuals who hear God speak words and then speak those exact words to the people. Jeremiah 1:4-7, "The word of the Lord came to me saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet, to the nations.' 'Ah, Sovereign Lord,' I said, 'I do not know how to speak, I'm only a child.' But the Lord said to me, 'Do not say I am only a child. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you to say.'" And then a verse later it says, "Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, 'Now, I have put my words in your mouth.'" So that's the essence of that prophetic gift, was delivering clearly and directly the words of God to the people. And there were a variety of prophetic communications. Hebrews 1:1, which I already quoted, "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways." Now, many of the prophets were commanded to write down the things that God had committed to them, though not all. Elijah and Elisha, there's no record of them writing down any of their prophecies. But Jeremiah and Isaiah were commanded to write them down. And so we have the written word coming from this prophetic gift. How to Identify Prophets: The Fulfillment of Their Words Now, the key issue for our purpose today is the question of how can we know that this person is a prophet? It was an issue then and it's an issue now. And so, it was raised in Deuteronomy 18:21-22, "You may say to yourselves, 'How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." So in other words, if they make a prediction that does not come true, that is a false prophet. That is a person who has not spoken in the name of the Lord. And so fulfillment of predictions was the marker of the prophet. We see this in Jeremiah's time. You remember how all of the false prophets were saying to the kings of Judah, that Nebuchadnezzar wouldn't even come? But then he comes, and he takes over most of Judah, and Jeremiah is saying, God is bringing the Babylonians as a judgment. Your only hope is to go out and surrender, which was not very popular with the fighting men on the walls. He looked like a traitor, but he was given the word of the Lord to say. And when it started coming true exactly as Jeremiah had said, he pointed to that and separated himself from the false prophets. He said to the king of Judah, "Where are your prophets who said he wouldn't even come?" The Babylonian king wouldn't even come. There was a false prophet named Hananiah, who predicted that there would be an exile once Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians had come and started to win battles. It's like, "Okay yes, there's going to be an exile but it's going to be really short.” Jeremiah predicted 70 years. And this is what Jeremiah said to Hananiah, the false prophet, "The prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true." There it is again, it's the same pattern every time. This is is how we know. Ezekiel 33:33 says the same thing, "When all this comes true, and it surely will," I love how the prophet says that, "When all of this comes true, and it surely will, then they will know that a prophet has been among them." A Description of Prophets Alright, so my own description then is an Old Testament prophet is an individual called by the Lord, who is appointed by God to speak His words directly to the people. He would say, "Thus says the Lord," and everything that followed was the word of God directly to the people. The prophets didn't only predict the future, they didn't even mostly predict the future. There was forth-telling, "Thus says the Lord," and He would uncover the sins and the wickedness of the nation. But it inevitably involved some prediction of the future so that the people could know that the individual was a prophet. And so, he would say directly the words of God. To disobey those words was equivalent to disobeying God Himself. The Yearning of Moses and the Prediction of Joel Now, Moses in his day, yearned that all of God's people would be prophets. He says that in Numbers 11:29, "I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit on them." Now, Joel predicted, maybe not a universal gift of prophecy, but a widespread expansion of the gift of prophecy in the new covenant. In Joel 2:28-29, it says, "And afterward I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." Well, the day of Pentecost came. Jesus had told them to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and as they were assembled there in the Upper Room, 120 of them waiting for the Lord to give His gift, suddenly there was a sound of a terrifying powerful wind, and they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them, and all of them began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." And a crowd gathered because of the sound of the wind, and because there were many there for the feast of Pentecost, they were all gathered, and so the apostles streamed out into the streets, they had no fear of the Jews at that point, no fear of being arrested, they had a mission to proclaim the Gospel, and so they did. Peter, speaking on behalf of the apostles, preached a message. Now, the people were deriding them, they were mocking them and saying, “They're drunk.” Peter said, "These men are not drunk as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning." I think that's humorous, anyway. "This is that which has been spoken by the prophet Joel." By the way, someone wrote a book on interpretation of prophecy, This is That, that's the title of the book. What it is saying is this thing that you're seeing is that which was predicted, it's that promise fulfillment motif. That's exactly what he says, this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days and they will prophesy." The Cessationists Understanding of the New Testament Prophets Now, the cessationists as they look at New Testament prophecy, they effectively say that's what prophecy is and only that, it's scripture-level prophecy. And they rightly say, I agree with them, that the Canon is closed and there is no more scriptural-level prophecy coming. That once the book of Revelation came, that all of that type of perfect revelation which is written down, the perfection of scripture has ended. You remember the end of the Book of Revelation, where these words are written, this is the very end of the Bible pretty much, "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his portion in the Tree of Life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." So he says, this book is a book of prophecy, and you can't add anything to it and you can't take anything away from it. But it's interesting that it's positioned at the end of the last book of the Bible, and so many Christians think that it also is speaking a word in general about adding to or taking away from the Bible, the 66 books of the Bible, saying those days are over. We have the Canon. And I think that's actually not a bad way to look at it. Now the gift of prophecy was functioning in those days in ways, however, that we don't fully understand. It wasn't just scriptural-level prophecy. The apostles are listed first, then prophets in verse 28, "He gave first of all, apostles, then prophets.” I've tended to see the prophets as the Old Testament prophets, and I don't have any problem with that, but there are clearly New Testament prophets at work in the church at Corinth and in other places. It says in Ephesians 2:20 that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. Now cessationist John Stott says this about that, "The simplest knowledge of architectural construction is enough to tell us that once the foundation of a building is laid and the superstructure begins to be built, the foundation cannot be laid again. So in the primary sense of prophets as vehicles of direct and fresh revelation, we must say that this charisma, spiritual gift, is no longer given. There is no longer anyone in the Church who may dare to say, 'the word of the Lord came to me' or 'thus says the Lord.'" I think aspects of what Stott says there are true. Are There Different Types of New Testament Prophets? We don't look for scripture-level prophecy anymore, but are there different types of prophecies? Are there different aspects of the gift? This is the point of division between cessationists and continuationists on the gift of prophecy. Wayne Grudem, he's a continuationist, cites a number of examples of the gift of prophecy that's lower than Scripture. For example, Acts 21:4, some disciples urged Paul through the Spirit, that is by the gift of prophecy, not to go to Jerusalem. But Paul disobeyed and went to Jerusalem anyway. If New Testament prophets spoke with an authority equal to that of Scripture, Paul would not have disobeyed it. So, that's one example. Other examples come in with what we call the weighing of prophecies. Alright, 1 Thessalonians 5, 1 Corinthians 14. 1 Thessalonians 5, it says, verse 19-22, "Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” And then 1 Corinthians 14:29, "Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said." Wayne Grudem says this, "We cannot imagine that an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah would say, 'Listen to what I say and weigh what is said, sort out the good from the bad, what you should accept from what you should not accept.' It's just a different kind of prophetic gift," says Grudem. There's also other examples of prophecy which I don't really even understand what they're about. For example, 1 Timothy 1:18, it says, "Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you so that by following them, you may fight the good fight of faith." I don't know what prophecies were made about Timothy. I don't know if we would call them scriptural-level prophecies, or what, just something it seems about his teaching ministry or his gift, but just we don't know what it is. Also this one is very interesting to me. Acts 21:9, "Philip had four unmarried daughters who prophesied." I know nothing about those ladies. I don't know what they said. I don't think that their prophecies made it into Scripture, they just had a gift and they used it. So I don't really know. There's just things that we don't know. Now sometimes the prophets gave direct guidance concerning the Great Commission. Clear example of this is in Acts 13, "In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul," so that is Paul. "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus." So I don't think it's too much to say that it was the prophets who spoke under the influence of the Holy Spirit that said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for this missionary work." And so that would be an example of how the prophetic gift would give a clear guidance of ministry and missions that people could do. And that's why I say if it were still to function like that, it'd be very useful or helpful. So, prophesy didn't always function as predictions about the future but a form of communication of the mind of God. Prophets also have the ability back then, in the church at Corinth, there were various people with the gifts. We would not say they were all speaking at Scriptural-level prophecy, but they just had a gift. And it's interesting, it says, "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all. And the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you.'" So there's some aspect of the prophetic gift that was at work in the Church at Corinth, which would uncover and lay bare secrets of hearts so that people are convicted and come to Christ. An Analysis of the Facts Now Wayne Grudem has an interesting idea of prophecy which I don't share, but I'll just share it with you. How could someone be a prophet and still speak imperfect words? So he says that God gives a revelation to the prophet, and the prophet then puts them into imperfect human words. So the idea is true, but the articulation is different. I have a hard time accepting that because it seems that the verbal communication has always been of the essence of the gift of prophecy, but that would be a discussion we would have. So, if prophecy does not actually literally contain the word of God for us, word-for-word, then what is it? And how is prophecy different today from let's say preaching or teaching? One of the Puritans, William Perkins, wrote a book called "The Art of prophesying." But you shouldn't go get it, it's probably free online. You can read the PDF and it's like I want to be a prophet. Read it, it's just about preaching, friends. It's how people like me should preach, and so they make it equivalent, prophesying and preaching. I don't think that's helpful. I actually just think prophesying and preaching and teaching are different. Grudem thinks so too, I think they're different. With preaching and teaching, you're taking the written Word of God that we all have, and you're walking through it, and explaining it through rules of exegesis and theology and applying it to people, that's the gift of preaching and teaching. Prophecy is just "Thus says the Lord," and you say it. Or, according to Grudem, a revelation, and you try to articulate that revelation. Grudem says preaching and teaching is more authoritative than that type of prophesying. Well, let me give you my analysis. I think Grudem brings up some interesting points. I'm not ready to say that prophecy doesn't exist anymore, but I have serious questions. I want to know why it is that many of these continuationists set aside my requirement that the prophet, or prophetess, because God uses women too, needs to predict the future before the Church knows that they are prophets. It's always been there. There are examples of New Testament predictions. Agabus predicted a famine that would come over the entire Roman world. And like in the days of Joseph, they got ready ahead of time for the famine and set aside stores for it because they believed that Agabus was predicting the future. Why couldn't we require that of prophets today? What ends up happening, I've heard, in some of these churches like Sovereign Grace churches, or some of these other charismatic churches, is that they'll have open mics. And if you want to know what's the application, we're not going to see open mics anytime soon. Just, that's a prediction, but it's not a prophecy, it's just kind of a judgment that I'm making. But what happens in these Sovereign Grace churches, and I had this confirmed even a week ago, I talked to somebody who used to attend there. So you would go up and you would talk to the elder and they would filter it, because they were really trying to follow the New Testament prescriptions. want to weed out anything wacky or strange that would be said. And what ends up happening is the prophet or prophetess just ends up doing scriptural exhortation. “The Lord is saying to us that He is our Shepherd and that we shall not want, and that he makes us lie down in green…” I'm like, friends if you just want to read Psalm 23, read it. That's not a prophecy. Or to say the Lord wants us to be active in evangelism. Again, I do that as a preacher, but I'm not claiming prophecy. “The Lord is saying to all the members, all the men, the married men in this church, that you are to love your wives as Christ loved the Church and you're to lay yourself down…” It's like, look I actually think that's even harmful to call that prophecy because I don't know that the Spirit is saying, that there's a specific deficiency in the husbands of the church that this is an area of emergency that needs a prophetic word. So it's better to just say the Scripture says this, it's binding on all of our consciences, but don't call it a prophecy. However, if someone is willing to come along and make a prediction and we mark that person as a prophet, then I think we could listen, if they were to say something like a 21st century version of, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." What is that work? X, Y, and Z. I think that would be powerful if God wants to do that, but He first has to mark the person with a clear prediction. What I call, this is very geeky, but here it is: Independently verifiable prediction of the future that then gets verified. Don't predict something that's going to happen in seven centuries. Because how can we know? It has to be verified by fulfillment. And that's always been the rule. Prophecy in Church History Now, has anything like that happened since then? Well, Church history gives us some interesting insights. I want to tell you a story of a Viking raider, that was converted by a prophecy. This is fascinating, this man, his name was Olaf Tryggvason, he lived a thousand years ago, over a thousand years ago, born in the year 963, died in the year 1000. He eventually became king of Norway. He was a viking. Viking was more of a verb, it was like a raider, and he went up and down the coasts of England plundering and killing and doing all the stuff vikings would do. But he was anchored at one point in a place called the Isles of Scilly, that is how you pronounce it, off the West Coast of England. And there was there a Christian hermit who was known to be a prophet. In other words, his reputation as speaking predictions that came true was established. Well Olaf was interested in that. He knew a lot about Christianity, but he was not a Christian. So he decided to test this guy, and he sent one of his tall men to pose as himself to the hermit. The Hermit saw right through that. He said, "You are not the king. And the advice I give you is to be faithful to your king." Well, the man went back, and then Olaf went in person and sought him out and asked if he, Olaf, would attain a kingdom, a kingdom. The hermit replied with a holy prophecy, "You will become a famous king and work famous deeds, you will bring many men to the true faith and to baptism, and in so doing you'll benefit both yourself and many others. And lest you doubt my answer, let this be taken as a token. When you return to your ships you shall encounter a band of traders, and you will yourself receive a mortal wound, and be borne on your shield to your ship, but you'll recover from this wound within seven days, and you'll be baptized soon thereafter." Now, that's a very clear prediction. Well, when Olaf returned to his ships, the events occurred just as the hermit had foretold, Olaf then believed he was a prophet, Olaf then visited the hermit and asked where did he get the wisdom that he could foretell the future? The hermit said that it was the God of the Christians who alone knew the future and who told him all that he was anxious to know. He told Olaf of the many miracles of God, he shared the Gospel with him clearly, and he persuaded Olaf to be baptized. And Olaf and all his men were baptized there. He went on to be the king of Norway. You can look it up. The Gifts of Healings Alright, on the gifts of healings briefly, we don't have much more time. Paul speaks interestingly in verse 8-9, he speaks of the gift of healing, in Verse 9, he says, "to another faith, by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healings," gifts of healings. All of the English translations make gifts plural, but they all make healing singular. It's odd, it's actually double plural, gifts of healings. Therefore, it could be that they're just different kinds of healings and healing ministries that go on. They're not all of the same sort. Now, for us, you could say, I heard John MacArthur in a sermon on spiritual gifts say, "If I could have one gift I don't have, it would be this gift, the gift of healing." And I think anybody who's been to an ICU, anybody that's been to minister to sick people, hurting people, injured people, you know why he says that. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to lay your hands on somebody and pray for them and have them healed? And that would be a remarkable thing. Jesus Healing Ministry Unmatched No one in all of human history, no one, has had the gift of healing like Jesus. The apostles did not have Jesus' level of healing. Huge crowds went to Jesus and He healed everyone of every disease, there was nothing He could not do. And as a matter of fact there were huge crowds because of this healing gift. You understand why. When you're sick and dying, or someone you love is sick, and dying, it's top priority for you to get that addressed. And we see a number of individuals that are urgent to get the healing, like the royal official in John 4, and the Syrophoenician woman, all they want is to be well or have their loved one well. We understand that. Now, here's the thing: Disease and suffering and accidents and pain, all of that leading to death, is part of the fall in Adam, it's part of the final enemy, what Jesus, what Paul calls the final enemy: Death. Jesus in one sense, banished illness from Palestine for a brief three-year period, but everyone He healed eventually died of something. The gifts of healings, were in some smaller measure committed to the apostles, but they didn't have the same level. Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus. He gave Timothy counsel about his hurt stomach about not drinking water from a well anymore, but taking wine, so that he wouldn't have these microbes I guess. He didn't heal him, he just said, manage it in this way. Paul himself had a thorn in the flesh, which the Lord chose not to remove. There is in some sense a diminishing of the miraculous gift of healing. However, I don't believe that I can say like an ardent cessationist that there are no miraculous healings anymore. And, frankly, in my 21 years here, I have seen again and again and again, remarkable answers to group prayers. God Answers Prayers for Healing It says in James 5:14-15, "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him, and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up." So many of us have had people that we know that have had very serious diagnoses, and are prayed for, and they go back and there's just remarkable evidence of healing and there's no medical explanation, and so we've seen that again and again. Now is that the gift of healing? I'm not up here to say it is or it isn't. Imagine if there were a brother or a sister that just had a heart for sick people and loved to pray for them, and followed James 5 and went and prayed all their life, again and again, sick people and saw many people healed. Certainly it's different than Jesus who never failed to heal somebody, but it's more similar to how the apostles sometimes left people sick. And so, I cannot say, like I'm a kind of a black and white cessationist, that that kind of gift doesn't happen. I am skeptical of public healers like TV-type people, as we all should be, because we've not seen organic diseases healed by those individuals. But I think we have seen, there's many testimonies of organic illnesses healed in answer to group prayer. And to have a brother or sister that might want to be in those groups again and again, and has seen multiple healings to look over 20 centuries of Church history and say that couldn't happen, I'm not ready to do it. So where does that leave us? I don't know, it leaves me out of time. What I would say is that I cannot go with the cessationist scripturally and say that these gifts have certainly ceased, but I have pretty serious questions about some continuationists and the way specifically the gift of prophecy functions. And so, at least for me, and I'm going to commend it to you, dear church, to require prediction of the future for somebody to be identified as a prophet. And if they won't do that, I'll just welcome them as giving me good, sound, scriptural, Christian exhortation. Does that makes sense? Prayer Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the time we've had to study Your word. We thank You for its complexity, its depth, its power. I thank You for the gifts of the Spirit. Lord, as I'm going to say in two weeks, God willing, the ordinary ministry of the Spirit is sufficient to do so many things, and I pray that as in the end we understand spiritual gifts we'd realize that the non-controversial gifts that are going on all the time, that everyone agrees are so powerful and so sufficient to finish the work, but that there may be advancements of the power of the Spirit that we should seek that is often called revival, that we should seek Your face, and ask You would pour out afresh and anew Your Holy Spirit, that we might be empowered to share the Gospel with people who need to hear it so much, and that we be empowered to do all the good works You have for us to do. In Jesus' name. Amen.

I. Worldwide Fear of Death Please open your bibles to Acts 2. We’re not going to do an exegetical walk through this text, but I want to say some things from that and then look at some other texts. There are always new things happening in this world of ours. I had not heard of this terrorist attack until this morning. And we're mindful of the fact that we live in this complex and diverse world and there are cultures very different from ours, language is very different than ours. People who answer the basic questions of life of what they will eat and how they will speak and what they will wear and how they will celebrate very differently than we do in our culture. We know that those lands have different heritages, different histories, different stories that they tell from their own past, they're very different than ours. So it's just an incredibly diverse world that we live in, but one thing unifies the human race, very much on my mind this morning, and that is fear of death, fear of death. In 1973, Ernest Becker a Pulitzer Prize winning author wrote a book entitled "The Denial of Death." And the thesis of the book is that humanity is enslaved worldwide by a fear of dying. This man is not writing from a Christian perspective, but he said that what people do all over the world is deny, deny, deny, deny. And they find a lot of different ways to deny death and their fear of death. There are religious ways, narcotic ways, alcoholic ways, ways of success and labor and all of that, that distracts and diverts. There are cosmetic ways and surgical ways to deny that you're aging. There are all kinds of denials of death. Becker said the main thesis of his book is that the fear of death haunts the human being like nothing else. It is a main spring of human activity, activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. Now this author back then had no answer for this. He's just making an observation. But we have the answer, amen. We have the answer to death itself and to fear of death. And we praise God, and we're assembled today to celebrate that answer. Hebrews 2:14-15 says that by Christ's death, "he destroyed him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." What a triumphant passage that is. And if I'm not careful I'll just go over and preach on that one right now. There's so many celebrating passages that we can... But liberated from fear of death. All over the world, death is known as the final enemy. We understand this, funeral rituals, very diverse, different cultures, but they're there and they're powerful, and they involve immense lamentations and overwhelming grief. It's really very simply. You just live long enough in the world, you know this reality. A certain person who's important to you is alive, he has wrapped himself up in your life in some way, he's part of your life, you eat with him, you talk with him, you enjoy his company, laugh at his jokes, maybe, work together on some project. He's woven into the fabric of your life to some degree. But then suddenly one day something happens, and you never see him alive again in this world. Maybe you see his dead body and maybe you don't, but one thing you know, that person who you remember is gone, and you never from that time on saw them again alive in this world. That's the experience of death, every culture, every nation, every tribe, subject to the same sorrow. And there's no refuge on this planet. No one's figured it out somewhere. It could be the distant mist covered valleys of Irian Jaya, there's no stone age tribe that's found some secret to the problem of death. Or even in the barren outreaches of the outback of Australia. It's not like there's some group there that has found the secret. Or you could go to the steel and glass high rises of Asia, Macau, or Hong Kong, and all of the teaming population there and there's not some back alley there where there's some specialist that is an oriental expert in herbs and has some interesting remedies that has delivered him and everyone that comes to his shop from death. Or you could go to the farmlands of the Ukraine where people are working hard, leading a wholesome life, and they're having year after year crops growing and they live that life of a Ukrainian wheat farmer, but there's no remedy, they die with no remedy. We've got missionaries that work in the northern regions of the Laplanders in Finland, and they send back reports that they haven't discovered a secret to death, and the Gospel is needed there, because they die just like we do. And the same thing in the jungles of the Amazon, this unites the people there too. They have all kinds of flora and fauna there, they have all kinds of interesting species of spiders and tree frogs with special poisons in them and all kinds of other chemicals that we don't have here in Raleigh-Durham, but they haven't discovered a secret to death. Not even in Durham, North Carolina, the City of Medicine, where right near us within a few minutes drive there are pharmaceutical companies that are researching various aspects of pain and suffering and disease, but none of them has conquered death and they won't. So this brings us to this Easter celebration, this Resurrection Day celebration. II. Jesus Christ Has Conquered Death Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. He has conquered death. And He is the only one. I'm not denying that some people have been resuscitated by CPR or those electrical pallets that put electricity and revive a dead heart. I don't even deny that there are in the Bible accounts of miracles of Lazarus and others that were resuscitated to the same mortal life that we now experience, but Christ alone has been resurrected, never to die again. He's the only one. And He says in John 10:17-18, "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me. But I lay it down freely of my own accord. I have the authority to lay my life down and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I received from my Father." Can you imagine anyone else making such a claim? There is no one else, no religious leader has made such a claim. I have absolute and power over life and death, my own. No one can kill me if I don't will to be killed, but I lay my life down freely and I have the power to take it back up again. And again, Revelation 1:18, where Jesus appeared to the Apostle John, when he was in the island of Patmos in exile, and he says this, Jesus said to John, "I am the living one. I was dead and behold I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the key of death and Hades." So not only that, Jesus claims to unleash that power toward us, to give us the fruit of His resurrection victory. That's what makes all of this a celebration. He said in John 14:19. "Because I live, you also will live." Cherish that O dear brothers and sisters in Christ, "Because I live, you also will live." And again, John 11, Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." But we may ask how can we be certain of these things? I need to know how can I be certain that Christ is risen, and that he can give me that same resurrection victory? What would be the ground of my assurance, the ground of my certainty? How can we who live here in the Raleigh-Durham area, in this high tech era, this digital age, 21st century, how can we derive any kind of certainty or assurance of these things? We're skeptical people, we need to know how can we know that any of this is true? And I say to you right now, the only way you will ever have certainty that Christ is risen from the dead, and that you also will be raised from the dead in the end is by faith in the Word of God. There is no other ground of assurance. Only by faith in the Word of God in the Scriptures will you have this certainty. If you don't have that faith in the word of God, you'll not have any certainty, either that Christ has been raised from the dead, or that you also could be raised from the dead. And the Bible is given to minister that faith to us, to feed us by faith. At the end of John's Gospel, in John 20:31, the Apostle John expressed why he had written his account of all the miracles, including the miracle of Christ's own resurrection. And said, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name." So by reading the words on the page, so you may have eternal life, you can access Christ's resurrection victory by simple faith in the Word of God. III. “This is What is Written” Now you may say there are many holy books. Wise men in the past, religious leaders have written things down, there are holy books a plenty. Seems like every religion has its own library, its own set of holy books. What is the difference between the Bible and the Hindu Scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu writings? Or the Muslim writing, the Quran, what's the difference between the Bible? Why should we believe the Bible as a holy book compared to the Quran? Or the Analects of Confucius or the Sutras of Buddhism or other holy books. But what is the difference? Well, there's two central differences in reference to the Bible. The first is predictive prophecy and the second is the testimony to the person and work of Jesus. No other scriptures have this combination of predictive prophecies culminating in this perfect historical figure, Jesus, that's the difference. And Jesus claimed to have power over death and He... It is said of Him by the eyewitness that He was physically raised from the dead. But his central evidence was the prophecies that were written in the Old Testament, and that's what we're going to spend the rest of our time on, feeding our faith on the prophecies. What is written? The Jewish religion was founded on Scripture, the writings of Moses, and then of the Prophets, and they were assembled in what we call the Old Testament, the 39 books of the Old Testament, written centuries before Jesus was born. And the Jewish life and religion was based on the Scriptures. Moses said in Deuteronomy 32:47, concerning the words he had written there in The Five Books of Moses. "These are not just idle words for you, they are your life." But not only did Jewish Scripture contain the laws by which the Jewish nation was to live, it also contained God's predictions about the future and this is what makes the Bible unique, God's ability to predict the future, and then tell the prophets what was to come and they wrote it down. There's no other religion in the world that has this aspect of predictive prophecy of foretelling. As he said in Isaiah 46:9-10, "I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning from ancient times what is still to come. And I say, my purpose will stand and I will accomplish all that I please." I love that, that's Isaiah 46:9-10. He says, I declare to you, I speak to you the end from the beginning. I tell you where we're going with all this. No other religion does. The Bhagavad Gita doesn't do it, the Quran doesn't do it, the Sutras don't do it, the Analects of Confucius don't do it, but Scripture does. And it was all asserted centuries before Jesus was born, the central event in human history was the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth and it was all predicted centuries before He was born. And so Jesus, after He was raised from the dead, went to His own disciples there in the upper room, and this is what he said, Luke 24:44-48. "He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then He opened their minds, so they could understand the Scriptures." He has the power to do that. He has the power, and I actually prayed for this yesterday that this would happen. In my mind, in your minds, in the minds of any unbelievers that might be here that were invited to come worship with us, that He would open your mind by the power of the Holy Spirit to understand the Scriptures. He has that power to do it. And Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He told them this is what is written that Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Well, that was just the beginning of a 40-day period in which Jesus trained His disciples in the Old Testament Scriptures. It was the greatest seminary in history. Now, we're right near by Southeastern Seminary. I happen to teach there from time to time and I love it. It's one of the greatest seminaries in the world, it's nothing compared to that 40-day Seminary. And I think all of you students that are at Southeastern or any of you professors, you must assent to this, that you would rather sit at Jesus' feet than any of the esteemed faculty at Southeastern. But the topic of that 40-day seminary was very clear. This is what is written, this is what the prophets said would happened, so that their faith would rest certainly on the unchanging, the written Word of God, Acts 1:3. "After His suffering, Jesus showed Himself to these men and gave them many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, and spoke about the kingdom of God." Now, what Scriptures did He share with them? We don't know, but we do know how Peter and the other Apostles preached on the day of Pentecost. And we do know how the Apostle Paul wrote the Book of Romans and all of the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures that he used to feed into them. Now, Paul was not there in that 40-day seminary, but he received a special tutoring session from the Holy Spirit. But it's the same Old Testament prophecies and scriptures. IV. The Three Greatest Prophecies of Christ’s Resurrection And I'm going to look with you this morning at the three greatest Old Testament prophecies of Christ's resurrection from the dead, and then the three greatest prophecies of our own resurrection from the dead, also from the Old Testament. Psalm 16 And we begin with Psalm 16, this is the one that Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost. Now, if you look at Acts 2, we're going to just give a setting of this, this preaching that he did. The day of Pentecost was one of the three major festivals in the Jewish year. It was very close in time to the Passover just 40 days later, and so, pilgrims would come from all over the Greek speaking, the Roman world, the Jews from distant lands, and converts to Judaism would come to Jerusalem for the Passover and they would stay over for Pentecost. Thousands of Jews have made this journey and they would stay. Now, Christ was crucified, in fulfillment of the Passover symbolism was crucified on Passover Friday, He was buried just before the Sabbath, He was raised to life on the third day after the Sabbath, the first day of the week. Now for 40 days, Jesus met with the disciples to go over these Scriptures and He told them that at the end of that time, they should wait in Jerusalem for the gift that the Father would give them, the Holy Spirit who would be poured out on them from on high. And Jesus would ascend up to heaven and that He and the Father together would pour out the Holy Spirit. Well, then Jesus did ascend and the church went back to the upper room, and they are waiting in the upper room for the gift that the Father was going to send. On the day of Pentecost, the gift was given. The Holy Spirit was poured out from on high, and they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And there's the sound of a violent tearing shredding wind, powerful like a hurricane level wind and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. And this crowd gathered of these pilgrims that were there for Pentecost, gathered around the house where they were staying, because they heard the sound of the wind. And Peter and the other Apostles went down and began to preach the Word of God to them. And what was amazing is that people heard all of them hearing one message, but they all could hear that one message in their own native languages. So God was doing something in their minds so that they heard, their eardrums would vibrate, but they would hear it in their own mother tongues. And Peter preached this incredible message, and in verse 22, he talks about the life and the miracles of Jesus' ministry. He said in verse Acts 2:22, "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you, through him as you yourselves know." So many of those people were eyewitnesses to the miracles Jesus had done. But then Peter in the next verse lays the blame for their death right at their feet. He just lays it at their feet. They had seen Jesus' miracles, they knew who Jesus was. And God and handed Him over to them, the Jewish nation, for judgment. Look at verse 23, "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge…" Stop right there. Let me just tell you, God had worked this whole thing out before the foundation of the world. There's no surprise, He didn't throw this thing together at the last minute. Not at all. He knew exactly what He was going to do with the problem of sin before He said, "Let there be light." And He made this whole plan, that's how He was able to speak through the prophets and let out a little bit of information to mark Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior of the world. But anyway, Peter said, "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of lawless men, wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross." "You did it." He was blaming the nation of Israel, along with the wicked men, the lawless men. Peter then declared very simply the greatest good news in human history. Look at Vverse 24, "But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him." Oh, don't you love those words? Can you just spend the rest of the day meditating on Acts 24? God raised Him from the dead, and freedom from the agony of death, why? Because death couldn't hold Him. It's impossible for death to keep hold of Jesus. And then in verse 32 again, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact." So the church was based on the power of eyewitness testimony, "We have seen Jesus alive." This is a matter of historical record. In space and time, we saw this individual, we touched Him, we ate with Him, we saw Him. Eyewitness. But God knew that was a temporary... A temporary status. Very soon after that, the physical evidence of the resurrection would be gone, maybe later that same day it was gone. And the eyewitnesses themselves would be arrested, and would martyred, and even in John's case, die of old age in exile, and they'd be gone. And future generations would only have one thing, the Bible. Only have the scriptures. That's all we would have. And the eyewitness would write down what they saw, and so we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we have... But it's the same thing, the Scripture. And so only by the prophecies of Scripture can we believe that these things are true. And so Peter there in his Pentecost message, turns to the solid foundation of predictive prophecy, and he turns to Psalm 16. It was the resurrection that had been predicted by King David a thousand years before Jesus was born. Look at verses 25-28, and that's chapter two. David said about Him, "I saw the Lord always before me because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will live in hope because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence." So that's Psalm 16. The Jews had been reading it for 10 centuries. It was well known to them, they didn't understand the meaning. And they hadn't really thought it through. They hadn't put two and two together. Peter puts it all together for them. He said, "Look, David, King David wrote this... " He didn't say, a thousand years ago, but they knew, a long time ago. And he wrote these words speaking of the defeat of death and decay at the grave, a corruption, "You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay." Think about it. Peter makes the point here, David could not have been speaking about himself, because David himself died and was buried and his body decayed. Look at verse 29, "Brothers, I can tell you confidently, [boldly, clearly] that the patriarch David died and was buried and his body is here to this day." It decayed. Remember the death of Lazarus and how the sisters were worried that if you took the stone away too early after four days, there would be a bad odor. You know what decay is all about, the corruption of bacteria, of worms eating the body, the defilement of the body because of sin. The body is sown in corruption and it's sown in dishonor. That's what decay is all about. But this prophecy says, "You will not abandon me to the grave, and you will not let me see decay." Well, Peter says... "He's not writing about himself because he died and decayed." But who's he writing about? Look at what he says verse 30 and 31. "He was a prophet, and he knew that God had promised him on oath that He would place one of his descendants on His throne. Seeing what was ahead [I love those words], he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay." Just ponder that, what other religion? Seeing what was ahead, and we would add writing what he saw. It's predictive prophecy, he was not talking about himself, to declare in words and write it down and have those scriptures handed on from generation to generation of Jews. Have the scribes copy them, all of those Hebrew letters, copy them, the generation after generation, not think it through. But the time had come for the veil to be removed from their minds and from ours, and say, "How could this be possible? How could someone die and see no decay?" And this is this testimony that is given in Scripture. It gives us the certainty that Christianity is true, and that Christ is risen from the dead. No other religion has these predictive prophecies. And these prophecies center on the most important issue in life, how we sinners can be forgiven by almighty God, and how we can live forever, and not die. That's what these predictions have to do. Psalm 22 Well, what other prophecies do you think that Jesus showed to His church? I want to give you two others, Psalm 22 and you can turn and look there if you would, and also one other, Isaiah 53. First Psalm 22, again written by King David, so a thousand years before Jesus was born. Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross. He said, "My God my God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm 22:1. I've often thought to myself that's Jesus' way of saying, "After all this is done, go back and read Psalm 22." But it also was a real sense of abandonment by God, with Him as our substitute. God made Him who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God, that exchange at the cross, and so that sin, our sin was laid on Him, and God in some mysterious way, abandoned Jesus. And He says, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" Now, that... This Psalm breaks into two main sections, and Peter spoke about it, how the prophets spoke of the sufferings of the Christ and the glories that would follow. That's a good two-part outline to Psalm 22. The sufferings of Christ come through the first section, the subsequent or following glories is in the second half of Psalm 22. Jump down with your eyes if you would at verses 14 through 18. This is a description of the physical process of crucifixion. It says there, "I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax, it is melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me, a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing." Well, there are many details in this Psalm that were directly fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, including His garments being gambled over, but especially amazing are these words in verse 14 and verse 16. Verse 14, "I am poured out like water... " Dehydration. "And all of my bones are out of joint." Disfigurement. And then verse 16, "They have pierced my hands and my feet." So again, this was written a thousand years before Christ was crucified, but it was also written about three centuries before the Assyrians invented crucifixion. Nothing like this had happened to anybody in David's time. David's hands and feet were not pierced, his bones were not physically put out of joint, he wasn't dehydrated, he wasn't surrounded by a bunch of enemies, and his garments were not gambled for. Again, he was a prophet, and he spoke filled with the Holy Spirit, seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the crucifixion of the Christ. But then at a certain point, the Psalm just turns and gets really happy. The Psalm just turns and gets really happy. The Psalm just turns and gets really celebratory. Look at Verses 22 through 25, "I will declare your name to my brothers in the congregation, I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise Him. All you descendants of Jacob honor Him. Revere Him all you descendants of Israel, for He has not despised or disdained the sufferings of the afflicted one. He has not hidden His face from him, but has listened to his cry for help. From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly. Before those who fear you, I will fulfill my vows." Suddenly, this suffering individual is celebrating a great deliverance in the great assembly. Look at verses 29 through 31, "All the rich of the earth will feast and worship. All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him. Those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve Him, future generations will be told about the Lord, they will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, for He has done it." This is resurrection, triumph, victory. Now, I was going to take the second half of Psalm 22 and put it in the second category, predictions of our own resurrection, but I kept it here. "All of those who go down to the dust… who cannot keep themselves alive... " Do you know who that is? That's us. And on the basis of Christ's piercing, on the basis of His crushed status, and His death on the cross, we will live forever. This is the celebration of Psalm 22. Isaiah 53 Now, Isaiah 53. Go and look at Isaiah 53, specifically verse 5 and 6. If Psalm 22 describes clearly how Christ died, Isaiah 53 describes very clearly why Christ died. Isaiah 53:5,6. Jesus' death was as a substitute for our sins. The centerpiece of Christianity was, or is substitutionary atonement. Atonement literally means "at-one-ment." We were estranged from God, and through Christ's substitutionary death, through His suffering, we are made at one with God, reconciled with God. And no verse in the entire Bible, including the New Testament teaches substitutionary atonement as clearly as Isaiah 53:5, and also verse six. Look at it, "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Written six-and-a-half to seven centuries before Jesus was born. Why did He die? He died because we all like sheep have gone astray. Because we're sick with sin and we need healing. Because we're rebels. We have all turned away from God and followed our own path, and we deserve to be condemned to hell, we deserve to die eternally for our sins. And God sent His son, His only begotten son, Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, to come into the world, lead a sinless life under the law of Moses, never violated the law, but then die an atoning death, a substitutionary atoning death. Look at Verse five, look at the substitutionary language. "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed." Again, notice in verse five the word pierced. That's a very unique, interesting word. I picture a sharp implement, a sword, a needle, an awl, something like that going through with force, a membrane to the other side. That's what piercing is. And there are actually four prophecies in the Old Testament linked to the death of Jesus in which the word pierce is used. How do you explain it? But here it's not actually talking so much about the mechanism of Christ's death, but the purpose of it and the results. By His wounds we are healed. Now, you may ask healed from what? Let's just keep it in the context first. Healed from sin, healed from turning to our own way and doing what we want. Healed from rebellion. Now you say... I've heard some people say this means also physical healings involved. Oh yes, infinitely so, more than you can imagine, not like the health and wealth prosperity Gospel where you can be healed from a cold. I mean healed from everything, from every pain and suffering you can ever imagine in a resurrection body for eternity in heaven. That's the healing He's going to give you. And all of it blood-bought. Verses 7 through 9 in Isaiah 53 also depict details of Christ's death and burial. "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before it shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and who can speak of his descendants, for he was cut off from the land of the living [that means dead]. For the transgression of my people, he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and was with the rich in his death." You don't need a grave if you're not dead, so he died. But he was buried in a rich man's tomb. I've often thought about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who were hidden secret disciples of Jesus before He was a corpse. Think about this. Did the Romans do guilt by association? Oh, big time. Would they have wanted any of Jesus' secret followers, to arrest them and maybe execute them? Absolutely. Where then did Joseph and Nicodemus suddenly get their courage to ask for the dead body of Jesus and bury Him with lavish spices in Joseph's rich man's tomb. Where did that courage come from? I tell you, it came from the Holy Spirit. Did it come from them reading the prophecies and saying, "You know Joseph, we need to go and fulfill this prophecy right here. We need to be certain that He's buried in a rich man's tomb." Nothing of the kind, they just suddenly, out of a love for Jesus and a sorrow at His death, took up courage and got the body and buried it in a rich man's tomb. But Isaiah predicted it seven centuries before Jesus was born. Look at the end, verse 10 and 11, "Though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days." Oh, He has a future, a history after being buried. Yes, He does. "The will of the Lord will prosper in His hands." Praise God. Verse 11, "After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied, and by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities." He was buried, and after the burial, He will see light. He will see His descendants, and He will rejoice. Resurrection. Well, those are the three greatest predictions of Christ's death and resurrection. V. The Three Greatest Prophecies of Our Resurrection What about our own? Do you see that this day would not be a happy day for us, if Christ is risen, and ascended and glorified, and we all end up in hell? It's because Christ is willing to take His resurrection victory and give it to us. He's the champion. He wins the championship and He gives all the plunder and the booty and the gold medals, and all of that to us. He already has all that, He's going to be seated at the right hand of almighty God. He did it for us, and it was written down and predicted centuries before He was born. Isaiah 25-26 Turn, if you would to Isaiah 25 and 26. We'll start at 25. On Maundy Thursday, I talked about this Isaiah 25:6-8. I'm not going to walk through it carefully, but just read it. Isaiah 25:6-8: "On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that unfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, the Lord has spoken." There is a rich feast coming, a banquet, and what's amazing about this banquet so lavishly described is that it really comes down to one thing: The destruction of death. He's going to destroy the shroud that's wrapped around the corpse, the sheet that unfolds all nations. He's going to swallow up death forever and we are going to celebrate. Now look to the next chapter, Isaiah 26:19. "But your dead will live. Their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning. The earth will give birth to her dead." A clear prediction of not Jesus' resurrection here, but the resurrection of those who went down to the dust, whose bodies did decay, who were buried, but the earth is going to give birth to her dead. You have to put the two together. By Christ's resurrection victory, death has been destroyed and the earth will give birth to her dead. Job 19:25-27 Turn to Job 19:25-27. Job was a godly man who suffered greatly, the loss of all his possessions and his children in a single day, and then the loss of his health, but these immense sufferings could not shake his trust in God. So look at Job 19:25-27. There he wrote, "I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end, he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" So after the worms have eaten me up and after my body has been destroyed, because my redeemer lives, I in my own flesh will see my God. Job 19:25-27. Daniel 12:2-3 The final one is Daniel 12, Verse 2 and 3. Turn to Daniel 12:2,3. Prophet Daniel lived six centuries before Jesus was born. God gave him amazing visions of the end of the world, and the greatest promise of all concerned the bodily resurrection of the dead from the grave into eternal glory. Daniel 12:2-3, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." That's the doctrine of the general resurrection. But then Verse 3, "Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever." Now, that's a glorious resurrection, resurrection glory. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will arise and shine with radiant glory. Look again at Verse 13. Daniel as usual was overwhelmed by the vision, didn't have any idea what he was talking about, was just told to write it down and not worry about it, and then was given this specific prediction concerning himself. Look at Verse 13. "As for you," this is an angel speaking to Daniel, "go your way till the end. You will rest," that means you will die, "and then at the end of the days, you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance." How powerful is that? So, this morning, we've looked at clear predictions of the death and resurrection of Jesus and clear predictions of the general resurrection of the righteous into bodies that will shine and live forever. VI. Applications What application can we take from this? Well, you don't have to turn there, but go back in your minds to the end of Peter's Pentecost sermon. After you get done preaching, it says that the people who heard him were cut to the heart or pierced in their hearts, and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" And Peter and the other apostles replied, "Repent from your sins and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." He didn't say it, but he could have added, "And you will be raised in a glorious resurrection body at the end of the world." So simply, all of you who hear me should believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. If you've never done that before, Welcome. I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad that somebody invited you. Maybe you just decided to come to church because it's Easter. If you did not come in here knowing that your sins were forgiven by faith in Christ, this is the time to cross over from death to life spiritually, and Jesus' resurrection victory will be yours for all eternity. Peter said it plainly, "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." For those of you that are Christians, let me just say this to you. Be healed emotionally. You need emotional therapy. You're like, "Well, how do you know that?" I just know because I need it and I know all of you. It's like, "Yes, another Easter. We need to sing and celebrate and the music needs to be a little bit louder and a little bit faster tempo, and so we'll do that, and the preaching needs to hit a certain pitch, and all that," look, set all that aside. That'll all be gone within, by the afternoon. Do you realize that almost all of Jesus' disciples and apostles emotionally reacted the wrong way to the news of the resurrection? They're all off. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were just straight depressed. And furthermore, some of our women have told us that the tomb is empty and we can't make hide nor hair of it. They don't know what's going on. And Jesus said, "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken to you." And He healed them by the ministry of the word. They didn't know who He was. His identity was hidden from them. But at the time... By the time He got done, their hearts were burning within them based on the scriptures. Think about Peter, Peter sees the actual evidence for the resurrection, and he went away puzzled. Peter. John saw and believed. Peter went away wondering. What about Mary there at the empty tomb and she's weeping and she sees the physical evidence for the resurrection and she's just weeping and crying? And the angel says, "Woman, why are you weeping?" "They've taken my Lord away and they put him somewhere and I don't know where he is and I want to get him and bring him back and bury him. I want to finish his burial." That's what she was about. Focused, focused individual. Alright? "I got to finish his burial." "No, you don't." And then Jesus appears and she thinks he's the gardener. It's one of the great moments in redemptive history, Mary thinking Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, is the gardener. "Sir, if you have taken him, tell me where he is and I'll get him and bring him back." Really? What's the plan, Mary? Then Jesus just spoke out of tenderness, and said, "Mary," and she immediately, with the hearing of her name, fell at His feet and worshipped Him. So I don't know what your emotional state was when you came in here. Maybe it was fine. Maybe you're just filled with joy, but I know this: Our joy is under constant assault by the world, the flesh and the devil. And my job here isn't to heat you up to a fever pitch and send you out like a coach at halftime and you're losing by three touchdowns. That's not my job. My job is to preach the Word and say you have a lasting permanent basis for unchanging joy, and you may be sometime sorrowful, but you can be always rejoicing based on these facts. So emotional therapy. Thirdly, let's put sin to death by the Spirit. We have the power to live in Christ a resurrected life. His resurrection physically gives us proof that we can live by the Spirit a resurrected life spiritually in holiness. Put sin to death this week by the power of the Spirit. The things that depress me the most in my life are my own sins. We don't need to sin ever again. We are set free from sin. Think like this. It was impossible for death to keep its hold on Jesus. It was also impossible for Him to sin. Some day, it's going to be impossible for you to sin. The more you live like that now, the more joyful you will be and the more fruitful you will be. And finally, let's go out this week as messengers. The staff went out on Monday and were handing out invites to Easter. Two-thirds of the people we talked to didn't know it was Easter. I was excited about that. You know why? It means we can do the same thing next week. Don't tell them it's Easter, but you can tell them we'll be celebrating the resurrection. We'll do that for sure. They don't know. We are becoming an increasingly post-Christian, pagan society. People don't know these things. They don't automatically go to church on Easter anymore. So let's go out and tell them this week that Christ has risen and that they in Him can live forever. Close with me in prayer.

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