Podcasts about like cain

Audio Recording Audio Block Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more Sermon OutlineSpeaker: Rev. Scott StrickmanSermon Series: Come, Let Us Walk in the Light of the LordIsaiah 26:9-21 (ESV)9 My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.10 If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness;in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord.11 O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it.Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.12 O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works.13 O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance.14 They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise;to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them.15 But you have increased the nation, O Lord, you have increased the nation; you are glorified; you have enlarged all the borders of the land.16 O Lord, in distress they sought you; they poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them.17 Like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near to giving birth,so were we because of you, O Lord;18 we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind.We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.20 Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you;hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by.21 For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.Sermon OutlineThe Easter message is life-giving news for people who are drying out and dying (v19).1. You Who Dwell in the Dustv9 “my soul yearns for you in the night… the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” v16 “in distress they sought you, they poured out a whispered prayer…”v17-18 “like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs… we writhed but we have given birth to wind.”2. Awake and Sing for Joyv21 “behold the Lord is coming… the earth will disclose the blood shed in it…”v19 “your dead shall live… the earth will give birth to the dead”v19 “your dew is a dew of light”Prayer of ConfessionO living God, our souls yearn for you. We are children of dust – frail, broken, and burdened by the corruption that dwells within us and all around us. Like Cain, we wrestle with shame, envy and anger. Our efforts to mend ourselves and repair the world have been like labor pains that give birth to wind. We need Jesus – the One who descended in humility, who entered our dust to raise us from it. We need your Spirit - to breathe life into our dying bodies, to revive hearts grown cold, and to raise us from the ashes of our sin. Do not deal with us as our sins deserve, but look upon us with mercy. Forgive us for the sake of Christ, who gave his life that we might have life in him. Awaken us, O Lord, to your marvelous grace. Renew us by the power of your resurrection. And lead us into the joy of new life, through Jesus Christ, our risen savior. Amen.Questions for ReflectionDo you ever feel like you “dwell in the dust”? What does it mean to be dust? Describe what it is like to feel like you dwell in dust.Can you relate to Cain, who felt he wasn't good enough, needed to improve, but whose growing resentment outpaced his energy to fix himself or rightly deal with his problem? What temptations rise when our efforts fail and frustrations growHow do you respond to the injustices of the world – when the innocent suffer and the guilty seem to thrive? How does this shape your trust in God, His justice, His timing? Does it feel like something is missing in life? What do you think it is?Why is it significant that Abel is remembered in the New Testament? What can we infer from the fact that Jesus came remembering Abel and the righteous whose blood was shed since his time?How are Jesus' sufferings like labor pains?How does receiving the Holy Spirit change us? Keeping in mind the imagery of dry dust, what happens when God's Spirit starts to work within us?What are some specific components of the Easter message that are reasons for rejoicing? What can you recognize, take hold of, and meditate on, that would breathe hope and encouragement into your soul?Have you ever prayed to receive the Holy Spirit? If not, what is stopping you? If you have, how can you seek God for fillings of the Spirit? What priorities will help you live a Spirit-empowered life?Read AheadIsaiah Sermon Series

Audio Recording Sermon OutlineSpeaker: Rev. Scott StrickmanSermon Series: Come, Let Us Walk in the Light of the LordIsaiah 26:9-21 (ESV)9 My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.10 If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness;in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord.11 O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it.Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.12 O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works.13 O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance.14 They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise;to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them.15 But you have increased the nation, O Lord, you have increased the nation; you are glorified; you have enlarged all the borders of the land.16 O Lord, in distress they sought you; they poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them.17 Like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near to giving birth,so were we because of you, O Lord;18 we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind.We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.20 Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you;hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by.21 For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.Sermon OutlineThe Easter message is life-giving news for people who are drying out and dying (v19).1. You Who Dwell in the Dustv9 “my soul yearns for you in the night… the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” v16 “in distress they sought you, they poured out a whispered prayer…”v17-18 “like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs… we writhed but we have given birth to wind.”2. Awake and Sing for Joyv21 “behold the Lord is coming… the earth will disclose the blood shed in it…”v19 “your dead shall live… the earth will give birth to the dead”v19 “your dew is a dew of light”Prayer of ConfessionO living God, our souls yearn for you. We are children of dust – frail, broken, and burdened by the corruption that dwells within us and all around us. Like Cain, we wrestle with shame, envy and anger. Our efforts to mend ourselves and repair the world have been like labor pains that give birth to wind. We need Jesus – the One who descended in humility, who entered our dust to raise us from it. We need your Spirit - to breathe life into our dying bodies, to revive hearts grown cold, and to raise us from the ashes of our sin. Do not deal with us as our sins deserve, but look upon us with mercy. Forgive us for the sake of Christ, who gave his life that we might have life in him. Awaken us, O Lord, to your marvelous grace. Renew us by the power of your resurrection. And lead us into the joy of new life, through Jesus Christ, our risen savior. Amen.Questions for ReflectionDo you ever feel like you “dwell in the dust”? What does it mean to be dust? Describe what it is like to feel like you dwell in dust.Can you relate to Cain, who felt he wasn't good enough, needed to improve, but whose growing resentment outpaced his energy to fix himself or rightly deal with his problem? What temptations rise when our efforts fail and frustrations growHow do you respond to the injustices of the world – when the innocent suffer and the guilty seem to thrive? How does this shape your trust in God, His justice, His timing? Does it feel like something is missing in life? What do you think it is?Why is it significant that Abel is remembered in the New Testament? What can we infer from the fact that Jesus came remembering Abel and the righteous whose blood was shed since his time?How are Jesus' sufferings like labor pains?How does receiving the Holy Spirit change us? Keeping in mind the imagery of dry dust, what happens when God's Spirit starts to work within us?What are some specific components of the Easter message that are reasons for rejoicing? What can you recognize, take hold of, and meditate on, that would breathe hope and encouragement into your soul?Have you ever prayed to receive the Holy Spirit? If not, what is stopping you? If you have, how can you seek God for fillings of the Spirit? What priorities will help you live a Spirit-empowered life?Read AheadIsaiah Sermon Series

Roy Cannaday from the Dice Tower (and game designer of Last Light) joins Candice to discuss their favorite board games with asymmetric factions.00:00:00 Introduction00:04:43 Fresh Plays00:04:59 Let's Go! To Japan00:09:31 Tindahan (Filipino Fruit Market)00:13:44 Trick and Trade00:14:26 Like Cain and Abel00:16:56 Fortitude00:17:29 Star Wars: Unlimited00:22:31 Ironwood00:35:58 Asymmetric Faction Satisfaction00:36:02 The Asymmetric Faction Secret Sauce00:41:34 Dune 00:44:56 Heavy Euros (Age of Innovation, Gaia Project, Terra Mystica)00:48:33 Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition) 00:51:29 Cooperative Games (Spirit Island, Too Many Bones)00:54:06 Root00:56:12 Historical Games (The COIN Series, Here I Stand)01:01:53 Heroes of Land, Air & Sea01:05:08 Two-player Epics (Dune: War for Arrakis, War of the Ring, Star Wars: Rebellion)01:12:12 Cosmic Encounter01:15:35 Multiplayer Games (TI4, Root, Dune, Hegemony)01:17:29 Two-player Card Games (Android: Netrunner, 1815 Scum of the Earth)01:20:12 Honorable Mentions (Vijayanagara, Defence of Procyon III, Vast, Crescent Moon, Red Dust Rebellion)01:23:57 Sign-offThank you to our sponsor, Lookout Games!Web: https://boardgamegeek.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@boardgamegeekTwitter: https://twitter.com/BoardGameGeekEmail: podcast@boardgamegeek.com

Join Ryan as he rambles about his newest podcast equipment, trick taking news, and Eurovision! Contact us: Discord - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/DBJzczy5km⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Linktree - ⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/tricktalkers⁠⁠⁠ Topics discussed during the episode: (01:10) - Rodecaster Duo (03:19) - New Tokyo Game Market (Travel-games.co.uk, Tricky Imports, Tanuki Games) (04:17) - New Mill Industries TGM Games (05:34) - Grok Games: Shock Knights With Poison and Unannounced Game (07:29) - Hiroken's Upcoming Game (09:19) - ⁠Haggis⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Tricktakers⁠⁠ Fulfilling! (11:18) - Like Cain and Abel (12:35) - CarMax Ramble (15:00) - Bug Council of Backyardia Expansion (18:10) - ⁠Yokai Septet Pocket Edition (19:55) - ⁠Eurovision Song Contest

As the first two sons of Adam and Eve, a lot of responsibility had been laid upon our shoulders. We were a farmer and a shepherd who had to offer our harvested grains and livestock to God. We were never sure if either of us was in His favour. So we carried on and made wilder and wilder boasts about our gifts to Our Lord until it was too much and one of us struck down the other. We were Like Cain and Abel by J.L. Reid from Bent Pin. Read the full review here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2024/05/04/like-cain-and-abel-saturday-review/ Useful Links Like Cain and Abel Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bentpin/like-cain-and-abel-an-18-card-trick-taking-and-bluffing-game Rulebook: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CyG0hIkO4IuqdSmXuq6uSDGysNYDYoT2/view Bent Pin: https://www.thebentpin.com/ BGG listing: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/414512/like-cain-and-abel Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Sound Effects: bbc.co.uk – © copyright 2024 BBC The Desert Planet (feat. Udio) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/12290-the-desert-planet-feat-udioLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license If you want to support this podcast financially, please check out the links below: Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ko-Fi: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/TabletopGamesBlog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tabletopgamesblog.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tabletopgamesblog/message

Message from Pastor Kory Cunningham on April 14, 2024

www.longviewbaptistchurch.org Genesis 4:1-8 1.God points at the atonement to come. 2.Like Cain, we are shielded from wrath by Gods grace!

Cain got angry for all the wrong reasons.  What about you?

There is a well-known theory amongst the Israelite Community that Esau is the progenitor of the "White Race." I am one of those who do not ascribe to this theory and with this message I have tried to dispel this "Theory" by using the scriptures. "Race" as we know it today is a fairly new concept, it was only invented around the 1500s before that people were known by their "Nation." the Bible says that two nations were in the womb of Rebecca: "The LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated;" "Genesis 25:22-28  Two different manner of people, two people will be separate, two biological brothers would be different. It's funny because those who have this theory, never acknowledge the fact that Esau and Jacob are biological brothers. Having the same Mother and the same father. Therefore based on this same logic and idea of "Race" today these two people undoubtedly by all accounts would be of the same race, even if they had different skin color. Nonetheless, these two were not different because of their "Race" but because of their identity, their ideals, and principles. Like Cain and Able one followed after God and the other after his own ideals: “At that time Isaac sent his younger son Jacob to the house of Shem and Eber, and he learned the instructions of the Lord, and Jacob remained in the house of Shem and Eber for thirty-two years, and Esau his brother did not go, for he was not willing to go, and he remained in his father's house in the land of Canaan.” Jasher 28:18 Let he who has and ear hear what thus saith the lord. I pray that this message gives you clarity and strengthens your faith in these last days. Shalom Send a Tithe, Donation, and/or Offerings at: https://leodunson.com/donate/ Cash App $LeoDunson - https://Cash.App/$LeoDunson Become a Member! - https://ministries.leodunson.com/ “Gods Laws, Commandments, & Statutes” (Book): https://tinyurl.com/33j95pbc “Precept Upon Precept” (Book) on Amazon at: https://tinyurl.com/z2uu46ez Connect with Leo on https://www.facebook.com/LeoDunsonjr Connect with Leo on https://www.instagram.com/LeoDunson Connect with Leo on https://tiktok.com/LeoDunson #Jacob #Esau #WhiteAmerica #BlackAmerica #Bible #Israelites #LeoDunson

1 John 3:12 NLT: We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was right. NKJV: not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous.

“You shall not steal” (Deuteronomy 5:18). It was a Tuesday evening; my dad had brought several of his children to the church building for the weekly Catechism Classes. Because we had classes at different times, we needed to wait for each other. The intend was that we would complete our homework while not in class. On this night, my friend enticed me to join him on a trip to the local variety store. On the way, he instructed me on the finer arts of shoplifting. He left successfully; I left with a stern warning that next time I would leave by police escort. Desire! That is the issue this covenant word addresses. Desire for stuff; the love of things. Who is not faced with this temptation on occasion? The Bible repeatedly warns us about it. Paul tells us how foolish it is to fall for the devil's wiles, “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Timothy 6:7). Many of Jesus' stories warn against the danger of this desire for wealth. Consider also the stories of Achan in Joshua 7 and Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Achan's story is during Israel's entrance into the land of promise. The Acts 5 story comes at the beginning of God's new people, the church. The two stories parallel each other. At these crucial moments of covenant history, God's people face the same danger: the desire for wealth. And then there is Judas, one of Jesus' twelve. How could he have fallen? He had preached the gospel, healed the sick, feed the poor, but his heart was in his wallet. As John would later comment, “he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Like Cain, he refused to change course. In the end, the devil could take him; and take him he did. If we are not careful, we too will be taken. Paul also wrote, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:7-10). How can we guard ourselves? It begins with putting God first. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). This is especially important while we are busy earning money. Ask yourself often, “Am I here to make money or to serve God in this place at this time?” It is a question of what's in first place in our lives: God or money? Serving both doesn't work. Putting God first leads to contentment. Paul also wrote, “But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that” (6:8). Desire for money and contentment are opposites here. I think we can go deeper. A lack of contentment with what we have suggests that God has done something wrong. He has not given me enough. Let us return to the covenant word, “You shall not steal”. We could rephase it to say, “I may not claim for my own something that belongs to another.” For the God follower this has implications for commerce and banking, for buying and selling, for saving and investing, for owning possessions and giving them away. It means employees should share in the profits they make. We are prohibited from manipulating someone else for the sake of personal gain. It prohibits the accumulation of goods by unjust means, or at the expense of other people. I suggest it says something about gambling which exploits people's greed. Moses undergirded this word with instructions on interest, pledges, bribes, correct weights and measures, moving a neighbour's property lines, as well as laws that protected the weak and poor from oppression, provided release for slaves and ensured the poor had access to the needs of life. The Bible offers another antidote to stealing. We seek God. Then we know God. C.S. Lewis wrote: "God loves us; not because we are loveable but because He is love; not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give." Again, from Paul, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Knowing God, we receive his grace and we become like him. We imitate him. If God is a giver, so are his children. Thus, not only is contentment the opposite of stealing, so is generosity. We lean into contentment as we share the gifts God has given us.

Genesis 4:1-16 - Not Like Cain by Sure Foundation Lutheran Church

Jude Series: Jude 11-Disaster Will Strike The Zealots and Like Cain, They Will Be Judged for Rebelling Against God-Lesson # 21

Jude Series: Jude 11-Disaster Will Strike The Zealots and Like Cain, They Will Be Judged for Rebelling Against God-Lesson # 21

We've cut so many stories short. Like Adam and Eve's immaturity caused their story with God to end too early. Our story is our process of maturity. Like Cain and Abel, the choices we make in our story can have long lasting consequences. When we get to know someone, we learn their story. This enables us to understand why they think and behave the way they do.

Jude Series: Jude 11b-Like Cain, the Unregenerate Jewish Zealots of Judaea Would Be Judged For Their Rebellion-Lesson # 43

Jude Series: Jude 11b-Like Cain, the Unregenerate Jewish Zealots of Judaea Would Be Judged For Their Rebellion-Lesson # 43

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jnmanokaran.wordpress.com/2022/04/25/we-should-not-be-like-cain-26-april-2022/

What if the only way to avoid murdering someone was to die yourself? Today on Rooted Daily we're talking about that paradox of love from the third chapter of John's first letter.

Bible Study & Devotional Day 59

One midrash tradition attributed the universal flood to the polygyny and patriarchy of the ancient world, which was first documented in the Hebrew scriptures with Lemekh's wives, Adah and Zillah (Gen. 4:19). In this episode, Father Jayme transports listeners back in time, to our worship of the Great Mother Goddess of fertility and sustenance for some 35,000 years. The nascent patriarchy of the Agricultural Revolution then marginalized the “hidden” and “absent” women in scriptures. Drawing on the works of Diarmuid Ó Murchú and Marija Gimbutas, Father Jayme notes how new notions of warfare and conquest led to the creation of a new god in human image: the conquering LORD God of hosts! Father Jayme shares: “Like Cain, the Kurgan warrior spirituality conquered, putting other spiritualities to the sword and casting the long shadow of patriarchy over the land.” Thus, the quick transition in Genesis 6 from the “sons of God” dominating the “daughters of humanity,” to God's regret that God had created humankind. Ideas of polygyny persisted, and men in the ancient world felt the right to possess sex-object wives in addition to their childbearing wives. The situation was compounded by societal structures that valued sons over daughters, viewing sons as gain and daughters as loss. Father Jayme concludes that continued sexism and patriarchy, expressed in our domination of others and of Mother Earth, have set in motion forces that may be no less destructive than the universal flood in the days of Naamah & Noach.Have you seen the latest issue of Extraordinary Catholics magazine?Check out other podcasts by and for Inclusive Catholics!Support Extraordinary Catholics podcast!

This teaching on the 6th Commandment dives into the lives of Cain and Abel. The spirit of Cain is in the earth today, yet those of the Abel spirit are alive and well. As Elohim's chosen people, we were created to love and be loved. Where there is a lack of love for the household of Elohim, there will be evidence of lawlessness/disobedience. Like Cain, we must ask ourselves.. are we holding a grudge against love? How often do we murder our brothers and sisters through our lack of love for them? Is the offering I present to Father offered in faith or by dead works alone? What will it take to close the door to sin!

This week we continue our discussion of Cain and Abel. This narrative continues to challenge who we are and how we respond when our reality is challenged. Do we respond as beasts or Image Bearers? The post A Heart Like Cain (Part 2) appeared first on Out of Ashes Ministries.

We have long read and grappled over the story of Cain and Abel. It just doesn’t seem fair that God would reject the best of what Cain had to give. More importantly for us, what does God’s rejection of Cain’s gift tell us about how God treats our best attempts to live for Him? This […] The post A Heart Like Cain appeared first on Out of Ashes Ministries.

Although at least Cain thought he was trying to please God. Hatred for the Mass of all time and the question of obedience | Opinion | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

After three years of learning to prepare expository sermons, the time finally came when the theology students were permitted to preach at the weekly chapel service. With several hundred students and staff in attendance, it was a difficult place to begin. One year, we were surprised by a student whom everyone knew as quiet. When the time came, she launched into an expert and rousing sermon. Her voice was commanding. The exposition was punctuated with vivid stories and illustrations from the local marketplace. Her points were skilfully repeated and punctuated with challenging questions which called for a response. The listeners were energised and engaged. When she sat down, no one had any doubt about what she had been called to do.

During a press conference on July 13, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on Vladimir Putin's controversial essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." Poking fun at the fact that the Kremlin published the article in Ukrainian, Zelensky said he was surprised that the Russian president had time to write an in-depth historical article but not to meet with him. The Ukrainian president added that Kyiv may issue an official response to Putin's piece. Here's what Zelensky said, in a nutshell. Original Article: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/07/13/more-like-cain-and-abel

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Good morning, and welcome again to Mosaic, good to see you this morning. If you're new, I just want to introduce myself, my name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we are so glad to have you with us. We mentioned this earlier. But we would love to connect with you, if you would like to connect with us, the best way to start that off is just to fill that little connection card out in your worship guide. You can either drop that in the little white offering box at the back of the room on your way out this morning. Or if you turn that in at the Welcome Center, we have a little gift there that we'd love to give to you, to thank you for being with us today.Last week, we finished up our sermon series, Jesus in Genesis season two, we looked at the life of Abraham and Sarah all the way up to the birth of Isaac, and Lord willing, we're going to come back to that series, probably do a couple more seasons, to finish out the book of Genesis someday. But today we're switching gears, we're starting up season two of another popular sermon series, Balm Psalms, that is one that we went through together last summer. The Psalms are something that we as Christians should be really visiting on a daily basis. That's how important the Psalms are.The Psalms remind us that God created emotion, and language and music and poetry and song, that his word is not just for our heads and our hands, it's for our hearts as well. When we have a true encounter with God, we should feel something. We should feel this kind of pressure building up inside us, begging to be released and to do something, to say something, to express God's worth his glory. One of the most satisfying ways to do that is through song, through singing to him and worship the God you are awesome, and you alone are worthy to be praised.How many of you, you can't wait to come to church on Sunday, because you just love to sing to the Lord? Like one of my hopes for us as a church, and one of the things I hope we grow in during the series is that we would become a church that loves to sing and loves to sing loud, on key, off key, it doesn't matter. Unless you're on the praise team, then it matters a lot. But for the rest of us, just sing because God is worthy of our praise, and it is right for us to praise him. So with all that being said, it should come as no surprise that right in the middle of our Bibles, we have this huge collection of poetry and songs that we call the Psalms. Music is powerful. We know that music, it speaks and it connects with our minds in a way that moves our hearts. It stirs in our hearts, and actually moves our hands to action.Today is Independence Day. I was thinking earlier this week of like, think of the courage that it would have taken for those small American colonies to say they were going to stand up to the strongest, most powerful empire on earth. A three pence tea tax. Like, "Are you kidding us?" "No, you can find your tea in the harbor and we will see you on the battlefield." I've been living here for eight years. That's still the only word I can say with a Boston accent. But the point is, you don't mess with people's caffeinated beverages. That's the first point. But secondly, if that wasn't enough, music actually played a pretty crucial role in the Revolutionary War.The colonies they composed entire song books that were meant to inspire courage and people to stand up to the British crown, and one of the most popular songs of this era, it was a song called Chester, it was actually written not too far from here. William Billings wrote it for the 1770 song book called The New-England Psalm-Singer, that's an interesting title. But listen to these lyrics. This is what he wrote. "The tyrants shake their iron rod and slavery clank her galling chains, we fear them not, we trust in God. New England's God forever reigns. The foe comes on with hearty stride, our troops advanced with martial noise, their veterans flee before our youth and generals yield to beardless boys."That's like some savage right there and you hear that and you're like, "Yep, sign me up. Give me a musket, I'm ready to fight." Billings just ended King George whole career right there. Jump ahead to the American Civil War. Again, one of the most famous songs from the union during that time period is one we're probably a little bit more familiar with the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Most of us know the first verse, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He's loose the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on." It's a picture of God's judgment coming down on the injustices that were happening.One of my favorite lines, though, actually comes in one of the later verses, and it goes like this. "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, is truth is marching on." You hear that and your heart is like, "Yeah, that is a cause worth fighting for. That is a cause even worth dying for." And historically, more people died for that cause than in any other war in U.S. history.America's bloodiest, deadliest war, it was fought because young men in the Union they caught a courageous vision that if Jesus had died to make them holy, then they had a duty to fight and to even die to make men free, and hundreds of 1000s of them did just that. To put it in perspective, more men died at the Battle of Gettysburg alone than in the entire Revolutionary War combined. I bring that up because today we are looking at Psalm 29. And Psalm 29 is not a calm, relaxing, meditative, like turn it on and do some yoga type song. Psalm 29 is 150 beats per minute, put your headphones on, the pre workouts kicking in, you're going to the gym, you're going to set some PRS today. That's what we're listening to when we read Psalm 29.It should get us pumped up, it should get us fired up and inspired, it should fill us with courage to do something, to fight the good fight of faith and to fight the spiritual war that is around us. I like to imagine like, perhaps this is one of the songs that the military choirs of Israel sung as they marched into battle, or perhaps this is one of the songs that Paul and Silas sung in their prison cell after they've been beaten and arrested for preaching the gospel, even better, here's how I want to set this up, just entertain me for a moment.I like to imagine King David stepping up to the microphone like an ancient rap battle. And he's facing off against the prophets of Baal. He's about to just melt their faces, dropping truth about his God, Yahweh. That's how I'm picturing it. I'm just going to stand up here and try to be the best hype man that I can, if that makes any sense. So, we're going to look at Psalm 29. As is a Psalm of David, if you have your Bibles you can open up or you can follow along on the screen as well. Psalm 29 beginning in verse one. "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord the glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple all cry, "Glory." The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as King forever. May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace."This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning, would you please join me in prayer over today's sermon. God you are awesome in power, you are sovereign over your creation. Your wisdom and understanding are pure, your judgment is perfect, and in contrast, we are weak. We're often ignorant and foolish, and worse than that, we are rebels against your authority Lord, and we're deserving of your judgment. God I pray today that your grace would teach our hearts to fear and that by your grace, our fears would be relieved in our Lord Jesus Christ, that you are enthroned above all, and you've made a way to show us mercy, to bless your people with peace and strength, and we thank you for this. We thank you for your word. We pray that you'd write these truths of your word upon our hearts today, we pray this in Jesus Christ name. Amen.Three points in today's sermon, point number one, we're going to talking about idol worship. Point number two, idol worship. See what I did there. Point number three, we're talking about ideal worship. Starting with idol worship. At first glance, Psalm 29 looks like a pretty straightforward Psalm. It's actually one of the more controversial Psalm in all of scripture. Controversial because a while back, some critical biblical scholars actually accused Psalm 29 of being plagiarized. They saw that some of the language used in the Psalm especially verses three and nine, three through nine, was similar. It's kind of reminiscent of some of the same language that the Canaanites would use when they would worship their god Baal.And throughout most of Israel's history, they were surrounded by the land of Canaan, and they were surrounded by the religion and the culture and the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites. And they were constantly faced with this temptation to be conformed to that culture, and to practice their idolatry, and you see them struggling with that over and over in the Old Testament. The Canaanites, they believed in several gods, but two of their more prominent gods were Yam and Baal. Yam was the god of the sea, the sea represented the chaos of the untamed, uncivilized world, and Yam had an adversary named Hadad, who's also called Baal. Baal was the god of storms and rain, and he represented order and fertility and prosperity.So, when the storms would form over the Mediterranean Sea, and they would move inland over the land of Canaan, the Canaanites believed that when these storms came that it was literally Baal riding on the clouds, the thunder was the sound of his voice. So, scholars would look at these beliefs, and then they would look at Psalm 29. They see, like verse three, that the voice of the Lord is over the waters and the God of glory thunders, and they would make a connection, that kind of sound similar to Ball, and so they would conclude, obviously, David just took a Canaanite song, and he swapped the names out with Yahweh.The problem with this is that there's no actual concrete evidence that this was the case, these scholars, they're just purely speculating on this. So what seems more likely, is that David is writing this Psalm, but he's also intentionally alluding to the beliefs of the Canaanites that they had about their god, Baal in order to put them in the context of the Psalm about Yahweh and do two things. On the one hand, he is exposing Baal as a fraud, and he is expressing the superiority of Yahweh, the God of Israel as the one true God. In other words, David says he's writing music, and he's doing apologetics at the same time.So, let's look at how he does this. We'll walk through these verses together. David starts off in verse one. He says, "Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, and worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." He uses this phrase over and over, ascribe to the Lord, recognize, acknowledge and attribute to Yahweh, what is true of his being that he alone possesses power and glory. But look at who David is addressing this to, it's not merely to human beings, he's addressing this to the heavenly beings. Who are these heavenly beings? Angels, but also Satan, demons and the false gods of Canaan, all must ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, because Yahweh is sovereign, not only over the earth, but over the heavenly realms as well.Now you contrast this to Baal, who even in the Canaanite beliefs, was not sovereign, he wasn't holy, he wasn't righteous, his power was limited, and much like us as human beings, he was a god who was locked in this endless struggle warring against the other gods. As we move through these verses, we're going to see David over and over showing the supremacy of the God of Israel. But we're also going to notice that what is being said here of Yahweh in the Old Testament, is also true of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. So when you look at Jesus in the New Testament, the heavenly beings, the angels worship, and even the demons tremble at the sound of his voice, they were subject to his command.Likewise, when Christ returns, Philippians, chapter two tells us that when Christ returns, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and Paul there is quoting from the prophet Isaiah, directly that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Yahweh. He is the God of glory. So, every tongue will confess this. So David sets the stage that the God of Israel is supreme, and then he follows this introduction, and he has a perfect number of seven declarations and they all begin with this phrase, the voice of the Lord.So let's look at these seven declarations together. Number one, it comes from verse three, says, the voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders the Lord over many waters. The gods of Canaan were finite, they were fickle, they were imperfect, oftentimes petty, and they're always fighting and at war against one another. Now in contrast, what we see is that Yahweh is perfect, he has no rival, he has no equal, he is unmatched in power, and in glory. In the ancient world, the sea, it represented chaos, it represented all of those things that fell outside of the control of human beings and of human civilization.It was something that we as people, as human beings struggled against, but was something that even Baal himself had to struggle against. In other words, everything that is outside of our control, and outside of even the heavenly beings control is not in any way outside of the control of Yahweh. That he is sovereign over the many waters, he is providentially commanding the forces of nature, both to bring about his blessing and his judgment. So now when we turn to the New Testament, this is why in the book of revelations, we see a picture of Jesus sitting on a throne in heaven, and all around his throne, we're told he's surrounded by a sea.But unlike a sea of chaos, we're told that it's a sea of glass, that the waves are stilled, they're calmed under his rule and authority. Jesus gave his disciples a glimpse of this authority when he walked on the water, when he calmed the sea and his disciples they marveled that even the wind and the waves obeyed the voice of Jesus. That's the first declaration. Declaration two and three comes from verse four, says the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty, power and majesty. Majesty has to do with ... The majestic, it's talking about a King in power, it depicts a King who is able to accomplish his will, more specifically the language used in Psalm 29. It's describing a King who is undefeatable, unstoppable in battle.The Canaanites, they believe that Baal was the God who brought rain and fertility to their land. But in order for him to do this, he first had to go to battle against another god named Mot, who is the god of death. And if Baal lost that battle, then the Canaanites would face a season of drought. So what we see here is that unlike Baal, Yahweh is a King who does not lose his battles, that nothing in on heaven or on earth can thwart his purposes, and Jesus proved this to us, that he is the one who went out and faced death himself, he died as our majestic King with a crown of thorns on his head, but then he rose in victory, to show that death could not hold him, that the grave could not defeat him.In his parting words, on the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished, the battle is now won, victory is secure." Nothing can change that. Declaration four, we see in verse five and six. Says, "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon, he makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox." What we're seeing here, there's a geographic progression unfolding in the text, and the picture that it's giving us is that there's this massive, violent storm that has formed over the Mediterranean, and now it is moving inland over Lebanonites, moving inland over the land of Canaan, and it's showing us that God is not only sovereign over the chaos at sea, he's also sovereign over the order of human civilization. He's sovereign over the kingdoms of man, even the kingdom of Canaan.The Canaanites, they took great pride in the fact that they built their homes and they built temples to Baal up in the mountains, and they built them out of these great cedars of Lebanon, and David points to these temples. He points to the cedars. He says the very voice of the Lord shatters them to pieces. It even shakes the mountain, the foundation that their source of pride was built on, and Jesus did the same thing. Jesus humbled everybody he came in contact with. He shattered the pride of the rebellious and the self righteous alike and showed them that if they were building on any foundation other than him they were building on sand.This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand, the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.The last three declarations come in verses seven, eight and nine. Verse seven says the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the voice shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple, all cry, "Glory." And now we see that the storm has moved even further inland. And as it is, it's consuming like a fire. It's stripping the forest bare, and it's showing us a stern warning of Yahweh's judgment, that he is a righteous judge, and that he will ultimately expose what is unseen, and bring down judgment on what is unholy.Verse nine says, he makes the deer give birth. When I first read that I think that's like a nice comforting picture in the midst of all of this other language and I started looking into this phrase, and I learned that what it's actually describing is describing this phenomenon which would happen occasionally during incredibly violent storms, where pregnant animals would be so frightened that they would actually give birth prematurely. It's showing us God is going to expose everything, and he's going to bring perfect justice to creation. So if I were to summarize all this and put this into my own words, this is how I would say, that the voice of the Lord is sovereign over both heaven and earth.He has the power to perfectly accomplish his will. He will shatter our idols and pride, has authority to judge his creation and the ability to reveal what is hidden so that nothing will escape his justice. That's the big idea. Almost, nothing will escape his justice except for what? Except for who? Except for those that we see in verse nine, who have found refuge in his temple. The climax in verse nine it shows us that outside of God's temple, yeah, the voice of the Lord is causing creation to tremble in fear at his righteous judgment. But inside the temple, there's peace. Inside the temple there's safety, that the people of God have been sheltered by his mercy and they cry out, "Glory."Psalm 29, it shows us that God is just and he will not allow sin off the hook. But he is also merciful. He has provided a way for sinners to be saved. For Israel, this was the temple, the sacrificial system. For us, Jesus is our sacrifice. Jesus is our temple. Jesus is the refuge that shelters us from the storm of God's wrath. We see this again, when David concludes in verses 10 and 11. He tells us this, that the Lord sits in enthroned over the flood. We're going to talk about what that means. The Lord sits enthroned as King forever, may the Lord give strength to his people, may the Lord bless his people with peace. That word for flood there, there's only one other place in all of scripture where that word is used. And it's used to refer to the flood of Noah. That is what David is drawing to mind.Because, again, the flood was a story of God's judgment, but it was also a story of God's salvation. That outside of the ark, God's wrath, it rained down in this cleansing judgment. Inside the ark, there was peace, that Noah and his family were preserved. Now, when we turn to the New Testament, the New Testament tells us that the story of the flood that David is alluding to and bringing to mind here, it is a story of what was, but it's also a story of what is and it's a story of what is to come. This is what I mean, that as it was in the days of Noah, we're told it will be when Christ returns. I get this from Matthew chapter 24. Jesus teaching his disciples about his return, this is what he says.Matthew 24, verse 36, "But concerning that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. And two men will be in the field and one will be taken and one left, two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one left, therefore stay awake, for you don't know what day your Lord is coming.But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what part of the night that thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect and when he does, what we see is that those who are in Christ, just as those who were in the ark, those who are in Christ will be saved, that those who are not will be swept away, taken away for judgment. The flood is a picture of what is to come.But then, New Testament tells us it's also a picture of what is true right now, and this comes from First Peter chapter three, beginning in verse 18. Peter writes this, he says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patients waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through water, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into the heavens and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him."Now, first of all, this is one of the most confusing passages in all of scripture, and we're going to have to save a lot of that for like another sermon on another day. But the big idea here is clear that just as Jesus is our refuge, our temple, Jesus is the true ark, and baptism is a picture of this salvation that he's referring to. He says, "It's not that we're saved by the physical act of baptism, it's not the removal of dirt from the body, but an appeal to God for good conscience." And this is why Jesus commands that every Christian should be baptized, the baptism is an outward action, it's a picture that symbolizes and shows forth that proclaims an inward reality that we have appealed to God's mercy, and we have been saved by grace through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That Jesus is our refuge, Jesus is our salvation.And so what this means is that in Christ, you were saved. The moment that you repented of your sin and put your faith in Christ, you were saved. We call that justification, but also in Christ, you are being saved by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been saved from the penalty of sin, you are being saved from the power of sin in your life. We call this sanctification. And in Christ, you will be saved. Eventually, from the very presence of sin all together and for all of attorney we call this glorification, that we will be raised, resurrected with Christ, to inherit a new heaven and new earth where sin, sorrow, death and decay will be no more. And what the New Testament tells us to do is in light of this, this is why we must run to Christ for refuse, for salvation, without delay right now.Peter brings this up again in his second letter, Second Peter chapter three, verse nine. And he tells us this, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all of these things are dust to be dissolved." What sort of people are you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God?Because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolve and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. When we rightly understand God's awesome power and his holiness and when we personally experience God's saving love and mercy, the only rational response is for us to cast down our idols, and to turn to the one true God. We must repent of our idol worship, but that in of itself is not enough. Point two is we must also repent of our idol worship, our vain worship, our, at times, hypocritical worship.Psalm 29, verses one and two say, "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." And this last phrase here in verse two, it's not referring to God's holiness, although God is holy, it's talking about, we need to worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. It's about how we worship God, it's the idea that we need to worship the right God, and we need to worship him in the right way.One of the very first stories in scripture was the story of two brothers, Cain and Abel, who were on their way to worship the Lord. In Genesis 4 says, "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain, a worker of the ground." In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at your door. His desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it."Pastor Jan preached a really great sermon on this in our first Jesus in Genesis season one series, I think it was maybe the fourth sermon in that series, you should go check that out. But the big ideas that Cain came to God, and he came to give him what he thought he needed to do, what was required of him in order to appease God, in order to keep God off his back. Abel, we're told, gave his gift in faith, he gave his first and he gave his best because he trusted God, he loved God, he had a genuine desire to worship God. And a lot of people, they come to God and they want to come to God like Cain, they want to come and they want to ask, "Okay, what's the bare minimum that I need to do to stay on your good side? Or how far away can I go and tiptoe out into sin before I get on your bad side?"And really, that's the same mindset the Canaanites brought to their god, Baal. Baal didn't love them. He didn't care for them. There was not a relationship there. He was just this force that they needed to appease for things to go well with them, and when we try to worship God like that, it shows that we really don't know him. We've probably heard this illustration before. When you watch a great movie, when you eat in amazing restaurant, like you can't help but to sing its praises. You want to tell your friends about it, you want to tell everybody what a great experience you had, you want to open up the app and smash the five star review, why would it be any differently with God, when you truly experience God, worship, it comes naturally. You can't but help it giving God the glory that he is due becomes our delight when we know who he truly is.And so the question for us is that how we come to God and worship? Is that how we are approaching God? If not, the lesson ... actually, the warning here is that you might not be worshipping idols, but your worship might be idol. Your Worship might be in vain. It might be hypocritical. Matthew 15, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah to rebuke the Pharisees. And he said, "You hypocrites." Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, "These people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." In vain do they worship me in idleness, teaching his doctrine, the commandments of man.And Jesus takes a very hard stance against the Pharisees, and this kind of worship, you got to wonder like, "Why is he so serious about this?" He's serious, because he knows where this leads, it leads to sin. And ultimately, it leads to death. Like Cain, when our heart is not properly in the right place, giving glory to God in worship, sin is right there, crouching at the door, waiting for that opportunity to pounce. Jesus in the book of Revelation, he rebuked the church of Laodicea, for this kind of idol, hypocritical, half hearted worship.In verse 15, chapter three, he says, "I know your works, you're neither cold nor hot. With that you are either cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." It's not just a problem for individuals. He's talking to an entire church here, and we see what a slippery and dangerous slope this is. It becomes clear just a few verses later in verse 20, where Jesus continues, and he says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone would hear my voice and open the door, I'll come in and eat with him and he, with me." But what's going on here?That lukewarm worship and affection has now resulted in a church that has effectively excommunicated Jesus. He's locked outside the door. They won't let him in. Do you think that this happens today? Like what would it look like for a church to lock Jesus out? It looks like a church that sneers at his lordship, a church that scoffs at the authority of his word. A church that defiantly rejects his teaching on morality and repentance and sin in laughs makes a mockery of his cross, and this is where idol worship leads.Second Timothy three, he warned his disciple Timothy that these days would come. Said, "Understand this Timothy. Then in the last days, there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God." Look at verse five, "Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power."I pray that we would never be a church that settles for merely having the appearance of godliness. I pray that we would be a church that is content with nothing less than Jesus Christ. We must not give in to the worship of false idols, we must also not give into the idleness of false worship. Point three is, we must instead pursue ideal worship. David says, "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." What is ideal worship look like? Jesus answers this in John chapter four. He's having a conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, and in their conversation, she brings up the topic of, "How are we to worship God and Samaritans do it this way, and the Jews do it that way?"He gives her an answer, and this is what he says. Verse 23, says, "Listen, the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Three things that I want to cover here real quick at the end, that what we see like ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth, and ideal worshipers worship incarnate, and I'll explain what I mean by that. But first and foremost, he says, "You got to worship in spirit." So what does it mean to worship in spirit?Just one chapter earlier, Jesus was having a conversation about the spirit with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a religious teacher and he told him, "Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, you need to be born again." And Nicodemus is baffled by this and says, "Jesus, how can I be born a second time? I don't understand." Jesus replies, and this is what he tells him in John three, verse six through eight, he says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marble that I said to you, you must be born again, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit."I read that I'm like, I don't think that would have been a very satisfying answer for Nicodemus, it kind of sounds like Jesus is just trolling him right here. But what he wants him to understand is listen, just as the wind comes and goes as it pleases, the Spirit gives life to whomever he wills, according to God's good purpose, we can't control that any more than we can control the wind. So worshiping in Spirit, starts by recognizing God's sovereignty over everything, even our salvation.Now, at the same time, Jesus is trying to compel a response in Nicodemus, he's not expecting him to be completely passive. He wants them to do something, and so, there's a mystery, there's a tension here that we need to embrace. That we cannot cause ourselves to be born again any more than we caused our own physical birth. Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerates hearts, and he does this through the proclamation of the gospel. But when we hear the gospel, we also have a responsibility to respond. That by our own free choice, we must respond in repentance.I had a professor in seminary that compared it to the sails on a ship. Sails actually can't move the ship, they have no power in and of themselves to do that. They can't cause the wind to blow. But when the wind does blow, they need to be up in proper position in order to be filled, in order for that ship to move, and it's not a perfect illustration. But in order for us to worship in Spirit, God must act on our behalf, and we must respond in repentance and faith, approach him with humility. It's about coming to the Lord, not on the basis of who we are, what we've done, or what we could do for him, but on the basis of what he has done for us through Jesus Christ.David put it like this in Psalm 51. He says, "Oh, Lord, open my lips, I need you to open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering, the sacrifices of God or a broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart, Oh, God, you will not despise." When you do come with that dependence, that humility, we need to worship in Spirit, we also need to worship in truth. Isaiah 66, "Thus says the Lord. The Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, what is the house that you build for me? What is the place of my rest? All these things my hand is made, and so these things came to be." Declares the Lord.But this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble, and contrite and spirit and trembles at my word, a true worship requires that we would tremble at the word of the Lord. It requires a submission and an obedience to God's word. Jesus put it like this in John 10:27. He says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." My sheep hear my voice, and they don't just go off and do as they will. They hear my voice, I know them, and they follow Me. The Canaanites came up with all kinds of perverse ways to worship their gods, they practice temple prostitution, even child sacrifice at time. And in contrast, God's people need to worship in God's way, and they need to worship in Godly ways, according to his truth in scripture.Just one practical example. There's a lot of songs, modern worship songs out there today, that we're probably never going to sing here at Mosaic. Because there's a lot of songs out there that are rich in production quality, and sadly bankrupt when it comes to biblical truth. The words that we sing about God, the words that we sing to God, those words matter. But this needs to go well beyond just the words that we sing. This has to do with the life that we live, when we hear Jesus voice, we need to submit to it, we need to follow him. What that means more practically, is that when we're reading this book, or reading scripture, and we come across something that offends us, it's not because the scripture is out of line, it's either we haven't understood it, or else we are out of line. And we need to bring our lives into alignment with God's word.And we do that, because we trust that Jesus is our shepherd, that his word is not only always right, but his word is always beautiful and good. First John five, one through three says that this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So, ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth and finally, ideal worshipers worship incarnate.Romans 12, one says, "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God." Paul says, "In light of everything that I've just written to you about God's, his justice and his amazing mercy and grace. Because of that, therefore, you have to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds." True worship is not something that we can compartmentalize to the songs that we sing on a Sunday morning, it needs to be incarnate. What I mean is, it needs to take on flesh, it needs to permeate our daily lives in a transformative way.This is going to take strength, this is going to take courage. I think this is why David prays for this at the end of Psalm 29. He says, "May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace, to truly live our lives, to give our lives as living sacrifices to God, this is going to take a supernatural courage to not be conformed to the patterns of this world." Just to illustrate this, there's a photograph that's gone viral, you've probably seen it making the rounds online, a photo from Nazi Germany.You see in the photo, a crowd of people, and at first glance, you see everyone hailing, Hitler doing the Nazi salute. But then you look a little bit closer around, if you can see it there, but there's a guy in the middle and he's just standing there like, "No, I'm not on board with this." You can look into this guy, he actually, from what I understand, was arrested because of his resistance, his rebellion to some of the Nazi laws. His rebellion against them costed him dearly. He faced a lot of hardship in his life because he refused to be conformed to the pattern of that age.I bring this up because this is a good picture for us to contemplate. That takes guts, that takes courage. And more often than not, to give God the glory that he deserves, is going to require the strength and the courage to defiantly refuse to give that glory to anyone, or to anything else. Be it Baal, Satan, sin, government, culture, even our own selves, no matter the circumstances, no matter the social pressures, no matter the consequences we face or the convenience that compromise might bring, true worship, courageous worship says no to the idols, it says no to the idleness and it does so in order to say yes to the Lord.This is the kind of worship that got Abel killed. This is the kind of worship that got Daniel thrown to the lions. It got Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown to the fiery furnace, that got the apostles martyred for their faith, and this is the kind of uncompromising worship that got Jesus Christ nailed to a cross. See, Jesus is the true ultimate ideal picture of what it looks like to worship the Lord, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself.He is our strength, he is our peace, he is the reason that we don't need to fear living our lives, giving our lives as living sacrifices, because we know he was willing to give his life as a dying sacrifice for us, he faced Satan, sin and death, he defeated them through his death and resurrection, the battle has already been won. So when we're tired, when we're weary, when we are discouraged and afraid, Jesus is our Battle Hymn, Jesus is what gives us the courage to say, "Wherever you call me to go, I will go, whatever you tell me to do, I will do, whatever you tell me to say, I will say, because you alone are God, you alone are mighty to save, and you alone are worthy of all praise."We're going to transition right now into time of communion, and communion is a time where we remember Christ and we remember his sacrifice that made this possible. As you came in, hopefully you were able to grab one of these, if not, feel free to just go in the back and grab one or better just raise your hand, one of the ushers will bring one to you. And you can go ahead and open these up. Inside, the bread, it represents Jesus body that was broken. The cup represents his blood that was poured out for our forgiveness, so that we could be saved from the storm of God's righteous judgment toward our sin.If you are here today, and you're not a Christian, we'd ask you to refrain from this part of the service, it's not going to do anything for you, there's nothing magical about this. And if you're a Christian who is living in unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain as well. Scripture warns us not to partake of communion in an idol, in an unrepentant manner. But better yet, repent right now, put your faith in Jesus Christ, and if you've done that today, we would welcome you to take communion, and we're going to take communion together right now.So Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. He said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Amen.Would you please stand, we're going to spend some time in prayer, and we're going to spend some time worshiping and singing to the Lord together. God, you are awesome, you are holy, you are perfect in every way. God, we marvel at your power, we tremble before the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. In his cross, we see the righteous requirements of your perfect justice unfold display. We also see your tender heart of mercy, your tremendous love for us. We thank you for Jesus, we thank you for the forgiveness that we have in his name, we thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit, we thank you that we have peace through his victory over Satan, sin and death. You alone are good, you alone are God, you alone are worthy of all praise.Jesus, you are the name that is above every name, and we know that the day will come, when every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that you are Lord to the glory of God the Father, and Lord, we thank you that even now we can praise you, even now we can give you the glory due your name, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can stand before your throne together singing your praise and know that you are here, that you hear us, that you delight in our worship. And so God we come as your children, purchased through the bloody of your Son, Jesus Christ, to thank you and to worship you together. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

This week, the Ellroy Boys examine Samuel Fuller's sublime "The Baron of Arizona", an especially strange and wonderful western about infamous master forger, James Reavis and his fraudulent attempt to lay claim to the state of Arizona. The boys dissect the film and talk Vincent Price, alchemy, noir, 'geography as destiny', Brendan's adventure to the hallowed grounds of El Monte, CA, and why Samuel Fuller may be our new favorite director. Starring @blauer_geist, @luso_brendan, & @rubberwidow produced by @GOLDpny

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/addisonsmitheverythingchurchpro)

Cain knew nothing about the love of GOD

Calls for love are easily twisted, so beware.

Title: Graced Public Relations Part 1 Text: Titus 3:1-7 FCF: We often struggle being different and separate from the world. Prop: Because we were of the world but were saved from it, we must live out the gospel. Scripture Intro: ESV [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to Titus chapter 3. I fear that I have done you a grave disservice. Two weeks ago, we completed chapter 2 of Titus. I have heard that some of you wrestled with the sermon there. Striving with the concept of grace giving a certainty of salvation rather than a potential for it. Then we took a week off and Eric Lundquist came and spoke. He also taught on God’s grace and the outcome of that being a changed life. And today I will begin a two-part message. So what is such a disservice to you? You won’t hear the second part of this message until May 2nd. Added to that, the theology in the text today is deep. It is difficult. It is challenging. And so, I have done you a great disservice. I trust that in God’s providence, He will use this scheduling to allow these truths to sink deeply and that you are able to grasp and accept what is being said. Up to this point in Titus, Paul has been emphasizing a lifestyle for the Cretans. A lifestyle made certain by the invasion of the grace of God. A lifestyle of righteousness given to those for whom Christ died. In chapter 2 Paul urged Titus to teach living that goes with the gospel with respect to those within the church. In chapter 3, Paul will urge Titus to remind those same Cretans –to live a lifestyle that goes with the gospel, toward those outside the church. And he will give two exceptional reasons for why they should be reminded of this. First that they too were once like all the unbelieving Cretans around them. And secondly, that God has changed them by grace to be different. I am in Titus 3. I’ll begin reading in verse 1. I am reading from the ESV, but you can follow along in the pew bible on page 1346 or in whatever version you have. Transition: What is our disposition toward an unbelieving world? How shall we relate to those who are ungodly and wicked? Are they the enemy? And even if they are – what does that mean? Such a truth is all the more relevant as Christianity becomes pressed on all sides. How shall we relate to those who actively oppose us? I.) We were once just like the unbelieving world, so we must live out the gospel. (1-3) a. [Slide 2] 1 – Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, i. Paul urges Titus to remind the Cretans that their good works, for which they should be zealous, are not turned only toward those in the church. They ought to be turned outward as well. ii. And right off the bat we have an object of good works that wouldn’t have been popular in Crete, it hasn’t been popular throughout the history of the world, and it is certainly one of the most unpopular messages you can teach the church right now. iii. Be submissive to rulers and authorities. iv. Perhaps when we spoke of this in reference to slaves and their masters, you thought it was a stretch to take this concept to all human authorities. v. Paul uses the exact same word he used in verse 9 of chapter 2 with reference to slaves and masters, as he uses here of being submissive to authorities. vi. It is true, that words do not have static or unnuanced meanings. And it is certainly possible that Paul could mean something different here. But contextually, that is unlikely. vii. Part of obedience to God, part of good works, part of being what God’s grace makes you to be, part of being what Christ is purifying you to be as His bride, is submitting yourselves to your rulers and authorities. viii. In fact, the general disposition of all Christ’s people is... b. [Slide 3] To be obedient, i. We obey, we comply first. ii. Not just to men, but also, and in an ultimate way, to God. c. [Slide 4] To be ready for every good work, i. In this way, we are ready for every good work. ii. We are not opposed, kicking, fighting. iii. Instead, we are ready to do all that God has asked of us. d. [Slide 5] 2 - To speak evil of no one, i. Oh boy. ii. Wow. iii. I think I am just going to let you look at those words for a few seconds. iv. Now let me say, that this doesn’t mean that we cannot call sin sin, that we cannot rebuke someone, or that we cannot point out failures. Indeed, lovingly pointing out sin in another person is not speaking evil, but is instead speaking life. It is for their good. v. But generally speaking, our lips should never utter complaints, murmurings, insults, cutting remarks, curses, or disdain for any who are outside of the church. e. [Slide 6] To avoid quarreling, i. It is hard to resist authority if you are trying to avoid quarreling isn’t it? ii. It is hard to speak evil of someone if you are avoiding quarreling. iii. It is hard to be ready for any good work while you are quarreling or quarrelsome. iv. My friends… we must be f. [Slide 7] To be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. i. There is no exception here. ii. All people must have our respect, love, and gentleness. iii. It doesn’t matter how wrong they are. It doesn’t matter how ungodly they are. It doesn’t matter how opposed to Christ they are. iv. We are to show courtesy and gentleness toward them.. why? g. [Slide 8] 3 – For we ourselves were once foolish, i. You were no different. ii. Let me say it again… iii. You were no different. iv. Again, my friends. THIS. IS. GRACE. v. This is why it is not our choice that saves us, but rather the grace of God which gives us the ability to believe what He has done. vi. Because if it was your choice to believe, then you ARE different than the ungodly. You ARE different than the wicked. You ARE different than all the rest. vii. But no… it was not by choice but by Grace that we have been saved. Through faith yes, but a faith that was a gift of God, so none could boast. viii. We can easily submit to our authorities, we can easily be obedient, we can easily be ready for every good work, we can easily speak no evil of them, we can easily avoid quarreling, we can easily be gentle and courteous to all people when we what? ix. Realize that we were the same. x. Not because we are human – not because we are made in God’s image… NO! Paul hangs the imperative of our gentleness and courtesy, our love toward all men, not on the equality of our origin, but rather on the equality of men in their depravity. xi. We have absolutely no room to treat ANYBODY as if they are less than we are. xii. Who is the most wicked person you can think of? Hitler probably, right? Sure. Hitler gets quite the pedigree for being the vilest person in history. xiii. You were the same. I was the same. xiv. How so? h. [Slide 9] disobedient, i. We did not love God’s law. ii. We had no thought of God’s law. iii. And even today, some who claim to be Christians STILL have no love of the law of God. iv. It is astounding to think that a person who claims to be God’s child could hate His law. i. [Slide 10] led astray, i. We were all led astray. ii. Every single one of us from birth up to and potentially including now, have had a crisis of skewed doctrine. iii. Eric brought this out last week. He said that the Holy Spirit often needs to correct bad theology in the text of scripture. Why is that? iv. Simply – we were born that way. v. When we say someone is born in sin we do not mean that they were born in some act to which they sinned. vi. Rather we mean that their natural condition is polluted, infested, and corrupted wholly by sin. vii. Meaning that a child comes into the world never needing to be instructed how to lie, cheat, steal, hit, or otherwise selfishly want its own way. viii. Their view of themselves, God, others, and the world is all wrong. And that didn’t happen because they were instructed in it by someone. ix. No. x. It happened because they were born into it. xi. Just the other day, my wife and I were talking to our girls. Somehow the topic of being children of God came up. My daughter asked if she was a child of God. I said, “no. God has to adopt us into His family for us to become His children. And as of yet, God has not adopted you.” And so this led naturally to her asking what she was to God. I told her, “you are an enemy of God.” She was visibly shaken. She said, maybe when I grow up I’ll be His child. Kadie said, there is nothing we would want more than for that to be the case. After that the topic changed. It was clear that being God’s enemy wasn’t an urgent need for her to change at that moment. But keep praying for her. There are signs that she may be being drawn. xii. All that to say – my child, a pastor’s child – has aberrant, terrible theology. Her doctrine is atrocious. Why? Did I teach her this? No. xiii. It is her natural understanding to think that she would be God’s child. And it was her natural inclination to think that at some later time she hopes she would be His child. But until that status of being an enemy of God sticks… she is still lost. xiv. So, I speak to her gently. Lovingly. Why? Because she is my daughter? Well, somewhat. But primarily, because I was just like her! j. [Slide 11] slaves to various passions and pleasures, i. Oh before Christ, before Grace, before being awoken to the truth – how often we dove in to the dumpster of sin for a cheap thrill. ii. Why? Could we have quit anytime? Could we have said no. iii. No. We were slaves. The whip of sin forced us on. iv. Like Cain, we may have had chances to keep ourselves from sinning greatly. We may have hated but kept ourselves from killing. We may have lusted but kept ourselves from fornication. We may have been arrogant but kept ourselves from bragging. v. But that didn’t mean we could stop sinning. Oh no. vi. I worked with some recovering addicts at a previous church. They were going through NA. And even though all of them were fighting and being relatively successful in keeping themselves off narcotics – all of them were addicted to sugar, tobacco, exorbitant amounts of coffee, or other substances. All of them were still committing acts of sexual sin, lying, complaining, and arrogance. You see without Christ; you can keep yourself from sinning in a specific way… but you cannot keep yourself from sinning. vii. Before grace, before Christ, we were slaves to our passions and pleasures. Many are this way in our world. “Follow your heart” is the Disney-fied mantra of those enslaved to their passions. “Trust your feelings” is the Star Wars motto of the slave master for your pleasures. viii. Our heart and feelings are the problem though, not the solution. We who are in Christ – know this now, but we did not know it naturally. k. [Slide 12] passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. i. Every day without the grace of God is filled with anger, resentment, envy and strife. ii. From where do disputes come? But from desiring what you do not have. iii. This is who we were! But it is not who we are now. l. [Slide 13] Passage Truth: Paul confirms to Titus and all the Cretans that they were formerly the same as all those outside the body of Christ. There is a human condition that they too possessed. They were foolish, wicked, enslaved, theologically rebellious, and violent people. m. Passage Application: For Titus, this is motivation for him to remind the Cretans to submit to, love, and live peaceably with everyone, because they were no better. n. [Slide 14] Broader Biblical Truth: Zooming out from this text, we understand that all men inherit sin through Adam. It is a doctrine called original sin and it can be traced back through the history of the church. Ignatius in the early 100s said, “all unbelievers, are incapable of doing the things of belief.” Or Justin Martyr who said – “no good thing dwells in us.” Or Origen who said, that “our human nature is not sufficient to seek God in any manner.” Or Paul who says that “no one seeks after God. No one is righteous. No one understands.” This is a truth from scripture and through the church ages. It has been challenged, but in every challenge the church has declared each opposing teaching to be heresy. Not just in its outright denial, such as Pelagianism. But also, in its half measure such as Semi-Pelagianism. The bottom line is this… mankind is dead in sin and unable to do anything about it. Any doctrine that does not teach this – is not from scripture. o. Broader Biblical Application: What does that mean for us who have been made alive with Christ with reference to how we view unbelievers? We love them, we live at peace with them, we submit to them if they have authority over us. We are eager to do good for them. How can we not? We were once just like them. Shall we thumb our noses at them? Shall we consider ourselves better, higher, mightier, more pious or refined? Friends, we were the same. We have no grounds for boasting. Transition: [Slide 15(blank)] So how is it possible for us to love them, be gentle with them, avoid quarreling, and submit to their authority? Because God has justified us by His grace. He has made us new. II.) God has justified us by grace so that we can be heirs of His promises, so we must live out the gospel. (4-7) a. [Slide 16] 4 – But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, i. Before we dive into this, we should recognize the symmetry between what is said here in verses 4-7 and really on out to verse 11 to what was said in verses 11-14 of chapter 2. ii. If we read these two passages side by side, which depending on your bible, you may be able to do, there is too many similarities for us to ignore. iii. Paul is saying the same thing he has been saying but in different words. iv. Recognizing this helps us to understand where Paul is going, by remembering where he has been. v. So, when we come to the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior, and we see that this appeared, we recognize the echo of verses 11-14 of chapter 2. vi. Another way of understanding the grace of God is to recognize it as the goodness and loving kindness of God. God’s goodness and loving kindness is lavished, not on those who were righteous, and not on those who believed, but on those who were yet depraved and wicked. vii. Indeed, our belief is not even mentioned in this entire context until verse 7. And there it is only a whisper. Verse 8 is when it truly comes in. viii. God acts in goodness and loving kindness toward those to whom He wishes. Toward those who are unable and unwilling to do and be what God desires– slaves to their passions, slaves to their hate, slaves to their ignorant theology, slaves to their wills – God, based on His will and choosing, lavishes upon His people goodness and loving kindness. It appears to them. ix. To what end? That they would believe? That they would choose Him? NO! b. [Slide 17] 5 – He saved us, i. Grace appeared bringing salvation. ii. Not potential but certain. iii. God’s goodness, and loving kindness toward us does not bring potential salvation but assured salvation. iv. He saved us. He alone. Why? v. Because we were utterly incapable… c. [Slide 18] Not because of works done by us in righteousness, i. Jesus preached a message of two commands. To repent and to believe the gospel. ii. To obey is a work (as Paul has just stated in this very text in verse 1.) iii. To obey a command of Christ is indeed a work done in righteousness. iv. And so, to think that repentance and faith is what releases God to save us is to upend what Paul preaches here. v. No! God saves us by Himself. WITHOUT us. It is not by works done by us in righteousness. It is not by our obedience that we are saved. It is because of Christ’s obedience we are saved. vi. It is NOT because of our belief that we are saved. It is because of the truth of what we believe that we are saved. vii. You say – but what of verses that say whoever believes will be saved? 1. YES! Whoever believes will be saved AMEN! 2. What you have to understand is that when the bible says “whoever believes will be saved” it is not giving a formula for us to get salvation. It is not saying, if you wish to have salvation you need to do x,y, and z. 3. Rather it is stating a fact. God loved the world so much that he sent His unique son, why? So that All believing in him might have eternal life. 4. John 3:16 is saying that the purpose of God sending Jesus is to so that those who depend on Him might have the promise of eternal life. It is not saying whoever wants to be saved can believe on Jesus. Because if that were true, we have to see Jesus’ words to the rich young ruler, as a lie. a. He asked Jesus, what more do I lack – Jesus said… not faith… not belief. What? He needed to sell all he had and follow Christ. b. Now in a sense, that is faith. It is belief. But it is not belief in the sense of a choice. Rather it is belief in the sense of dependance. c. And in that kind of belief, it most certainly is a work. And in the case of the rich young ruler, it was a work that meant his selling of all he had. 5. The call of Christ to produce good works is the appropriate call to a person who is unsaved. Why? Because if they are able to produce good works, then God has done something in their hearts. viii. My friends we must get this through our heads. ix. We undo our gospel presentations when we say – you cannot earn your salvation and then say, But if you say this prayer, believe all these things, then God will give His Spirit to you. x. But, you say, the Philippian jailer asked Paul – “What must I do to be saved?” And Paul said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ! See – Paul is saying that is the secret formula to get salvation. xi. Is he though? 1. Paul is simply saying what Jesus said to the rich young ruler. Depend, trust, rely fully on Christ. 2. But if he was a slave to sin, a slave to his passions, led astray in doctrine – could he do this? No. He would have walked away sorrowful. Instead, he invited the apostles to his home to speak of the matter further. 3. And that is where Paul perceived that the Philippian jailer may have been given grace by God already. All the signs were there. What signs? a. He was trembling with fear. Not when he thought the prisoners had escaped, but after he had seen with his own eyes the destruction of the prison, and that all the prisoners were still there. b. So what had him so afraid? What indeed. c. The second sign that Paul had a suspicion, or even a certainty that God was doing something in the man, is that Paul and Silas predicted the salvation of the entire household. This does not happen in any other text of scripture where the household is predicted to be saved. 4. Imagine a baby entering the world. He comes out silent. No crying. But imagine he looks at the doctor and asks – what must I do to live? 5. A silly question, for he is already alive, but if he wishes to live he must do what? Breathe! So the doctor says – BREATHE! And smacks the child on the back. 6. So Paul said – BREATHE! To a new baby that had been born. xii. Belief is not the catalyst to our conversion. Why? Because salvation is not by our works of righteousness. xiii. But faith is the means by which God continues to save us. We continue to have faith in Christ… not faith in our faith in Christ. xiv. All this must be true if we are to conclude that God’s salvation was… d. [Slide 19] But according to his own mercy, i. Mercy is when someone does not get the penalty for what they have done. ii. The wages of sin is death. iii. God’s mercy upon us is when he turns His wrath on Christ rather than on us. When Christ gets our death. iv. But how do we attain this? How do we get God’s mercy to us? How are the benefits of Christ’s work given to us? e. [Slide 20] By the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit i. We are cleansed of our sin, we are renewed, we are regenerated by the work of the Spirit of God. ii. God’s goodness and loving kindness, shown in mercy, saves us by washing us clean of the filth of sin and regenerating us to life from the death of sin. We are made new in the power of the Spirit of God. iii. And it was not a taste of the Spirit which He gave, waiting for us to believe. No.. f. [Slide 21] 6 - Whom he poured out on us richly i. He dumped all of the Spirit’s cleansing, renewing, and regenerating power on us. ii. It is a downpour. iii. How was this made possible? g. [Slide 22] Through Jesus Christ our Savior i. Christ Jesus took our penalty and gave His infinite righteousness ii. So that we could be cleansed, reborn, and given life. iii. Why? To what end? h. [Slide 23] 7 – So that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. i. So we would become heirs according to the hope or the faith, the trust of eternal life. ii. We believe – why? iii. Because we have been reborn and enabled to do so. Without the spirit’s washing, renewing, and regenerating, we would remain how Paul characterized us in verse 3. We simply could never depend on what Christ has done for us. iv. But we have been justified by His grace! v. The scriptures teach that we are justified by grace, faith, and works. 1. Here we are justified by grace 2. In Romans we are justified by faith (and grace Romans 3:24) – Romans 3:28 3. In James he says we are justified by works - James 2:24 vi. So which is it? Assuming the bible does not contradict – how can we be justified or how can we be declared righteous before God by all three of these at the same time? vii. [Slide 24] How is our declared righteousness by grace? 1. Grace enables faith or dependence on Christ’s work, and Grace trains us in righteousness. 2. Raw faith and raw works could never save – because they would not be possible without God’s Grace. You saw what we were in verse 3. God’s grace was absolutely necessary for us to be declared righteous. 3. Therefore, justification must be by grace. viii. [Slide 25] How is our declared righteousness by faith? 1. We depend on or have faith in Christ’s work and not our own. The nature of what Christ accomplishes necessitates our abandonment of hope in anything save His finished work. 2. So, a Grace that only has God giving us life but then leaves us to work it out for ourselves to the best we could, would only lead to our death. Without the cancellation of our sin and imputation of righteousness, we could not hope to be declared righteous. 3. Therefore, justification must be by faith. ix. [Slide 26] Finally, how is our declared righteousness by works? 1. Works of righteousness as we have seen in almost every context of the New and Old Testament, is a natural byproduct of God’s power in someone. 2. To the extent that when someone does works of righteousness, and is obedient to God, we could never conclude that they do so without God having done something in them. 3. And so a grace that brings us to life and gives us favor and a faith that trades our sin for His righteousness, but does not actually save us from being a slave of sin, could not possibly lead to anyone being declared to be righteous. 4. Therefore, justification must be by works. x. [Slide 27] What the writers of the New Testament mean when they say that justification is by grace, faith and works, is that it is all or nothing. xi. If you are justified by grace, you will produce faith and works. xii. If you are justified by faith, it was gifted by grace and it will produce works xiii. If you are justified by works, it was trained by grace and established on the work of Christ to which you cling. xiv. It is an unbroken chain. xv. God has done all this so that those who are justified by grace could become heirs according to His promise which they have received through faith, a promise for eternal life in Christ. i. [Slide 28] Passage Truth: Paul emphasizes the role of the Triune God in saving His people from their sin. The Father, in goodness, and loving kindness, fitting with his mercy, saves His people, without their aid, by washing them with regeneration and by renewing them with His Spirit. His grace declares His people righteous so that they might be heirs of the faith of eternal life. j. Passage Application: So Titus must remind His people to be workers of righteousness, remembering who they formerly were, and the great lengths that God alone went to to rescue them. k. [Slide 29] Broader Biblical Truth: Zooming out to all of scripture we understand that God alone acts to save His people. We do not contribute in any way. This is not to say that there are not any responsibilities upon us in the process of our salvation. Certainly, God calls us to do things. To live righteously. To repent and keep on repenting. To believe and keep on believing. But because of who we were before God acted, such expectations are beyond us until He acts. l. Broader Biblical Application: So Paul’s point becomes clear. We live according to what he describes in verses 1 and 2 because verses 4-7 have made it possible. So for us here at CBC, the application still holds. We must live out the grace and faith we have been given, by loving God and others. We must demonstrate by our good works that we have had grace poured on us. Conclusion: There is no need for me to labor long here. We ought to be shinning examples of God’s mercy and grace as we interact with unbelievers. We used to be as they are, but we’ve been changed. We’ve been saved. We’ve been washed and remade. So we cannot live like them. We must live like Christ toward them. He ate with sinners. He healed the ungodly. He helped the gentile. So should we. Not because we are better than they are. But because we were the same, and now we’ve been made to be like Christ. What does that look like? Verses 1 and 2. We ought to submit to authority, obey, speak kindly, gently, avoiding quarrelling, being eager instead to do good toward them. May our conduct toward a world that hates us, be meek, mild, gentle, and loving.

Jude has given three examples from the Old Testament of wickedness and parallels them to the wickedness of false teachers. False teachers follow the way of Cain. Like Cain, they are heretics who are selfish. False teachers have rushed headlong in the error of Balaam. Like Balaam, they are greedy, encouraging others to engage in immorality and idolatry. False teachers perished in the rebellion of Korah. Like Korah, they rebel against God’s appointed authority and as such are doomed to Hell and eventually the Lake of Fire. All three men had Scriptural truth and all three men refused to obey that truth. Be warned believer, do not make the same mistake.

You never know where you'll find some grace filled truth. I found some last week in a Bob Dylan song that I had somehow overlooked from his 1981 album, Shot of Love. Paul Williams said about the song: 'The song is about the moments in which we accept our pain and vulnerability and bow down (and are lifted up by) the will of God'. There might not be more poignant words ever written in pop music. Enjoy these lyrics as we discuss on today's The Pilgrim's Odyssey. "In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere, Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.   Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake, Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break. In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.   Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear, Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer. The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.   I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame And every time I pass that way I always hear my name. Then onward in my journey I come to understand That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.   I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light, In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space, In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.   I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me. I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand."

Text: 1 John 3:11-24

Vérifié/VerifiedSemaine/Week 81 Jean 1/1 John 1Ray LevyPasteur des louange/Worship Pastor

Love Like Christ, Not Like Cain | Verified Week 8 | October 4, 2020 Leave us a comment and share with a friend. Are you a Guest? We would love to know you. Text CONNECT to 615-551-9800 or submit the Connect Form — https://lifept.org/guestIf you wish to give online visit https://lifept.org/give 

Love Like Christ, Not Like Cain | Verified Week 8 | October 4, 2020 Leave us a comment and share with a friend. Are you a Guest? We would love to know you. Text CONNECT to 615-551-9800 or submit the Connect Form — https://lifept.org/guestIf you wish to give online visit https://lifept.org/give 

Love Like Christ, Not Like Cain | Verified Week 8 | October 4, 2020 Leave us a comment and share with a friend. Are you a Guest? We would love to know you. Text CONNECT to 615-551-9800 or submit the Connect Form — https://lifept.org/guestIf you wish to give online visit https://lifept.org/give 

Title: We Should Not Be Like Cain Preacher: Jim Hamilton Series: Genesis Passage: Genesis 4

Date: 24 February 2019 (Evening)Title: Do Not Be Like CainPassage: Genesis 4:1-16Preacher: Liam Garvie

Our understanding of fruit has become detached from the garden. Like Cain in Genesis 4, we’re removed from the soil. We act like the purpose of fruit is consumption. As disciples of Jesus, we’re called to cultivate “fruits of the Spirit” - but the purpose of God’s fruit in us isn’t just to eat, but also to till new soil with the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the measure of untilled land which marks the inauguration of God’s kingdom. How dirty are your hands?

Our understanding of fruit has become detached from the garden. Like Cain in Genesis 4, we're removed from the soil. We act like the purpose of fruit is consumption. As disciples of Jesus, we're called to cultivate “fruits of the Spirit” - but the purpose of God's fruit in us isn't just to eat, but also to till new soil with the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the measure of untilled land which marks the inauguration of God's kingdom. How dirty are your hands?

Our understanding of fruit has become detached from the garden. Like Cain in Genesis 4, we're removed from the soil. We act like the purpose of fruit is consumption. As disciples of Jesus, we're called to cultivate “fruits of the Spirit” - but the purpose of God's fruit in us isn't just to eat, but also to till new soil with the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the measure of untilled land which marks the inauguration of God's kingdom. How dirty are your hands?

Our understanding of fruit has become detached from the garden. Like Cain in Genesis 4, we’re removed from the soil. We act like the purpose of fruit is consumption. As disciples of Jesus, we’re called to cultivate “fruits of the Spirit” - but the purpose of God’s fruit in us isn’t just to eat, but also to till new soil with the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the measure of untilled land which marks the inauguration of God’s kingdom. How dirty are your hands?

Our understanding of fruit has become detached from the garden. Like Cain in Genesis 4, we’re removed from the soil. We act like the purpose of fruit is consumption. As disciples of Jesus, we’re called to cultivate “fruits of the Spirit” - but the purpose of God’s fruit in us isn’t just to eat, but also to till new soil with the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is the measure of untilled land which marks the inauguration of God’s kingdom. How dirty are your hands?

Rev. Christopher Chelpka

TenTalks 22/10/2017 | Part 10 | The story of Cain and Abel is a perfect example of why the spirit of comparison is a thief of joy and how it can take our eyes off God and disrupt the plans he has for us. 

Carin Mrotz presented this Yom Kippur sermon in Minneapolis at the Shir Tikvah Synagogue in 2017 The text as prepared for delivery: In preparing, I asked my self: What do I want to say to you. What do I need you to know, today, on Yom Kippur. And who am I to tell you? I think about that a lot – who am I in relation to this congregation, this community. I’m the director of an organization that serves this community, and also asks a lot of you. And I’m a member of this congregation. It can be hard to hold some of these those roles at the same time. I’m a board member, and sometimes when I usher at Shabbat, I find myself only talking to people about JCA. Or while I’m sitting in the library reading while my kids are in religious school. It can be hard to know how to just BE in the congregation and not feel that I’m working. Sometimes Jewish becomes such a thing that I do that I forget how it feels to just be. So rather than fight all of that, I’m just going to step into it here, and be all of those things here with you. And I look out and see JCA members, board members, and staff. I see the doctor who delivered my son, I look into the choir and see the nurse midwife who delivered my daughter. And I see both of my children here, squirming their way through the adult service just to hear mom speak. I see my husband, who isn’t Jewish, who in making a family with me threw his lot in with mine and joined our community wholeheartedly. I’m accountable to so many of you in this room. We’re accountable to each other. That can feel like a tremendous responsibility, but also, today, on our holiest day and one of not just atonement but forgiveness, it feels like a blessing. And I’m going to talk to you about racial justice and resistance, and our community’s flawed inheritance. But I’ll start with Cain and Abel. To recap, for those who don’t remember or who haven’t yet read, or who just like a good story, Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve after they were cast out of Eden. They had sisters, too, but they were obviously perfect and never did anything wrong, since I can’t think of any other reason the text isn’t about them. Cain is the first birth in the Torah. The first person born to another person. To people who were cursed. His brother Abel follows. They are given roles: Cain tills the soil and Abel tends the flock. The soil Cain tills is, of course, cursed. God cursed the soil before he was even born. When he and his brother approach God with offerings, his is disappointing. Of course it is. Abel has the fattest sheep and Cain has fruit grown from cursed soil. And God accepts Abel’s offering and rebuffs Cain’s. God turns his back on Cain, and furious, Cain kills his brother. The first man born in the Torah becomes the first murderer. He makes his brother the first death. I think it means something that the first man born to a person in the Torah takes the first life. I think his humanity is important. In social justice work, we draw heavily, or lean heavily on the concept of b’tselem elohim, the idea that we’re all made in the image of God. We are all made equally from the divine and are all uniquely valuable. It’s a powerful way to describe what connects us as humans. We use it to build empathy – with victims of police violence, with undocumented immigrants. It’s the way we put words to what we hope we all would just feel – that everyone is valuable, not matter how they got here, no matter what they do. It’s how we articulate what connects us to people we’ve never even met, why we care what happens to them. There’s nothing about being made in the image of God that means we’re perfect. Cain is messy and flawed and his brother bears that burden and loses his life. And they are both made in the image of God. There is so much responsibility in being human and we’re going to hurt each other. We’re going to make mistakes because we were designed to. Cain meets Abel in a field, ready to argue, and he kills him. And God comes to Cain and asks where Abel is. God knows what happened to Abel and doesn’t need to ask. So why does God bother to ask? God wants Cain to tell the truth. Today is Yom Kippur, a day to atone, to reflect, to tell the truth. I need to tell you some truth, too. Like MJ sang last night, I didn’t come to fool you. First. As a community, we’ve done a deep dive into our white privilege in the name of working for racial justice. We’ve gone to trainings – I’ve conducted them – we’ve read books like How Jews Became White Folks, and articles like last year’s As Jews atone on Yom Kippur, we need to confront our White Privilege in the Washington Post. Many of us want to understand who we are and where to stand in the fight for racial equality in America, so we studied our path in becoming white and sought to understand the privileges that were granted us. We’ve haven’t been getting this right. That’s the first truth. I did a training a few years ago with a friend and colleague, also Jewish. A black Jew. And I will never forget this - she held up a copy of How Jews Became White Folks, and said, “I could rub this book all over me and I will never become white.” White Jews need to do the work we’ve been doing to understand how to be allies in fighting white supremacy, but somewhere we mistook the racial identity and privilege conveyed to some of us as individuals as an identifier for our whole community. We’re a multiracial community. Some of us are white. But in generalizing our community as white, we’ve cast ourselves as allies to people who live outside it, and we fall short of supporting - and seeing – Jews of color. Or Jews with origins in the Middle East or South America or Asia. Or Jews whose family history is not one of immigration at all. We’ve simplified our story, taken the Ashkenazi journey to whiteness and made it the story of American Jews. We’ve marginalized members of our own community, made them invisible. I’m sorry we’ve done that. We’re capable as a community of sitting with deeper complexity; we have shortchanged ourselves. Next truth. Even for white Jews, our whiteness does not protect us from anti-Semitism. Our rates of home ownership and college graduation have not made neo-Nazis okay with us. Our privilege is conditional, and if anything, our whiteness makes it easier for anti-Semitism to be brushed aside as not actually very threatening. Our president – sigh – tells the nation that some of those neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were fine people. Can you believe that? A woman was killed. But I’m not just talking about neo-Nazis, in the days following what happened in Charlottesville, some of us felt the sting of having the anti-Semitism erased from those rallies by our own friends. Men chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and yet when our anti-racist partners demanded justice, in some of those demands, we felt forgotten. We were forgotten. Truth. It stung. It hurt. A Jewish friend, a longtime racial justice activist told me it felt like a door had closed. She didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because she didn’t want to prioritize her own fear when other communities were experiencing much more urgent attacks, and from systems, from institutions. But the truth is it hurt, some of us felt truly isolated. Last fall, not long after the election, I was attacked by Nazis on Twitter. A neighbor discovered a giant swastika painted on the garage of an abandoned home in North Minneapolis, where I live. A friend of mine, a black organizer, and I went together to clean it off. I went to Home Depot and bought paint remover and we scrubbed together in the cold until it was as gone as it could be, and then because we couldn’t believe that a few hours earlier, there had literally been a giant swastika right there on a house on the Northside, we took pictures and tweeted them. Within a few days, racist and anti-Semitic trolls attacked. They said we’d painted it ourselves for attention, or because leftists are intent on proving hate exists. Look, black women and their Jewish girlfriends don’t have to work hard to prove hate exists. So, exposed as a hoax and targeted for having committed the crime of being black and Jewish and women and publicly fighting white supremacy, we got hammered for days. I received pictures of myself photoshopped into Holocaust memes. My face was zoomed in on and analyzed for my Jewish features. My friend was merely the pet, I was her puppeteer. Some were violent, some explicit. There was one guy who kept tweeting my picture and comparing me to a young Howard Stern. Which is probably fair. But most were threatening, and most focused on my identity as a Jew and hers as a black woman and the fact that we had done this together. My friend told me she didn’t know anti-Semitism existed anymore. She’d thought it was an artifact. Something historical. “I thought you guys were normal white people,” she said. “Right?” I answered. “We did, too.” Cain doesn’t tell God the truth. God asks where is Abel and Cain answers, famously, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Why lie to someone who already knows the truth? I try to put myself in Cain’s shoes and I think about how scary it is to tell the truth when you’re all alone. That’s the function of anti-Semitism – to isolate Jews, to position us as an invisible buffer between the oppressed and oppressor. Conditionally safe. We get privilege but never full acceptance. We are exalted as powerful by those who wish to destroy us because it separates us from the people we think of as our most likely allies in fighting them. If everyone believes that the rich white Jews are funding the anti-racist resistance, white supremacists will blame us while black activists will feel used, controlled, resentful. We end up alone, vulnerable. A scapegoat. I pause here, because the idea of our community being used as a scapegoat is interesting to think about today. The traditional Yom Kippur text is from Leviticus, the expulsion into the wilderness of the scapegoat—the “goat for Azazel,” carrying upon him all the inequities of the Israelites. A literal vessel to carry our sins away from us. Today, though, we’re reading Cain and Abel, a story that does the opposite – pushes us to stand and face our flaws, pushes us to ask ourselves questions we already know the answers to in order to tell the truth. To really atone is to hold our flaws close, not send them away. And if we’ve been made the vessel for others to cast off their sins, a scapegoat, it’s not a role we have to accept. God asked Cain what happened to Abel. God gave Cain a chance to tell the truth. And he couldn’t. Or he just didn’t. And yes, he was alone, but remember, Cain was alone because in his anger at having been handed cursed ground, and in his pain at being rejected by God, he pushed his brother away. He turned inward and destroyed the person that might have supported him. In his pain, he made himself alone. And they were both made in the image of God, and Cain’s destiny was bound together with Abel’s – after he killed Abel, God sent Cain to wander, separated him from the land that was his birthright, never to return. Here’s another truth, or maybe a question. When we’ve found ourselves alone, are there times when it’s because we’ve isolated ourselves? When we have assumed likely allyship based on a historical relationship that we haven’t kept up? When have we been hurt that other communities have scheduled something a date that’s significant to us without understanding why it might be significant to them? When we have criticized tactics without understanding the demands? or wordsmithed statements? or disavowed groups that we never had a relationship with in the first place? When have we relied on an image of Heschel marching with King because we didn’t have a more recent example of solidarity? We’ve been relying on Heschel praying with his feet for more than 50 years. His feet are exhausted. Another truth: B’tselem elohim, the recognition of God in a stranger is not a shortcut to actually knowing them. I can recognize your humanity and fight for you, but we are stronger if we fight together, on equal terms, not because we want to help each other but because our destinies are firmly entwined. We are strongest in relationship. Those take time, and they’re messy. That’s by design – remember, we’re messy on purpose. We need to stay in relationships when it’s hard. When we feel invisible, when we accidentally make someone else invisible. When we’ve found ourselves alone, when has that been an opportunity to make a connection? When I was being attacked by Twitter Nazis, I was scared for my safety. I use my real name on the internet, I am a professional Jew in public, my address is listed. I knew rationally that the anonymity and distance that enabled these trolls to come after me online would also probably protect me from having to encounter them physically in my world. But I was deeply shaken, my anxiety was out of control, I was drained. And I got through it, because of my friends. They took my phone away and blocked the trolls so I wouldn’t have to see all of the tweets. They fed me meals. A dozen of my girlfriends in other states coordinated a donation to JCA in honor of fighting Nazis. From all around, I felt held, and supported. We say that our inheritance as Jews is a broken world. Like Cain inherited cursed soil, we received a world in need of repair. We entered it broken, like Cain, but we can choose to care for it, to tend it. We can choose to bring each other closer, not isolate ourselves. I believe our other inheritance is resilience. Some people think resilience is the ability to bounce back, but I like the way the American Psychological Association defines it – as adaptation in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or stress. I learned that not from a psychologist but from Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. I had the privilege, in a dark moment, to receive some of her teaching on resilience, and I wanted to share just a tiny bit with you. Resilience is not coming back from something terrible, it’s adapting in the current moment to terrible circumstances. I went to a training once, on how to fight racism as people of faith, and the facilitator said, “We talk about safe spaces, but my job is not to keep things from hurting you in this space, it’s to help you be resilient enough to deal with painful things and keep doing the work.” That’s what our community has always done. That’s our job right now – to support each other through challenging times, knowing that sometimes we will be messy. And we will work in relationship, because none of the paths through this moment can be managed alone. The last truth, another question. When we’ve thought ourselves alone, when have we really not been? When have we been guided by our ancestors, our shared story of survival. When have we looked around to find ourselves sitting in a full congregation, in community, on our holiest day, together?

"Sin Is Crouching At Your Door." That's the title of today's episode, which has Genesis 4:5b-7 as its main text. This episode examines Cain's jealousy and the warning given him by God. Like Cain, we often find ourselves on the threshold of engaging in sin. But we must succeed where Cain failed! We must not allow sin to master us! We must master sin!

A daily devotional through the Bible speaking with God as Adam and Eve may have in the garden east of Eden. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com summary The reason Moses didn't go into the promised land wasn't because of the Israelites. Did you notice his blame game? He blamed the rest of the nation for God blocking his entrance to the new land. He would do it again later in his discourse. He couldn't take the blame for his disobedience. Like so many, he tried to point the finger somewhere else. He wanted to share his guilt. Like Adam in the garden when he blamed Eve for his failure to keep God's command. Like Eve who then blamed the serpent for giving her the fruit from the tree. Like Cain who tried to shun the blame for his brother's murder. Like so many, Moses tried to shed the blame for his disobedience. today's scriptures Today's Bible reading plans include: Ready - Deuteronomy 1: 26-46 Set - Deuteronomy 1; Mark 12 Go! - Deuteronomy 1-2; Mark 12

Carter Brown, director of student ministries at Rio Vista Community Church, preaches on what was learned from the Berlin missions trip.

1 John 3:11-24. As followers of Jesus, we are not like Cain. Find out from 1 John was that means in your life.