Podcasts about thou fount

Travis continues in Then Sings My Soul with a discussion on Come, Thou Fount and how it can help us from wandering from God.#iamembraceEmbrace is one church, made up of multiple campuses and network churches. We exist to relentlessly reach the next person for Jesus.Give Herehttps://www.iamembrace.com/giveStay ConnectedWebsite: iamembrace.comEmbrace Church Facebook: facebook.com/iamembraceEmbrace Church Instagram: instagram.com/iamembraceAdam Weber YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adamaweber Adam Weber Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adamaweberAdam Weber Instagram: instagram.com/adamaweber

Sunday Worship for March 30, 2025, from Queen Anne Lutheran Church in Seattle, our 10:30 service—Pastor Dan Peterson; Cantor Kyle Haugen.Prelude—Selections from Mass for the Convents, FrançoisCouperin, (1668–1733) • Introit—Isaiah 66:10; Psalm 122:1 • Gathering Hymn— Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, ELW 807 •   First Reading— Joshua 5:9-12  • Psalm 32 • Second Reading—2 Corinthians 5:16-21 • Gospel—Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 • Sermon—Pastor Dan Peterson • Hymn of the Day— Chief of Sinners Though I Be, ELW 609 • Communion Verse—Luke 15:32 • Distribution Anthem—O Taste and See, Timothy S. Flynn (b. 1962) • Sending Hymn —Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound , ELW 779) • Postlude—Chorale variations on JESU, MEINE LEBENS LEBEN (ELW 339, “Christ, the Life of All the Living”) Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Link here to view the bulletin.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enjoying our worship recordings? Consider giving a gift to our church; ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠go to this link.⁠⁠

“I Am He”.  Jeffrey R. Holland and The Tabernacle Choir Sings ‘Come Thou Font of Every Blessing'.  ACU Sunday Series.   “I Am He”.  Jeffrey R. Holland. October 2024 General Conference Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/wO_zZtt0Nmc?si=eKjEk7gAnBj1yhsu General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ 591K subscribers 199,536 views Oct 6, 2024 President Jeffrey R. Holland speaks at the 194th semiannual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held on October 5-6, 2024. Christ's charity—evident in complete loyalty to divine will—persisted and continues to persist. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s...   Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (2011) | The Tabernacle Choir The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square 902K subscribers 16,678,929 views Nov 1, 2012 Purchase "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" from the album "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing: American Folk Hymns and Spirituals": Amazon: http://amzn.to/WqlRyH iTunes: http://bit.ly/TV9N9q Deseret Book: http://bit.ly/Qob6tB LDS Store: http://bit.ly/R1mEEu   Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Lyrics: Come, thou Fount of ev'ry blessing, Tune my heart to sing thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above; Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of thy redeeming love.   Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by thy help I'm come; And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Prone to wander Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above.   Jesus sought me when a stranger, wand'ring from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed his precious blood. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above.   O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above, Seal it for thy courts above.

Song List:1- Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing2- There is Power in the Blood3- What a Friend We Have4- Nearer, My God, to Thee5- Rock of Ages Message: Bro. Mark TurquittScripture: St. John 11:28-44Invitation- Trust and Obey

ScriptureTranscriptMusic:Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing - Chris Rice (Instrumental)The Great I Am - Phillips, Craig, and Dean

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“Make every effort to come to me soon, because Demas has deserted me, since he loved this present world, and has gone to Thessalonica.”~2 Timothy 4:9-10 “Therefore, brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.”~2 Peter 1:10-11 “Now the one sown among the thorns—this is one who hears the word, but the worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”~Matthew 13:22 “O to grace how great a debtorDaily I'm constrained to be!Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;Prone to leave the God I love:Take my heart, oh, take and seal itWith Thy Spirit from above.”~Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”SERMON PASSAGE Hebrews 2:1-4 (CSB) 1 For this reason, we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away. 2 For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, 3 how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? This salvation had its beginning when it was spoken of by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 At the same time, God also testified by signs and wonders, various miracles, and distributions of gifts from the Holy Spirit according to his will.

In the final episode of 2024, Brian Delamont returns to the podcast to talk about transformed direction. Repentance isn't just a one-time event at the time of salvation but a daily surrender and redirection. Joel 2:12-13 “We can rationalize or explain just about anything in our behavior and our thinking rather than truly commit to a transformed direction.” “God is longing for us to genuinely change, for us to live lives fully integrated and aligned with Him.”  Hear more about VIM on Episode 157 Listen to “Come, Thou Fount” here and read more about the story behind the song here Acts 2 “Repentance is not a one time for all time thing, but it is an ongoing act of our relationship with God.” “To repent is turning from sin and turning to God.” “It's impossible to underestimate the power of a transformational change in direction. It can break generational patterns of behavior and bring freedom to entire family lines, entire communities.” A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson “God does give us moments, like mile markers along the way, that show us progress.” Mark 1:15 “Transformation is not me mustering up enough grit or resolve to somehow change my life. Rather, I become a new creation in Christ Jesus. And this is made possible through the very life of Christ, the Holy Spirit living in me, pouring His life into my life in every way.” December Reflection: What do I know needs changing? What do I need to repent of, so that I live fully into God's future for me in the coming year? What's changing our lives: Keane: Neighborhood friends Heather: Doing “sprint” work on projects with her team Brian: Eggnog in his coffee Weekly Spotlight: GDQ International Christian School We'd love to hear from you! podcast@teachbeyond.org Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/ 

Ask: In what ways have you enjoyed the season of Advent this week? Listen: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Sufjan Stevens  https://open.spotify.com/track/2HGauri7NDGHmTKM3C34g1?si=10ff1916d044485a  Art: Mary and Joseph Look with Faith on the Child of Jesus at His Nativity (1995) by Elizabeth Wang.    Devotional based on the work Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent, by Tsh Oxenreider

PreludeWelcome & News of the ChurchCall to WorshipOpening Hymn - (#318) "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing"Confession, Assurance, and Gloria PatriMinute for Mission - Operation Christmas ChildPraise SongsSermon - "Gratitude: God's In Charge" (I Samuel 2:1–10) - by Rev. Jason GrifficeHymn of Response - (#454) "Trust and Obey"Receiving of Our Tithes and OfferingsOffertory - "Once Again" by Matt RedmanDoxologyPastoral PrayerClosing Hymn - (#495) "It Is Well With My Soul"BenedictionPostludeCome Thou Fount of Every BlessingCome, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above; Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love. This my glad commemoration That 'til now I've safely come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood. O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love: Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above. Amen. Trust and ObeyWhen we walk with the Lord In the light of His Word, What a glory He sheds on our way! While we do His good will, He abides with us still, And with all who will trust and obey. CHORUS:Trust and obey, for there's no other wayTo be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obeyThen in fellowship sweet We will sit at His feet, Or we'll walk by His side in the way; What He says we will do, Where He sends we will go, Never fear, only trust and obey. [CHORUS]It Is Well With My SoulWhen peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll— Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is will with my soul. CHORUS: It is well (it is well)With my soul (with my soul)It is well, it is well with my soul.My sin—O the joy of this glorious thought—My sin, not in par, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more: Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. [CHORUS]And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll: The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend, "Even so"—it is well with my soul. [CHORUS]

ScriptureTranscriptMusic:Sing, Sing, Sing - Wendell KimbroughCome, Thou Fount of Every Blessing - Chris RiceTrust and Obey - Big Daddy Weave

PreludeWelcome & News of the ChurchCall to WorshipOpening Hymn - (#318) "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing"Praise SongsConfession, Assurance, and Gloria PatriSpecial Music - "We Sing Alleluia" by Farrah/Schrader - Micah Wright, piano; Cornel Radulescu, organSermon - "Kiddushin: Weddings" (Matthew 22:1–10) - by Rev. Jason GrifficeHymn of Response - (#633) "In My Heart There Rings a Melody" (verses 1 & 3)Receiving of Our Tithes and OfferingsOffertory and DoxologyPastoral PrayerClosing Hymn - (#87) "Leaning on the Everlasing Arms"BenedictionPostludeCome, Thou Fount of Every BlessingCome, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above; Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love. This my glad commemoration That 'til now I've safely come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood. O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love: Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above. Amen. In My Heart There Rings a MelodyI have a song that Jesus gave me, It was sent from heaven above; There never was a sweeter melody, 'Tis a melody of love. CHORUS: In my heart there rings a melody, there rings a melody with heaven's harmony; In my heart there rings a melody, There rings a melody of love. 'Twill be my endless theme in glovy, With the angels I will sing; 'Twill be a song with glorious harmony, When the courts of heaven ring. [CHORUS]Leaning on the Everlasing ArmsWhat a fellowship, what a joy divine, Leaning on the everlasting arms; What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, Leaning on the everlasting arms CHORUS: Leaning, leaning, Safe a secure from all alarms; Leaning, leaning, Leaning on the everlasting arms. O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, Leaning on the everlasting arms; O how bright the path grows from day to day, Leaning on the everlasting arms. [CHORUS]What have I to dread, what have I to fear, Leaning on the everlasting arms? I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, Leaning on the everlasting arms. [CHORUS]

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing Overview Title: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing Key Lines: “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing; Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.” Historical Context: This hymn was not in the original LDS hymnbook... The post 805 Hear Hymn – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing appeared first on The Cultural Hall Podcast.

Main Passage: Hebrews 4:14-16 Scripture used: Proverbs 14:10; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 7:23-28; Hebrews 1:3b; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 12:1-2a; Hebrews 3:1; Hebrews 3:6; Hebrews 3:14; Hebrews 4:14b; Hebrews 10:23; 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 1 John 2:19; John 11:33-36; Romans 12:15; Isaiah 53:4a; Matthew 8:17; Luke 22:42b-44; Hebrews 12:3-4; Revelation 4:2-11; Romans 10:13; Psalm 86:5; 1 John 1:9; Matthew 6:13; Hebrews 2:18; 1 Corinthians 10:13; James 1:5; Isaiah 40:29, 31a; Psalm 34:18; 1 Peter 5:7; Philippians 4:19; Psalm 46:1; Two Hymns Mentioned: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robert Robinson, 1758 No One Understands Like Jesus by John Peterson, 1952 Main points: Lift Your Eyes to Exalted Deity Hold Fast to Him Trust Your Heart to Humble Sympathy Boldly Approach Him

ScriptureTranscriptMusic:Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing - Chris RiceCome, Let Us Worship and Bow Down - Maranatha! SingersHoly Spirit, Living Breath of God - Keith & Kristyn Getty

Join us as Michael Grooms delivers his Sunday evening sermon titled "O Thou Fount of Every Blessing".

February 25 Service Groveport UMC, Groveport Ohio Rick Birk, Pastor WELCOME & ANNOUNCEMENTS BREAKTHROUGH PRAYER: Amazing God, We pray that through the Holy Spirit Your preferred future for Groveport United Methodist Church will be made clear to us. Give us the courage we need to follow You wherever You may take us. We ask that You bind us together in love so that we can bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to our friends, families, and community. Open our eyes so that we may see the amazing things You are already doing among us. AMEN. PRELUDE “The Servant Song” LIGHTING OF THE ALTAR CANDLES *OPENING MUSIC “Here I Am, Lord” #593 CALL TO WORSHIP: Give thanks to the Lord because he is good, because his faithful love lasts forever. “God's faithful love lasts forever!” In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord. The Lord answered me with wide-open spaces. “God's faithful love lasts forever!” The Lord is for me— I won't be afraid. What can anyone do to me? “God's faithful love lasts forever!” I was pushed so hard I nearly died, but the Lord helped me. “God's faithful love lasts forever!” It's far better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust any human. “God's faithful love lasts forever!” The stone rejected by the builders is now the main foundation stone! “God's faithful love lasts forever!” This is the day the Lord acted; we will rejoice and celebrate in it! “God's faithful love lasts forever!” HYMN “Fairest Lord Jesus” #189 FIRST SCRIPTURE READING: Proverbs 3:5-6 AFFIRMATION OF FAITH: By faith we believe in creation, that God set this world in motion. By faith we believe in salvation, that Jesus died for us that we might live. By faith we believe in eternity, that we will one day live forever with our Savior. We did not see the creation or the crucifixion, and we have yet to taste the glory of eternity. Though we have not seen, by faith we believe. OUR TIME OF PRAYER HYMN “Sanctuary” THE LORD'S PRAYER OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS “How Beautiful” *DOXOLOGY *PRAYER OF DEDICATION CHILDREN'S MOMENTS SECOND SCRIPTURE READING: Mark 14:32-52 SERMON “Keep Watch” CLOSING HYMN “Shout to the Lord” *BENEDICTION *SENDING FORTH “Go Now in Peace” POSTLUDE “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

Hymnology- Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Father, we thank you for your holy word and we thank you that you are a holy God and we have transgressed your holy law. And it's because of our rebellion. It's because we do have, every single one of us, a problem with authority, a problem with your authority in particular when you call us to do things that go against our own will. And Lord, you didn't leave us in our sins and trespasses. You didn't leave us in our rebellious, recalcitrant, our stubborn stiff-neckedness. Instead, you sent your son Jesus Christ, who submitted perfectly to every single facet of the law, every single tenant of the law, every single law. And you submitted Jesus to the will of the Father like no one before you, like no one after you. And you did that in order to provide a way for us to be saved. And you went to the cross instead of experiencing the blessing that you deserved for your law keeping, you took the curse that we deserve for our lawbreaking.And Lord, you were crucified, you died and you were buried. And we thank you that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you were resurrected. And now you call every single one of us to repentance in particular the areas of our life where we do want to seek our own will instead of yours. You call us to repent and not be stiff neck and I pray today, soften our hearts, soften our necks, soften our wills, and make us a people that long to obey you because your will is good and your will is perfect and your will is holy. You do not call us to anything that is short of your blessed will. Everything you call us to is for our good and it's ultimately for your glory. And when we glorify you the most, that's when we experience your presence the most and we experience the joy that you would have for us.Lord bless our time, the holy scriptures today. Holy Spirit, we love you. If there's any places in our lives where we are grieving you or where we are in our obstinacy, turning from your leading, I pray today, Lord, make us filled with the Holy Spirit to keep in step with the Spirit. Doing nothing to grieve your spirit. Lord bless our time in the holy scriptures and give us grace and give us your presence. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. And the title of the sermon today is Beware Stiff Nakedness. A few years ago, my third daughter at Katharina, Ecat for short, she started a dog sitting business and she got this dog that was small yet incredibly strong to watch for a few days and she loves dogs and she loves dog sitting.And dog sitting is the closest that she's going to get to having a dog, although she is hoping for a miracle and praying for one. So though it was Ecat's responsibility to watch this dog, I don't know what happened, but it wasn't her walking the dog, it was my second daughter, Elizabeth, went out to give the dog a walk and it was winter time, it was cold outside and 20 minutes goes by, she's not home in 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and we got to worrying and we went to look for her and we found her stuck on a street corner trying with all her might to drag this dog, to turn this dog in the direction of home to no veil. She tried talking to the dog, pleading with the dog, cajoling the dog, bribing the dog with snacks. And every time she would pull on the leash to turn her home, the dog stiffened its neck and dug in. And it took a strong word of command to get the dog to come, a stronger yank of the leash to get the dog to turn right.And from the side, if you saw what was happening here like that looks like excessive force, but it wasn't excessive and force was the only thing that the dog could understand, it was actually loving force. What was the goal? The goal was to get the dog home where it's warm and toasty and by itself the dog wouldn't make it out on the streets. The dog was stiff-necked. And that's the same phrase that God uses to describe the behavior of unbelieving people, people who see God's work, see sign after sign and don't take God at his Word. People who intentionally reject God's Word to do their own will. There's a curious passage in Nehemiah where Nehemiah summarizes quick in a pithy way the history of the people of Israel. In Nehemiah 9:13, speaking of God, "You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your Holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses, your servant.You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go into possess the land that you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refuse to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you've performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and did not forsake them." You read this and you say it's unbelievable. These people saw miracle after miracle with a crescendo of parting the Red Sea and they walked through and the armies of the Egyptians, they were swallowed up by the water.They saw miracle after miracle, they heard the voice of God, they saw the evidence of God's work. And then as soon as they realized that to be free from captivity means to be in submission to God and his word, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I prefer slavery. And they appointed a leader to bring them back. And you say, how could they ever do that? Well, friends, just look into your own heart, look at your own history, how often do we come to Christ, have our sins forgiven? And then the Lord says, "Repent, believe, and follow me." And we start following and realize, "Oh, this is so much harder than I'd ever anticipated. The sacrifice is so much greater than I'm willing to make." And you turn back to sin, the word of God presents hardheartedness as the root cause of stiff nakedness. Why?Because in the scriptures, the heart isn't just the seed of emotions, it's the center of the will. So you end up doing exactly what you love most. And if you love yourself more than you love God, you place yourself in the position of God. And if you take God's rightful place on the throne of your life, the very life that God gave you, then there will never be evidence enough for the existence of God, for the veracity of his word, for his clear commandments. God is the ultimate authority. And to believe in God is to love His authority. To believe in God is to submit to His authority no matter how we feel about the commandment. Even when every fiber in your being bristles with rebellion, at those moments, we must cry out to the Lord. Lord, soften my heart, Lord relax my stiff neck.And those sticking points are the places where if we receive God's will, the absolute greatest transformation happens in our lives. However, if the Lord reveals a point in our lives where our necks have stiffened up against His will where we remain recalcitrant, when he pulls on the leash, there is potential for the neck to break. Proverbs 29:1 says, "He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing." And today we approach a text where Jesus deals with the hard hardness of the stiff nakedness of those who should have known better, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the politicians, those who followed Herod and the Herodians. And then he turns His attention to the disciples and He says that rebellious spirit that you see in the Pharisees and the Herodians, watch out that that spirit does not grow in your hearts. So today in Mark 8:11-22, would you look at the text with me?"The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking for him a sign from heaven to test Him. And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?" "Truly I say to you, no sign will be given this generation" and He left them, gotten to the boat again and went to the other side. Now, they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them saying, watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus aware of this said to them, why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see and having ears?Do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to Him "twelve." And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to Him, "Seven". And He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" This is the reading of God's holy, inert and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points of the frame up our time, be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. Second, beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. And three battle hardheartedness by remembering. First be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. After Jesus feeds the 4,000 Gentiles, Mark tells us that he gets in the boat and they went to the region of Dalmanutha on the western, more Jewish shore of the lake.And that's where the Pharisees meet Him. And that's verse 11. The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven to test him. Now, if you haven't been with us, the Pharisees, just a quick recap, were the religious leaders. They're the gatekeepers of the Jewish faith. They're the self-proclaimed representatives of God. So when Jesus shows up and starts telling people the Pharisees, He starts telling them that he's the promised Messiah and actually he's the Son of God. While they've got concerns. He can't be God they reason. Why? Because they know God. God is on our side, they figured. We have God figured out. We're the professionals here, Jesus. Moreover, if Jesus is right, then they're wrong, but they can't be wrong, not this wrong, not this wrong about the most important question in the universe. Who is God and what does He demand of me?And moreover, if Jesus is right, then they have to change their lives and they don't want to change their lives. They like their lives. They like their prestigious, lucrative positions. They like the honor that the people give them. They like the glory they receive and the praise from the people. Moreover, Jesus is preaching not just that they are to obey God more, he's preaching that they can't save themselves at all. He's preaching that apart from repentance, that they have no standing before God. He's preaching repentance, which means a change of life, but they don't want to change their life. And also Jesus, who are you to teach us about God? You didn't even go to rabbinical school and we don't even know who your father is. And they cast all kinds of insinuations upon Him. So they come to Jesus and they begin to argue with Him.This is a phrase that's used with a nuance of hostility. They're saying, "Jesus, prove your authority. Prove that you are who you say you are. And prove it in exactly how we say it." Here's the marching orders, Jesus, obey them dutifully and then maybe we'll follow you. But here's the thing, God doesn't take commands from us. We can pray to God and we can bring our requests to God, but we can't command God. And by definition, God does not obey humans and the posture of their heart behind this phrase "Prove to me that you're God," well, it's a posture of authority over a subject. They're standing in authority over Jesus, Jesus we're telling you what to do if you want us to believe. He's God and which means He doesn't obey us, we obey him. And the very second he starts to obey us is the very second we usurp his throne, which He doesn't allow.They came to test Him seeking from him a sign from heaven what Jesus had just been doing, sign after sign after sign. Perhaps they weren't privy or witness to the sign of feeding of the 4,000, but they had definitely heard about it. If you feed 5,000 men, if you give 5,000 men a free lunch, it doesn't even have to be that great, a free mediocre lunch, they're going to tell everybody about it. I got a free lunch. It was awesome. It was free. Partially our strategy behind feeding people. February 4th is our first monthly community lunch, make sure to come at 1:00 PM February 4th and bring your friends so they tell all their friends about it. No. And then also they saw some of the miracles. They saw the exorcism in chapter three. Jesus cast out a demon from a person and the Pharisees charged Jesus with doing this spiritual work by the power of Satan himself.And Jesus calls them out and says, "No, no, no, you are on the side of Satan actually and you've blasphemed the Holy Spirit," and seeking a sign despite the existence of previous signs, despite the eyewitness accounts of different signs. What the Pharisees do is they demonstrate that they're spiritual heirs of the disobedient wilderness generation, the generation that was led out of captivity from Egypt and led into the wilderness and they did not believe God, and God turned from them. In the Old Testament, it's not always a mark of disobedience to request a sign from God. If you remember Gideon, he famously laid a fleece before the Lord to ascertain whether God was going to choose him as an instrument in military deliverance. Hezekiah asked for a sign and received it that he would be healed of his grave illness. Isaiah seven, God insists that Ahaz actually asked for a sign from heaven and God sends it.In other places, signs seeking is presented negatively in particular with false prophets. God did warn that false prophets will come and they will try to verify their teaching with signs and miracles, but if they give signs and lead people into apostasy, those people aren't from God. Deuteronomy 13:1-5, "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or a wonder that he tells you comes to pass. And if He says, let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord, your God, is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.But that prophet or that dreamer of dream shall be put to death because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." And perhaps this was at the heart of the strategy of the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of being a false prophet. So that was their assumption that you're teaching something false, something against the scriptures, and here's the sign that you did. Therefore, Deuteronomy 13, we have reason to condemn you. They were seeking a sign to test Him. And this phrase to test is a phrase that's used often to describe Satan. Satan was a tester of the tempter in Matthew chapter four, where Jesus has been fasting for 40 days.Satan comes to tempt Jesus Christ with signs. He said, take these stones and turn them into bread to prove that you are who you say you are. And then Jesus responds with a quotation of Deuteronomy chapter 6:16, which is a reference to the incident at Massa and marimba. We'll get to that. But Deuteronomy 6:16, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested Him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His testimonies and His statutes, which He has commanded you." You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, he's the one that gives us tests. He's the one that puts us to the test. We don't return the favor. Sometimes people ask me, you want to go bungee jumping? You want to go jump out of a plane with a parachute?And I say, I don't have enough faith. I don't have enough faith in that stuff. And my verse that every time that comes to mind, whenever that whole category of I don't want to put the Lord to the test, like, oh, this is a great opportunity. That's not what he's talking about, he's talking about don't test the veracity of God's word, especially if God's already proven it time and time and time again, don't test Him. And this wasn't a request, it was a test similar to the testing of God by the Israelites at Massah and Meribah in Exodus 17. So Exodus 16, God sends manna from heaven, an incredible miracle, people see that God is providing. And then chapter 17, they test Moses again, they want water. And their question is, does God love us? Is God even with us? And they're testing God.And the same phrase that's used here in Mark where the Pharisees test God, peirazō, peirazein, that same saying, that same phrase is used in Exodus 17 in the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Exodus 17:1, "All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?" "Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people?"They're almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people taking with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand, the staff, with which you struck the Nile and go." "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb and you shall strike the rock and the water shall come out of it and the people will drink." And Moses did so on the sight of the elders of Israel and he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Is the Lord among us or not? After miracle, after miracle, after miracle and they were just fed with manna the day before, but it's just a human need, thirst, they suffer just a little bit and all of a sudden they're questioning God.They're grumbling against the Lord. And we see that all throughout the scriptures. This episode is brought to the forefront just to remind the people of Israel do not be like your forefathers. Psalm 95:7-11, "For He is our God and we are the people of his pastor and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. When your father's put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, "They are people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways." Therefore, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest." The parallels are clear between what Jesus was doing here and Mark and what God was doing with the people of Israel.Moses fed people with manna, in the same way Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then the 4,000, and then we have this text about not testing God and not being stiff-necked. Numbers 14, God swears that the wilderness generation that tested him will not enter Canaan. So in a sense you can diminish blessing from your own life by testing God. Through our own stiffness we actually keep ourselves from blessings that the Lord would have for us. The people resisted God and were stiff-necked against God and they missed out on the promised land. Numbers 14:21, "But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these 10 times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers and none of those who despise me shall see it."And the Lord was keeping track 10 times, he says they were stiff-necked and didn't obey. And why? Because they weren't just testing Moses, they were testing God. To test God is to undermine his authority and to undermine his authority is to hate him. And in our text, the Pharisees weren't just testing a representative of God, they were testing God himself, God incarnate. Psalm 78:17, "Yet they sinned still more against Him, rebelling against the most high in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God saying, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?" He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and streams overflowed. "Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?" What's Jesus' reaction to their testing? Verse 12, "And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." He sighed deeply in His spirit. If you remember when He healed a deaf man before He healed the deaf man, he looked up to heaven and he sighed deeply, partially because He is exasperated by the consequences of the fall, the repercussions of the fall, which includes sickness. And here He's exasperated at their unbelief, people that should have known better, people who have received God's Word and God here is exasperated with them. Scripture teaches us to not grieve the Holy Spirit, meaning when the Holy Spirit tells us what to do, it leads us in a certain direction and we say no, we're stiff-necked against the Holy Spirit. He does grieve. He is grieved by our disobedience and we are told not to quench the spirit or grieve the spirit but be filled with the spirit.Similar reaction Jesus feels in the next chapter where a gentleman comes and he says to the disciples of Jesus, "Can you cast out a demon from my son?" And the disciples couldn't do it. Jesus comes down the mountain of transfiguration and He says this in Mark 9:19, "Oh faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" The stubborn refusal to believe lay at the root of the Pharisees attitude. To those in such a state of unbelief, even a sign, if it was given, it wouldn't convince because a lack of belief, the root cause of the lack of belief in God is not a lack of evidence, and it's not a difficulty of the intellect or the reason. No, it's a difficulty of the will. John 7:17 says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority."And Jesus is saying, "Do you want proof that the words that I'm saying are true?" Well, do you want to do God's will? Because if I prove to you that God exists but you don't want to do God's will, it's actually more condemnation. I don't want to give you illumination that will lead to more condemnation if you want nothing to do with God's will. And certainty in the faith deepening of the faith, it is a gift of those who are obedient to the Lord. Is your will to do God's will, and that is the way to deepen your faith. The Pharisees were blind and as someone said, none are so blind as those who will not see. That's their attitude and such an attitude of sign seeking runs diametrically opposed to the biblical concept of the nature of faith. Jesus told Thomas when Thomas said, "Until I put my hands in the wounds of the resurrected Christ, I'm not going to believe."And then he sees Christ and Christ showed him the wounds he didn't even have to touch. He believed and he said, "Blessed are you Thomas." But more blessed are those who have not seen. You've seen and you've believed, but more blessed are those who have not seen and believe. Why? Because if you see a miracle, if Jesus gave the Pharisees another miracle, another sign at this moment, it's not faith that leads them to believe in God. No, it's just a logical conclusion. Of course this is God. Of course I'm going to place my faith in God because I've seen the evidence. It's a logical conclusion and the Lord wants a deeper faith and he wants us to take a step of faith given the evidence that he's given us. And he says, "This generation, truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation."And that's a phrase that's used before the flood in Genesis six where there's an evil and adulterous generation and same phrase that's used for Israel in the wilderness. And he says that you're not going to get a sign. Another translation says, God forbid that a sign should be given you. Perish the thought that I would do such a thing. There's an intense emotion. And what He's saying is, "No, I'm not doing it." God's not in the business of sending authenticating signs on demand. God isn't a pinata. God isn't a vending machine. God clearly tells us these are the terms on which you come to me, and you don't get to dictate the terms. Jesus has given them all the evidence they need to come to faith. The Pharisees are without excuse.,They can't plead ignorance, nor can they say that God hadn't given them enough information.You're alive. Why are you alive? Where did you come from? Where did life come from? You live in a material world, where did all of this come from? It didn't come from nothing. Nothing can come from nothing. And then on top of that, the moral law is written on your heart. When you read the 10 Commandments, you're like, yes, life would be better if everyone lived like this. And no, I have not lived like this. So what's the penalty for transgressing on the holy law of God? The penalty is damnation. The penalty is to be rejected by God. Therefore, I need grace. And this is exactly what they were unwilling to ask for. And it's not as though these people are unintelligent, on the contrary, they were probably some of the smartest people in Israel at the time. They knew the prophetic passages about the Messiah and Jesus fulfilled them perfectly.But they refused to believe. Why? Partially because Jesus called them out for their self-righteousness. You present yourself as righteous, but you are far from it and it's all facades of righteousness and it's all hypocrisy. And Jesus called them to repentance and they didn't want to be called to repentance. You're calling us sinners, Jesus, we're not sinners, we do all the right things, you're probably the sinner. A lot of us, today, we want miracles to believe in the Lord. And sometimes it is fine to ask for a miracle. It's fine to ask for a sign from the Lord. It really depends on what posture of heart that you ask the miracle with which you ask for the miracle. And then the point, are you looking for a miracle so that you can deepen your obedience and submission to the Lord? Or are you looking for an excuse to rebel against him?We do have miracles. We experience miracles every time a person comes to faith, especially in a place like Boston, one of the greatest miracles, the fact that anyone would turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Regeneration incredible miracle. Another miracle is the holy scriptures, the word of God, the Bible, two million miracles, two million words, give or take order of magnitude. 66 books, 1,189 chapters written by 40 different authors over 1,500 years, three different languages used Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, every jaw, every tittle of it given by the inspiration of God that holy men of old Roe as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. It's incredible through the centuries that the Lord has preserved the holy scriptures. This is the miracle. It's right before us, right before us supervised by the Holy Spirit and it tells us everything we need, everything we need to know about God, who he is, about the person of God.It tells us everything we need to know about how we can be reconciled with Him, saved from sin, saved from eternal damnation and tells us how we are to live in order to glorify God and honor him. Mark 8:13, "And he left them and got into the boat again and went to the other side." So in the beginning of the passage, Jesus crosses over from gentile land to Jewish land, exchanges a few sentences with the Pharisees. They're like, "We want to sign?" They're like, "I'm not giving you a sign." Gets in the boat and leaves. And here it is just a reminiscent of the departure of God and Deuteronomy where He turns his face away from rebellious people. Deuteronomy 32:20 and He said, "I will hide my face from them and I'll see what their end will be for they're a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness."Point two is beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. Here now Jesus turns from the Pharisees to His own disciples. In verse 14, now they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat and he cautioned them saying, "Watch out. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." The word leaven, it's not synonymous with yeast. In ancient times, yeast was rare. Dough was rather made by leavening or mixing into a small amount of dough, a piece of the previous week's dough that had been leavened. It was kept back for that purpose. If you make yogurt at home, it's the same process. Kombucha, kombucha, really delicious, really good for you apparently. But it's like you make a batch but you save a little bit of that batch to make the next batch, that's what the leaven is.And the power of the leaven is that it has power to permeate the whole dough. This is what Jesus is talking about. And in context of the Hebrew scriptures, during Passover, they had unleavened bread and they would cleanse their house from any leaven because the leaven was a sign of something that could permeate the whole thing. And here in this context that leaven is evil, it's stubbornness, it's stiff ness. And Jesus saying, "Disciples, be careful if even a little bit of this bitterness in your heart, even a little bit of the stiff-neckedness in your heart and any tiny aspect of your life because it has the power to take over. Unbelief because of non-submissive hearts is the unseen pervasive influence. 1st Corinthians 5:6 says, "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump?" Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are on leaven for Christ?Our passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So he says, be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians. In verse 16, they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. They just witnessed Jesus feed 5,000 men and then they witnessed Jesus feed 4,000. Jesus is clearly talking about spiritual matters, but they missed the point. To show us just how far they are from understanding who Christ is completely what his ultimate goal was in coming, which is to save us from the leaven of sin within, to give us new hearts that long to obey God. And in response to their misunderstanding, Jesus unleashes a series of questions. He ask eight questions, five critical questions that echo passages from the Old Testament, then two additional questions that recall the two miraculous feedings and then a final critical question.But the point is watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. "Watch out, beware." It's a double warning meaning this is how important it is to heeded this warning. Beware that you do not get infected with the stubborn unbelief. The stiff-neckedness of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Both were stiff-necked but seemingly in opposite waves. If you look at the surface, if you just look at their appearance and their lives, it seemed like the Pharisees were the religious ones. The Herodians wanted nothing to do with religion. But Jesus calls both of them stiff-necked. The Pharisees played the religious game. They pretended to be followers of God, they pretended to do all the right things. They pretended to go through the motions, but they weren't following God's law, they were following human interpretations of God's law and they were following human traditions, thus proving that they didn't love God, nor did they want to submit to his authority.They thought that they knew God, but when God showed up, they didn't even recognize Him. And here the word is particularly relevant for those who have been in the church for a while or perhaps you've grown up in the faith or perhaps you come from a Christian family where your parents believed or your grandparents believed. You know the lingo. You know what to say, when to say it, you know how to behave in church, how to behave around believers, but deep down inside your stiff-necked and you want nothing to do with God. And here the lesson is, don't stiffen your neck when the Lord corrects you or when he corrects your traditional thought patterns. Patterns that we inherit from the world, inherit from the school system, inherit from the university system. Where you learn one pattern or thinking and you come to the scripture and you're like, "Whoa" it rubs you the wrong way.You're offended by it. And what do you do at those moments of offense? Do you stiffen your neck or do you say, "Lord, help me understand, Lord, give me eyes to see? Lord, help me receive your word." Don't say, I could never believe that. Don't say, I could never believe in a God that commands that. Herod, on the other hand, he didn't even pretend to be obedient to God. He was the king, who was God to tell him what to do? He did as he pleased. He was Allah unto himself. When John the Baptist confronted King Herod, king Herod loved the sermons. He's like, "Oh, great sermon John, Mr. Baptist, now you're imprisoned. I'll call you again when I want another sermon." And John shows up again and Herod's like, "Give me a different sermon." He's like, "Nope, I got one sermon for you, Herod, repent of your adultery, you shouldn't do this." And Herod wanted to listen to the sermons, but he wanted nothing to do with submitting to God.John called him to repentance, which assumed a change of lifestyle, Herod wanted nothing to do with that. Both the Pharisees and the Herodians had the same leaven, a refusal to release power over their life and a stubborn refusal to believe and obey. So how do we fight the hardheartedness, the stiff-neckedness? This is 0.3, battle hardheartedness by remembering, remembering what? Remembering the work of God in your life. We are to document the work of God in our life. We are to remember, force ourselves to be reminded. Verse 17 and Jesus aware of this said to them, "Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?" Jesus is warning the disciples against being infected by the same evil impulse that the Herodians and the Pharisees were infected with.But He gives them questions which assumes that there is hope for them to learn. He doesn't just rebuke them and say, "You are hardhearted." He asks them, "Are you hardhearted?" Because at that moment their hearts perhaps were hard, but they didn't think the hearts were hard. Just like it shows us the blinding effect of sin to its own reality in our lives, it is a blind spot. When you are in sin, until someone confronts you of that sin, usually you don't even realize. And He does assume that they're going to grow. He's given them evidence upon evidence and He continues to do so. But until now, if you just think about how much they've seen, they witnessed Jesus heal, they witnessed Jesus cast out demons. They witnessed Jesus comma storm. They witnessed Jesus confound the Pharisees as He ate with tax collectors and sinners. They heard about Jesus preach about the kingdom.They even preached sermons themselves. They went on a mission trip. They preached the word of God. But here in the presence of Jesus Christ, it's almost like all of that has been wiped clean. This shows us that spiritual amnesia is real. It's almost like we have a physical memory what happens in our life and then we have a spiritual memory. What happens in our soul? What happens when the Holy Spirit moves us, the work of God and our lives? And it's almost as if sometimes the spiritual memory just turns off. It's wiped clean. Back in the day, I remember there was a movie called Men in Black with Will Smith and they're like the memory thing, the memory stick, it's like you just don't remember anything. It's like Satan has this stick and he comes to us and like I have been born again, I have experienced God.I love the word of God. I go to church, and say, "Am I even a believer?" Does God even exist? That's what Jesus is getting at, that this is real and we are to remind ourselves of the realities of God's work in our life. Verse 18, "Having eyes, do you not see and having ears? Do you not hear and do you not remember?" Do you not remember? And he's calling them to remind themselves of the work of God in their lives. Jesus questions echo Moses words and to Israel and Deuteronomy 29:2. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants and to all his land. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders. But to this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.And we see the same themes of the insensitive heart, the blind eyes and the deaf ears. Same references we see in Jeremiah 5:21. "Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but see not who have ears but hear not. "Do you not fear me," declares the Lord? Do you not tremble before me?" Ezekiel was told this in Ezekiel 12:2, "Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house who have eyes to see but see not and have ears to hear but hear not for they are a rebellious house." And do you not remember... At our community group a couple of weeks ago, someone said, we do whenever there's new people, we say name, where you're from. And then someone said, tell us the date you were baptized. And I was like, you know what? That's a great question. I should know exactly the date that I was baptized.And for me it was October 29th, 1996. I was baptized at age 16 outside in a lake in Connecticut, in Ashford, Connecticut. I was raised in a Russian Baptist church. The lake was freezing. There was little bits of ice. And the pastor told me, well, it's better than hell. And then he baptized me. So that was my upbringing. But you should know, you should know when the Lord called you to himself. You should know when you were baptized, you should know about how God has answered prayer in your life. A prayer journal is very useful where whatever your prayers are, you write them down and then go back to the prayer journal three, six months, a year, and it's uncanny how God answers prayer sometimes precisely everything we asked for and precisely the same way. Sometimes he answered the prayer and it was absolutely the opposite of what you asked for.But you're like, oh, given time has passed, this is exactly what I would have prayed for had I known everything that the Lord knows, and it's incredible. We are to remind ourselves, I can't help but think of the words of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy when the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land and they're standing on the planes of Moab and Moses is explaining, your life is going to change dramatically. You're no longer going to have the provision of the manna that the Lord was sending you on a daily basis, but you are entering into the promised land, the land of splendor that's flowing with milk and honey. And he says, when you do and when you get comfortable, make sure at those moments and particularly those moments that you remind yourself of where you came from and what it took to get you here.Deuteronomy 8:11, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God, by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them. And when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who led you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know. That he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.You shall remember the Lord your God for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm his covenant, that He swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God." We are to remind ourselves of the great work of God in our life. And then when the people of Israel passed over the river, Jordan, Joshua who was the military leader, he sets up memorial stones in the river and on the bank of the river. Why? Because he says, when your children, the next generation, when they come to you and say, "Hey, what are those stones all about?"And you are to remind them and say, those stones are to remind us of the mighty acts of God that we have witnessed his greatness. He's done it in our generation. He will do it in your generation if you keep submitting. And we love the song, come Thou Fount, I love that song. It's tremendous. Come Thou Fount of every blessing. And there's a line about Ebenezer and everyone always thinks about Ebenezer Scrooge. That's not in the Bible, but the Ebenezer stone is and it just means stone of help. And it's a story where Samuel is bringing sacrifice to the Lord and then the Philistines descend upon Israel and the people of Israel go to Samuel and say, pray for us. He continues to pray for them. And then when they're about to get defeated, wiped out, the Lord miraculously intervenes and saves them from disaster.And they realized at the moment when they were outmanned, outgunned, outnumbered outmaneuvered. That's when the Lord showed up in the nick of time precisely the way they needed the help at the precise moment. And the stone of Ebenezer was to remind them, yes, God showed up before exactly as we had asked and he will show up again. Mark 8:19, Jesus continues. "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" They said to Him "Twelve". "And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" And they said "Seven." He did the feeding twice. One time there were 12 baskets, the second time there were seven. And just in case the disciples forgot that there was seven, he gives them the answer in the question. And the number seven we know is important because the number seven is number of completion.The number 12 is important. The 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples and Jesus, impartially I think he did that so they would remember, I fed the 5,000, there were 12 baskets. I fed the 4,000, there were seven baskets. It's to say when you needed the Lord, He came through and He came through in a way that you couldn't even imagine with leftovers. And then verse 21, He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" The phrase here not yet implies the disciples will eventually understand. One of the truths about holy scripture is we never know the way we ought to know. There's always room left for growth. In 1st Corinthians 8:2 it says, "If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know." The very second you believe I got it, I read the Bible, I know this story.You don't know the way you ought to know. And I do this on a weekly basis, on a professional way, it'll make professional hours spent studying the word of God. The more I study, the more I read, my goodness, there's so much to know. And then I get blown away by how perfect scripture is. For example, here in this text, the seventh question, the last word of the seventh question is the number seven or God's just winking at us? Yeah, it is my book, I wrote it. So there's always room for growth. And Philippians 3:2 tells us, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.Let those of us who are mature think this way. And if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you, only let us hold true to what we have attained." He's saying the mature believer always understands that I have not known God the way I ought to. You're always pursuing God, you're always pursuing sanctification. You're always pursuing holiness. He's saying the immature person thinks that they've arrived and he says, but the Lord will reveal that also to you assuming they need revelation. The problem is the disciples have a hard heart because they don't realize the depth of the ministry of Jesus Christ. He isn't just a messiah who came just to fulfill prophecy and just to reinstate the glory of Israel and just to bring Gentiles to himself. No, he's come to save sinners. And the assumption there is sinners who can't save themselves.Pharisees cannot save themselves no matter how much they posture themselves as being religious. Herodians, they can't save disciples. You can't save yourself. Jesus came to save us from sin, which assumes that we need saving in a way that we cannot save ourselves. Why did Jesus cast out demons? To prove to us that there's a greater power than us out there vow of Satan, the power of demons. And if we are not protected by the Holy Spirit, we are vulnerable and susceptible to the attacks and oppression and even possession. Why did Jesus heal certain illnesses in the public settings? To prove that in the same way that the blind man can't give himself sight, we can't give ourselves sight of God. We need Him to do a miracle in us. Why does Jesus challenge the Pharisees on their self-righteousness? To show them that their self-righteous isn't enough to entrust them to God.It's not enough to bring them to heaven, they need to trust in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ didn't just preach, repent and believe, he also mirrored, he showed us the example of what it means at the breaking point, the moment where you do not want to obey what to do, Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, he knows exactly the mission that God has given. God, the Father gave him the mission to go to the cross and bear the penalty for the sins of all the elect, all who were trust in Him. And Jesus at that breaking point, He told the disciples, go pray for Him because this is the breaking point. There's so much stress that Jesus was enduring that says that the capillaries in his face were bursting and the blood mixed with sweat. It's as if he was sweating blood. He understood the immense pressure of what it means, not just to bear the excruciating pain physically of the crucifixion, but to bear the condemnation from God the Father for all of our sins.Jesus knew all of that. And He's on his knees and He says, father, if there's any other way, if there's any other way, let this cup pass for me. What's going on in his own heart? The same battle that goes on in our own hearts when we don't want to obey. He said, F, let this cup pass for me. And then what does he say? Not my will but yours be done. That's it. He didn't stiffen his neck and he went to the cross and he went to the cross to die, to be broken, for the blood to be shed, to provide a way for us to have grace, have access to grace. For all the times that we would not obey, for all the times that we said, Lord, not your will, my will be done. And that's the essence of sin. So, friend, today, if you are not a Christian, a follower of Christ, if you have not ever repented of your sin today, we're calling you today, accept the grace of Jesus Christ.Today accept the mercy of Jesus Christ. And when Jesus tells you that you're a sinner, just know He's telling you because he loves you. He's saying, you are sinner. You're a sinner, you're my beloved sinner. I love you so much to tell you you're a sinner. So repent, believe, and obey. Don't harden your heart. When you hear that message, don't stiffen your neck. I'll close it with the words of Isaiah, the prophet in Isaiah 55. Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come by and eat. Come by wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live and I'll make with you an everlasting covenant,My steadfast, sure love for David. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this incredible word, a word of rebuke, but it's a loving rebuke because you want the best for us. And Lord, make us the people that when we hear your word, when we study your commandments, when we study your law, that we are quick to soften our hearts, that we are quick to soften our necks and say, yes Lord, your will be done not mine. And Lord, whenever we have doubts about if your will is good, let us quell those doubts by looking to the cross of Jesus Christ. Well, of course His will is good. Look how much He loves us, that he was willing to suffer in our stead on the cross. Lord Jesus, continue to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to be people who walk in the manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Father, we thank you for your holy word and we thank you that you are a holy God and we have transgressed your holy law. And it's because of our rebellion. It's because we do have, every single one of us, a problem with authority, a problem with your authority in particular when you call us to do things that go against our own will. And Lord, you didn't leave us in our sins and trespasses. You didn't leave us in our rebellious, recalcitrant, our stubborn stiff-neckedness. Instead, you sent your son Jesus Christ, who submitted perfectly to every single facet of the law, every single tenant of the law, every single law. And you submitted Jesus to the will of the Father like no one before you, like no one after you. And you did that in order to provide a way for us to be saved. And you went to the cross instead of experiencing the blessing that you deserved for your law keeping, you took the curse that we deserve for our lawbreaking.And Lord, you were crucified, you died and you were buried. And we thank you that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you were resurrected. And now you call every single one of us to repentance in particular the areas of our life where we do want to seek our own will instead of yours. You call us to repent and not be stiff neck and I pray today, soften our hearts, soften our necks, soften our wills, and make us a people that long to obey you because your will is good and your will is perfect and your will is holy. You do not call us to anything that is short of your blessed will. Everything you call us to is for our good and it's ultimately for your glory. And when we glorify you the most, that's when we experience your presence the most and we experience the joy that you would have for us.Lord bless our time, the holy scriptures today. Holy Spirit, we love you. If there's any places in our lives where we are grieving you or where we are in our obstinacy, turning from your leading, I pray today, Lord, make us filled with the Holy Spirit to keep in step with the Spirit. Doing nothing to grieve your spirit. Lord bless our time in the holy scriptures and give us grace and give us your presence. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. And the title of the sermon today is Beware Stiff Nakedness. A few years ago, my third daughter at Katharina, Ecat for short, she started a dog sitting business and she got this dog that was small yet incredibly strong to watch for a few days and she loves dogs and she loves dog sitting.And dog sitting is the closest that she's going to get to having a dog, although she is hoping for a miracle and praying for one. So though it was Ecat's responsibility to watch this dog, I don't know what happened, but it wasn't her walking the dog, it was my second daughter, Elizabeth, went out to give the dog a walk and it was winter time, it was cold outside and 20 minutes goes by, she's not home in 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and we got to worrying and we went to look for her and we found her stuck on a street corner trying with all her might to drag this dog, to turn this dog in the direction of home to no veil. She tried talking to the dog, pleading with the dog, cajoling the dog, bribing the dog with snacks. And every time she would pull on the leash to turn her home, the dog stiffened its neck and dug in. And it took a strong word of command to get the dog to come, a stronger yank of the leash to get the dog to turn right.And from the side, if you saw what was happening here like that looks like excessive force, but it wasn't excessive and force was the only thing that the dog could understand, it was actually loving force. What was the goal? The goal was to get the dog home where it's warm and toasty and by itself the dog wouldn't make it out on the streets. The dog was stiff-necked. And that's the same phrase that God uses to describe the behavior of unbelieving people, people who see God's work, see sign after sign and don't take God at his Word. People who intentionally reject God's Word to do their own will. There's a curious passage in Nehemiah where Nehemiah summarizes quick in a pithy way the history of the people of Israel. In Nehemiah 9:13, speaking of God, "You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your Holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses, your servant.You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go into possess the land that you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refuse to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you've performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and did not forsake them." You read this and you say it's unbelievable. These people saw miracle after miracle with a crescendo of parting the Red Sea and they walked through and the armies of the Egyptians, they were swallowed up by the water.They saw miracle after miracle, they heard the voice of God, they saw the evidence of God's work. And then as soon as they realized that to be free from captivity means to be in submission to God and his word, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I prefer slavery. And they appointed a leader to bring them back. And you say, how could they ever do that? Well, friends, just look into your own heart, look at your own history, how often do we come to Christ, have our sins forgiven? And then the Lord says, "Repent, believe, and follow me." And we start following and realize, "Oh, this is so much harder than I'd ever anticipated. The sacrifice is so much greater than I'm willing to make." And you turn back to sin, the word of God presents hardheartedness as the root cause of stiff nakedness. Why?Because in the scriptures, the heart isn't just the seed of emotions, it's the center of the will. So you end up doing exactly what you love most. And if you love yourself more than you love God, you place yourself in the position of God. And if you take God's rightful place on the throne of your life, the very life that God gave you, then there will never be evidence enough for the existence of God, for the veracity of his word, for his clear commandments. God is the ultimate authority. And to believe in God is to love His authority. To believe in God is to submit to His authority no matter how we feel about the commandment. Even when every fiber in your being bristles with rebellion, at those moments, we must cry out to the Lord. Lord, soften my heart, Lord relax my stiff neck.And those sticking points are the places where if we receive God's will, the absolute greatest transformation happens in our lives. However, if the Lord reveals a point in our lives where our necks have stiffened up against His will where we remain recalcitrant, when he pulls on the leash, there is potential for the neck to break. Proverbs 29:1 says, "He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing." And today we approach a text where Jesus deals with the hard hardness of the stiff nakedness of those who should have known better, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the politicians, those who followed Herod and the Herodians. And then he turns His attention to the disciples and He says that rebellious spirit that you see in the Pharisees and the Herodians, watch out that that spirit does not grow in your hearts. So today in Mark 8:11-22, would you look at the text with me?"The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking for him a sign from heaven to test Him. And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?" "Truly I say to you, no sign will be given this generation" and He left them, gotten to the boat again and went to the other side. Now, they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them saying, watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus aware of this said to them, why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see and having ears?Do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to Him "twelve." And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to Him, "Seven". And He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" This is the reading of God's holy, inert and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points of the frame up our time, be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. Second, beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. And three battle hardheartedness by remembering. First be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. After Jesus feeds the 4,000 Gentiles, Mark tells us that he gets in the boat and they went to the region of Dalmanutha on the western, more Jewish shore of the lake.And that's where the Pharisees meet Him. And that's verse 11. The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven to test him. Now, if you haven't been with us, the Pharisees, just a quick recap, were the religious leaders. They're the gatekeepers of the Jewish faith. They're the self-proclaimed representatives of God. So when Jesus shows up and starts telling people the Pharisees, He starts telling them that he's the promised Messiah and actually he's the Son of God. While they've got concerns. He can't be God they reason. Why? Because they know God. God is on our side, they figured. We have God figured out. We're the professionals here, Jesus. Moreover, if Jesus is right, then they're wrong, but they can't be wrong, not this wrong, not this wrong about the most important question in the universe. Who is God and what does He demand of me?And moreover, if Jesus is right, then they have to change their lives and they don't want to change their lives. They like their lives. They like their prestigious, lucrative positions. They like the honor that the people give them. They like the glory they receive and the praise from the people. Moreover, Jesus is preaching not just that they are to obey God more, he's preaching that they can't save themselves at all. He's preaching that apart from repentance, that they have no standing before God. He's preaching repentance, which means a change of life, but they don't want to change their life. And also Jesus, who are you to teach us about God? You didn't even go to rabbinical school and we don't even know who your father is. And they cast all kinds of insinuations upon Him. So they come to Jesus and they begin to argue with Him.This is a phrase that's used with a nuance of hostility. They're saying, "Jesus, prove your authority. Prove that you are who you say you are. And prove it in exactly how we say it." Here's the marching orders, Jesus, obey them dutifully and then maybe we'll follow you. But here's the thing, God doesn't take commands from us. We can pray to God and we can bring our requests to God, but we can't command God. And by definition, God does not obey humans and the posture of their heart behind this phrase "Prove to me that you're God," well, it's a posture of authority over a subject. They're standing in authority over Jesus, Jesus we're telling you what to do if you want us to believe. He's God and which means He doesn't obey us, we obey him. And the very second he starts to obey us is the very second we usurp his throne, which He doesn't allow.They came to test Him seeking from him a sign from heaven what Jesus had just been doing, sign after sign after sign. Perhaps they weren't privy or witness to the sign of feeding of the 4,000, but they had definitely heard about it. If you feed 5,000 men, if you give 5,000 men a free lunch, it doesn't even have to be that great, a free mediocre lunch, they're going to tell everybody about it. I got a free lunch. It was awesome. It was free. Partially our strategy behind feeding people. February 4th is our first monthly community lunch, make sure to come at 1:00 PM February 4th and bring your friends so they tell all their friends about it. No. And then also they saw some of the miracles. They saw the exorcism in chapter three. Jesus cast out a demon from a person and the Pharisees charged Jesus with doing this spiritual work by the power of Satan himself.And Jesus calls them out and says, "No, no, no, you are on the side of Satan actually and you've blasphemed the Holy Spirit," and seeking a sign despite the existence of previous signs, despite the eyewitness accounts of different signs. What the Pharisees do is they demonstrate that they're spiritual heirs of the disobedient wilderness generation, the generation that was led out of captivity from Egypt and led into the wilderness and they did not believe God, and God turned from them. In the Old Testament, it's not always a mark of disobedience to request a sign from God. If you remember Gideon, he famously laid a fleece before the Lord to ascertain whether God was going to choose him as an instrument in military deliverance. Hezekiah asked for a sign and received it that he would be healed of his grave illness. Isaiah seven, God insists that Ahaz actually asked for a sign from heaven and God sends it.In other places, signs seeking is presented negatively in particular with false prophets. God did warn that false prophets will come and they will try to verify their teaching with signs and miracles, but if they give signs and lead people into apostasy, those people aren't from God. Deuteronomy 13:1-5, "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or a wonder that he tells you comes to pass. And if He says, let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord, your God, is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.But that prophet or that dreamer of dream shall be put to death because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." And perhaps this was at the heart of the strategy of the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of being a false prophet. So that was their assumption that you're teaching something false, something against the scriptures, and here's the sign that you did. Therefore, Deuteronomy 13, we have reason to condemn you. They were seeking a sign to test Him. And this phrase to test is a phrase that's used often to describe Satan. Satan was a tester of the tempter in Matthew chapter four, where Jesus has been fasting for 40 days.Satan comes to tempt Jesus Christ with signs. He said, take these stones and turn them into bread to prove that you are who you say you are. And then Jesus responds with a quotation of Deuteronomy chapter 6:16, which is a reference to the incident at Massa and marimba. We'll get to that. But Deuteronomy 6:16, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested Him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His testimonies and His statutes, which He has commanded you." You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, he's the one that gives us tests. He's the one that puts us to the test. We don't return the favor. Sometimes people ask me, you want to go bungee jumping? You want to go jump out of a plane with a parachute?And I say, I don't have enough faith. I don't have enough faith in that stuff. And my verse that every time that comes to mind, whenever that whole category of I don't want to put the Lord to the test, like, oh, this is a great opportunity. That's not what he's talking about, he's talking about don't test the veracity of God's word, especially if God's already proven it time and time and time again, don't test Him. And this wasn't a request, it was a test similar to the testing of God by the Israelites at Massah and Meribah in Exodus 17. So Exodus 16, God sends manna from heaven, an incredible miracle, people see that God is providing. And then chapter 17, they test Moses again, they want water. And their question is, does God love us? Is God even with us? And they're testing God.And the same phrase that's used here in Mark where the Pharisees test God, peirazō, peirazein, that same saying, that same phrase is used in Exodus 17 in the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Exodus 17:1, "All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?" "Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people?"They're almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people taking with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand, the staff, with which you struck the Nile and go." "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb and you shall strike the rock and the water shall come out of it and the people will drink." And Moses did so on the sight of the elders of Israel and he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Is the Lord among us or not? After miracle, after miracle, after miracle and they were just fed with manna the day before, but it's just a human need, thirst, they suffer just a little bit and all of a sudden they're questioning God.They're grumbling against the Lord. And we see that all throughout the scriptures. This episode is brought to the forefront just to remind the people of Israel do not be like your forefathers. Psalm 95:7-11, "For He is our God and we are the people of his pastor and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. When your father's put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, "They are people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways." Therefore, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest." The parallels are clear between what Jesus was doing here and Mark and what God was doing with the people of Israel.Moses fed people with manna, in the same way Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then the 4,000, and then we have this text about not testing God and not being stiff-necked. Numbers 14, God swears that the wilderness generation that tested him will not enter Canaan. So in a sense you can diminish blessing from your own life by testing God. Through our own stiffness we actually keep ourselves from blessings that the Lord would have for us. The people resisted God and were stiff-necked against God and they missed out on the promised land. Numbers 14:21, "But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these 10 times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers and none of those who despise me shall see it."And the Lord was keeping track 10 times, he says they were stiff-necked and didn't obey. And why? Because they weren't just testing Moses, they were testing God. To test God is to undermine his authority and to undermine his authority is to hate him. And in our text, the Pharisees weren't just testing a representative of God, they were testing God himself, God incarnate. Psalm 78:17, "Yet they sinned still more against Him, rebelling against the most high in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God saying, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?" He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and streams overflowed. "Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?" What's Jesus' reaction to their testing? Verse 12, "And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." He sighed deeply in His spirit. If you remember when He healed a deaf man before He healed the deaf man, he looked up to heaven and he sighed deeply, partially because He is exasperated by the consequences of the fall, the repercussions of the fall, which includes sickness. And here He's exasperated at their unbelief, people that should have known better, people who have received God's Word and God here is exasperated with them. Scripture teaches us to not grieve the Holy Spirit, meaning when the Holy Spirit tells us what to do, it leads us in a certain direction and we say no, we're stiff-necked against the Holy Spirit. He does grieve. He is grieved by our disobedience and we are told not to quench the spirit or grieve the spirit but be filled with the spirit.Similar reaction Jesus feels in the next chapter where a gentleman comes and he says to the disciples of Jesus, "Can you cast out a demon from my son?" And the disciples couldn't do it. Jesus comes down the mountain of transfiguration and He says this in Mark 9:19, "Oh faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" The stubborn refusal to believe lay at the root of the Pharisees attitude. To those in such a state of unbelief, even a sign, if it was given, it wouldn't convince because a lack of belief, the root cause of the lack of belief in God is not a lack of evidence, and it's not a difficulty of the intellect or the reason. No, it's a difficulty of the will. John 7:17 says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority."And Jesus is saying, "Do you want proof that the words that I'm saying are true?" Well, do you want to do God's will? Because if I prove to you that God exists but you don't want to do God's will, it's actually more condemnation. I don't want to give you illumination that will lead to more condemnation if you want nothing to do with God's will. And certainty in the faith deepening of the faith, it is a gift of those who are obedient to the Lord. Is your will to do God's will, and that is the way to deepen your faith. The Pharisees were blind and as someone said, none are so blind as those who will not see. That's their attitude and such an attitude of sign seeking runs diametrically opposed to the biblical concept of the nature of faith. Jesus told Thomas when Thomas said, "Until I put my hands in the wounds of the resurrected Christ, I'm not going to believe."And then he sees Christ and Christ showed him the wounds he didn't even have to touch. He believed and he said, "Blessed are you Thomas." But more blessed are those who have not seen. You've seen and you've believed, but more blessed are those who have not seen and believe. Why? Because if you see a miracle, if Jesus gave the Pharisees another miracle, another sign at this moment, it's not faith that leads them to believe in God. No, it's just a logical conclusion. Of course this is God. Of course I'm going to place my faith in God because I've seen the evidence. It's a logical conclusion and the Lord wants a deeper faith and he wants us to take a step of faith given the evidence that he's given us. And he says, "This generation, truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation."And that's a phrase that's used before the flood in Genesis six where there's an evil and adulterous generation and same phrase that's used for Israel in the wilderness. And he says that you're not going to get a sign. Another translation says, God forbid that a sign should be given you. Perish the thought that I would do such a thing. There's an intense emotion. And what He's saying is, "No, I'm not doing it." God's not in the business of sending authenticating signs on demand. God isn't a pinata. God isn't a vending machine. God clearly tells us these are the terms on which you come to me, and you don't get to dictate the terms. Jesus has given them all the evidence they need to come to faith. The Pharisees are without excuse.,They can't plead ignorance, nor can they say that God hadn't given them enough information.You're alive. Why are you alive? Where did you come from? Where did life come from? You live in a material world, where did all of this come from? It didn't come from nothing. Nothing can come from nothing. And then on top of that, the moral law is written on your heart. When you read the 10 Commandments, you're like, yes, life would be better if everyone lived like this. And no, I have not lived like this. So what's the penalty for transgressing on the holy law of God? The penalty is damnation. The penalty is to be rejected by God. Therefore, I need grace. And this is exactly what they were unwilling to ask for. And it's not as though these people are unintelligent, on the contrary, they were probably some of the smartest people in Israel at the time. They knew the prophetic passages about the Messiah and Jesus fulfilled them perfectly.But they refused to believe. Why? Partially because Jesus called them out for their self-righteousness. You present yourself as righteous, but you are far from it and it's all facades of righteousness and it's all hypocrisy. And Jesus called them to repentance and they didn't want to be called to repentance. You're calling us sinners, Jesus, we're not sinners, we do all the right things, you're probably the sinner. A lot of us, today, we want miracles to believe in the Lord. And sometimes it is fine to ask for a miracle. It's fine to ask for a sign from the Lord. It really depends on what posture of heart that you ask the miracle with which you ask for the miracle. And then the point, are you looking for a miracle so that you can deepen your obedience and submission to the Lord? Or are you looking for an excuse to rebel against him?We do have miracles. We experience miracles every time a person comes to faith, especially in a place like Boston, one of the greatest miracles, the fact that anyone would turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Regeneration incredible miracle. Another miracle is the holy scriptures, the word of God, the Bible, two million miracles, two million words, give or take order of magnitude. 66 books, 1,189 chapters written by 40 different authors over 1,500 years, three different languages used Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, every jaw, every tittle of it given by the inspiration of God that holy men of old Roe as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. It's incredible through the centuries that the Lord has preserved the holy scriptures. This is the miracle. It's right before us, right before us supervised by the Holy Spirit and it tells us everything we need, everything we need to know about God, who he is, about the person of God.It tells us everything we need to know about how we can be reconciled with Him, saved from sin, saved from eternal damnation and tells us how we are to live in order to glorify God and honor him. Mark 8:13, "And he left them and got into the boat again and went to the other side." So in the beginning of the passage, Jesus crosses over from gentile land to Jewish land, exchanges a few sentences with the Pharisees. They're like, "We want to sign?" They're like, "I'm not giving you a sign." Gets in the boat and leaves. And here it is just a reminiscent of the departure of God and Deuteronomy where He turns his face away from rebellious people. Deuteronomy 32:20 and He said, "I will hide my face from them and I'll see what their end will be for they're a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness."Point two is beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. Here now Jesus turns from the Pharisees to His own disciples. In verse 14, now they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat and he cautioned them saying, "Watch out. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." The word leaven, it's not synonymous with yeast. In ancient times, yeast was rare. Dough was rather made by leavening or mixing into a small amount of dough, a piece of the previous week's dough that had been leavened. It was kept back for that purpose. If you make yogurt at home, it's the same process. Kombucha, kombucha, really delicious, really good for you apparently. But it's like you make a batch but you save a little bit of that batch to make the next batch, that's what the leaven is.And the power of the leaven is that it has power to permeate the whole dough. This is what Jesus is talking about. And in context of the Hebrew scriptures, during Passover, they had unleavened bread and they would cleanse their house from any leaven because the leaven was a sign of something that could permeate the whole thing. And here in this context that leaven is evil, it's stubbornness, it's stiff ness. And Jesus saying, "Disciples, be careful if even a little bit of this bitterness in your heart, even a little bit of the stiff-neckedness in your heart and any tiny aspect of your life because it has the power to take over. Unbelief because of non-submissive hearts is the unseen pervasive influence. 1st Corinthians 5:6 says, "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump?" Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are on leaven for Christ?Our passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So he says, be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians. In verse 16, they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. They just witnessed Jesus feed 5,000 men and then they witnessed Jesus feed 4,000. Jesus is clearly talking about spiritual matters, but they missed the point. To show us just how far they are from understanding who Christ is completely what his ultimate goal was in coming, which is to save us from the leaven of sin within, to give us new hearts that long to obey God. And in response to their misunderstanding, Jesus unleashes a series of questions. He ask eight questions, five critical questions that echo passages from the Old Testament, then two additional questions that recall the two miraculous feedings and then a final critical question.But the point is watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. "Watch out, beware." It's a double warning meaning this is how important it is to heeded this warning. Beware that you do not get infected with the stubborn unbelief. The stiff-neckedness of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Both were stiff-necked but seemingly in opposite waves. If you look at the surface, if you just look at their appearance and their lives, it seemed like the Pharisees were the religious ones. The Herodians wanted nothing to do with religion. But Jesus calls both of them stiff-necked. The Pharisees played the religious game. They pretended to be followers of God, they pretended to do all the right things. They pretended to go through the motions, but they weren't following God's law, they were following human interpretations of God's law and they were following human traditions, thus proving that they didn't love God, nor did they want to submit to his authority.They thought that they knew God, but when God showed up, they didn't even recognize Him. And here the word is particularly relevant for those who have been in the church for a while or perhaps you've grown up in the faith or perhaps you come from a Christian family where your parents believed or your grandparents believed. You know the lingo. You know what to say, when to say it, you know how to behave in church, how to behave around believers, but deep down inside your stiff-necked and you want nothing to do with God. And here the lesson is, don't stiffen your neck when the Lord corrects you or when he corrects your traditional thought patterns. Patterns that we inherit from the world, inherit from the school system, inherit from the university system. Where you learn one pattern or thinking and you come to the scripture and you're like, "Whoa" it rubs you the wrong way.You're offended by it. And what do you do at those moments of offense? Do you stiffen your neck or do you say, "Lord, help me understand, Lord, give me eyes to see? Lord, help me receive your word." Don't say, I could never believe that. Don't say, I could never believe in a God that commands that. Herod, on the other hand, he didn't even pretend to be obedient to God. He was the king, who was God to tell him what to do? He did as he pleased. He was Allah unto himself. When John the Baptist confronted King Herod, king Herod loved the sermons. He's like, "Oh, great sermon John, Mr. Baptist, now you're imprisoned. I'll call you again when I want another sermon." And John shows up again and Herod's like, "Give me a different sermon." He's like, "Nope, I got one sermon for you, Herod, repent of your adultery, you shouldn't do this." And Herod wanted to listen to the sermons, but he wanted nothing to do with submitting to God.John called him to repentance, which assumed a change of lifestyle, Herod wanted nothing to do with that. Both the Pharisees and the Herodians had the same leaven, a refusal to release power over their life and a stubborn refusal to believe and obey. So how do we fight the hardheartedness, the stiff-neckedness? This is 0.3, battle hardheartedness by remembering, remembering what? Remembering the work of God in your life. We are to document the work of God in our life. We are to remember, force ourselves to be reminded. Verse 17 and Jesus aware of this said to them, "Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?" Jesus is warning the disciples against being infected by the same evil impulse that the Herodians and the Pharisees were infected with.But He gives them questions which assumes that there is hope for them to learn. He doesn't just rebuke them and say, "You are hardhearted." He asks them, "Are you hardhearted?" Because at that moment their hearts perhaps were hard, but they didn't think the hearts were hard. Just like it shows us the blinding effect of sin to its own reality in our lives, it is a blind spot. When you are in sin, until someone confronts you of that sin, usually you don't even realize. And He does assume that they're going to grow. He's given them evidence upon evidence and He continues to do so. But until now, if you just think about how much they've seen, they witnessed Jesus heal, they witnessed Jesus cast out demons. They witnessed Jesus comma storm. They witnessed Jesus confound the Pharisees as He ate with tax collectors and sinners. They heard about Jesus preach about the kingdom.They even preached sermons themselves. They went on a mission trip. They preached the word of God. But here in the presence of Jesus Christ, it's almost like all of that has been wiped clean. This shows us that spiritual amnesia is real. It's almost like we have a physical memory what happens in our life and then we have a spiritual memory. What happens in our soul? What happens when the Holy Spirit moves us, the work of God and our lives? And it's almost as if sometimes the spiritual memory just turns off. It's wiped clean. Back in the day, I remember there was a movie called Men in Black with Will Smith and they're like the memory thing, the memory stick, it's like you just don't remember anything. It's like Satan has this stick and he comes to us and like I have been born again, I have experienced God.I love the word of God. I go to church, and say, "Am I even a believer?" Does God even exist? That's what Jesus is getting at, that this is real and we are to remind ourselves of the realities of God's work in our life. Verse 18, "Having eyes, do you not see and having ears? Do you not hear and do you not remember?" Do you not remember? And he's calling them to remind themselves of the work of God in their lives. Jesus questions echo Moses words and to Israel and Deuteronomy 29:2. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants and to all his land. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders. But to this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.And we see the same themes of the insensitive heart, the blind eyes and the deaf ears. Same references we see in Jeremiah 5:21. "Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but see not who have ears but hear not. "Do you not fear me," declares the Lord? Do you not tremble before me?" Ezekiel was told this in Ezekiel 12:2, "Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house who have eyes to see but see not and have ears to hear but hear not for they are a rebellious house." And do you not remember... At our community group a couple of weeks ago, someone said, we do whenever there's new people, we say name, where you're from. And then someone said, tell us the date you were baptized. And I was like, you know what? That's a great question. I should know exactly the date that I was baptized.And for me it was October 29th, 1996. I was baptized at age 16 outside in a lake in Connecticut, in Ashford, Connecticut. I was raised in a Russian Baptist church. The lake was freezing. There was little bits of ice. And the pastor told me, well, it's better than hell. And then he baptized me. So that was my upbringing. But you should know, you should know when the Lord called you to himself. You should know when you were baptized, you should know about how God has answered prayer in your life. A prayer journal is very useful where whatever your prayers are, you write them down and then go back to the prayer journal three, six months, a year, and it's uncanny how God answers prayer sometimes precisely everything we asked for and precisely the same way. Sometimes he answered the prayer and it was absolutely the opposite of what you asked for.But you're like, oh, given time has passed, this is exactly what I would have prayed for had I known everything that the Lord knows, and it's incredible. We are to remind ourselves, I can't help but think of the words of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy when the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land and they're standing on the planes of Moab and Moses is explaining, your life is going to change dramatically. You're no longer going to have the provision of the manna that the Lord was sending you on a daily basis, but you are entering into the promised land, the land of splendor that's flowing with milk and honey. And he says, when you do and when you get comfortable, make sure at those moments and particularly those moments that you remind yourself of where you came from and what it took to get you here.Deuteronomy 8:11, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God, by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them. And when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who led you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know. That he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.You shall remember the Lord your God for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm his covenant, that He swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God." We are to remind ourselves of the great work of God in our life. And then when the people of Israel passed over the river, Jordan, Joshua who was the military leader, he sets up memorial stones in the river and on the bank of the river. Why? Because he says, when your children, the next generation, when they come to you and say, "Hey, what are those stones all about?"And you are to remind them and say, those stones are to remind us of the mighty acts of God that we have witnessed his greatness. He's done it in our generation. He will do it in your generation if you keep submitting. And we love the song, come Thou Fount, I love that song. It's tremendous. Come Thou Fount of every blessing. And there's a line about Ebenezer and everyone always thinks about Ebenezer Scrooge. That's not in the Bible, but the Ebenezer stone is and it just means stone of help. And it's a story where Samuel is bringing sacrifice to the Lord and then the Philistines descend upon Israel and the people of Israel go to Samuel and say, pray for us. He continues to pray for them. And then when they're about to get defeated, wiped out, the Lord miraculously intervenes and saves them from disaster.And they realized at the moment when they were outmanned, outgunned, outnumbered outmaneuvered. That's when the Lord showed up in the nick of time precisely the way they needed the help at the precise moment. And the stone of Ebenezer was to remind them, yes, God showed up before exactly as we had asked and he will show up again. Mark 8:19, Jesus continues. "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" They said to Him "Twelve". "And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" And they said "Seven." He did the feeding twice. One time there were 12 baskets, the second time there were seven. And just in case the disciples forgot that there was seven, he gives them the answer in the question. And the number seven we know is important because the number seven is number of completion.The number 12 is important. The 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples and Jesus, impartially I think he did that so they would remember, I fed the 5,000, there were 12 baskets. I fed the 4,000, there were seven baskets. It's to say when you needed the Lord, He came through and He came through in a way that you couldn't even imagine with leftovers. And then verse 21, He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" The phrase here not yet implies the disciples will eventually understand. One of the truths about holy scripture is we never know the way we ought to know. There's always room left for growth. In 1st Corinthians 8:2 it says, "If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know." The very second you believe I got it, I read the Bible, I know this story.You don't know the way you ought to know. And I do this on a weekly basis, on a professional way, it'll make professional hours spent studying the word of God. The more I study, the more I read, my goodness, there's so much to know. And then I get blown away by how perfect scripture is. For example, here in this text, the seventh question, the last word of the seventh question is the number seven or God's just winking at us? Yeah, it is my book, I wrote it. So there's always room for growth. And Philippians 3:2 tells us, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.Let those of us who are mature think this way. And if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you, only let us hold true to what we have attained." He's saying the mature believer always understands that I have not known God the way I ought to. You're always pursuing God, you're always pursuing sanctification. You're always pursuing holiness. He's saying the immature person thinks that they've arrived and he says, but the Lord will reveal that also to you assuming they need revelation. The problem is the disciples have a hard heart because they don't realize the depth of the ministry of Jesus Christ. He isn't just a messiah who came just to fulfill prophecy and just to reinstate the glory of Israel and just to bring Gentiles to himself. No, he's come to save sinners. And the assumption there is sinners who can't save themselves.Pharisees cannot save themselves no matter how much they posture themselves as being religious. Herodians, they can't save disciples. You can't save yourself. Jesus came to save us from sin, which assumes that we need saving in a way that we cannot save ourselves. Why did Jesus cast out demons? To prove to us that there's a greater power than us out there vow of Satan, the power of demons. And if we are not protected by the Holy Spirit, we are vulnerable and susceptible to the attacks and oppression and even possession. Why did Jesus heal certain illnesses in the public settings? To prove that in the same way that the blind man can't give himself sight, we can't give ourselves sight of God. We need Him to do a miracle in us. Why does Jesus challenge the Pharisees on their self-righteousness? To show them that their self-righteous isn't enough to entrust them to God.It's not enough to bring them to heaven, they need to trust in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ didn't just preach, repent and believe, he also mirrored, he showed us the example of what it means at the breaking point, the moment where you do not want to obey what to do, Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, he knows exactly the mission that God has given. God, the Father gave him the mission to go to the cross and bear the penalty for the sins of all the elect, all who were trust in Him. And Jesus at that breaking point, He told the disciples, go pray for Him because this is the breaking point. There's so much stress that Jesus was enduring that says that the capillaries in his face were bursting and the blood mixed with sweat. It's as if he was sweating blood. He understood the immense pressure of what it means, not just to bear the excruciating pain physically of the crucifixion, but to bear the condemnation from God the Father for all of our sins.Jesus knew all of that. And He's on his knees and He says, father, if there's any other way, if there's any other way, let this cup pass for me. What's going on in his own heart? The same battle that goes on in our own hearts when we don't want to obey. He said, F, let this cup pass for me. And then what does he say? Not my will but yours be done. That's it. He didn't stiffen his neck and he went to the cross and he went to the cross to die, to be broken, for the blood to be shed, to provide a way for us to have grace, have access to grace. For all the times that we would not obey, for all the times that we said, Lord, not your will, my will be done. And that's the essence of sin. So, friend, today, if you are not a Christian, a follower of Christ, if you have not ever repented of your sin today, we're calling you today, accept the grace of Jesus Christ.Today accept the mercy of Jesus Christ. And when Jesus tells you that you're a sinner, just know He's telling you because he loves you. He's saying, you are sinner. You're a sinner, you're my beloved sinner. I love you so much to tell you you're a sinner. So repent, believe, and obey. Don't harden your heart. When you hear that message, don't stiffen your neck. I'll close it with the words of Isaiah, the prophet in Isaiah 55. Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come by and eat. Come by wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live and I'll make with you an everlasting covenant,My steadfast, sure love for David. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this incredible word, a word of rebuke, but it's a loving rebuke because you want the best for us. And Lord, make us the people that when we hear your word, when we study your commandments, when we study your law, that we are quick to soften our hearts, that we are quick to soften our necks and say, yes Lord, your will be done not mine. And Lord, whenever we have doubts about if your will is good, let us quell those doubts by looking to the cross of Jesus Christ. Well, of course His will is good. Look how much He loves us, that he was willing to suffer in our stead on the cross. Lord Jesus, continue to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to be people who walk in the manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

FPC Knoxville's 1/21/24 Sunday sermon "Not Meaner Than Me"  by Rev. Mark CurtisScripture Ref: (Psalm 139:1-10/Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 4:1-3)Hymn Of Response: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing performed by Mark Pace and our adult choir.Prayers of the People and The Lord's Prayer by Rev. Dr. Meredith Loftis

Pastor Jason continues our Advent series with a message on joy.

Pastor Jason begins our Advent season with a message on hope.

Pastor Jason continues our Advent season with a message on love.

Thank you for giving to support this ministry. You can go here to find out more. It's the second Monday of Advent in the Church Calendar. December 11, 2023 Our general order and lectionary comes from the Book of Common Prayer Daily Office. We'll sing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson (additional Advent verse by Luke Brawner) with a prayer of confession. We'll read Psalm 25 followed by the Gloria Patri. Our Scripture lesson is Matthew 22:23-33. We'll say the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Collect of the Day followed by a time of spontaneous, prompted prayer. If you have a prayer request please submit it here. Sign up here for the email list. Morning Prayer and Worship is a production of Steady Stream Ministries, a 501(c)(3) non profit organization.  Join our Facebook group here! Art by Rianna Turner. Second Sunday of Advent - Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prayerandworship/message

Song List:1- Give Thanks2- Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing3- We Gather Together4- We Shall Behold Him- Sis. Maggie, Bro. Beau, Bro. Chris, Bro. Wayne, Sis. Vanessa, Sis. Marilyn5- Sweet Beulah Land- Bro. Beau, Bro. Chris, Bro. Wayne, Sis. Vanessa, Sis. Marilyn6- Count Your BlessingsMessage: Bro. Patrick JohnsonScripture: Matthew 7:7-11Invitation- Have Thine Own Way, Lord

Has God felt distant? In the final part of Hymns, Pastor Rick looks at the hymn "Come Thou Fount" and how we can return to God even when we wander.

Jason and Roger kick off a new 4-part series called A Season of Blessings, taking a deep-dive look at the enduring hymn, O Thou Fount of Every Blessing. In this first episode of the series, we walk through the first verse.

Jesus came to heal our sin-sick hearts. The essence of our salvation is perfect righteousness and, ultimately, perfect obedience to the two great commandments. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - As we make our way through the Gospel of Mark, we've seen again and again the evidence for His greatness, His person as the son of God. The primary evidence given, if we've been alive, as recorded in the pages of the Scripture, are his miracles of healing, the incredible healing power of Jesus Christ. He healed a leper with a touch, restoring his diseased and destroyed flesh instantly. He instantly and effortlessly healed a paralyzed man with just a word, and that man got up and walked and carried out his mat in full view of them all. He healed a man that was possessed by 6,000 demons with a word. The demons left that man and fled. He healed a blind man with a touch, with a small measure of his saliva. He healed a deaf man by putting His fingers in the man's ears and by breathing and saying, “Ephphatha", and instantly, his capacity for hearing was restored. There was no disease He could not cure. At that point there in Mark 7, they said He's done everything well. There was nothing He couldn't do. Every diseased human organ, Jesus understood and drove away the disease instantly, effectively, powerfully with a word-restoring health. In that word, “health", we're looking at the original purpose of the organ of the eyes to see, not to be blind, of the ears to hear and not to be deaf, of the legs that they would walk and not be paralyzed. I. The Greatest Disease Diagnosed and Healed The greatest organ of all, if we could use that word, is the inner self captivated in the words of this first and greatest commandment. The heart, soul, mind, strength, that inner self is the greatest organ. Therefore, also we would say the greatest disease of all is the inability of that organ to do what it was designed to do, to love God. Sin is defined as lawlessness, a violation of God's law. We have before us as we've had for two weeks now, this is the third week, the first and greatest commandment. This text tells us what God demands of us. What He demands is to love Him with all of our hearts, with all of our souls, with all of our minds, with all of our strength. And we don't. We don't. Jesus, the great physician of the human condition has ultimately come to heal that disease as well. Luke 5:31-32, “It's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” This is the healing, the ultimate healing work Jesus came to do. But unlike those physical cures, this cure will not be instantaneous in this world. God has willed to heal us from our greatest disease gradually, to heal us from our failure to love Him, to heal us gradually over a lifetime. Now if that healing has begun in you, if you are a Christian today, you already do love Christ, though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him [1 Peter 1:8], so that healing has begun. You do love God and you do love Christ, but you also know you don't love Him as you should, not yet. You want, you yearn for that healing to continue. That's what this sermon is all about. "God has willed to heal us from our greatest disease gradually, to heal us from our failure to love Him, to heal us gradually over a lifetime. Now if that healing has begun in you, if you are a Christian today, you already do love Christ, though you have not seen Him, you love Him." Back on April 15th, 2022, I began a long and, for me, arduous journey, the journey of memorizing the book of Ezekiel, probably the hardest book I've ever tried to memorize. Those who know me well and are close to me know that, in many ways, it eluded me. Don't ask how much it eluded me, but it did. It was hard work. Today, October 22nd, I complete that journey. I won't recite Ezekiel anymore after today. As I have immersed myself in this complex book, friends have asked, "In these 48 chapters, what has made the greatest impact on you?" There are many possible answers. Right away, in Ezekiel 1, we have a vision of the mysterious majesty and glory of God, really of the pre-incarnate Christ. We have cherubim, wheels within wheels, big huge wheels with eyes all around and just lightning moving back and forth among these holy creatures. They're almost indescribable. High above them, an expanse like ice, separating them from the throne of fire that's high above that expanse, and on that, a man as if on fire, the pre-incarnate Christ. That could be an answer. to this question. Ezekiel 1, a manifestation of the image of the likeness of the glory of God, that almost defies language. Or I could speak of Ezekiel 10, the moment when that glory rose up symbolically and departed the temple because of all the wickedness of the people there, moving out of the temple and out of the city of Jerusalem, making way for the Babylonians to come and destroy it. Or perhaps Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones in which the nation of Israel is depicted as long dead, very dry bones. Suddenly, by the ministry of the Word, by the ministry of the power of the Word in the Spirit, the bones start to assemble, and then flesh and skin comes on them, and they're up on their feet, but they're not alive yet. Then Ezekiel prophesizes again to the wind and the wind comes, and the breath comes by the Spirit and the pieces come alive, a vast army. It’s an incredible picture of resurrection. I could say all of that. But for me, I would say again and again, the most impactful experience I had in these 48 chapters of Ezekiel was in chapter 16. There’s some danger in me relating because it's just such at the core of my heart as I went over those verses. For 100 consecutive days, I went over Ezekiel 16; I was marinating in it. In that chapter, almighty God speaks of his marriage to Jerusalem and that the city represents his people. Ezekiel was in exile with the Jews in Babylon because of the nation's idolatries, the grievous idolatries. God gave Ezekiel a powerful word picture of His love relationship with the city of Jerusalem, representing the Jews, representing His people really in all time I think. God says that He found her a forsaken waif out in the field kicking about in her blood. As He walked by, He looked on her and said to her, "Live," and she came alive. She stayed alive and she began to grow. Later, He passed by and saw that she was of an age to be married. She was ready for love. God says, “I spread the corner of my garment over you and I entered into a covenant with you and you became mine.” Now what does that mean? You became mine. I married you, loved you. Then God lavished gifts on her. He gave her a beautiful robe, beautiful sandals for her feet, jewelry for her neck and for her wrists and her fingers, a beautiful crown on her head, and He fed her with the best of wheat and most delicious of honey and oil and all of the best things. She rose to become a radiant and a beautiful queen, but she trusted in her beauty and she used her beauty to become a prostitute. She was totally unfaithful to God, her husband, the lover of her soul. She plied her favors with anyone who passed by, anyone at all.Her fame spread far and wide as this beautiful queen, and people came and ravished her and used her. This went on and on. As her beauty was degraded, she eventually had to begin paying her lovers to come to her. Unlike any other prostitute, she didn't receive wages, but she had to pay out for them to come. God spoke to her in Ezekiel 16:32, "You adulterous wife, you prefer strangers to your own husband." God spoke judgment on her. He said He would bring those nations back to her, the ones that had ravished her, the ones she had whored with, and they would hack her to pieces and burn her to the ground. So as I was reciting that chapter day after day for 100 days, a basic principle that I take to the scripture that I would commend to you is this: whenever there's any revelation of the wickedness of any people in any passage of scripture ever, you should assume God is talking first to you. You should not say, "I thank you God. I'm not like those people." Don't do that ever. Instead say, "God, how am I like that?" Imagine going over that for three months, day after day after day. "How am I like that?" I believe that God was saying those words, not just over Jerusalem or over the Jews, but over all his people for all time. God is a jealous God. He tells us that again and again. He's a jealous husband who yearns after the affections of his wife. I have the same corrupt and wandering heart that that princess wife had in Ezekiel 16. I also realize, above all of that, what God wants out of this universe. What is the big picture? What do you want, God? "I want you to love me." That's what He's saying. "I want your love. I want your heart. With all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind and all your strength. That's what I want. That's what I'll have. I want you to love me above all of my good gifts and all of the pleasures of this world. I want you to love me above anything." Now, as heavy as that is, the incredible good news of the gospel is someday He will have what He wants. He'll have what He wants in me and all of you who are His children. We will be pure and faithful to Him in our affections. We will have a perfect marriage to God, to Christ forever. That's the good news. Despite the fact that we have not loved God, but have lusted after idols and we have given ourselves to them again and again, God has chosen to work salvation for us in Christ. He has chosen by our simple faith in Christ to pay for all of the idolatries of our entire lives, all of the corruption, and by simple faith in Christ to credit us with Jesus's perfect obedience to these two commandments. Justification by faith alone apart from works, complete forgiveness of sins just by believing in Jesus to give me that, and then to work in me progressively that I would more and more and more love Him with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength and sanctification. That's what this sermon is hoping to do for you. I said that the transformation, the healing of our hearts is not instantaneous. That's not entirely true, at some point, it will be. At glorification, He will do in an instant what we couldn't do in a lifetime, and He will make us pure and we will love Him. I'm looking forward to that. In the meantime, we have sermons like this one. We have the opportunity for God to work a healing work in us, a progressive healing work in us so that we will love Him. This tendency in Ezekiel 16 is not alone there in that chapter. You see it in Job as well. What was the accusation that Satan made against, frankly, both Job and God? "Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven't You put a hedge around him in all his possessions? Doesn't Job basically love You for his prosperity and his good gifts and not for You? If you take away all that, he'll curse You to Your face.” Isn't that the same message in Hosea where he had to marry a prostitute, Gomer, representing God's relationship to unfaithful Israel? At some point, Hosea had to buy Gomer's time, and God said, "That's what you, oh, faithless Israel are like. I have to block you in with thorns so you have no other option but to come back to me, your husband.” What was God saying there? Our hearts are consistently idolatrous. We're consistently going after and worshiping and serving the created thing rather than the creator who's forever praised [Romans 1:25]. That's what we go after. Augustine put it this way in his Confessions, confessions are written to God. This is what Augustine said, "He loves you too little who loves any created thing along with you, which he does not love for your sake." In other words, putting it in simpler terms, if we love any created thing more than we love God, we do not love God enough and we love that created thing too much. The problem is the Bible says this is what we do all the time. This is what the nature of idolatry is. Our hearts are prone to wander. Having been converted by the sovereign power of the spirit and to faith in Jesus Christ into a genuine love for Him, or you're not converted, we then continually regress from that love assaulted by the world, we go after other things and we don't love Him like we should. We repent and we come back into a healthy relationship with Him, and then off we go again. This is the regular pattern. Our hearts wax and wane in and out of love for Christ. In the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, the hymn writer said, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above." The central doctrinal concept here, this sermon, is that God alone has the power through Jesus Christ to heal our wandering loveless hearts. God alone has the power through Jesus Christ to heal our wandering and loveless hearts. Another hymn writer put it this way, "Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, wean it from earth, through all its pulses move. Stoop to my weakness. Mighty as Thou art and make me love Thee as I ought to love. Teach me to love Thee as Thine angel's love, one holy passion filling all my frame. The kindling of the heaven-descended dove, my heart and altar and Thy love the flame." Augustine, again, in Confessions, put it this way, "Give what you command, then command whatever you will." God, if You impart to me the thing You're commanding, then You can command me to do anything. If you just give by Your sovereign grace and power the thing You command, then command whatever You will.” In other words, “God, if You would work in my heart the ability to love You as you're commanding here with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, then You can command that. Give what You command. But I see that apart from Your sovereign working in me, I cannot obey this command. I will not obey it. So would You please work this in me?” God has the power to do it. There are numerous examples of God commanding something that can't be done, and then giving supernatural power to his servant to do it. Certainly commanding Peter to walk on water would be a good example of this. The clearest example for me is the apostle, John, on the island of Patmos. His feet are there on that rocky island, that tiny island of exile off the coast of modern-day Turkey. In Revelation 4, it says, "After this, I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven and a voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here and I'll show you what must take place after that.'" How are you going to obey that command? I mean, God, You could as easily command me to fly. Wait a minute, you are. "Come up here." “At once, I was in the spirit and there before me was a throne with someone seated on it". Wow. Do you not see the rhythm of that? Impossible command, power of the spirit, fulfillment. This sermon is not about some legalistic list of dos and don'ts. You do this and don't do that, you will have a love relationship with God. It's not that at all. It is, “I see the command, I understand what you're asking, but I can't do it. Would you please work this in me by Your sovereign grace?” That's what we're talking about. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, "I will give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from you your heart of stone and I'll give you a heart of flesh and I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws," which Jesus says are summed up in these two commandments. "I'll take out that dead unresponsive heart of yours and I'll give you a living heart. And then by my spirit, I will move you to obey these two great commandments." Oh, God, do that, so these two Great Commandments are clear. Of all the commandments [Mark 12] which is the most important one? Jesus answers, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength." The second is this, "Love your neighbors yourself." There is no commandment greater than these.” When we're converted to faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit along with that new nature. The Holy Spirit works together with our new nature to fulfill the commands of God, to begin to fulfill those commands, and so we do love God. But what's the problem then? What's the problem? The problem is Romans 7. Are you familiar with that? You don't need to even know the words. You're living it every day. Romans 7:14 and following, we know the law is spiritual. The two great commandments are spiritual, Paul says. But I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. “I do not understand what I do for what I want to do, I do not do. And what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,’ the law is good as it is. It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” So Paul is speaking as a converted person. “It's not me that does it. I have a new nature, but I still have this problem. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” That is the healing that we need. That's the problem. That wretchedness that we need deliverance from, Jesus has come to give it to us. That is the healing that the physician of the soul must do. The essence of our salvation is perfect righteousness, total conformity of the laws of God, and Jesus came to work that healing in us. Now, for me, I cannot do this heavy work today, this convicting work, this therapeutic work without thinking again and again about our hope in heaven. What is it going to be like when, at last, our hearts will do what they were designed by God to do? What will that be like? Heaven will be as Jonathan Edwards said, “a world of love”. This is what he wrote, "There in heaven, this infinite fountain of love, this eternal three-in-one is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested, shines forth in full glory in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, ye even in rivers of love and delight. And those rivers swell as it were to an ocean of love in which the souls of the ransom may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment in their hearts as it were be deluged in love." That's where you're heading. You're heading to an ocean of love and you'll be immersed in it and that's what you'll be and do forever. What that means is every bit that you can fight lovelessness and disobedience to this first and greatest commandment will be successful and rewarded. Don't give up, don't get discouraged, but just keep fighting for delight and for joy. Last week, I defined love... That has basically been three sermons on this first Greatest Commandment. The first is just tracing out how it relates to justification, sanctification, glorification, first week. Second week, what does it mean to love God? This week is therapeutic. What do I do if I don't love God enough? How do I love God more? It's a therapeutic sermon. Last week, leaning on Edwards’ Religious Affections, it said the soul has two great capacities. One is the ability to comprehend or understand something that it sets its attention to, to understand the world, spiritual and physical. Secondly, to be inclined or disinclined to everything it studies such as liking or loving or hating or disliking and hating. I saw it in terms of magnetic attraction, the heart is magnetically attracted or repulsed from things to a greater less degree. I laid it out in my mind and it's a number line of affection. That was last week. I ended briefly with five applications, all of them began with A: awareness is just seeing God's nature, seeing Him in creation, seeing Him in the word awareness, could just say knowledge, but it didn't begin with A. So I went with awareness. Secondly, approval. Unlike the demons who are aware, we approve of God, we are attracted to God. That would be another word we could use. Approval. Thirdly, worship and delight is amazement. There's a sense of wonder and amazement at the greatness and the majesty of God, a response. Fourth is ardor. A sense of burning, a passion, a fire. Then the fifth is action or obedience to God's word. So that was last week. II. Ardor: Fainting and Feasting: Psalm 63 insights Now what I want to do is I want to zero in on ardor. Turn to Psalm 63, and I want to look at that psalm and talk about ardor. We see two aspects of our pilgrimage in terms of loving God. This is mostly diagnosis at this point. Look at Psalm 63, which I mentioned briefly last week, but I want to dig into a little bit more now. Psalm 63:1-5, "Oh God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh faints for You as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory because Your love is better than life. My lips will glorify You. I'll praise You as long as I live and in Your name, I'll lift up my hands, my soul be fully satisfied. As with the richest of foods with singing lips, my mouth will praise You." David presents himself as if in the desert; David had many desert experiences, literally physically in the desert. Here it seems to be more like a spiritual desert for him. He's in a spiritual desert situation. He's struggling in his relationship with God. He feels distant from him as a physical person is in a desert where there is no water. He's getting parched spiritually. It may well be many of you are feeling the same thing. You are in a spiritual desert right now. You feel distant from God, you feel dry. It's been a long time since you felt any sense of elevation or joy or delight in your relationship with God, and you're in a spiritual desert. Maybe you're going through a trial, maybe a medical trial, maybe a financial trial. I don't know. It could be a relational trial, and you feel like you're in a desert. You're wondering, "Where is God?" We have the word “fainting”. There's a fainting in the soul here. He says, "My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land." You've got a faintness to your relationship with God. You feel dry, you feel distant, but then you've got, also in the same psalm, a feasting aspect. Look at verse 5. He says, "My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food." Some translations even use the word “feast”. When God draws near and pours his love into David's heart and gives him a sense of his glory and a sense of his greatness, he feels like he's feasting at a banquet. How is God both water in a desert and rich and fair, as in a feast? David says in verse 3, "Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You." “I have a sense that your love, God, feeling Your love, that you love me, and that you're pouring that love into my heart is better than anything else in the world. I'd rather have that than anything else, even than life itself. Your love is better than life.” What that means is, according to Augustine and to the things we've been saying, God is better than his gifts. He's better than the good stuff He gives you that satisfy your five senses. Those are good gifts. Every good and perfect gift comes from God, but God is better than all of them. Even if we were to take them all away, if God would pour his love into your heart, that would be enough for you. David has had, in his old covenant way, a spiritual vision of the greatness and the glory of God. Verse 2 says, "I've seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory." So much of this is a spiritual vision to have a sense of the greatness of God. And so he said, "I've seen that and that is deeply satisfying to me." Then in Psalm 63, we have fainting to feasting, then back to fainting again and feasting. You're going to be that way the rest of your life and be like... I just want you to know that's normal. That's what we're talking about here. When you feel faint and weak, go after him like in Psalm 63, say, "I yearn for you. I'm hungry and thirsting for You. I want You, oh, God." That’s Psalm 63. III. Diagnosing Versions of Our Heart Disease There are various versions of our heart disease, and I want to talk about those different versions because you're going to be different in different places as you struggle in your walk with the Lord. The fundamental issue I've been asserting this morning is idolatry. The fundamental issue here is idolatry. John Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory. What does that mean? All of the problems that we're having in our relationship with God, our sinful tendency to stop loving God is not because your heart has stopped loving. Period. That's not why. This magnificent internal organ, your heart, soul, mind, strength inside of you is going to keep functioning in some way. But if you're not loving God, you're going to be loving some created thing. You're going to go after some creature. That's the essence of idolatry. When you love that created thing and not God as the giver of that created thing, that's idolatry. That's where the problem tends to come from. When we go after self or money or sex or pleasure or achievement or anything earthly, that's when the problem starts coming in our relationship with God. We have to see like, "Where is that happening for me? Where is the idolatry occurring?" It will then have an impact on you in different ways. It'll be different spiritual phenomenons that you can see. "That's the essence of idolatry. When you love that created thing and not God as the giver of that created thing, that's idolatry." The first I want to mention is drifting. You will drift in your relationship with God. This is Hebrews 2:1, "We must pay more careful attention therefore to what we have heard so that we do not drift away.” What is drifting? It's a gradual process whereby your heart is less and less in love with Christ. Your heart is less and less drawn after spiritual things, you're drifting. It's not immediate. It's not over across a weekend, but little by little by little through bad habits and the failure to do good habits through that, you are in a much worse place now than you were spiritually, a much worse place than you were a year ago. Little by little we love Christ less and less. Sometimes it's imperceptible, but it's always because of the same thing. The next chapter, Hebrews 3, tells the reason why. Hebrews 3:12-13, which says, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” Putting all that together, the drifting happens when we are slowly hardened by sin's deceitfulness resulting in a heart state that's gradually turning away from the living God. All right. What's the remedy? Hebrews 2:1-4 says, "The remedy is we must pay more careful attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away." That's getting back into the Word, specifically the Gospel. Pay more careful attention to Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. Pay more careful attention to who Jesus is. Pay more careful attention to Romans 1 through 8. The power of the gospel is the power of God for salvation. Look at how Romans 3 diagnoses sin. Look at Romans 3:21-26, which is the glowing heart of the gospel. How Jesus died under the wrath of God to take away His wrath and that we can tap into that only by faith. Justification by faith alone. Walk through that. Pay more careful attention to the doctrine of your salvation so that you do not drift away. Remedy one is draw close to God in the word. Pay more careful attention to what he's heard. Remedy two is the church. "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." We're surrounded by people. Without looking, you can use your peripheral vision and know that there are people near you. You're surrounded by people. This is the benefit of a local church. This is what the local church is for. In a good, healthy local church, we will notice changes that are happening in each other. We'll notice that people are behaving differently than they were three months, six months, nine months, a year ago. We will see to it that we don't let that happen. This is what it means in our church covenant. We'll watch over one another in brotherly love. We will go after people that we haven't seen in a little while. I mean, tonight, God willing, you're going to have home fellowship. This would be a good chance for you to say, "How are things with you? How are things in your walk with God? How are your quiet times? How's your heart? Do you feel like you're closer to Jesus now than you were a year ago? Are you growing closer? Do you feel like you're drifting away? What's going on?" "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart." How is sin's deceitfulness hardening each other's hearts? It's very hard to see. You got to know each other. That's knowing and being known in the local church. We get to know each other. It's like, "What is going on with you?" We should care enough. That's the remedy. The third remedy is in the next passage, Revelation 2. Revelation 2 and 3 are Christ’s letters to the seven churches, as He's moving through the seven golden lampstands. Whenever you see the plural word, churches, you're talking about local church. He doesn't have many brides. There's one bride, the church. But they have churches and those are local churches. Jesus is moving through the seven lampstands representing local churches. The first is the church at Ephesus and He says good things about them, they’re doctrinally strong, they’re active, energetic. They're discerning. They're able to discern false doctrine. They have been persecuted and they haven't given up. “All that's good. But I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love,” and then He gives the remedy right away. In the next verse, Revelation 2:5, "Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent from the sins that cause you to fall from that height of affection and renew the things you used to do." Remember, repent and renew. What was it like for you when you first started walking with Christ? What was your heart like then? That's your first love. What was it like when you first started walking with Jesus, when you first realized His death for you, and you trusted in Him? What was that like? That was a height of affection that you're at, a height of emotion. Remember how that used to be? That height? Now look at you. You've backslidden. You're in a colder, more distant place. Remember how it used to be. Repent because He uses the word “forsake”, you have forsaken your first love. This wasn't an accident. I don't know how it happened. You forsook Him. You chose something else. So repent of that and do the things you used to do. How did you used to show affection for Christ back in those days? Then the distance and formalism, the coldness in Mark 7, quoting Isaiah, "Jesus said, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.'" What is that? That's just going through the motions. It's going to church because you go to church. It's what you do on Sunday morning. You're here, you're going through the motions, you're going through the patterns, but your heart is far from God. "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." He's looking at your heart. It's not just a lip thing, it's not a whitewashed tomb thing. It's what's really going on in you. We can get into that machine, can't we? We're just going through the motions week after week. What is actually happening? Part of it is we begin to think of the things of religion. Daily quiet times, weekly church attendance, Bible studies, different things we did to express our relationship with God as a burden. They start to be annoying. Malachi 1:13, it says, "You say, what a burden and you bring me injured and diseased animals, and offer them as sacrifices." It's the animal sacrificial system, but what do we learn? You don't bring me your best anymore and you think the whole thing's annoying. So you start cutting corners in your quiet time. You start finding a reason, maybe not to go to church from time to time. What's going on? You know what's going on, your heart is drifting. There's a dying aspect of your relationship with God. Those are three. Drifting, that forsaking the first love, and then there's that cold formalism where you're going through the machinery. IV. Fight for Joy in the Lord Finally, as we finish, I want to walk through probably the most clearly applicational passage you'll ever find on this topic. Turn to James 4, and I'm going to give you step-by-step on how to renew your heart affection for Christ. Again, keep in mind, you're going to see it in the verses themselves. This is not 7 steps or 10 steps to a right heart. That's not what's going on here. It's a deeply spiritual process in which you understand only Christ can heal your heart and give you love. Let's walk through it, James 4:4-10. It begins right away with this statement, "You adulterous people." That image is from Ezekiel 16. We're spiritually adulterous if we're going after the world, going after the things of the world. He says, "You adulterous people. Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says without reason that the spirit that He caused to live in us envies intensely, but He gives us more grace?" That is why scripture says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." Let's walk through these as we finish. Step one, admit that love for the world is the reason why you've stopped loving Christ ardently. Something in the world has captivated you instead of Jesus. Admit that. Step two, understand God's burning jealousy over your wandering heart. God is a jealous God, the spirit He caused to live in you envies intensely." He's jealous over it. He wants it. It is what He sent Jesus into the world to save us so that we would love Him with our hearts. That's what He's going after is the heart, and He's jealous over it. Understand God's jealousy [Ezekiel 16]. Step three, seek more grace for your hearts. He gives us more grace. If you're a Christian, you have already received saving grace, but you need more grace. The language here is very clear. He gives us more grace. So you had grace for justification, but now you need more grace to stay in Christ. So seek. Say, "God, my drifting, wandering, hard heart needs more grace. Would you give me more grace?" I really believe this is why Paul uses his formula in all his epistles. “Grace to you” at the beginning of the epistle and “may grace be with you” as you leave the epistle. You're entering the grace zone in Paul's epistle and you're going to have grace with you as you leave the grace zone. You need more grace through the Word of God, especially. Step four, humble yourselves before God to seek that grace. This is humbling. It's humbling for me to tell you that in 48 chapters, the most impactful was Ezekiel 16, and 16:63 ends with “you ought to be ashamed." It's like, "I need shame like I need pain. I won't need it in heaven, but I need it. I need to be ashamed in the way that my heart is wandering and drifting in idolatries, and it's powerful for me to feel that." This is humbling. Humble yourself before God concerning this, to seek that more grace. Step five, submit yourself fully to God. Submit yourself to Christ's kingship. Say, "This has not just been an optional thing that I've gone after idol. It's not any big deal. It's been rebellion." We've rebelled in our idolatry, so we should submit ourselves to God and to Christ. I have found, I don't know if you have, but I think you have, idols die hard. If your heart is wrapped up in some idol, it will not go easily. The only way you're going to kill it is if you submit to the kingship of Christ and grab the sword of the spirit and go kill it. These idols die hard. Step six, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Now, that's an image. How powerful is that? Say no to him. Tell him no with his temptations. His allurements, resist him. Put on the armor of God [Ephesians 6] and stand in the day of testing and resist and send him to flight. He's not fleeing from you. He's fleeing from the spirit of God in you, but he's going to flee from you. If you'll resist the devil, he will flee from you. Step seven, draw near to God in humble faith. The moment that Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus has opened a new and living way into the presence of God. Hebrews 10:22 says, "Let us draw near to God in full assurance with a sincere heart and with full assurance of faith, having a heart sprinkled that cleanses from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Draw near to God, draw near to him, or again, Hebrews 4:15-16, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Step eight. This may be the least applied verse in American evangelicalism— Grieve, mourn, and wail. “Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Nobody wants to do that. But you understand the moment you sin, the Holy Spirit is grieved by it. If you're not, you're out of step with the spirit. Galatians says we should keep in step with the Spirit. If He's grieved over your idolatries, you should be grieved too. It should hurt you. It should make you sad. You should grieve over it. You can't repent without grief. There is a grief for sin. Step nine, humble yourself before the Lord, again, He says it twice. Grieve and come back to God in humility. Step 10, the good news, He will lift you up. What does that mean? He will lift you up into a healthy love relationship with Christ. He'll restore you. He'll feel your heart with joy and peace. That's the process. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the remedies that you give us in scripture. We thank you that Jesus is the physician of the soul. We thank you that He looks at us honestly and tells us truthfully what we really are. He tells us what we have been, what we are, and what we will be. Lord, I pray that you would help my brothers and sisters here. Help us at home fellowship tonight, ask real questions and have that genuine fellowship that is so rich and powerful and needed. Help us, all of us, who have been drifting to get back into the word in ways that we haven't been recently. Help us to find ways that idols have crept into our hearts. Help us to repent from them and turn away. And above all, Lord Jesus, present yourself to the soul as a lover of our souls, the one who shed his blood for us and who loves us in ways that no one else can. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.

One of my favorite hymns is “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The modern Christian hymn writer, Fernando Ortega, has a beautiful rendition of it that I enjoy listening to and I always appreciate when we sing it at Redeemer. But there's a line in the hymn that causes some folks to stumble: “Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I'm come; and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.” For English-speakers, especially, the mention of “Ebenezer” makes us think of Charles Dickens's classic character in “A Christmas Carol.” The term, however, isn't about a person. It's about a thing—a monument that helps Israel to remember God's faithfulness to them. This week we turn to the passage of Scripture that speaks of the Ebenezer memorial stone and we'll consider why it's always a good time to remember God's faithfulness to us.

Songs of Yesteryear: Part 3 Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Beersheba Church

Order of Service: - Prelude: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” arr. by Valadez - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 1-5 - Mark 14:38: (Jesus said to Peter) “Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 6-9 - Blessing - Postlude: “Ashokan Farewell,” by Jay Ungar / arr. by Custer Service Participants: Rev. Tim Hartwig, President, Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (Preacher), Prof. Ben Faugstad (Band Director), BLC Chamber Orchestra (Instrumental Group)

Order of Service: - Prelude: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” arr. by Valadez - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 1-5 - Mark 14:38: (Jesus said to Peter) “Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 6-9 - Blessing - Postlude: “Ashokan Farewell,” by Jay Ungar / arr. by Custer Service Participants: Rev. Tim Hartwig, President, Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (Preacher), Prof. Ben Faugstad (Band Director), BLC Chamber Orchestra (Instrumental Group)

Order of Service: - Prelude: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” arr. by Valadez - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 1-5 - Mark 14:38: (Jesus said to Peter) “Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 511 - Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide: vv. 6-9 - Blessing - Postlude: “Ashokan Farewell,” by Jay Ungar / arr. by Custer Service Participants: Rev. Tim Hartwig, President, Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (Preacher), Prof. Ben Faugstad (Band Director), BLC Chamber Orchestra (Instrumental Group)

Song List:1- Praise Him! Praise Him!2- Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing3- Great Is Thy Faithfulness4- Sweet Hour of Prayer5- Sheltered in the Arms of God- Sis. Maggie, Bro. Beau, Bro. Chris, Bro. Wayne, Sis. Vanessa, Sis. MarilynMessage: Bro. Steve LeCroyScripture: Psalm 73:1-28Invitation- I Am Thine, O Lord

Featuring our tendency to wander and need to check our trajectory. Don't forget to check out our website! https://treasurehuntpodcast.wixsite.com/realtreasure --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/treasurehuntintheword/message

We are prone to wander. In today's message, Pastor Greg will explore that line from the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" as we discover strength for our battle with sin. Teaching text: Romans 7:14-20.

Tina Harrington, alto, Kate Benson, clarinet, Stephen Main, piano, Piedmont Community Church, Piedmont, California

To view the connection card or to share a prayer request, visit: www.epicchurchbuffalo.com/online

To view the connection card or to share a prayer request, visit: www.epicchurchbuffalo.com/online

Song List:1- To God Be the Glory2- Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing3- My Savior's Love4- Grace Greater than Our Sin5- Amazing GraceMessage: Bro. Steve LeCroyScripture: Mark 5:1-5Invitation- Living for Jesus

Exploring the intersection between the ways we worship and our own journeys on the road toward transformation to be like Jesus, based on 1 John 3:1-3. Part 1 of 2 — three of six things to consider: worshipping in times of ease and times of hardship; worshipping in times of comfort and in times of refinement; worshipping in “the shallows” and in “the depths”.Music in this episode:• To Be Like You, by Brooke Ligertwood, Matt Crocker• Blessed Be Your Name, by Matt & Beth Redman• Refiner's Fire, by Brian Doerksen• Altar (Come, Thou Fount), by Phil Laeger• I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Martin Smith• The Wonderful Cross, by Isaac Watts, Chris Tomlin, J. D. Walt, Jesse Reeves, Lowell MasonSupport me on Patreon here! Patrons get early access to all new music, exclusive content, livestreams, and more.Theme music for First Draft Phil is from the song Trampoline, composed by Phil Laeger and produced by Jason Hoard. All rights reserved.

A Word of Encouragement with Vicky Mutchler is heard at 11:30 AM Central Time on Faith Music Radio. You can follow Mrs. Vicky by joining the On a Positive Note Facebook group.

Song List:1- Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing2- Standing on the PromisesDevotion: Bro. Roger MartinScripture: Proverbs 1:33Teacher: Bro. Chris GreenScripture: Galatians 1:1 - 4:31

It's The First Monday in Lent in the Church Calendar. February 27, 2023. This week we are following the Daily Office lectionary with an episode Monday through Friday. Praying today for Stella in Nigeria. Our general order and lectionary comes from the Book of Common Prayer Daily Office. We'll sing “Come Thou Fount” by John Wyeth and Robert Robinson. We'll read Psalms 41 and 52 followed by the Gloria Patri. Our Gospel reading is John 2:1-12 . We'll say the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Collect of the Day. We'll then have a time of prompted prayer. If you have a prayer request please submit it here. Sign up here for the email list. Visit Patreon to give and support Morning Prayer monthly. Go to PayPal to give a one-time gift. Art: Loïs Mailou Jones, Textile Design for Cretonne, 1928 Collect of the Day - First Sunday in Lent, Rite Two - Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prayerandworship/message

It's The First Monday in Lent in the Church Calendar. February 27, 2023. This week we are following the Daily Office lectionary with an episode Monday through Friday. Praying today for Stella in Nigeria. Our general order and lectionary comes from the Book of Common Prayer Daily Office. We'll sing “Come Thou Fount” by John Wyeth and Robert Robinson. We'll read Psalms 41 and 52 followed by the Gloria Patri. Our Gospel reading is John 2:1-12 . We'll say the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Collect of the Day. We'll then have a time of prompted prayer. If you have a prayer request please submit it here. Sign up here for the email list. Visit Patreon to give and support Morning Prayer monthly. Go to PayPal to give a one-time gift. Art: Loïs Mailou Jones, Textile Design for Cretonne, 1928 Collect of the Day - First Sunday in Lent, Rite Two - Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Join Professor Sweet as he scribbles out his thoughts on the 1758 Robert Robinson hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/napkinscribbles/message

داستان تارا وست اور که در یک خانواده مورمون به دنیا اومدهاسپانسر این اپیزود: کوینکسوب‌سایت کوینکساینستاگرام اورسی: https://www.instagram.com/owrsi/دونیت به پادکست آن در سایت حامی باش: https://hamibash.com/onpodcastحمایت از خارج از کشور: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/onpodcastPayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/mersenarabzadehاینستاگرام: https://Instagram.com/_u/thisisonpodcastتوییتر: https://twitter.com/thisisonpodcastموزیکهای این اپیزود:Aretha Franklin – ThinkCome, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (2011) | The Tabernacle Choir Vladimir Mostovoy - Vespers (All-Night Vigil), Op.37 5. NThe Dixie Hummingbirds - Nobody Knows the Trouble I ve SeenThe Choir Of King s College, Cambridge - Ave verum corpus, KMark Knofler - When You LeaveSam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna ComeFrank Alvarez - Swan Lake SlowedClint Mansell - Finish ItClint Mansell – Death Is A DiseaseHozier – From Eden