Podcasts about by his word

Hebrews 4:12-13.1. In His Word God is Personally Present2. Through His Word God Powerfully Acts3. By His Word, God Penetrates the Heart

*Listen to the Show notes and podcast transcript with this multi-language player. Summary: God loves His creation and wishes that none be lost. He is giving us His heart to love with so that His provision can be made manifest in everything. By His Word and love we walk in the very footsteps of Christ to finish what He is creating in this new age. Show Notes: God loves His creation and wants none to perish. God is giving us a new heart. It's today that He is giving us a new heart. We are saved by His provision of love for us, and nothing from ourselves. It's this love from the Father that we walk in to finish what He is creating in this new age. Quotes: Mercy triumphs over judgment. That's His heart. God came to seek and to save that which was lost. We are going to walk righteous in His law; have the ability to walk righteous in His law because of what He's going to do in our hearts. He's giving us a new heart. He's taking the heart of stone out. He's giving a heart of flesh. We're talking about today. It's a provision that we can receive just by opening our hearts and saying, yes, Lord, come in. Am I to keep myself by doing anything? No. I'm going to be kept by the provision that He has provided. By His love... We're living upon every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. References: James 2:13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” 1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; Jeremiah 31:31-4 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and

Genesis 1 September 15th, 2024 God's word overcomes and orders the chaos and emptiness of the primordial waters. By His Word, God Spirit forms the chaos and fills the emptiness for human flourishing. In the same way, God's Spirit and Word forms us and fill us for our flourishing in the Word made flesh.

August 26, 2024 Today's Reading: Isaiah 29:11-19Daily Lectionary: 1 Kings 8:22-30, 46-63; 2 Corinthians 4:1-18In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. (Isaiah 29:18)In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. If you love books, I can think of no better time to be living than now. Books are everywhere: in print, on-demand, digital books you can read on your phone, and books you can listen to in your car or while you work out. The Christian Bible remains the most widely published and read book in the world today; it is easily accessible through every form of media presently available – you can even listen to the Bible through your wristwatch!The Bible is unlike any other book ever written; it is the very Word from God– words breathed out by God through human authors. It is alive, and it is active! It exposes and it enlightens. It kills, and it makes alive. Yet, someone can read the Scriptures and not see it as if they were blind. One can listen to God's Word and not hear it as if they were deaf. The Spirit of God must open the ears of the spiritually deaf to hear and believe! “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The Spirit of God must enlighten the spiritually blind so that with their heart they see and believe in the Gospel.  This is the Lord's doing; this is the God's work. By His Word and Spirit, He lays bare our hearts and exposes the darkness within. He reveals our thoughts and intentions of the heart so that nothing is hidden from His sight. He works in us repentance that confesses what God has exposed to be true: I am a sinner; and then, the miracles of miracles, God works faith in us to believe His Gospel Word. “...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9-10).  “Out of our gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see.” This is the grace of God at work in us, giving us the eyes of faith to see and ears to believe in His outrageous words of promise– words that do and give what they say. God's Word is unlike any other word put down in a book, for God's Word is living and giving – giving faith, forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation! So, take up and read! Hear and believe! These Words of God are for you. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.“Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that, by patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.” (LSB: Prayers -148)-Rev. Darrin Sheek, pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church Anaheim, CA.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.The new Guiding Word series takes you through all the books of the Bible in six volumes. Starting with the Books of Moses—Genesis through Deuteronomy—you will explore every passage of every chapter of each book with the help of maps, diagrams, links between the testaments, and clarification points.

Read the update on Everett. Would you like to know God's providential leading for your life? Welcome to the Daily Devo. I am Vince Miller. This week, we are in 1 Samuel 9. I've titled this chapter "Guided By God." Today, we pick up at the point of the story where Saul and Samuel have now completed their meal and are making their way back to town. Saul still does not quite understand what is going on, but he is treated as the guest of honor, and now they head back to the home of Samuel. Our text picks up in 1 Samuel 9:25-27, which reads: And when they came down from the high place into the city, a bed was spread for Saul on the roof, and he lay down to sleep. Then at the break of dawn Samuel called to Saul on the roof, “Up, that I may send you on your way.” So Saul arose, and both he and Samuel went out into the street. As they were going down to the outskirts of the city, Samuel said to Saul, “Tell the servant to pass on before us, and when he has passed on, stop here yourself for a while, that I may make known to you the word of God.” — 1 Samuel 9:25-27 Everything that has happened in Chapter 9 is chilling. God's providence is all over this. After eating his last bites of bread and sleeping in the hills of Ephraim on the ground for three days, Saul concludes with being given the finest meal and bed and then having an early morning discussion with the last and greatest prophet in the time of the Judges. As the servant goes ahead of them, Samuel discloses to Saul his future—that God's Word is that he (Saul) will be the first King of Israel. I assume that Saul had completely forgotten about the lost donkeys by now. I think we far underestimate the power and providence of God's Word. God's Word has a timeless effect. We tend to only think about His Word as words on a page. But the Words of God have far more consequence. Samuel, as a steward of God's Word, understood this. As the Word of the Lord had come to Samuel for the first time many years earlier at Shiloh (1 Sam. 3:7), Samuel was about to make the Word of God known to Saul for the first time. God's Word directs all of life. By His Word, God created life. By His Word, nations rise and fall. By His Word, kings come and go. His Word is providential. Yet, to experience God's providential leading, we must hear and obey His Word. But here's the best part: God made it easy for us all to hear his providential leading. He made His Word flesh in Jesus. Jesus was the living Word of God who walked with us (John 1:14). During Jesus's life, he spoke about the Word God gave him. He lived obediently to God's Word. He died and rose again as God's Word predicted. And he did this so you could hear and obey the Word of God. The moment that Saul and Samuel share in this text about God's Word, you can experience it today. You can know God's providential leading for your life. All you need to do is pick up God's Word, read it daily, and do it as prescribed, and you will know God's amazing providential leading. #DivineGuidance #GodsWord #ProvidenceInAction Ask This: How does Saul's journey in 1 Samuel 9 demonstrate the importance of being open to unexpected encounters and God's providential leading in our own lives? In what ways can we cultivate a deeper sensitivity to God's Word today, ensuring that we not only hear but also faithfully obey His guidance in our decisions and daily life? Do This: Hear and listen to God's Word and discover his providential leading. Pray This: Father, help me to trust in Your providential guidance and to faithfully follow Your Word in every aspect of my life. May I be open to unexpected encounters that reveal Your purposes and strengthen my faith in Your perfect plan. Amen. Play This: I Come To The Garden Alone.

July 6, 2024 Today's Reading: Introit for Pentecost 7 - Psalm 132:13-16; antiphon: Psalm 34:8Daily Lectionary: Joshua 24:1-31; Judges 1:1-36; Acts 13:1-12For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread. (Psalm 132:13-15) In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. The Scriptures talk about several times where the people of God built a place for God to live with His people. In Isaiah, we read, “Heaven is My throne, And earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest?" (Isaiah 66:1, NKJV). Although God doesn't live in houses built by humans (Acts 7:48), He comes to live among His people.God dwelt with His people in the Old Testament in many and various places. In the New Testament, we hear how the Holy of Holies has become flesh for us. The Holy Gospel tells us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, NKJV).Today, we don't have the Old Testament temple or even Jesus in the flesh living among us, but this doesn't mean He is not present. This Sunday's Introit teaches that God promises to live with His people even today. That's why we go to church; that's where God dwells among us. At the church I serve, we have a quote from Genesis right outside of the entrance to the nave and sanctuary. The quote is from Genesis 28:17, which says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” When you enter into the Divine Service at your church, you are entering into that place where heaven meets earth. By His Word, He is present at the altar, font, and pulpit as He speaks to you His forgiveness, washes you of your sins, and feeds you His wonderful provision of His Body and Blood. Angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven are with you as you gather around the feast of the Lamb in His kingdom that Has no end. Just as the Lord chose Zion for His dwelling place, your church is the resting place of the Almighty present before you to bless and keep you all the days of your life. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.Blessed Savior, Jesus Christ, You have given Yourself to us in this holy Sacrament. Keep us in Your faith and favor that we may live in You even as You live in us. May Your body and blood preserve us in the true faith to life everlasting. Hear us for the same of Your name. Amen. (Thanksgiving after receiving the Sacrament, LSB 308)-Rev. Kent Schaaf is pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Little Rock, AR.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, Ky.Your favorite study Bible is now available in a simple, intuitive app on your device! Distinctively Lutheran notes on the full ESV text, helpful articles, and custom user settings offer an engaging experience in God's Word anywhere you go. Download The Lutheran Study Bible App.

"We ourselves were formed by His word. I know some people like to say He put His hand in the dirt and formed us up, but I don't see that. He SPOKE man into existence! He fearfully and wonderfully made us and He did it BY HIS WORD." --Pastor Omar Ellison Let's open our Bibles to Hebrews 11:3. ******* Find more information on our website: https://www.saltandlightcovenant.com/

As He promised, the Lord our God has raised up “a prophet” like Moses, namely Jesus, our brother in the flesh. “To him you shall listen,” because the Word of the Lord is “in his mouth” (Deut. 18:15–18). Indeed, He is more than a prophet and more than a scribe of the Scriptures; He is the incarnate Word, and He speaks “a new teaching with authority” (Mark 1:22, 27). He enters “the synagogue” of His Church and provides true Sabbath rest, using His authority to silence and cast out “even the unclean spirits” (Mark 1:21–27). By His Word of the cross, He removes the accusations of the Law and of the devil, and He cleanses our consciences before God the Father, “from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” Hence, we are now set free from bondage and commended to God by the one Lord, Jesus Christ, “through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:6). Therefore, use your freedom to care for your brothers and sisters, neither causing them to stumble nor wounding their consciences (1 Cor. 8:9–12), but cleansing and strengthening them with the Gospel. ----- Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person! Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​ Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A #LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

We are continuing in our series called “Who do you think you are?” You don't have to look long or far to realize that our world is having an identity crisis. Everywhere we look, people are on a constant search to figure out who they are, to define themselves, to make themselves significant or important. The good news for us is that the Bible has lots to say about who we are. It communicates that those of us who are in Christ have a brand new identity. In the first 8 weeks of this series, we've looked at different realities that have become true about those believe in Christ. Identity defining realities. In Christ, we are justified, redeemed, reconciled, adopted, new creations, members of His body, and saints. We are completely secure in Christ. This is who we are. In the last couple episodes we made a slight shift. Even though we are continuing with this same theme of our identity, instead of looking at realities that are already true of us, we are now looking at realities that ought to be true of us if we understand what Christ has done for us. Last week, we saw that in light of who Jesus is and what He has done for us, we ought to be disciples. By His Word and by His Spirit, we want to follow Him. Today, in light of those same realities, we are going to see that not only should we be disciples, we ought to be servants! Go check out our socials for the 50th episode giveaway! **Bible study starts at 8:50**

Summary: Walking in the invisible realm of Spirit today is being made visible by the open door of the Word of God. This avenue is a portal into the realm of Spirit where we can truly know what we are doing and how it's being accomplished. Mature men and women have a focused faith in the Word and are seeing the fulfillment of the scripture; “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Show Notes: As men and women mature in this day, they will draw from what they have learned from the past, and reach into what God is saying today. Although the Spirit realm is invisible, it is not to be invisible to us. God has given us His Word to be the open door to learn how to move and understand the realm of Spirit. By His Word it become visible to us. Just like Joshua, we must eat, meditate, and live in the Words that we have received so that God will open up to us these things of Spirit. It's a focused faith in His Word. It's a dedication to be in that Word. When we go through our “dry” times in the Word, we humble our minds and hearts and return to His Word. As we dwell in the Word, the Holy Spirit opens up to us the mysteries of the Spirit realm. Quotes: A mature man will draw from the old and yet reaches into the new. He draws from the old, he draws from the Word that he heard, and the Word that he's entering into now. The Bible,the Word of God, that has been spoken by many men and women, are, for a better word, a portal, into the fulfillment of walking and becoming in this age of Spirit. Joshua, he just meditated on the Word. And God opened up realms to him, that he would have never figured out, he would have never gotten. Well, that's no different for us today. I don't have to go find some new Word to hear to tickle my ears. I need to reach in to the Words that have been spoken to me in faith, listening for the Holy Spirit to open something up. The Word is such a key to the Holy Spirit moving and ministering and teaching us how to move.

God's Word has provided everything that is needed for a man or woman to come to the “Saving Faith” that leads unto Salvation's Promise and the “new birth” miracle it holds within it, but only a few will truly grasp and surrender to its mandate unto Eternal Life – because the enemy of God has been working diligently from the beginning of time to rob, kill, and destroy and to keep as many as he can from entering into the Abundant Life of Salvation's assurance that Lord Jesus came to give.By His Word, Jesus has clearly revealed to us that the Gate to that Eternal Life provision is narrow and only a few find it – while the Gate to death and destruction is wide and many are those who enter by it (Mt. 7:13-14).Lucifer has paved that wide way with many deceptions that include a myriad of false religions, philosophies of men, dead works, and a host of other man-orchestrated and prideful endeavors. And multitudes are rushing through that wide Gate like sheep being led to the slaughter.But blessed is the one who enters through the narrow Gate which is Jesus Christ the Savior…for He alone is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life and no one comes to the Father by through Him.Which Gate have you entered? It is time that you know.Support the showVisit our website: https://agapelightministries.com/

If you missed Part 1, please check that out first HERE!Part II: The Practice of Love by the Church as a “Community of Love” (19 - 39)Now that the exploration of the concept of love is finished, Pope Benedict turns his attention to the concrete. We have answered what love is, now we see how love is lived. The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love (19)Part II begins by speaking on the Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love. Concretely there is nothing more *real* than the Blessed Trinity. The Godhead is a unity of three Divine Persons who are in a community of life and love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father eternally begets and loves the Son, the perfect self-image of the Father, who eternally reflects that perfect love back to the Father. The love outpoured eternally between Father and Son is the Person of the Holy Spirit, proceeding from each eternally. If nothing I said makes any sense, that is okay! Trinitarian theology is remarkably complicated and nuanced because it is the mystery of God, as He is. Mystery though it is, God is the source of all, as Trinity. And so, how can we recognize the Trinity? The Pope quotes St. Augustine in saying: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity (19).”God created all things, seen and unseen, in a plan of sheer loving goodness. When God sent His Son to assume our humanity, He invited us, in love, to share in His divinity. We can say that the mystery of the Church is the drawing of men into the mystery of God. The Father “wishes to make humanity a single family in his Son (19).” He does this through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who the Pope speaks of as “the energy which transforms the heart of the ecclesial community, so that it becomes a witness before the world to the love of the Father (19).” Gathering all men to Himself as the Church, the Father “seeks the integral good of man (19).” This seeking of our good, the Pope says, is an expression of love in the entire activity of the Church. By His Word and the Sacraments, the Church shares the reality of the Good News of Jesus Christ with the world. What greater love can we share with our fellow man than the work of evangelization?Charity as a responsibility of the Church (20 - 25)This outward act of love of evangelization does not end with the spiritual but also includes the corporal. Charity is a responsibility of the whole Church, clergy, religious, and laity. From the beginning, Jesus Christ established the Church upon four pillars, outlined by Acts 2:42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” These four pillars give structure to the Church in every age and are reflected in the Catechism of the Council of Trent and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The apostolic teaching is doctrine. Fellowship, also translated as communal life, is the moral life in Christ. The breaking of the bread is the early term for the Eucharist and for the Sacraments generally. And prayer is Christian prayer, perfectly expressed in the Our Father which our Lord gave us.Pope Benedict gives attention in paragraph 20 of Deus Caritas Est to this idea of fellowship, communion, or communal life. The Greek word in Acts is koinonia. Koinonia “consists in the fact that believers hold all things in common and that among them, there is no longer any distinction between rich and poor (20).” This sort of radical communal life is part and parcel of early Christianity. But as the Pope remarks:“As the Church grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact be preserved. But its essential core remained: within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life (20).”When it became necessary, the Church instituted the clerical office of the Diaconate, the first level of participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ and the lowest level of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. A diakonos was historically a servant of the king. And so, the Deacon, is a servant of Christ the King and his vicar in a particular diocese, the bishop. They were to provide for the spiritual and corporal needs of the people. As Pope Benedict puts it:“... the social which they were meant to provide was absolutely concrete, yet at the same time it was also a spiritual service; theirs was a truly spiritual office which carried out an essential responsibility of the Church, namely a well-ordered love of neighbour (21).”This system of charity must have been a formidable force in the ancient world because the Roman leader Julian the Apostate, who rejected Christianity and tried to instantiate Neoplatonic Hellenism, told his pagan priests that they needed to imitate and outdo the Church's charity. Of course, they failed because imitation can never capture what is authentically of God.Beyond the diaconate, the proclamation of the Good News, and the liturgy were indispensable to the Church. As the Pope puts it:“The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable (25).”Though the Church is now worldwide and the radical form of community of the early Church is less possible, the Church is nonetheless responsible for Her Members. The needs of the People of God are not only spiritual. Like any family, the Church is obliged to care for the necessities of those in the Church, in a particular way. As Benedict says:“The Church is God's family in the world. In this family no one ought to go without the necessities of life… Without in any way detracting from this commandment of universal love, the Church also has a specific responsibility: within the ecclesial family no member should suffer through being in need (25).”Justice and Charity (26 - 29)After concluding the section on the responsibility of charity in the Church, the Pope moves on to a fairly expansive conversation of justice and charity. Rooted deeply in Catholic social teaching, expounded since Pope Leo XIII especially, Pope Benedict begins by addressing the elephant in the room: Karl Marx. Since the nineteenth century, Marxists have critiqued the Church saying that “the poor… do not need charity but justice (26).” Benedict offers a steel-man explanation of the Marxist critique, saying:“Works of charity—almsgiving—are in effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for justice and a means of soothing their consciences, while preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their rights. Instead of contributing through individual works of charity to maintaining the status quo, we need to build a just social order in which all receive their share of the world's goods and no longer have to depend on charity (26).”He admits that there is some merit to the argument, but there is much that is mistaken. Historically, capital became concentrated in the hands of a powerful few and there has been conflict between employer and laborer. But rather than succumbing the Hegelian notion which Marx put forward of class warfare and revolution, the Pope offers that Catholic social teaching is applicable beyond the confines of the Church, saying:“Marxism had seen world revolution and its preliminaries as the panacea for the social problem: revolution and the subsequent collectivization of the means of production, so it was claimed, would immediately change things for the better. This illusion has vanished. In today's complex situation, not least because of the growth of a globalized economy, the Church's social doctrine has become a set of fundamental guidelines offering approaches that are valid even beyond the confines of the Church: in the face of ongoing development these guidelines need to be addressed in the context of dialogue with all those seriously concerned for humanity and for the world in which we live (27).”Commitment to Justice and Ministry of CharityThe Church, and the world, has a necessary commitment to justice and the ministry of charity. There is no dichotomy between justice and charity. Both are necessary. First, “the just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics (28),” says the Pope. Quoting St. Augustine, he says: “a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves… (28).”Venturing into the subject of freedom of religion in a State, Pope Benedict says that,“The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated (28).”In other words: the State cannot coerce the Church. Rather the Church is independent of the State but interrelated with the State. What faithful Catholic can switch off their Catholicism when they engage in matters of politics and the State? They cannot. Only unfaithful Catholics attempt this, which results in deadly scandal and sin. Why is this? It is because God is the Lawgiver; He alone created all that is and He alone is the arbiter of morality.Justice is the aim of politics, properly understood and it is the criteria for good politics. Politics is not merely about rules governing public life: “its origin and its goal,” say the Pope, “are found in justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics (28).”If justice is the aim and internal criterion of politics, as Benedict says, then why do Catholics need anything beyond reason? Why is faith necessary for true justice? Benedict explains:“Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God—an encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly… Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just (28).”If Faith is necessary, then is the Pope calling on the Church to engage directly in matters of State? Not quite. A just social and civil order is ordered towards each person receiving his or her due, which is an essential task in every generation. But it is a political task and therefore is a human responsibility rather than an ecclesial responsibility. The Church can help to purify our powers of reason and provide ethical formation. Benedict also says clearly, “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice (28).”The clergy are called to sanctify the laity and the laity are sent out into the world to sanctify the temporal order. Love is NecessaryEven in the best, most just societies, love will always be necessary. Care and concern for the other will always happen best on the local level. This is the principle of subsidiarity which holds that the best decisions are made on the lowest possible level and the highest level necessary. In fact, injustices stem from a higher level claiming authority over something which in fact belongs naturally to someone personally closer to the situation. Against totalitarianism of this kind, Pope Benedict writes beautifully of the bigger, complicated picture:“We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human (28).”As I mentioned earlier, the clergy are called to sanctify the laity and the laity are sent out into the world to sanctify the temporal order. In this way, the Pope says:“The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity… The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility (29).” The Church, of course, still sponsors organizations which practice charity. But this is not merely an activity of justice because it is focused on the admixture of the love of God, which is a universal human need. As Benedict says,“The Church's charitable organizations, on the other hand, constitute an opus proprium, a task agreeable to her, in which she does not cooperate collaterally, but acts as a subject with direct responsibility, doing what corresponds to her nature. The Church can never be exempted from practicing charity as an organized activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will always need, love (29).”The multiple structures of charitable service in the social context of the present day (30)Because there is never going to be a situation where individual Christians are unneeded in charitable service, Pope Benedict recognizes the social context of the present day. Long since gone is the time of Christendom when Christian kingdoms ruled. Now, there are many different types of governments, organizations, nonprofits, and social structures. Even our way of communicating is different now. As the Pope says, “Mass communication has narrowed the distance between peoples and cultures (30).” Despite the narrowing of the distance, there is still work to be done in making sure that no one is forgotten. These groups are diverse, but they all are marked with the love of God. The Pope remarks that, “Numerous organizations have arisen that are a cooperation of State and Church, but these agencies still have a Christian quality (30).” This Christian quality is not a vague echo of the love of Jesus Christ. Rather, it is a direct result of Church agencies cooperating with State agencies. Also, due to the growing amount of leisure time afforded to modern man, especially among the youth, the Pope says, “our time has also seen a growth and spread of different kinds of volunteer work, which assume responsibility for providing a variety of services (30).” What is clear is that there are a myriad of ways to get involved; however, love compels us to leave the sidelines and get in the game.In non-Catholic Churches and Ecclesial Communities, there has also been a new rising of charitable activity, with new life and energy. The Catholic Church must have a readiness, Pope Benedict says, to:“cooperate with the charitable agencies of these Churches and Communities, since we all have the same fundamental motivation and look towards the same goal: a true humanism, which acknowledges that man is made in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way consonant with that dignity (30).”Ideally, all Christians and all people of good will would work with a united voice to inculcate, as Pope Benedict says, quoting St. John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, “respect for the rights and needs of everyone, especially the poor, the lowly and the defenseless (30).”Thank you for reading Will Wright Catholic. This post is public so feel free to share it.The distinctiveness of the Church's charitable activity (31)After speaking on the interplay of Church and State cooperation, Pope Benedict then turns his attention to the distinctiveness of the Church's charitable activity. The Pontiff explains that there are a few essential elements of Christian and ecclesial charity.First, there must be a simple response to immediate needs and specific situations. Second, and related to the first, resources and personnel needed for the work must be provided. Though Pope Benedict does not mention subsidiarity here by name, I think it is worth mentioning. Subsidiarity is the principle of Catholic social teaching which says that the best decision is made at the highest level necessary and the lowest level possible. Why leave a decision best left to the local Parish to the Vatican, for example? The local communities all need to strive to care for those in their immediate vicinity.The third essential element of Christian and ecclesial charity is that individuals who care for those in need must be professionally competent and properly trained. As the Pope explains:“We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern. Those who work for the Church's charitable organizations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity… Consequently, in addition to their necessary professional training, these charity workers need a “formation of the heart”: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others. As a result, love of neighbor will no longer be for them a commandment imposed, so to speak, from without, but a consequence deriving from their faith, a faith which becomes active through love (cf. Gal 5:6) (31).”The fourth essential element is that Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. Charitable activity is not a useful means to a longer end goal. It is not done to change the world ideologically, nor is at “at the service of worldly strategems,” says Pope Benedict, “but is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs (31).” As a Church of Christ rather than a ‘church of causes,' we must follow the “program of Jesus” which is a “a heart which sees (31).” The Pope continues:“This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly. Obviously when charitable activity is carried out by the Church as a communitarian initiative, the spontaneity of individuals must be combined with planning, foresight and cooperation with other similar institutions (31).”Fifth and finally, charity cannot be used as a means of engaging in proselytism. Pope Benedict clearly states:“Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends. But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole man. Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God… A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak (31).”Having given these five essential elements of Christian charity, who is responsible for the Church's charitable activity?Those responsible for the Church's charitable activity (32 - 39)Charity is such a deep action of the Church that it is part of Her identity. So, those responsible for charitable activity are the whole Church: bishops, priests, deacons, lay, and religious. In regard to bishops, Pope Benedict says the following:“In the rite of episcopal ordination, prior to the act of consecration itself, the candidate must respond to several questions which express the essential elements of his office and recall the duties of his future ministry. He promises expressly to be, in the Lord's name, welcoming and merciful to the poor and to all those in need of consolation and assistance. The Code of Canon Law, in the canons on the ministry of the Bishop, does not expressly mention charity as a specific sector of episcopal activity, but speaks in general terms of the Bishop's responsibility for coordinating the different works of the apostolate with due regard for their proper character (32).”He goes on to say once again that no one is off the hook from doing charitable work. Okay, he does not put it quite that way. He says this:“With regard to the personnel who carry out the Church's charitable activity on the practical level, the essential has already been said: they must not be inspired by ideologies aimed at improving the world, but should rather be guided by the faith which works through love… Consequently, more than anything, they must be persons moved by Christ's love, persons whose hearts Christ has conquered with his love, awakening within them a love of neighbor (33).”Of course it is always the love of Christ which marks our meritorious work. Charity inflames us to do good, in and through Christ, apart from Whom we can do nothing of true merit. Christ came to redeem the whole world and God loves each man and woman. Interior openness to Christ and His love is what makes the service of Christ's disciples so distinctive. St. Paul's hymn to charity in 1 Cor. 13 teaches us that service is more than activity alone: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Cor. 13:3).” Pope Benedict refers to this hymn as the “Magna Carta of all ecclesial service (34)” and the summary of all the reflections on love which he offers in Deus Caritas Est.He goes on to say:“Practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift (34).”When we serve in this self-giving way, we learn humility and grow in humility. As Pope Benedict beautifully reminds us:“We recognize that we are not acting on the basis of any superiority or greater personal efficiency, but because the Lord has graciously enabled us to do so… We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength. To do all we can with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: ‘The love of Christ urges us on' (2 Cor 5:14) (35).”Finding the BalanceUrged on by the love of Christ, it is easy to lose balance. “When we consider the immensity of others' needs, we can, on the one hand,” Pope Benedict says, “be driven towards an ideology that would aim at doing what God's governance of the world apparently cannot: fully resolving every problem. Or we can be tempted to give in to inertia, since it would seem that in any event nothing can be accomplished (36).”So, how can we overcome these temptations? How can we find balance and keep the seesaw from tipping completely one way or the other? Pope Benedict continues:“At such times, a living relationship with Christ is decisive if we are to keep on the right path, without falling into an arrogant contempt for man, something not only unconstructive but actually destructive, or surrendering to a resignation which would prevent us from being guided by love in the service of others. Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone (36).”Personal Relationship with GodPrayer is vital if we are to live in and with God. Prayer is our life blood. Our entire life can become a prayer if continually drawn deeply from the well of Christ. With the scourge of secularism prowling and the misguided extreme arm of activism, Christians are engaged in charitable work. Prayer is the antidote to this worldly spirit. A personal relationship with our loving Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit is utterly necessary. Pope Benedict puts it this way:“Clearly, the Christian who prays does not claim to be able to change God's plans or correct what he has foreseen. Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the Spirit to him and his work (37).”The Problem of EvilThis personal relationship with God is all the more necessary for us in the midst of the problem of evil. We can often experience bewilderment and fail to understand the world around us. In these moments, the Pope says:“Christians continue to believe in the ‘goodness and loving kindness of God' (Tit 3:4). Immersed like everyone else in the dramatic complexity of historical events, they remain unshakably certain that God is our Father and loves us, even when his silence remains incomprehensible (38).”Faith, Hope, and CharityIn the midst of darkness, we trust in the love of God which surpasses all understanding. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, God's own life, have been instilled in our soul through the gift of Baptism. These theological virtues go together. Pope Benedict teaches us:“Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sake and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory (39).”We cannot see the full picture; only God does. And He has revealed so much to us. More than revelation, He has given us Himself. He shares in our humanity that we might share in His divinity. In Baptism, we are given the light and made to be the light to the world, in and through Christ. Pope Benedict sums up his first encyclical this way:“Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practice it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to extend with the present Encyclical (39).”Conclusion (40 - 42)As was the practice with his predecessor, Pope Benedict dedicates the conclusion of his document to the Mother of God, Mary most holy. Truly, each of the saints are a beautiful witness to the charity of God in every way imaginable. However, there is a preeminence to the holy charity of our Blessed Mother, the first disciple of her Holy Son, Jesus Christ.I highly recommend reading the entire Conclusion (and the whole document, really) in full. But I would like to draw what resonated most with me. I simply love the way Pope Benedict speaks about our Blessed Mother. He says:“Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, not herself. She is lowly: her only desire is to be the handmaid of the Lord (cf. Lk 1:38, 48) She knows that she will only contribute to the salvation of the world if, rather than carrying out her own projects, she places herself completely at the disposal of God's initiatives (41).” How often do you and I carry out our own projects, without putting ourselves at the disposal of God's initiatives. Mary, form us, teach us! The Pope goes on:“Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27); later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) (41).”Mary was there through it all. By her “yes” the Word of God took flesh, provided by her own body. Even despite her prominence and grandeur, the humility of the Theotokos is led by love. She loves with the love of God flowing through her as a perfect vessel and she loves with a human, motherly love. The Pope goes on:“Mary, Virgin and Mother, shows us what love is and whence it draws its origin and its constantly renewed power. To her we entrust the Church and her mission in the service of love (42).”Here Pope Benedict ends with a prayer to the Theotokos, which I would like to end today's article with as well. Please join me in praying:“Holy Mary, Mother of God, you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son – the Son of God. You abandoned yourself completely to God's call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, so that we too can become capable of true love and be fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world (42).”Amen. Get full access to Will Wright Catholic Podcast at www.willwrightcatholic.com/subscribe

The Lord Jesus enters Jerusalem “humble, and mounted on a donkey,” riding on “a beast of burden” (Matt. 21:5), as He Himself bears the sins of the world in His body. Now He comes by the ministry of the Gospel to save us from sin, death, the devil and hell. Therefore, we sing, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matt. 21:9). For we are called “to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob,” His Holy Church, “that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Is. 2:3). By His Word, we “walk in the light of the LORD” (Is. 2:5). That is to live in love, which “does no wrong to a neighbor” (Rom. 13:10). We “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,” for “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11, 12). Hence, the entire Christian life is a time to wake and watch, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt. 24:42).Support the show-----Trinity Lutheran Church, School and Child Care have been "Making Known the Love of Christ" in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and throughout the world since 1853 as a congregation gathering around God's Word and Sacraments to receive forgiveness and life everlasting. Trinity is located in downtown Sheboygan, only one block from the Mead Public Library and the Weill Center for the Performing Arts. We invite you to visit us in person!Trinity Lutheran Sheboygan is a proud member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit their website: https://www.lcms.org/​​​​Music for this production was obtained through a licensing agreement with One License, LLC. The copyright permission to reprint, podcast, and record hymns and songs is acquired through ID Number: 730195-A#LCMS #Lutheran #DivineService

The blessings of home and family are a gift from God. By His Word he heals homes and families broken by sin, and He calls us to share that Word in our homes, whether it’s “Leave It To Beaver” homes, blended families, empty nests, or nursing homes. He gives Fathers a special responsibility and special influence in the home, which should encourage all fathers to be even more active spiritual leaders for their families, knowing that this work really does make a big difference.

THIS WEEK'S video coming to you in THREE PARTS!!!! It's so good, SO BIG, and wow… SO IMPORTANT! Your Relationship with YOU! The enemy tried to take us OUUUTTT for this one. But here we are, alive and well, one black eye and a whoolleeee lot of truth to bring you what we've got! Now, MORE THAN EVER, the world, the enemy, the culture is trying to confuse, contradict and create who we are based on lies and made up words. We have to know who we are in Christ and because of Christ to know who we are in this world. Because though we are in this world, we are not of this world. And to live as Christ, we will be left out, we will not fit in, we will not look like the world around us. Your relationship with yourself cannot come from the world or anything of it. Your relationship with you comes from our relationship with Jesus. SHOW NOTES: 1:04 When you lose your life, you actually gain it (SCRIPTURE) 1:13 When we crucify ourselves, that is actually where we find life 1:20 Recap from last week — Our Relationship with Jesus 4:44 By His Word, the Heavens and Earth was made and the Earth is the Lord's and everything that is in Him and the life and breath of every living creature in His Hands (SCRIPTURE) 6:10 Jeremiah 29:11, 1 Peter 2:9, Ephesians 3:10, Psalm 34:7, 2 Peter 1:3, Philippians 4:19 6:45 Colossians 1:21-22 7:40 Galatians 2:20 7:50 God's Word is true and powerful, how we flesh that out every day is in worship. 8:05 Are we choosing to obey God or follow our flesh in every situation? (Joshua 24:15) 8:10 Galatians 2:20 — I don't have to fall to that temptation because it's not me anymore, its Jesus in me. I can, by Holy Spirit, be strengthened against this sin. 8:37 It's not that it's not hard, it is still a fight against our flesh, but you are not alone. God is fighting for you. 9:07 It is Christ living through us and when we know Jesus in us, we truly know ourselves. 9:33 Conquering the hard in this world leads to joy in Christ 10:19 We are either surrendering to Jesus or surrendering to your flesh. 10:50 We either hate ourselves, loving ourselves in Christ, or worshipping ourselves. 11:15 We find our humility in Christ — we came to serve and we are valuable because of the Image in which we were created in God. 12:00 We have two options, there are two ways we experience hardships — to avoid a surrendered life to God in fear or embrace difficulties fully surrendered to Jesus. 13:20 The decision is clear and easy when we know who we are in Christ 16:12 2 Peter 1:3-11 26:50 1 Peter 1:3-5 Shielded by God's Power 29:00 Fruit of the Spirit Galatians 5:22-23 29:07 1 John 2:9-11 29:28 Mark 12:28-31 29:56 1 Samuel 18:3 33:12 Who is your authority? 33:28 Nothing takes you out of God's Hand John 10:28 33:33 You can walk out of God's Will, that is your choice, but His Hand never leaves you. 35:00 Children, obey your parents Ephesians 6:1 35:05 Give to Caesar what is his Mark 12:17 Discipleship model — earthly authority We cannot let our flesh rule us. We were made for relationship, not isolation. 36:27 What boundaries do you have in place to protect yourself from yourself? 37:10 “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” Proverbs 6:27 38:28 1 Corinthians 10:12 41:00 Psalm 66:18-20 41:25 Proverbs 15:3

Today's Reading: Introit for Septuagesima (Psalm 18:1-2a, 27, 32, 49; antiphon: vs.5-6a)Daily Lectionary: Job 8:1-22; John 4:27-45The cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD. (From the Introit for Septuagesima)In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. Septuagesima. About 70 days until Easter. We can't stay on the mountain of Transfiguration forever. Thanks be to God for good days, but the bad ones tend to follow. The snares of death confronted me. That's what the passion of our Lord is for. He rescues us from the evils that confront us, not by dangling a way of escape in front of us but by running ahead of us into every unsafe place we're afraid of. The gesima Sundays count down to Easter, but that means they also introduce Lent. These aren't Sundays meant simply to make you sad. They're to speak to every awful thing you pray never happens and every awful thing you pray will stop right now. The passion of our Lord gives us something to say to the not-so-great days. Jesus saved us from them. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and from heaven He heard my voice, but He didn't stay there. He descended to save. Our fortresses aren't the safe places that come and go or the heaven we hope for, but the Lord who goes into the unsafe places to die and rise to save. That's the thing about real comfort. It isn't a lack of bad things, but a presence of good things. A lack of bad things is just empty. The presence of a good so strong it overwhelms the rest and grants relief is true comfort. So Jesus descends from the heavens to save. Everything you're afraid of comes from sin, death, and the devil. Jesus conquered those. We don't have to run anymore. In your Baptism He has already united you with the victory over them. By His Word, He gives you strength to find comfort in the face of them.. He has equipped us with His strength, and even forgives us our sins where we fall short of using that strength. The gesima Sundays give us words of praise to sing to the God who won't stay on the mountain, because we can't stay there, either. Your fortress goes ahead of you and with you, so that wherever you are, your prayers will be answered. Sin, death, and the power of the devil lay defeated on the side. God has saved His humbled people. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.Gone the past, unknown the future--Grace supplies my daily breath; Strong in Christ through death's dark valley, Firm and faithful unto death. ("All for Christ, I have Forsaken" LSB 753, st.3)-Rev. Harrison Goodman is content executive for Higher Things.Audio Reflections Speaker: Rev. Duane BamschDiscover new insights from each line of the Psalms in Engaging the Psalms: A Guide for Reflection and Prayer. Read, repeat, and return to the Lord as you walk through all 150 Psalms. Now available from Concordia Publishing House.

(Is.55:10-11;   Ps.34:4-7,16-19;   Mt.6:7-15)   “Give us today our daily bread.”   Our daily bread comes from the mouth of God; it is His Word that nourishes us.  His Word “water[s] the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats.”  By His Word our spiritual lives are anointed with holiness; the breath of His mouth makes us whole, and so we become fruitful in His Name. Yes, we are sharers in His Word; it is His Word the just speak in their time of need.  “Crushed in spirit” before Him like holy seed, their cry comes to His ears and the rain He sends upon them saves them from all sin, “deliver[s] [them] from all fears.”  Jesus, the Word made flesh, is true, and His words are true: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him”; and so the Father is quick to hear when we enter into His Word and call upon His Name in all humility.  It is this humility which makes us fertile earth, this trust in His will that lifts our faces toward His light, that we “may not blush with shame.”  “Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy,” O sinner.  “Glorify the Lord” and “extol His name,” for with you He shares His Spirit; in you He plants the Word that grows to eternal life. Father in heaven, you alone are holy, and your Name is life to us.  Let “your kingdom come,” let “your will be done,” for apart from you we wither and die.  Make our earth your heaven; bring to us all the blessings you know we need to live ever in your light.  Feed us with your bread, feed us with your Word – your Son is all the food we need.  And for all “the wrong we have done,” as He has taught us, let us find our forgiveness by releasing from all bondage those who have done wrong to us, by loving our enemies.  In the end we pray, O Lord, that temptation be taken from our path; though we treasure your chastising Hand, let us not falter anymore – “deliver us from the evil one” who lurks in this world seeking the ruin of our souls. O Lord, our lives are in your hands.  Our hearts are given life by you.  In our prayer let us not imitate the vain words of the pagans, but let us join in the Spirit with your Son and become one in the Word with you.  (Help me to remember your Name.)   (I witness here that however many times I speak the Lord's Prayer, as however many times I attend Holy Mass, by the grace that comes through the Spirit, it is ever new and alive with the blessings that come from above.  These words are a gift to us we must cherish in our souls.)   ******* O LORD, may the grace of your forgiveness flow upon us and through us and so bear the fruit of salvation.  YHWH, your Word be upon us to bless us and nourish us this day that our words might be fruitful as your own.  With your Son and by the words He has instructed us to pray, let us come to you and find your presence upon us, saving us from sin and leading us to your kingdom.  From the grasp of the evil one let us be released as we call upon your Name. How shall we be fed this day, O LORD, if not by your hand, if not by the Spirit you send forth from your holy throne?  From on high you shower down upon us cleansing rain that we might be made whole and fruitful in your sight, that we might be as your Son on this earth, bringing your kingdom to bear on this plane.  O let us be as your sons and daughters, shining your light in this dark place! Hear us as we call to you, LORD.  Deliver us from all distress and affliction.  Let our poor souls be blessed by you that we might ever praise your holy Name.  O Father in Heaven, let us be with you this day.

(Is.55:10-11;   Ps.34:4-7,16-19;   Mt.6:7-15)   “Give us today our daily bread.”   Our daily bread comes from the mouth of God; it is His Word that nourishes us.  His Word “water[s] the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats.”  By His Word our spiritual lives are anointed with holiness; the breath of His mouth makes us whole, and so we become fruitful in His Name. Yes, we are sharers in His Word; it is His Word the just speak in their time of need.  “Crushed in spirit” before Him like holy seed, their cry comes to His ears and the rain He sends upon them saves them from all sin, “deliver[s] [them] from all fears.”  Jesus, the Word made flesh, is true, and His words are true: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him”; and so the Father is quick to hear when we enter into His Word and call upon His Name in all humility.  It is this humility which makes us fertile earth, this trust in His will that lifts our faces toward His light, that we “may not blush with shame.”  “Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy,” O sinner.  “Glorify the Lord” and “extol His name,” for with you He shares His Spirit; in you He plants the Word that grows to eternal life. Father in heaven, you alone are holy, and your Name is life to us.  Let “your kingdom come,” let “your will be done,” for apart from you we wither and die.  Make our earth your heaven; bring to us all the blessings you know we need to live ever in your light.  Feed us with your bread, feed us with your Word – your Son is all the food we need.  And for all “the wrong we have done,” as He has taught us, let us find our forgiveness by releasing from all bondage those who have done wrong to us, by loving our enemies.  In the end we pray, O Lord, that temptation be taken from our path; though we treasure your chastising Hand, let us not falter anymore – “deliver us from the evil one” who lurks in this world seeking the ruin of our souls. O Lord, our lives are in your hands.  Our hearts are given life by you.  In our prayer let us not imitate the vain words of the pagans, but let us join in the Spirit with your Son and become one in the Word with you.  (Help me to remember your Name.)   (I witness here that however many times I speak the Lord's Prayer, as however many times I attend Holy Mass, by the grace that comes through the Spirit, it is ever new and alive with the blessings that come from above.  These words are a gift to us we must cherish in our souls.)   ******* O LORD, may the grace of your forgiveness flow upon us and through us and so bear the fruit of salvation.  YHWH, your Word be upon us to bless us and nourish us this day that our words might be fruitful as your own.  With your Son and by the words He has instructed us to pray, let us come to you and find your presence upon us, saving us from sin and leading us to your kingdom.  From the grasp of the evil one let us be released as we call upon your Name. How shall we be fed this day, O LORD, if not by your hand, if not by the Spirit you send forth from your holy throne?  From on high you shower down upon us cleansing rain that we might be made whole and fruitful in your sight, that we might be as your Son on this earth, bringing your kingdom to bear on this plane.  O let us be as your sons and daughters, shining your light in this dark place! Hear us as we call to you, LORD.  Deliver us from all distress and affliction.  Let our poor souls be blessed by you that we might ever praise your holy Name.  O Father in Heaven, let us be with you this day.

By His Word by Naomi, Hannah, Seth, Eliyah & Jeremy Doell - February 14, 2021

The Bible is very clear that this world is a battleground between the kingdoms of Darkness and Light. In his book ‘The Christian Warfare' Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones states ‘The teaching of the Bible is that this world in which we live is a battle-ground, is a place in which we literally have to fight for our souls, to fight for our eternal welfare.'The Bible not only speaks about the reality of spiritual warfare but also thankfully shows us in Ephesians 6:10-18 how we can be victorious. God has given us every spiritual weapon we need to defeat all evil. Are you wearing the full armour of God every day? Here's how you can conquer:1. The belt of truth (Ephesians 6:14; John 8:44; 2 Corinthians 4:4; John 8:32; Joshua 1:8)2. The breastplate of righteousness (Ephesians 6:14; Romans 3:23)3. Feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15; Isaiah 52:7; Matthew 28:19-20)4. The shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16; Hebrews 11)5. The helmet of salvation (Ephesians 6:17; 2 Corinthians 10:5)6. The sword of the spirit (Ephesians 6:17; Hebrews 4:12)7. Pray continually (Ephesians 6:18; Matthew 6:9-13)ApplyDo you feel that you are under enemy attack in your family, your finances, health, work, emotions, ministry or any other situation? Today, no matter what battles you are facing, you have every spiritual weapon to overcome all the power of the enemy. You can conquer in every situation as you make sure to always put on the full armour of God:THE BELT OF TRUTH (v14): The ‘belt of truth' is revealed in the Word of God: The Bible. With God, there aren't different versions of the truth: there is only one truth. Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life. In contrast, Jesus said Satan is the ‘father of lies' (John 8:44) who blinds the mind of all unbelievers so they cannot receive the truth (2 Corinthians 4:4). The enemy wants to deceive and confuse every person, but Jesus promises that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Having the belt of truth buckled around you means you are held secure by the truth of God's Word, truth which is rooted in your heart and you declare with your mouth (Joshua 1:8).THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (v14): The word righteousness means ‘right action' or living right before God and being right with God. The breastplate is like a bulletproof vest. We could never live righteous lives in our own strength (Romans 3:23). Jesus shed His blood on the cross to forgive us, to heal our broken hearts and take our place of judgement. When you accept Jesus as your Saviour, you accept that He took all your sinfulness and gave you His righteousness in exchange. This means the enemy has no power to hold your past sins against you. You can also be healed in your emotions so that the Devil can no longer manipulate your feelings. When you trust in God's righteousness, not self-righteousness, you can be free from all condemnation and live with confidence and security. Putting on the breastplate of righteousness every day means that you live by the grace of God, protected from every attack on your heart as a child of God. FEET FITTED WITH THE READINESS THAT COMES FROM THE GOSPEL OF PEACE (v15): The Roman soldier's sturdy sandals with hobnailed soles gave soldiers stability and maneuverability. When we face a ‘day of evil', when we are taking our stand against the enemy, we can't be on the back foot: we must be sure that we are alert and ready to move out to fight spiritual battles. We should also be quick to move out to spread the good news of Jesus who brings peace on earth (Isaiah 52:7 & Matthew 28:19-20).THE SHIELD OF FAITH (v16): Satan's forces are constantly shooting fiery arrows at Christians to bring panic and destruction: arrows of doubt, fear and depression. But faith in God will always protect us and enable us to overcome (Hebrews 11). Our faith in God is the most powerful shield of protection around our lives and families. As you believe in God's unchanging promises and declare your faith, you will see that God is the shield who will protect you and neutralise every enemy attack. THE HELMET OF SALVATION (v17): The helmet protects our head, shielding us against every attack on our mind. The enemy goes for the head because your thoughts are what determine your actions and reactions. When you know you are saved from sin, you can be confident that you have been freed from the power of Satan's kingdom. In the moment of attack on your mind, remind yourself of your new identify in Christ. Nothing is more powerful than the blood of Jesus which has redeemed you from all the power of the enemy. You have the authority in Christ to be the head in every situation. Don't let any wrong thoughts mess with your head (2 Corinthians 10:5).THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT v17: Of all the armour described, the sword of the Spirit (the Word of God we declare with our mouths) is the only weapon we can use to attack the enemy. Every word spoken by God is loaded with power (Hebrews 4:12). By His Word, Jesus cast out demons, calmed storms, healed the sick, and brought the dead back to life. ‘The word of God in your mouth is the same as the word of God in the mouth of Jesus' - Reinhard Bonnke.PRAY CONTINUALLY (v18): Prayer brings us protection and provision. Our model for victory over the enemy is Jesus. Jesus made time to pray. He got up early in the morning and went to a quiet place. He lived a life of prayer. Jesus also taught us how to pray. The Lord's Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 is a powerful weapon we can use every day to see complete victory over the enemy. We all know we should pray. So let's pray more to conquer more and win our battles on our knees in prayer! You will live a life of victory by praying in the Spirit with all kinds of prayer.

Title: The Pillar and Bedrock Text: I Timothy 3:14-16 FCF: We often struggle determining exactly how to conduct ourselves in God’s family. Prop: Because God’s family uphold the truth of Jesus Christ, our lifestyles must demonstrate the truth. Scripture Intro: NASB [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to I Timothy chapter 3. After the last two weeks in looking into the offices of Elder and Deacon, we may have come away with the impression that Paul was writing a handbook of church order. However, when we see it in the scope of all that Paul has said, we understand that his primary message is for Timothy to preach the gospel. When he moves into chapter 2 for some reason, we forget that. We see him talking about praying for everyone, and men being certain kinds of men, women being certain kinds of women, and leaders being certain kinds of people, and we get lost. But we must remember – that the backdrop for all this discussion is still the gospel of Christ. But Paul has never really been talking to just Timothy. In this next section Paul reveals his primary reason for writing this letter. And it is both encouraging… and humbling. Let’s look at verse 14 of chapter 3. I’ll be reading from the NASB but you can follow along in the pew bible on page 1338 or in whatever version you prefer. Transition: So let’s look at the text this morning and see what Paul’s primary purpose for this letter is. I.) The church upholds God’s truth, so our lifestyles must demonstrate the truth. (14-15) a. [Slide 2] 14 - I am writing these things to you hoping to come to you before long i. What Paul reveals here is not the purpose of his writing, but rather his mental, emotional, and spiritual state at the time of his writing. ii. As he pens these very words he hopes to come and assist Timothy in the grand work he is being commissioned to do. b. [Slide 3] 15 – but in case I am delayed, i. But even Paul doesn’t know the future. The Roman empire was in the some of the most turbulent times, especially for believers. ii. Indeed, Paul was only a couple years from his own death. And many other Christians would follow him in martyrdom. iii. God gave him no guarantee or assurance of the length of his ministry. c. [Slide 4] I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God. i. And so, Paul tells Timothy the pinnacle purpose of his letter. All that we’ve seen up to this point and all that we will see after this, meets right here at the end of chapter 3. ii. Even though it only covers three verses – this is, perhaps, the most important message in the entire book. iii. If you leave here today and do not grasp on to this, you’ll have a more difficult time understanding the rest of the letter. iv. So what is the purpose of Paul’s writing? v. So that Timothy, and by extension the church at Ephesus, may know or understand how a person ought to conduct themselves. vi. What does this word “conduct” mean? vii. One meaning of the word is to turn back, or to overturn, or to throw down. The idea is to prevent something from leaving or to alter somethings course. To keep something where it is. This leads to another meaning of the word which is to abide or live. viii. Paul is writing to make known how a person is to live if they are, what? ix. In the household of God. x. Paul is incorporating wordplay here. This word in the Greek can mean house, structure, or dwelling place. However, it can also refer to the inhabitants of a house. xi. But he makes an allusion to a building here – because he is not quite done with the building imagery. xii. Still we would do well to understand that this is not a physical building of God. Paul is not talking about decorum or behavior in a church building, synagogue, temple or assembly hall. NO! xiii. Paul is talking about how people in God’s household or family ought to live. xiv. The lifestyles of those who are truly in God’s family is the subject of Paul’s letter. Therefore, throughout the rest of this letter and I hope we’ve seen even before this passage, the understanding that gospel believing people ARE gospel changed people. Not could be, not might be, not have the opportunity to be… but they are. xv. Paul then, dials up the rhetoric a little. d. [Slide 5] Which is the church of the Living God i. This family of God IS the church of the Living God. ii. Church here, again, does not mean building. It is a word that means assembly or gathering. iii. People. iv. The family of God are comprised of gathered people from around the world. Not necessarily in one building – but in one family. v. What is this designation “Living God” vi. Are there are other gods that are dead? Did God win some cosmic battle where he came out the victor? Do we live in a world where there are competing divines and we just so happen to serve the one who killed the rest? vii. We must be careful here. There are levels of truth to some of these questions and statements – but we cannot discard the sovereignty of God as THE creator of the universe. viii. All other would be gods, are dead in the sense that they have been spiritually cut off from the source of life – Yahweh. The God of the bible. ix. But there both was no war and there still is a war. The war was not between equal sides opposing one another and Yahweh happened to win. Rather the war is ongoing but its end has already been decided before it even began. Yahweh, the God of the bible has decreed the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:10) x. And so, it is not a war with equal sides or an uncertain end – but it is a war in the sense that there are competing forces. xi. God is the Living God – in that He is the source of life. He is active. He is true. He is unique. He is the only God. xii. And the family of God, which is the gathered assembly of God, serves this one, only, and true God. xiii. But not only is the family of God, the gathered people of the living God – they are also e. [Slide 6] The pillar and support of the truth. i. We are back to our building imagery. The house of the Living God, which is His gathered people, his family, are a mighty house. ii. They are the walls, the pillars, the buttresses. iii. They are the foundation, the support, the bedrock. iv. Of what? v. The truth. THE truth. vi. The Living God, the only true God’s gathered family, are the ONLY thing in this world holding up the truth of God. vii. And how do we hold it up? I think this goes back to Paul’s original point. He writes to help us understand what ought to be the lifestyle of God’s family. And so to uphold the truth is not simply to believe it – but to live it. viii. Life is filled with lies, deceit, and treachery as this spiritual war goes forward – but it is not really a war is it? The only true God, who is Himself truth, has put His family on earth to be a light, a beacon, of truth. ix. What is truth? The Word is truth. We believe it and we live it. f. [Slide 7] Passage Truth: Paul to Timothy reveals his primary purpose for writing this letter. Meaning that everything he has said or will say comes down to one primary application. And the reason for this application is that God’s family, His church, is the pillar and foundation of the truth. They uphold truth. g. Passage Application: Since this is true, Timothy needs to realize that by upholding the truth, their lives must also demonstrate it. Their lifestyles ought to be changed. h. [Slide 8] Broader Biblical Truth: Zooming out from this passage, we see God weave the mystery of His church in the pages of the Old Testament. He speaks of people not bound by tongue, tribe, or ethnicity. He speaks of all the earth being blessed through Abraham. He speaks of a new covenant where the inheritors will receive a new heart that knows God and serves Him. He speaks of a people who He has chosen for His own purposes to accomplish His will. The New Testament reveals this to be the true church of God. The gathered saints made alive in Christ. The true church, made alive by God, is the pillar and foundation of the truth. God’s Truth. His Word. If the church does not hold up the Word of God – no one else will. i. Broader Biblical Application: And as a consistent theme, not only in the Old Testament, but in literally every single book of the New Testament – true faith is demonstrated in righteousness. This is what James taught when he combated the wisdom of his day. They said “Some have faith and others have works.” James’ reply was “Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works.” His point was, that there is no faith, no upholding of truth, no belief WITHOUT righteousness. Our lifestyles match the truth we uphold. Transition: [Slide 9(blank)] Certainly we’ve seen that the church is the pillar and bedrock of the truth. And we’ve even guessed at what that truth may be… God’s Word. But what does that mean? What is this truth we uphold? II.) Jesus is the truth of God, so our lifestyles must demonstrate the truth. (16) a. [Slide 10] 16 – By common confession i. This is one word in Greek. It is an adverb. An adverb modifies an adjective, verb, or adverb. So the big question is – what is the word, confessedly modifying? ii. It is actually modifying the rest of the verse. iii. By way of illustration – sometimes we say something like “Fortunately, I had already purchased my ticket to the game.” In this sentence, the adverb “fortunately” modifies the entire phrase. iv. And so, this word, confessedly, is communicating the common agreement of the church. v. Agreement about what? b. [Slide 11] Great is the mystery of godliness i. We must start first with this word godliness to get a clear understanding of what is happening here in the text. ii. It is an interesting word. From it we could be talking about godliness or holiness. We could also be talking about devotion or reverence. We could also be talking about creed or doctrine. iii. Based on the context it seems best to assign the word faith or doctrine. iv. Paul is talking about the church being the pillar and foundation of the truth. So contextually, the truth or teaching has been established. v. The word mystery denotes a concept that was veiled and distorted that has now been revealed. vi. Meaning that this truth that we as the family of God are holding up, we all agree, is a great mystery to most, but has been revealed to us. vii. So putting all the pieces together, Paul desires Timothy to understand how the family of the Living God is to conduct themselves since they uphold the truth. But that truth is, as they all agree, a GREAT mystery, that they have been given sight to understand. viii. So what are the components of this great, mysterious, faith that the church understands, confesses, and upholds? c. [Slide 12] He who was revealed in the flesh, i. Some of your bibles no doubt have this phrase and the next several statements set off in italics or tabbed in from the rest of the paragraph. ii. The reason for this is because many scholars believe that this is all of or some of an ancient creed, poem, confession, or hymn that Paul has inserted as the content of the great mystery of the faith they confess. iii. It is important to note that the pronoun “He” does not exist in the Greek text. iv. It is the simple relative pronoun “who”. v. And so, the referent for “who” is fairly difficult to locate grammatically. Theologically we know it to be God, specifically the Second person of the Godhead, Jesus the Messiah. vi. We as the family of the living God, support and uphold the truth. God’s Word is truth. vii. And God’s Word became flesh. viii. God was revealed in flesh to us. Mankind saw God, and we lived to speak of it. Even Paul, who saw the ascended Christ – saw Him in flesh. His glorified body. ix. We have been granted insight by God into this truth. We understand this mystery, even though it is great. Furthermore, we confess and uphold it. x. Again, to confess and uphold truth is not simply to believe. But to believe and live righteously. We believe, and we have been changed by this truth. In Jesus Christ all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form. xi. As we learned from our New City Catechism… 1. [Slide 13] #22 - Why must the Redeemer to be truly human? a. That in human nature he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin; and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses. 2. [Slide 14] #23 – Why must the Redeemer be truly God? a. That because of his divine nature his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective; and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death. d. [Slide 15] Was vindicated in the Spirit, i. There is some disagreement about what is being referred to here. ii. Some, using a different definition of the word “vindicated” see this as justified or declared righteous. iii. So, they see this as the Father’s pronouncement and the Spirit’s confirmation on Jesus at His baptism that this is God’s Son, in whom He is exceedingly pleased. iv. This essentially refers to the complete and total obedience of Christ to the whole law of God. v. Others see this word as vindicated, and translate the preposition “by” the Spirit rather than “in” the Spirit. vi. Thus, this is a reference to the resurrection. The resurrection was the confirmation that Christ was who He said He was, and that He was not a guilty sinner or blasphemer but was, in fact, the Son of God, whom The Spirit of God raised to life. vii. Following the flow, it could be either, but I favor the latter. viii. It seems that Christ’s obedience to the law and approval by God is wrapped up in the first statement of His incarnation. ix. So, what great mystery has been revealed that we, the family of God, do confess and uphold? What do we confess and how does that change how we live? x. Again, this goes back to our New City Catechism. 1. [Slide 16] #50 – What does Christ’s resurrection mean for us? a. Christ triumphed over sin and death by being physically resurrected, so that all who trust in him are raised to new life in this world and to everlasting life in the world to come. Just as we will one day be resurrected, so this world will one day be restored. But those who do not trust in Christ will be raised to everlasting death. xi. Christ’s resurrection physically produces our resurrection spiritually. We are baptized into Him. He takes our death, and gives us our life. We join with Him. And one day, we will be raised bodily too. Given new bodies capable of inhabiting the New Kingdom. Where we will reign with Him, and worship Him forever. xii. We don’t merely hold up this truth – we proclaim it with our lives! We conquer sin, live in righteousness, are conformed to the image of Christ – because He was vindicated by the Spirit. e. [Slide 17] Seen by angels, i. Again, there is some disagreement over what this could mean. ii. Some say that this is a reference to Christ’s descent into the realm of the dead and Him preaching to the angels kept in punishment there – pronouncing His glorious victory. iii. Others say this refers to His ascension to heaven, to the glory and marvel of the angels. iv. Both are true in scripture. v. It seems as though the hymn moves chronologically through the work of the incarnated Word. So, if we adopted the Spirit approval of Jesus at baptism, we might be able to say this referred to the preaching to the angels in utter darkness. vi. However, that would mean that the song would skip the resurrection. Which is unlikely considering its great weight. Therefore, the ascension is preferred here. vii. So here again, God’s people have been privy to this mystery. They understand, not simply that Christ ascended – but why. And that truth changes who they are. So that their very lives reflect and reveal this mystery. How? viii. Again, we turn to our Catechism. 1. [Slide 18] #51 – Of what advantage to us is Christ’s ascension? a. Christ physically ascended on our behalf, just as he came down to earth physically on our account, and he is now advocating for us in the presence of his Father, preparing a place for us, and also sends us his Spirit. ix. We are perpetually being changed because He has been seen by angels. Our lives are constantly in flux, as we are pressed into the mold of Christ – BY CHRIST – as he stands before the throne of God as our advocate. He continues to sustain us from the throne room of the Most High! So we uphold the truth, not simply by our confessing it – but as we change according to His grace! f. [Slide 19] Proclaimed among the nations, i. Christ – the Word- has been preached near and far. ii. He is what is given to the nations. iii. The mystery of the new covenant church has been revealed also. We go and proclaim truth to the nations. Not simply belief, or living it, but preaching it! In so doing, we uphold the truth! 1. [Slide 20] #48 – What is the Church? a. God chooses and preserves for himself a community elected for eternal life and united by faith, who love, follow, learn from, and worship God together. God sends out this community to proclaim the gospel and prefigure Christ’s kingdom by the quality of their life together and their love for one another. g. [Slide 21] Believed on in the world i. Here is the mystery of faith alone! A mystery that God’s people have been shown… VIVIDLY. ii. The mystery is that by grace ALONE and through faith ALONE we are saved. iii. Why do we believe? How could we if all this was a mystery? Who has done the revealing? Who has given us truth? iv. Again, to our Catechism – are you noticing a theme? 1. [Slide 22] #35 – Since we are redeemed by grace alone, through faith alone, where does this faith come from? a. All the gifts we receive from Christ we receive through the Holy Spirit, including faith itself. v. We having been shown the mystery, having learned the secret, do know that the reason we believe is because the Spirit has brought us to life and opened our eyes to the truth. How is all that accomplished? It happens in tandem with the preached word of God. In which the church goes forth and proclaims Christ crucified to the nations. vi. And so here in these two items we have the total of the church experience on earth. God’s people hold up the truth by going into all the world preaching it to dead creatures. And God brings some of them to life and continues to save them through faith which He gives them from the faith-account of His Son. Ripping them from the kingdom of darkness and joining them to the Kingdom of light. vii. And speaking of that kingdom… h. [Slide 23] Taken up in glory. i. That kingdom is NOW! ii. Christ has been taken up in glory. iii. This could be a reference to the ascension -but more likely, given the context this is referring to Christ being given a name above all other names. A name that is worthy of worship. iv. That all things have been put under His feet. v. His Kingdom is now and not yet. It has been installed but has not yet reached its full magnitude. But as the intensity of His Kingdom grows – it is no shock to us to see the kingdom of this world more fiercely oppose it. vi. And so, in the mystery of the kingdom that is not here but is – in confessing and upholding this truth we both believe it and are changed by it! Christ reigns forever which started at the cross and has continued in greater degrees to this very moment. vii. And one day He will return and fully install His reign forever! 1. [Slide 24] #52 – What hope does everlasting life hold for us? a. It reminds us that this present fallen world is not all there is; soon we will live with and enjoy God forever in the new city, in the new heaven and the new earth, where we will be fully and forever freed from all sin and will inhabit renewed, resurrection bodies in a renewed, restored creation. viii. [Slide 25] This… my friends… is the truth we confess and uphold. Something we have received from God to understand, faith to believe it, and we are being changed by it. ix. We hold it up – because we have been placed under it my friends. x. The truth is not a slave to God’s people but rather God’s people a slave to Truth. xi. We can’t unsee what God has forced us to look upon. Nor would we ever want to. Because it is the power of God to save us from sin and to righteousness. xii. The first step of Paul’s discussion about how we ought to live as family members in God’s kingdom, is what we confess and uphold as the truth, namely the Word of God, Jesus Christ. xiii. And Jesus frees His people from their sin and turns them into slaves of righteousness. i. [Slide 26] Passage Truth: Paul to Timothy summarizes the truth we uphold. We all agree it is a great mystery, now revealed to God’s children. That truth is, The Son of God. j. Passage Application: So to Timothy, he and his congregation must not only uphold and believe these things, but live them out. k. [Slide 26] Broader Biblical Truth: Zooming out from this text we understand and realize that it has always been the very words of God that have sustained us. The law in the Old Testament, brought periodic revival and renewal from the slow and disastrous decent of the Israelites. It was the Word of God spoken by prophets that pushed Kings to repentance. Some of whom were not even Israelites. And in the New Testament Jesus prayed to the Father that those who belonged to Christ, whom the Father gave to Him, would be sanctified, set apart, made holy in the truth. And He identifies what truth is… The Word. Himself. Sanctify them in me. In fact, he spells it out in John 19:19 – I set myself apart on their behalf so that they too may be truly set apart. Jesus is the truth we confess and uphold. And it is this Word that has been preached down through the centuries giving us creeds, confessions and Catechisms, organizing truth in memorable ways so that we may know, understand, confess, and uphold it. l. Broader Biblical Application: And of course, upholding does not simply mean preaching, nor believing. But doing. Living. Our conduct in the family of God is summarized by holding up and demonstrating the truth of Christ as we are made like Him. These truths Paul mentions form the core gospel of Jesus that changes us from creatures of wrath to children of God. Conclusion: [Slide 28(end)] I hope and trust that you saw the correlation between the truths we believe and the lifestyle they dictate. You cannot truly believe the truth about Jesus Christ and yet have a life still in sin. You cannot claim to know the mysteries of God’s Word, and still live in unrighteousness. None of us will be perfect on earth – but when we know Christ, in his death and resurrection– we will never be satisfied until we are made perfect. We’ll continue to be pressed into His mold. To apply this truth today though – I’d like to take a moment to highlight the importance of the church. I realize that this is not Paul’s main application, but rather the reason for his application. But to me, before we can get to our demonstrating truth with our lifestyles, I think we need to rightly understand what it means to uphold it. My friends… read again what Paul has said. We are the church of the living God. The church of all other gods are many. They are colleges, universities, bars, clubs, casinos, businesses, governments, hospitals, militaries, and more. They serve their gods of humanism, secularism, materialism, hedonism, paganism, and more – and they uphold the lies of the kingdom of darkness with their lifestyles. Indeed, they are slaves to these lies and lifestyles. Because they are slaves to sin. They are blind to the truth – the great mystery of our faith. But we… True believers from all nations are the church of the living God. The only one of its kind. There is no other God and there is no other church of the one true God. We have been set apart by the truth. By His Word. By His Son. We have been called out, ripped away, and re-created into something completely new. The gods of this age, the principalities and powers, and their many assemblies – are in every way the same. Their differences are too subtle to really matter. But compared to them – we are completely different. We are holy. Unique. Peculiar. The mystery of the truth has been revealed to us. God’s Spirit has brought us to life. He has opened our eyes. We see the world for what it truly is. We understand because we’ve been given this faith. We’ve been handed revelation through grace. We know that Jesus came in the flesh, fulfilled the law of God, died in our place, was raised the third day, ascended to heaven where he intercedes for us, helps his church proclaim the gospel, actively communicates His faith to His sheep throughout the nations, and He will one day come again to fully install His Kingdom. We believe all this, because we have been given spiritual eyes to see it. We were just like everyone else once. Children of wrath… but now… we are co-heirs with Christ. If we do not uphold the truth… no other entity, no other organization, no assembly, no “church” no temple of any god will do so. They are all part of the same lie. We alone serve the true God. The church is the gathered assembly, the family, of the living God. My friends. You can’t be a church of one. And lest we think that the church is merely a group who believes the same things… no. As we’ve seen today – these things can’t be merely believed. No friends. True belief of these things ALWAYS… and I mean ALWAYS…. Changes how we live. Paul has already addressed some areas of how the gospel forms us. Men, women and leaders. But he is preparing us for the next 3 chapters of this letter. There is so much here, but we must remember… it is all because of Christ. All the application flows from our primary duty as the church of the living God… to confess and uphold the truth. May God give us grace to hold up the Word of God, without excuse, without apology, and without compromise. That we lovingly plead with the world to see their sin as we have seen our own. May we shed bitter tears as we mourn for the plight of the wicked. May we rejoice greatly as we suffer ridicule for being holy. And may we weep with joy when the Word of the Lord produces a harvest in the fertile soil of a heart that God has made ready to hear. This. Is. The. Church. Is it you?

Pastor Allen Bauer delivered his message Sunday, December 1, 2019, on the sermon series,"The Purpose of Advent" entitled, "A Time to Watch". Advent is to be a time of watching and waiting. We need to always be ready for the coming of the Lord. How do we do that? By His Word, we “walk in the light of the LORD” (Is. 2:5). That is to live in love, which “does no wrong to a neighbor” (Rom. 13:10). We “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,” for “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11, 12). The entire Christian life is a time to wake and watch, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt. 24:42).

In Matthew 25, we see Jesus underscore the importance of Scripture. God only operates by His Word. By His Word, all of creation was formed, and God’s existence is evident through what He has created.

Jesus prepares us for peace, grows us in peace through His Holy Spirit, and makes us to be peacemakers in a dark and troubling world. By His Word and Spirit, we can prepare ourselves for His peace, we can practice His peace, and we have His Spirit and His capacity to pass His peace to one another. 5/26/19

Worship songs:  Every Beat, Won’t Stop Now, How Deep The Father’s Love for Us, Great Are You Lord Connection Groups: Jesus' promise to be "with us always" is yet to be finalized in his promised return. Until then the promise is being fulfilled in three primary ways: By His Spirit. Read John 14:16-17 and Acts 2:1-4. Do you believe that you are filled by the Holy Spirit? Why or why not? Is there such thing as a Christian not filled by the Spirit? How might we become more aware of the Spirit with us day to day? By His Word. Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17. Have you sensed God's presence through the study of the Bible? If so, how? If we believe the scriptures are inspired and will reveal Gods teaching, rebuking, correcting and training, how can we be more in the Word? By His Body. Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. Christians are never in isolation in the Bible: Jesus called the 12. Paul always traveling with companions. The letters are written primarily to churches. How can we experience God with us with his people?

Dynamite does one thing well: it blows stuff up. Dynamite is no more than an absorbent material, such as sawdust, soaked in a highly combustible chemical called nitroglycerin. The absorbent material makes the nitroglycerin much more stable. Attached to the nitroglycerin infused sawdust is either a fuse of a blasting cap. Once lit, the fuse or cap creates a small explosion that triggers the larger explosion in the dynamite itself. Once ignited, the dynamite burns extremely rapidly and produces a large amount of hot gas in the process. The hot gas expands very quickly and applies pressure, and thus blows up or explodes. The Greek word dynamis (δύναμις) is commonly translated as “power of God.” A college professor of mine once smacked his hands down loudly on the podium and said: “the Gospel is dynamite, exploding faith into the heart of the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit.” The Gospel, to me, from that day on, has been dynamite. It blows up the Old Adam and creates from the rubble the New Man who by faith stands in Christ alone. The idea that it was the Gospel of Christ––either through the stand-alone proclaimed Word, or the Word as it is connected to water in Holy Baptism or the bread and wine, body and blood, in Holy Communion––as the Means of Grace (media gratiae) through which God brings sinners to Himself was an idea unique to the Reformation. The idea itself is simple but carries with it immense implications. If God blows up my Old-Adam with the dynamite of the Gospel, then it is His work that saves from beginning to end. I do nothing to save myself; He does everything. This has always vexed Christians, especially new Christians. If God has saved me of His accord and His work on account of Christ, what can I do now for God? How can I serve Him? How can I say thank you? Often, the answer to this question leaves the questioner disappointed. The answer is, God doesn't need your service. He is the almighty creator of heaven and earth. By His Word, all things were made that have been made. By His Word, He performs great miracles. By His Word, your Old Adam is constantly blown up with the dynamite of the Gospel. You need Him; He doesn't need you. The Reformers had an answer for this one too. The Reformers realized that it was not the monks and priests of the church that were doing “super works” to please God. They saw that the everyday person served God, but did so in a way that had not previously been recognized. The Reformers called this the doctrine of vocation. We are all called to freely love and serve those whom God has called into our lives. We don't always recognize the form that this service will take. And we certainly serve them imperfectly; often badly. Sometimes this service will look like changing a diaper. Sometimes it will be getting a cup of coffee for your spouse. (Thus, some of the most common and important vocation are being a dad or mom, husband or wife.) Sometimes it's telling someone that you love them. Sometimes it's standing next to a friend as they bury a loved one. The one thing we know is that it will probably look very standard, and will likely be difficult to recognize as “unique.” To quote Gerhard Forde as he tries to explain Luther's ideas on this topic: “Whatever call there might be for more extreme action, it must be remembered that Luther's idea is that first and foremost one serves God by taking care of his creation.” (Gerhard Forde, A More Radical Gospel) So then, the Gospel is the dynamite that constantly blows up the Old Adam in us, and then God uses the rubble to, by the work of the Holy Spirit, build up saving faith, trust, in our hearts saving us on account of Christ alone. He then calls people into our lives, inviting us to love them and be loved in return, serve them and be served in return, all through the ordinary everyday motions of our daily, often boring lives. This is the Christian vocation. When we fail––and we do––he forgives once more through the dynamite of salvation, the Gospel of Christ.

Introduction For most of my adult life, I have been a student of military history. Until the advent of the explosive power of gunpowder-based weapons, the most terrifying sound heard on the battlefield must have been the sound of the approach of enemy cavalry — mounted warriors. It must indeed have been beyond terrifying for foot soldiers, trained to stand their ground, to feel the earth shaking beneath their feet from an army of half-ton of animals traveling as fast as 30-40 miles an hour toward them. In Job 39:21-25 God boasts about the horse in military terms: “He paws the ground fiercely and charges into the fray. He laughs at fear, and is afraid of nothing. In frenzied excitement, he eats up the ground. He cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.” The horses alone would have been terrifying, to say nothing of their mounted warriors. The first four seals bring to us one of the more famous images from the Book of Revelation: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Here, we will see for the first time in the Book of Revelation the judgments of God unleashed on sinful Earth. His judgments will be a dominant theme throughout the rest of the book of Revelation. In Revelation 1, John, who was in exile on the island of Patmos, has a vision, which he introduces as “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants the things that must soon take place.” It is an unveiling of Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and of future things that we would have no other way of knowing. In his vision, he sees the resurrected, glorified Christ dressed like a priest, moving among seven golden lamp stands which represented seven contemporary local churches, but also His Church across history, showing a constant, active interest that Jesus has for local churches around the world. Those seven churches were the focus of the seven letters which make up Revelation 2-3. In these letters, we learn both what Christ loves and is attracted to in churches, and what He hates or wants to see destroyed in them. This brings forth the beautiful balance of that which is part of healthy church life — hard work, discipline, diligence, orthodox doctrine, a genuine love for God and for one another, and a willingness to expose and to shun false doctrine. It also reveals His hatred for lukewarmness, for secret sin, and even for tolerating sin among a local body. In Revelation 4, John saw a door standing open in the Heavenly realms, and he was invited by Christ to ascend and to go through that doorway to see what was going on there. Of course, he could not obey that unaided, but the Spirit moved him from the Earth through the doorway into Heaven in a spiritual flight. He immediately saw the central reality of the physical and spiritual universe — Almighty God, the Creator on His throne. Surrounding the throne were 24 other thrones with elders seated on them, pouring forth beautiful, powerful, continual worship for the Creator who created all things; day and night they praised Him. By His Word, they were created, and by His word, they are sustained, or continue to have their being. As that scene unfolded before John, we saw last week in Revelation 5, the Creator God held in His right hand a scroll. The scroll was sealed with seven seals, with writing on both sides. A mighty angel cried out a challenge to all creation: “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” No one was found in Heaven, or on earth, or under the earth who was worthy, and John wept and wept as a result. One of the elders told him, “‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’” He heard this about the Lion, but turning, he saw instead a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, a clear declaration of his deity. Jesus is the Lion and the Lamb, possessing a beautiful combination of attributes. His triumph is the victory of the cross: By His blood, He has purchased people for God from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation. When Jesus had taken the scroll from the right hand of Him who sat on the throne, worship for Him exploded and cascaded from those around the throne. Now we come to Revelation 6. This chapter unfolds with the breaking open of six of the seals on the scroll. Because of the difficulty of interpreting the words of this and following chapters, many pastors shrink away from preaching verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Revelation. Certainty flees; at best one can render godly opinions. With careful study of other people’s opinions and interpretations, I will do my best to manage the specific challenging details. However, the large, central themes are crystal clear and we will see those repeatedly: God’s sovereign control and power over the events on earth; His active, aggressive wrath crescendoing at the end of human history, in the days, weeks, months, and years preceding the Second Coming of Christ; His love for His people; His desire to protect them from persecution or to avenge them where He allows it; and the ultimate destination of both the righteous — the redeemed, and the unrighteous — the wicked. We can approach the seven seals in two different ways. On one hand, we could see everything described from a future perspective that none have happened yet — that John’s words describe the events at the end of redemptive history, future not only for him but for us as well. This future time is known as the Great Tribulation. Jesus described a time of tribulation — the Little Apocolypse — in Matthew 24, which can be seen as an interpretive key to the Great Apocalypse. In Matthew 24:21-22 “…then there will be great distress [or great tribulation], unequaled from the beginning of the world until now — and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” There is yet to come a terrible tribulation, unlike any that has ever been seen in human history. That language sets it apart. In this view, these events, beginning with the seven seals, are nothing we have ever experienced before; all are tied to the Great Tribulation. A second approach, one that I personally favor, is that the events described, especially in the first five seals (though, you could extend it to the sixth seal as well, depending on how you read prophetic language) represent recurring patterns of wrath, judgment, and suffering that will happen, again and again throughout redemptive history, all over the earth. But they will find their last and greatest and most dreadful fulfillment in the events leading up to the Second Coming of Christ. Matthew 24:6-9 says, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” During the unfolding of redemptive history that God has ordained, there have been and will continue to be regular patterns of what we will see with these first seals, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: peaceful conquest as with the White Horse; war as with the Red Horse; famine as with the black horse; and death as with the pale horse. While all this suffering occurs in every generation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ will continue to spread to every nation and language on earth. Matthew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” The rise and fall of wicked rulers and the general hatred of the human race for the Gospel result in much persecution of the messengers of that Gospel, suffering in every generation, leaving an unbroken trail of blood throughout twenty centuries thus far of church history. This includes the apostasy of many false believers who buckle under the pressure of persecution going on in their lifetime, in their generation. Jesus said in Matthew 24:9-10, “…you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other.” The fifth seal unveils the ever-growing number of martyrs who will have paid the price in their own blood for the spread of the Gospel. Revelation 6:9-11 says, “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.” We see the events of the first five seals repeated in church history, again and again, just as Jesus said we would. He said they would continue until the end of the world, but at the end of the world, in the final phase of human history under the Antichrist, we should expect a great consummation of intensified conquest, war, famine, death and martyrdom. Jesus Himself gives us permission to use this perspective in Matthew 24:37, when He said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came, and took them all away.” That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” I take that phrase, “as it was, so it will be” (or already/not yet) as a guide to look for repeated patterns of these events until the end. I do not think this holds true throughout the book of Revelation. When we get to the trumpet judgments and the bowl judgements, we will see events described that have never happened in human history. Nothing approaching the carnage and ecological disaster of Revelation 8 or the demonic army and the subsequent suffering of Revelation 9 have ever occurred from the beginning of time until now. But we are at the beginning of the story as Jesus takes the scroll and begins breaking open these seals. We believe that God is actively involved in maintaining the universe He created. We are not Deists, thinking that God has left us alone to our own devices and things are running by their own forces. He actively intervenes in everything, including displaying His wrath every day. In Romans 1:18, it says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” But though it is presently displayed, the final outpouring of God’s wrath will hit levels such as we have never seen before nor even imagined. That final tribulation will begin by following the pattern unfolded in these seals. The First Seal Broken, the First Rider Unleashed: Deceptive Peace Let us now do the best we can to understand each of these seals in detail. The first seal is broken, and then the first rider is unleashed, bearing some kind of peace. Revelation 6:1-2 says, “I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” The Lamb Initiates Everything The first thing we notice, which I will repeat because it bears repeating, is that the Lamb, Jesus Christ, initiates every event that is described. Human rulers may think they are in charge, that they are making judgments and rendering decisions that will change history — that they are the movers and shakers — in reality, ultimately they are the ones moved and shaken. They are pawns in God’s overarching plan. In Isaiah 14:26-27, we read this refrain:“This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” God has a plan; His hand is omnipotent. He sets the course of human history from beginning to end. We see this as Christ breaks open each seal; events start to move in Heaven first, and then on earth. As He breaks open the first seal, one of the four living creatures is cued to cry, “Come!” His voice sounds like thunder. Often, voices from Heaven have overwhelming volume. It seems that John could feel it in his chest, like the sound of thunder, and flashes of lightning, and an earthquake, and the sound of many waters like a mighty, roaring waterfall. He imparts a sense of a stunning level of power among these angelic beings. In Isaiah 6, when the seraphim were crying to one another, “Holy, holy, holy”, the door posts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke — at the sound of their voices, not God’s. These are powerful created beings; they show us how weak and puny our voices are. As the first creature cries “Come!”, the First Horseman of the Apocalypse is unleashed. The First Horseman Described John described this horse as being white, implying in some sense that it was physically attractive, alluring, appealing. The word “white” is generally associated with godliness and righteousness in the book of Revelation, as we see with the robes given to all of the redeemed from every tribe, language, people, and nation. The rider carried a bow, but had no arrows — no open weaponry. “He rode forth like a conqueror bent on conquest.” He sought to build an empire, but by means other than the usual military conquest. Yet, we could argue, that the bow in his hand implied the threat of a war. The First Horseman Interpreted Many solid, godly commentators believe that this first Horseman represents Jesus Christ and the spread of the Gospel. Their strongest scriptural is in Revelation 19:11, when Jesus is depicted at the Second Coming riding a white horse and wearing many crowns. That is compelling and not off-base to say that the first horse represents the spread of the Gospel. In Matthew 24:14, as we saw a moment ago, Jesus said, “This Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus if He was a king, Jesus replied, “You are right in saying that I am a king. For this reason, I was born, and for this I came into the world: To testify to the truth.” His Kingdom is built by the testimony of the truth. He said to Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It is not an earthly Kingdom, so it does not advance in the usual way. However, I do not think that is the best way to interpret this first horse. First, it seems unlikely that the Lamb in Heaven would break open a seal and then show up as His own response, especially since He is coming in response to the living creature giving the command to come, as though the horses are unleashed by the order of the living creatures. Second, and more significant, in my opinion, is that the Four Horsemen should be seen together as one whole package of judgment and wrath on the earth. This first Horseman only appears to be righteous and delightful and alluring, but in truth is not. These four Horsemen bring death and judgment on the earth together. This beautiful Horseman a counterfeit Christ, looking like Christ but without His holiness or power. This theme of counterfeiting is seen throughout the book of Revelation. It will resurface in Revelation 13 with the rise of the beast from the sea, who ends up playing an Antichrist, or substitute Christ. Together with the dragon and the beast from the earth, the three comprise an unholy, ungodly trinity, which is a mocking counterfeit to the true Trinity the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Temporary Success of the First Rider This carries out the theme of already/not yet as well. A kingdom is being advanced by subtle, even treacherous means, that are different from what is expected, but extremely effective: sly treachery and a deceitful peace, rather than by warfare, though with the threat of war thinly veiled and ever-present. In Matthew 24:24-25, Jesus said, “…false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect-- if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time.” He spoke in the plural, not the singular, implying that we would see repeated patterns. Throughout history, there have been devious, wicked, sly politicians, who have skillfully conquered lands by evil and by treacherous treaties and false diplomacy which they later break. This is seen clearly in the Book of Daniel. In Daniel 11:21, Daniel prophesied about one of the successors of Alexander the Great, a Greek king who was to come, in this way: “He [the previous king] will be succeeded by a contemptible [meaning of low birth] person who has not been given the honor of royalty. He will invade the kingdom when its people feel secure, and he will seize it through intrigue.” What is intrigue? It's treachery. It is being a sly politician, possessing charisma and savvy to be able to draw people in under false pretenses in order to gain control. Further, Daniel 11:23-24 says, “After coming to an agreement with him [another king... There's a king of the north and a king of the south who are always battling each other in Daniel 11], he will act deceitfully, and with only a few people he will rise to power. When the richest provinces feel secure, he will invade them and will achieve what neither his fathers nor his forefathers did.” He will conquer by treachery, by deceit, by lulling the people of those lands into a false sense of security. One of my favorite verses in Daniel is 11:27. This is what I picture when I think of the United Nations or discussions between ambassadors of two pagan nations. “The two kings [king of the north, king of the south], with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other, but to no avail, because an end will still come at the appointed time.” This happens often in the political world and other realms (such as business). There is treachery, but one king is much better at it than the other one. This man in Daniel 11 represents an actual king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who was a symbol of the future Antichrist. That is why so much detail is given to him in Daniel 11. He was a real ruler; he rose politically through treachery and intrigue; he made covenants and broke them. He set a pattern that we see acted out in history, again and again. We saw the same pattern with Adolf Hitler in Munich, when Neville Chamberlain, afraid of a coming cataclysm, terrified of repeating World War I, sold Czechoslovakia up the river to get a piece of paper signed by Hitler, saying that Germany would never go to war against England again. In retrospect, we can see what a liar Hitler was. He was happy to sign the false treaty and send Neville Chamberlain home waving the piece of paper on the tarmac, saying, “We have peace in our time.” That lasted for another 10 months before Germany took over the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and the whole country. No one could do anything, and within a year, they invaded Poland, setting off World War II. That is one example of many throughout history that depicts conquest through deception and treachery. This is a recurring theme in history, but will be ultimately fulfilled right before the Second Coming of Christ. The Antichrist will come initially by appearing beautiful and attractive, but his heart is treacherous. He advances and is given a crown and “[rides] forth like a conqueror bent on conquest.” The Second Seal Broken, the Second Rider Unleashed: War The Lamb Initiates Again: the Second Seal is Broken This leads to the second seal being opened, because the unloaded bow is short-lived. Revelation 6:3-4 says,“When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, ‘Come!’ Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.” Again, the Lamb initiates, and then, when He has broken the seal, the living creature cries, “Come!” The Second Horse and Rider Described and Interpreted When the living creature has given this order, the second horse, the fiery Red Horse, is unleashed. There is no doubt how to interpret this one — this is simply open warfare. The color red must signify the flow of blood, especially since the rider is given a sword to wreak massive slaughter. Whatever treaties, whatever promises of peace have been made have all been swept aside, and now, there is open warfare. As we have already seen, warfare has long plagued the human race, stampeding and trampling down the pages of history with bloody red footprints. In Matthew 24:6-7, Jesus says, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” Warfare, with one nation fighting another nation, demonstrates two things. First, Satan hates all human beings; he wants all of them to die outside of Christ. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, it was the Nazis fighting the Communist soldiers. I doubt there were many born again soldiers on either side; the ideologies represented were satanic. Millions and millions of Germans and Russians died in that conflict. Second, this pattern is judgment from God against sinful individuals and nations. Isaiah 34:2-3 says,“The LORD is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked with their blood.” The blood-red carnage begins with the breaking open of the second seal. There will be an end-time fulfillment of this when the beast from the sea is given power to rule over the entire earth. No human ruler has ever ruled the whole earth. Genghis Khan conquered a quarter of the land mass of the earth, the highest of any nation in terms of real estate. But this beast from the sea will have it all. The people of the earth will not give up their land and power easily, once they realize the intrigue and treachery that have taken place. The Antichrist will be forced to show his military power. Revelation 13:7 says, “He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.” The second Horseman, ultimately, represents the bloody conquest by a final world ruler, who will begin his conquest through deception, intrigue, and false diplomacy, but who will end his conquest by warfare, the swinging of a large, bloody sword given to him for a short time. The Third Seal Broken, the Third Rider Unleashed: Famine The Lamb Once Again Initiates the Next Horse and Rider Following this bloodshed, the third seal is broken and the third Rider, Famine, is unleashed. Revelation 6:5-6 says, “When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!’” Once again, the Lamb initiates events by opening the seal. A living creature responds to the Lamb’s initiative by calling out, “Come!” and the third horse and Horseman come. The Third Horse and Rider Described This horse is black, which, technically is not a color but rather the absence of light. It is darkness. The Rider is holding scales, which were associated with merchants in that era for weighing merchandise and money — a rod with platters or plates hanging by chains. The merchants would weigh out their goods and then calculate the currency and weigh it against standardized weights. The picture we are meant to see is that of buying and selling of merchandise. As this black horse and its Rider move across the earth, John hears a voice coming mysteriously from among the living creatures. John does not know who speaks, but the voice is like that of a merchant calling forth his price for his commodities. He is calling for the careful weighing of a quart of wheat for a full day’s work. People will work all day to get a quart of wheat to take home to feed their families. That qualifies as famine. The barley, a little more available, was a lower-quality grain, but three quarts was still not enough. Famine is truly a logical consequence of war. When armies are running roughshod over the countryside, farmers cannot plow, plant, and reap. Consider the famine going on in East Africa right now. Human warfare, resulting in anarchy, has been responsible in large part for that. The same thing happened after World War II; if it had not been for the Marshall Plan and other wealthier nations helping out, there would have been worldwide starvation in a scope scarcely imaginable. BUT the Famine is Not Universal Jesus said that there would be famines in various places. This famine is not universal. The voice that called out the famine conditions limited it, saying, “Do not hurt or harm the oil and the wine!” — referring to olive oil. This famine is not as bad as it possibly could be. It is possible, as some commentators believe, that the more wealthy will be able to obtain provisions but the poor will suffer, since items like oil and wine can be considered luxuries in times of famine. That is possible, though I do not know. This limitation perhaps lends a future aspect to this seal — in the Old Testament, when famine came, no one was able to get any food, no matter how rich. People could not eat their silver or gold. No food meant no food for anyone. The Fourth Seal Broken, the Fourth Rider Unleashed: Death Now Comes the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse! Finally, the fourth seal is broken and the fourth Rider is unleashed. Revelation 6:7-8 says,“When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!' I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” Like the other three, the initiative is with Jesus. He breaks the seal, the fourth living creature says, “Come!” and the pale horse rides forth. The Fourth Horse and Rider Described Where this horse is described as pale, the Greek uses the word “chloros,” from which we get the word “chlorophyll.” It is a greenish tint, what we might describe as a ghostly green. There is a sense of decay and death. The rider is clearly identified: his name is Death, like the decaying of a corpse. Hades, the grave, follows right after him. The horse and rider together are given power from Heaven to kill one quarter of the population of the earth, not only by sword, with military might, but also by famine, plague, and wild beasts. We truly do not comprehend how much God restrains animals and birds from attacking the human race, but imagine if He did not, how terrifying that would be. Note also that the sword, famine, plague, and beasts are the standard plagues given in Old Testament prophetic books about what would happen to Israel with the invasion of an army. The horror escalates with each subsequent horse. The slaughter of one quarter of the earth’s population is absolutely mind-boggling. Every generation has experienced war, famine, and death to some degree, but this is a scope never before experienced in history. The death toll connected with World War II, including from fighting, collateral civilian casualties, death from diseases that were otherwise curable, and other factors, was at the highest between 60 and 70 million people. The population of the earth in 1940 was 2.4 billion. That is a total of 2.6% of the world's population. This carnage is 10 times that. A literal interpretation of one quarter of the earth’s population from these first four seals renders this a definite futurist interpretation of what will happen right before the end. And yet, Jesus says in Matthew 24:8 “All these are the beginning of birth pains.” Persecution follows with the next seal, but we will cover that in the next sermon, God willing. As a preview, Matthew 24:9-10 says, “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other…” Betrayal, persecution, and martyrdom. Applications Understand the Sovereign Power of Christ Over Events on Earth Here are some quick applications. First, understand the sovereignty of God over all things. The events of today and the future do not happen by accident. This is part of God’s plan for the ultimate consummation of the new Heavens and the new earth, the salvation of the righteous, and the condemnation of the wicked. We must understand the sovereign power of Jesus Christ over these events. He has the right to ordain and initiate these events. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Him. He owns the earth; the title deed to the earth is His by right. As he breaks open each seal, the judgments that follow are his righteous reactions to the sins of the human race. As a Christian, do not fear that the world is spinning out of control, even as we see the beginnings of birth pains: wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes in various places. See the Pattern of “Already/Not Yet” Second, see the pattern of already/not yet in world events that unfold each day. We may even see them escalating, but still the end is not yet come. It is not imminent in that way, though we need to be ready for death and for the Second Coming at any point. Most of these terrors are still in the future. Prepare for the End of the Universe by Living a Holy Life and Spreading the Gospel Third, 2 Peter 3:11-13 tells us how we should think about the end of the world: “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” It is because of sin that these judgments are coming. Ephesians and Colossians corroborate this: because of the sins of sexual immorality, of rage, and anger, and covetousness, and idolatry, these judgments will come. We Christians should flee them. We should put sin to death by the Spirit, and live holy and upright lives. As we look forward to the day of God, and speed its coming through evangelism and missions. We must take these themes out to people in the Raleigh-Durham area and share the Gospel. Many people believe these things will not happen, but we know that these words are true, and that beyond these events will come Judgment Day. Embrace the Doctrine of the Wrath of God for Sin Embrace the doctrine of the wrath of God for sin. We will see it many more times in the book of Revelation. It is not an embarrassing or dirty secret that God does this kind of thing; it is just and righteous for Him to bring judgments on the sinners of the earth. Once More… Flee to Christ NOW!!! And then, finally, at the end of Revelation 6, everybody is looking for refuge, for a cave or some other hidden place to flee the wrath to come, but they will not find it. This is an appeal to you who are outside of Christ, that you would realize that the time for fleeing is now. The refuge is available now in the Gospel. Flee to Christ. God sent Him, His own Son, into the world, to live a sinless life and die in our place on the cross, that we might have forgiveness of sins. You can escape the wrath to come, not by works — by what you do — but by trusting in Him. Closing Prayer Father, thank you for the words of the Book of Revelation and what we have learned through studying these words today. It's enough to make us tremble, oh Lord, to realize the kind of terrors that will come on the earth. They will be even worse than I have described here. I pray, oh, Lord, that you would please give us strength to read this, and strength to believe it. I pray that we who have already fled to Christ, who we have been delivered from the wrath to come, would realize we have a responsibility to those who have not yet trusted in Christ, to share the Gospel with them, and a responsibility to You to be holy. Thank you for the Word of God, and for the chance we've had to study it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Today I'm joined with my friend Emily Barry to discuss the four hymns Thomas wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi. --- Please support PWA here: https://www.patreon.com/pwa --- HUGE THANKS to the following Patrons: Tom Dickson, Jack Buss, Sean McNicholl, Jed Florstat, Daniel Szafran, Phillip Hadden Katie Kuchar, Phillipe Ortiz, Russell T Potee, Sarah Jacob, Fernando Enrile  --- Here are those hymns:   Lauda Sion   Sion, lift up thy voice and sing: Praise thy Savior and thy King, Praise with hymns thy shepherd true. All thou canst, do thou endeavour: Yet thy praise can equal never Such as merits thy great King. See today before us laid The living and life-giving Bread, Theme for praise and joy profound. The same which at the sacred board Was, by our incarnate Lord, Giv'n to His Apostles round. Let the praise be loud and high: Sweet and tranquil be the joy Felt today in every breast. On this festival divine Which records the origin Of the glorious Eucharist. On this table of the King, Our new Paschal offering Brings to end the olden rite. Here, for empty shadows fled, Is reality instead, Here, instead of darkness, light. His own act, at supper seated Christ ordain'd to be repeated In His memory divine; Wherefore now, with adoration, We, the host of our salvation, Consecrate from bread and wine. Hear, what holy Church maintaineth, That the bread its substance changeth Into Flesh, the wine to Blood. Doth it pass thy comprehending? Faith, the law of sight transcending Leaps to things not understood. Here beneath these signs are hidden Priceless things, to sense forbidden, Signs, not things, are all we see. Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine, Yet is Christ in either sign, All entire, confessed to be. They, who of Him here partake, Sever not, nor rend, nor break: But, entire, their Lord receive. Whether one or thousands eat: All receive the self-same meat: Nor the less for others leave. Both the wicked and the good Eat of this celestial Food: But with ends how opposite! Here 't is life: and there 't is death: The same, yet issuing to each In a difference infinite. Nor a single doubt retain, When they break the Host in twain, But that in each part remains What was in the whole before. Since the simple sign alone Suffers change in state or form: The signified remaining one And the same for evermore. Behold the Bread of Angels, For us pilgrims food, and token Of the promise by Christ spoken, Children's meat, to dogs denied. Shewn in Isaac's dedication, In the manna's preparation: In the Paschal immolation, In old types pre-signified. Jesu, shepherd of the sheep: Thou thy flock in safety keep, Living bread, thy life supply: Strengthen us, or else we die, Fill us with celestial grace. Thou, who feedest us below: Source of all we have or know: Grant that with Thy Saints above, Sitting at the feast of love, We may see Thee face to face. Amen. Alleluia.   Pange Lingua Gloriosi   Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory, Of His Flesh, the mystery sing; Of the Blood, all price exceeding, Shed by our Immortal King, Destined, for the world's redemption, From a noble Womb to spring. Of a pure and spotless Virgin Born for us on earth below, He, as Man, with man conversing, Stayed, the seeds of truth to sow; Then He closed in solemn order Wondrously His Life of woe. On the night of that Last Supper, Seated with His chosen band, He, the Paschal Victim eating, First fulfils the Law's command; Then as Food to all his brethren Gives Himself with His own Hand. Word-made-Flesh, the bread of nature By His Word to Flesh He turns; Wine into His Blood He changes: What though sense no change discerns. Only be the heart in earnest, Faith her lesson quickly learns. Down in adoration falling, Lo, the sacred Host we hail, Lo, o'er ancient forms departing Newer rites of grace prevail: Faith for all defects supplying, When the feeble senses fail. To the Everlasting Father And the Son who comes on high With the Holy Ghost proceeding Forth from each eternally, Be salvation, honor, blessing, Might and endless majesty. Amen. Alleluia.   Verbum Supernum   The Word descending from above, without leaving the right hand of his Father, and going forth to do his work, reached the evening of his life. When about to be given over to his enemies by one of his disciples, to suffer death, he first gave himself to his disciples as the bread of life. Under a twofold appearance he gave them his flesh and his blood; that he might thus wholly feed us made up of a twofold substance. By his birth he gave himself as our companion; at the Last Supper he gave himself as our food; dying on the cross he gave himself as our ransom; reigning in heaven he gives himself as our reward O salutary Victim, Who expandest the door of Heaven, Hostile wars press. Give strength; bear aid. To the Lord One in Three, May there be sempiternal glory; May He grant us life without end In the native land.   Sacris Solemniis   At this our solemn feast let holy joys abound, and from the inmost breast let songs of praise resound; let ancient rites depart, and all be new around, in every act, and voice, and heart. Remember we that eve, when, the Last Supper spread, Christ, as we all believe, the Lamb, with leavenless bread, among His brethren shared, and thus the Law obeyed, of all unto their sire declared. The typic Lamb consumed, the legal Feast complete, the Lord unto the Twelve His Body gave to eat; the whole to all, no less the whole to each did mete with His own hands, as we confess. He gave them, weak and frail, His Flesh, their Food to be; on them, downcast and sad, His Blood bestowed He: and thus to them He spake, "Receive this Cup from Me, and all of you of this partake." So He this Sacrifice to institute did will, and charged His priests alone that office to fulfill: to them He did confide: to whom it pertains still to take, and the rest divide. Thus Angels' Bread is made the Bread of man today: the Living Bread from heaven with figures dost away: O wondrous gift indeed! the poor and lowly may upon their Lord and Master feed. Thee, therefore, we implore, O Godhead, One in Three, so may Thou visit us as we now worship Thee; and lead us on Thy way, That we at last may see the light wherein Thou dwellest aye.

Listen @ http://www.brendanflannagan.com/what-is-sin/ Sin; we often correlate the word with doing “bad things”. Many things inform our perception of “bad”: our conscience, the natural world, our emotions, circumstantial knowledge, and past decisions. Naturally, we weave together our moral identity using our perceptions and the resulting quilt of our conglomerated senses forms our conscience; or, how we justify our reactions to the events composing our lives. On paper, this is fine, but we know the problem. We all possess varying emotions, different perspectives, and special tastes. As Blaise Pascal, succinctly writes, “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.” So, in reality, we have not come any closer to defining bad or good. Instead, we have allowed our opinions to reign, and the subjective truth of our ever-changing minds to feed our consciences. But as beauty, as goodness, as truth have a source of objective and indisputable truth, so does sin. Once, we view sin from God’s perspective, our conscience and moral understanding will find rest and assurance, we will not only be able to define what is bad, and identify the character of sin; but, embrace what is good. In both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, sin literally translates to “missing the mark”. The mark or the bull’s-eye rests in God. Whatever lies outside of His person, anything that “misses the mark” of His revealed will, can be defined as sin. The Greek word for sin- hamartria- is formed by two root words: “not”, and “a part of”. So, when we choose sin, we decide on an action originating in our own person and not in the person of God. In sin, we choose the course and proceed by our willpower. Sin rests in men and women attempting to cast off the will of God (Ps 2:1-6). Yet, the will of God always prevails. While God plays no part in sin, nor is the source of evil, He continues to work all things for His good. His providential care and sovereign plan are not hindered by the will of men. In the book of Genesis, the words of Joseph best summarize God’s ability to use evil for His good. Joseph says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive (Gen 50:20).” As we continue to discuss sin, we may take assurance in the fact that while sin may reign in our hearts, and continues to evidence its consequences throughout the world, God never removes His thumb of dominion from the back of sin. His goodness continues to conquer the sin of this world. Ultimately, understanding sin begins with comprehending God’s nature and continues with an assurance that, despite sin's pervasiveness, God reigns over all things. For us to go against God’s will is to sin- Period! Furthermore, God reveals His will through His unchanging and inerrant word. By His Word, He directs our path and aligns our will in accordance with His purpose (Ps 119: 103-106). As we grow to understand the meaning of sin- “missing the mark” of God's will, we should begin to realize our own nature. By nature, we do not reside in the will of God; we need His word and guidance. Instead, our nature is aligned with sin. In the natural pursuit of and submission to our thoughts and desires, we continually find ourselves outside of God’s will. Apart from God, we are born in sin (Ps 51:5) and we will continue in sin our entire lives (Eph 2:1-5; Col 2:13). Finish Reading and listening @ http://www.brendanflannagan.com/what-is-sin/

God has Spoken... By His Word (audio from a YouTube video)

God has Spoken... By His Word (audio from a YouTube video)

THE MIGHTY POWER OF HOPE! JANUARY 17,2016 ROMANS 5:1-5 The meaning and origin of Hope Hope – the God given spiritual force of life that energizes life, ever reaching for more and better! The Giver of Hope (Romans 15:13) This Hope prevails over natural, circumstantial hope (Romans 4:17, 18 Hope is the thermostat, goal setter of your faith! (Hebrews 11:1) Your hope is waiting on God to say something! (By His Word, His Spirit’s inner voice, His affirmation, inner knowing) Hope sustains us in times of trouble. (Hebrews 6:13-20)How is Hope developed? (Romans 5:3-5)

I. A God Who Speaks (verses 1-2) It is with a great deal of excitement that I begin this series of studies on Isaiah, the prophet. I love history. My favorite time in history is the Age of Discovery, when Columbus discovered that tiny island that he thought was near the Indies, and called it San Salvador. I would love to have stood there on the deck October 12th, 1492, and just peered there, knowing what I know today, and say, "You know what that is? That's not India, that's the New World. It's a world to be discovered." Or to be with Lewis and Clark when they were discovering North America and all that it held. It was just a vast emptiness in the minds of most people who lived in the United States at that point. Just to be with them when they saw the snow-capped Rockies for the first time, as they drank it in and realized what a jewel the North American continent was and is. Just to be able to feed from it. So for me, I feel that same sense of excitement and discovery, to get to preach and to proclaim the truths that flow from this most visionary of books. Look how it begins in Verse 1: “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw.” It is a visionary book. Images pop in your mind when you hear any text of Isaiah read. There are images that pop in your mind. But look at the very next verse, that verse that's been in front you, I think, much of the morning. Verse 2: "Hear, O heavens, listen O earth, for the Lord has spoken." Therefore, it is a vision that fills your soul when you listen to the Word that God has spoken. And I think it is vital in this case that it is past tense. We are listening to a Word that God has already spoken. Therefore it brings us to the written testimony of the prophets, it brings us to the Scripture. We are hearing a word He has already spoken. Now I believe, from Hebrews 3, He is going to speak it again, now, by the Spirit. I am praying for it. But it is a Word He has already spoken, and it is written down for us, the Word of God written. And in this way we will have visions of God, visions of His glory, visions of the new heaven and the new earth declared plainly in Isaiah 65. Most of all, visions of Christ, the Redeemer, dead on the cross, raised from the dead on the third day. Visions of Christ, our salvation. That is what is going to fill your mind by faith. But it all starts with you listening. So listen! Calm your hearts now. Put aside all of the concerns. Don't be like Martha, running around, getting ready, making it the best day ever for Jesus, when what she needed to do was to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him speak. You have plenty of time through the week to bustle around and do all that busyness. Now what you need to do is just calm your hearts and listen to the Word of God. And so it begins with a God who speaks. A River of Words but a Seemingly Silent God We live in a culture that is just a river of words. They estimate that the average person speaks between 10,000 and 16,000 words a day. That is a lot of words. And there are six billion people on this planet speaking those words. We are looking at sixty trillion human words pouring forth every day. With the miracles of modern science, you can listen to a good percentage of them through podcasts and through CNN and through the internet. You can just fill your mind with a river of human words. That is not the kind of listening I want you to do today. I want you to hear God speak. I want you to hear Him speak. And the reason is because He seems to be silent through all of that. It seems like He is not there at all. In 1972, Francis Schaeffer wrote a book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Amen to that. He is here and He is not silent. He wants to speak and so He is speaking. Schaeffer, in that book, argued that the primary philosophical question facing the human race is this: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Schaeffer argued the only possible final answer to this question is in a triune God who speaks, who communicates, who reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ. We live in a vast, terrifyingly huge, and mostly empty universe. It is mostly empty. As a matter of fact, if you had a scale model of the solar system in which the entire solar system fit roughly within the span of your arms, the nearest star would be four miles away. Imagine just laying on your back, halfway between this speck of dust that would be the scale model of the sun and another speck of dust, the scale model of the nearest star. You would be two miles from each one. You wouldn't be able to see them. It is a vast, terrifyingly empty universe. And yet for all that emptiness, that sense of nothingness, there is a God whose glory fills it all. Heaven, even the highest heavens, cannot contain Him. And so the whole universe testifies to His glory. Even more terrifying is this: people look at history and see a vast empty nothingness. They look at the events of human history and say, "There is nothing here of any worth or value. It is just the rise and fall of one nation after another. There is nothing here worthy of our attention. It is really empty. And yet in the midst of all that, God, in Isaiah 1:2 says, "Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken." God’s Apparent Silence Misleading God's apparent silence is greatly misleading to unbelievers. They assume, because He does not immediately speak when they sin, that He is altogether like them. In Psalm 50:21 God says, "These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you." Well, that is greatly misleading. God's apparent silence when wicked people sin so grievously makes them believe there actually is no God at all, or that He likes the wicked things they do. In Isaiah 57:11, He says, "Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear Me?" The silence of God, then, is misleading to unbelievers. Others, seeing God's silence in the face of great evils like the Holocaust, change their theology accordingly. They start saying different things about God. Rabbi Harold Kushner, when he looked at the atrocities of Auschwitz, said this, "I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters. I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die for whatever exalted reason." So he adjusts his theology because it is easier for him to worship one kind of god than another. God is not presenting Himself as an easy god to worship. Instead, He is presenting himself as the King of the universe, declaring things that are, saying in Isaiah 45:7, "I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things.” And, in fact, He is sitting up on His throne and saying, "Here I am. You must deal with Me." “Hear O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.” God's silence is misleading also to believers sometimes. In Psalm 73, when the psalmist is fretting over the prosperity of the wicked, he wonders why God doesn’t deal with them immediately. Why does He let them go on and be so prosperous? When Job was going through personal afflictions, the fact that God didn't speak to him bothered him greatly. "I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm” (Job 30:20-22). “God, why are you doing all this, and You're not telling what You're doing?" Distressed by it, many psalmists basically say the same thing. "Why Lord, are You silent? Why don't You speak to me?" By His Word the Universe Exists King David, in Psalm 13 says, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.” He is troubled by the apparent silence of God. But yet Isaiah says, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.” We learn from Scripture that it is by the Word of the Lord that He creates the universe. That is why there is something rather than nothing, because God spoke it into existence. Psalm 33:6: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth." That is the power I want here today, the power that spoke forth the universe, the one that speaks constellations and pulsars and quasars into existence, the one that speaks great power. That is what I want to hear today. I want it to reach into my soul and yours, the power of God's Word to create where there was nothing before. That is the kind of power that is in the Word of God, the power of God's first act - creation. In the middle of that creation, God says, "Let there be light.” And there is light. God speaks and there is. And thus, the universe itself speaks of the existence and power of God. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” If you were floating halfway between the sun and the nearest star, you wouldn't be in total darkness because God's heavens would still be testifying of a universe full of His glory. You would see the stars more vividly than you had ever seen them before. You might worry about how you would get back home, but you would see something because God has filled the universe with His glory. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” He Has Spoken Through the Prophets But most clearly, God has spoken through the prophets. God spoke through the prophets when He descended on Mount Sinai in a dreadful cloud and the earth was shaking under the people’s feet, and God spoke and they heard the voice of God Almighty speaking the Ten Commandments. And the people trembled and begged Moses, "Oh, please, go up in the mountain and hear God's words, and you come and tell us the words. How can we listen to this great voice of God any longer? If we keep listening we will die!" And God said, "What these people have said is good. Oh, that their hearts would always be moved to fear Me." Thus, God established the office of the prophet. Moses would speak God's words for the people. And they would listen to Moses and they would hear. And the Lord said through Moses that He would raise up other prophets who would speak like Moses did. And so Isaiah was one of those prophets who spoke for God. God's Word accomplishes everything that God intends. We will learn that later in the book of Isaiah. God’s Word Accomplishes What God Intends He doesn't send forth His word in vain. It accomplishes, it achieves the purpose for which He sent it. All I need to do today is preach it. I just need to proclaim the Word of God and it will achieve, in this huge crowd, varying things that I could never orchestrate or manipulate. But God is going to do something different in each of your hearts because that is the power of the Word of God. All you need to do is listen. Just listen and God will work. And ultimately the Word He is speaking is Christ. He is speaking Christ. That is what Isaiah's vision is all about. He is speaking of Christ, the Great Savior, whose blood atones for our sins. A Heavenly Court Trial Now, as we begin here, it is not just a general statement that God speaks. No, not at all. There is a context here. It is a dreadful context. He is summoning his people to court. He is calling them to trial. When He gives the old covenant through Moses, when it is re-summarized and restated in the Book of Deuteronomy, three times He says that Heaven and earth will be witnesses concerning their keeping of the covenant. Three times He says it. Deuteronomy 30:19, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." He is calling heaven and earth as witnesses against His own people, the Jews. In Deuteronomy 31:28 He says, "Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to testify against them.” And so there is the magnificent song of Moses, in which He tells the people ahead of time what they are going to do and then what He is going to do. He tells them ahead of time that they are going to violate the Covenant. He tells them ahead of time that He is going to bring a pagan nation in to conquer and to destroy them as a result. He tells them ahead of time all their history. And he teaches it to them in a song. You know how songs are memorable, how you can remember the lyrics and the music. The song of Moses is a sad song, a scary song. It begins like this in Deuteronomy 32:1, "Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth." Do you think Isaiah has that in mind in Isaiah 1:2? Does God have that song in mind? He is saying in essence, "I told you so. I told you you would do this, and now you are doing it. Hear, O heavens, I am calling my witnesses to come and view the sin of my people, for they have violated my Covenant." II. A God Who Judges His People (verses 2-9) The Heartbreak of Rebellion So He is a God who judges His people. Israel has completely broken the Covenant. The Northern Kingdom, the ten tribes, they are gone. Assyria is going to take them away during the lifetime of Isaiah the prophet. As for the Southern Kingdom, they are not much better. Only by a miracle is God going to protect just the City of Jerusalem and godly King Hezekiah. The Assyrians get everything else until God sends the angel of the Lord and turns them away. The fact is, things are bad with the people of God, and so therefore He is summoning them to court. He is summoning them to judgment. We see in verses 2 through 9 that He is a God who judges His people. You see the heartbreak of rebellion, "I reared children," verse 2, "and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me." Like an anguished father, concerned over his wayward children, so He speaks. There are many imperfect fathers in the Bible. I contend every father is imperfect. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We see it again and again and again. There is Noah, he has Ham for a son. There is Abraham. He has Ishmael, the mocker, for a son. Godly Isaac had godless Esau for a son. Samuel's sons rebelled and did not follow the Lord. David's son, Absalom, rebelled and wanted to kill his father and take his place on the throne. All of these godly men, however, were sinners. And knowing what I know more and more about being a father, it is not hard to see your own sinfulness in your kids. It's not hard, it's heartbreaking. Every parent dreads the possibility that their children will be rebels. There are Christian parenting curricula that promise "full success, no teen rebellion." All this kind of thing, as though it were something you dialed in. You drop in all of these things and you will get freedom from all rebellion. Well, how can that be, when the only perfect father that has ever been had rebels for children? And that is Almighty God. What did God do wrong? He is going to say in Isaiah 5, concerning Jerusalem, "What more could I have done for my people than I did for them? Why then have they rebelled against me?" It is an anguished cry from a father, a perfect father who had rebels for children. And so He calls out the sinful people. There is nothing concealed that will not be exposed. The prophetic task therefore is to expose the sin, to speak about it in detailed language. So Isaiah does it. A Sinful People Called Out We have rebellion against God in verse 2. We have ignorance of God in Verse 3. Look at this. "The ox knows its master, the donkey his owner's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." The manger is a place where the food is. I know we as Christians tend to think it is where Jesus was laid. Well, that's where the beast came and fed. And what He is saying is, "The animal knows who feeds him, you don't seem to know who feeds you. The universe is intensely God-centered, and you don't know Me. You don't know how much you depend on Me. You don't know. Even the ox and the donkey know better than you." They don't know God. And there are active patterns of sin. Look at Verse 4. "Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption!" In Verse 16, he says, "Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong." There is violence. Look at Verse 15. "Your hands are full of blood." In verse 21, he mentions murderers. These are God's people, the Jews. And they are characterized by this? There is sexual immorality. In verse 21 He says, "See how the faithful city has become a harlot!" And it is not just a spiritual issue. It is also a physical, sexual issue as well. They are sexually sinning. There is injustice. Verse 23 reads, "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts." There is oppression of the poor and needy. Verse 23, "They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them." There is theft. Verse 23, "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves." And there is idolatry at the very end. Verse 29 says, "You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be disgraced because of gardens that you have chosen." There is no doubt in my mind that these represent secret pagan places where they worshipped the Baals and the Ashtoreths through immorality. They would go there and they would love them and worship them in idolatrous orgies. It's wicked. And cloaking all of this, if you can believe it, was religious hypocrisy, the machinery of religion. We will get to that in a moment. But they continue to have the outward trappings of a religious people through all of that. God’s Active Judgment Against his People And so God goes into active judgment against His people. Look at Verses 5 through 7. "Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness - only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers." He begins with an analogy of their body. The nation is like a physical body that is totally beaten up and bloody from head to toe. Recently, Charlton Heston died. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Ben-Hur. You've probably seen the movie. There is an evil guy who used to be his childhood friend, a Roman guy named Messala. He is the protagonist in the movie, the bad guy. And the climax of the relationship between the two is the chariot race, one of the greatest scenes ever in movie history. So there is this chariot race, they are racing against each other, and at the climax of the chariot race Messala gets thrown from his chariot and run over by his own chariot wheels, and then run over by two more chariots to boot. He is just trampled. They pick him up take him off, and bring him down to the bowels of the stadium. He is covered in blood. He is a totally broken individual about to die, and he does die. I get that picture of the nations of Israel and Judah, totally destroyed, ravaged by invading armies. The Assyrians come in. They burn everything. They destroy everything. They kill almost everybody. The very thing that God had promised to them, that their enemies would do to them if they violated the covenant of Moses. The crops would fail, the pregnant women would miscarry, the livestock would die from plagues, and even worse, a foreign nation would come and invade and destroy them and deport them and kill them. And that is exactly what is happening. Only Jerusalem is left unconquered. Verse 8, "The Daughter of Zion [Jerusalem] is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege." I was thinking about these verses. I was in Romania one time, and I looked out and saw a cucumber field or something like that. And there were low vines everywhere, and there was this hut all alone. You can see the vision. I told you, Isaiah is the most visionary of all, and you can picture it. He says, "Low-lying fields everywhere, all the vines low, and then there is this hut all alone." And that is what Jerusalem is going to look like when the Assyrians get done with the country. There will be nothing left, just the one city. The judgment from God was a clear fulfillment of the curses He threatened against Israel in Deuteronomy. Listen to this. In Deuteronomy 28:49-52, this is what He said He would do. "The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand… They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you." “And they will take them.” Read Isaiah 36. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came in, besieged them and took them. They're all gone, all of them. And so the whole country is destroyed. That is what He is saying. It's desolate. Yet in Wrath, God Remembers Mercy And yet, in wrath God remembered mercy. Look at verse 9. "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” No survivors. These survivors are the remnants. They are the ones that God has chosen by grace. And the implications of the text is that they, the remnant, are really no better. It is only because of the grace of God that they are not also swept away. If God hadn't done it, they would have been gone too. In wrath, Habakkuk 3:2, God remembered mercy. The people deserved to be wiped out. In many ways they were no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. I think in some ways they were worse because they had more of God's word that they were violating. They were worse than the pagan cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, actually, Isaiah just goes ahead and calls them that. Look at Verse 10. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!" These are the Jews. These are God's own people. Can I just pause this for a moment? Can I just urge you, when we are talking about the Jews and Jerusalem and the sins of those people, don't think those people out there, don't think those people back then. If God is at work in your heart, you are going to say, "Oh, God, what a wretched sinner I am that I'm like this!" Don't make it out there. I don't do it as a preacher. Don't you do it. Listen and say, "God, what are you saying to me about my sin?" Listen. Consider Sodom and Gomorrah. That is what He is saying. You are no different, we are no different, except by the grace of God. And the grace of God means we praise Him for it. We don't take any credit. We say of ourselves, “We're no different than them.” But, boy, this must have rankled with the Jews, they must have found it so offensive. "Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!" That's what he calls them in Verse 10. Now, if God hadn't left them a remnant, Assyria would have conquered them all. Was Assyria strong enough to take Jerusalem? Are you kidding? No problem. How then did Hezekiah and the remnant inside the walls survive? Because God ordained it. And Paul references this in Romans 9 in order to say, "This is the Godly remnant, the remnant chosen by grace, sustained by grace, protected by grace. They will be saved by grace. And to God be the glory for it." It is the only way any of us will be saved, to be part of that remnant saved by grace, because we are no different either. We are all the same. III. A God Who Despises Religious Hypocrisy (verses 10-15) In Verses 10 through 15, we see a God who despises religious hypocrisy. This is where it hits home. We are religious people. You are here. This is a religious event, so you are religious. You are here today, in church. So am I. It's good to be religious. James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." So there is nothing wrong with religion as long as it is good religion. So we are religious. Formalism, Religiosity, and Hypocrisy on Display What does God say about their religion? In verses 10 through 15 we see formalism, we see religiosity, and we see hypocrisy on display. The machinery of the sacrificial system just kept on running, running, running. Religious festivals, new moon feast, Sabbath, it's like a mindless machine, running, running, and running the machinery of religion. Week after week after week, the machinery of it. It was an endless parade of Jews bringing a countless number of bulls and sheep and goats. A river of blood to be offered on God's altar. A river of blood. Josephus said there were a quarter of a million Passover lambs sacrificed in one year during his day. That is a river of blood. God calls it "a trampling of My courts." "Who has asked this of you, this trampling of My courts?" (verse 12). Day after day, they did all of this evil. And then they tried to cover it up with animal sacrifice and religion, thinking that God would accept it. Even worse, they sniffed at it as did the Jews of Malachi 1:13. They said, "What a burden we have to do this. I wish we could just sin and not have to cover it with animal blood." They didn't even want to do that. And when they did, they tried to cheat God. Choose the worst animals, the ones that are lame and the blind and that nobody wants. The ones that are a bit diseased. Nobody wants to eat them anyway. Like roadkill or something. Just give God something. Just give Him something. He will be happy. Malachi says, "Try offering them to your governor! Would He be pleased with you?" (Malachi 1:8). And “I see everything you do, the traffic and wickedness." A Traffic in Wickedness The basic mentality here is, “How much does this sin cost? I'll pay it.” That's the idea. What's it going to cost to sleep with my neighbor's wife? A bull? Sheep? What's it cost? I'll pay the price. It's a machinery. It is mindless mercantilism in sin. They didn't get it. They didn't understand. The blood was to show they deserved to die for the sin. That's the point. That's the lesson, that sin deserves death. That's what they should have learned. But no, it was like, "How much does it cost?" The same thing happened in the Middle Ages with the Medieval Roman Catholic system and indulgences. If you paid money to the Pope, you could have all your sins forgiven. You could even pay for a sin ahead of time. I wonder if you could pay for ten years of sinning, free of charge. It's just evil. And yet this attitude is in our hearts, too. Throw God some religion. He'll cover it. Even born-again people in America think they can do that. Just throw God some Sunday morning religion and He'll cover it. God’s Utter Revulsion at Formalism and Hypocrisy God hates that. Look at the words, "The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to Me?" says the Lord in verse 11. "They mean nothing to Me.” “I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.” “Your religious feasts and festivals are detestable to me. I hate them." He says, "I can't bear your evil assemblies. I detest it when you get together." He says, "My soul hates your religious gatherings. They are like some kind of crushing burden.” “I am weary of bearing them." Here is the infinitely powerful God saying, "I am getting tired of carrying this mess." Even their prayer life is detestable to God. Look at Verse 15. "When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood." Isaiah later will say, "All our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). Listen to John Bunyan. I heard this quote this past week and said, "Wow." So I actually wrote it right down. John Bunyan said, "The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin in it to damn the whole world for eternity." "The best prayer I ever prayed." Well, God has utter disdain for their religion. And we need to apply this to ourselves. How tragic is this lie that Satan foists on us in every generation, that God should be honored for anything we do for Him? He should be happy with any bone we throw His way, that the mere outward show of religion will be enough to cover us. Even in Baptist churches, some people think that just by being a member of the church, serving on some committee, coming most weeks, even coming on Wednesday nights, that that is going to do it, the religiosity. In Greece and in Russia, they think that because you are born in the Orthodox church and baptized in the Orthodox church, you are saved. God hates heartless, machine-like, formal religion that is a hypocritical mask covering up all those sins. Hear Isaiah 29:13. "The Lord says: 'These people come near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men.'" I believe the hardest category of people on the face of the earth to evangelize are people who have been attending church all their life but are not converted. I don't know what to tell them. They have learned somehow to hear the Word of God and change it in their minds so that they don't repent. They don't take sin seriously. They don't grieve over sin. They're not broken by it. They don't take a text like this seriously. They think it is about somebody else, not them. I don't know what to do for them. I hope I am not talking to any of you today. It would be better if you openly did not claim to be a Christian and then could come to Christ, than to have you in that state. It is a very serious condition. IV. A God Who Pleads with Sinners (verses 16-20) And so we have a God who pleads with sinners. In verses 16 through 20 we see God’s call to come. Look at Verse 18. "Come now," He says. "Come, cross the distance between us. There is a gap between us. Come to Me. Come. Draw near to God. Come close to Me." Their sins have made a distant gap between them. Their idolatry has put an infinite gap between them. But now God beckons them to come near to him. And he calls on them to reason. “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord” (verse 18). The Hebrew word is rich, as though God were welcoming some kind of discussion, some rational exchange over their sin. "Let's talk about this. How is the sin working out for you? Is it going well, your life in sin? Let's talk about it. Let's reason together." Sin is unreasonable. It's insane, it's irrational. It produces corruption and misery. It results in estrangement from God, enslavement to an ever-increasing cycle of wickedness. It stores up an ever-increasing sense of doom and wrath on Judgment Day. Sin is the ultimate tyrant. It has its boot on the necks of all of its slaves and wants to crush them to death and send them to hell. Sin is the ultimate tyrant. And yet we welcome it. We choose new patterns of sin. Why would we do that? It's insane. So God says, "Come now, let's talk about this. Let's reason together. What has sin ever done for you except destroy your life? Let's converse about this." It is like the prodigal son. Remember the story? He goes away from his father. He is bored at home. I don't know, - maybe there’s not enough to do. So he says, "Give me some money," and he goes out and has a life of partying and all that kind of thing untill the money runs out. Then there is a famine in the land. He has a hard time getting a job and ends up slopping pigs. As a Jewish young man, that is pretty tough. He longs to fill his stomach with the pods they give the pigs, but that would be stealing. And they wouldn't even give him anything. Nothing. And then in Luke 15:17, Jesus said this, "When he came to his senses, he said, 'What am I doing here? What am I doing here? How many of my father's servants are well fed and well dressed? Look, I can just go back and be a servant. He'll treat me well. I don't deserve to be his son, but I can go back." When he comes to himself, he comes to his senses. I am telling you that sin is insane, it is irrational. It is the insanity of sin. So the Lord says, "Come now, let us reason together." And then He calls on them to repent. "Wash and make yourselves clean" (verse 16). "Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right! Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow." It's a call to repent. Now think with me about this. The more I've learned about Scripture, the more I have realized these things are impossible apart from Christ. Look at each one. "Wash and make yourselves clean." How are you going to do that? How? How are you going to wash and make yourself clean? You are sitting in a mud puddle, covered in mud top to bottom, surrounded by muddy water. You go to wash yourself up. "There, how do I look?" Still muddy. "Well, how about this now?" More muddy. Muddier. How are you going to wash and make yourselves clean? How about the next one? "Take your evil deeds out of my sight." How are you going to do that? Does He not fill heaven and earth? Is there anything hidden that He cannot see? Is there anywhere you can go where He is not already there? Where are you going to go to take your evil deeds out of His sight? And what about this one: "Stop doing wrong"? That's the whole problem! Apart from Christ, we can't stop doing wrong. We are slaves to sin. "Start doing right." Well, that is the flipside of "stop doing wrong." I can't do either one. And what about caring about other needy people, seeking justice, encouraging the oppressed, defending the cause of the fatherless, pleading the case of the widow? I don't care naturally. I don't care about them. You cannot do any of these things if God's grace doesn't change you first. You could not do any of these things if Jesus hadn't died on the cross for sinners like you and me. You can't. None of them. But in Christ you can do all of them. In Christ, there is forgiveness. These are not empty words from God. This is what God will do in anyone who turns to Christ. V. A God Who Works Salvation and Threatens Judgment (verses 21-31) “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.’” He has the power to cleanse from all sin. It doesn't matter how heinous. “Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.” How do we get a willing and obedient heart if God doesn't take out that heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, willing and obedient? But if He does that, you know what? You are going to eat the best from the land. You will live forever, in the new heaven and the new earth, and you will eat the best of the land. But there is the flipside, the warning of total destruction. “If you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (verse 20). "Zion will be redeemed with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the Lord will perish" (verses 27 and 28). How can we do this? How can we be redeemed with justice? How can Zion be a place where God would want to live, a holy place? It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53, He said, "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." Christ is the perfect sacrifice. His blood cleanses us from sin. It is a cleansing, redeeming fountain. Our filth, and our sinful wickedness can be cleansed. In Christ alone we can wash and make ourselves clean. In Christ alone, through the indwelling spirit, we can stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Why? Because He cares about those things. Christ alone. This whole chapter just aches and yearns for an answer, and the answer is Jesus. He is the best of the land. He us what you are going to feast on when you come to God in repentance. You get Jesus and everything in Him. VI. Application Come to Christ, come to Him. Come to Him for the first time, repent and turn away from sin. He is pleading with you through me. Stop sinning. Turn away from it. Let's reason together. It is leading you to hell. Look at Verse 31. "The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together with no one to quench the fire." The unquenchable fire is hell. The best of the land is heaven. It's what He is offering you in Christ. Flee the wrath to come, and trust in Him. And if you're already a Christian, then come to Him again and again and again. Don't think, "This isn't me." Think, "This is me, apart from the grace of God. If God removed His grace from me, even now, I would sink immediately back into this. Immediately, I would. I know it. By the grace of God, I can be righteous. By the grace of God, I can be redeemed with justice and be made pure and holy." And if I were you, I would just, as a Christian, simply delight in the perfect righteousness of Christ. That is the gift of Isaiah. It is the gift of the Gospel. He will see you perfectly righteous, perfectly righteous. So draw near to God and reason with Him. If you are trapped in a cycle of sin, let Him talk to you today. Let Him say, "What is it doing for you? This unlawful pleasure - what is it doing for you? Is it not corrupting you? Be free from it. Let us reason together." Repent of religious formalism, don't just come here week after week and do the Baptist thing. Don't. Don't. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. He says, "Don't just bring Me empty sacrifices.” God is not impressed. Develop a deep concern for the poor and needy. We will hear of this again and again in Isaiah. Reach out to the urban poor, reach out to Northeast Central Durham, reach out. But even more, reach out to those who are lost, dead in transgressions and sins. I don't care how much money they have in their wallet. Reach out with the gospel. Finally, I want to speak a message of encouragement to parents of rebellious children. I think there could be few things more heartbreaking than to see your own children drifting away from God, to see them rebelling. Maybe they are not growing in their faith, not going to church. Just understand, the God that you bring them to in prayer every day - and you better be praying for them every day - the God that you bring them to, He understands what it is like to have rebellious children. Unlike Him, you cannot say, "I never did anything wrong. I was the perfect father, perfect mother." You can never say that. Actually, it's very distressing to see your own sin patterns replicated in the next generation. We must take responsibility for that. But understand this, God knows what it is like to have rebellious children. And He specializes in turning them away from their rebellion and back toward him. This is what He does. He has this kind of power, trust in Him for it. Close with me in prayer.

I. Introduction We are looking this morning at Colossians 1:24-29: Elements of a Fruitful Ministry. I love history. I do. I especially love colorful figures from history, and I think there are few as colorful from the old American West as the snake oil salesmen. I am talking about individuals that would go from town to town in interestingly colored carts and wagons and set up shop in each place. They would have fascinating, bizarre remedies to cure whatever ailed you. If you bought their little vials of substances and oils and other remedies, and you took them they might do you some good. You might feel better, you might feel worse or you might feel the same. The snake oil salesman certainly made a good living, and often they would go to the next town, and you would probably never see them again, at least not that particular one. Another one might come in six months. Every week, thereabouts, I get things in the mail that teach me how to grow this church, from church growth experts that tell me what I need to do to make this church a success. Success in a box: All you have to do is send your $139.95 (or whatever the amount it is) and it comes right out of the box and it will make this local church a success. Don't you want to? I want to be a success. Would you like to be a success? I would like this church to be a success. You may wonder what the two of those illustrations have to do with each other, the snake oil salesmen and these experts, and their various remedies to cure what ails you. I think you can see the connection. I would rather hear from someone who can tell me the truth. How can we grow this church to be everything that God wants it to be? In the context of Colossians chapter one, I want to understand what kind of ministry will glorify Christ as He has been revealed in this chapter. Think about that. What kind of Christ have we seen? He is the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn over all creation. By His Word, the Heavens and the Earth came to be, and have their being to this very moment. This is the glory of Christ. We learned last week that He is the one who shed His blood on the cross. It is by that blood shed on the cross that every man, woman, and child who will ever stand before God, blameless and unafraid, holy in His presence, will be escorted into the very presence of almighty God to live forever and ever. It is by the blood shed by Jesus on the cross that all of that will happen. It is by His blood that the world, the universe, will be reconciled to God. Now, what kind of ministry is worthy of that? That is the question in front of us today. And the Apostle Paul, as he does so frequently, presents himself and his own ministry as an example for us to follow. He describes to the Colossians the nature of his ministry. He describes what it is like and what he does. And he does this, not to boast in himself, but in effect, to say, "Follow me as I follow Christ. This is the kind of ministry that is going to build the church. This is it." And so this morning, we're going to look at a pattern for fruitful ministry. I'm not saying that these eight elements that I find here in Colossians 1:24-29 exhaust the depths of everything that could be said about the elements of a fruitful ministry. And I am not even saying that they exhaust Colossians 1:24-29. But I think these eight things are helpful for me as a pastor, and to all of us as Christians who have a ministry (and that should be all of us) that we would look at these things and say, "Oh, God, work this in me." I was very convicted by this passage of Scripture, specifically in the area of tireless labor for Christ. That is very convicting for me. And I want you to be convicted as well. I want God to work in your heart. I want God to work in your heart and to use Paul's example. And so as we look at the pattern of ministry here in Colossians 1:24-29 there are eight elements: Stewardship, joy and suffering, full proclamation of the Word of God, but with a focus on Christ in the midst of that full proclamation, a shepherding, nurturing heart, teaching and admonishing with all wisdom, and a clear focus on maturity in Christ and Christ-likeness. We're looking to see Christ formed in individuals, and then that aspect of laboring in the Lord by His power. These eight elements we are going to look at today. Now, I want to just take a moment because Andy Winn is not here and I just want to talk about him. Okay? Is that all right? He usually sits right over there. You’ll notice he is not here; he is on vacation. And I know this is being taped, so he can listen to it later. But when I come to Colossians 1:29, for the rest of my life, I am going to remember Andy Winn. We needed a youth pastor, and we were interviewing, and Andy had been doing fruitful ministry here. He was almost done at Southeastern and so he was presented as a candidate, and I thought he was a good candidate. I wanted to ask him about it and talk to him, so we sat down, and the two of us talked together. And I asked him, I said, "Andy, what, in your mind, are the keys or the elements of a fruitful, successful youth ministry?" Without blinking an eye, without hesitating, he said this, "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, in order that we might present everyone perfect in Christ." He got the job. That was it. First of all, he had it memorized. That was really good for me, all right? He chose the right verse, and he has been doing that kind of ministry in our midst ever since, for seven plus years, and I think that is just a sweet thing. And so, if you see him, encourage him, because that is the kind of man that he has been in our midst. But this isn't just Andy Winn's verse; this is my verse too, and the verse of anyone who wants to be faithful in ministry, and I just thought that story would be encouraging to you. I'll never forget it. These are elements, not just of a fruitful or successful youth ministry, but of any ministry. As you hear these eight elements, don’t just think 'apostle,' and don't just think 'pastor,' or 'youth pastor.' Think 'yourself.' Because I believe that God has entrusted to each one of us a ministry, for which we are going to be held accountable, and these same elements will be helpful for all of us. Let's look at the first one and that is a perspective of stewardship. A stewardship perspective. II. Stewardship Perspective (verses 23, 25) In Verse 23, Paul speaks in the Gospel. He said, "This is the Gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under Heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant." A servant. And then in Verse 25, he says, "Of the church, I became a servant [or a minister], according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the Word of God fully known." Paul considered his ministry a stewardship to himself. It was something entrusted to him by Christ. Now, a steward is a servant who manages someone else's property, someone else's possessions, and seeks to manage them in a way that would honor the master, and be pleasing to the master. That is what a good steward does anyway. And Paul sought to be that kind of a servant, or a steward. A minister or a servant is like a table waiter. That is the word used here. And the idea there of being a table waiter, is that you are not the chef. You are not the chef, you are not the cook and you have no business getting involved in what is on the plate. It is your job, successfully, to take it from the master chef and present it unadulterated at the table. And that is the way Paul saw himself when it came to the ministry of the Word, and I see myself that way too. It is not for me to mess with the doctrines, or to rearrange them, or to change the Word of God, but rather to present the Word of God in its fullness. Paul saw himself as a servant and as a steward. He believed that Christ had entrusted this ministry to him. Now, he says in 1 Corinthians 9:16 and 17, "For if I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me, if I do not preach the Gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have a stewardship that has been entrusted to me." He says again in 1 Corinthians 4:1 and 2, "So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those who have been entrusted with the secret things of God. Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” Brothers and sisters, have you been given a trust? Has a ministry been entrusted to you? I would argue from Scripture, that every Christian must have a ministry. Every Christian must put forth labor and effort by the power of the Spirit to build the church of Jesus Christ. What is your ministry? If nothing is popping into your mind, may the Lord awaken within you a yearning for an identifiable pattern of ministry in this local church, so that Christ might be glorified. But if you have a ministry, you are a steward of that ministry; it has been entrusted to you, and someday, you are going to have to give Christ an account of what you did with it. And so the first idea here of a fruitful or a successful ministry, is to consider that it has been entrusted to you by Jesus Christ Himself. For it says in 2 Corinthians 5:9 and 10, "So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." We have to give Him an account, and then, from Him, we will receive our rewards. III. Sustaining Joy (verse 24) Secondly, we see the issue of sustaining joy. In Verse 24, Paul says, "Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you.” This is the commitment of the Apostle Paul. Paul had a commitment to joy in the ministry. What good is a ministry done by a miserable person? Think about that. Just picture it in your mind: "I'm a teacher." "What do you teach?" "I'm a teacher of the Word of God." You know, like Eeyore? Have you ever met an Eeyore kind of person? I'm not against Eeyore. I'm just saying, there must be a joy, a visible joy in ministry. And Paul says, "I rejoice." There is a commitment to joy and it is a realistic joy. He didn't have his eyes shut. He says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, "sorrowful, but always rejoicing." We are sorrowful because the more you get into ministry the more you are facing the wreck that sin leaves in people's lives, and it is really sad. It is really sad, so you sorrow, you weep. Jesus was a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering, and yet, He died for the joy set before Him. And so we have got to be buoyed up by joy in ministry all the time. Just about all of the book of Philippians is given to addressing this issue of joy, the attitude of joy. "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice." Joy is the only proper response, I believe, to the greatness of the hope that Christ has won for us. Our future inheritance, brothers and sisters, in the new Heaven and the new Earth. Oh, how rich we are in Christ. How rich is our future and how great should be our joy. You ought to feed on that joy every single day. Now, I believe that joy is an indicator of spiritual health, and that a lack of joy is an indicator of spiritual sickness, or a problem. It is similar to a canary in a coal mine. Back in the olden days, before we had the kind of technology that we have today, miners would take a canary, and put it in a little cage, and bring it down with them into the coal mines. The reason they would do this, is not because they were lonely, and wanted a pet. The reason they did this, is because the canaries were very sensitive to the presence of methane gas or carbon monoxide. Especially carbon monoxide, it is odorless and colorless. And so, if you were a coal miner and you were down there, you would just learn to talk to your bird, and listen to its singing and watch it as you worked. And if the bird was doing well, then you were fine. But if the bird started to look woozy and started to sway on its perch, you would know you needed to get out of there. You probably ought to take the bird with you. It would be just out of love for God's creation, but you need to get out. That canary in the coal mine was a sensitive early warning system for difficulties, invisible difficulties, and so also is joy in the Christian life. It is sensitive, it is delicate, isn't it? Are you characterized by consistent Christian joy? And I do not think anybody, honestly, is going to say that. You catch me at every moment, 168 hours a week, well, minus the sleep time...but anyway-I would guess I'm joyful in sleeping. But if that is your only time of joy, you've got problems. Do people characterize you as a basically joyful person, connected to the joy of the Gospel or not? I think joy is a great early warning sign. You look at what Paul wrote in Galatians, as they were drinking in bad doctrine and legalism, and all that. He asked them in Galatians 4, "what has happened to all your joy?" That is a big problem and when you do not have joy in the Christian life, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7, speaking of financial giving, he says, "God loves a cheerful giver." He doesn't just love a giver, friends. He loves a cheerful giver. He does not accept gifts given with irritability and given out of compulsion with a grumpy attitude. Well, and that is not just about financial giving, it is any giving you do to the Lord, any aspect of your ministry, you need to do it cheerfully, you need to do it with joy. Any spiritual gift ministry, teaching with joy, giving with joy, praying with joy, serving with joy, and hospitality with joy. It says in 1 Peter 4: 9, "Offer hospitality without grumbling." Many of you are going to open your homes tonight to home fellowships. I just want to say thank you for your sacrifice. It is going to be hard work. You're going to work this afternoon to get your house clean. Or maybe your house is always beautiful and clean. Maybe I'm showing something of myself I don't need to show right now. We do have to labor to get our house looking that good. But that is hard work. It says, "Without grumbling." Instead, we do it joyfully. Your ministry has to be done with joy. Now, Satan, I believe, attacks joy all the time, constantly sending joy thieves after you. Pride is a joy thief, isn't it? "I don't deserve what I'm getting. Don't they notice and don't they see all the good things I'm doing?" Pretty soon, your joy is gone. Or, "I don't deserve the trial I'm going through, the suffering I'm going through in my life. I don't deserve it." Pride is a joy thief. Selfishness is a joy thief. So also is a guilty conscience. A guilty conscience is a terrible joy thief. It's hard to be joyful, if you've got a guilty conscience. Unbelief is a joy thief, not trusting the promises of God. False doctrine and legalism are joy thieves, just understanding grace wrongly. The greatest joy thief of all is sin, wouldn't you say? If you are not joyful in Christ, that is probably because you've sinned and you need to confess something to God. All of the ministry we do, we need to do with joy. And it is a commitment that we make, isn't it? We are going to make a commitment. We're going to rejoice in the Lord. We're going to be like Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. We're going to sing, and praise, and worship. Paul and Silas, beaten publicly without a trial, put in stocks in the inner cell, a dark, nasty place, and they fill it with joyful singing to God. And do you know what God did? He sent an earthquake, and He shook the place, and the result was the Philippian jailer and his family coming to faith in Christ in the middle of the night. Does that happen if Paul and Silas are not joyful in their trial? I tell you, it doesn't. I’m saying God doesn't send that earthquake and I'm saying that Philippian jailer doesn't get saved that night, if they hadn't responded joyfully in the midst of their trial. He pulls them out trembling and says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" He wants to know. I tell you, joy in evangelism and joy in ministry is so attractive; it's so engaging. IV. Embracing Suffering (verse 24) Thirdly, embracing suffering. You might think, the two of them, how do they go together? How do you go from joy to suffering, one after the other? But Paul openly embraces it, he says, "Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the church." Now, this is a fascinating verse. Fascinating; there are lot of things in this verse. First of all, I think that many translations have a different approach. It's more like, Paul is rejoicing in his own sufferings for the Colossians and he fills up in his body what is lacking. But I actually don’t think that is what the Greek says. I think the NIV has it right, in this case. Because Paul says, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you." He's never been to the Colossae. He doesn't know them personally. He hasn't suffered anything personally for them. Now, he's lived a lifestyle of suffering and we'll get to that in a moment, but not for them. I think what is going on here is, he is saying, "I rejoice in the principle of suffering in what happened, what Epaphras, perhaps, or other servants have done to plant the church there in your community. I rejoice in it. I rejoice in what was suffered for you." That's a bigger issue, isn't it? What does it take to plant a church in a city like Colossae? What does it take to bring a single person to Christ? What does it take for us to finish the ministry God has entrusted to us? What does it take for us here at First Baptist Durham to reach out to this Triangle community with the Gospel? What does it take for those of you that are preparing for cross-cultural, unreached people group ministry? What is it going to take for you to bring your people group to Christ? I tell you, it's suffering, and without suffering, it will not happen. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." There is no progress made in the Kingdom of Heaven without sacrifice, without suffering. And so what Paul is saying here is, "I rejoice in the suffering that happened to bring you about. I rejoice in that." I think it is one of the most glorious things to consider, that we are part of a royal family of brothers and sisters in the Lord, who did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Revelation 12:11 says, "They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." But they were willing, in the Roman era, to have their blood poured out in the sands of the Colosseum, to see the Roman Empire basically be converted. These are faceless, nameless people to us, but God knows each one of them. And Paul would say, "I rejoice in what was suffered to do that." Tertullian said, "The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” I rejoice in that. I embrace it as a principle. It is the way Jesus saved our souls. I rejoice in the principle of suffering. Jesus saved us by suffering and he set not just our atonement up, but the pattern by which the atonement would spread to the ends of the Earth. Polycarp, burned at the stake, said, "86 years, I've served Him, and He's never done me wrong. How can I betray my King, who saved me?" Glorious statements, one after the other. Adoniram Judson buries two wives and a daughter in an effort to take the Gospel to Burma. Even today, there are brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering and dying. You would not believe all of the incredible things that are happening in Iran. You hear about Iran, politically. You hear about Iran, in terms of the threat they are to world peace, in terms of atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, but below all of this, the church is exploding, people are coming to faith in Christ. It's an awesome thing, but they are doing so, sometimes, at the price of their own lives. Paul would say, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you." We don't know those stories. Someday, we'll learn them though, when we are in Heaven and it's testimony time, and we are freed from time constraints, and we are freed from pride and selfishness. Notice that Paul is not rejoicing in his own suffering for the Colossian church. He is rejoicing in what Epaphras suffered, free from selfishness. It doesn't matter who did the suffering, that person is my brother or my sister in Christ. I rejoice in it. We will delight in those stories. We will delight in hearing about a brother or sister in Christ during the time of the bubonic plague, the Black Death, who took his or her life into their hands to bring nursing and the Gospel into a specific area. They were willing to die and maybe did die of the Black Plague, but they led some people to Christ before it happened. We'll rejoice in those stories and delight in them. We're part of that royal heritage. But Paul goes deeper here. He actually gives us a theology of suffering. He says, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regards of the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the church." This is very deep. It's a bit mysterious. What does Paul mean when he says, "I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking, in regard to the afflictions of Christ?" What could possibly be lacking in the suffering of Christ? Well, there are some things we can just reject, some ideas we can just get rid of here. Look back a few verses to verse 19 and 20. It says of Christ, "God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross." Is there anything lacking in that, brothers and sisters? Anything at all? When Jesus says in John 19, after receiving the drink and knowing that all was fulfilled, when He said, "It is finished," and then he pillowed His head down on His chest, and gave up His Spirit and died, was there anything lacking in the afflictions of Christ at that moment? I tell you, no. It's a perfect work of atonement. But let's take what John Murray said in his great book "Redemption Accomplished and Applied," to understand this. There was suffering for Christ to get redemption accomplished, but then there is suffering for us to get it applied. Do you see? Jesus did His work. He ascended to Heaven. He sends forth His Spirit and He says, "I will give you power, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the Earth, and you will suffer to do it. You need to take up your cross to do it." "And I fill up," Paul says, "In my flesh what's still lacking, in regard to Christ's afflictions." They are still Christ's afflictions. Now, how are they Christ's afflictions? Well, you remember Saul of Tarsus, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples? He got letters from the synagogue leaders, and the high priest, and the officials, so that he could go to the synagogues in Damascus, and arrest any there who belonged to Christ. And on the way, he got knocked to the ground by the blinding, resurrected Christ, the light, the glory of Christ. And do you remember what Jesus said to him? "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “When you drag off men and women, and throw them in prison, I feel it. You're hurting me." When your hand hurts, it sends a signal to the brain. When your foot hurts, the brain knows about it immediately. And so also, all of the sufferings of Christians, the martyrs and the witnesses, all of that suffering is Christ's afflictions. And Paul says, "I'm filling them up in my body." Is there a call on you, in that regard? Are you called to suffer at all to advance the Gospel of Jesus? Are you suffering to advance the Gospel of Christ? V. Full Proclamation (verse 25) Fourth, full proclamation. In verse 25, Paul says, "I have become its servant [a servant of the Gospel] by the commission God gave me, to present to you the Word of God in its fullness." Verse 28 says, "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." The essence or the center, practically speaking, of Paul's ministry, was the proclamation of the Word of God. The proclamation, the teaching and the preaching of the Word of God. That was the center of what he did. Preaching was the center of God's plan for the salvation of the world. Now, the snake oil salesmen in the 21st century are telling us that preaching's day is over: "It's finished. We're in a different era now, of communication, and we need to compete with the computer graphics that are done with movies, and with all of the stuff that's done for ad campaigns, and everything that is done on the internet, and all of the ways that we're communicating now. We need to come up into that. Preaching is done. The simple communication of the Word of God through preaching is finished." It will never be finished. It will never be finished, because God has ordained the simplicity of the preaching of the Gospel, as the way that He will work. Now, I'm not saying that we can't be more sensational, more spectacular, that we can't entertain better, that we can't send people off with a bigger bang. We can do all of that, but that is not how the church will be built, not that way. And so we proclaim. "I am to present the Word of God in its fullness," Paul says. That was his calling. And so he says to the elders in the Church at Ephesus, in Acts 20, he says, "You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you, but have taught you publicly and from house to house." He was there for three years, ministering to those people every day. And he said, "I didn't shrink back from proclaiming anything that would be helpful to you. I taught you publicly from house to house." Verse 27 of Acts 20, he says, "I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God.” “All that was in God's mind to communicate to you, I preached that. I taught that to you." As a matter of fact, Paul yearned to hit the finish line having accomplished all of it, whatever God had entrusted to him. Again, Acts 20, he says in verse 24, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." He knew what he was about, and that was the clear proclamation, the teaching of the Word of God; that is what it was about. Now, the church is the steward of this ministry. And therefore, it is not just the pastor, but there are teachers who teach the Word of God in its fullness, and they need to be faithful to it. This church, First Baptist Church, must be fully committed to this kind of an expositional ministry, if we're going to continue to be healthy. We need to hear the Word of God in its fullness. Amen? If the Lord were to take me tomorrow, get somebody else who will do it. You have to have this kind of clear teaching of the Word of God in its fullness, not shrinking back from anything in the Word, but just saying what it says, if you want to grow. And so also, the teachers in Bible for Life, and Acts, and Home Fellowship, teach the Word of God in its fullness. It is essential to the Great Commission. You know that, don't you? "Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and what? "Teaching them to obey... " What's the next word? "Everything I have taught you." That is the Word of God in its fullness. Tell it. What do I need to do, Lord? All of it. I don't just want part of it. Tell me all of my responsibilities. I want to be faithful to the whole counsel of God. Too often these days we fall into pragmatism. The snake oil salesmen are telling you, "This is what works. We've got this little thing," and they're measuring it by human techniques. No, the Word of God is what will build the church from inside out. It will grow numerically and it will also grow into the image of Christ this way. And yet, for all of that, there is a focus to the preaching: the focus is on Christ. Yes, he preached the whole counsel of God. Yes, it was the Word of God in its fullness. But you know who the Word of God in its fullness is? It is Christ. VI. Christ-Focus: “Christ in You, the Hope of Glory” (verse 26-27) And so in the end, we need to teach the 66 books of the Bible. Yes, we need the stuff in Leviticus, but we need to find Christ in Leviticus. Amen? We need to know where He is in all of those offerings, and all of those washings, and all that cleanness and uncleanness. We need to know where Christ is in all of it. We proclaim Christ. Look what it says in verses 26, 27 and on. It says, "The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him." Yes, there is a breadth to a healthy preaching and teaching ministry in a local church, but there is a laser-like focus on Christ in all of it. We proclaim Him. And why? Because it is Christ in us, the hope of glory, and how mysterious is that, friends? This infinite God, this image of the invisible God, the one by whose word the cosmos existed and have their being, this one can live within our own hearts. He can dwell within us by faith. We proclaim Him and the unveiling of a great mystery that Gentiles, we Gentiles, can actually be sharers together with the Jews in one great, new people called Christians. One new man, focused on Christ, trusting in Christ, forgiven. We are new creations, aren't we? And a new creation existing with Christ in our hearts. Oh, is that an awesome thing, that by Christ, the triune God would actually live within a human heart, would live within us. We are the temple of the living God. And it speaks there of the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you realize how wealthy you are? You may be a poor student. You may be struggling to make ends meet. You may be having trouble paying your bills. There may be some hidden aspects to your financial struggles that nobody knows about. God knows. But if you're a Christian, you are infinitely wealthy. The immense riches that are yours, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you know what that means? That you will see glory, you will see it with your own eyes. You will see God in the face and not be consumed. You will see the new Heaven and the new Earth; you will see it with your own eyes. You will walk the perfect streets and you will see things you can't even describe. I couldn't describe them. You will see glory, but more than that, you will be glory. And if you are not, you can't be there. You will be glorious. God will make you glorious. Christ in you is the hope of all of that, the hope of glory, and that's what we proclaim. We proclaim Him. Now, what does that mean, "We proclaim Him?" Well, you know Spurgeon’s story when he was teaching young pastors about preaching? (And I keep this in front of me frequently.) He told the story of an old pastor who listened to a young man preaching one of his first sermons and the young man said, "How did you like it?" And he said, "I didn't like it at all." “Well, why don't you tell the truth?” But you need people that will tell you the truth. The young man said, "Well, why didn't you like it?" He said, "There wasn't any Christ in it." He said, "But I didn't find Christ in the passage." And he said, "Don't you know, my boy, that in every town, and village, and hamlet in England, there's a road that leads to London? Find it." In every text, there's a road that leads to Christ, find it. He said, "But what if Christ isn't even mentioned in the text? What if he's not there?" He said, "Then go over a hedge or ditch, but find Him. Get to Christ." Now, friends, there'll be no point in me preaching a sermon like this, talking about ministry, about Jesus in general, and forget that there may be some that are here today, brought by the providence of God, who are not Christians yet. You are listening to me now in a Christ-less state; you are not ready for judgment day. The wrath of God is on you now, and if you were to die, you would know what that meant immediately. You are not ready to give an account for every careless word spoken and you are not ready for death. But you can be. It is this simple: You don't have to do any great good works. You just have to hear what I'm saying now, and believe that God sent His Son, and His Son shed His blood on the cross, and by that, the wrath of God can be fully atoned for, fully appeased, for anyone who simply trusts in Christ. Do you hear what I'm saying? Do you believe it? That God didn't leave Him dead on the cross, but He raised Him from the dead on the third day? And that if you believe all of that, you will be saved? Trust in Him now. I believe that every week God brings someone into this place who is not saved. Trust in Him. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone." VII. A Shepherding Heart (verse 28) And this brings us to a shepherding heart. "Admonishing, teaching everyone with all wisdom." God has done a wonderful work in this church in the last two years, in raising up the beginnings of a really wonderful counseling ministry. My yearning and my prayer, I've prayed a lot about this in the last two weeks, is that God would lead us to continue to grow, and that God would raise up more laborers for this abundant harvest field. Do you know how messed up non-Christian's lives are because of sin and how much they need the truth of the Word of God? Even Christians struggle with being messed up because of sin. And we need to hear the Word of God too, don't we? God has raised up a wonderful counseling ministry. We had Randy Patten in the summer; he's the President of NANC, National Association of Nouthetic Counseling. The word 'nouthetic,' comes from a Greek word 'noutheteos,' right in our text here today. "We proclaim Him, admonishing." Now, it was Jay Adams in Competent to Counsel, who taught us what this nouthetic counseling is. Basically, what it is, is taking the Word of God, and going to an individual who is struggling with sin, and warning, and admonishing, and working with him, so that they give up the sin, repent, and come to a healthy relationship with Christ. And it is done gently, it is done with humility. It is done taking the log out of your eye first. It is done with a recognition that the roles could be reversed in two or three months, but it needs to be done. And so Paul says, "This is a shepherding ministry." We care about what's going on. We admonish with all wisdom, not in a coarse, crude, prideful, harsh way. How do you take something out of somebody's eye? Do you want somebody to take something out of your eye? There's a twitch mechanism. You have to come gently and you need to have built some trust. When I touch my little baby's face she doesn't flinch, she just knows. But if somebody she didn't know comes, she is going to pull back, and so there's a way to do it. But this is a shepherding ministry. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and also teaching everyone with all wisdom." The teaching aspect of the ministry, every precept, every little block of truth; you've heard a lot of them already today, not just in my sermon, but in Bible for Life. And every true statement, every true doctrine is like a brick of truth that God uses to erect a whole lavish city of truth inside your heart. It takes time, but this teaching ministry builds up a worldview of truth, out of which you will live your life. And that's a shepherding ministry that must continue. "We proclaim Him, admonishing." Dealing with people and their sin truthfully and teaching everyone with all wisdom, as they need it. VIII. A Clear Goal: Maturity in Christ (verse 28) And the clear goal of all of this is in verse 28, "So that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." Perfect in Christ. Now, I don't believe in perfectionism. Perfectionism is basically the idea that you can be sinless and perfect in this age, in this present age. I don't think it's true. I know it's not true. Romans 7 speaks of a deep and bitter struggle with sin, and we will not be perfect in this world. But we can walk in the light as He is in the light and at the same time the blood of Christ cleanses us in an ongoing way from all sin. But the goal here is, we're not satisfied with where we are. How many of you are satisfied? Don't raise your hands, but are you satisfied with where you are at in your Christian growth? You've arrived? You're done? Well, this isn't a good church for you, because we're all about the journey here, the infinite journey, the one you haven't reached yet. And what that means, is that you will not arrive at perfect Christ-likeness in this life. So the goal of ministry, the goal of this kind of a ministry, is to present everyone perfect in Christ. The idea is that, if you have a ministry, you are presenting your workmanship to God, saying, "This is what I did." And so you're presenting, in effect, people, and saying, "We want to present people perfect in Christ, and we're going to pray, and we're going to cry, and teach, and admonish, and we're going to do all of these things toward this end, that you might be perfect in Christ, and we're not going to stop until that happens." But only Christ will finish it. You know that. He is the only one that can. He is the only one that can glorify us, and so that's the completion of our ministry, but we labor toward it. And along the way, as we aim for perfection, we're going to hit maturity. Spiritually mature men and women, and they will be like rocks, like pillars, on which God builds an ongoing work. And so that's our goal. There's a focus, a clear goal. IX. Sustainable Labor with Christ (verse 29) Finally, Verse 29, "To this end, I labor, struggling with all His energy, that so powerfully works in me." I was thinking about the martyrs, the blood of martyrs, a seed for the church, thinking about suffering, reading martyrs stories and all that, and it seems somewhat removed from my life. Now, I think it is wonderful that God has brought to us, and continues to bring to us, people who have a missionary call. And they're going to follow and obey that call, and I may be talking to someone, a young man or a young woman, or maybe older and you may end up being slaughtered for Christ. You may die as a martyr for Jesus. It's possible. It doesn't happen a lot, but it is possible. It is good to know the theology of that kind of suffering, and know how Paul rejoices in it, and how God will honor it, and how it is a glorious thing to not love your life so much as to shrink from death. But I think most of us American Christians are called to a different kind of suffering of two types: Suffering for personal holiness and suffering to labor in Gospel ministry. Despite all the inducements to a self-serving, entertainment-soaked, selfish, lazy way of life, that we would, instead of that labor for Christ and for His Kingdom. Labor like Paul. Look what he says, "To this end, I labor." 'Kopiao,' it means to work to the point of exhaustion. Struggling is 'agónizomai,' like in agony, wrestling against an opponent, "With all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." I think the reason we hold back from pouring ourselves out in labor, is we are afraid. We are afraid that there will not be a sustainable, renewable energy source to keep us going. We don't want to be exhausted. And that's so sad because people who lose that fear, and just go for it, find the power of Christ in them, like Paul did in him. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, in order that we might present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." Just look at the sun today. Just look at it. Now, there is a renewable, sustainable energy source for you. We're looking for one. I don't know how long petroleum's going to last, but there's the sun. I'm not talking here about solar energy. I'm just talking about the sun as an example of what God can do. Do you realize that, if you took the gross national product of the United States of America, (we heard this on a tape or a DVD, speaking about the greatness of God in the cosmos) if you took the gross national product of the United States of America and invested it completely in energy production for the next 100,000 years, it would be less than the energy put out by the sun in one second. Are you telling me God can't keep you going for the next 40 to 50 years of faithful service to Christ? He can. Test Him. Try it. Look at what the Apostle Paul did, hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger. I think his schedule was like this: When he was working as a tent maker, during the day, he preached to unbelievers. In the evening, he ministered to Christians, teaching them, and preparing them. In the late night, he sewed tents to support he and his fellow workers. That was his life. And so he speaks frequently about his work. He says in Acts 20, "You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak." 1 Corinthians 4:12, "We work hard with our own hands." 1 Thessalonians 2:9, "Surely, you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; We worked night and day, in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the Gospel of God to you." But here we are. We coddle ourselves, we comfort ourselves, and we entertain ourselves. We don't work hard for Christ. Now the quickest thing to do is to go find some solution ourselves and bring it to Christ. That's not it. Go to Christ and say, "This is who I am. This is the way I'm really living. I actually don't have a ministry, or if I do, I'm not really laboring at it to the point of exhaustion. I'm not really focused on ministry. I don't have a ministry. I'm not really laboring at it the way Paul did. Forgive me, Lord. And then work within me the kind of energy it will take to get my priorities straight, and to start living the kind of life you want me to live." I've already done that. I'm going to keep doing it. Paul challenges me. And I feel like, "Oh, how sweet it will be when, five years from now, people say, 'You know, I don't know what it was, maybe around the time of Colossians, some other time, God worked in me and he gave me a ministry. And over the last five years, I've really felt poured out in that ministry. And look at the fruit.' " And I don't know what it's going to be. Evangelistic fruit? Wonderful. Let's see it happen. But it could be all kinds of spiritual gift ministries. This is the labor that Paul, that God is calling us to. X. Applications By way of application, can you begin just by praying that this kind of eightfold ministry would happen here at this church? Pray for me, that I would be this kind of a pastor. Pray for Andy Winn, for Eric. Pray also for our spiritual leaders, who are not vocational ministers, but are called to ministry, that they would minister like this. Keep going. Pray for yourself, that you would minister like this. Pray that God would give you a ministry, an identifiable, clear ministry, and that you would labor in it like this. Pray that God would raise up fruit in your life. Concerning suffering, you may be going through some great suffering right now, just know that there's a purpose in it. Know that there's no suffering that happens, that's not coming to you, except through the hands of God. And just know that God is, in effect, putting you on display. Suffer with great joy. And I want to finish with joy. Canary in the coal mine, what an image. How's your joy? Is it where it needs to be? And if it's not, go to the Lord this afternoon in prayer, and say, "Lord, what is the joy thief in my life?" Maybe it's that you don't have a ministry and you're not serving Christ. You've tasted the world, and it's not satisfying to you, and you're not happy. It's because you've built your house on sand-or just a wing of your house anyway. Let God crush that wing, and get back to building on Christ, and on His words. Maybe there is sin in your life. Confess it to Him. Confess it. Let Him work in you. He is a gracious God. This is the kind of ministry, not only that God wants to work through you, but He wants to work to you. Let Him do it.

Loss of Focus on the Kingdom They forgot to bring the bread. That was a big mistake. The scripture never resolves it. It's like an unresolved key on the piano, it doesn't resolve into a sweet chord. We don't know what they had for dinner that night, we never found out what they actually, in fact, ate. I do have a strong instinct that not one of them died of starvation. Do you have that sense? Not one of them died of starvation, but they did forget to bring the bread. It’s worthy of mention at least in the Scripture right there in verse 5, they forgot to bring the bread. I must tell you, and I don't think it's perverse I think it's intended by God. I find pleasure in their failing, I just do. I find comfort in the fact that they were forgetful. I find consolation in the fact that God's grace can cover our sinfulness and our weakness, that we have a God who watches over us and providential cares for us, and that in this text, He’s calling on us to look above our earthly forgetfulness and our weakness and our failings to kingdom matters and focus on that and concentrate on that and let him take care of our needs. I take consolation in that. I take consolation in the fact that the Bible is unfailingly honest about the failings of its great people. I mean, the apostles were great heroes of our faith. They were chosen by Christ after a night of fasting and prayer. They were the human foundation of his future work. Their eyewitness testimony to Christ, to His life, His death, and His resurrection, was the foundation of the future generations of the church, which I think the later part of this chapter makes plain. Peter and the other Eleven stood up on the day of Pentecost. They raised their voices, and they proclaimed the Gospel with great courage and 3,000 were added to their number that day, in one day, what a great harvest. They would write down their eyewitness accounts, they would give us four Gospels, they would give us the New Testament. We read it, and we derive great benefit from it. They would step out in faith and they would shape the course of church history, by their key decisions, by their lifestyle, they were great men. In the end, they would courageously testify to a hostile world at the cost of their own blood - at the cost of their lives - to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were great men; they were incredible heroes and yet they were examples of weakness and failing and sin. It's right here you can read about it. They frequently misunderstood Christ, they didn't know what he was saying to them, they couldn't figure it out. They frequently displayed carnal attitudes and actions, like we do. They displayed selfishness, when they were indignant with James and John, who were asking to sit at Jesus' right, and his left at the Kingdom. They were indignant because they wish they'd thought of it first. They wanted to sit at the right and the left, not because of anything other than selfish reasons. They displayed unbelief when they couldn't drive out the demon from that boy when Jesus was up on the Mount of Transfiguration and Jesus said, “Oh, faithless and unbelieving generation.” He was talking about his own disciples, what a moment that was. They displayed cowardice when they all deserted him and fled the night He was arrested, “This night you will all fall away on account of me,” Jesus said. All of them, not just Peter, all of them fled. After the resurrection, they displayed unbelief when the women testified to the resurrection, the evidence that they'd seen with their own eyes and they wouldn't believe it. They were foolish of heart and slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken. They were like that. They were ordinary men, with ordinary sin patterns. In this one chapter, we have abundant evidence of both the godliness and sinfulness of the apostles. Godly, in that they'd left everything to follow Jesus; sinful in that they still can't seem to trust him to meet all their needs for the journey. They're godly in that they believe Jesus did those miraculous feedings by the great power of God, but sinful in thinking that doesn't apply to their present situation. They were godly in that they were committed to following after Christ's character and becoming like him in every way, but sinful, in that they're bickering and arguing over who forgot to bring the bread. Godly, in that Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the living God. Bu ungodly in the same chapter, when a moment later, he rebukes him concerning going to the cross. This chapter has ample evidence of the apostles. They’re a mixed bag. For myself, I think, this was written to give me comfort and consolation. How can both be true? How can we be as Martin Luther put it at the same time righteous and sinful? How can it be, even James wonders over that, out of the same mouth come praising and cursing? Out of the same heart come righteousness and sin, how can it be? How can it be? But indeed, it is true, and you know it, don't you? Out of the same life come praising and cursing, how can it be? The Bible's this way throughout, honest again and again about the failings of its great people. Like Abraham, who lied to save his skin at the expense of his wife's honor, not a good moment for Abraham. Isaac, you know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, he did the same thing to save Rebecca, again, same pattern. Jacob is a conniver, a liar, a con artist, with all kinds of issues, played favorites in his family, not an ideal father in that regard at least. Judah sleeps with a prostitute and then tries to cover it over. Moses, you know, commits murder and then when he's called, at age 80, by flames of the burning bush, it's quite a sign, but not enough. “Send somebody else Lord.” He doesn't want to go. The Jews as a nation, consistently a mixed bag, consistently believing and not believing. You've got the two spies that believe, the ten spies that don't. That's the way it is again with even the godly men and prophets. The great example is like Elijah standing before God and man on Mount Carmel, calling down fire from heaven and then, afraid of a woman [Jezebel] a few hours later, running for his life wanting to die. Laying under the broom tree, Elijah ’s ready to die. Both Job and Jeremiah accused God of injustice, both of them did. You can find it in the scripture. Both of them said that God was unjust, unfair to them. John the Baptist before he died, doubted whether Jesus was the Messiah. He was among those born of women, no one had risen greater than John the Baptist, and he's there doubting, right before his death, and Jesus does some miracles in front of John's messengers to persuade them, so that they can persuade, John. The scripture consistently testifies honestly to the failings of its great people. You know why, because Jesus said it this way, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Ecclesiastes 7:20, says, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.” I believe it's Biblical to say that there's not a person in this room who's done being saved. All of us have to continue in faith, in godliness, in trusting in him. We have to continue in a lifestyle of repentance and trust and the Lord. By His Word and by His Spirit we are going to keep uncovering new issues. You're going to keep seeing new patterns of sin. You're going to be grieved over it, and what should you do? Follow the example of the apostles. Turn to God with tears coming down your face and ask for forgiveness. He will restore you and this act will continue the rest of your life. I think it's a good thing when we come to passages like Matthew 16, and see the failings of great people and realize that we can fail too and still be in the family of God. Isn't it remarkable how Jesus can use his omnipotence, his great power to use people like us to build an eternal kingdom? He can use you. If you're a Christian, He can use you. It doesn't matter how many are your weaknesses and how great are your failings, He can use you. His grace is sufficient in the middle of your weakness, actually He's made glorious in weakness. It's not perverse that I'm glad that they forgot to bring the bread. I guess really what it is, is I'm glad that they wrote about it, so that when I forget my cellphone or my wallet or my keys or I forget to call somebody back or forget to do something and I chide myself over my forgetfulness, this passage steps up and confirms that God's grace is sufficient to cover my weakness. And that's encouraging. For you perfect people, take the morning off, okay? But for the rest of us who need this kind of encouragement, I find it right here in this passage. Reasons We Lose Focus: Forgetfulness So, we begin with forgetfulness, and forgetfulness is covered by God's grace. Look at it in verse 5. When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. At one level, it's a small failing, but at another level, a significant one. There weren't going to be supermarkets to quickly go to, this was a big deal. It's a steward’s job to see to it that God's people get their food at the appointed time. Someone blew it. I can imagine how the discussion went, “I thought it was your turn.” “No, it must have been yours, I got it last time.” This kind of thing, but one of them forgot. When people are counting on you to meet their needs and you don't follow through, that's a big deal. I don't want to minimize it. I believe that daily life forgetfulness is evidence of sin, evidence of the frailty of our nature when you promise to pray for someone and then forget to do it, and the next time you see their face brings to memory that you promised that you would pray for their situation, and you didn't. That's a sinful self-focus for myself because I'm prone to that kind of sin, I've learned to pray immediately when someone asks for prayer to stop and say, "Let's pray now". But I think it's frailty when we are late in mailing a birthday card or forget to return a call or do various things. I think it's sin, it's self-focus. Our deal is more important than that deal. We’re not talking about physical reasons for forgetfulness. My grandmother died of Alzheimer's. It was hard to watch her in those last few years as they forget their own name, they forget the faces of people they loved. That's very tough and its evidence of the sin that entered the world through Adam. Mental illness is therefore just one more physical effect of the disease of sin that entered the world at that beginning with Adam. But for those of us that don't have that physical thing I still think forgetfulness is just evidence of sin. The issue in this passage is what happens when you forget. Jesus is in the boat with them. The question I want to ask is, is it true that God helps those who help themselves? That's really what this passage is about, in terms of their forgetfulness. “God helps those who help themselves.” It's an ancient proverb that Benjamin Franklin put in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736. He didn't make it up, it’d been around a long time. The problem with the passage or with the proverb is it's not just that God helps those who help themselves, it's that God only helps those who help themselves. To say that God helps people who helping themselves leads to work salvation, doesn't it? Do you know that George Gallup did a poll and 75% of Americans thought that's actually in the Bible? It isn't. Actually, it flies in the face of salvation by grace. God is in the business of covering up our weakness. He's in the business of making up the difference. You know we say to each other as friends do, “I’ve got your back.” What does that mean, “I’ve got your back?” What it means is, “I’ve got you covered in your weakness, in your weak spot I'm watching out for you. You watch out for me too.” Well, God has our back, He's covering for our weakness and our failings. Fact of the matter is, we cannot completely care for ourselves, we certainly can't save ourselves, we can't even feed ourselves apart from His grace, we get our food from rainfall. From sunshine, from a good harvest, from livestock multiplying over which we have no control. Then an elaborate food delivery system over which we have no control gets it to our favorite supermarket. That's what we depend on. Jesus, in this passage, is really rebuking our arrogance, and our self-focused and our confidence that we need to save ourselves, that we need to take care of our own needs. Jesus says in Matthew 5:36, “You cannot make even one hair white or black.” He says in Luke 12, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life since you cannot do this very little thing, then why do you worry about the rest? Why are you worried as though you're the king of the universe?” As though you need to take care of everything yourself? God has committed himself to caring for our needs entirely. Here's the confusing part. Sometimes he uses our labor and industry, and foresight and planning to do it, and sometimes He particularly doesn't use those things and takes care of us anyway. He humbled Israel and taught them to trust in Him by giving them manna every day for 40 years, which came down out of heaven, and in this way, He's humbled them, saying, what you need to do is to get a basket and go out and collect it. That's all. For 40 years. He humbled them and taught them this lesson. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is by God's command that you live and move and have your being. Why did they need to be trained for 40 years? He was bringing them into a fruitful land, a land soaked with the rains of heaven, a land where there were vineyards and crops planted that they didn't plant and houses that they didn't build. They were going to step immediately into prosperity, and when they stepped into that good land, immediately into prosperity, they would forget God, and forget how dependent they were on him. Is that not our failing also as a nation? We live in a good land, a land soaked with the rains of heaven, a land with good crops, a land where you can dig copper and gold and iron out of the hills. It's like the promised land in that regard, it's good land. It's easy for us, in our prosperity, to forget that God gave it to us, and that we are dependent on Him every moment, every day. God meets our daily needs, and they're met by God's grace every day. So, our forgetfulness is covered by God's grace. So next time you're at the airport and you start fumbling and you find that you didn't bring any form of identification, and you have an e-ticket, and now you have missed your fight. It's that simple. I'm just urging at that moment, trust in God, He has something big planned for you. Don't just imagine that those that didn't forget their passport and all that, are going to die in a fiery plane crash, and God was rescuing you. No, they just remembered to bring their identification, and they'll be fine. God has a different plan for you. God can cover our weakness, learn to trust Him in those situations. Yes, plan ahead, please bring your passport and form of identification to the airport. Got to have this, so I can get on the plane. Alright, I always check, but you know something, if for some reason I forget and then I must trust God. Reasons We Lose Focus: Arguing Secondly, we notice that arguing is covered by God's grace. Verse 6-8, “Be careful,” Jesus said to them, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They discussed this among themselves and said, “It’s because we didn't bring any bread. That's why Jesus is talking about yeast.” Aware of their discussion. Jesus asked, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?” One of the most natural things in the world when someone forgets to bring the bread is the blame game. Right? Have you ever done that? You get into that bickering situation, you know what happens, it's like... It's like river water that you just let sit for a while and it looks clear enough to drink, but then when you kinda jostle it a little bit stuff starts getting stirred up. I think when there are these kinds of stressful situations, what's in the heart comes up and pride tends to come. This wasn’t merely discussion. There was an argument going on here, in Luke 9:46, the same word is used, it said, “An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.” Now, that's an ugly moment right there. The sam is word used here. The disciples are bickering, and bickering is a great sin, so is blame shifting, pointing the finger, it's your fault, it was your turn. I brought it last time, all of that. None of that matters. We're commanded in Philippians 2:14, "Do everything without complaining or arguing." But you know what, arguing is covered by God's grace. Notice how gracefully Christ deals with it here. You can imagine them huddled in one side of the boat, not wanting to argue in front of Jesus, and Jesus in the other end of the boat, “What are you discussing among yourselves?” He knows exactly what they're talking about. You know that all of our arguments are done right in front of Jesus, all of them. He knows exactly what we're arguing about, and yet, there He is covering it with His graciousness, covering it with mercy. He's pointing them to the things of the Kingdom. Thanks be to God that even these kinds of ugly disputes can be covered by His grace. Reasons We Lose Focus: Hardness of Heart We notice also that hardness of heart is covered by Christ's grace. Aware of their discussion Jesus asks, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don't you remember the five loaves for the 5000 and how many basketfuls you gathered, or the seven loaves for the 4000 and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is it that you don't understand that I was not talking to you about bread?” They'd already seen two great feeding miracles both centered around bread. They had already seen this feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000. Now Mark's Gospel gives us an insight here. Mark 8:14 tells us they actually did bring one loaf; Mark 8:14, “The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat." I think it's possible that Matthew didn't mention it because it was in the bottom of the boat where all that swill water is and maybe it wasn't edible. I don't really have any idea, but it clearly wasn't enough to feed the whole crowd. What were they thinking? Were they thinking, "Well Jesus, we know you need to have at least five loaves to do the miracle, and you only have one, so we're in trouble.”? Jesus says, "You of little faith." He upbraids them. Friends, this is a very significant spiritual principle. There was an insight that came to me this week concerning this. I believe with all my heart that faith comes from hearing the word, but apparently faith comes from more than just hearing the word, it also comes from living in God's world, and seeing his power. Because he says, "You of little faith, you should have known by living through these experiences, what I have done in the past." I actually think the two go together. I think the word of God interprets our experiences under God's sovereign grace, and they together give us faith. They should have known by living through the experience that Jesus can handle this, they should have known by living through it again, that Jesus can handle this. They shouldn't have been so doubtful; they should have trusted. Faith comes not only by hearing, but also by hearing and living in God's world, and seeing his mighty power by His Spirit. He says, “You of little faith.” There's a world of difference between being called, "You of little faith,” and “You have no faith." If you have no faith, then you have no forgiveness of sins, you're un-regenerate, you are lost, you're heading to hell if you have no faith. If you have little faith, what's happening is, the inside of faith that God has given you, you haven't learned yet to apply it to any and every situation. You don't need more faith; you need the same faith applied over and over again. There is a God, He's a king, He loves me, He's powerful, He can handle it. It's the same thought, apply to every situation. Why did they have such little faith? Why did they still not understand? Mark’s diagnosis is hardness of heart. Aware of their discussion in Mark 8:17-18, Jesus asked them, "Why are you talking about having no bread, do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, but fail to see? Do you have ears, but fail to hear? And don't you remember what I did?" Their hearts are hard. What is a hardened heart? It's one that's resisting the work of God. We're not able to learn lessons, we've got stubbornness, we've got selfishness, pleasure-seeking, these things make it hard for us to learn Christ's lessons. After Jesus fed the 5000 and then walked on water, Mark describes very clearly how hardness of heart was the reason they were afraid of Jesus. Remember they thought He was a ghost. Mark 6:49 and following says, “When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost, they cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.” Immediately He spoke to them and said, "Take courage. It is I, don't be afraid." Then He climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely amazed for they had not understood about the loaves, their hearts were hardened. The reason we don't learn lessons that God sets up for us, how He orchestrates providentially circumstances, and we go through them and don't learn the lesson is our hearts are hard. Hardness of heart hinders understanding. A hindered understanding means anxiety and problems. Our eyes are like those of a blind person, our ears are deaf to God's still small voice. Our mind is like a sieve, like a bucket with 16 holes blown in it. We have to keep learning the same lesson, and just draining out, draining out, how inefficient. Isn't it amazing that God can build his kingdom with people like us? Isn't that incredible? But hardness of heart is covered by Christ's grace. Thanks be to God, He knows how to work with hardened hearts, He knows how to soften them. He knows how to work with them, He is gracious with people who have hard hearts. And above all, He is skillful at using his Word to transform our lives by the renewing of our minds, so that our hard hearts get softened by the Word of God. We start learning more and more, and we learn to trust Jesus, trust him for everything. False Teaching: The Yeast of the Pharisees & the Sadducees The real danger Jesus was getting at had nothing to do with bread. I hope you know that. He wasn't even talking about bread; He was using an analogy. He was talking about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. It wasn't even about bread; it was just an analogy. Look at verse 6, “Be careful,” Jesus said to them, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Frankly friends, all of that bread discussion was just a distraction. That's the whole point of this passage. We are distracted by things that don't matter. Do you realize that? You're going to get hungry about three times a day. It is not the point of the Kingdom. God will meet that need. That's not what we're about here. If it's feasting you want, you're going to have it in the kingdom forever and ever. We'll be in the presence of God, and as He sees fit in his beautiful way, we will feast with Him at His table, and what a magnificent thing is. But right now, we're about the kingdom, and Jesus is urging them to see through the distractions and know about the piece, the loaf of bread in the bottom of the boat. “I know about it; I know where we're at with that. Focus with me. Focus, concentrate, beware, be on your guard of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well. Don't worry about your life, what you'll eat, or drink, about your body, what you'll wear, is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? So, do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Focus with me now, concentrate, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Now what that yeast? It's false teaching. The context of this is an encounter Jesus had in verses 1-5 of this chapter, when the Pharisees and Sadducees came and wanted to see a sign from heaven. He's thinking about them and said, "Watch out for those guys, watch out for their teaching." The yeast is the teaching and it's called yeast because it spreads, like gangrene, like the plague it spreads, it doesn't stay put. False teaching is deadly dangerous for the life of the church. So, “You Apostles,” He's saying, “You are going to be guardians of the mind and the doctrine of the church. Watch out for these two great perversions of world view. These are the two greatest there are: the yeast of the Pharisees, self-righteousness, religion through self-effort, thinking you don't need a savior, thinking that just by obeying a bunch of religious rules and regulations, you can make yourself perfect in God's sight.” Secondly, the yeast of the Sadducees: denial of revelation, denial of the resurrection of the body, thinking that this life is all you get, so you might as well have a good time and enjoy it and forget about all that religious stuff, but concentrate on here and now, and enjoy your life. These are the two great perversions of world view. Beware of them. These teachings are going to crop up again and again; thinking that you can save yourself through your own efforts, or thinking that this world is all I've got, so live for my pleasures right here and right now. Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees, that's what he's getting at. Now, false teachers who do not repent are in deep trouble. 2 Peter Chapter 2 says blackest darkness is reserved for them; the most severe penalty there is for false teachers who don't repent. False teaching is the most deadly attack there is on the life and the mind of the church. But even false teaching is covered by Christ's grace, because Christ's sheep don't believe it, they don't follow it. They are aware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees; they know that they can't be saved by their own works. They know that this world is not all there is, that the pleasures of this world are vanishing. They don't mean anything, they know that. “My sheep hear my voice; they will not follow the voice of another.” You are God's people; you have an anointing an unction inside you and you know the truth. 1 John 2, “I do not write to you because you don't know the truth, but because you do know it.” “You're established in the truth. False Christs and false prophets [Matthew 24] will come and perform great signs and wonders to deceive even the elective, if that were possible, but it's no, because Christ's grace covers false teaching, and He will not let us be deluded. Instead, He gives us warning, He gives us patient careful teaching. We are ready when the false teachers come, and we say that is wrong. It's unbiblical. We're ready. He's called them to the truth as leaders of the church, the very thing that Paul called the elders in the Church of Ephesus in Acts 20,” Be on your guard. Remember that for three years, I never stopped warning each of you, night and day with tears. Beware of false teaching. Beware, they come in like wolves with sheep's clothing on, watch out for them, watch out for these two forms of perversion of worldview, watch out for it, be on your guard.” Application stop worrying about everyday life issues What application can we take from this passage? First of all, stop worrying about everyday life issues. Think about this last week, did you worry about anything this week? Do you worry about anything to do with your body, anything to do with your income, anything to do with relationships, anything to do with your future? Did you worry this week? Stop worrying about it. These earthly things are not the reason you live. Life is more than that. God's providence will take care of you. I have to balance it because some of you are going to say, "I don't even need to look both ways before I cross the street. No, I told you to check to see if you have a passport and your self-identification, before you go to the airport. Proverbs 19:3 says, “A man's own folly ruins his life, but his heart rages against the Lord.” It's your fault God, I forgot my passport. No, it isn't God's fault. What I am saying is, do whatever you find your hand to do, pray, think about your trip, think about your day at work, plan as best you can, but understand this, God sometimes providentially will create blind spots so that you learn to depend on him more and more. You don't have to watch out for everything in your life because you can't, it's too big a job. It's just too big a job. Trust him, stop being anxious about your life. Focus on the kingdom. focus on the kingdom of christ Secondly, focus first and foremost on the kingdom of Christ, it is what is happening in this world. May I speak a word to those of you that are here who have never trusted in Christ? I'm urging you, don't be worried about your life, about your food, about your clothing, be worried about your soul. You may have come here today, and you don't know Jesus as Lord and Savior, you're not ready to die, you should be anxious about that. You should flee to Christ because His blood shed on the cross is sufficient for you. Trust in him, seek first his kingdom, his forgiveness, repent of sins, turn to him, turn away from evil, turn to God, and follow Him that you might know the forgiveness that only He can give. If you don't know how to do that, if you don't know what to say, if you don't know what to do, then talk to me after the service. It doesn't matter if eight people are waiting. Wait, it's worth it. Come and talk to us if you need to. Don't leave this place not sure whether you're going to heaven or hell. But I say that those of you who have already made a commitment to Christ, seek first his kingdom as well. Seek it every day. You mean to do ministry, but Monday was crazy, Tuesday was worst. Wednesday, the car broke down. Thursday, your boss got all over you, Friday, the kids got sick, and 10 years pass by. Forget these things. Yes, you have responsibilities, but seek first His Kingdom, He's lying on your heart to do a ministry so do it. He's lying on your heart to expand your prayer time, to include unreached people groups, then pray for them. He's lying on your heart to memorize a chapter of the Bible. You thought of that four years ago, do it now. He's laying it on your heart to witness to your boss, or co-worker. You've been thinking about it for a year, do it this week, do it tomorrow. Seek first His kingdom, don't wait, don't put it off, pursue him. beware of the yeast of the pharisees and sadducees Thirdly, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Don't think for a moment that you're not susceptible to those two perversions: saving yourself, self-righteousness, I don't need Jesus, I'm doing well by following rules and regulations, or this world really in the end is all we have, and we need to just get as much gusto and as much pleasure and as much fun as we can in this world. Those two things are going to be screaming at you the rest of your lives. Beware of them, watch out for them. Seek first His kingdom and let God meet your pleasure needs, and comfort needs, and love needs. Do his work and realize you need Jesus every moment for the forgiveness of sins, you can never save yourself. grow an active trust in the lord Fourthly, grow an active trust in the Lord. Just feed on His word, strengthen your faith. Faith comes by hearing, apparently from this passage faith also comes from living in God's world and seeing the hand of Christ at work. I give pre-eminence to the Word of God to interpret our life experiences. But the two just go together, don't they? We see God be faithful, as George Muller saw God be faithful to feed 10,000 orphans over decades. His faith was strong thereby, he had learned how to trust God through all of those things. Grow in active trust in the Lord and daily life circumstances.