Podcasts about old covenant

The author of "Decoding The Torah" explains the original purpose of several Old Covenant laws and how they still relate to us today. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/619/29

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Brad Bell

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Brad Bell

Episode 2 – Mike discusses the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant and its implications. The conversation touches on the church's resistance to the message of grace.

Dive into this uplifting Double Edged Sword Podcast episode exploring Acts 15, where the Jerusalem Council, guided by the Holy Spirit, ruled against requiring circumcision for Gentile believers, fulfilling rather than abolishing the Old Covenant. Led by Peter, James, and Paul, their decision reflects a unified church, contrasting today's 45,000 denominations split by personal views and deception. Highlighting uniform liturgy, baptism's salvific role, and the Spirit's guidance over mere Scripture (1 Corinthians 1:10, 14:40), this episode urges unity in apostolic truth. Prophets Judas and Silas strengthened faith, not false predictions, as Antioch rejoiced in love and truth (1 Corinthians 13). Embrace Christ's unchanging Word (Hebrews 4:12) for a harmonious faith. Glory to His name!

In this episode of the Broken Wharfe Podcast, John-Mark sits down with Dr. James Renihan to explore the Old and New Testament foundations of baptism. Drawing from his teaching series, IRBS On The Road, Dr. Renihan explains how ritual washings in the Old Covenant point forward to believer's baptism, why circumcision is fulfilled in regeneration—not baptism—and how baptism serves as a pastoral help to Christians.Whether you're Baptist, paedobaptist, or simply wrestling with the theology of baptism, this conversation provides clarity, encouragement, and a strong biblical framework.

Allan Moseley delves into 2 Corinthians chapter 3, examining the profound distinctions between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in Christ. It emphasizes the New Covenant's surpassing glory, spiritual life, and eternal righteousness, and encourages believers to daily behold Christ's glory for personal transformation and to reveal God's greatness to a world in desperate need.

Topics: Biblical Backsliding, You're Not a Backslider If You Don't "Fully Commit" to God, You're Not a Backslider If You're Sinning, The Word Backslide Is Not in the New Testament for a Reason, The Law Was Brought in so That Sin Would Increase (Romans 5:20), The Law is a Ministry of Death and Condemnation (2 Corinthians 3), You Are Now the Temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:11), You Are Now the House of God (Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 10), You Search the Scriptures because You Think that in Them You Have Life (John 5), The Law is Not of Faith (Galatians 3), Even when We are Faithless He Remains Faithful (2 Timothy 2:13), A Fearful Exception for the Unbelievers Who Insult Grace (Hebrews 10), It Is Good for Your Heart to Be Strengthened by Grace, Jesus is Grace, Jesus Is Grace, The Law Was Meant to Increase Sin, The Old Covenant is Now Obsolete (Hebrews 8), The New Covenant Is a New and Living Way, You Are Not Under the Law but Under Grace (Romans 6:14), If It's Based on Works It Cannot Be Based on Grace (Romans 11:6), If You Are Led by the Spirit You Are Not Under the Law (Galatians 5:18), God Found Fault with Israel, The New Covenant Is Based on Better Promises, The New Covenant Came through the Blood of Jesus, You Are a Beneficiary to the New Covenant, The Old Testament Uses the Word Backslide, The Context of Backsliding Was the Hebrews Sliding Away from Faith in the Old Covenant, Jesus Is the Gospel of Grace (Acts 20:24), Your Sins Are Not More Powerful than What He's Done, The Promises Made at the Cross Keeps This from Being Undone, Confession and Repentance Don't Maintain Your Salvation, You Are One Spirit with the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:17), Our Perfection Comes by Way of Trusting in What Jesus Has Done with His Blood, God Was Still Married to the "Backslider" in the Old TestamentSupport the showSign up for Matt's free daily devotional! https://mattmcmillen.com/newsletter

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Brad Bell

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Brad Bell

The Old Covenant offered earthly and conditional promises based on the people's ability to obey the law. The New Covenant is based on God's unconditional promise to forgive sin and grant eternal life through faith in Christ. Through the New Covenant, God's law is written on the hearts and minds of believers by the Holy Spirit, leading to an inward desire to obey God out of love.Support the showhttp://www.gwafgbc.org http://www.gwafgbc.org/storehttp://www.gwafgbc.org/givehttps://vimeo.com/manage/videos

Send us a textThe concept of "eternal refuge" completely transforms how we understand salvation. God's everlasting arms beneath us create not a prison of legalism, but a sanctuary of grace from which we can face life's battles with confidence.Many believers live trapped in chains of fear, perpetually worried their salvation hangs by a thread of their own performance. But this message shatters that misconception. When Moses spoke of God as our eternal refuge with everlasting arms underneath us, he wasn't describing a temporary shelter but an unbreakable promise. The security of our salvation doesn't depend on our ability to maintain it, but on God's unchanging character and Christ's completed work.The substitutionary nature of Christ's death means He fully bore our punishment. If Jesus didn't actually take away all sin from His elect people, how would His sacrifice differ from the repetitive animal sacrifices under the Old Covenant? We stand justified before God not because we've never sinned, but because Christ's righteousness has been credited to our account. This divine transaction means believers face no condemnation—not because we don't sin, but because our sin was completely accounted for at Calvary.Perhaps most powerful is the revelation that God's sovereignty works alongside our responsibility. In Deuteronomy, Moses speaks of God thrusting out enemies before Israel while commanding them to destroy these enemies. This parallels our spiritual battles today. God has already defeated our spiritual enemies and now calls us to participate in their destruction from a position of security. "I've made you safe in my refuge; I've secured you in my arms; now go destroy those enemies because you cannot lose."This truth frees us to fight sin with confidence—not from fear of losing salvation, but from assurance in God's completed work and ongoing protection. Take heart in this powerful truth: God's arms are positioned to lift you up, not push you down. Rest in His refuge, trust in His finished work, and face your battles with divine confidence.The Balance of GrayFaith That Challenges. Conversations that Matter. Laughs included. Subscribe Now!Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

What the Old Covenant demands, the New Covenant promises to accomplish in God's unmerited covenant people through Christ's sacrifice and priestly intercession for them. Hebrews 8:8-12 For more resources on this teaching please visit https://brcc.church/teachings/the-glory-of-the-new-covenant/

What laws should civil rulers govern by? Since every law of God is “holy . . . just and good” (Rom. 7:12), this must be their standard. And how should they apply them? Scripture gives us three divisions of the law: (1) ceremonial laws, which were fulfilled in Christ; (2) judicial laws, which were tied to Israel’s civil life and expired with the Old Covenant; and (3) the moral laws, summarized in the Ten Commandments, which abide forever. Civil magistrates are bound to uphold God’s moral laws in every decision they make. And even though the judicial laws of Israel expired in their original form, these laws still carry general equity—moral principles that apply across all ages and nations, which they should administer with careful wisdom.

Faith for the Coming Wilderness (5) (audio) David Eells – 9/17/25 God has really good plans for us, brethren, and we don't need to fear a thing about living in the wilderness. The Bible says in (Isa.35:1) The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. (2) It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God. (3) Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. (4) Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; he will come and save you. God cannot fail us; He's made these promises, and He can do anything but fail. He is going to be creating sons through this tribulation we're coming to, and our concern ought to be that we don't hinder Him with our own works. That's a big problem. Remember that Jesus said, (Mat.9:29) … According to your faith be it done unto you, so obviously a lack of faith will hinder what He really desires to do for us. When Jesus came to His own hometown, He couldn't do many miracles for them because of their unbelief. (Mat.13:54) And coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? (55) Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? (56) And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? (57) And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. (58) And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Unbelief can certainly block God from giving us the benefits that we should have. The reason I mention works is because your works prove whether you have faith or not. Many people are blocking God by attempting to save themselves through their own works, so they never get to see God's works, but what did Jesus tell His disciples? (Mat.16:6) … Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They eventually understood that Jesus was talking about the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, which was so dangerous to the real salvation of God because their teaching was self-works. (Mat.16:5) And the disciples came to the other side and forgot to take bread. (6) And Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (7) And they reasoned among themselves, saying, We took no bread. (8) And Jesus perceiving it said, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have no bread? (9) Do ye not yet perceive, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? That was 12 baskets of uneaten fragments they took up. (10) Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? That time, they took up seven baskets of uneaten fragments. (11) How is it that ye do not perceive that I spake not to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (12) Then understood they that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their teaching had replaced God's works in their lives and God's works through them with self-works. However, notice that the more loaves the people provided of their own supply, the fewer the number of people who were fed, and the fewer baskets of leftovers there were. Jesus was obviously making a point here about the leaven of the Pharisees, and His point was that the more you put in of your own works to save yourself, the less God will put in to save you. Salvation in any form is by grace; it's unmerited and it's unearned. Yet many of God's people are attempting to save themselves with their money and by their own methods, which they claim are now God's methods. All the worldly methods to which we've had access, and worked for us in “Egypt,” are not going to work in the wilderness. So, what Jesus was saying, to the extent you trust in God and let Him do the work, He'll do it, but to the extent you're trying to do it yourself, it's doomed to failure. (Eph.2:8) For by grace have ye been saved (the Greek word sozo) through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; (9) not of works (This is referring to your works.), that no man should glory. God will not share His glory with anybody else (Exodus 20:3; Isaiah 42:8; 43:11; 48:11; etc.). Men get the credit when men do the work and when man's ingenuity is involved, but God has designed a way where man can get no credit. Sozo covers a very broad territory and, as a matter of fact, I'm going to show you that it covers everything. Salvation includes receiving every benefit that the Lord gave to you at the cross, and salvation includes being delivered from every curse, but it's not by our works. (Gal.3:13) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: (14) that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Jesus became a curse for us so that we might have the blessing of Abraham. The all-inclusive curse listed in Deuteronomy 28 is everything detrimental that ever happened to man because man went his own way and did his own thing, was put upon Jesus. Jesus bore that curse upon Himself. And since we have been saved, there's not much we can do to add to what God has already accomplished, except to walk by faith so that it is accomplished. The wilderness is a completely safe and secure place for believers; it really is! Everything has already been provided there, just like God provided for the Israelites. The only thing He really desired of them in the wilderness was faith in His promises. Our faith in His promises is the very substance from which the desired need is made. (Heb.11:1) Now faith is assurance (or the “substance”) of [things] hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. Jesus said, (Mar.11:24) … All things whatsover ye pray and ask for, believe ye received them and you shall have them. Your translation may say “receive” but the word there is past tense in the original Greek. And all throughout the Bible, God uses the past tense concerning His provision for our needs and His deliverance of our curses. Why does He do that? He uses the past tense because it was all accomplished at the cross. This past tense, sacrificial provision has already been accomplished. (Eph.2:8) For by grace have ye been saved (past tense) through faith.... (1Pe.2:24) Who his own self bare (past tense) our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins (past tense), might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed (past tense). It's already been accomplished. Your healings have already been accomplished! Your sins have already been taken away! It's not by your works, not by self-effort, but by faith. God lets your faith stand in temporarily as the substance of the thing hoped for, until He brings it to pass. (Col.1:13) Who delivered us (past tense) out of the power of darkness.... Many people are anxious and troubled about being delivered from their past curses or the family curses that have been passed down to them, or demonic oppression and possession in their lives. But, as you see, we've already been delivered. (Col.1:13) Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. We don't have to strive through self-effort to enter into His Kingdom; we have to strive through faith to enter into His Kingdom. Faith will give us the obedience that we need to enter into His Kingdom. (2Co.5:18) But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; (19) to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. The word translated “reconciled” is the Greek katallasso, and it means “exchanged.” God made an exchange through Jesus Christ. He took our life and gave us His life. (Gal.2:20) I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that [life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, [the faith] which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. We were crucified with Christ, and we don't live anymore. He now lives in us by faith, so a reconciliation has been made, and God is constantly bringing this reconciliation to pass through our faith in Him. He's giving us the blessings of Christ; He's giving us the spotless purity of Christ. And as we confess our sins and walk by faith, He's taking away our old, sinful life and the curses under which we've been living. Salvation is not by self-efforts; it's by faith in Jesus and what He already accomplished for us. Apostle Paul said, (Gal.2:20) I have been crucified with Christ.... There are preachers out there who like to emphasize, “We have to die; we have to die.” Well, here's the way to die: “I have been crucified with Christ.” You accept this free gift of crucifixion with Christ, and God brings it to pass as you continue to believe it and confess it. (Gal.2:20) I have been crucified (past tense) with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me.... That's a confession of faith, a confession that the promise has already been accomplished. Through this we will be able to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus.  (Gal.3:13) Christ redeemed us (past tense) from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.... (1Pe.1:3) Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again (past tense) unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Father begat us again by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Heb.10:10) By which will we have been sanctified (past tense) through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (14) For by one offering he hath perfected (past tense) for ever them that are sanctified. All the promises are past tense. (Eph.1:3) Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us (past tense) with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly [places] in Christ. (2Pe.1:3) Seeing that his divine power hath granted (past tense) unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue. And this “knowledge” shows us how to exercise our faith for this victory. And Jesus told us in His day, which is, of course, in our past, that (Joh.12:31) Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. (Joh.16:33) These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome (past tense) the world. (Joh.19:30) When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished (past tense): and he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit. “It is finished.” This is the reason we believe that we received, past tense: because everything was accomplished at the cross. That really prevents our works from being of any benefit, doesn't it? The Lord has already given everything to us; that's why we are to believe we have received “all things whatsoever” we pray and ask for. “All things whatsoever” were given to us at the cross as a free gift. It's not as if you have to talk God into giving you a healing, or deliverance, or provision, or protection, or sanctification. You don't have to talk God into it; you have to believe you have received whatever you asked because God already took care of it. That's why Paul said, (Php.4:19) And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. It's already been accomplished; it's already been paid for. Redemption from the curse and provision for life were truly accomplished at the cross. In fact, God's works were finished from the foundation of the world; that's when He spoke the plan into existence. (Heb.4:3) For we who have believed do enter into that rest; even as he hath said, As I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. The only thing left is for the true sons of God to enter into those works by faith, believing they have received. Since the works were finished, we should believe and rest from our own works. We can't save, or heal, or deliver ourselves, but we can exercise faith in those promises so that they do come to pass. This resting in faith on the grounds of God's promises is the “rest” in the wilderness that God expected of the Israelites. (Heb.4:3) For we who have believed do enter into that rest.... When you believe these past tense promises, what do you do? When you believe that you have been saved, were healed, were translated, have been crucified, have been redeemed, have been perfected, have been sanctified, have been blessed in all things; when you believe that it's all been done, what can you do to bring it to pass? If you do something in the flesh to bring it to pass, what you are saying is, “I don't believe it has been accomplished.” Listen, I have tested this out for many, many years and I know it works, and I know it works consistently. I also know that, to the extent I've added to the works of God in seeking to bring something to pass, it turned out to be kind of like what Jesus said: (Mat.16:9) Do ye not yet perceive, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? (10) Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? Whenever I've put in, God hasn't. God's power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). And so, (Heb.4:3) … we who have believed do enter into that rest.... This is speaking of a spiritual Sabbath rest. (Heb.4:9) There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. The Greek word here for sabbath rest is sabbatismos, and it means a “keeping of rest.” It's not a one-day rest like it was in the Old Covenant. In the New Testament, the Sabbath is never said to be one day of the week; that's just a type and shadow of the continual keeping of rest, which is commanded here. “There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God.” This constant keeping of rest every day through these past tense promises is our New Testament spiritual Sabbath. (10) For he that is entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. The rest is to believe in these promises, to accept them as done, to hold fast to them. (Heb.4:1) Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into his rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. In other words, don't leave out even one promise that would cause you to enter into this rest. And this rest is ceasing from your own works. Many of God's people are dead today because they wouldn't cease from their own self-efforts to save themselves. (Heb.4:2) For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard. God has designed salvation to be by grace, the unmerited, unearned favor of God toward those who believe. You see, we're going to a very dry place, a place where man will not provide our needs, but God will. Through these promises, God will consistently provide our needs. He was very, very consistent the whole time I was raising my children. Of course, when they got out in the world, some of them decided to go their own way, and they'll have to learn their own lessons. But while they were under my authority and headship, God consistently healed, delivered, and provided all these things. I learned early on in my Christian walk that when I exercised faith in these promises, God fulfilled them. (Php.2:13) For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. He not only works in me to will and to do of His good pleasure, but He brings forth that which is promised. Let me share another testimony with you. Years ago, when I lived in Louisiana, a lady preacher contacted me one day. She had traveled all over the country to try to get help, but she was still in desperate need. She said, “David, I've travelled all over the country and I've gone here and I've gone there. I have two very large inoperable tumors, and the doctors say if they operated on me, they would kill me.” She went to so and so, and so and so, and so and so, all these faith preachers who are known for laying hands on the sick, and if I gave you their names, you would probably recognize them. And she went on, “David, I just don't understand it; I just don't understand why I haven't been healed!” And I answered her, “You just told me why you haven't been healed. You're expecting something to come, but you know, tomorrow never comes. You don't believe the true Gospel because the true Gospel is that God's already done it.” A lot of people understand the Gospel as, “One day, God will heal me.” No. God already healed you. God already delivered you. God already provided for you. It's already done; it's a sure thing. That's why we can have such faith in the Lord. It's not a matter of us talking Him into it; it's a matter of our accepting this free gift He's already given us. And so I told that lady preacher, “You've been looking in the wrong direction. You're looking forward, and you need to turn around and look back. That's where God healed you. ‘By the stripes of Jesus, ye were healed'; that's the Gospel you must believe! Romans 1:16 says the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes it. The Good News is not that Jesus will heal you; the Good News tells you that He already did heal you; that's the real Gospel.” Now, the reason people are not receiving from God is they are trying to talk God into it, and as long as you are trying to talk Him into it, you never know whether the answer is “yes” or “no.” But what does the Scripture say? (2Co.1:20) For how many soever be the promises of God, in him is the yea: wherefore also through him is the Amen, unto the glory of God through us. All the promises of God are “Yes.” That means God is not going to go back on anything He's said to us. (Num.23:19) God is not a man, that he should lie, Neither the son of man, that he should repent: Hath he said, and will he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and will he not make it good? He's going to bring it to pass, as long as you believe the Gospel. The Gospel is that you already received these things as a free gift; long before you ever came into existence, they were given to you as a free gift. Be convinced by what the Bible says, not by what it doesn't say. When I explained this to the lady preacher, I could almost see a light bulb go on; it was like her eyes just started glowing. She understood, and I could see she understood. And I said to her, “Okay, we're going to pray one more time, and this time, you receive this free gift from God. You accept it because it's yours,” and she agreed. So we prayed and, as we were still praying, as a matter of fact, she said, “They're gone! I felt them go!” She actually felt those tumors leave her, and I pointed out to her, “This is the first time you believed the Gospel. All that other was hope; it wasn't faith. Faith believes you have received; hope looks forward to the future.” If you look up the Biblical word for “hope,” it basically means “a firm expectation,” but a “firm expectation” is not believing you have received; salvation is by faith. Everybody who has faith has hope, but not everybody who has hope has faith. “Believing you have received” is something only true believers can do. Many people in the Church are not believers. We need to identify believers the way Jesus identified believers. He said, (Mar.16:17) And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; (18) they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. And also, (Joh.14:12) Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. Believers have the works of God manifested through them, not their own works. They have the works of God manifested through them because they believe the works were finished. I remember another time when I was a very young Christian. My wife and I had just come to the Lord, and we'd spent a month in a dead church that didn't believe the full Gospel. But I'd been reading the Bible for some time and really believing what I was seeing there. I was living it out, and God was proving to me that all of it was still true; none of it had passed away, as these people were saying. So, I just left this church and went to a full Gospel church. Well, at the time, my wife had been in a motorcycle accident in which she was injured. Her kidneys had been badly bruised, and the doctors put her on some antibiotics to clear up an infection so that they could operate on her kidneys, but in the meantime, we called for the elders of the church and had them pray for her, as the Bible tells us to do. (Jas.5:14) Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: (15) and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him. So the elders prayed for her, and I think it was something like a week later that my wife was walking through the house, and she was complaining to the Lord. She said, “Lord, I just don't understand. We did what You said: we called for the elders, we prayed the prayer of faith. I just don't understand why it's not happening.” And the Lord spoke to her. She said it was the first time the Lord had ever spoken to her, and it was almost audible. He said to her, “If you believe that I have healed you, why are you taking all that medicine?” Well, you know, it was such a shocking thing that she ran immediately into the bathroom and started pouring the medicine down the commode, and she was healed instantly right there. The question the Lord spoke was to make her believe the Gospel: “If you believe that I have healed you, why are you taking all that medicine?” In other words, “Why are you trying to heal yourself when I've already told you in the Bible that I healed you?” This is the kind of self-effort that hinders God from doing what He wants to do because self-effort proves you do not believe that this is a free gift. Self-effort proves you do not believe that it's already been given to you. Now, a lot of people are going to ask, “David, are you saying that God doesn't use doctors and medicine?” Well, I'm going to answer that question. First of all, if God already healed you, if He already delivered you, and you believe it, what are your actions going to be like? Just stop and think. (Jas.2:17) Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. Faith without works is dead; it's incomplete. (18) Yea, a man will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith. How do you prove that you believe you already received this at the cross? It's going to be by your works that agree with what you say you believe; anything else is hypocrisy. You say you believe it, so your actions should agree with what you say. I learned this was the main reason people don't receive from God. They say they believe what the Bible says, but all their actions prove that they believe they have to help God out because He's not a very powerful God and He hasn't already taken care of their need. They're still trying to talk Him into it, but since we're not talking about something in the future or something in the past, we have to just accept it as done. Our oldest child, Deborah, was about four when we first came to the Lord, but our next child, Corban, came along after my wife and I came to the Lord. By that time, we were convinced that God had already given us these gifts and that salvation covered all of this, as the Bible clearly says: (1Pe.2:24) Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. Notice, too, that the Bible always connects salvation with deliverance from sin and deliverance from the curse of sin: (Psa.103:3) Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases. God connects salvation for the soul with salvation for the body, and we knew this was a part of salvation. We knew (Eph.2:8) For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. And we knew that salvation includes receiving every benefit and being delivered from every curse. So we felt like the Lord was convicting us that He wanted us to put our trust in Him and to have our children at home, which we did from that day forth. I am not putting anyone under law to do this because it has to be faith. At that time when we had faith, the first child to come along was Corban. We were trusting God to do the delivery and it was just an awesome miracle when he was born. I didn't know anything about delivering babies, though, and most dont deliver babies without forceps. That's not God's way. I knew that God was going to deliver this baby, just like He's done for thousands of years, and that I was just there to catch. The only thing I really studied was how to tie the cord. Somebody gave me a book after they found out we were going to do a home birth, but when the thought came into my mind, “Are you going to do this or am I going to do this?” I knew the Lord was talking to me. The only thing I actually looked for in the book was how to tie the cord, so I saw how they did that and gave the book back to the person who gave it to me. When it came time, Mary went into labor, and the first thing that actually appeared was a little purple toe. I thought, “Uh, oh! I know it's not supposed to work like this!” We knew we had a breach, so we prayed and we committed it to the Lord. Literally, I stood there and I pointed at that baby and I said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of there!” People laugh at me when I say that, and I laugh at myself when I say that, but that's what I did. I want you to know, we didn't realize at the time that this boy was not only a breach, he was a footling breach, which is one foot up and one foot down and wrong end down. I've talked to several medical people since then, and they said, “That's impossible!” Doctors always do a C-section when they have a situation like that, but I was trusting in God, and God's power is made perfect in our weakness. Well, that baby did come out of there. He came out of there as a footling breach, and he didn't turn. God just had to show us that He could do it, and He did do it. And I'll tell you something else: after Corban was born, he was a very deep, deep yellow because we were told my wife and I had incompatible blood types. I think the doctors call it a RhoGAM problem. In the hospital, they would give you a RhoGAM shot because the condition actually causes blood poisoning in the child. So here he was, very yellow and since he was born at home, we decided we would call the Public Health Unit to see how we could get a birth certificate for him. And the nurse who answered said, “Well, did you just not make it to the hospital in time?” We said, “No, that wasn't the situation at all.” Then she asked me, “Was it just too fast?” I told her, “No, that wasn't the situation either; we planned it.” She said, “Oh. We'll send a nurse out to do the certificate.” So they sent a nurse out, but as soon as the nurse got a look at Corban, she said, “Mr. Eells, you have to rush this baby to the hospital! This baby has blood poisoning and he's going to die without a transfusion!” Now, before I go on, I want you to know I'm not talking about peer pressure here. I've heard the horror stories out there of people who had home births because that's what their church expected of them, and they did it because of peer pressure to be accepted in their religion or whatever. That's not the way of faith. God's not in it, and it's doomed to failure. You don't want to get the cart before the horse. It's not works before faith; it's faith before works. This nurse was a Catholic lady and, after we had talked to her for a few minutes, I told her, “Ma'am, Corban is healed. He'll be just fine, so don't you worry.” I quoted a few verses to her, and she went away, but I could tell she wasn't convinced. And she came back after a little while and knocked on the door again, and I thought, “Uh, oh. I wonder what's going on here.” I was thinking she might take some kind of legal action, but by the time she came back, Corban's skin was the same color as my skin. All the yellow had gone, and this little Catholic lady was astounded. She said, “That just doesn't happen without a transfusion,” and I said, “Well, you're looking at it!” I didn't say, “I told you so,” but she knew it. The year after that, we had Nathan, and Nathan was two months premature. Now listen, when you trust God, it's not as if you always get out of a trial and everything goes smoothly. We had trials just about every time, but God showed us that there was no problem from which He couldn't save us. Nathan was very premature and very, very small. We prayed over him, and I tell you, he never looked back. He just grew and grew. The boy never slowed down; he outgrew children who were born full-weight at the same time he was born. And when we called the Public Health Unit to get a birth certificate for Nathan, it happened that they sent out the same nurse, and she brought company with her: another nurse. As soon as they came in the door, she said, “Oh, Mr. Eells, can I show her the baby who was born last year?” I said, “Sure.” So they went in to see Corban and I could hear her talking to this other nurse. She said, “Now, this is the baby I was telling you about. This is the baby, this is the miracle!” Then they went and looked at Nathan, but this lady had gotten some faith in her because she wasn't worried, even though Nathan was very, very small. He was about four pounds, just a little bitty thing, but she wasn't a bit worried about it. I don't know what all happened to her, but I know Corban's miracle did something to this little Catholic lady. The reason I wasn't worried was that I knew it was already done. I didn't have to convince God. If you think you have to convince God, then you are walking by sight to see if God's answered. But when you walk by faith, you know He has already answered, and that's a moot point. Many people spend all of their energy trying to convince God to do something that He says He's already done. Amen! Praise the Lord! Many have questions about God using doctors and medicine. Many people today believe that this is God's way, but I want to point out some things to you from the Scriptures. Jesus is called “The Great Physician,” when nothing could be further from the truth because a physician is a Doctor of Medicine. He's legally qualified to practice medicine and Jesus never touched medicine. Calling Him “The Great Physician” is just a sorry translation of the Greek iatros, which simply means “healer,” or iaomai, which means “to heal” or “make whole.” Now, Jesus was “The Great Healer” but He never practiced medicine because He didn't use the methods and the things of the world. He just used the spoken word. He commanded it done and it was done. Some people ask, “What about Luke? Luke was called ‘The Beloved Physician.'” Again, the word there has nothing to do with physician; it's the same word iatros, meaning “healer.” Luke was a healer, but he was a healer in the same way that Jesus was a healer. The Book of Acts tells us that Luke traveled with Paul and wherever they went there were healings, but there is absolutely no place in the Bible that says Luke used any physician skills. The word is simply “healer.” However, there is another term that's used in the Scriptures and it's translated “sorcerer.” The word is pharmakeus or pharmakeia, and it does involve the use of medicine. It's where we get our word for “pharmacy.” A pharmacist doesn't generally practice pharmakeus; he just sells the drugs, but the physician is legally qualified to practice pharmakeia, which is healing through drugs. The Bible has nothing good to say about pharmakeus or pharmakeia. It calls pharmakeia a work of the flesh. (Gal.5:19) Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these:] fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, (20) idolatry, sorcery (the word there is pharmakeia), enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, (21) envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And over in Revelation, God demands that the people repent of their pharmakeia. (Rev.9:20) And the rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk: (21) and they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries (that's the word pharmakeia again),nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. In Jesus' day, the disciples all repented of pharmakeia; they walked by faith. (Heb.10:38) But my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him. The disciples spoke the word of faith and God healed, and God delivered, and God did miracles! Today we're coming to our own Book of Acts. God is once again going to give grace through faith that those people who have knowledge of the Word to begin to walk in that knowledge. (Eph 2:8)  for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.  Also, Revelation says that the Harlot deceived the earth with her pharmakeia. (Rev.18:23) And the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the princes of the earth; for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived. People are deceived into thinking that, “Now God has changed. Now He needs help. He doesn't have the power He once had to heal the sick. He doesn't do it by faith.” (1Pe.2:24) … by whose stripes ye were healed. If you were healed, why are you trying to heal yourself? Why are you running to lost men and pharmakeia? God says, “cursed is the man who trusts in man.” Before the vax, the Journal of the American Medical Association admitted to 450,000 deaths a year are because of medical mistakes. This is not something I haven't proven. We've had almost every kind of healing miracle you can think of, from broken bones made whole overnight to heart and cardiovascular problems taken away, and I can tell you that God consistently heals today like He did back then, if you believe what you read in the Book. (Heb.13:8) Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever. Are there reasons why some do not get healed? Yes, a person may want to go home, there may be willful disobedience, there may be unforgiveness, there may be idolatry. Honest confession of sins is powerful. Believe the Good News. (Rom.1:16) For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

In this enlightening teaching, Pastor Olubi Johnson explains how everything under the Law of Moses finds its spiritual fulfillment in Christ Jesus. While we are no longer bound by the Law, we live under a higher law—the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—which is kept by grace, not by works (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 2:16). Pastor Olubi reveals the difference between physical sacrifices under the Old Covenant and the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, worship, and righteous living that believers now offer under Christ's eternal priesthood. He shows why justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the Law, and how love and humility must guide us in handling non-essential issues so that souls may be saved. You will also see God's wisdom in ordaining civil government as a restraint against lawlessness, even using imperfect systems to fulfill His purposes—as seen in Paul's preservation through Roman authority. Finally, Pastor Olubi reminds us that Christians must pray consistently for leaders and nations, knowing that everything God allows works together for His glory and our good. You can follow Pastor Olubi Johnson on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also check out our Website.

In this enlightening teaching, Pastor Olubi Johnson explains how everything under the Law of Moses finds its spiritual fulfillment in Christ Jesus. While we are no longer bound by the Law, we live under a higher law—the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—which is kept by grace, not by works (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 2:16). Pastor Olubi reveals the difference between physical sacrifices under the Old Covenant and the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, worship, and righteous living that believers now offer under Christ's eternal priesthood. He shows why justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the Law, and how love and humility must guide us in handling non-essential issues so that souls may be saved. You will also see God's wisdom in ordaining civil government as a restraint against lawlessness, even using imperfect systems to fulfill His purposes—as seen in Paul's preservation through Roman authority. Finally, Pastor Olubi reminds us that Christians must pray consistently for leaders and nations, knowing that everything God allows works together for His glory and our good. You can follow Pastor Olubi Johnson on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also check out our Website.

In this enlightening teaching, Pastor Olubi Johnson explains how everything under the Law of Moses finds its spiritual fulfillment in Christ Jesus. While we are no longer bound by the Law, we live under a higher law—the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—which is kept by grace, not by works (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 2:16). Pastor Olubi reveals the difference between physical sacrifices under the Old Covenant and the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, worship, and righteous living that believers now offer under Christ's eternal priesthood. He shows why justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the Law, and how love and humility must guide us in handling non-essential issues so that souls may be saved. You will also see God's wisdom in ordaining civil government as a restraint against lawlessness, even using imperfect systems to fulfill His purposes—as seen in Paul's preservation through Roman authority. Finally, Pastor Olubi reminds us that Christians must pray consistently for leaders and nations, knowing that everything God allows works together for His glory and our good. You can follow Pastor Olubi Johnson on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also check out our Website.

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Mike Slayden

The central theme of the Book of Hebrews is the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all Old Testament figures and systems. He is greater than angels, prophets, Moses, and even the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a superior rest, assurance, faith, and life. Ultimately, He is revealed as the founder and perfecter of our faith, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. Speaker: Mike Slayden

* You can get the sermon note sheet at: https://family-bible-church.org/2025Messages/25Sep14.pdf * Last week we began a study of the Book of Hebrews by considering the identity of it's Author, Audience and Theme. In this treatise, we see the presentation of "A New and Living Way" through the perfect propitiation of Jesus who eternally fulfilled the requirements of the ultimate sin sacrifice - that offered on behalf of the priest, and then the nation, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). * In the book of Hebrews, the "New and Living Way" found in the New Covenant, and established by Jesus the Messiah, is declared to a primarily Jewish audience who are struggling with the trappings of the Old Covenant and false rabbinic teachings. * Today, we will consider the first of those misunderstandings, or false teachings - that Jesus the Messiah was an "Angel." God's Word is very clear that Jesus is the Son of God not an "angel." The author of the book begins by declaring WHO JESUS IS - He is the Son of God - and what that entails. He then transitions into the Biblical proof of why He is not an "angel." * As last week, we will consider the final point of our outline first in order to fully understand the Hebrew mindset before we consider the wonder of who Jesus actually is! ... SO ... WHO EXACTLY IS THE SON OF GOD? * This message was presented by Bob Corbin on September 14, 2025 at Family Bible Church in Martinez, Georgia.

Discernment in this context entails proper understanding bearing fruit of conviction, reverence, humility, and obedience. We can relate to, and learn from, the risks and rewards of frequent communion Paul addresses in this letter. As in all of life, we must approach the communion table walking in the Spirit, not the flesh. While we recognize that familiarity & mere repetition often foster a casual irreverence, it remains true that the very things we must remember in order to repent of our callous hearts are pictured and proclaimed at THE LORD'S TABLE. A good prayer to prepare for communion might be… Lord, may my often-weary soul ever cherish and never despise the living water and bread of heaven which sustains me unto glory… As we noted in Old Covenant parallels proclaimed in Chap 10 of this epistle last week, communion is New Covenant provision for the believer in the wilderness of life…. Let us therefore nurture an acquired taste for all the means of grace that we might drink deeply and be satisfied with water from our Rock Jesus Christ.

In this revelatory message, Este-lee Preez unpacks the depth of the New Covenant and why tongues are central to it. From Pentecost to Paul's secret of revelation, this teaching contrasts the failures of the Old Covenant tongue with the supernatural gift of a New Tongue. Learn how praying in the Spirit restores fellowship, brings divine wisdom, imparts rest, strengthens your inner man, and aligns you with the perfect will of God. This is a powerful call to daily embrace the Person of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural prayer language He gives.

In this powerful teaching, Leon du Preez unpacks the mystery and necessity of praying in tongues. From the Old Covenant to Pentecost, he reveals why God gave a new tongue, how it builds faith, unlocks revelation, strengthens the believer, and connects us directly to the perfect will of God. This message is filled with deep revelation, practical examples, and a prophetic call to embrace the gift of praying in the Spirit for supernatural rest, refreshing, and empowerment.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. We started a new series last week. We finished up First Samuel. We'll get back to Second Samuel in the new year. We started a series called Remember where We Are Remembering. We are walking through what it looks like to be a member here as we walk through our membership commitment. So we're taking the next few months to walk through this commitment. Normally, as we study through books of the Bible, we get to look at the text and follow along with what God is doing in his redemptive story in this world. But this is something where we get to walk through 14 membership commitments that we have written that our membership abides by and see where these actually come from, the scriptures, to see why we believe these things and why it is good to be bound by these beliefs together as a church, as we seek to be a gospel centered community on mission. So this commitment actually a lot of ways, when you read it, actually functions a lot like a discipleship game plan. And that's one of the things that we'll see over the next couple of months that this is if you want to figure out who we're called to be and how we're called to make disciples. These 14 statements kind of provide an outline for that. So if you're new and you've been coming around for a bit, this is actually a very good time to walk with us as we walk through this membership commitment to see the things that bind us together in belief and practice. But if you've been here for a few years, my hope is that this would be an encouragement, that this would be a shot in the arm. This would be galvanizing. This would help us remember why we commit to be members of this church and what we hope to do. So what we're going to do is look at two statements this morning. The first two statements that are foundational for really the rest of the statements that flow out of them. So we're going to see these first two foundational statements. But let me tell you first about how 98 people lost their lives a few years ago. So a few years ago in Florida, there was a condo building that collapsed. I mean, it just looked like a demolition. It just completely collapsed. And 98 people instantly lost their lives. And I remember watching the video from that. I remember me kind of echoing the same sentiments that so many people have, which is, how in the world does that happen in America in 2021? Like, how is it possible for an entire building to just collapse? And everyone was like, I mean, you've seen throughout history, this has happened with different buildings, but with all the building codes, all the things we have here, how does a building just fall? And as they started to do the studies on it, it became very clear that what happened with this building is what happens with a lot of buildings over time. But the foundation of this building was not sound. It seemed they had cut corners. It seemed they had neglected things, and the foundation was crumbling, and it was unable to support the weight of everything above it. And when they did this, when they neglected the foundation of this building, catastrophe ensued. It was a disaster. It was awful. And I can think of no better metaphor than to think about what happens if you build your life upon the wrong foundation. That as you think about faith, what it means to build your life on the wrong beliefs. Because if you do not have a solid foundation to build your faith upon, it will crumble under the weight of everything above will not last. It will break and it will fall. And these first two commitments are unbelievably important to us. They're important for us. They are the foundation upon which we build the rest of our faith. So we're going to walk through these two commitments. We're going to see how important they are, because they are how we view the Bible and how we view our God. So let me pray, and then we'll walk through this together.Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us either discover or for some of us, rediscover what it means to be a people that build our lives upon you. And may that be so compelling to our hearts that we not just be hearers of the Word, but we would be doers of the Word in responding in faith and in repentance and reorienting our lives in a way that honor you. In Jesus name, Amen.All right, so we're gonna get this first. Commitment number one. The Bible is God's inerrant revelation of Himself to us. And I accept it as the authority over my life. Life. That's the Bible. The first 60 or the 66 books in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. If there's a blue Bible around you, that's it. That that Bible is God's inerrant, meaning it is truthful, it is trustworthy, the inerrant revelation of Himself to us that God reveals Himself to us in His Word. It's how we know God. And I accept it as the authority over my life, meaning I submit myself to this God through His Word and trusting him and believing him and being obedient. To his will. That's what this commitment says. And some will ask, wait a second, why are you starting with the Bible? Why don't you start with God? Why would you elevate the Bible above God? That seems out of order. And I could understand how it may seem that way. When you read a lot of systematic theologies, which are just theology textbooks that have organized our beliefs in a way that's systematic. That's why it's called systematic theology, you guys. In case you didn't know, they start with the Word. And the reason why is because before we get to who God is, we have to start with a baseline. How do we actually know who this God is to begin with? How can we actually know Him? What is our source? Now, there are two sources for how God reveals Himself to us. The first is what's called general revelation. This is creation revealing who our God is. That when you look at the Milky Way, that when you look at the Grand Canyon, when you feel that there's something bigger than yourself and you feel small and you start to see someone had to have made this. That is how God reveals Himself generally. Romans chapter one captures this in verses 19 and 20.> because what may be known of God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19–20 ESV)What we see in that is this reality that the heavens, the stars, the beautiful mountains and valleys and sea and rivers, all of it in its grandness, reveals the. The invisible attributes of God, namely His divine power, that a creator made this, that feeling that everyone feels that's built into us because God has revealed Himself through creation. When you read Psalm 19, which is a psalm that regularly shows up in our call to worship, the first half of that psalm is picturing how God reveals himself to creation, how it shows his glory. So that's one way God reveals himself. The second way is what's called special revelation. This is how God specifically specially reveals Himself to us through His Word, through the Scriptures, through from Genesis to revelation, these 66 books in the Bible. And that's how we get to know God. Specifically the Book of Hebrews, which is a New Testament letter that is capturing how Christ fulfills the old covenant. So it very helpfully ties together the Old Testament and the New Testament.> Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV)Then we get this picture of he talks about our fathers by the prophets. That is the Old Testament, that God spoke through the prophets. That's how we have the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. But in the new covenant of Christ, Jesus speaks. And when you play that out, what that is is the Gospels, the recordings of Jesus teachings. And then the apostles who God used to write Scripture to. We saw this last week to churches in the New Testament, to people of the New Testament. These are the apostles who carried the teachings of Christ with them and God spoke through them to us. The Old, the New Covenant together, the Old and New Testament. This is God's word to us that reveal more of who God is in a way that creation cannot, in a way that is powerful. In 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, it says all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness. That the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work.> All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV)That language of breathed out. That's where we get the word inspired. That God inspires through men his eternal wonderful truth. And God uses this to bring us into faith. But he uses this to teach, to reproof, to correct, to train us in righteousness that we may be equipped for every good work that God has called us to do. The Scriptures are powerful and they are true. That God has spoken truthfully. We use the phrase inerrant means devoid of any error. This is something we've taught for years in our church. We've talked over and over again about how God speaks truthfully, that our Bibles are trustworthy. And after teaching this for years, this is something that actually in our membership commitment, we've added this word inerrant. And we'll talk about this at family meeting to help clarify. This is something that we've always believed and it's something we should build our faith upon to trust God that when he has spoken, he has spoken truthfully. That certainly there are times in the Bible where it's hard to figure out what this text means versus this text. But as at the end of the day, when the dust settles, we can trust our Bibles unbelievably trustworthy. There's so many people who've dedicated their lives to helping see some of the nuances of how the Greek and the Hebrew were transcribed over time and how it's completely trustworthy. We spent some time in this in the past to help us see that our Bibles are so unbelievably trustworthy. We've looked at some stuff from like, Wesley Huff. We've done some video work on that in the past to help us see that man. There's so much that we can see that we can build our lives upon this as being true. And the Bible testifies to this. We look at Psalm 19, the second half of Psalm 19. It begins in verse 7.> The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. (Psalm 19:7–8 ESV)Law, testimony, precepts, commandment. These are all phrases that mean the word of God. And it is perfect and it is sure and it is right and it is pure. And you'll see this over and over again. The Scriptures are trustworthy. They're reliable. That when God speaks, we can trust him. And not just trust him, but obey him. That we would see him as the authority in our lives. The Scriptures are authoritative. The way God speaks, we respond. So much so that when he says, flee from sexual immorality, we say, yes, my flesh wants this, but I'm going to flee. I'm going to run from this. Because I know ultimately I'm going to trust you over my own desires. That when God says, keep yourself from the love of money and be content with all things, we say, I know that I live in a culture that pushes me to build my life on success, the American dream, but I'm going to run from that. I'm going to keep myself free from that. I'm going to trust you above my own instincts, God. That when God speaks, we respond. This is unbelievably important. This is foundational. Because the Bible has to be part of this foundation that helps us trust who our God is. When he says who he is and it reveals who God is, which is our second commitment that we would know this God commandment number two. The God that scripture reveals has existed forever as a trinity. God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit.So the God that scripture, that's the Bible that you have reveals, just talked about, has existed forever, meaning that God is outside of time in a way that breaks our brain. That time is a linear thing that he has created and eternity past, which we don't know how that works. God forever existed. He exists in outside of time. And when time ends after time and eternity future, God forever exists, which again, we don't Know how that works. Our finite minds can't understand that, but has existed forever as a trinity. God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Now, Trinity is not a word you will find in the Bible. It's not a word that you'll see in the Scriptures in the same way that inerrant is not a word you'll find in the Bible. But over time, we've had to. We've had to come up with words and concepts to describe what's happening in the Scripture and also answer false teachings over time. And that's where the doctrine of the Trinity came. In the first few centuries, as the early church fathers were looking at the Scriptures, trying to understand who our God is, we came up with the doctrine of the Trinity, built upon the Scriptures, which just means tri unity, our triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three distinct persons, completely and fully one God. Which, as we try to understand that, again, our brains do not compute. I got three kids, 10, 8, and 6. When we read the Bible together, when we talk through different theological things I'm trying to instill and teach to them, they get to the Trinity and we've had this conversation, and they'll be like, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Our God is one, but he's three. But three isn't one. And they just go, what? That doesn't make sense. And I say, welcome to the party. Christians for centuries have sat in the mystery of who our God is, that he is one and that he's three. And, yep, what you're feeling right now is very normal. And there have been ways to try to explain who our God is as a triune God. There's a symbol that's been used for years in church history that I find helpful, and it's been very, very, very common for many centuries. And it helps us see that the Father is God, but the Father is not the Son, and is not the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is God, but he's not the Holy Spirit. He's not the Father. The Holy Spirit is God, but he's not the Father, and he's not the Son, Distinct, but all God. And it's like, what I know. It's hard. It's hard for us to understand it. It's paradoxical. It may seem contradictory to us because we operate in finite rules, in finite order of the universe. Our God is infinite and stands outside of the finite order that he created. So we take this in faith to understand who our God is. And the Church did this. Y' all looking at the Scriptures, looking at Genesis 1:26, it says, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.> Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Genesis 1:26 ESV)That is God, us, our in conversation with himself, making humanity in his image. That when Jesus gives the great commission, he says, go therefore, make disciples of all nations baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit.> Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matthew 28:19 ESV)That when we baptize people in the name of our God, it is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three in one. In the New Testament, when you get to certain sections that are encouragements, you see 1 in 2nd Corinthians 13:14. It says, the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.> The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14 ESV)And it's this language of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that God the Father, in his deep love for us, sends Christ the Son to be crucified for us to conquer the power of death, of the resurrection, to bestow grace upon us. That the work of the Holy Spirit renews and brings to life in our hearts and carries us through to completion until we see God face to face. This is the work of our triune God. And it's something that the Church has grappled with for a very long time. That's one thing I don't think we appreciate in the modern setting. We don't appreciate that the first few centuries of the Church was really trying to understand this, really trying to get this right, really having big debates and trying to understand our God correctly. And I think we take those battles for granted. I do. We'll try to explain God with cheap illustrations that don't, not only don't do justice, but speak wrongly about our God. I've heard this for years. This is a classic illustration. Some will say that, you know, God is like water, and at room temperature it's a liquid, but when you freeze it, it turns into a solid because it's ice. That's the second form of water. But the third form of water is when you heat it up and it turns into a vapor, it's a gas. So it's all one substance. One substance, but three different forms. And people go, oh, yes, that's a great way to understand it. And church history goes, no, no, no, that's a historical heresy called modalism. One God, three forms. That is not what I just put on the screen earlier. No, that's something the Church fought over for a very long time. To not see as one God and three substances. No, one God, three distinct persons, three and one. And it's hard to wrap our minds around this, but we should go with what the Scriptures give us. We should not try to go outside of it. We should not try to oversimplify this for human understanding. No way. And we should acknowledge those false teachings that get the Trinity wrong and realize that there's danger in that it leads to judgment. That Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism, Oneness, Pentecostals, Christian Scientists, Unitarians, all preach a heretical view of the Trinity and that leads to judgment. We should seek to remember our history and to remember our Bibles, because those versions are not true in any real biblical sense or historical sense at all. The Bible reveals our triune God, that we get to know who he is and all of his mystery and all of his wonder without trying to oversimplify this for our finite minds. I heard a lecture in seminary once. We had a guest lecturer who came in and he was lecturing on Trinitarian theology. And I so appreciated. He was quoting a guy named Gregory of Nazi Ansus as a church father. So don't get humbled on his last name. He's like 3rd, 4th century, so has nothing to do with the Nazis, just has an unfortunate last name for history. But he was quoting Gregory who said, I cannot think on the one without quickly being circled by the splendor of the three, nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the One. And the lecturer was making a point that we should be overwhelmed by the threeness of our God, that our God is three. And we were so blown away and captivated by his three ness that we should run back to the oneness of God and see who our God is as the one true God. And we've thought too much of the oneness of our God. We should be driven to the splendor of the three ness of God and be driven back between three and one, three and one. And to keep our minds always there. And I've always found that to be wildly helpful for my soul. To think of our God as the one true God, and also to think about the Father and how loving and how wonderful he is, and how sovereign and wonderful our God is, and think of Christ and His beautiful work that's been given to us that we don't deserve, and to think of the nearness of the Spirit at work in us. We should be thinking about our God in trinitarian language, in our souls, in our speech regularly.So that's our first two commitments. The Bible is God's revelation of Himself to us. And I accept it as the authority over my life. And the God that revealed the scripture reveals has existed forever as a trinity. God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. These two commitments are foundational, foundational to Christian belief. If you reject them, you're in danger of judgment. Listen, they cannot be just nice thought exercises. They can't just be neat ideas that are just floating. That we ascent. We agree. We agree to. It's like, yeah, I get that. And then just mentally agree with it without believing in it, building our life upon it and orienting our reality in line with it. Because if we don't do that, we're in danger. This cannot be just head knowledge. It cannot be. I mean, you can, with head knowledge, agree that gravity exists. In theory. You can have mental agreement that says, you know what? Yeah, it makes sense. It's a decent idea. In theory, that makes sense. But if you don't actually believe in gravity, if you don't actually orient your life as if gravity is a reality, you're in danger. You will find yourself on the Gervais street bridge thinking, I don't know, I mean, maybe it's true. Mentally it makes sense. But I also, I think I can invent my own beliefs here. Maybe I can fly. Maybe I'll float off this bridge. And if you do that, you will crash into the congaree. And if the crash doesn't kill you, one of those gators they've been taking pictures of near the bridge will snatch you up. You can't. This, this cannot be just mental. Yeah, yeah, no, no. Our reality has to be built upon this. And if it does, if that's not what we do, we are in trouble. We're in danger. But life is so much better when we orient ourselves on what is actually true and build our lives upon that.So I have two challenges as we close up to think through these two commitments as we want to grow in this as Christians. And the first is we become people of the Word. That we should be a people that make the scriptures central in our lives and fight to do this over and over again. I have a few different ways we can do this. The first is we see that our worship is centered in the word of God. That our worship is centered in the word of God. That as we gather here on Sundays to realize and to celebrate that the Word is primary, that we begin with a call to worship that comes from the scriptures. When you hear the call to worship, you should not just be checking out and be thinking of other things, but should be thinking about the words that we are reading. That point to who our God is. That we have scripture readings, liturgy readings that we should not check out from. We should actually clue it and see the importance of reading the Word out loud together. That we should realize that our songs are chosen not haphazardly. There's a team that chooses songs that align with what we're teaching, that align with, that help teach us wonderful theology that we can sing deep into our souls and to sing that joyfully in a way that helps the Word be centered in our heart. This is why we preach sermons from the Bible and honestly why we do this. Most of our sermons are just going through books of the Bible. That's most of our teaching. Over 80% of our teaching is what's called expository preaching. For theology nerds, that'll mean something to you. For others of you, it just means that we're going through books of the Bible verse by verse, expositing the text, helping understand who our God is. And this. Most of our preaching is just going through books of the Bible. And every now and then we'll do a topical series like this. But we do that because a honestly topical series, not our best. Our best stuff is just being honest with you. It's harder for us. It's a lot easier, and it makes a lot more sense just to go through books of the Bible. But the more important reason is we just want to walk through the Bible. And if we're in charge and we get to pick text here, here, here and there, we're going to pick things that we want. I'd rather just pick books of the Bible, walk through them, not skip things, lean into the difficult stuff and get the Word into our hearts. And that's what our teaching is. Our teaching is scriptures centered in the scriptures. But we have to be, as a people, mindful of this and joyfully embracing this. The Word of God should be central in our worship. And when we leave here, every. Every time we leave on Sunday, we say the church is plan A for advancing the kingdom, for advancing the Gospel. There is no plan B. We mean that. Which means that our evangelism needs to be centered in the Word of God. That when we leave here and we take the word that we've been given, our evangelism needs to be centered in the Word of God. Which means that when we talk to people who are not believers, it cannot just be wise and persuasive arguments. Those can be helpful. But if you never get to the gospel that flows from the scriptures, you're not actually preaching the gospel. But if you think that preaching the gospel is just friending someone, befriending someone, which we should do as Christians, we should be the most hospitable, the best of friends, the most reliable. But being a friend to someone isn't the gospel. It's not. There's a phrase that gets thrown around quite a bit that says, use the gospel, preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words. And it gets attributed to somebody who didn't even say that. But that guiding ethos has for the last few decades just made us be, okay, I'll just share the gospel of my life. And it's like, no, you can live out the gospel in a way that makes the gospel compelling, but you have to say words. You got to declare who Jesus is. You should memorize some scriptures. You should know how to break down Romans 6:23 and sit with someone and help them see who God is. Our evangelism should be word centered. As we scatter into community groups. That's the third thing. Our groups are word centered. We come together as groups regularly and we study the Word because there's power in the word of God exposing the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. Hebrews 4:12 that we should see this. And as we are walking with other Christians, we should point each other to the Word. That means an accountability that when someone is sinning, we should lovingly and winsomely compel them from the scriptures to say, hey, here's what obedience looks like. One of the things we say is when we practice is we use the phrase good news before good advice. What that means is that when someone shares a problem, we don't want to jump to, okay, here's a bunch of life advice to be able to fix that. No, we want to start with the Gospel. We want to pause and say, hey, can I remind you of who you are in Christ? That your identity doesn't come from your work. It doesn't come from what you do in the office. Your identity comes from the God who saved you, who redeemed you, who set you apart to love him and delight in him. And one of the ways you do that is you actually glorify him in your work. But step one, like you need to believe that first. Now let's talk about your problem outside of that or flowing out of that. But that comes from the scriptures. Those ideas, the gospel comes from the Scriptures. We should be word centered in how we point one of the two Christ and our groups and our groups needed to continue in being word centered. We should be mindful of if the majority of things that we are saying are absent and detached from the Scriptures and we should course correct if that is the case. Fourth thing, our care is centered in the Word. The way that we care for one another is centered in the Word of God. That goes back to something similar. I just said that when someone has an idea about how to care for someone, we want to be able to take everything, every idea and filter that through the Word of God and see, is that biblical? Does that make sense in light of the teachings of the Scriptures? Because we want to be Bible people in how we care for one another. We want to be able to think scripturally and give Scripture when it's appropriate. Our pastoral counseling, which we do, is that at times it can be complex in the things that we go through, but ultimately at its root core, it's simply walking with other people who are struggling and helping them see. Do you see who God is in His Word? Do you see how knowing him and how delighting in him actually exposes some of the things in our own life? The brokenness, the sin, the struggles, the idolatry? We want to be a people whose care is centered in the Word of God. And lastly, we want to have spiritual disciplines that are centered in the Word of God. We want to be a people who stay disciplined in His Word in a way that truly takes the Scriptures, adores them, and meditates on them day and night. I want to be like that picture that we just read earlier and sang about in Psalm 1. It's planted in the streams of water that flow from our God and the living and abiding Word of God that bear fruit in our lives in wonderful ways. And I know over the years I've heard the popular rebuttal that says, okay, yeah, I mean, I get it, yeah, read your Bible. You know, I've been told that and I've done that and it didn't work. And as I've heard this over the years, I've thought about my own soul in this. What I've realized is I don't think we truly understand what it means to actually be rooted in the Word of God like we're supposed to. I don't think we truly understand what it means to meditate regularly in the Word of God. I think what happens is that, that our souls are so over entertained, so easily distracted, so glued to our phones that we are so now oriented to experience 20 second clips in a way that has made us so distracted, that the idea that we think is that alongside that we can Inject a few minutes of the Word in our day, here or there, every few days. And that. That somehow is supposed to counteract all of the things that we fill our soul with that rob us of joy in Christ. And God sometimes does, in those few moments, supernaturally, just in his wonderful power, work through the Word in that moment and reorient our souls. But often what happens in the lives of ordinary Christians in ordinary days is regularly meditating upon the Word of God in a way that seems saturates our souls so that when we are walking through whatever we're walking through, we're able to see it through the lens of the Gospel. And that's different, y'. All. When you study the faith of the people of old, of centuries ago, it's like they'd wake up and they'd read the Word of God and they wouldn't just leave it there. They'd pick it up and they meditated on it throughout the day. And they continue to think about it, continue to process it and chew on it and enjoy it. And then as the day closes, as their evenings close, they come back to the Word and they'd read it and they'd enjoy it. And even those Christians walked through seasons that were dry, that felt like a spiritual desert. But they persevered knowing that the path to getting to the other side of that is to continue to stay disciplined in beholding who our God is and His Word. So when I hear, yeah, I read my Bible, it didn't do anything for me. I'm just like, I don't know if we actually did. Not in the way the Scriptures outline, not in the way that we're supposed to. Not in the way that God invites us into. No, I don't. We cannot reject the power of God's Word as people under the authority of God's Word and make God the least influential position on our screens and in our souls. That cannot be. And I feel this, y'. All. I feel this personally right now. So as we look at our commitments, I know some of our commitment is going to cover this. We need to come back to being men and women who are disciplined in the Word of God, which means at times you're going to read things that you don't like. You're going to read the Scriptures and go, I don't know if I'd like that. One of the things I've appreciated over the years of walking with people is at times when you come up against something in the Bible that says, I don't like this. It's like that's okay. But in faith, trust the God who wrote it. And in faith what you'll see is that over time you may not like that, but at time you'll grow to believe that is actually ultimately what is good for you. And that God willing, he's going to change our hearts. That we might love the things that we once did not like at all. But that takes discipline and that takes some pursuit and that takes making God central in our lives. We should be people of the Word.The second and the last is we should become people of God, become Bible people and God centered people. People love God. I don't mean that in a way that says that this is how you make yourself a Christian. That's not what I mean. I mean that if you're in Christ, we should be just of God in a way that Jesus taught when he said, pursue God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul. That we should be a people. That our intellect and our affections, our emotions, our whole being is oriented towards our triune God. We should think about God the Father in a way that says, I love our heavenly, my heavenly Father. That he's a better Father than any earthly Father I could have. He's a better authority figure than any authority figure I could have. That I'm going to trust in my heavenly Father. That I want to behold Christ the Son and think about all the ways every day as I sin, every day as I struggle to remember Jesus. Thank you that you bled and you died for my struggles, for my brokenness. That we remember the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives in a way that helps us remember that every moment of our lives, in every room, God is present with us. To believe that, that God is present with us. That even when we can't feel it, we know by faith he's with us. We should think and dwell and enjoy our triune God. One of the normative ways to do this is through prayer is to seek our triune God in prayer. Jesus taught the normative pattern of prayer is to the Father. So we should pray normally to the Father. Most of the prayer you see in the New Testament is to the Father, our Father who lives in heaven. But we also should pray with the rest of the Trinity in mind with Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit and be trinitarian and how we think about prayer. To think about God the Father that we are submitting to and enjoying in prayer. And Christ our great High Priest who offers our prayers to the Father and the Holy Spirit who prays for us when we don't know what to say ourselves. Our God is wonderful and he is good and we should orient our souls to toward our triune God and be God centered people, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one true God. And if we make him our pursuit, make him the goal of our affections, of our desires, God will form us in the people that he's called us to be. And I believe that if we build our lives on these first two commitments we walk through that we will set a foundation that is meant to last. That we will build our lives on a foundation that will not crumble. Y', all, I have. I'm serious. I have watched friends who seemed like they were on fire for Jesus, that raised their hands and worshiped and knew all the right phrases and knew all the right correct answers, who did not build their life on this foundation, who began to question the Bible, who began to question the validity of it, who became skeptical, who began to slowly drift in a way that they didn't just walk away from God, they became enemies of God and to this day are still throwing stones at Jesus and his movement. It is important for us to evaluate what are we building our life upon. What is the foundation that everything is built upon? These two commitments are vital for building a foundation that will last.Let me close with the words of Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the mount in Matthew 7 and I want you to hear these if you have to close your eyes to focus, do so. But I want you to hear what Jesus says to us. He says, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.> Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And 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. (Matthew 7:24–27 ESV)What he just said is that everyone who hears my words hears Christ's words, believes, trusts, obeys, and builds their life upon them. It's like a wise person who built their house on the rock. Verse 25 and the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. That when the storms of this life shift you and beat upon you, when you feel suffering and trials and the storms of temptation, everything that begins to shake, you won't shift off of the rock because you were built on a solid foundation. He goes on to say, and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell. And great was the fall it that Jesus warns and says, if you don't build your life upon me, upon Christ, upon our triune God who's revealed himself in his word. If you don't, it will not last. And when the storms of life come, you will be shifted. But we as a church resolve to commit ourselves to be built upon the rock that is Christ. These two foundational commitments are vital. And if we will build our lives upon pursuing and knowing and delighting and trusting our God and His Word, so that we might know who God is and respond to him in faith and repentance and delighting in him and trusting him and walking out joyfully in obedience, we will stand.Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us begin. Some of us begin to see the beauty of the scriptures that reveal who you are. That we would not believe in anything else, in anyone else, that we would build our lives upon you as our solid rock and faith foundation. But Lord, that comes through your redemptive work in our hearts, through helping us to see you more clearly and growing in us spiritual fruit that helps us know you in Jesus name. Amen.We're going to respond here by taking the Lord's Supper. I want to read from Mark chapter 14 to prepare our hearts to take the Lord's Supper. Here Jesus.> And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Mark 14:22–25 ESV)That when Jesus was sitting with them and he took the bread and he broke and he took the cup of the new covenant, he said, this is my work done for you. The second member of the Trinity looking at us saying, I love you so much that I came to have my blood shed for you. And if you're a Christian and your life is built upon the rock that is Christ, you get to in a moment joyfully come to the table confessing our sin, but confessing our wonderful Savior as revealed to us in the word of God. So in a moment, prepare your heart. There's gluten free back in that back corner over there. But come and take the Lord's Supper. But hear this. If you are not a Christian, if you haven't trusted in Christ My hope is this morning is you would not come to the table, but you would come to Christ. You would place your faith in him, and you'd build your life on the wonderful foundation that is our God. But when you're ready, come.

After 9 months studying the Old Testament, this week's episode of the Story of Scripture discusses the Gospel of Matthew. How are these first chapters of the New Testament connected to the people and story of the Old Covenant? What does the beginning of this book communicate about the identity and purposes of Jesus? What is the same, what is really new, and how can we discover the foundational message of Jesus' ministry? 

Are you struggling to feel close to God?

The Book of Hebrews can be one of the most challenging texts in the New Testament. Its authorship and specific historical context remain uncertain, but its message is clear. Written to a group of early believers tempted to drift away from their faith, Hebrews calls them to hold fast and press on toward Christ.At its core, Hebrews is a powerful declaration of Jesus Christ's supremacy. He is greater than the prophets, greater than Moses, greater than the angels, and greater than the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a better hope, a deeper rest, a fuller assurance, and a more enduring faith.This series will explore how Jesus is not just the centerpiece of the New Testament but the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament anticipated. Jesus is not just enough. He is greater. Speaker: Brad Bell

The Book of Hebrews can be one of the most challenging texts in the New Testament. Its authorship and specific historical context remain uncertain, but its message is clear. Written to a group of early believers tempted to drift away from their faith, Hebrews calls them to hold fast and press on toward Christ.At its core, Hebrews is a powerful declaration of Jesus Christ's supremacy. He is greater than the prophets, greater than Moses, greater than the angels, and greater than the Old Covenant itself. Jesus offers a better hope, a deeper rest, a fuller assurance, and a more enduring faith.This series will explore how Jesus is not just the centerpiece of the New Testament but the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament anticipated. Jesus is not just enough. He is greater. Speaker: Brad Bell

* Two weeks ago, we concluded our 72 week study of the birth, life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ! * Today, we begin a new journey in which we will consider the eternal impact of what we just studied. Why did Jesus come to earth? What was, and is, the impact of His death, burial and resurrection? * Today, we begin a study of the Book of Hebrews. In this treatise, the author reveals how Jesus fulfilled the ultimate sin sacrifice - that offered on behalf of the priest, and then the nation, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). In the book of Hebrews, the "New and Living Way" found in the New Covenant, and established by Jesus the Messiah, is declared to a primarily Jewish audience who are struggling with the trappings of the Old Covenant and false rabbinic teachings. * Today, we will consider an overview of this very important book. * This message was presented by Bob Corbin on September 7, 2025 at Family Bible Church in Martinez, Georgia.

Relationships That Reflect Christ: A Conversation with Natalie RunionIn this special episode of Divine Table Talk, Jamie and Jane welcome Natalie Runion—author, speaker, and founder of Raised to Stay—for a heartfelt conversation about relationships. Together, they discuss what it means to cultivate Christ-centered connections, navigate conflict with grace, and build communities rooted in love and authenticity. Natalie shares wisdom from her own journey and offers encouragement for anyone longing to strengthen their relationships with God and others.____________________________________Connect with Natalie Runion:Website: https://natalierunion.com/____________________________________Connect with Jamie:Website: www.jamieklusacek.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacekConnect with Jane:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams____________________________________ Get Jamie's Newest Book:Living Loved: An 8-week Journey to Living Fully Loved

September 4, 2025 Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, Novelist and Life Coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Thursday, September 4, 2025, and this is episode #16 in Series 2025. This episode is titled, "The Time of Jacob's Trouble Is Near." Before we get into our message for this week, I want to extend a warm welcome to all of our new subscribers around the world. By the grace of God, Winning with the Word now reaches 85 countries all over the globe! Praise the Lord and glory to God!I want you to know how much I appreciate your support, and I trust that Winning with the Word blesses you and encourages you during these difficult end times. Please share this podcast and blog with your family and friends. I would love to bless them and encourage them as well.Now on to our message for this week, which, by the way is especially for all of my Jewish friends out there. If you are not Jewish, please pass this podcast on to your Jewish friends and acquaintances. Thank you!So, what is the time of Jacob's trouble? This phrase first appears in the Book of Jeremiah, an Old Covenant (or Old Testament) prophet who lived from about 650 BC to 570 BC. He was a prophet during the latter decades of the Kingdom of Judah, and his ministry continued until after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC.Referring to the time of Jacob's trouble, Jeremiah wrote the following in chapter 30, verse 7, of his prophetic book: "In all history there has never been such a time of terror. It will be a time of trouble for my people Israel. Yet in the end they will be saved." The time of Jacob's trouble is a seven-year period of intense suffering and torture under the brutal dictatorship of the AntiChrist. It is also called "the 70th week of Daniel" in the prophetic Old Testament book written by the prophet Daniel. I say this with all due respect, but the time of Jacob's Trouble will make the Holocaust look like a picnic."Jacob" in the phrase "the time of Jacob's trouble" includes the entire nation of Israel, comprising both the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. When Jeremiah wrote his prophecy, Israel was in a time of great turmoil. The northern kingdom had already been captured by the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom of Judah was on the verge of being sent into captivity to Babylon because of their disobedience to the Lord's commands. Two Levels of InterpretationBut Jeremiah's prophecy had not only an immediate meaning for the Jewish people living during his time; it also has a prophetic meaning for the Jewish people of our day. This dual level of interpretation means that the Babylonian captivity and other horrendous persecutions of the Jews, such as the Holocaust, served as types of the ultimate pouring out of God's wrath on His people for their continual rebellion in not recognizing Jesus Christ as their Messiah.Jesus Himself also referred to the time of Jacob's trouble in Matthew 24: 21 BLB: "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, and never shall be."The purpose of the seven-year tribulation is to punish the Jews and all non-believers for rejecting Jesus Christ as the true Messiah. In the end, one-third of the Jews will finally acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the true Messiah and will be saved.Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, there is only one way to be saved. And that way is by acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He died to take the punishment for our sin upon His shoulders, and that He rose from the dead. There is no other way. Buddha cannot save you. Mohammed cannot save you. Hare Krishna cannot save you. No false god or false belief system can save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you.He Himself said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." Won't you hear His call to you now? Won't You receive Him as Your Savior and Lord before it is too l...

Unconditional love? Are Religions intrinsically violent? Is the Old Covenant still valid? This and more on Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders.

Faith for the Coming Wilderness (1) (audio) David Eells – 9/3/25 Father, You say in (Eph 2:8)  for by grace (unmerited favor) have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. 9  not of works, that no man should glory. Interpretation: By unearned favor God gives us His gift of faith to be what we should be. And He tells us that we don't have anything that we didn't receive from Him so how could we be proud of anything that we are able to do? With that in mind I ask     in the name of Jesus, you would let Your anointing be in our midst and to bless us all to have eyes to see and ears to hear. Give us all discernment from Your Spirit, Lord. We thank You that everything that You have done for us through Jesus Christ has all been accomplished at the cross, and we praise You for it, Father. We thank You, Lord, for using this unworthy vessel to share with the brethren a little bit more of the Word. Amen. I want to talk to you about the First-fruits and encourage you about how you can be part of that ministry. One major question that people have concerns the difference between those who will be in the First-fruits and those who will be in the in-gathering. In Exodus 23, the Bible speaks of two harvests. (Exo.23:14) Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. (15) The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep: seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it thou camest out from Egypt); and none shall appear before me empty: (We cannot bear fruit except by the unleavened bread of the pure Word. If we have done this the proof will be in the harvest.) (16) and the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labors, which thou sowest in the field: and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labors out of the field. The first-fruits are the first harvest and the rest are harvested at the end. The harvest is being brought into the Kingdom through the unleavened bread. We've learned that the First-fruits harvest is the Man-child ministry, and the ingathering harvest is those who are brought in later. Jesus was called the First-fruits who raised up His two witnesses who went out two by two to continue the harvest. (See Hidden Manna for the End Times, Chapter 7, “Maturity and Harvests,” which is available in PDF at ubm1. org), but what people want to know is, “How can I be in the First-fruits?” We'll find our answer if we examine the different types and shadows of the First-fruits. Two of the major types, of course, are Moses and Jesus. One thing we can see immediately from Moses and Jesus is that they went through a common experience, which prepared them to bring the people of God into the wilderness and teach them how to be overcomers. Moses went into the wilderness for 40 years (Act.7:30-34) and he overcame to lead the Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days (Mat.4:1; Luk.4:2) and He overcame to teach the disciples. The number 40 represents “trial” or “tribulation,” so both Moses and Jesus overcame in their own trials. (Rev.2:26) And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations. (Rev.3:21) He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. In other words, dominion is given to the people of God who overcome in their wilderness trials. So where is this “wilderness” and what does it entail? Well, the wilderness is everywhere there is a Christian. We're not looking for a literal, physical desert somewhere to go into, so don't be thinking that! (2Co.3:6) Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Anywhere God's people are, there is a wilderness available to them. Why do I say “available”? That's because God's people are like Israel when they were in Egypt, and they don't necessarily want to go into that wilderness. In some cases, God even has to force them into that wilderness. Israel had to be forced into that wilderness by Pharaoh's army behind them and by God parting the Red Sea before them. But both Moses and Jesus each went out into their personal wilderness first; first they overcame their own temptations and trials before God used them to bring others there. The wilderness is a place where you are tempted and tried, and if you want to be used to bring others there, you first have to pass the test. Let me share with you some things the Lord has taught me about this wilderness. Not long after I became a Christian, by the Lord's grace and mercy, I started going out into the wilderness because I began getting the revelation of what it entailed and what it meant. To put it very simply, in the New Testament, a “wilderness” is any place and any trial in which you are believing and acting upon the Word of God. For instance, there is a mark of the Beast coming, and most Christians know that they won't be able to buy or sell with the world anymore, unless they take that mark. They will be put into a wilderness experience where they can't go back to Egypt, just like the Israelites out in the wilderness. The Israelites were tested to see if they were really going to believe in the promises of God, which was the only thing that would sustain them in their wilderness. We're coming to the same situation in our day. If you want to be like Moses, or if you want to be like Jesus, or if you want to be like Joseph, if you want to be like these different types and shadows of the First-fruits, you have to go out into your wilderness now. These men didn't wait for the crowd to go; they led them where they had already gone. I want to tell you quite frankly that if you are not living in the wilderness, you are not living as a believer. You are rebelling against the Word of God. If you are satisfied to go along with whatever the other religious people around you are doing, that won't put you in the First-fruits. You have to act upon what you see in the Word. Let me explain this wilderness to you a little bit more before I share a few testimonies. The Word of God says that our salvation has been accomplished. It's done. The Lord has already healed us. He's already delivered us. He's already perfected us. (Joh.19:28) After this Jesus, knowing that all things are now finished, that the scripture might be accomplished, saith, I thirst. (29) There was set there a vessel full of vinegar: so they put a sponge full of the vinegar upon hyssop, and brought it to his mouth. (30) When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit. Jesus said, “It is finished.” (Joh.16:33) These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. You see, the Lord has already overcome the world for us, and He did it by His sacrifice. He gave His Life for us. (1Pe.2:24) Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. Notice, these are past tense. (Heb.10:14) For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. This was all accomplished at the cross! (Joh.1:29) On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world! He was the Lamb of God Who took away the sins of the world and there is a reason for that. The Bible says that God chose the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. (1Co.1:27) But God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; (28) and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, [yea] and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are. The “things that are not” are these promises that we don't see manifested in this physical realm. God says you are healed, you are delivered, you are perfected, and your sins are all taken away, but you say, “Well, David, I don't see that in this physical realm.” That's exactly right, but the Word of God is still true! When you hold fast to these past-tense promises, you will definitely see them come to pass because that's what faith is. Faith is believing and acting on these promises. God gave awesome promises to the Israelites when they went into their wilderness, and He was very much offended that they did not believe those promises. Let's look at what He said to them, since it was basically His whole problem with Israel in the wilderness. (Num.14:11) And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people despise me? and how long will they not believe in me, for all the signs which I have wrought among them? (12) I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a nation greater and mightier than they. (23) Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that despised me see it. (Because they did not believe in Him.) So, the Lord swore He would bring them into that land, but He changed His mind because all the promises of God are functional and based on our part of the Covenant, which is faith in the promises. We have to believe! (Mar.9:23) And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth. (24) Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Jesus taught that we are supposed to believe that we have received everything that we pray for. For instance, (Mar.11:24) Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever (What does “all” leave out? Nothing!) whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye received them (This is past tense in all the ancient manuscripts. It's just that the translators didn't understand why you should believe you have received something when you don't see it.) believe that ye received them, and ye shall have them. God expects us to believe before we see; He expects us to believe we've received everything the Bible promises us. (Heb.11:1) Now faith is assurance of [things] hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. If you believe you received something when you prayed for it, what are you going to do to try to bring it to pass? If you say, for instance, that you believe by the stripes of Jesus you were healed, yet you continue trying to get healed by some worldly means, what you are proving is that you don't believe the good news that Jesus already healed you at the cross. For many years, I've never missed receiving a healing. I've raised five children and they have all received healing from the Lord. They were born at home (except for my oldest) and received healing for anything they ever needed. It didn't matter if it was broken bones, diseases, or whatever. They were always healed because I acted on what I saw in the Word of God concerning healing. His Word says that you don't have to accomplish healing; you have to receive it as a free gift, just as you receive every other form of salvation as a free gift. Since “God chose … the things that are not” to bring to nothing “the things that are,” how does He do that? (Rom.4:17) … God … calleth the things that are not, as though they were. Well then, how do we do that? We just speak it as done. Every miracle that Jesus ever did, He spoke it first. Nothing was there. He spoke it first, and it came to pass. And what the Lord wants us to do is speak in agreement with the Word. (Amo.3:3) Shall two walk together, except they have agreed? We need to speak in agreement with the Word of God. If the Bible says we're healed, we need to agree with that. If we have to call for the elders to anoint us with oil so we can put our faith together to agree with that, then that's what we should do, but we need to agree with that. (Rom.6:11) Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. You are delivered from sin. Consider it done. Why are so many people anxious and troubled about their sins? It's because they don't believe the Gospel! Why are so many people anxious and troubled about getting a healing? It's because they don't believe the Gospel! Why are so many people trying to deliver themselves? It's because they are not believing and acting upon the Gospel. Salvation in any form is a free gift. You accept it by faith. You speak it by faith. It is yours. (Col.1:12) Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; (13) who delivered us (past tense) out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love. If you are attempting to save yourself and not accepting that you were delivered at the cross, then what you are proving is that you don't believe the Gospel. You believe in salvation by works. All of your self-efforts are hindering God from giving you what He wants to give you because He chose the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. The “things that are not” are these promises. The “things that are” is the curse. Look around you; God says He healed you and sometimes you don't look healed. He says He delivered you from sin and sometimes you don't think you are delivered from sin. He says He delivered you out of the power of darkness and sometimes you think you might have demons. Apostle Paul said, (Php.4:19) And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Every need! Wow! That's awesome! “My God shall supply every need of yours.” Think about that. You need to know and confess that all of God's promises are true anywhere you are. When you get into that wilderness, God is going to be there. God told Paul in (2Co.12:9) And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. His power is true power when we are weak, when we give up our own efforts to save ourselves. In the wilderness, there was no visible means of support for the Israelites. There was no lush land or a wondrous place to raise sheep and goats and crops. It was a desert. God brought them there to prove to them that He was Jehovah-jireh; the Lord my provider. (Gen.22:14) And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh. As it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. He brought them there to prove that He was their provider in all things, but they moaned, and they complained, and they wouldn't believe God, and so they fell in the wilderness because they walked by sight and not by faith. God is about to send us into a wilderness. We are coming to a place where the world will no longer cooperate with us, but will turn against us, persecute us, and separate us from their benefits. They will blame us for the judgments that are falling upon the world. There will be a brief recovery of the economy and then a collapse and wilderness.  The governments are going to look for whomever they can blame and cut off because their resources will be gone. Remember that Egypt was completely ruined by the time the Israelites went into the wilderness (Exo.10:7). But before the Israelites went into the wilderness, they had already eaten the Passover lamb. Then they came out of Egypt and passed through the Red Sea, which Paul called a “baptism.” (1Co.10:1) For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; (2) and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; (3) and did all eat the same spiritual food; (4) and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ. So they were saved, they were baptized, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and went right into the wilderness. If you believe the Word of God, that's exactly what you do! You go immediately into the wilderness, even if you are a baby Christian. You walk into that wilderness, you walk into that place where you receive your sustenance out of Heaven from God and you no longer receive your sustenance from man by his methods, by the works of the flesh. When the Israelites went into their wilderness, they carried all of their provisions out there with them, but in only three days, they started running out (Exo.15:22). In spite of their own efforts, they found themselves still dependent on the hand of God. Many Christians today think that we're going to store up all these things and get prepared for the coming wilderness, but God said that “My power is made perfect in weakness.” God is bringing us into a wilderness to multiply the food (Mat.14:13- 21; Mar.6:30-44, etc.), to bring the manna out of Heaven (Exo.16:31,35; Num.11:7,9, etc.), to bring the water out of the rock (Exo.17:6; Num.20:8, etc.) He's going to do all these miraculous things and more to provide for His people, yet His people are still of a mind of salvation by works. They think, “We don't have to walk by faith! We are going to save ourselves!” Well, I can tell you that exactly what happened to the Israelites is going to happen to the Church. In the wilderness, they are going to run out of everything, and they are going to be back depending upon God because that's His plan! We have to learn to use those promises, we have to learn to use the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. Even though we see that the promises are not yet fulfilled in this physical realm, we have to use them to provide ourselves with the things that we need. Jesus already provided us with everything right there at the cross, and only through our weakness is God's power going to be made perfect (2 Corinthians 12:9). Many years ago, I was driving down the interstate and I passed over the River Jordan, except it was spelled “Jourdan” instead of “Jordan.” And when I passed over it, the thought came into my mind, “Oh, boy! Thank You, Lord! I'm going to the Promised Land!” But God immediately corrected me. He said, “No, you're not. I'm sending you through a wilderness so that you can tell My people that I still supply there.” That's what happened, and at the time, I was in a wilderness. I had been in it for many years, but the Lord helped me to explain it better. My wilderness was simply that I believed the Word of God when I was a baby Christian. I didn't have any religious background; I was raised a Catholic, but I didn't know anything about the Bible, so at home I started reading the Bible. I was just consumed with a love for the Bible! I knew that this was the truth, and so I began to act upon those awesome, precious promises that God has given us, and I began to see some wondrous miracles before I ever became mixed up with any religion. I just knew that those promises didn't pass away with the apostles. The Lord taught me in this wilderness how to receive provision from Him, and He taught me that so that I can teach it to you. It's exactly as He told me: “I'm sending you through a wilderness so that you can tell My people that I still supply there,” because we are going into a wilderness. The Tribulation period is the wilderness (Rev.12:6, 17:6). And we have to prepare for this wilderness, but not in the way that carnally-minded Christians have been teaching. I can tell you right now that how they are getting prepared is not going to last. To get prepared to walk through this wilderness, you need to walk by faith in the promises of God. You need to act on what you read in the Word, and if you will do that, you will be weak. That's because you can do nothing to bring to pass a promise that God says He's already given you. If He says that He has healed you and you go running to man for healing, then you prove you haven't believed that verse yet! And you are not in the wilderness because, when you are in the wilderness, you are in a place of weakness to the flesh. The flesh cannot save itself in the wilderness; it has to turn to God. God started teaching me these principles of just acting upon the Word, and before I knew what a wilderness was, I was going there. So you don't have to wait to go into the wilderness. In fact, if you go there and you overcome now, you will be one of those whom God will use to bring others there and teach them the ways of the Lord. (Isa.55:8) For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. (9) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. The ways of the Lord are not our ways. He has methods that are not our methods. You don't have to read the Gospel very far before you realize that. Jesus didn't use the methods of the world to bring about the deliverance of God's people. When did Jesus send anybody to a psychiatrist or a doctor? He spoke the Word of God! He called the things that are not as though they were. We're going to do the same thing! If you make it through that wilderness, you are going to do the same thing. Some of what God began to teach me about living in the wilderness had to do with my finances. For instance, I have been ministering for 55 years now, and I've never taken an offering. “Taking” an offering is an oxymoron! You can't “take” an offering; it's supposed to be freely given! Now, I have preached in other assemblies where people have taken up offerings for me.  And some of them, I'm sorry to say, were use to their preacher's “beatings” to make them give through condemnation. But the Lord taught me at the beginning, (Mat.10:8) … freely ye received, freely give (Deu.15:10; Psa.112:9, etc.). God wanted me to give everything that He gave to me, to just give it freely, knowing that He is Almighty God and that He will take care of me. And when I ministered, I never asked for an offering, nor do I talk about money in our local assembly. I know that in most churches, they talk about money every time they meet, but I don't talk about money because God puts it in people's hearts to meet the needs of the brethren. So I freely give and for the past 55 years, God has freely given to me. Truly, if you prove God's Word, you will be very impressed with God. I'm very impressed with God! I know He watches over me, I know that He knows my needs, I know that He provides for my needs and I know that I don't have to stand around and beg Him or beg men. I've never taken an offering and I continue to freely give of my ministry to people. We freely give away our materials and our books on our website, but God puts it in people's hearts to give back. (Luk.6:38) Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again. Wow! That's awesome! And I've never had to condemn people into giving to me, either. I don't even have to mention it. I have taught on giving, of course, but I've never taught on giving to me, and I've never taught on putting people under the Law to give to me. The disciples never took up an offering for themselves but for saints who were suffering elsewhere. For instance, you can't find the command to tithe in the New Testament. Jesus said that tithing was of the Law. (Mat.23:23) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done (under the Law), and not to have left the other undone. There's no place in the New Testament where God commanded Christians to be tithers. That was a law that was given in the Old Testament to the Old Covenant people. If a preacher drags it over into the New Covenant, it's because he's not obeying Jesus. He's not freely giving and freely receiving. What he's doing is condemning people into supporting him because he has no faith. When Jesus sent out the disciples, they were men of faith, or He would not have ordained them, and He would not have sent them out. And when He sent them out, He told them, “Freely ye received, freely give,” and that's what they did. They didn't take up any offerings. They didn't throw any pity parties. They didn't cry about all of their needs. They trusted in Almighty God! He can take care of us and, by the way, He is not poverty-stricken! I learned very quickly that tithing was something that churches used because they didn't trust God, so they were putting God's people under the Law, which was pronounced to be a curse. (Deu.28:15) But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. (Jas.2:10) For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one [point,] he is become guilty of all. I learned that Jesus said, (Luk.14:33) So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. We are not stewards of 10% and owners of 90% anymore! Read the New Testament! We are called “stewards” of 100%!  We handle it for God. We've been bought with a price (1Co.6:19-20; 7:23). We are not our own and neither is anything that we have. We are bondservants, and everything that we have belongs to our Master. He's the One Who tells us what to do with it, how much to give, where to give and to whom. Yes, we do in type and shadow, bring our tithes into the storehouse (Mal.3:10), which in the Old Testament was in the middle of the temple, but in the New Testament, God's people are the temple. When Jesus returns to judge the nations, He's not going to say anything about the tithe. (Mat.25:34) Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: (35) for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in (Notice its all about how we treat the temple.); (36) naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. (37) Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? (38) And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? (39) And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? (40) And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. You see, you bring your “tithes” into the storehouse by how you treat the temple. At times, God has even called on me to give away my car and my house, but anything that I gave away, He always gave back to me and, in most cases, even better. He has never failed me! When I've been to minister as an invited speaker at other assemblies, I always appreciated it if they chose to give me an offering, but I never asked for one. I also learned that it pleased God if I didn't tell everyone my needs. I just told Him my needs. There's not one instance in the Bible where an apostle took up offerings or told anyone their own needs. The only time they took up an offering was for someone else; they took up an offering for the saints in Jerusalem who were in desperate need, because when they came to Christianity, the Jews around them were plundering them. (Heb.10:34) For ye both had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your possessions, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one. And so Paul had the churches take up offerings for the saints (1Co.16:3; 2Co.9:5; 12:16-18; Php.4:15-19), but he never took up an offering for himself and nobody else did, either. They were men of faith, and they walked by faith. They knew they were working for the Father and that the Father would pay them. You get to see the glory of God if you don't do things in the flesh. I'll give you one little instance. But first please remember that we have nothing to brag about. Everything comes from our awesome God by unmerited favor through faith which is His gift to us. When my children were young, I was impressed that I needed to go to Louisiana to visit some relatives. Well, this was at a time when I didn't have any money whatsoever. Even my children asked, “How are we going to Louisiana?” It was a pretty good drive, four-and-a-half hours from where we lived, and I told them, “We are going to go by faith.” I never let on to anybody in our assembly, “Well, I'm going to Louisiana and I don't have any money.” The next day, we all piled into our car, which was out of gas, and we headed out to Louisiana. Now, as I was going out of the door, I saw where a sister had left her Bible on the table, so I picked it up and I said, “We'll drop this by on our way.” You know, I was convinced that God was just going to put gas in my car because He had done it many times before. And when we stopped by this sister's house, I knocked on her door and I handed her the Bible when she answered. I said, “You left this at our house and I didn't want you to go through the weekend without having the Word.” I turned around to leave, but she said, “David, the Lord is telling me to give this to you,” and she handed me a $20 bill. Now, in those days, a $20 bill would fill up even a big station wagon, which is what I had with five kids in it. So I thanked her and I turned around and went back to town, and I took that money and filled the tank up with gas.  We were excited because the pump clicked off at $20. Folks, you never saw a tank of gas in a big gas hog car like mine go as far as that tank of gas went! And when we took off for Louisiana, we still didn't have any money because we had put it all in the gas tank. After we got to Louisiana and were visiting, an assembly over there somehow found out I was in town. They decided to invite me over to preach and, sure enough, they took up an offering and blessed me. I came back with a whole lot more money than when I left. Praise be to God! I remember taking my kids to the beach when we didn't have any gas in the car and God put gas in the car. And I remember one time a friend called me to come and pick him up because he had run his car off the road, and he was stuck. That was when my car was empty. It had been empty for days, and I had been driving it that way for days, and he was on the other side of town. I said, “Lord, Your Word says, ‘Give to him that asketh of thee' (Mat.5:42; Luk.6:30), and he's asking, so I'm going!” I got in my car that I'd been driving for several days without any gas in it, and I went over there and I picked him up where he was stuck alongside the road. I dragged him out and came back home. You know, I drove that car for a week and it never ran out of gas. There was another time I actually did have plenty of money, but the gas stations were closed. When I lived over in Baton Rouge, I once had to go to work very, very early in the morning, and I didn't realize that all those stations weren't open that early. I went to a couple of them, and they were closed, but I decided, “Well, Lord, nothing is stopping You from putting gas in my tank. I'm going.” So I jumped up on the interstate, and before I had gone anywhere, I saw that gas tank needle start climbing; I think it climbed up about a third of a tank while I was driving down the interstate, and then it stopped. I asked, “Well, Lord, why didn't You just go ahead and fill it up?” And I heard Him answer, “Well, I always give you what you need.” I said, “That's right!” It didn't matter to me if I ran out because I've seen my car run without any gas in it. It makes no difference to God. We must become as a child in trusting our Father. To such belongs the Kingdom of heaven. God bless you to believe and trust in His promises you find in the Word of His provision and care for you!

Unconditional love? Are Religions intrinsically violent? Is the Old Covenant still valid? This and more on Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders.

Dr. Alan Kurschner explained that God has worked with Israel and the church simultaneously in the past. He described three prophecies that were given to Israel, and about Israel, that have been fulfilled in the past during the church age. The point of this was two-fold: (1) to demonstrate that God does indeed work with Israel and the church at the same time, and (2) to show that it is inconsistent to claim that Daniel's seventy-weeks prophecy made to Israel excludes the church from being on earth during the final seven years of that prophecy.   Please consider giving monthly: https://www.alankurschner.com/partner/  

Dr. Alan Kurschner explained that God has worked with Israel and the church simultaneously in the past. He described three prophecies that were given to Israel, and about Israel, that have been fulfilled in the past during the church age. The point of this was two-fold: (1) to demonstrate that God does indeed work with […] The post Three Old Covenant Dispensation Prophecies Fulfilled DURING the Church Age appeared first on ESCHATOS MINISTRIES.

Romans 7:1-25 - Living Water Bible Fellowship exists to lead people into a life changing and ever growing relationship with Jesus Christ. Thank you for joining us today. If you have a need or prayer request, please check our links and connect with us.  If you made a decision today for Christ, please call or email us so we can celebrate with you! Phone: 719-589-6351 Email addresses for our leadership: Pastor Jeron - pastorjeron@livingwateralamosa.org Derek Sisneros - derek.sisneros@livingwateralamosa.org Luke Smith - lsmith@livingwateralamosa.org LWBF Office - office@livingwateralamosa.org Donations: https://www.livingwateralamosa.org/give Website: http://www.livingwateralamosa.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lwbfalamosa YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0GuaHLwY2ZP_rBvw8Ep7g We have an app! From your phone: http://lwbf.app Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/living-water-bible-fellowship/id1417883284?mt=8 Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tentapps.livingwateralam Subscribe to our Podcast: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sermons/id1294034914 Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Ipbuu6siddg57clx4kinggfjuxm Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=153528&refid=stpr Thank you for watching and listening!

In this revelatory message, Leon du Preez unpacks the Better Promises of the New Covenant. From the shift away from the obsolete Old Covenant to the nine promises found in Hebrews, he reveals how Jesus is our Mediator, how His blood speaks better things, and how the Spirit engraves God's law on our hearts. With powerful warnings on false doctrine, the dangers of gossip, and the call to unity, this message stirs faith and anchors believers in the rest of Christ's finished work.

It is no accident that Jesus was crucified during Passover. The passover is a memorial of the blood of the lamb that caused death to pass over the homes it covers. Jesus is the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, and He institutes the ordinance of communion at the passover meal hours before He is arrested and eventually crucified to atone for the sins of the elect. In this sermon, Pastor Daniel shows the link between Passover and communion, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and the atoning work of Christ on the cross.

From the Glory of the Old Covenant to the Even Greater Glory of the New Covenant! To watch today's video, just click on this link! The post From Glory to Glory – by Eddie Manley appeared first on Living Rock Church.

What happens when good intentions toward biblical faithfulness lead to legalistic bondage? In this episode, we're unpacking MORE THAN JUST the growing trend of Torah-keeping, feast day observance, and dietary codes among modern believers. Our returning guest, Dr. R.L. Solberg, takes us deep into his new book The Law, The Christ, The Promise—a verse-by-verse apologetic study of Galatians that lays out the dangers of blending Old Covenant rituals with New Covenant freedom. From practical theology to table fellowship, from legalism to love, this conversation is rich, nuanced, and deeply encouraging for anyone wrestling with law, liberty, and living out their faith in Christ.Grab the book here-->https://amzn.to/3SDCcmhDr. R.L. Solberg's website is: https://thebiblicalroots.org

The sermon explores Psalm 41, examining its historical context within the Old Covenant while simultaneously revealing its profound messianic implications. It highlights David's plea for mercy amidst slander and betrayal, emphasizing the importance of caring for the poor as a mark of covenant faithfulness, and ultimately pointing to Christ as the perfect embodiment of righteousness who suffered, yet triumphed over all enemies, securing eternal blessings for believers. The sermon encourages listeners to recognize Christ's role in fulfilling Old Testament promises and to draw assurance from his victory, ultimately affirming God's enduring reign and the hope of eternal glory.

In part four of our series on biblical covenants, Blake explains how the New Covenant fulfilled and reimagined every part of the Old Covenant. In teaching what Scripture says about the New Covenant, he also debunks the most popular heresy in the Evangelical Church about the New Covenant: that it is somehow incomplete and not yet fully realized (dispensationalism). Biblical Covenants, Part 4. That You May Know Him, Episode 265.

Have you ever wondered why the Bible sometimes just doesn't seem to make sense? In this special bonus episode of Seek Go Create, host Tim Winders pulls back the curtain on his recent five-part series, confronting confusion, clarifying key teachings, and addressing the strong reactions his insights have sparked on social media. Join Tim as he revisits what he might have gotten wrong, tackles common misconceptions—especially about end times and rapture theology—and explains why context is crucial for understanding scripture. If you're ready to dig deeper, challenge assumptions, and pursue biblical truth with humility, this episode is for you."Don't be afraid to question, to wrestle, to unlearn. That's how we grow." - Tim Winders Access all show and episode resources HEREReasons to Listen: Real-Time Clarifications & Honest Reflection: Host Tim Winders dives into questions and feedback from listeners, openly addresses potential mistakes, and offers clarifications on key biblical concepts—a rare, transparent look into how spiritual understanding evolves.Context is Everything: This episode reveals why reading the Bible in its historical context, especially around the Old and New Covenant overlap, changes how everything “makes sense”—challenging assumptions that many never question.Inside the Social Media Firestorm: Tim shares wild responses from his social media posts (including heated rapture debates, support messages, and even accusations of heresy), giving you an unfiltered peek into the real-life reactions sparked by re-examining longstanding theology.Key Lessons:Humility in Teaching and Learning - Tim emphasizes the importance of humility, acknowledging that it's powerful for teachers and leaders to say, "I may have messed up." The episode models openness to correction, growth, and the willingness to revisit and clarify complex topics.Understanding Context Is Critical - A recurring theme is the necessity of reading the Bible—especially the Old and New Testaments—in their proper historical and cultural contexts. Tim shares that much confusion and doctrinal disagreement comes from taking verses or teachings out of context.Transition Between Old and New Covenants - Tim clarifies the nuanced overlap between the Old and New Covenants, underscoring that while Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant at the cross, the physical temple system remained until AD 70. This period of transition is key to understanding New Testament writings and early church tensions.Confronting Fear-Based Theology - The episode calls out the dangers of fear-based interpretations like rapture theology, highlighting how such doctrines can create anxiety and misunderstanding. Instead, Tim advocates for a faith rooted in peace, confidence in Christ's finished work, and healthy dialogue—even when facing opposition or criticism.Christ Is Enough—Resting in Reconciliation - Drawing on Paul's letter to the Colossians, Tim drives home the message that Christ is all and in all, and that everything is being reconciled through Him. This foundational truth invites listeners to let go of fear, rest in God's grace, and focus on living out the kingdom with peace and hope.Episode Highlights:00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview01:37 Clarifications and Reflections02:27 Recording Process and AI Assistance04:15 Episode-by-Episode Breakdown16:27 Social Media Reactions and Discussions21:25 Controversial Teachings and Criticisms22:16 Scripture Dumping and Misinterpretations23:05 Accusations and Contradictions24:13 Historical...

Topics: Why Church Attendance Is Declining, The Top-Down Hierarchy System, The Give-to-Get System and Church Lotto, Rude and Hateful Church People, Mixing Politics with the Gospel, The Antiquated Pew and Pulpit System, Double Talk Teaching in Church, The Dangers of Covenant Mixture Theology, Everyone Is not Included Equally, The Pressure and Guilt to Go to Church, The Message is not about The New Creation, The Message is not about Jesus, The Church Has forgotten Its First Love, Jesus Said Call NEpisonsither, Jesus said it will not be like this among you, What the Bible Says About Our Gatherings, Tithing is a Give-to-Get System, It is Easier for a Camel to Go Through a Needle, Sin Will not Longer be Your Master Romans 6:14, It is the Goodness of God which Leads People to Repentance, Deny Yourself is Out of Context, Paul said He is Chief of Sinners is Out of Context, You are a New Creation, You are Holy According to Colossians 1:22, Jesus Said He had not Come to Abolish the Law, The Old Covenant has been Abolished, The New Testament is about Everyday Life, Everyone is a Vital Member of the Body of Christ, The Church Has lost Its Influence, Jesus is the Head of the ChurchSupport the showSign up for Matt's free daily devotional! https://mattmcmillen.com/newsletter

By Tony Stith - In Hebrews 12, the Apostle Paul contrasts the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai with the New Covenant at Mount Zion; contrasting a relationship with God marked by fear, distance, and a transactional system of blessings and curses with a new relationship of faith, love, and direct access to God through

How is the meaning of marriage different in the New Covenant? The Catechism teaches us today that Christ elevates the gift of marriage to a sacrament and restores the original order of this powerful union between man and woman. Fr. Mike explains why marriage looked different in the Old Covenant and how God was preparing his chosen people throughout time to accept Christ's law of marriage. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 1609-1617. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

The priesthood of the Old Covenant among the people of Israel is fulfilled in the one priesthood of Christ. The Catechism compares the Old Testament priesthood, “powerless to bring about salvation,” with the ordained ministry in the New Covenant. Fr. Mike unpacks the reality that there is only one true priest—Jesus Christ. His “priests” on earth are humble ministers. Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 1539-1545. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.