Podcasts about two corinthians

Ever wondered, "How can I find faith for myself?" In this sermon, Megan, Vicar of Saint Philip's Deep Creek, explores this very question. Discover how we're all people of faith already, trusting in things we can't always see, from the air we breathe to the reliability of a chair. But how does this relate to faith in God, who is unseen? To catch up on the latest sermons from Deep Creek, go to iTunes, Spotify ordeepcreekanglican.comand check out the website for more info about whats happening. Transcription I am Megan and I am the current vicar of Saint Philip's Deep Creek. but I stand in a long line of terrific leaders who have worked in partnership with a terrific bunch of people. Now we're here today asking a question. We're in a series called finding Faith. And we're starting today with our question. How can I find faith for myself? Believing in the Invisible And I wanted to go looking for something. I wanted to go looking for something in here. That's invisible. All right. What in here is invisible. Anyone? What can't I see? But that is definitely here. Don't overthink it. Yeah, okay. Faith is here. Thank you. You did overthink it, but I appreciate it. Yes. God is here. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Nikki. The Holy Spirit is here. Wow. You guys are all amazing. But there's some other things here that I can't see right now. Oh, yes. There's air. I can't see, but there's air. Does anyone know what's in the air? There's oxygen. Anything else? I mean, oxygen is my favorite, but there's nitrogen. Yes, there's there's argon. There is some carbon dioxide. Yes. There's all kinds of things. There's some water vapor. There's some, Trace elements of krypton. And there's methane, and I promise it wasn't me. So there are things that we can't see that are here. Is there anything else that we can't see that is here? Correct? Yes. I can't see your heart. That is good. That is a very good thing. but in terms of your thoughts, I can't see your thoughts. I can't see your feelings. But they're here. Your fight? Yeah. What you've been through. Absolutely. That is so good. Well, what about you? Some of the things that are very important to you. There's electromagnetic radiation which goes between your devices. That's here, right? There's radio waves and all those things that make our phones tell us amazing things. Yes, mommy and daddy. Yes. Well, I can see them, but do you know what? You're right in that I can't necessarily see that they're your mommy and daddy. I could do a blood test, and I could work that out. But you're right. Everyone is a Person of Faith There are many things here that we can't see. And sometimes when people say to us, well, I don't have faith because I just believe in things that I can see. We could say, actually, everybody here is a person of faith already, because being a person of faith is just about believing and trusting in things. So. I've got a chair here, and I can trust that if I sit on it, I'll be safe. I wasn't 100% sure, but I, you know, I had faith that I could sit down on it and it wouldn't break. You never know. If I put a couple of chairs together and decided to stand on them. That would be a bigger step of faith. It might not be very sensible at all, but there are other things that you and I have faith in that we can't see. So if I said to my daughter, we're going to have ice cream after church today. Now she and my husband says yes. She has to decide. Do I believe that? Do I have faith in what mum said? And there's been things that throughout our life have built up a trust in her that, if I've said it, probably will do it. I've said it in front of 100 people, so it's even more likely if I said, we're going to go to my favorite restaurant, Meat and Wine Co, and we're going to order the most expensive steak on the menu. What is like 400? I don't know, it's I've never, then she might think, no, I don't think that's going to happen, but an ice cream, we've done that before. And she can trust. So let's imagine that we are all in some way people of faith, and that there are things that we always take on trust. Sometimes if we put the effort into it, we could find out a scientific reason, for example, that Nick and Tam are a mom and dad. But sometimes there are things that we can't see at all. And we do believe. Pin the Tail on the Donkey: Faith vs. Guessing Right now, I've got a game here, and I'm going to need at least six little people to play this game. It's called pin the tail on the donkey. I'm going to put it up here. All right. So what happens in pin the tail on the donkey is you need to add to the donkey's rear end the tail. You're going to be blindfolded. And we're going to spin you around a little bit. And you're not allowed to give a good feel to this piece of paper. So you need to just have a look, okay. You're going to have a blindfold on. We're going to spin you around. You're going to trust that we're going to put you in front of it, and then you're on your own. Okay. You're ready for it. Okay. There we go. I do, I think you are the closest. Well done. Congratulations. We do have a little prize for you. Well done. All right. All right. What the Bible Says About Faith We're going to have some Bible readings now. And it's going to help us to understand more about faith. Two Corinthians four verse 13 to 18. It is written, I believe, therefore I have spoken. Since we have that same spirit of faith. We also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore, we do not lose heart, though through outward we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Now. Faith is confidence in Hebrews 11 verses 1 to 2. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. Perfect. Thank you so much. So the Bible tells us that faith is assurance of what we hope for, but it's about what we cannot see. So the two readings that we had today talked about faith, particularly in the future. So when I sat down on the chair, that was me trusting that my future sitting would be safe. But it was something that you could see. It was over and done with. When I say to Phoebe, we're going to have ice cream. She has to trust because it's in the future. It's unseen, but it relies on what she knows about me. The availability of ice cream and possibly what's in my bank account. So when the Bible tells us that we are to put our trust, our belief, our faith in God who we cannot see, and in the promises about our future which we cannot see. We have to know that it's not the same as pin the tail on the donkey in. Pin the tail on the donkey. You have a blindfold and you are turned around, and you're not allowed to touch the outside of the page. Now, these guys had a pretty good idea where the tail might end up. This is pretty good, although I think the best one was on Nick's nose. Well done. But in general, it's a bit of a guess. The thing about faith in God is that it's not a blind guess. Reasons for Faith: More Than a Blind Guess We've got lots of reasons why we can know where we're aiming. So you're right. We can't see. And the Bible admits that we can't see God. Everyone said God's here, but we can't see God here. But the Bible tells us to trust not because it just tells us to trust. But because there are lots of reasons. So it tells us a few different things. Number one, it tells us that we've got a whole written record. If kids you've got a Bible, it might not look like this. It might have way more pictures, which is good. But we've got a written record so that we're not entirely turned around in looking for God. This tells us how. But the Bible also tells us, and you and I know that we can look around the world, and there are many things that we can see that point us to evidence of God. Now, has anyone seen any Marvel movies lately? Kids that the littlest ones know. But, well, one of the things that Marvel has been getting into is a thing called the multiverse. Does that ring any bells with anyone? That means that, you know, you might have an infinite number of spider-mans because there's an infinite number of universes. And in the sci fi world of Marvel, you might be able to move through those universes, and one day all the spiders will end up all together. Now we actually have no evidence at all. For anything other than the universe that we have. There is no evidence. Nothing. Entirely zero evidence for multiverses. But the reason it's an attractive idea. Is because it it gives us some sort of reason. Outside of a creator for this incredible experience called life. So if you look at our experience called life, if you look at our earth, actually it's quite hard to reason away that there is a creator. The only thing you can do is say, well, all the odds that have come together to cause humans right now. Everything that could have happened at any point will happen everywhere. We must have multiverses. It'll all. It's all happened somewhere. And so an infinite number of things have come together and it's totally random. But as fun as that is in Marvel. Actually, on Earth, in our universe, there's so much evidence that a good creator made us. So there's the skies, the earth, everything telling us that this didn't happen by chance. Then we have the Bible, and then we have the way in which we experience the love of each other. And sometimes that sense that something outside us really loves and cares for us. Different Ways of Knowing There are lots of ways of knowing things. So you might think, well, I, I know things because of science. Well, there are plenty of things that we know that cannot be proved by science, because science requires something to be able to be done over and over again. So if you do an experiment, you need to be able to do it again and again and again in order to be sure that the result you get is the truth. But when it comes to something in history, for example, you will have a good trust that a certain event happened, but you can't make it happen again. You can't apply the scientific method to historical knowledge. That's a different way of knowing. So you look for different things eyewitness accounts. You look for archaeology, archaeological evidence. You dig things up. You look for sources that are trustworthy. And then there are things like, how do we know that Avery and Maisie have a mum and dad? Well, we can see that in the way that they treat each other. How do we know that we have friendship? We can see that in the way that we treat each other, and in the way that we feel about one another, and how someone else makes us feel. There are lots of different ways of knowing things. And we have to go forward in our lives. Never letting anyone tell us that there's only one way of knowing things. The truth. We actually come at it all the time from lots of different ways. Trusting the Skateboard: Knowledge vs. Action Now I've got up here a skateboard. Okay, so I know this is a skateboard for a few reasons. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and, I used to sit on one and go down the hill. Right? That's. That's about as good as it was. I can work it out from a book or online. I can take a picture of it now and something will tell us. Now, how do I know? then, so I can work out what it is. How do I know that it's trustworthy for me to stand on it? Okay. All right, well, I know this one was, especially ordered by Phil, and he's a bit heavier than me. and he got the really the really good one, right? Especially asked, can this 50 year old man trust this particular skateboard? It didn't come from Kmart. Okay. All right, so I can I can have a look at it. I can trust I know the backstory. I know the history. I know that the company doesn't want to be sued. And so I have to trust that they're interested in safety. Okay. Now. That is all very well and good. You'll have lots of ways of knowing that God is worth trusting. You'll have lots of ways of knowing that Jesus is who he says he is. Lots of ways there really are, and it's trustworthy. But that's a bit different than. Getting on it right? It's a bit different knowing that there's a God out there. Believing that Jesus is the Son of God and actually putting your trust. Now, Philip, could you come up here, please? The suspense. Okay. Now, first of all, for me to really know I'm going to I'm going to put someone else on this right before I go on it. What do you got? Okay. You can stand on it. Good. Oh, that sounds interesting. Okay. Yeah. All right. Now, can can it. Can it do anything? Okay. All right. It can do a few things. What about anything else? Whoa! All right, that seems. That seems okay. All right, so what I've done there is I've had a look around. Is someone else able to trust? Is someone that I love and trust able to trust this thing? Yes. All right. Now, could you help me, please? Thank you. Right. I think maybe two hands. Right. Great. Together. Okay, so I've got someone here helping me, holding me and telling me, don't do that. telling me. Yeah, if you are, if you put your feet too close together, it's going to go out the back from you. All of these things. All right. Now. Okay. All right. Now. 00000. Hang on. It's stuck in the little thing now. And that's going to be really problematic okay I'm going to get this way. All right. So I'm not going to go down the stairs right now. Taking the Step of Faith But what what we've done is gone through a whole process. How can I have faith? I can work out whether the object that I am thinking about is trustworthy. Lots of different ways. Then I have to decide, can I take that step for myself? What I did was check out whether someone I love and trust can do that. He could. Then I said, can you help me? And he did. And then eventually I took my hands away and I moved a little bit. Now I only do this on carpet because otherwise I would absolutely it's going to fall off. But eventually, with that sort of help and the right protective gear, I'd be able to ride that for myself. So I want to say, can you have faith? Well, you absolutely can, because you're already a person who believes and trusts things. You absolutely can. Because there are all kinds of ways of knowing things to be true. And all of those ways can be brought to bear on the Bible and the truth about Jesus. But eventually you will have to take a risk. You will have to say, I'm going to get on this thing for myself. But you don't do that on your own. So what we're going to do now is one of the things that we don't do on our own, and that is to share communion together. This is a way in which we see other people who can get on that skateboard, and we stand with them and they show us, and Jesus shows us that he is trustworthy. Learning from Saint Philip: Ask, Follow, Invite Well, today is the day that we celebrate Saint Philip. And this church is named after Saint Philip, but we mostly just call ourselves Deep Creek Anglican. but Philip was a great follower of Jesus who really wanted to know how he could have faith for himself. So he asked lots of questions and he followed Jesus around wherever he went so he could find out as much as possible, even really early in his following Jesus around what we sometimes call being a disciple or an apostle. he was convinced that Jesus was someone very special. And so in John's Gospel we read these words. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, follow me, Philip, like Andrew and Peter was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip, after following Jesus for a bit, found Nathaniel and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel, also someone who took a little while to get some faith, said Nazareth, can anything good come from there? Come and see, said Philip. We've got an opportunity over these next couple of weeks to be like our namesake, Philip, and, well, ask questions, follow Jesus around. When Jesus says, follow me to maybe take that step of faith with the help of others. But we've also got one more thing that we can do. We can say to other people, come and see. Faith is about having enough confidence that you think it would be good for someone else to find out more about Jesus. Faith is not simply saying this is good for me, but saying this is good for the world. An Opportunity to "Come and See" And so over the next three weeks, the kids will be doing their special program, and the adults also have a chance to invite friends to think about who they would like to pray for, and maybe at work, or at home, or at family gatherings or at the footy to say, why don't you come and see? Doesn't have to be come and see here it could be come and see, read something, could be come and see. Search online. Could be. Come and see. Talk to my friends from my growth group. Or let's go out with a few of us and have pizza. But in three weeks time on the 25th of May, we will particularly be having an opportunity for people who are here in this gathering to say yes to Jesus. So Richard Bruce, who some of you may know, some of you might not know, who's a member of our congregation is going to be preaching, and he will give us all an opportunity to say, Will I take that step of faith for myself? And if you have someone that you know, it would be great to have them there. Then why not invite them along? We are a welcoming and growing multigenerational church in Doncaster East in Melbourne with refreshing faith in Jesus Christ. We think that looks like being life-giving to the believer, surprising to the world, and strengthening to the weary and doubting.

Two Corinthians teams go in search of provincial silverware this Sunday (28th April 2024) when they take on their Sligo counterparts in Connacht Finals. The under-15 Corinthians Blacks have been successful coming through the underage ranks and they'll take on Sligo at 1.30pm. Then the under-17s meet for the first time since Corinthians won 51-0 in the league semi-final in January.  That was an unusual result between the teams, as Sligo did edge Corinthians at under-16 level. Following a league final defeat, Corinthians overcame Loughrea and Castlebar before avening their league final loss to Buccaneers (22-11) in the semi-final.  Sligo have also three wins from three since the league. Leading up to the game, Corinthians under-17 manager Rob Dolan chatted to Galway Bay FM's Darren Kelly. == Kick-off at Dexcom Stadium on Sunday is 3.30pm.

Just the Editor's opinion… It's one thing to be selling golden sneakers for $399 (here) while running for president. It's another, stratospheric level of audacity to be pandering to cultural Christians by selling KJV Bibles for $60 (here), in the view of some, to help support his (some fair, some unfair) personal legal defense. Trump endorses the Bible by saying its, “The only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” and speaking directly on Truth Social, "I'm proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible." My view, respectfully, is that pride is ironically part of the problem with the endorsement.  One could not create a better scenario to build a straw man on the threat of Christian Nationalism than merging Trump selling Bibles. The former president thinks his foray into religious commercialism will ingratiate him with Christians. Believers are all now expected believe he must be born-again… for sure. And non-Christians now have a perfect example to point to in locking all Christians together under the banner of our mascot, Trump. This can't help Biblical Christianity. One may choose to vote for the lesser of evils, and God can do anything, with anyone. One positive may be more Bibles put in the hands of seekers. However, this tightening of associations between Trump and Biblical Christians only serves to do damage to our attempts at evangelism, just as his reference of “Two” Corinthians 3:17 (here), while standing in front of St. John's Church, was a warning to all who were listening. Of course the spin on this faux pas was, "that's the way they say it in England". 

Our Eternal King is supreme and preeminent over all things. In the letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul states that “For in Him, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…” which means that Christ was not merely a good moral teacher, but the only one who ever existed as fully God and Fully Man. This reality makes Him the only one who is capable to sympathize with our weaknesses and save our souls! Please join us as we embark on a rich study of the letter to the Colossians entitled “The Supremacy of Christ.” ————————  This week, Pastor Scott will preach from Colossians 1:19-20. The first message in this series is entitled "The Supremacy of Christ in Reconciliation." The main idea of the sermon is: The preeminent Christ has secured reconciliation and peace by the blood of the cross. ————————  Connect with Us: Website: parkwoodonline.org Facebook: facebook.com/parkwoodonline Instagram: instagram.com/parkwoodonline.org  Check out more resources and sermons online at: parkwoodresources.org———————— TranscriptWelcome and thank you for connecting with us at Parkwood Baptist Church. Here at Parkwood, we exist to glorify God by laboring together for the growth of all believers while going with the gospel to all people. You can find more information about our church@parkwoodonline.org by visiting our website you will be able to learn more about Parkwood and our mission. Now join us as we grow together through the teaching of God's word.You well, good morning. It is a joy to be with you again this morning as we gather together to worship the Lord. Pastor Jeff was away this past week, so I have the privilege of taking up the word of God with you. And together this morning we'll be continuing our sermon series in Colossians. We'll be in Colossians chapter one, verses 19 and 20 this morning. So please grab your bibles and turn there.We're on page 983 in the chair bibles if you need to use one of those. And please feel free to do that. Now, while you're turning there, I just want to clear up something several of you have asked me over the last few weeks. What happened to verses 13 and 14? Well, we didn't skip them. Pastor Jeff is going to come back to them on Easter Sunday. It's a wonderful passage that speaks of redemption, so you will hear that preached on Easter Sunday. But for this morning we're taking up chapter one, verses 19 and 20. So would you please now stand as we read the word of God together?Paul writes, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for your word. Thank you for its complexity, but thank you for its simplicity. So I pray you help us to understand it this morning and apply it to our lives in the power of the spirit and in Christ's name, I pray. Amen.You can be seated. So when my wife and I were living overseas, we had the privilege of visiting the great wall of China. And if you've ever been there, you know how magnificent it is. It's over 13,000 miles long. The average height is 25ft, but the tallest part of it is over 45ft high. And when you're on the wall and you're walking on it, you actually see how magnificent it is. It's more than just a wall. There's gun fortresses and watch towers and just all kinds of things on the wall. And the widest part of the wall is over 55ft wide, which is wider than a four lane highway, but the narrowest part is less than 2ft.So it's really small in some parts. It's fascinating to walk around it, or to walk on it and then walk around it. On that particular day that we visited, there were lots of other people there. It was really crowded and everyone was taking pictures of the wall, touching the ancient stone, ooo-ing and ahh-ing over the size of it, the magnitude of it. And when we finished, we had been there a couple of hours, several hours, actually. And when we finished, we walked down the stone steps to the ground level and we noticed that all along the base of the great wall, there are these old ladies that are with their carts, there are these little shops, and they're selling their goods to all the visitors that are coming to visit the great wall.They're selling hats that have the pictures of the wall on it and shirts that said, I survived the great wall and all these kind of things. And so we spent some time walking around and looking at those shops. But as we were walking around and looking at them, I noticed something. I noticed that not one single time did a single lady turn around and look at the wall. They never even noticed the wall. They never paid attention to the wall that was behind them. Yet all the other visitors who were there seeing it for the first time were wide eyed and mouths open, looking at the magnificence of the wall.You see, what had happened was they had become so familiar, the ladies, with the great wall, that its greatness no longer impressed them. They were too busy with their own lives, right? They were too busy trying to make money with their own pursuits to even notice or pay attention to something so magnificent that was right next to them. So, brothers and sisters, my fear for us this morning, especially those of us that have grown up in the church, my fear is that we've heard these things, colossians 1:15 through 20.We've heard them so many times that we're so familiar with them that we're unimpressed by Jesus, we're unimpressed with the gospel, we're too familiar with it, we're too busy with our own lives, that we no longer stand in awe of the magnificence of Christ. We no longer, wide eyed and, mouths open, wonder at the beauty of the gospel. As Pastor Jeff said last week, colossians 115 through 20 is a mountaintop passage of the Bible.It is a tremendously profound description of Jesus Christ. And yet I'm afraid we'll miss it because we've heard it before. We're too familiar with it. So I challenge us, you and me, at the beginning of this sermon, to not ignore or miss the supremacy of Christ in the gospel. With that said, let's dive into the passage this morning. The main idea is this. The preeminent Christ has secured reconciliation and peace by the blood of the cross.So verses 19 and 20 are a continuation of 15 through 18. It's one connected passage, but we've separated it into two sermons last week and this week because we wanted to slow down so we don't miss it. We wanted to unpack these amazing truths as they are found in verses 15 through 20. But we will begin in verse 19. Paul says, in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Let's take this one phrase at a time. First, in him, that's in Christ.That's who Paul has been talking about. Go back up to verse 13 and you'll see it. Paul writes, he has delivered. That's God. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. That's Jesus. And from that point on, when Paul's talking about, he is this and he is that, and in him and through him, he's referring to Christ. So in Christ next, all the fullness of God.So what's interesting about this phrase, the fullness of God, is that it can be used. Especially the word full can be used in many different ways, right? Like, I could use the word full to mean to fill up what is lacking or to make up a deficiency. So, simple example. After church, we go out to eat. I order a sweet tea. I drink it some of the way down. The waitress comes by with a pitcher of tea. She fills it up. I say, my glass is full.But the fullness is just expressed, as in making up the deficiency, right? Filling up what is lacking. That's not what Paul means here. As if God is somehow lacking something is deficient, and Jesus fills that up. That's not what he means. Another way full is used is to mean to be at capacity, to be at your limit. So, same illustration. But this time, let's say we go to Pastor Andrew's favorite restaurant after church today, dynasty buffet.And we eat lots and lots of chinese food and we stuff ourselves. And then what do we say? We say, I'm full. But what do we mean? We mean I'm at capacity. I can't take anymore. I've reached my limit. I'm full. That's not how Paul means this either, as if somehow God is at capacity and Jesus somehow surpasses. No, no, that's not what he means either. So what does he mean? Here's what the fullness, the word fullness means.It means that the totality of divine power, which means the power of God, the full power of God, and the totality of divine attributes. So who God is is found in Christ. In other words, you don't have to look anywhere else other than Jesus to learn anything and everything that you need to know about God. In other words, middle schoolers, if there's any in the room. Remember last year, we walked through the doctrine of Christ, and we taught you, and you learn that Jesus is fully where. This is one of the passages where we get that doctrine from all of who God is is found in Christ.And notice that Paul says all the fullness, which is actually redundant in the Greek. It's like saying whole fullness or fully full. But what Paul's doing is emphasizing the fact that the completeness of God is found in Christ. Next phrase. Was pleased to dwell. Was pleased to dwell. Now, this is a very interesting phrase, has lots of Old Testament allusions. So if you remember from the book of Exodus, right, the Israelites, God's people were wandering in the desert for 40 years, right? They had no permanent dwelling place.They lived in tents, and they'd pack up the tent and they'd move on, and they'd pitch the tent again, and the presence of God was with them. But even God's presence had no permanent dwelling place. If you remember, God showed up to them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and he moved with them through the desert. Later, when Solomon built the temple to house the presence of God, if you remember, in his prayer of dedication for the temple, in one kings, chapter eight, verse 27, he said this quote, but will God indeed dwell on the earth?Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built. So Solomon is acknowledging the greatness of God and how nothing can house the greatness or the fullness of God. The fullness of God is too much for anything to hold except Jesus. That's Paul's point, which is an amazing one. He's driving home the point that the fullness of God does indeed have a dwelling place, and it's found in his son Jesus.Now, the word pleased is actually, and I apologize for the technical term, but it is important. It is an heiress infinitive, which means it is a timeless thing. It is ongoing. It cannot be nailed down to a specific moment. Why is that important? It's because, yes, there's an emphasis on the incarnation, the moment when God took on flesh and dwelt among us. But it's not just at the birth of Christ that the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him. It's not just at the crucifixion of Christ.It's not just at the resurrection of Christ. It's from before the beginning of time, when Jesus was there during his life and death and after he ascended to heaven to seat at the right hand of the Father. The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Christ the whole time, from the beginning of time and extending to eternity. It always has been and always will be that Christ has the fullness of God at the pleasure of God.Which leads us now to our first point this morning. The preeminent Christ has secured reconciliation by the blood of the cross. So Paul says here in verse 20, through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven. So first, what does reconcile mean? Well, we've looked at this before, right? Reconcile acknowledges or implies that there's broken relationships, right? Because it means to restore or to put back together, to bring back together.So we have to ask, what relationships are broken? Well, I think there are several. First and foremost, the relationship between God and man is broken. This is the bad news of the gospel message, if you will. This is the part where we understand that God is holy and righteous and just and good, and we are not. God created us in his image, to reflect him, to worship him. But we sinned. It began with Adam and Eve when they chose to go their own way, to reject the good design and the good order of God.And that one sin allowed sin to enter the world. And that's why all of us born after Adam and Eve are born with a sinful human nature. We are prone to sin, being prideful, being selfish, self preserving, and any of the others come naturally to us. If you don't think that's true, just have kids. It's natural for. I'll just talk about my kids. It's natural for my kids to lie, to try to get out of trouble.It's natural for them. So our job as parents is to what? Teach them to tell the truth, to teach them to do right. Why? Because lying comes naturally to them. But I want you to see in scripture one verse, Isaiah 59, two. So please flip to Isaiah 59, two. I want you to see this verse because this is on a bigger scale it kind of speaks to our relationship with God and what our sin does to specifically our relationship with God.This is one of the most sobering verses in the Bible. Isaiah 59 two says this, but your iniquities, that's your sins, your wrongdoings, your iniquities, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. Now, that's bad news, right? That's bad news. You see, our sin has caused what once was a perfect and loving and intimate relationship between God and man.Our sin has caused it to be broken, and therefore, we need reconciliation, right? We need our relationship with God to be restored. But our relationship with God is not the only relationship that needs to be restored. It's not the only thing that's broken as a result of sin. The fall relationships between human beings are also broken. Right. Not long after the account of the first sin by Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three, we have the account of the first murder in Genesis chapter four.So it didn't take very long for human beings to start being at odds with each other. If you remember, the first two sons of Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. And due to the jealousy over their offerings that they presented to God, Cain took his brother out into a field and killed him. And of course, that was just the beginning, right? Ever since then, human relationships have been difficult. You don't believe me? Just get married.Amen. Right. Now, I love my wife dearly, and she loves me dearly. But marriage is hard. And why is marriage hard? Because it's two sinners that have agreed to be in union with each other. And because we're sinners, we're prone to selfishness, to pride, to being bitter, to being spiteful and all the rest. And because of that, not just marriage relationships, any human relationship is difficult. But because of Christ's redeeming work on the cross, two people, two different people, two sinners, can overcome their differences, can overcome their division, and be united in Christ.But there's another thing that needs to be restored. By using the phrase, Paul uses the phrase reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven. Paul is including the cosmos, the creation. He's including nature, as in need of restoration. So it's not just that sin didn't just mess up our relationship with God, and it didn't just mess up our relationship with each other. It also messed up creation.Romans 820 and 21 explain this. Paul writes, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So Paul describes creation post fall as subject to futility that means devoid of truth, perverse, and in bondage to corruption.But if you pay attention, there's hope for creation, and it's the same hope of the children of God. The gospel, the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, is the hope for creation, that one day it will be restored as well. Now, before we move on to the second point, I want to pause and highlight just a few things about reconciliation that we see in verse 20, but we also see elsewhere in scripture. First is this, reconciliation is a work of God.Reconciliation is a work of God. So what's unique about Paul's use of the word or the idea of reconciliation in all of his letters, not just colossians, is that he uses, know, kind of in the opposite way that we would typically think about reconciliation. And this is what I mean. The normal way we talk of reconciliation is when the guilty party, the person who has done the wrong, seeks forgiveness from the person that they wronged.Right? Like if I did something wrong to you and I realized what I did was wrong, and especially if I'm a mature person, then I'm going to come to you and say I'm sorry, and seek forgiveness. That's normally how it works, but that's not how Paul typically talks of reconciliation. Paul emphasizes in multiple places in his letters that it's God, the offended party, who initiates reconciliation with us.Romans 5:8. But while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So while we were still offending God, while we were still doing the thing that broke the relationship with God, what did he do? He sent Christ to die for us. Two Corinthians 519. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against him. He's the initiator. He is the one doing the reconciling. One more verse. Galatians 4:4.When the fullness of time had come, what's the next word? God sent forth his son. We cannot overlook this point, which can be simply put like this. There would be no reconciliation at all if God had not initiated it. There would be no reconciliation at all if God had not initiated it. It was Thursday morning of this past week. I was doing my study, doing my preparation for the sermon, when this truth, the spirit hit me with this. I was sitting Bible open, commentaries open, and this thought I had, I would not be saved if God had not first moved towards me.And you wouldn't either. What that means, brothers and sisters, is that the Bible is not some story about our search for God. It's not some lord of the rings type epic where we're the main characters and the chapters are about our journey to find God. No, the Bible begins with God in the beginning, God. And it ends with the amazing scene of every tongue, tribe and nation surrounding the throne worshipping the lamb.Quote. This is a quote from a commentary. Holy scripture is marked out from all other religious writings by its unique insistence that the initiative in reconciliation belongs wholly to God. Excuse me? He moved, he acted, and because of that, we are saved. Praise God. Second unique thing to notice here in Paul's writings is that not only is God the initiator of reconciliation, God is also the recipient of reconciliation.In other words, reconciliation is a work of God. Yes. And reconciliation is a work of God for God. Notice what Paul says back in verse 20. Through him to reconcile to himself all things. We just read two Corinthians 5:19. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. So to himself is not just relational. Yes, it is relational. It speaks to reconciliation about how we will be returned to God. Our relationship with God will be restored, but to himself is also directional.It speaks to the aim of reconciliation, the goal of reconciliation. Now, why is that important? It's incredibly important because if we don't understand or believe that the reconciling work of Christ on the cross was directed towards God, then you're going to have to find something else or something else to put in that place. You're going to have to ask the question, who was reconciliation for? To whom was it directed?And I think because we live in a culture that loves to make us little g gods. The world revolves around us, right? Revolves around what we want, what we need, our happiness. Right? Live your truth. You ever heard that? Just live your truth. Do whatever makes you happy, because if it makes you happy, it can't be bad. You ever heard that? Who's the God in that sentence? You are right or I am? No. Now I know. Last time I preached, I talked about christian music, and I'm about to do it again. I promised. I'm not trying to be critical here.I don't know these people who write these songs. I'm not a songwriter myself. I don't know how difficult that is. But I am a pastor. And we as pastors and elders, have a responsibility to shepherd the flock of God among us. So I want to help you identify where things are in culture that will cause you or tempt you to think wrongly about God or about the gospel. There's one particular song that just irks me. It drives me crazy. At the end of the chorus, he says this.You paid the price. Talking about Jesus, you paid the price. You took the cross, you gave your life. All good so far. And then he says this, and you did it all with me on your mind. Now, again, I don't know the heart behind that, but what I hear from that, what I hear from that is that the work of redemption, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, drinking the cup of the wrath of God, when he was bearing the physical torture of the crucifixion, he's thinking about me.Where do you find that in scripture? Because that type of thinking makes me the focus of redemption. That makes me the prize, folks. I'm not the prize. I'm the problem, right? We are the problem. Our sin has got us into this mess to begin with. Reconciliation is not about you, and it's not about me. It's about worship. So yes, it is true that God relentlessly pursues us. I think you see that in stories like the prodigal son, the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost sheep. You see this, but you've got to ask why?Why? Is it to gain me? Is it because he's not happy without me? He's walking around heaven being like, I just have to have, Scott. I just have to. No, it's about worship. I was created to worship him, and my sin causes me not to worship him. So he pursues me. It. He pursues me and you. So we will worship him, because by worshiping him, we find our ultimate satisfaction. Second point this morning, the preeminent Christ has secured peace by the blood of the cross.The preeminent Christ has secured peace by the blood of the cross. At the end of verse 20, Paul says this, making peace by the blood of his cross. So making peace means to harmonize, to harmonize, to establish peace. It's very similar to reconciliation. He's saying that peace, or the absence of war, the absence of fighting, is established by the work of Christ on the cross. Now the phrase blood of his cross is actually an interesting one. This is the only time it's used.So the Bible talks a lot about the blood of Christ, and the Bible talks a lot about the cross of Christ. This is the only time that it's put together in one phrase. The blood, of course, is referring to the blood that Jesus shed on the cross, which means several things. Paul's referring to several things, but one of which he means is that Christ was really a human. So, middle schoolers, where are you at again?Right, last year sermon series Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. Paul is highlighting the humanity of Jesus here. He was really a man. If you shove a crown of thorns on a man's head, he's going to bleed. If you put a nail in the hands and the feet, he's going to bleed. A man can die. He's highlighting the fact that Jesus Christ is fully, completely man. And we know from Hebrews 922 that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.So again, Paul is just emphasizing here the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross, specifically that he established peace, Ephesians 213 through 16. Pastor Jordan read that this morning as part of the pastoral prayer. It's a great passage where Paul kind of sums up everything we've been talking about here. He says, now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So you see there, once far off, you're separated from God, but now through the blood of Christ, again he says that you've come together, been brought near.For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh humanity, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two. So making peace and might reconcile us both, that's jews and gentiles. That's who he's talking to here, might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.It's a really powerful passage. We don't have time to study it further. But you see the repeated themes, peace, reconciliation, the blood of Christ. So what this morning, so what? I have one question. Are you submitting to the lordship of Christ? Now? At face value, that may sound like an odd thing to ask after the last two weeks, walking through Colossians 115 through 20, but this is kind of a so what question for all five of the verses. It's a so what over the last two weeks.Because the main point, as we've learned, is that the preeminence of Christ, the supremacy of Christ, or you could say the lordship of Christ. So I think in this passage, in light of this passage, I think there's two main ways we can respond to the lordship of Christ. First is simply that we should submit. We can submit to the lordship of Christ now, both as individuals and as a church. We must fall under Christ's authority.He is supreme over your life and he is supreme over our church, over this church. Now you may, Scott, you know, sure, that's obvious. I think we do that. You may say, I think I do that as an individual. We do that as a church. You can move on. Well, perhaps you are doing that. Perhaps we are doing that as a church. But I want to remind you, it's a daily battle. It's a daily battle for you as an individual follower of Christ.And it's a daily battle for our church every day to submit and fall under the authority of the lordship of Christ. Because here's the danger. It's kind of similar to what we said earlier. If we remove Christ as the head of our church, if we remove him or don't acknowledge him as the head of our lives, the head of our church, that creates a void. And we are so quick to fill that void with something that was never intended to be there.I think in a church setting we are quick to fill that void with human authority or tradition. Here's what I mean. Human authority. We are quick to put a person in the place of the head of the church. You see this a lot with preachers who become famous and kind of have a cult following. We can talk a lot about this. Pastor Jeff has said it scares him a little when people say it's his church or it's my church that's flirting with this idea that we're putting a human in the place of where only Christ belongs.I don't have to tell you how dangerous that is. You've all got experiences and heard stories of churches that replaced Jesus as the head and put somebody there. And when that person falls, so does the church. Or we replace the void. We fill the void. We replace Christ as the head with tradition. It's a, oh, that's not the way we've always done this mentality. If you do that, the church never grows, the church never changes. The church never takes risk for the gospel because, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.That's not how we've always done it and how dare we change? It's fine the way it was. What happens there? You end up sacrificing mission on the altar of tradition. So the second response to the Lordship of Christ is to do exactly what we were created to do, and that's worship God. The fact that God initiated reconciliation while we were still sinners ought to cause you to stop everything in worship.The fact that the fullness of God, the completeness of God, was pleased to dwell in Jesus ought to stop. Make you stop and worship. The fact that Jesus took on human flesh, sacrificed himself on the cross, bore the wrath of God, and secured reconciliation and peace for us with God, with each other, and of creation ought to make you stop and worship. The fact that Christ rose from the dead and secured new life for us in heaven ought to make you stop and worship.Turn with me to Romans, chapter five. We're going to end here. Two more minutes. Romans, chapter five, verses ten and eleven. I'm going to end with this now. We mentioned this earlier briefly, but we're coming back to it now just to end the sermon. Romans, chapter five, verses ten and eleven. So Paul writes this for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more. Now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. So if you notice, the passage builds logically. Do you notice the two times Paul says more? First he says the end of verse ten, much more. And then the beginning of verse eleven. More than that, he's building an argument. What he's saying is we started out as enemies of God, and while we were still enemies of God, God did the hardest thing imaginable. He sent his son as a sacrifice for people who hated him.For his enemies, it's the hardest thing you can do. So here's the logic. If God is willing to do that for his enemies, how much more will he keep his promise and actually save those who have already been reconciled? This is an assurance of salvation, that God will keep his promises. And then I love this more than that. Paul says more than that. What is our response to love and reconciliation? Rejoice in God through Christ Jesus.Our response is worship. Our response is gratitude for what God has done. So I go back to my opening illustration. Are you too familiar with this to be amazed by it? Are you too busy? Are we? Am I too busy with my own life to stand in all of Jesus, to stand in awe of the gospel? Brothers and sisters, I pray not. That has been my prayer all week, that we will respond to the gospel, respond to the person and work of Christ with submission and worship. And I don't just mean worship in a song. We're about to sing a song. Yes, worship God in the song. I don't just mean a song. I mean our lives.Our lives ought to be lived in submission to Christ and worship. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for today. I thank you for your word as I prayed earlier. It is so complex and so deep, and yet it is so simple and so clear. And in a passage like this, we are confronted with the preeminence of Christ, the supremacy of Christ, that he is to be first and primary in our lives. And so I pray that we will just examine our lives. We will see where we have mistakenly put someone else as first or primary in our lives. Where we have put something else as first or primary in our lives.May we not be so familiar with these amazing truths and these amazing things that we forget that we are no longer impressed. We ignore it. We don't care about it. Convict us, spirit, to worship you in spirit and in truth. Like I said, not just in a song, but in our lives. And lord, I pray this in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit MosaicBoston.com.Our Heavenly Father, all of us face perplexing situations in our lives, in our youth, in our middle ages and in the challenges of our twilight years. We never know from one day to the next what turns will occur. And so daily, as we face your providence, we're challenged with the challenge of faith. Will we walk by faith or by sight? Lord, I pray that you give us grace to walk by faith even when everything that we see seems counter to good. Yet Lord, we know on the turn of a dime you can redeem any situation. As we consider your providence today in the life of Joseph as he is stuck in a dungeon, Lord, we thank you that you were with him even in the darkest pit.And Lord, teach us lasting lessons from your scriptures and we pray that your Holy Spirit enables us, not just to understand these lessons, but to embrace them and to love them. Help us experientially know your love and love the fact that you and your good purposes and your wisdom you brought us to where you have brought us and we know that you will lead us from here. Well Lord, in spite of the dark seasons of providence, we do trust in you and we pray that you deepen our trust in you. In Jesus' name, amen.We're continuing our sermon series that we've entitled Graduate Level Grace: A Study in the Life of Joseph. This is Genesis 37 through 50. Today we find ourselves in Genesis 40 and the title of the sermon is Seek God Defined Success. Among the most prized possessions of men in past centuries was a fine sword. Swords have been immortalized in mythology like King Arthur's Excalibur, the broad sword pulled from a cloven rock. More recently, there's Frodo Baggins' little miniature sword, Sting. Even science fiction boasts of swords like the light sabers of the Jedi Knights. But there's a sword more powerful than any of those, and that's the sword of the word of God, and that's an apt metaphor.Ephesians 6:17 says, and this is a commandment, "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." When we take the sword of the Spirit on a daily basis and we first apply it to ourselves, it completely changes us. Why? Because Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." The word of God is like a sword in that it does penetrate through into the depths of our soul. John Bunyan's Pilgrim carries the right true Jerusalem blade, which was a way of saying the Christian is armed with the word of God.Now, when you study the word of God and you apply it to yourself and you seek to obey the Lord faithfully, and when you disobey, you ask for grace and repent of sin, what happens is that you yourself become a sword, that the human life, when it is presented to God in humility, God use me. Well, what does God do? He shapes us. He hones us. He tempers us by His word and also by the fires of providence, the fires that occur in life until we become a mighty blade in the hands of God. And that's what we're seeing with Joseph, that God is sharpening him, edge after edge, sharpening him until he becomes a singular instrument of redemption in the hands of God.The story begins with Joseph, just a young guy, naive and sensitive in many ways. Innocently arrogant in his youth and then he's sold into slavery. At that point, he could have turned to bitterness. He could have become a victim. At that point, he could have allowed his spirit to become wounded. No, he doesn't do any of that. The bitterness of Joseph's experience by God's grace seasoned him with sweetness so that the arrogance is deflated. And then ultimately, he is used by God to save his family whom he forgives. Joseph was already shown in the story, signs of spiritual greatness. Last week, we learned about his remaining faithful and not being compromised by Mrs. Potiphar's seductive siege. And Moses has written success in large letters all across Joseph's life at this juncture.If you remember last chapter ends in Genesis 39:21 through 23 with these words, "But the Lord was with Joseph, showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison and the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. And whatever was done there, he was the one to do it. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed." And here you got to pause and ask, is this success? He's in his late twenties, no family, no career, owns nothing. Successful in what category?Well, he's successful in the eyes of God and that's the only true measure of success. Despite trying circumstances, dark providence where he could have just run from God, run from responsibility. No, his faith actually grows stronger. Though he is far removed from his family, separated by the desolate expanse of the Sinai, immersed in another culture speaking a different language, enduring the living death of a slave. Despite all that, he still holds fast to his God.And we know in the coming chapters that he will be elevated to the vice regency of Egypt. He becomes number two only after Potiphar. And what we see is before his ascent to power, God gives us one more chapter that shows us where Joseph is in the darkest place in his life. It's a final stint, a final opportunity for God to shape him. And many lessons are enforced by the picture of Joseph in this dungeon, but he understands, come what will, right is right and sin is sin and that consequences are never to deter from duty. And that it's better to live with a clean conscience in prison then to do wickedness and sit at a king's table.Four points or categories, subheadings with which we'll walk through the text. First we'll look at the prisoners assigned to Joseph, then we'll look at the prisoners troubling dreams. Third, Joseph interprets their dreams. And fourth, the dreams come true. And we'll walk verse by verse through the text. First, prisoners are assigned to Joseph. So if you remember Potiphar who was in charge of the executioners of Pharaoh. Mrs. Potiphar came to him and said, "Joseph, he was trying to rape me." That's what was going on. And then Potiphar didn't really believe her. That's why he didn't have Joseph executed. And so he puts Joseph in this prison that he's in charge of and then he grows in responsibility. So this is Genesis 40 verses one through four."Sometime after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their Lord, the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. And he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody."So Joseph was sold by his brothers into captivity when he was 17 years old. And we know that 11 years have already passed from that time. We don't know how those 11 years were divided between serving in Potiphar's household and in prison. But we do know that Joseph is now 28 years old because in the next chapter it says two years passed, two whole years passed from the events in this chapter, and then he'll be 30 at which at that age he ascended to the service of Pharaoh. So what happens is we don't know what the chief cupbearer or the chief baker did, but we do know that they are chief in their class. These are people to whom the Pharaoh entrusted his life. The royal cupbearer and the royal baker in a sense held the life of Pharaoh in their hands.If you wanted to take a king out or Pharaoh out, one of the ways you would do that is you bribe the cupbearer or you bribe the baker to poison the man. That's why the Egyptian cupbearers were sometimes called pure of hands. There were supposed to be people of incredible integrity. So the cupbearer's job was not just to taste the wine, he would oversee the whole process of the wine making and then finally taste it in the presence of Pharaoh before giving him the cup. The baker would do the same with food. So they were put in the custody in the house of the captain of the guard. Potiphar is the captain of the bodyguard. So Potiphar puts Joseph in a position to care for these criminals.And the thing you got to know about these guys is that they are high ranking officers. Remember, Nehemiah was a cupbearer, so he had incredible influence over the king, over the land. They were confidants, they were advisors. But here, something happened, we don't know what, but Pharaoh suspected them of plotting his demise. Perhaps he grew ill after a meal and he didn't know which one to blame, so he threw both into prison until it was decided. So here's Joseph. He's at the bottom of the bottom. He's 28 years old, been in prison serving prisoners, serving those who are enslaved. And at this point, he could have thrown himself a pity party and also checked out of reality. He could have thought, Lord, why did you give me this lot in life? I didn't sign up for this. Why was it that my mother died in an untimely death? And why was it that my father who loved me so couldn't quell the strife in the family?And why is it that my family sold me into slavery? And why is that Potiphar believed these false accusations, et cetera, and he's in prison. But instead of doing any of that, he continued to trust in the Lord and the Lord continued to sustain him even in prison. Before Joseph is put in the palace, he's taught by God to walk by faith in the prison. And that brings us to the next verses, and this is the second heading, prisoners troubling dreams. Verse five. "And one night they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its interpretation."So the ancient Egyptians put great stock in dreams because they believe that when they slept, they were put in contact with another world. A pair of dreams, dual dreams shows us that there is certainty of fulfillment. So these guys, they both woke up rattled on the same night. They had these dreams, they're burdened with this inscrutable dream. And we see here, of course, God, in His providence, bringing these two guys together and it's God who gives them these two dreams. And what is God doing? He's furthering His glory. "Yes, Joseph, I do have great plans for you, plans to prosper you and plans to glorify my name through you." And part of the process of glorification is, how will you respond to adversity. How will you respond to dark providence, seasons where the only place to look up is to look up to God from the pit. And that's what's happening here. And even as He's teaching Joseph, God is ultimately concerned about glorifying His name and His might. That's what's happening here.In verse six, "When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled." He noticed that they were perturbed, something was off. So he says in verse seven, "So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, 'Why are your faces downcast today?'" Why are your faces gloomy today? In this question, what we see is, what do we see, we see kindness. We see interest. We see respect. He noticed things. By the way, this is a man. This is a man noticing the feelings of other men. This is a miracle in and of itself. But it just shows incredible sensitivity. I saw yesterday you were not gloomy, today, you're gloomy. Both of you are gloomy. And it shows this and this is a large measure of Joseph's success. He was present on a daily basis and he inquired of those around him of how they're doing or how they felt. Incredible sympathy, incredible sensitivity.And also, you can't but notice the growth. Remember when he was 17 years old, he's very good looking, beloved by Jacob. He's a beloved son. He's got the beautiful colored rainbow, the robe, and he knows he's the chosen one. And he didn't have the awareness to keep his dreams to himself. The dreams were it was clear that one day his brother's whole family would bow down before him. No, he decided to share that. Well, of course, how do you think your brothers are going to respond to dreams like that? So when he was younger, he lacked the sensitivity. But now, though he had every reason to ignore the feelings of his fellow inmates, he was tender to be considerate of them. And it's apparent that what Joseph had experienced in the famous ups and downs of his own life, well, those seasons made him sensitive and compassionate toward others.So he asked the question and verse eight they said to him, "We have had dreams and there is no one to interpret them. And Joseph said to them, 'Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.'" Well, first thing you got to notice is he has this God reflex. As soon as he hears about they have a problem, let's take it to the Lord. And also, there's an implicit declaration of belief here. God sends dreams and God can interpret dreams. And by the way, this shows that he never stopped believing that those dreams that God had sent him early on were from God and they were to come true. Joseph's faith has also demonstrated in the fact that he doesn't take credit. He could have said, I have the skills of being a great interpreter of dreams. He says, no, no, no, let's take it to the Lord.Well, what has God just done? He has given Joseph the opportunity to testify to his glory. Now no matter what circumstances we're in, in God's providence, we have a choice to make. Will I trust whatever the circumstance I'm in, will I trust God today? Will I trust that God's hand of providence brought me here and God's hand of providence will take me out of here? Will I trust Him today? And part of trusting God is giving glory to Him verbally saying, "God, I praise you for this day. I praise you for this season. Whatever it is, I will give you glory." Joseph meant only God alone can give us the wisdom to understand what's happening here. And he, like Daniel, that's how Daniel approached dreams when he worked in Babylon. He said, "Let's take it to the Lord. I can ask of him and he can reveal it."So point three is, Joseph interprets their dreams and this is verse nine. "So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, 'In my dream there was a vine before me. And on the vine there were three branches. And as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth and the clusters ripe ripened with grapes. Pharaoh's cup is was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.'" So the cupbearer speaks first, perhaps because he wasn't really worried about his dream, it was kind of a pleasant dream. He didn't understand it, but there wasn't reason for misgivings. And we see here that there is a quick succession of ensuing steps. The blossoms develop into grapes and then all of a sudden there's complete clusters which ripen on the spot and then he takes them and he makes wine out of them. And pharaoh's cup is filled. And obviously a beautiful cup. That's the image.So what does Joseph say in verse 12? Then Joseph said to him, "This is its interpretation. The three branches are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office and you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formally when you were his cupbearer." Now had Joseph lost faith by this point, faith in God, faith in God's revelations through dreams, we would imagine him to say something like, "Gentlemen, you had dreams. Congratulations. I had dreams. Let me tell you about my dreams. No, you don't want dreams. Forget the dreams. Don't let anyone interpret the dreams for you." Had he lost faith, that's exactly what he would do. No, no. God grants Joseph the power and the wisdom to discern the interpretation of the dream with perfect clearness, partially because he never stopped believing in the Lord.He walked before the faith of the Lord. He communed with the Lord, he was abiding with the Lord. So there's no wavering or uncertainty on Joseph's part. He seizes upon the essential features of the dream that are now, after the interpretation, clear to us. The expression, lift up your head, is counter to your head was down, you were gloomy. But in three days, your head will be lifted up and you will be restored. And that's precisely what happened. And because of the accuracy of his interpretation, the cupbearer, though he forgot Joseph for two years, he remembered Joseph when Pharaoh needed interpretation. That's next chapter.We continue in Genesis 40:14. Joseph said, "Only remember me when it is well with you and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. For I was indeed stolen out of land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit." One commentator says that what we see here is the powerful man born to rule is also a needful one. We must understand that after 11 long years we see that Joseph, he knows he's innocent. And one of the lessons we can learn here is a lot of people, when they talk about God's sovereignty or God's providence, they talk about it in a way where it does nullify the human will. Does Joseph believe in God's providence, God's sovereignty? God has allowed me to be put ... yes. But does Joseph say, therefore, I will resign myself and never try to improve my situation? No, of course not.He believes that God put him here, put him here for a reason. But at the very first opportunity to get out, he says, "Look, remember me, please remember me." And it's a measured request. He doesn't say, "I want FaceTime with Pharaoh." He just says, "Can you mention me and mention my cause?" In Genesis 40 verse 16, when the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, "I also had a dream. There were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head." First thing to point out is Egyptians apparently loved their carbs, they loved bread. The dictionary of Egyptian from this period lists 38 different kinds of cake and 57 varieties of bread. So this is a big deal for them. And that's why, by the way, the famine with the grain is kind of a big deal because they're like, we love our carbs. And imagine, seven years with no carbs and thanks to Joseph that was wasn't as bad as it could have been.But so the chief baker has a dream and he hears the cupbearers favorable interpretation and he thinks, perhaps my dream was also favorable. The top basket had a variety of some of every sort of pharaoh's food, a handiwork of the baker. And none of this is unusual, butlers of that time, bakers of that time were men who commonly carried the baskets on their head. But one thing the baker failed to notice, which is really the outstanding thing of this dream and really ominous, he wasn't able to drive the birds away. The birds ate unhindered. Have you ever been to Nahant Beach? It's like the seagulls there, just demonic. And that's what's happening here. They really are demonic. And birds, by the way, usually are a sign of something ominous in scripture.Joseph has a decision to make. How will I interpret this guy's dream? Genesis 40 verse 18. "Joseph answered and said, 'This is its interpretation. The three baskets are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree and the birds will eat the flesh from you.' So he's going to be lifted up too, but quite in a different way. And the same language is used here, your head will be lifted up and then the Hebrew just adds from you, showing he will be decapitated following by hanging on a tree and then the birds of prey would eat his flesh. Judging by Joseph's kindness, he probably broke this unwelcome news as kindly as he could. But he does break the bad news. He doesn't say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Baker, I can't interpret your dreams or I'd rather not interpret your dreams, or I'd rather not ruin your day by talking about something negative."No, God has a revealed good news to Joseph and bad news. And Joseph isn't the spiritual coward and he doesn't attack the wisdom of God. If God has revealed that this is His word, we are to proclaim that this is His word. And if we as Christians are going to preach heaven, we also must preach hell if we're going to be faithful to the Lord and His word. And also, Joseph didn't make up the interpretation of the dream. He doesn't enhance it in any way. He doesn't make up God's providence. He simply reported it. God gave him a message and he shared that message and he did it as lovingly as he could.The fourth subheading is, dreams come true. And this is verses 20 through 23. "On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. He restored the chief cupbearer to his position and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him." So every interpretation of Joseph proved to be true. In fact, the specific words and phrases spoken to the cupbearer and to the baker, verses 13, 19, are echoed here, just to underline the precision with which Joseph predicted the future. How encouraging this must have been for Joseph.For 11 years, he had believed that his dreams would come true. He never wavered in his conviction despite his circumstances. And now, he had solid objective evidence that God's hand is upon him, he still has God's anointing and that God has purposes for him. And he brilliantly interpreted this pair of dreams. So now that he was doubly sure that his own dreams would be fulfilled and he knows that God is with him, what's he thinking? He's thinking that's it. My stint in prison is over. Praise be to God. He thinks he's going to be at the birthday party with Pharaoh. He thinks he's going to be chilling with the cupbearer. That's what he's thinking. He's preparing for the party. And then a month goes by and in the court, the news has circulated that, yeah, everything Joseph said, it happened with the cupbearer, and yet the cupbearer did nothing. The cupbearer forgot.What we see here is another two long years of disappointment, two whole years. That's what the next chapter says. Joseph experienced disappointment and after disappointment. Throughout the whole story, his brother's murderous rejection of him, evil in return for doing the good and resisting Potiphar's wife, the withering disappointment from the forgetful cupbearer. Joseph's life teaches us that disappointments are essential. They're not just part of our life, they're essential to our spiritual growth because they demand at this moment, Lord, I want this thing. Lord, I'm begging for whatever this is. At that the moment you got to exhibit patience and faith and rest all your hope upon God.Well, it's those seasons, in particular, of disappointment that refine us. As V Raymond Edman says, "Delay never thwarts God's promises, it only polishes his instrument." And if you take a step back and just meditate, why two more years, Lord? Why two more years? Part of it is, he needed the preparation. In two years, Joseph would go from being an absolute nobody catapulted to the second position in all of Egypt. And Pharaoh, at that moment, when he elevates Joseph, changes Joseph's name to Egyptian and gives Joseph an Egyptian wife. He's trying to Egyptianize Joseph, meaning, you're going to believe what we believe.And on top of that, the wife that he gives Joseph comes from a family of the highest priests of their religion, of the sun god. So Joseph, as a 30-year old man, will be tossed into this court of idol worship and a life that will be lived amidst a swirl of sensuality with Mrs. Potiphars everywhere. And the intrigues of the court, like happened with the baker, that was just a part of daily life with lying and backbiting, et cetera. So Joseph had to be prepared for the responsibility with which he would be tasked. So God continues to prepare him and He continues to teach him. And his greatest successes were not at the top, but actually here in the pit where he's wrestling with God and God is expanding his soul reflex and instinctively he turns to Lord despite the disappointments. God could have conveyed all of these truths about Joseph's preparation by simply listing them.As I prepare a sermon on long narratives, I'm like, "Lord, all these lessons that I have to learn from the text, why don't you just list them? That'd be great." Be like, at the end of the ... okay, here's the three lessons and that'd be tremendous. But instead, God has chosen to illustrate these lessons in the fabric and text of a human life so that his life can be pressed and impressed on ours. So in this 40th chapter of Genesis, it records the final living touches upon a man that will be used mightily by God.There are moments in the Christian walk where it feels like the Lord has forgotten you. It feels like the omniscient God of the universe has turned His back on you. We've all been in seasons like that. Experienced Christians can only too well imagine him in this prison year after year, crying out as the psalmists do. For example, in Psalm 13, "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Lift up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken." But notice the turn in the text. "But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me."Those moments of God's dark providence, when you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, you got to make a decision. And the decision the psalmist makes is no matter what, "But I have trusted in your steadfast love." That's what walking by faith looks like. God has led me into the valley of the shadow of death and He will lead me out. God is strengthening Joseph's faith by teaching him not to judge his circumstances only by his senses, but to trust God for His grace. Two Corinthians 5:6 through 10 says, "So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil."The passage indicates that God is furthering His glory by delaying Joseph's desire to get out of prison for several reasons. But if God had gotten Joseph out of prison through the cupbearer's initial pleas, then Joseph would've thought that the cupbearer was the rescuer. "Oh Lord, thank you for sending this guy to save me." And God would rather glorify Himself in the life of Joseph by making it absolutely clear it wasn't a cupbearer, it was actually God miraculously intervening. And finally, in this very act of delaying the answer to Joseph's desires, God is establishing His plan to save Israel. And through saving Israel, provides salvation for each one of us.For example, if Joseph was freed from the prison by the mere appeal of the cupbearer, well, he'd never get appointed to be second in command in the house of Pharaoh. Why? Pharaoh wouldn't even know about it. Okay, you're freed because unjustly, you were sold into captive. What would Joseph have done at that moment? He would've gone home. And then what happens? And then in a few years, the famine starts and then he's in the same situation, helpless as his whole family. No, God says, "You got to wait a couple more years and then Pharaoh will have that dream through which Joseph will be elevated." So God had a better plan than Joseph and a better purpose. And that plan meant waiting, it meant being frustrated. It meant being perplexed. It meant being patient. But also, it meant growing in the Lord and growing in faith.Many a lesson we can learn from here. I don't know what dreams the Lord has given you, and I'm not here to interpret them, but there is something that I can proclaim, and I can proclaim it with absolute assurance because it's 100% true. I can proclaim the future for each one of us. If you are not in the Lord Jesus Christ, dear friend, you will experience damnation for eternity. If you do not trust in Jesus Christ, then the penalty for your sin is upon you. Galatians 3:13, 14 says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed as everyone who is hanged on a tree', so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith."In the same way that the baker was cursed and he was hanging on a tree, anyone that was crucified by the Roman empire was also considered to be cursed in a theological sense from the Old Testament scriptures that was predicted, cursed is everyone who was hanged on a tree. Well, Jesus Christ hung on a tree and experienced the curse. And you say, "Why? Why does the second person of the trinity, the son of God, why is he hanging on a tree?" Because Jesus knew the bad news. He knew the bad news that faces every single person who was outside of Christ.If you're here this morning, you've never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, you might have been brought here by the sovereignty of God, for God to proclaim into your heart, into your soul of souls, that you are a sinner. You are under divine condemnation. You are headed for a Christ-less eternity. You are with without hope without God in this world. You are ultimately destined to spend eternity in the lake of fire where it grows hotter and hotter and hotter. And yes, for all of eternity. And yes, I know hell and fire and damnation of preaching, but I didn't invent it, it's God's word. It's in holy scripture. Jesus believed this. You're destined to be in the place of blackness, of darkness forever in which it gets darker and darker and darker.I'm the Lord's ambassador and I don't add anything to the message and I just proclaim it as it's given to us. And the reason why we start with the bad news and we share the bad news is to get you to a place to see how great the good news is. That there is a message of mercy. While your heart is still beating on this side of eternity, you have a decision to make. Will I accept the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, the second person of the Trinity who took it upon himself to carry out the intention of the Father and to provide atonement for us, for sinners.He suffered in blood and bled and died on the cross at Calvary and he cried out, "It is finished." The work of atonement is accomplished. The blood was shed, and now salvation is offered to you. Well, dear friend, what are you going to do with it? Will you accept the grace of God? If God, through the Holy Spirit, today is convicting you and you know it, you know it. Deep inside, you're, yes, yes, someone is speaking, someone is stirring. That's the spirit of God. The Spirit of God's bringing conviction upon you. And dear friend, you have a decision to make and I urge you to flee to the cross and accept the salvation of Jesus Christ.What do you need to do? Well, you need to acknowledge your sin and your iniquity before the Lord. "Lord, I have sinned, I have broken commandments. I have lived as if you don't exist or as if your opinion of me does not matter." Acknowledge your sin, your iniquity before the Lord and receive as a free gift, salvation by grace through faith. God wants to give you all of eternal life. So receive the Lord Jesus as your savior and rest for eternity in the forgiveness that God offers. And then, dear friend, put your trust in the Lord again on a daily basis. And that's what we do. Deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Him even through the seasons of dark providence, knowing that He will get us through.With that said, would you please pray with me? Our Heavenly Father, we pray, Lord, that you would teach us to embrace all of the truths in this text. And Lord, I pray, continue to stretch our ability to understand all of your purposes, but even when we don't understand what's happening before us, Lord, we do trust you. We believe in you, and we thank you, Lord, for the example of many saints in this church who have endured much in their walk with you, things that would've crumpled lesser humans, but because of their own trust in you, you've given them joy to endure as Christ did. And Lord, we pray that you continue by the Holy Spirit to forge us, to hone us, to polish us, to refine us, to strengthen us even through the fires of life, so we can be a powerful weapon in your hands against the powers of darkness.Lord, continue to build up your church and continue to use each one of us. Fill us with the Holy Spirit, protect us from the evil one and continue to glorify your name in and through us. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

[00:00:03.130] - Speaker 1Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.[00:00:43.440] - Speaker 2This is the funny part of the whole story. I really don't. I gave some really good spiritual advice to somebody that came back to me after they said that was some of the best advice I'd ever been given. And I was like, I am embarrassed and apologized because I have no idea what I said. Some of you remember this is probably three, maybe four years ago, but I had some really weird neurological nerve thing going on. And they put me on like, there's this drug, this drug. And then they found something from I don't know what corner of what street they found it on, but I was out of the moon. The joke in our house is, after I was better, thank you to a lot of prayer and care from a lot of people. I got better. And it was actually, I think it's miraculous that I did. And sometime later, my brother in law who lives in our basement, he goes, can you make those cinnamon buns again? I said, I've never made cinnamon buns in my life. He said, no, you made the best cinnamon buns we have ever had. Don't you remember?[00:01:39.450] - Speaker 2And everybody was just like, yeah, those were just phenomenal. And it was when I was high as a kite, I made these most amazing cinnamon buns. I don't even remember, and I've been asked to make them since. And I just don't want to go down that path again. Sometimes I think of that story because I had no idea what I was making when I was making it. I was not there when I was making this thing. I needed to bruise something up. And somehow out of me came this amazing cinnamon bun feast. I think my question for that, in sharing that, as we talk about a little bit about ingredients, we're going to weave some of these stories together is that sometimes we wonder, did God know what he was doing when he was making us? I don't want to really imply that God as high as the kite when he was making us, but sometimes if you read the Psalms, we get these stories of God's people saying, god, do you know what you're doing here? Do you know what you are making? We identify God that you created everything. And we love that you created everything.[00:02:49.500] - Speaker 2But when it comes to people, when it comes to us, we are a little bit mystified. Do you know what you are doing here? Are we, as humans, a cosmic mix up? Are we a mistake? Are we a fluke of nature? There are many philosophies out there that would say we sure are right. Humans are a big byproduct of some weird cosmic gas situation. There's nothing behind it. Enjoy the ride while you have it. Good. Well, it's a question that these writers ask in their anxiety about what it is to be human. In Psalm eight, we get a little bit of this. It's a psalm of David. It says this when I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you set in place says, what are we, mere mortals? That you would think about them, human beings, that you should care for them. He takes a look at humans and he's wondering, what are these things? The world is so big, there's so much going on, and what's a human? We're mere mortals, we have a short lifespan. We're here and then we're gone. Maybe we pass some stuff onto our kids.[00:04:02.500] - Speaker 2But what is this about? Right? Do you know what you've made here? God? Maybe you're wondering this here today too. Maybe you enjoy a good existential crisis sometimes where you stop and lean back and say, what am I here for? What is this life about? What is it to be human? Do we just come here and we suffer a little bit and we're done? Do I work my job and try to save up enough for retirement, which disappears when I finally get there? What is this about? Well, the psalm cries a similar cry and then we read he goes on in it, the writer of this psalm, and it says this says, yet you made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority. He tries to orient humans in God's big story. Humans are somehow not as low as worms. They aren't way down there, and they aren't as high as God. They're somewhere in between. They have been given by God this authority to occupy this middle space, higher than this, lower than this. Humans, the ancient songs say they have a place in God's world.[00:05:14.120] - Speaker 2Humans have a home here. And science would say that we live in this wee little thin layer around a planet that's spinning through cosmic space. If we go up a little higher, we will suffocate. If we go down below, we'll suffocate. But we're all happy, right, in this little layer, right? It's kind of weird when you step back with it. If this is too much for you, then you can go back to what a lot of us do, which is to say, I can't think about it. But these psalms, they unpack it. We stand above the soils and the minerals around us, but we are below the angels, who in turn belong to God. And this cry rings through what are we? Last week we asked, Where are we? And we learned about God finding God's people or finding this husband and wife, Adam and Eve, under the undergrowth and said, Where are you? I had to discover that. And in this, we wonder, along with all these before us, what are we? And so our big conversation that we're doing is we're going to ask these big questions about what it is to be human.[00:06:17.740] - Speaker 2Because what you believe about being human will shape your entire life. It will shape everything you do. Your perceived origin story, where you came from, your place in the vast universe and all that we can and cannot do. It will utterly form us. And it could make us hide under a rock and shake in fear or step out boldly into this life. I think we have one beautiful life to live. And I think in Jesus we can step out in a beautiful way. So into this whole vast story comes Jesus, who shows us and demonstrates to us not only what it is to be human, but he reframes everything in a way that we can see ourselves, others and our creator with. This resounding proclamation that humans, the very ones standing in front of him, every human he met, that they can know who they are and whose they are. We are not going around with our eyes closed, blind, but we are stepping in as followers of Jesus with a huge capacity to step into life as a full human. Jesus lays out the foundation for the quest for humanity and for purpose by becoming a human.[00:07:32.300] - Speaker 2And to show us how. I want to share just a few things here as to what we are. What we are. There's three really basic biblical principles that we stand on that often goes in contrast to what the world around us might tell us. And if we had even just these three to wake up to every morning, we would be on a good start. For something that I'm going to share here that I think Jesus does in us. And it's this number one, we are God's handiwork. We are his beautiful creation. He made us like a sculptor, make something he loves. But this is a living creation that super surpasses anything. I've been online playing with AI a little bit. Has anybody been playing with this stuff? You can ask a computer to say things and it sounds almost human, right? You can ask it to make art and it sounds almost human. But we are his handiwork. All these things are just trying to mimic what a human can do. Ephesians 210 says this for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus. To do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.[00:08:41.890] - Speaker 2Christians start here. We start by declaring that we are God's design, made by God and in God's creative and abundant love. God made us where's handiwork his workmanship. We are owned by someone in his imagination. He thought of us and said this is just perfect. I want to make this. And creators are proud of what they made. Doesn't matter what it goes through. They are proud of what they made. And they look and they say this is good. And when God is proud of us, it means that he also has a purpose for us, even if we don't always see what that is. So we are God's handiwork number 1. Second, we are dependent on God. Humans have this amazing they occupy an amazing, unique place in the animal world. We are not like all the other animals. And I looked at scientists are trying to figure out why are humans so different from all the other animals? And humans have this amazing capacity to see themselves from outside. And philosophers, they say that humans can see themselves from outside. I actually saw a video of a bear. They had put up a mirror in a forest and this bear came around the corner and saw the mirror and just freaked out on it, right?[00:10:04.860] - Speaker 2Smashing it, going around behind it, wondering where the bar is, just not aware that it's just a mirror, right? We as humans, we can see ourselves from outside. And the more we see ourselves from outside, the more we get to actually see what it is we are made of. We like a pantry. We get to see and make sense and go, I'm made of this. This is inside of me. I have this capacity. And the more philosophers call this openness to the world. It is the ability for humans to have this amazing capacity for seeing so much in the future, in the past, in the present. And by having this huge expansive view, christian philosophers actually say then we must have someone who understands what this big burden is that we carry. We can think and dream and participate in the world. But guess what? We realize that for all that we are made of, we have not found something to fulfill us yet. You too? I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Right? We are longing for something. This huge expanse of imagination has only brought us to a place where we go.[00:11:09.660] - Speaker 2It's not found here. What I'm looking for isn't found here. It's not found at the mall, it's not found on the internet. And if you live long enough, guys like Solomon write great books that say, listen, I tried it all. I've had hundreds of wives. It's still not found there, right? And in the end, we wonder at this great sense of purposelessness. Even though we have the super ability to look at the meaning of it. All right? Humans are caught here. We see how in vain it is that we only have the short life and yet we long still for meaning. St. Augustine, he says this our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee, O God. We are made to be dependent on God. We are humans who are God's handiwork, and we need God for our purpose in life. These are the two foundations. We're God's handiwork, and we are dependent on God for our purpose. You can deviate from it. He'll follow you wherever you go looking for your purpose. He followed Solomon and he's like, Boy, that's a lot of wives. There my boy. But if I get 100 more, maybe okay, I'll be here in the end when you write your book saying it's all purposeless until I find God.[00:12:26.020] - Speaker 2Last one. We have a valuable origin story. We have been in our family. We have recently found out more information about Kelly's biological father. And it has been exciting. We are like we have learned more little tidbits of information that are weaving us to interesting distant family relatives. And we discovered, like this auntie. She's lovely. We even went to the same college, Kelly's biological auntie and I. And we're just like a little bit of this little origin story. A little taste of this origin story has brought some joy to us, and it's exciting. But imagine if we know our origin story in God. Imagine if we had an origin story that the Creator made us. Stan Grenz, he says that knowing our origin story comes from God. It does two things in us. It says that I am not the author of my story. Somebody else dreamed this story. Somebody else imagined how this story would go. That's number one. And number two, that we have meaning. That you are made to connect with your Creator, to have purpose, direction and resolve for your life. That being human means having value. Everyone wants to say what you're worth and what you do with your life.[00:13:42.220] - Speaker 2But having an origin story in God means that you know your value and your story is in God's hands. So these are the three quite unique Christian proclamations about being human and what we are made of. One, you are God's handiwork, you're dependent on God, and you have an origin story that gives you great value. When those three are held in our eyes and we meet Jesus, something profound happens in that because Jesus shows us how all those three things come alive in us. So Christian anthropology makes some really bold claims here. A Christian view of being human makes some very bold claims here. And either we believe those claims or we don't. There's really no easy middle ground there. Oftentimes in our faith we go, I'm kind of Christian in my worldview, actually. Our worldview needs to hold those things quite up and test stuff against it and say, Am. I really God's handiwork? Can I really depend on him? Does he really provide for me? And does my origin story start there? Or am I trying to write my own story every day? Couple words. Barra is the Hebrew word for create God.[00:15:00.210] - Speaker 2Bara everything. God created everything. All of the stuff that you are made of, the periodic table of elements, physics, chemistry, biology, that is God's creative work. Barra. But there's another word that comes a little bit after this. God created you. And you might believe this, and this alone might be your anthropology, that God started you and created you, your belief about humans and God in the created world. So what, God made me, and a lot of Christians stop here with bara. God creates you. You go, thanks. I'm here, I breathe. Now I'm going to find my own way. But there's another word. It's a word called ASA, and it means made. God made you. Did you know that when a child is born, it isn't that God creates the child? God created the mother and everything that made the child, and God created but God made the child. The child was formed in the mother's womb, right? Psalm 121 two says, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. It says God created everything, but here it's saying God made it. And this word is like an ongoing word. It means to make.[00:16:20.850] - Speaker 2He's making heaven and earth. God created everything and now he's in the business of upgrading it kind of like I talked about with the kids. God created all of the ingredients and now he's cooking, now he's making. Now he's bringing life to these ingredients and he is active in this. The word is assa. God made the heavens and the earth. This helping Lord, my help comes from the Lord who made heavens and the earth. My helping Lord, he is a maker to the present tense. He is ongoing in this making work. Not just back then, not once, not when you were born, not when your great grandparents were born, but he is ongoing in this making work. God's doing more than just great heaven and earth. He is he's building it up. He's mixing these raw ingredients. Humans are made in the image of God. Assa in the image of God. We are being made into the image of God. There was a moment in my story that's my hardest moment, my hardest moment. I've shared the story before, and I only share it once in a while because sometimes when you dig into a hard moment, you're like, I don't really want to go back there.[00:17:36.100] - Speaker 2It was a moment that some of you have heard about, but I was married before Kelly, and I was married for three years, and my wife had a series of affairs that just destroyed me. I was utterly undone. I lost my humanity in that. I lost £40. Everything I thought was true about me, that God has a plan for me, that God knows me, that God I'm His handiwork. No, that was all undone in this betraying experience. I was deeply hurt. And I remember one day I'll just tell the story for what it is. But I remember one day I stood I was in a basement street in Calgary where I was living, and I was a pastor and new pastor at this church. And I was just thinking of seeing everything disappear, even myself. I just wanted to shrivel up under the weight of this undoing. I remember I had one hand on this old dresser and another hand on this old dresser. I was standing there, and it's maybe the only time in my life that I've almost perhaps heard the voice of God. And this is what I heard. Preston, I am making you.[00:18:43.260] - Speaker 2I am making you. In this moment of my deepest undoing, I am encountering a God who is making me. Did you know that that's what I needed to hear more than anything else in my deep sorrow was that God was making me? That I wasn't just created and left to spin off into this world alone, but that I was being made by a God who sees me and knows how all the pieces go together. He knows the recipe. He knows how life comes to Preston. I am his handiwork. And he wasn't about to abandon his handiwork when I was needing the Creator the most. And he came close to me, and I believe he spoke to me. I am making you. What are you being made into today? I thought I was a worm. I thought this might be true. I thought I could maybe learn it in a book. But I was pretty educated at that time. But what I needed was I needed the presence of Jesus Himself to come to me and whisper into my heart what is true about me. My making and forming and being made is in Jesus. It is in a person.[00:19:55.160] - Speaker 2Not a philosophy of something that happened a long time ago, but it's something that is happening right now. He let me borrow his life in my moment when I did not know that I had anything going on. He said, Come and be in me. My life will be yours. The scriptures unpack this that we borrow the very make wholeness of Jesus. He is whole and complete as a human, and we get to enter into his wholeness and be made whole in Him. Two Corinthians 318 it says this and the Lord, who is Spirit, makes us more and more like Him. As we are changed into his glorious image, he is making us into what he looks like. I was a worm, and Jesus says that he wants to make me look like Him. I can't plan that I'm being made into Him. Not to be anxious or cynical or bitter or vindictive. And let me tell you, for 2 hours after I got the worst news in my life, I had 2 hours where I was not following Jesus. 2 hours where I made a master plan to go my own way, to tell my own story, to be my own strength, to figure my own way through.[00:21:16.830] - Speaker 2And in those 2 hours, Jesus, he impressed on me that he has never left me. And in those 2 hours, I made a decision that I would be formed into his image. And guess what? It took some time, but guess what I was able to do in the weeks following? I was able to forgive a person that hurt me a great deal. It was a sign that I was being made into the human that God imagined me to be. To begin to be formed into the likeness of Christ. To not carry the cynicism, the anger, the bitterness, the shame, the rage, all the things that were bubbling inside of me. I was being formed into Christ. Even in my darkest time, Jesus was betrayed too. He was sold out by a friend. He was sold out by Judas. He was denied by Peter, and all of his followers fled. If you and I were there, we wouldn't be there. We'd have been like what? Is that the way? Is that the door? We're going there. And I did that too. For two solid hours, I was out of the room until he found me. Jesus was there, alone and dehumanized on a cross, tortured and nailed to a tree.[00:22:32.820] - Speaker 2I want to end with this. The most beautiful words that Jesus shared as Jesus. This man, God come man to live in the world of all of the brokenness, who knew that every human he met was God's handiwork, that they were each dependent on God, that they had this valuable origin story. He knew all that inherently because he was the one who great gave it. And there he hung on the cross, dying a criminal's death. And he said this word when he died. His last words on the cross was this teta lisa tai which is the Greek word assa. It is finished. I made it. I did it on the cross. Jesus finishes making his people on the cross. He says, Ay, they are now complete. These people that I made in my image, I made them. And their completion is now full in me because I took on everything that is broken about them and it is in me now. That means they can live, is finished. I wonder if Jesus took his last breath as one of great pride, to feel like he was able to finish something that he started. That no sin, shame, brokenness and death would come between Him and his people anymore.[00:24:00.900] - Speaker 2That he created them. But now he made them done. Humans are done. They are whole. They are complete. When he rises from the dead, the job is over right now. You might be sitting here today and wondering. I don't feel that the goal isn't for you to sometimes feel it, but the goal isn't for you to the goal isn't for you to convince God to finish something he didn't ever finish. The goal is for you to accept what he already did for you. I finished you. I finished you. You are whole and complete. I made you. You are done. You can now be a new creation in me. All those things that cling to you to say you are undone, to say that you need to spend your life striving for some sort of career, for some sort of becoming a better parent, for becoming richer, for whatever it is you are pursuing after and going, I'm incomplete and I'm looking for these things. Jesus is saying, I finished. You already come live in me. Everything you are looking for your happiness, for your joy, for your purpose, how to live this one and beautiful life, it's fulfilled in me.[00:25:21.100] - Speaker 2I live in you and you live in me. And when you do, you get to be the complete human. You don't have to live with the cynicism and the anger and the fear anymore. You can leave that and let me show you even more and even more and even more. Our humanity is now bound in his, and it is the greatest gift I think we can give. It is the good news of the gospel, is that our humanity finds its completion in him. What are we? We are made and done in Christ and the Lord, who is Spirit, makes us more and more like Him and we are changed into his glorious image. Paul says in Psalm 22 31 says his righteous acts will be told to those not yet born and they will hear about everything he has done. Jesus, it is done. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you that you have completed something. You created the world and then you made Jesus, who welcomes us, to be done in him too. To be completed, to be made to made whole. All the broken pieces are wrapped up in you. I pray for these my friends who have this one and beautiful life.[00:26:44.430] - Speaker 2I pray that they would discover what it is to be made in you, to be completed in you, to make their lives in you. And all the things that my friends in this room, these followers of Jesus along with me, are longing for in this life, this one and beautiful and good life, all the things they are pursuing, that are giving them anxiety, that are keeping them up at night, that are making them turn to all sorts of things that are into you. I pray that in that moment, as they grip onto the sides of their dressers, that they would know that you are making each and every one of them too, that they are not undone, but they are being made and that they can trust you with every step of the making, even if it hurts. Make us. Amen. Please stand with me. I did a funeral on Saturday, and it wasn't for I hope I'm not giving much away here. I might regret saying this, but it wasn't for a family that was explicit about their hope in Jesus. And throughout the whole time, I was giving the homily and all these things, and the family asked me to kind of stay in my lane.[00:28:04.050] - Speaker 2Right. I'm a Christian pastor, so they want at least a bit of me, but not all of me. Sorry I'm being crass, but I want to just scream out the hope of Jesus. I just wanted to just yell out and say, do you know there's great hope here? This person who has passed away, guess what? They are in the hands of someone who made them, who loves them, and so are all of you. This is not hopeless. This is good. May Lord bless you and keep you. May Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace. You are his handiwork. You can depend on him. And your story begins and ends with the One who dreamed you up and holds you in his imagination even now. Amen. Amen. Go peace, my friends. Have a good week. We'll see you next week here. Bless you all. Bye.

Arm Yourself With Scripture2 Thessalonians 3:3 "But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.”As I was looking for a tea cup this morning I came across one that my sister in law gave me for Christmas.  It has a series of statements on it in two columns.  The first column is all the things we might say to ourselves when we are struggling and the other side is all the things that God says back to our statements.  It got me thinking about how many people I know that are struggling right now.  How many people I know that are wanting to do amazing things with their lives and yet are running into these negative self talk statements at each turn.  When I hear the way they are talking to themselves, I tell them the things they are saying are not true.  However, the enemy wants them to believe those things are true because then they stop trying to accomplish amazing things.  If they believe the things they tell themselves, then they won't continue on the same path.  I am sure you know the types of statements that I am talking about as we have all said them to ourselves at one point or another.  I am not smart enough, nobody loves me, I don't deserve forgiveness, I can't go on, and so forth.  There are so many defeating things that we tell ourselves.  We tend to doubt ourselves and we tend to think we are not good enough.  However, God created us in His likeness and image so we are perfect just as we are.  I know the enemy helps put these thoughts in our head.  He likes us to feel we are helpless because when we feel like that then we aren't accomplishing God's great plan for our lives.  The ladies I know that are struggling the most right now are ladies that have dedicated their lives to the Lord.  They have a light and a fire burning inside of them to accomplish God's will and to spread His love and His light to everyone they meet.  And yet, they struggle with feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy.  This is something that is running rampant in our culture these days.  People are feeling more and more alone and they feel as though they aren't anything special.  Just by existing here on earth, you are special.  You are made in the image and likeness of God, that is another reason you are special.  So, why don't we feel special, why don't we feel loved?  I think the reason we don't feel loved or special is because we are looking for those things in this world and from those around us, instead of turning to the Lord and asking Him to show us love.  When we rely on things of this world we will always be let down because we live in a broken world.  However, God never lets us down.  He is always there for us when we need Him.  The verse above says, "But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.”  I truly believe that the evil one is behind all of our questioning.  He is the one that benefits the most from it.  However, this morning I was listening the The Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim, and she was talking about how the enemy does get in our way of doing amazing things sometimes.  Do you know what else can get in our way?  Us!  We can get in our own way as well.  You see, the enemy has no power over you unless you let Him.  Yes, he can persuade you to have these thoughts, maybe he can even put them in your head, to be honest, I am not really sure.  However, you are the only one that can decide if you want to keep having them or not.  “The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one,” but you have to turn to Him and ask Him.  If you are constantly having these attacks or constantly having this negative self talk, what are you doing about it?  One thing the Lord seems to be telling me in several different ways lately is that we have a part to play.  We don't get to just sit by and watch as God does everything for us.  We do our part and He does His part.  So what is our part?  Our part is to read God's word, learn about who God is and how He works.  Our part is to spend time with the Lord, talk with Him and listen to Him.  If we ask Him what He wants us to do and then listen, He will tell us.  One thing that we can do to combat the enemy and ourselves when it comes to negative self talk is to create a list of scripture verses that dispute the negative things we like to tell ourselves.   A friend of mine said she has a notebook like this.  I forget what she called it, maybe her book of promises, I'm not sure.  She said on the left hand side of the page she has all the things that she tells herself when she is struggling and then on the right hand side she has scripture verses that dispute those things and remind her of all that God has promised to us.  I think this is an awesome idea!  If you are someone that has a lot of negative self talk it is time to change that.  It is time to turn to the Lord and for you to know that He is there giving you strength and guidance.  He is protecting you and you can arm yourself with scripture so the next time the enemy tries to convince you that you are not smart enough, you are not loved, or you can't go on, you can use the Lord's word against the enemy, just as Jesus did when He was attacked by the enemy after His 40 days in the desert.  If you want to read about this it is in Matthew 4:1-11 or Luke 4.  Today I would like to get your list started with the ones that are on my tea cup.  I am sure if you do a quick internet search for “I say vs. God says” you will probably find even more.  I encourage you, if there are certain negative things you are telling yourself over and over again, do an internet search for bible verses about that thing and arm yourself with scripture.  Here are the ones from my teacup:You say I can't figure it out. God says I will direct your steps. (Proverbs 3:5-6)You say I am too tired. God says I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28-30)You say it's impossible. God says all things are possible. (Luke 18:27)You say nobody loves me. God says I love you. (John 3:16)You say I can't forgive myself. God says I forgive you. (Romans 8:1)You say it's not worth it. God says it will be worth it. (Romans 8:28)You say I'm not smart enough. God says I will give you wisdom. (1 Corinthians 1:30)You say I'm not able. God says I am able. (2 Corinthians 9:8)You say I can't go on. God says my grace is sufficient. (Two Corinthians 12:9)You say I can't do it. God says you can do all things. (Philippians 4:13)You say I can't manage. God says I will supply all your needs. (Philippians 4:19)You say I'm afraid. God says I have not given you fear. (2 Timothy 1:7)You say I feel all alone. God says I will never leave you alone. (Hebrews 13:5)Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we thank you for all your promises and for all the ways you protect us from the evil one and from all that wishes us harm.  Lord, help us to rely on you and to arm ourselves with your scripture.  If there is a certain scripture you want us to know I ask that you put in on our hearts Lord.  Help us to take action and to create this list and put it somewhere where we will see it often and where we can remind ourselves of it when we are struggling.  God you are truly amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us.  We thank you for making us in your likeness and image and we ask you to help us appreciate that more.  We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen!Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus.  Tomorrow we will have another witness from my friend Anna.  She will talk about her journey to discover the Lord and what he was all about.  I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow, have a blessed day!

Do you remember years ago, we used to see people walking around baseball stadiums holding a sign, which said "John 3:16"? I used to think, why are those people doing that? Now I know. John 3:16 is probably the single most important verse in the Bible. What does this verse mean? Does it apply to me? Listen in as Mike goes in to detail about this key verse.   Transcript: Well, today we're going to talk about John 316 that says, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 316 is probably the most popular Bible verse where even some non believers even recognize that verse, maybe because that verse, John 316, was on signs that people walked around ballparks and arenas, which you don't see that anymore, probably because of it. It's too exclusive for today. And it's unfortunate that we are not walking around the ballparks because this verse is really one of the most important verses in the Bible. But let's break it down. As far as what does John 316 really mean? It says for God, so love the world. Love is the very nature of God. One John 416 says that God is love and love is an action. So yes, we have loving feelings, but loving feelings are a result of a loving action. And so feelings will follow our thoughts, feelings will follow our actions. But love is more than just a feeling. And in this case, God did take an action. It says in one John four, nine, and ten that this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world, that we might live through him. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. So God took an action. He sent Jesus Christ into the world. He was fully God. He was fully human, but his purpose was to take away the sins of the world. And then on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and came back to life. And the Spirit of God is what brought Jesus back to life. And so that was the action that God had taken. Two Corinthians 514 says that Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. So this love of God, this action of God that God took on our behalf, is what really compels us when we grab a hold of what this really is. There are many different views of what God's love is. Sometimes people look at God as a vending machine and that they pray for certain things and that they expect God to come through with those prayers. But yes, God comes through with prayers in our life, but not always according to what we want. Our deepest need is to know God. It's something that is so important and to have a relationship with him not based on fear, not based on worry or anger, but based on pure love. That God is love and only love. Religion has kind of taken God's love out of context because there are so many conditions that are put onto God's love. For instance, that a Christian comes to Christ and is born again and now they're required to be obedient and follow the law. And those conditions are what make people run from God. Our obedience and our trustworthiness are just byproducts of knowing the love of God. It's nothing that we have to do to earn God's love. It's because of God's love. So it's way different than sometimes we hear in the pulpit in different religions. So God loves the world. And when you see the word world, put your name in there, that's you Mike, for instance, God so loved Mike. God so loved Frank or sue or whoever. It doesn't matter. Put your name right in that spot that God so loves you. And that was an action. Now, what did God do? It says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. And so God gave something. He gave his only Son, Jesus, to us. And that's a gift, right? When you give something to somebody, it is a gift. And God certainly has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit when we put our faith in him. Acts four says, on one occasion while he was eating with them, referring to Jesus, he gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. Well, this gift was in the heart of God from the beginning of time when he created mankind. He knew that man would fall and the Spirit of God would leave Adam at the time who was the first man, and that we are all born in Adam's image, spiritually dead. And so we need to be made alive and to be born again. And that is the gift of God is to give his life to us so that he can live his life through us and give us eternal life. And so in Acts two, one to four, this finally happened. It says, when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. These were the disciples. Suddenly, a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. It says that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. So this was the first time that the Spirit of God had ever come to live inside of mankind. Before that God was upon them. He was around them, but he was never living in mankind until Acts two, one, four, known as the Day of Pentecost. But that is the gift of God. And it's the gift of God today is to receive eternal life and be born again, just like they were born again back in those days. Galatians 220 says, I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me the life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So there again you see the Word gave that God sent Christ into this world to give us the Spirit of Christ living in us when we put our faith in him. And so that's this meaning here that God gave his one and only Son as a gift to all of mankind. The next part of this verse, that whoever believes so for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish. So this is a word that we need to really think through believes in Him because James 2019 says that even the demons believe there is one God. And so the word belief is different than the word faith. The word belief means that I believe that something exists. Say, for instance, a chair. I believe that this chair will hold me up and I might just stand there in front of the chair and say, I believe that chair will hold me. But faith is putting your belief into action. It's putting faith in what you believe. So when you sit down in the chair, you've just put your faith in what you say you believe. Sometimes belief and faith are used anonymously But I believe that these verses in the Book of John and other places about believing in him are referring to putting our faith in what we believe. And so we really need to know why we need to put our faith in Jesus. So God so loved this world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in Him will have eternal life. Well, that sounds a lot like John 360 NIV version, but this is the contemporary English version that says that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life. Most of the versions do say believe in him, but believe and trust are really what the writer of the Book of John is trying to get to us to put our faith in what we believe. So why do we need to believe in Jesus? Why do you need eternal life? This is what is really missing in many sermons and many online teachings is why do I need to be born again? Why do I need eternal life? And that takes us back all the way to the garden. And we have to go back there to see why we need eternal life. Because Adam was created in the image of God. He was created alive physically, but he also was created alive spiritually. Genesis 127 says that so God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them male and female. So God created Adam and the image of himself. Genesis 27 says that then God gave the breath of life to Adam. Now that was the breath of life physically in his lungs so he could breathe. But also that's where the spirit of God was given to Adam. And that only means that God was living inside of Adam. The spirit of God was in dwelt in Adam. That's the good news of how mankind was created. Now, Genesis 216 to 17 says that the Lord commanded the man, Adam, you're free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, for when you eat of it, you will surely die. So this story of Anna and Eve, it's been talked about and sometimes ridiculed about over the years. But really, this is the crux. This is the place where the spirit of God left mankind because Adam and Eve were confused, they were lied to by Satan. In Genesis three, four and five, it says that Satan says, you will certainly not die. Go ahead and eat from that tree. The serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So this is where Satan tricked Adam and Eve and they ate from the tree in the middle of the garden that God told them not to. God gave them only one command. And this command was, do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden or you will surely die. Well, they did in Genesis 322 says, oh my gosh, this is an unbelievable verse. And says, And God said, the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from the tree of life and live forever. So that was it. And then Genesis 323 says that the Lord banished him. That's referring to Adam. But Eve was with him from the Garden of Eden, and there was a waving sword banishing and keeping them from now from the tree of life. So, oh, my gosh, this was it. The Spirit of God had left Adam and Eve and they were spiritually dead. They were condemned for hell. And this is how it all began. Genesis five, three, it says that when Adam lived 130 years, so that's how we know he didn't die physically that day when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Here says that Adam would live 130 years altogether. He lived 930 years. But it says at 130, he had a son. Now, catch this in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth. Adam's son, Seth was not born in the image of God. He was born in the image and likeness of Adam. Now, that's so contrary to today, because we hear from the pulpit again, from sermons from everywhere, news, TV that were born in the image of God. And that is not true. We are born in the image and likeness of Adam, spiritually dead, condemned for hell. That is the way, unfortunately, as a result of Adam's disobedience, he didn't obey God in the garden. We are all born that way. That is so crucial to understand that, that we're more than just sinners in need of forgiveness because that's what we hear. Again, if you ask most people what's their understanding of Salvation, they'll say that Jesus took away my sins and it stops there. The gospel. The good news is more than just that Jesus took away our sins is that we're dead spiritually as a result of Adam's disobedience and in need of life. Romans 512, it says, therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, that's Adam and death through sin, like we've been talking about, that spiritual death came about as Adam sin and his disobedience. And it says in this way, death came to all people because all of sinned. So the spiritual death has come to all people. All means all. That means everybody. There's nobody excluded from that. Ephesians 21 says, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins and that's how we came into this world. Spiritually dead. Now, how many of you know that? How many of you have heard that before that this is our real problem. This is why John 316 is such a crucial verse. Romans 623 says, for the wages of sin is death, the cost of sin, of Adam's sin, of Adam's disobedience. The wages of his sin is death. But contrary to that, the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ. John 17 three says, now this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ who you have sent. So we need to know our condition. We need to know how we are born into this world more again than just a sinner. We all know that we sin. We all know we do wrong things and think wrong things. We know that. And thank God Jesus took away our sins at the cross. He took away the sins for the whole world. But if you go to a doctor because you don't feel well, before he can give you a remedy or a prescription or to help you feel better, he's got to diagnose you. He has to tell you. He has to take some tests and blood pressure and take some lab tests to find out what's wrong. What's the matter with you before he can prescribe anything? If his diagnosis is off, then his prescription and his remedy will be off. You could die or you could have a long term illness as a result of the wrong diagnosis. Well, in the same way, if we don't understand our diagnosis that we're spiritually dead in need of life, we may miss that. That is why I'm doing this podcast. That is why we started Grace Coaches, that you would know that. You would know Jesus, you would know that you need eternal life and why you need eternal life. So again, we're just not sinners in need of forgiveness. We're dead spiritually and in need of life. So the next part of the verse says that whoever believes in Him shall not perish. Well, what does perish mean? It means to die. It means to die eternally in this case, to go to hell or to stay in our condemned state of spiritual death. John 318 says, Whoever believes in him is not condemned, that him is Jesus. But whoever does not believe in Jesus catch this stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. Jesus didn't come to condemn anybody. Like so much of religion teaches, that's why people run away from religion, because of the message that we come to Christ and all of a sudden we're condemned and God is watching over us and spanking us and hitting us with the great wooden spoon in the sky. Well, people run from that. And that's not true because he's taken away all of our sins. Matthew 25 46 that says that then they will go away to eternal punishment. But the righteous to eternal life. The righteous are those who believe, who put their faith in what they believe, who've come to Christ. And the Spirit of God has come to live inside of that person and that person is born again. Well, those are the righteous. They're righteous because they have the righteous one Jesus living in them. That's what makes them righteous. It's an imputed righteousness. John 1028 says, I give them eternal life and they shall not perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. So once you are born again, you will never lose that your Salvation, you are saved eternally. John 524 is one of my favorite verses for very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life. You put your faith in Jesus, you have crossed over from spiritual death to spiritual life, and you'll never go back to spiritual death because all of your sins are forgiven, all of the promises of God that he says, I'll never leave you. You are saved completely and eternally. You will not perish. But those who don't believe in Jesus, they will perish, they will die eternally, they will be condemned, and they will enter a place called Hell, the day of their last breath on Earth. And so that's the reason for evangelism is to tell as many people as we can that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish spiritually, but have eternal life. And eternal life is mentioned 17 times in the book of John. It's a 180 from perishing, isn't it? Eternal life is forever, it lasts forever. There is no end to eternal life. It's perpetual and it's forever. We can't lose that once we have it. Why is that? Because now we have the eternal one Jesus living inside of us. Why are we right with God? Because Jesus is righteous. Why do we have eternal life? Because Jesus is eternal life. And where does he live? He lives in us. And we read Galatians 220 earlier that Jesus lives in us and we'll be with God forever. And so this is so crucial It's so crucial to know our condition. It's so crucial to come to Christ for God's provision of eternal life. And I'll just end the podcast today on this last verse one John 511 and twelve and this is the testimony God has given us eternal life and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son does not have life. I pray that you ponder on these verses and ponder on this podcast pass it on to a friend. That is our goal as a result of this podcast today that somebody would come to Christ and be saved and have eternal life. God bless. Thank you for listening to Grace Coach. If you want to connect with us, we would love to engage with you. Email us at the Gracecoach@gmail.com visit our Facebook page or visit our website gracecoach.org.  

We are going UP on a Wednesday!! Branon and Jiles talk Aretha, Brittney, Uncle Joe, Haiti, Covid and more!

When they heard, “it is finished! Father, into the hands I commend my spirit!“ They knew that he was dead, and they went to work. They boldly identified with Jesus Christ at a time when he seemed like a failure and his cars hopelessly defeated. The Sabbath was about to dawn. Jesus had finished the work of the “New creation”. Two Corinthians 5:17, and now he would rest.

00:00 Steve Bannon Talks To Revolver, https://www.revolver.news/2020/10/steve-bannon-hunter-biden-hard-drive-exclusive-interview/ 04:00 The CCP's Ownership of Joe Biden Pt.1 (w/ Rudy Giuliani), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-8BtQg6F2A 12:20 Steve Bannon talks to Sky News Australia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew1YARgHdA0 59:40 Trump attends church in Las Vegas, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb1x9Jx8IUM 1:04:00 Two Corinthians walk into a casino 1:41:20 Rabbi Yaron Reuven: BEN SHAPIRO: GENIUS OR HERETIC?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlA-ZLj17Q 1:55:30 Casey returns: Thucydides on Nature & War, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMktWNQWhTM 2:01:30 Mike Allen on Election 2020 2:04:45 Emails Reveal Hunter Biden's Associates Helped Communist-Aligned Chinese Elites Secure White House Meetings, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/16/exclusive-this-is-china-inc-emails-reveal-hunter-bidens-associates-helped-communist-aligned-chinese-elites-secure-white-house-meetings/ 2:07:00 Why the Alt-Right's Most Famous Woman Disappeared, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/alt-right-star-racist-propagandist-has-no-regrets/616725/ 2:17:30 Scott Adams: Biden's Mansion, Facebook Fact-Checking, Sweden Mystery, Mask Controversy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3MWnVk2LwU 2:28:00 Michelle Malkin on the media and the mob: https://twitter.com/newsmax/status/1317611433266499587 2:41:00 Lauren Southern responds to Daniel Lombroso, https://hubpages.com/politics/Just-Promise-Not-To-Tell-The-Atlantic 2:51:00 Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Michigan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5DQ0kyNIu0 3:08:00 The Spanish Civil War, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X7CMGXAAVo 3:13:50 Trump jokes about being called a fascist, comments on friendly transition of power at Michigan rally, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIrz29NRZs https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/17/doj-94-percent-of-foreign-nationals-in-u-s-federal-prison-are-illegal-aliens/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/18/trump-ad-blasts-joe-biden-sons-lucrative-business-dealings-turns-out-he-lied/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/16/exclusive-this-is-china-inc-emails-reveal-hunter-bidens-associates-helped-communist-aligned-chinese-elites-secure-white-house-meetings/ Polls, questions, super chats: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Periscope: https://www.pscp.tv/lukeford/1nAJEAnVRDaJL Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 Reb Dooovid: https://twitter.com/RebDoooovid https://www.patreon.com/lukeford http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Book an online Alexander Technique lesson with Luke: https://alexander90210.com Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

Encore release December 18, 2018. Encore release September 10, 2017. For the third presidential election cycle in a row, evangelical fundamentalist Christians have failed to nominate a Republican candidate that's a full-throated theocratic nut job (although they came close with Ted Cruz). And once again they're faced with the daunting task of keeping themselves relevant by throwing their weight behind the inevitable candidate, no matter how odious he may be. And so, we have people like Focus Crosshairs on the Family president James Dobson declaring, with no evidence, really, that Donald Trump (he of the bloviation and baby fingers) is now a "baby Christian" who was brought to Christ "recently." Trump himself has made laughable attempts to ingratiate himself to the fundamentalist vote, quoting "Two" Corinthians and saying his favorite Bible verse is "an eye for an eye"--the one Bible verse that Jesus explicitly refuted! Anyway, a road is being paved to give conservative Christians an path (rickety at best) to vote for Trump as one of theirs. Plus: A federal judge blocks Mississippi's Orwellian "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act," a law expressly designed to ensure anti-gay, one-man-one-woman Christian bigots ever have to deal with anyone in the LGBT community. Look for this one to be resolved in a year or two by the Supreme Court, almost certainly on the side of those who want to see all citizens treated equally and without discrimination. Ken Ham's Ark Encounter boondoggle has opened for business in central Kentucky. Holey Scripture looks at how the Ark (both Noah's and Ham's) was made. And just what the heck is "gopher" wood?

I’m gonna tell you a story from the Bible.  Well actually, I’m gonna read it from The Message Bible.  And then, I’m gonna tell you some tea about my life.  Here’s the story: II Corinthians (which is SECOND Corinthians and not “Two Corinthians, by the way) 12:7-10 relays the apostle Paul’s message like this: “Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.“ There is soooo much goodness in this passage.  Number one, Paul had seen a lot of things since he began to walk with God.  However, the enemy of his soul had another plan, and that was to give him something that would hinder him.  The Message Bible calls it a “handicap” and the King James Version calls it a “thorn” in Paul’s flesh.  Can’t you relate?  It’s the one thing that keeps you from being “perfect” in the eyes of society.  It’s that one thing that seems to always come up to try to block your progress.  It’s that one thing about you that you can’t get rid of but you wish you could.  If you ask God to reveal it to you, it will be revealed.   Here’s the thing about this little situation.  The passage of scripture references this thing as a “gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations.”  Paul didn’t say “This thing was given to me and it made me worse.”  He didn’t say “This thing was given to me and it ruined my life.”  He was able to see the “thing” for what it really was.  The enemy wanted to use it to kick up against Paul and make the way harder for him.  And because of that, Paul asked that it be removed.  He asked three times.  But what did God do?  God let him know that His grace was enough.  He let Paul know that any time he is weak, God’s strength will come through.  No matter what. So what did the next part of the scripture say?  It says, “Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.”  The weaker you get, the stronger you become. The more you exercise, the more your muscles break down at first.  The more they break down, the stronger they become the next go around.  What we see as limitations and hindrances, God sees as gifts to be expressed to the world.  Think about people who have autism.  Although they appear to be delayed in a lot of areas, they are complete geniuses in other areas.  They have heightened senses, and they can perceive things and remember things in ways that we would have to work hard and even go to school to learn how to do.  It’s amazing. Today, I want you to remember something.  No matter how old you are, no matter how much you have accomplished and no matter how much you love God, you WILL be given a thorn in your flesh.  You will have something that will come into your life to try to handicap you.  But you need to ask God what to do with it.  I’m not even telling you not to ask God to take it away.  Why?

This week, Thomas and Sam discuss their favorite bags to carry their everyday items, what’s wrong with college admissions, Two Corinthians, Climate Change, Dura Europos, and the intentions of heavily armed angry white men. Show Notes: ThisIsGround Mod Tablet 2 Sam’s Maxpedition Case Harvard calls for admissions revolution | Boston.com “This is what being outraised looks like.” | Clinton Supporter Email Is The Bern Surge for real? | Slate Who Would Make a Good President? | Pew  What Bernie Sanders Has that Hillary Doesn’t | Vox “Too Big to Fail” and Hillary | HuffPo Iowa’s key evangelical voters | MSNBC Ted Cruz is making people vote for Donald Trump | HuffPo Donald Trump or Ted Cruz | NY Times The National Review Takes on Trump | Politico Marco’s Crisis of Faith | Politico 2015 was warmest year on record | NY Times Coming recession / depression | USA Today Oregon Militants Go ISIS on Native American Relics | DailyKOS DURA! (sad) | American Magazine Sign up for the Thinking Religion newsletter … delivered weekly and full of interesting tidbits, ideas, links, and thought provoking analysis that complements the show. The post Thinking Religion 64: Two Corinthians Walk Into a Bar… appeared first on Thinking.FM.

Two Corinthians has nothing to do with anything but Donald Trump made it everything....

Two Corinthians has nothing to do with anything but Donald Trump made it everything....