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2 episodes with which god
2 episodes with which god
2 episodes with which god
Title: God's Appointed Evangelist: YOU! Text: Acts 21:37-22:21 FCF: We often struggle feeling adequate enough to share our faith with others. Prop: Because God providentially equips us to share the gospel, we must be excellent at submitting to His prompting to share the clear truth of the gospel. Scripture Intro: [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to Acts chapter 21. In a moment we'll read from the LSB starting in verse 37. You can follow along in the pew bible or whatever version you prefer. Last time in the book of Acts Paul was dragged out of the temple and accused of violating a cultural law which prohibited all gentiles from entering the temple grounds. The crowd attempted to kill him. But he was rescued by the Roman commander who was merely trying to keep the peace. We noted last time that because the gospel is offensive we must be ready to endure slander and persecution for it. But we also must be ready to use such opportunities to share the gospel. Today we will see Paul doing just that. From his example we'll be able to understand what that looks like and how the Lord has providentially helped us to do this. So please stand with me to give honor to and to focus on the reading of the Word of God starting in verse 37 of Acts 21. Invocation: Heavenly Father, because we know that nothing happens outside of your decreed will and that all comes about to accomplish your purposes, we can rest assured that everything we have experienced in this life has been guided and directed by your providence. Therefore, we know that we are where we are because you have arranged it and that You have equipped us to do what You ask us to do. Let us then rest in this hope and strive to do all that You have asked us to. To make disciples and teach them all that You have commanded. Help us to see all this and more from the text this morning we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Transition: Let's get right to the text this morning. I.) God providentially equips us to share the gospel, so we must look out for opportunities He gives to share the gospel. (21:37-40) a. [Slide 2] 37 - As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? i. As they neared the Barracks, probably ascending the second stair case, Paul wishes to speak to the Jews, desiring to show compassion on them and share the gospel to them. ii. In this process he very politely addresses the Roman commander in Greek. Something that clearly catches the Roman officer off guard, but we are not exactly sure why. iii. The common language used in Judea would have been Aramaic. Hebrew would have been used in religious conversation and instruction, especially among Judean Jews. iv. Judean Jews in general would have avoided Hellenistic entanglements, chief among them being the Greek language. v. That being said, most Jews would have known at least a little Greek and been able to speak well enough to get by. vi. What makes this even more perplexing to us is what the commander says next… b. [Slide 3] 38 - “Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago raised a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” i. The translation of this question is something that is disputed. ii. We can talk more about it on Thursday. iii. But the guard clearly thinks or has thought up to this point that Paul is an Egyptian Assassin. iv. Again, we can go into the history of this on Thursday, but suffice it to say, something in Paul's speaking Greek has led the guard to ask this question of Paul. v. Paul quickly corrects the commander in the following verse. c. [Slide 4] 39 - But Paul said, “I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city; and I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” i. Paul lays out his pedigree. He is a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia and a citizen of that city which is by no means a backwater no name city. ii. Tarsus was an important city for trade throughout the empire. It also had a rich history of education. It was also granted “free city” status, meaning it was permitted to govern itself within the Roman Empire. iii. In other words – Paul is definitely NOT the Egyptian assassin. iv. Furthermore, Paul's heritage and citizenship to a prominent city indicated that his social status was actually above even the commander himself. v. It is probably because of this that the commander permitted him to speak to the crowd who up till recently tried to kill him. d. [Slide 5] 40 - And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand; and when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying, i. The Commander no doubt standing next to him in approval helps to hush the crowd. ii. Then Paul begins to speak to them in the Hebrew language. Although there is a possibility that this means ancient Hebrew which we know was still known and spoken at that time, we also know that it was spoken mostly in religious situations and probably was not the common man's language. Indeed, Jews from Asia would probably not even know Hebrew. So most likely Luke means that Paul spoke Aramaic. e. [Slide 6] Summary of the Point: Today we see Paul taking the opportunity he is given to defend the gospel. But what gave him that opportunity? Paul's unique background, providentially ordered by the Lord, gives him the opportunity to defend the gospel. Paul having the pedigree he had, where he even had a higher social standing than the Roman commander arresting him, equipped him to be allowed to share the gospel that day. And the same is true for us. God has uniquely equipped each of us to share the gospel to people who other believers will never have opportunity. To the extent that where others may be silenced or killed, we will be permitted to at least provide a defense. Therefore, we must be like Paul and have the boldness and determination to speak up when we have an opportunity. Paul could have gone into the barracks and been safely secured against their attack, Instead, he used his social standing to gain an audience and defend the gospel. We should look for similar opportunities to share the gospel that are provided to us through our backgrounds which God arranged. Transition: [Slide 7(blank)] But what is Paul going to say? The crowd isn't exactly friendly. What is his responsibility in conveying the gospel to such a hostile group? Can he just be like Jonah and warn them that in 40 days they'll be destroyed? II.) God providentially equips us to share the gospel, so we must clarify misconceptions about the gospel. (22:1-16) a. [Slide 8] 1 - “Men, brothers, and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you.” i. Paul begins his defense with a similar address that Stephen gave to the Sanhedrin when he was brought before them. ii. Of course, Stephen was accused of speaking against the law of Moses and against the temple too. iii. And Jesus before them was accused of blasphemy and speaking against the temple. iv. What is clear is that the Jews had created a trinity of their own. They worshipped God, the law, and the temple. All of which were intricately connected. v. And bound up into that trinity is their national pride of being the chosen people of God. To attack one of the three is to attack all and to attack their Jewish identity as a whole. vi. It is no accident that the charges brought against everyone the Jews wanted dead were the same. This is the way they can make sure that they can stir up every Jew against the one they want gone. vii. Paul begins his defense which is not only a testimony of his salvation and commission to ministry – but also a rich defense of his own Jewish heritage and standing. b. [Slide 9] 2 - And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even quieter; and he said, i. Right off the bat, the people understand that this is not a Hellenized Jew – at least not entirely. ii. To speak Aramaic, and to do so well enough to make a defense before a hostile crowd, means that he is not rejecting Jewish heritage or culture. iii. The crowd responds with affording him their attention. c. [Slide 10] 3 - “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but having been brought up in this city, having been instructed at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictness of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today, i. Notice that Paul doesn't deny his birth city, but quickly moves past it to recount his early life. ii. From a boy, Paul was brought up in the city of Jerusalem. iii. While in the city, Paul was instructed according to the strictness of the Mosaic law by none other than Gamaliel. iv. The last time we heard that name was at Peter and John's trial before the Sanhedrin. v. Gamaliel's advice was to leave the apostles alone and see what happens of the Nazarene sect. If they are not of God, then they will dissolve to nothing. If they are of God, then the council would be caught fighting against God's will. vi. Pretty sound advice. Advice that they did not heed. vii. Still, from historical records, we know that Gamaliel was a Rabbi and head of a Rabbinical school in Jerusalem and even though they did not listen to his advice on that occasion, we know he was well respected in the Jewish community of that time. viii. Paul indicating that he was zealous for God just as the Jews were on this very day, is indicating that Paul does not see his persecutors as enemies. He too is zealous for God. And has been since being instructed in the ways of the Pharisees. ix. How devoted was he for God? d. [Slide 11] 4 - I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering both men and women into prisons, 5 - as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brothers, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished. i. He was so zealous for God that he persecuted the Nazarene sect called “The Way” to death. ii. Perhaps at this time some rumor or lie was being spread around indicating that Paul never really did this. But Paul appeals to the testimony of the high priest and all the council of Elders. iii. They can give you their testimony that this is the case. iv. They can also tell you how they gave him letters to Damascus to bring those following The Way back to Jerusalem to be imprisoned and punished. v. Paul was once the exact same as they are today. To the extent that he did to others what they have done to him. vi. Paul doesn't see them as his enemy. Because he was just like them at one time. vii. So this begs the questions… what happened to make him different today? And how different has he become? e. [Slide 12] 6 - But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, i. Visions from God have been and continue to be recognized as important ways that God communicates corrective truth to people in the middle east. ii. As Eric Lundquist was saying last week, Iranian Christians converting from Islam frequently speak of visions they have received from God imploring them to seek Christ. iii. Some of the greatest prophets of Israel's and even Islam's history have or have claimed to see visions from God to reveal truth. iv. If someone today said something similar to Paul, we would be right to test them thoroughly for signs of God working in their life beyond simply a vision. And Paul will provide that too. v. But the Jews would not be skeptical of this sign merely because it was a vision from heaven. f. [Slide 13] 7 - and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' 8 - And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?' And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.' i. Voices from heaven are rare in the Old Testament. But when someone hears from heaven it is never anyone but God Himself who speaks. ii. This is probably why Paul assumed that this was the Lord speaking. iii. This is similar to the time when Moses asks what he should call God when he goes back to the Israelite captives to inform them that God was going to rescue them. Which God? iv. God says, tell them “I AM” has sent you. Yahweh. The proper name of God. v. By Paul asking Who are you, Lord – he is looking for confirmation that the God with whom He speaks is Yahweh Himself. vi. How shocking then… Is the answer? vii. I am Jesus the Nazarene whom you are persecuting. viii. In heaven, with God, is this one Jesus the Nazarene. ix. Without actually saying the words, Paul testifies clearly here that Jesus and Yahweh are one. They are One God in three distinct persons. x. The God who addressed Moses from the burning bush is the same God who addressed Paul on that road. xi. But to make such a claim that Jesus spoke to him from heaven, it would be necessary to have witnesses, wouldn't it? Especially since the name given was not Yahweh. xii. Who else was there to hear or see what happened? g. [Slide 14] 9 - And those who were with me beheld the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me. i. The guards who went with Paul that day, did see the light. ii. And here we have our first discrepancy regarding the story of Paul's conversion. iii. In Acts chapter 9 it says that these guards did hear the voice, but here Paul says that they did not understand the voice. Now before you start pointing out to me that hearing and understanding aren't the same things… iv. The Greek word IS the same. The LSB, for some reason, translates it here as understanding instead of hearing. What a crummy translation… well, hang on. Let's investigate. v. So how do we deal with Luke recording that the men heard the voice but didn't see the person speaking, and Paul saying that they did not hear the voice? This seems to be quite the contradiction. vi. There is an easy explanation that we can actually demonstrate using a similar word in English. 1. If I, in the midst of giving a command to my daughter, ask her if she is listening, and she says yes… in one sense we can see that she did listen to me. But if that story goes forward and we find out that she did not obey the command I gave, we could say that she did not listen. 2. Well how could she have listened and not listened at the same time? It is a matter of different definitions of the same word. Correct? 3. Listening can mean hearing and it can also mean obeying. vii. In a similar way, the semantic range of the word ἀκούω includes not only hearing the noise of something but also comprehending it. viii. So, in Luke's earlier account It is clear that he records that the soldiers heard the voice. ix. By Paul saying that they did not hear, we must take the second definition of the word which means to listen or to understand. x. Thus the LSB records for us the appropriate meaning. That the guards with him did hear the voice but were not able to comprehend what was said to Paul. xi. In short, he had witnesses to this event. And even though they did not understand the voice which spoke, they did hear it and they certainly heard and understood Paul's responses. h. [Slide 15] 10 - And I said, ‘What should I do, Lord?' And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been determined for you to do.' 11 - But since I could not see because of the glory of that light, being led by the hand by those who were with me, I came into Damascus. i. Jesus the Nazarene instructs Paul to go to Damascus and wait for someone to come to him to tell him what to do. ii. The miracle of this would not be lost on anyone, since Damascus was a large city and all those of The Way would have feared Paul to the point of avoiding him. Who is going to come and talk to Paul in this state? iii. Paul continues the story of how he was blinded by this light and had to be led to Damascus. Once again this is something the guards could have borne witness to. i. [Slide 16] 12 - Now a certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the Law, and well-spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, 13 - came to me, and standing near, said to me, ‘Brother Saul, regain your sight!' And at that very hour I regained my sight and saw him. i. Notice what Paul is doing with his testimony of conversion. ii. He is highlighting the important, Jewish, law abiding, zealous people who helped to shape and form him. iii. Now he moves to a man named Ananias, who is well known to be a devout law-abiding Jew, known by Jews who lived in Damascus. iv. But Ananias was CLEARLY of The Way. v. What is Paul saying? vi. They are not mutually exclusive. You can be zealous for the law of Moses and still be a follower of Christ. vii. That is not to say that they are the same thing or that the law is equal in importance to Christ. But it is to say that there is no conflict between abiding by the law of Moses and following Christ. viii. One must simply hold them in their appropriate places of importance. ix. Ananias commands Paul to regain his sight and at that moment his sight returned. j. [Slide 17] 14 - And he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from His mouth. 15 - ‘For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard. 16 - Now why do you delay? Rise up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.' i. Notice what Ananias says. The God of our fathers – Yahweh of course, has appointed, chosen, elected you to know His will and to see the Righteous One (Jesus the Nazarene) and to hear a voice from His mouth. ii. The Righteous One title is interesting because it is a title given to Yahweh's servant who is called Righteous and will justify many by bearing their iniquities. iii. The title “The Righteous One” implies sinless perfection having no blemish or spot in moral uprightness. Truly no person could claim such a thing. And so this human must be more than merely human. iv. Paul is commissioned to go to all men and bear witness of what he has seen and heard. v. At that moment Ananias commands him to rise up and be baptized and wash your sins away calling on His name. vi. Although many camps within Christendom would see the teaching of water baptism in view here whereby we are actually, as they would say, washed from our sin – it is clear that Ananias means not a literal physical washing only, but an inward, Spirit baptism. To be baptized by the Spirit is to be converted, to be justified, to be indwelled by the Spirit. vii. Baptism of the Spirit refers to the moment when a person who has been made alive with Christ repents and receives Him as Lord and Savior. viii. Notice that Ananias says to be baptized, wash your sins away, while calling on His name. ix. Thus, Paul is converted in this moment. x. And notice what the good Jew says to Paul… Get up, be baptized, be washed of your sins by calling on His name. xi. Whose name? xii. Is it the God of our Fathers or is it the Righteous One? xiii. Yes. Calling on Jesus' name IS calling on Yahweh's name. k. Summary of the Point: Notice still God's providential hand on Paul's testimony of salvation. The charges against Paul are primarily his rejection of the law, the Jewish people and their customs, and the temple itself. But he was zealous for the law, even opposing The Way, but was rebuked by a Jewish Messiah who spoke from heaven, a place higher than the temple, and led to faith in this Jesus by a well-respected Jew in Damascus. You can't get much more Jewish than that story! God providentially provided all of this to Paul in his conversion testimony, so that he could systematically cast down and defend the gospel he preached against all the accusations of being anti-Jew, anti-law, and anti-temple. We too must cast down arguments and defend the gospel against false caricatures of its teachings. We must do apologetics to prove that such things are lies. And God providentially provides each of our testimonies of faith as arguments against those false views. Transition: [Slide 19 (blank)] Paul has successfully defended the gospel. But what about the other component here? What about the Gentiles. Why is Paul mixed up with them? III.) God providentially equips us to share the gospel, but we must trust His leading not our own wisdom. (22:17-21) a. [Slide 20] 17 - Now it happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance, 18 - and I saw Him saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your witness about Me.' i. Although Luke does record Paul going back to Jerusalem in Acts 9, we are not told about this event. Luke there is focusing on Paul's relationship to other believers. That isn't what's happening here. What does he say? ii. While I was in the temple praying. iii. Well how much more devout could a Jew be to be praying in the temple? iv. And during a visit to the temple is when he sees another vision in a trance. v. In this vision, the Lord Jesus again speaks to him commanding him to get out of Jerusalem because “they” will not accept your witness about Me. vi. Who is they? vii. Paul's response to the Lord at that time makes it clear. b. [Slide 21] 19 - And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You. 20 - And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and guarding the garments of those who were slaying him.' i. The “they” is the non-believing Jews. ii. Paul's rebuttal to the Lord Jesus is that he seems like the perfect candidate to send to the Jews. iii. Afterall, there are few in Jerusalem who do not know who he is. They know how he used to fight against the people of The Way and even stood in approval over the stoning of Stephen. iv. He has a powerful testimony toward these people. They SHOULD believe him. v. Why? vi. Because he used to be one of them. vii. But Jesus points out that often it is the opposite. viii. The Jews, as we have seen throughout the book of Acts, have either believed Paul's gospel message – or they have sought to kill him. And there really isn't any middle ground. ix. Jesus at this time commands him to leave. c. [Slide 22] 21 - And He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'” i. You aren't the perfect person to go to the Jews. They are going to reject you and your message. ii. Instead I am sending you far away to the Gentiles. iii. First, to those in Tarsus… your home. iv. Then to those in Antioch of Syria. Then to Asia. Then to Greece. v. And soon to Rome and even Spain. vi. Paul would go to the Gentiles. vii. What a marvelous mission. viii. If only the Jews were not full of bigotry and hatred at this time… but more on that next week. d. [Slide 23] Summary of the Point: Here we see an interesting point that counterbalances all we have seen thus far. God providentially put Paul in a great position to share the gospel on this particular occasion. But keen observers would have noticed that all of his background was true before he left Jerusalem to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. So, we, and perhaps even his audience, would be wondering why Paul ever left if his background makes him an ideal candidate to share the gospel. Paul reveals in his testimony that he also wondered the same thing. From his perspective, he would be the ideal candidate to preach the gospel to the Jews. Nevertheless, God had other plans for him. Jesus commanded him to go. Why? Because the Jews would reject him and the gospel and because God had ordained him to take the gospel to the Gentiles. We too must be careful that we don't trust our own wisdom in analyzing who we are best equipped to take the gospel to. Instead, we must be sensitive to the Lord's leading in when and to whom we share our faith. Conclusion: So CBC, what have we learned and how shall we live? What are some basic teachings of belief and practice from this text? Basics of Belief and Practice: [Slide 24] The primary point of belief we should gain from this text is that God Himself providentially equips us to bear witness to the truth of the gospel. From this doctrinal point, revolving around God's role to sovereignly guide our backgrounds so we are the right tool for the job… we have several applications for us. First, is to seek and take opportunities to share the gospel. Second, we must clarify any known misrepresentations of the gospel as we give a defense for the hope we have in us. Thirdly, and serving as a counterweight to this, although God does providentially equip us to share the gospel, we must be careful that we don't make assumptions from our background of to whom we might be called to bear witness to the truth. But let me see if we can expand these truths out a little by first heading back to the text and then out from it to our lives. 1.) [Slide 25] Mind Transformation: “What truth must we believe from this text?” or “What might we not naturally believe that we must believe because of what this text has said?” We must affirm that God providentially equips us to share the gospel with unbelievers. a. We see this in Paul's life as everything he is doing is completely in keeping with the scope of Judaism, the law, the Jewish nation, and the temple itself. b. Paul has been uniquely equipped to take the gospel to the Gentiles while continuing to cherish and observe the teachings of Judaism. c. Paul is not only the right man to preach the gospel to the Gentiles he is also the right man to stand before the Jews at this very moment and confront them with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. d. And of course, he is only allowed to do this because God providentially gave him a social standing that supersedes the Roman commander who was trying to arrest him. e. You and I also have been providentially, from the beginning of our lives to this very moment, supplied with a unique background which equips us with all sorts of experiences, values, morals, virtues, and passions. And each of these are given both negatively and positively. f. Modern psychology attempts to tell us that our backgrounds shape us and mold us for the worse. We are a product of our environment and our upbringing. But this isn't the way Paul saw it. g. And this isn't the way the scriptures frame God's sovereign control of all things. h. All our background, positive and negative, serves to shape and form and mold us to be uniquely equipped to serve the Lord and His Kingdom and His righteousness. i. Paul even uses his shameful persecution of Christians as a point in his gospel presentation to prove that the gospel is NOT anti-Jew. j. Everything we have experienced and gone through, everything that has shaped us, was not done by some blind force or shapeless entity we call “the universe”. k. Instead – EVERYTHING that has happened to us has been guided and superintended by a Good and Loving God who prepares us to serve Him as Soldiers of the Cross of Christ. l. You may not use every experience in every situation where God has called you to share the gospel – but make no mistake, God has prepared you to bring the truth of the gospel to bear upon the souls of those who do not believe. m. Not everyone needs a scholarly presentation of the gospel. Not everyone needs a story presentation of the gospel. Not everyone needs a hyper logical presentation of the gospel. But everyone needs the Word of God shown to them in ways that your unique background can help to explain. n. There is no Christian that God has providentially prepared to sit in the pews. There is no Christian that God has providentially prepared to keep quiet while the others talk. o. You have a mission field that few if any will ever be able to reach. p. So, what do we do with this truth? 2.) [Slide 26] Exhortation: “What actions should we take?” or “What is this passage specifically commanding us to do that we don't naturally do or aren't currently doing?” We must jump on opportunities God gives to share the gospel. a. Paul could have stayed quiet. b. In fact, many counselors may have advised him at this time to quit while he was ahead. c. It seemed like the Roman commander was going to deliver him safely from the mob. d. Instead, he uses his social influence to convince the commander to allow him to address the crowds who were just moments ago trying to kill him. e. We too must seek and boldly capitalize on evangelism opportunities that come our way. f. Unfortunately many of us choose to hide in the shadows hoping someone else will speak up concerning the gospel message. g. We are tortured by fears of inadequacy and rejection. h. Paul's example, at least this week helps us. Of course they did reject Paul – we'll get to that next week. i. Ultimately this shows us that our fear of inadequacy is unfounded and our fear of rejection must be rebuked. j. Inadequacy cuts directly against the point we just looked at, where God uniquely equips us to share the gospel with others whom we come into contact with. k. And Rejection is actually something we are guaranteed we will experience. Fearing rejection for preaching the gospel is like fearing getting dirty if you clean out the pig pen. If fear of getting dirty stops you from cleaning out the pig pen, then you don't understand what it means to own a pig. In the same way if fear of rejection stops you from preaching the gospel, you may not even understand the gospel in the first place. l. Let me try to help you out to know whether or not God is calling you to step up and share the gospel with someone… m. If you are a Christian in the room when people misconstrue the gospel or ask questions concerning its teachings… guess what… You can just take that as God's call for you to speak. You don't have to wait for a sign. You don't have to pray about it to make sure it is God's will. n. You can just go for it. Speak from the heart, speak about what God did for you, and make sure that you speak with words the scriptures use. Stay away from trite phrases not found in the bible. Like… i. Ask Jesus into your heart. ii. Say yes to Jesus iii. Accept Jesus into your life iv. Pray this prayer v. Make him the Lord of your life vi. Etc. o. Also… stay away from non-universal experiences that are not common to every single person who comes to Christ in the bible. Like… i. I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders… ii. I felt warm all over as if I was being hugged by God iii. I wept uncontrollably iv. I started convulsing on the ground because I realized how sinful I was v. I heard an audible voice from God calling me to believe. vi. I saw Jesus holding out his arms to me. vii. Etc p. Instead, focus on what the bible actually says – stick to the words it uses as closely as you can while still being clear… i. All men are wicked and have evil hearts which cannot be cured. All men are dead in their trespasses and sins and are enslaved to their passions and their lusts. All men love their evil deeds. All men do not seek God. ii. Jesus died for sinners. Jesus became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus was the substitute which absorbed sin's penalty for sinners and gave them a right standing before God. Jesus is the new representative for all who place their complete trust in Him. iii. Jesus was raised the third day and has ascended to the Father's side where He now continues to be with and help all those who are His people. And all who are in Him will also be raised and live with Him forever. iv. Repent- turn from your sin and believe and depend on this gospel. q. In short – we must understand that since God has prepared us for this very purpose, if we are lazy or afraid, we are falling short of God's calling on our lives. We are failing at one of the very reasons we are still on earth. r. We aren't here to work a job, support our family, or enjoy retirement. These are inherently part of being what God wants us to be – but it isn't why we are here. s. We are here to make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Triune God and teaching them to observe all the things He has commanded. 3.) [Slide 27] Exhortation: “What actions should we take?” or “What is this passage specifically commanding us to do that we don't naturally do or aren't currently doing?” We must clarify and defend the truth of the gospel. a. Paul, by his own testimony, proves without a doubt that everything about his conversion and his mission is NOT anti-jew. b. So we too must be apologists, seeking to defend the gospel against misconceptions and false summarizations of its teachings. c. Although the details are different, generally speaking all Christians are saved the exact same way. d. Romans 8 clues us in to some of that process and the 5 Solas of the reformation help to expound what the bible teaches on that process. e. Since this is the case, each of our testimonies serve as an anecdotal proof that all the misconceptions about the gospel fail when it is compared to the universal shared experience of all who are truly believers. f. We can go to the scriptures to show exactly what God did for us and how He accomplished it. g. We may not have understood it when we were saved – but we certainly understand it now or at least, we should. h. In this we can counter all the accusations of being brainwashed, deceived, or otherwise conned by this religious teaching. i. With the bible we can also address misconceptions about the gospel where people assume it is a works based salvation that is similar to other faiths, or an unnecessarily narrow religion of intolerance. j. In short, it is incumbent upon us as those who bear witness to the gospel of Christ, to clarify and defend the truth of the gospel. For if the gospel is tainted by untruth it stops becoming the gospel and is therefore unable to save anyone. k. But If we are to clarify and defend the truth of the gospel, we must be diligent in our study and understanding of it. We cannot be satisfied with a rudimentary understanding of nature of the gospel. For even though it is simple enough for children to believe, it is infinite enough that scholars still admit there are things we can't quite explain about God and what He has done for us. l. Just because it is simple enough for a child to believe, doesn't mean you should preach it with the understanding of a child. m. No Christian has an excuse. We must be theologians and understand as much as we can about this gospel we preach. 4.) [Slide 28] De-Exhortation: “What actions should we stop doing” or “What behaviors do we naturally practice that this passage tells us to stop doing?” We must stop assuming our background limits or reveals God's will for our mission field. a. Paul thought he was uniquely equipped to share the gospel with the Jews. b. And that is true in Acts 22. c. But this was only after God sent him to the gentiles. d. Because this is where God wanted him to go and because generally the Jews would see him as a traitor and not as an example to follow. e. Sometimes we can be abundantly convinced that we are best equipped to share the gospel to certain mission fields. Or that we are ill equipped to take the gospel to others. f. But this may be a terrible assumption which is counter to God's will. g. Former Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses can make excellent evangelists to some – but they can also be perceived as traitors and apostates and dismissed without even allowing them to speak. h. Former drug addicts could be effective at sharing the gospel to those still addicted – or they may be seen as a Christ figure, someone to be followed instead of Jesus Himself. i. In every case, as we consider where God would have us minister, our background can help to inform us where we might be best used, but ultimately, we must listen for the Lord's leading. 5.) Exhortation: “What actions should we take?” or “What is this passage specifically commanding us to do that we don't naturally do or aren't currently doing?” Why do you delay? Rise up, be baptized in the Spirit! Wash away your sins by calling on Jesus' name! a. Perhaps you are here today and the testimony of Paul and the songs about God's salvation and all that Jesus has done, have stirred your heart. b. Perhaps you have realized that you are a sinner in danger of the Lord's judgement and wrath? c. Perhaps you like Paul have opposed Christ at every turn. d. What are you waiting for? e. Call on the name of Jesus and wash yourself clean in His sacrifice for you. Follow Him and be His. Let me close with a prayer by the Scottish Reformed theologian Robert Rollock Lord, when we stand up to speak of the resurrection of Christ to others, give us grace so that we may be persuaded of it in our own hearts. May we find his gracious Spirit working in us, and as we speak of heaven and these joys to others, may we also find that joy in our own hearts. So that after this life is ended, we may reign with him in glory forever with Christ! To whom, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all honor, praise, and glory forevermore. Amen. Benediction: And now let all people in Zion declare his gracious name, With one accord, So that all nations will fear the name of the Lord, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD. Until we meet again, go in peace.
Rev. Tim Hartwig, President, Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary was preacher for this service. Genesis 27:46-28:5: And Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
Order of Service: - Prelude - Hymn 189 - in House and Home Where Man and Wife: vv. 1, 2 - Genesis 27:46-28:5: And Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. - Devotion - Prayer - Hymn 189 - in House and Home Where Man and Wife: vv. 3, 4 - Blessing - Postlude Service Participants: Rev. Tim Hartwig, President, Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (Preacher), Laura Matzke (Organist)
Sermon Summary: Christmas - God With Us Summary: Nick's sermon delves into the heart of the Christmas story, emphasizing the reality of God's presence in human lives, particularly in challenging circumstances. He challenges the common perception of Christmas as a magical, idealized time, highlighting the often-overlooked struggles and hardships faced by Mary and Joseph. Nick argues that the true essence of Christmas lies in God's incarnation, His decision to become human and enter our world. He emphasizes that God doesn't wait for invitation but actively seeks us, even when we're lost, broken, or unaware of His presence. The sermon draws parallels between Mary's experience and contemporary life, suggesting that even in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, we can find hope and worship. Nick encourages listeners to recognize God's closeness, to embrace His grace, and to become agents of God's love in their communities. Key themes explored in the sermon include: God's Immanence: God is not distant or aloof but intimately involved in human lives. The Reality of Christmas: The Christmas story is not merely a fairytale but a powerful narrative of God's love and grace. The Invitation to Worship: Even in the midst of struggle, we can find reasons to worship God. God's Initiative: God takes the initiative to reach out to humanity, regardless of our circumstances. Becoming Agents of God's Love: Christians are called to embody God's love in their communities and the world. Ultimately, the sermon invites listeners to embrace the true meaning of Christmas, to experience God's presence in their lives, and to share His love with others. Transcription Nice to see you all. Happy Christmas. It's Christmas time. There's no need to be afraid. There's a real sense in me that God wanted to say something. I do know, you know, I can put my, I'm not just saying something, I don't know what it is. But the challenge of sensing that and putting it into words and putting it down on paper is a real one. And I was sort of on my third go at this this morning. But as we've worshiped and prayed and heard what's been said and what's been shared, so much of it resonates with what I feel that God has wanted to say. And so I'm just trusting him this morning that he will communicate his word through my efforts. And so we're going to look at a video. I think, have you got a video there for me, Michel? This is from a ministry called Proximity that's to do with the Eden teams. And it's about people that are involved in mission in all sorts of urban settings just as we have our Eden team here. And they've produced a whole load of resources and particularly some resources for Christmas. And this video I found really interesting and inspiring. And so I just want us to look at that as a prelude to what I want to say this morning. And now the angel is nowhere to be seen. And she wakes from a dream with her head down the loo and next down something for the acid, the youngest at antenatal classes. Feeling like a strict smart lump, trying to hide a bump in oversized clothes, waddling down the street with swollen feet, scared witless, wondering whether she's got what it takes to be a mother. Now she knocks on the door of another knuckle, someone else who feels each kick and every elbow flick and wakes up sick, a cousin with stretched hips who's both blessed and broken. And immediately, almost as if obediently, Elizabeth feels heaven and earth kicked and flipped inside her as her heavy belly moans with sympathy and angelic symphony burst from her amniotic sack. And Mary answers back, my soul magnifies the magnificent. It glorifies the glorious for the God who kicks the wall of the uterus who was worshiped from the womb to the God of bedsit rooms of tower blocks of basketball and shots of part took four by fours and shut up shops to the God of tear stained cheeks and grazed knees of caffeinated drinks and quarter pounders with cheese. Praise be to the father of cold and rainy nights of overcrowded buses of flickering street lights in the name of bright white nights and leggings, hoodies, caps and knackered looking jeggings in the name of not living but surviving in the name of ducking and diving in the name of poverty. God comes to me. Wrapped in hand-me-down clothes, dirty nappies and blankets. As the creator of the universe, the maker of all planets is pushed in a boogie and laid in a basket. For he is with us, not against us, one of us not opposed to us. And he has not forgotten the honest or the humble, the straight talking, the musn't grumble. His eye is on the single mum with no disposable income drowning in debt and depression. The OAP try to make ends meet from a pension. Those falling through the cracks, they're the ones who've got his attention. Yes, in a world that don't make sense, he's the golden frankincense overturning tables, turning the world upside down, right side up, bringing heaven to earth with a seasonal burst of Christmas. And in case you missed this, he makes Christmas every day. No, not in the shops or on the telly or the jingle jangle of songs and sleighs and snow. No, in the stomachs of the hungry, in the arms of the lonely, in the hearts of the broken, Christ can be found knocking on doors, kicking on walls of a mother's womb, asking us to make room for the kingdom to be born in us and through us. Glory be to the infinite, magnify the magnificent. Oh my soul, bless the incarnate. Glorify the omnipotent. Praise be to the God who became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood. The gist of that, it's on the super wide version there, so you can't actually see what's happening, but we'll share it later. Yeah, we'll skirt over that. Yeah, so yeah, there's a whole lot of visual stuff to that as well, but there's just a description, hopefully a description of the reality of Christmas and what the first Christmas really meant. The so-called magic of Christmas lifts us in a way out of the reality of midwinter and plants us firmly in this winter wonderland, plays our emotions, our memories, our aspirations, sort of gives us a sense of unreality. It can give us a real mixed bag of emotions. Christmas can be really difficult, can't it? Maybe for people here, Christmas is a really difficult time, not a magical time. It's a time that really challenges all that we go through and makes us think in, perhaps, not in the fairy tale way, but in a really, in a real, in a very difficult way. It can be a desperately difficult time. A lot of artistic license is used in telling and retelling the story of Christmas to make it magical and wonderful and we can left, we left scratch in our head when you actually go to the scripture itself and you read the story of Christmas, you think, how does this match up with what we hear, what we see, what we see on the screens, what we see in our Christmas cards or in our, in the presentation that Christmas, the presentation of Christmas is given to us. Desperately hard, real life struggle of the Christmas story gets lost as it's retold to create the magic and wonder and the sense of unreality. And we need to try and get into the mind of Mary and Joseph. It was nothing other than a desperately difficult and challenging time for them and yet God was in the middle of it all. And I think that's what's been coming through this morning in the worship and the prayers, that sense that God in the middle of the mess, God in the middle of the reality, God in the middle of real life, that's what Christmas is all about. And we need to see if it's possible to get away from the glitz and the glitter and the elves and the snowmen to get a handle on what this story is really telling us because there is power in this story that we can lose. Tradition is wonderful. Celebration is wonderful. Atmosphere is wonderful. But if we lose the power of the story, then we lose everything. We lose the sense that, you know, and if it doesn't actually touch our real life, touch our experience, we think, oh, well, if our experience is only just in evoking a sense of wonder and excitement and childhood memories, then really Christmas is losing something in our experience. And just as Genesis is the foundation for our understanding of our place in the world, we've been going through over these months, a Christmas story is the foundation for our understanding of the purpose of our lives and the nature of our mission. A Christmas story is about heaven's interaction with earth, the unfolding of the greatest story ever told. And so we can't afford to lose it under all the snow and the starlight in the present. It should leave us built and encouraged and strengthened and empowered and ready for the year ahead rather than just nursing a headache in a credit card bill. That's not a good deal when the greatest story ever told, the greatest credit card bill ever seen, doesn't match up. And that's what I like about that video, if we could have seen it fully. It takes what's actually plain in the scripture, takes away all the layers of glitter that have been put on it over the years and it roots it in the experience of real life. The first Christmas was rooted in the experience of a real couple. And it's so hard to get behind what they actually felt away from the magic of the Christmas cards. And many times religious tradition can separate important things from reality. Jesus has a way of connecting and including and uniting things with reality, of bringing us. That's why Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, not God out there, God somewhere there, God somewhere to be found, but God with us, God coming close, God alongside, God in it with us. The creator of the universe, he said, the maker of all planets is pushed in a buggy and laid in a basket. They had buggies in those days, but you know what I mean, is bringing it into the real life of the everyday. There's nothing separate or aloof or unreachable about this God. He's presented himself in the humblest form and destroyed all natural preconceptions about the way God will introduce himself to us if he does. Which God could actually do that? Who could actually write this? Who could actually imagine this story except that it come from the heart of God himself, that he would become a baby and be born in humility, born in poverty, born against misunderstanding, born in shame, born against the background of a young couple that are thinking, what on earth is going on with our lives? And yet God in the middle of it all, God with us, Emmanuel. Christmas tells us that he doesn't wait to be invited. You know, one of the things that evangelists often have said over the years, I've heard it many times, is that God is a gentleman. He waits to be invited. He waits until we open up our hearts to him and then he comes in. Well, Christmas tells us actually that's not quite true. He doesn't wait to be invited. He comes even when we don't want him. He comes even when we're dead in our sins. He comes even when we're lost in our transgressions. He comes when we're drowning in the confusion of our circumstances and the mess of our lives. He steps into our lives when we didn't even think of inviting him. We didn't even think we wanted him. We perhaps even thought he was responsible for the mess that we're in. And yet he comes in to introduce himself on a normal night, born to a young woman whose life has been thrown into absolute chaos through her encounter with God. You're gonna have a baby, Mary. Oh, good news, let's have a celebration. From that moment, everything went wrong. And yet, when all the pieces fall into place, when she understands the magnitude of what has happened to her and who it is that she's carrying in her womb, what happens? Worship comes out of her heart. Her heart explodes with worship. She glorifies God. I heard Sam Ward from the message trust saying the other day that perhaps we might say, if we were in Mary's position, God, you've ruined my life. But she says, my soul glorifies the Lord. That's the connection. That's what happens when in the middle of that confusion, we meet God. There's not that separation that, you know, how do we work this out? How do we come to a point of worship? In actual fact, that is the moment when she suddenly, her eyes are open. She doesn't have answers to all the questions. She doesn't understand what's happening. She doesn't know what her future holds. She doesn't know what this means to give birth to this baby. She knows that there's a lot of trouble ahead. But at that moment, her heart says, my soul glorifies the Lord. And you see, worship doesn't happen when we've got everything together and we feel ready. Worship happens when we finally see God, see God himself even in the middle of our mess and our chaos and our fear and our insecurity and our shame and our upset and everything else. It's that moment of seeing God when all those other things fall away and say, well, my soul glorifies the Lord. And we stand in the middle of it all with all the debris around us. And we say, God, you are great. You have come into my life. You are God, Emmanuel. You are with me in all of this. If you've ever been on the London Underground, whenever a train pulls into the station and the doors open, there's a recorded voice that says, mind the gap. Sound familiar? I grew up down there, so I know it all. It used to be easy to get to London. Now it's not so easy. Mind the gap. And it made me smile as I thought about this because I realized that there's actually no warning for us when we come to God, say, mind the gap, because there's no gap anymore. God has come right close. And actually, religion, traditional religion relies on there being a gap, relies on there being a chasm, relies on there being something to do in order to cross that divide. And yet, there is no gap anymore. Emmanuel, God with us is not something for those who've got it all together. It is good news of great joy for all the people, often reflected on that. When the angels come, the first thing they do, they don't say, right, let's sit down and talk about how we're going to access this blessing of God. They just say, good news of great joy for all the people. A Savior is born. For who? For all the people. Good news of great joy. And we look at the gap sometimes. We stare at what the gap that we imagine, but there isn't one. Mary had a lot of fear, no doubt. There must have been a lot of tears. There must have been a lot of anguish. There must have been a lot of uncertainty, as I've already said. And yet, in that moment, she realized there was no gap between her and God, that there was no sense that she had to sort all this out. She had to understand it. She had to figure it out. She had to find the keys. She had to take some steps. She had to do a number of things in order that she could get herself to a position where she could open up her heart in worship. It was at that moment that her eyes were opened, she saw God, and she said, my soul glorifies the Lord. And God says, do not be afraid. He means there's nothing to be afraid about. You are free to trust me, free to worship, free to praise. No ifs, no buts, no maybes, no gap. God with us, Immanuel. That's the beauty of Christmas. And we can disqualify ourselves from Christmas. I don't like Christmas, but, you know, life has been difficult. Life is a challenge. There's no magic for me in Christmas, but there is a wonder in God coming to us. It doesn't matter whether we've had a perfect life and a perfect understanding and a perfect experience of Christmas, or everything about it makes us want to run away and hide. Yet, for each of us, there is an opportunity to meet with God because He is God with us, Immanuel. Sometimes when God comes close to us, our first thought can be about sin. Oh no, what about sin? What about my sin? What about my shame? If God knew all about me, then He wouldn't, there wouldn't be this, the invitation would be canceled. But the wonderful thing about God coming without invitation is that He, it's because He already knows. He doesn't wait for the invitation because He knows we're not going to invite Him. He knows that we don't actually qualify, we don't actually have any reason why we should believe that God would actually want our worship, but so He comes to us and He closes that gap. And basically He says, I'm dealing with sin in order that you might be free to worship me. He has dealt with sin so that He can draw close. Good news of great joy for all the people. A Savior is born. That means that all of those things can be set aside in order that we might know God, in order that He might come close. We've never been able to solve the issue of sin and so God does it at His own initiative, comes close to us. So Mary responded as Jesus, as Jesus certainly came close to her, as the Spirit of God came close to her, Mary responded, oh how my soul praises the Lord, how my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For He took notice of His lowly servant girl and from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One is holy and He has done great things for me. He shows mercy from generation to generation to all who fear Him. His mighty arm has done tremendous things. He has scattered the proud and the haughty ones. He has brought down princes from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands. He has helped His servant Israel and remembered to be merciful. For He made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever. And so the fantasy Jesus, the Christmas Jesus, the life that is suitable for worship is beyond us. But if we open our eyes we can see Him today. And there might be people here like I said that are thinking, well I can't, it's too far away, the gap is too big. Remember what I've said, there is no gap because Emmanuel has come to us. He comes to your life uninvited. He comes regardless of the situation. He comes regardless of the barriers because He said actually all of those things I've taken them in hand. I'm dealing with them in order that you might come close. And you think well I'm a million miles away from being able to worship like Mary. Imagine how Mary felt at that moment and yet as her eyes were opened her heart magnified the Lord. So the wonderful thing as God draws close is that He allows us to take our eyes off ourselves and to fix them firmly on Him. Matt Britton said in that video, in the name of everything we are, everything that defines our lives, He knows it all. He knows everything about us. There's nothing to hide. There's no point even trying to hide because He knows it all. He sees it all and then He comes close. Shepherds didn't receive the angels after an all night prayer meeting and a sacrificial offering. They were just sat doing what shepherds do, probably telling dodgy stories and lighting fires. And in the middle of it all the angels come and say good news, the Savior is born. It doesn't matter who you are or what your story is, God comes to you today. God comes to you at Christmas and He stays with us. He doesn't just visit for Christmas. Christmas can be a problem can't it with visitors? Lots of people come in. A few murmurs. But God comes to stay, comes to dwell, comes to live amongst us. You might have spent years trying to worship and being dragged down by that nagging sense of unrighteousness. We've been following the story of Abraham in Genesis and the covenant promises God made to him and how God credited his faith to him as righteousness. Those promises are real for us today. May Mary's last line in her song is simply this, for He has made this promise to our ancestors to Abraham and his children forever. We are living in the good of the promises God made to Abraham. The Mary's song can be our song. I'm just going to quote from that video. In a world that doesn't make sense, He's the gold and the frankincense. Overturning tables, turning the world upside down, right side up, bringing heaven to earth with a seasonal burst of Christmas. And in case you missed this, He makes Christmas every day. No, not in the shops or on the telly or the jingle-jangle of songs and sleighs and snow. No, in the stomachs of the hungry, in the arms of the lonely, in the hearts of the broken, Christ can be found. Knocking on doors, kicking on walls of a mother's womb, asking us to make room for a kingdom to be born in us and through us. And so we need to see for ourselves what Christmas means. Don't disqualify ourselves ever. Christmas is the great leveler. It's the thing that opens up the doors, the opportunity that Jesus says, I am coming. I am coming to you regardless. He isn't invited. He doesn't come according to our timetable. He doesn't come according to our agenda. He comes according to His will and to His purpose. And so as we see for ourselves what it means for Christ to be born among us, our hearts sing with what that means for us. But it also wakes us up to what we are about, that this Christmas, our purpose, our task, whether as individuals or as a church, is to bring Christ to birth again in our communities and in our world. Give birth to the kingdom, to the reality of God in our world. So we're not just celebrating Christmas or telling the story of Christmas, but we're agents of Christmas. We're people who have seen that God has drawn close and we know that actually He draws close to anybody who will see Him. Bringing Christ to birth in the heart of our neighborhood. Don't shut Him away. Let's see Him live in our communities. He makes Christmas every day in the stomachs of the hungry, in the arms of the lonely, in the hearts of the broken. Christ can be found knocking on doors, kicking on walls of a mother's womb, asking us to make room for a kingdom to be born in us and through us. That's the reality of Christmas. Applicable in any and every situation. Applicable in every tragic situation. Applicable in every lost situation. Applicable in every situation where people think, actually I've made a mess of it. And yet Jesus comes. Not only to us, but to all who will see Him. So we can find Jesus today in the midst of everything we have going on. And be part of seeing Him brought to birth in our families, in our workplaces, and in our neighborhoods. That's good news. Good news of Christmas. Good news of great joy for all the earth. A Savior is born. I don't know where you stand today, whether you've never, ever considered it, whether Jesus has been locked up in the stories of the past, in the stories of tradition. But maybe today might be a day like Mary had where your eyes open and your heart is ready to see and to accept that actually Jesus is not just this huge figure that people all around the world worship, but He's your Savior. He's one who draws close to you. He's Emmanuel, God with you in the midst of everything that you think of and everything that you come up with that says, actually not me. I don't qualify. I'm not good enough. Everything that you come up with, every barrier that you put in place, He sweeps away and says, actually, I'm coming. There is no gap. There is no distance. Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.
November 2, 2024Today's Reading: Introit for Pentecost 24 - Psalm 89:1-4; antiphon: Psalm 9:1Daily Lectionary: Jeremiah 1:1-19; Matthew 21:23-46I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all Your wonderful deeds. (Psalm 9:1)In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. The story is told of a woman wanting to look her best for her daughter's wedding. “Don't worry, ma'am,” said the hairdresser, “I'll do you justice.” “Justice!” cried the lady. “I don't need justice! I need mercy!”An Old Testament prophet cries out to God that in wrath He would remember mercy (Habakkuk 3:2). That mercy is the “steadfast love” the psalmist is singing about in tomorrow's Introit. “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever (89:1).”It is “the steadfast love of the Lord” that sent Jesus to the cross for you to suffer and die for your sins. It is “the steadfast love of the Lord” that sends Jesus in your Baptism to keep the promise of His cross a present reality in the face of all your sins today. It is “the steadfast love of the Lord” that sends Jesus in the absolutions and sermons you hear from your pastor. And it is “the steadfast love of the Lord” that sends Jesus with the bread and wine at Holy Communion tomorrow, “for you, for the forgiveness of sins.”After all, God made a covenant with His “chosen one,” with “David my servant,” that He would “establish” his “offspring forever,” and “build” his “throne for all generations” (Psalm 89:3-4). That is what will be happening in tomorrow's Divine Service. For that Offspring is Jesus, and that throne is God's throne of grace. God is fulfilling His covenant with David, establishing Jesus, David's Son and David's Lord, forever on David's throne. That is good news for all of us because God knows our sins. He knows the dreaded fear we have because of our sins. But tomorrow, because of Jesus, God will be calling us to a lively trust, a joyful confidence in His steadfast love for all sinners. Because the justice God will promise tomorrow is the mercy He promised and accomplished for you the first time He sent Jesus. And it will be the same “steadfast love” the Lord sends and accomplishes for you when He sends Jesus on the Last Day.“The steadfast love of the Lord” “will be built up forever.” Thank God, because that means salvation for all of us. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. Let children hear the mighty deeds Which God performed of old, Which in our younger days we saw, And which our parents told. So make to them His glories known, His works of pow'r and grace; And we'll convey His wonders down Through ev'ry rising race. (LSB 867:1, 2)-Rev. Bradley Drew, pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Metairie, LA.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.Spend time reading and meditating on God's Word throughout the Church Year with the Enduring Grace Journal. Includes scripture readings, prayers, prompts, and space for journaling. The Church Year Journal, Enduring Grace, now available from Concordia Publishing House.
Mervyn Hall preaches on 5 ways in which God is glorified. God is glorified in His Son, in our salvation, our submission, our service, and our suffering. Readings: Psa 106:6-8, 1 Cor 6:19-20, 10:32-33, 1 Pet 4:12-14, 2 Pet 1:15-18. (Recorded in Helions Bumpstead Gospel Hall, 28th Oct 2017) The post 5 Ways in Which God is Glorified (35 min) first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.
We are Apologists - 3:16; Rev 5:13 Beware of Apostates - 4:1-2; II 3:1; 4:3-4; Acts 20:28-31; Heb 3:12; II Pt 2:1, 20-22; 3:17 - MATT 24:1-14 I. The Divine Doctrines - 3:16; Rev 5:13 a. Revealed in the flesh - b. Vindicated in the Spirit - c. Beheld by angels - d. Proclaimed among the nations - e. Taken up in glory - II. The Demonic Doctrines - 4:1-5 • The Spirit reveals (prophecy): - Mt. 3; Jn 2;Phil. 3:1 a. Falling from the faith - b. Falling for deception - II Tim 3 c. Hypocrisy of liars d. Seared in their conscience - 3:9 • Men who forbid marriage - Paul isn't attacking singleness. This command moves away from God's divine design. * Gen. 1 & 2; Proverbs 5:18-19; 12:4 (2); 18:22; 31:10; Eph. 5:22-33; Hebrews 13:4 • Advocate abstaining from foods - a. Which God created to be gratefully shared in - Colossians 2 (anything that denies salvation by grace in Jesus is dangerous and even demonic - like circumcision or good works) b. By those who believe & know the truth - c. IF received w/ thanksgiving - d. FOR it is sanctified by the Word of God (clarity) and prayer - Ro.14; Heb. 13:9
3 Ways in Which God's Word is Transformative and Powerful 1-Truth Sets Us Free, vv. 41-48 2-Truth Sustains Us in Affliction, vv. 65-72 3-Truth that Satisfies Us Forever, vv. 97-104
Who should be worshiped between Lord Shiva and Vishnu? Which God is completely divine in himself? It's understood that Lord Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh (Shiva) each have their roles in the universe's creation. But whom should we prioritize in worship, and from whom can we expect the greatest blessings? Know what Rudra Hridaya Upanishad says about this? Listen to this episode of "Bhagwan Shiv aur Vishnu mein kiski Anukampa karein? (Rudra Hriday Upnishad)" of the podcast Upnishad Simplified by Dr. Shisham Aggarwal. For more such information check out the book - https://www.amazon.in/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ADr.+Shisham+Bansal&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Which God do I Follow? The God of Islam? by Lead Pastor Rodlie Ortiz
Correct thinking leads to correct action! 1 Timothy 1 Introduction I am sure that some people here when they heard I was preaching tonight were expecting some obscure passage from the Old Testament or even something from that wonderful book of Leviticus. I know that Chris and Sue Cook were! But no! A change! Did I catch you out? Our passage tonight, wonderfully read for us, is found in the New Testament. The little letter of 1 Timothy, where the aged Paul is reminding and instructing Timothy, his much younger disciple, who is probably about 40 years old now. The whole of the New Testament church is growing and spreading far and wide away from its starting point in Jerusalem. Most scholars agree that this letter was written about 64AD, so it is now about 8 years after Paul's 3 year stay in Ephesus came to an end. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be a first century Christian. The original followers of Jesus, the apostles have either died or will be soon, so who will ensure that good teaching and guidance will be given to me and others around me? Who will ensure that sound doctrine of salvation through Jesus alone by grace alone through faith alone will be preserved? Some of these concerns are met by the apostle Paul in what we call the Pastoral Epistles - 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. Paul is getting on in age now. He is in Macedonia, but his representative, Timothy, was left in Ephesus, and by all accounts was undergoing a particularly torrid time. The church in Ephesus was still made up of small groups of believers and each group had a leader with some experience, knowledge and therefore influence. So you can imagine the turmoil if their understanding of the Gospel would become twisted, contorted and infected with false teachings and myths. The turmoil would act like a virus going from group to group, person to person. The records we have of the early church show that when false teaching had been encountered elsewhere, it had usually come from outsiders to that local church. However, here in Ephesus, the false teachers had come from within the church in Ephesus. Even some of the house leaders setup by Paul! Was Paul surprised? Not at all! Paul had predicted this would occur. We read in Acts 20, written much earlier than this letter, Paul saying "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." So Paul has delegated his authority to Timothy, his personal representative in Ephesus. Timothy is encouraged to counter with sound doctrine any false teaching, particularly in regards to the Mosaic Law. It seems from this letter, that the leaders were mixing Jewish ideas and pagan myths into Christian thought. We read about those things in v3 and 4. These things were distracting the church from doing God's work and were instead promoting fantasy, controversies and meaningless talk. So Paul writes to Timothy. He had already written his letter to the church in Ephesus - that was a few years ago now. This letter is a personal one. He didn't write to the church itself again. He did this in order to bolster Timothy's authority and position against those who were spreading false teaching. That's probably why Paul puts forward his credentials at the start. Paul is saying to the church in Ephesus "I, Paul, am an apostle because God has commanded me to be so! Timothy is my ambassador, my man, so wise up, church - you Ephesians! Listen to him and you won't go astray from the truth." Timothy would have shared this letter with the church there. Right mouse click or tap here to save/download this Sermon as a MP3 file ----more---- The church (1 Timothy 1:4-11) Let us start with the church in Ephesus, before moving on to Timothy, Paul and ultimately, God! Some leaders inside the church of Ephesus were teaching doctrines contrary to that of Paul. They were being troublemakers - causing rebelliousness and dissent. This NIV translates it as "false doctrine" but another translation puts it as "a different doctrine", as in different from apostolic teaching. These people were mixing myths and legends in with the true doctrine of solid apostolic faith. It led them to teach a different Jesus - making a Jesus who was different from the Jesus of Paul and the other Apostles. Just as the Corinthian church had been urged by false teachers to follow a different Jesus, so was the church in Ephesus. There was also desire of these troublemakers to inflict a form of Judaism upon the church, whereby a number of Jewish ceremonies were seen to be still binding on Christians - making a gospel of works rather than a gospel of grace. For the Jewish people, genealogies were important, particularly linking back to Abraham, because by doing so, their salvation was guaranteed. A kind of false gospel, in the light of Jesus Christ and His salvation work. But Paul says here that any reliance on genealogies is useless and unreliable! Genealogies don't promote good work and a good conscience! To rely on genealogies for salvation is a gospel of works, as opposed to salvation through Jesus Christ which is salvation based on grace alone given by God in faith alone. This teaching, combining myths and genealogies was promoting controversy and speculation rather than unity and morality. They were being contentious for the sake of arguments and quarrels. Whereas the goal of apostolic teaching was to be borne from love, and to result in love. Love issuing forth from a good conscience and an uncontaminated faith in God. Love of God and love of others is the product of teaching true doctrine, says Paul to Timothy - as opposed to the dissension, bitterness and contrariness of the false teachers. Timothy! Do not touch! Do not taste! These false teachers from inside the church were promoting nothing but their own glory, rather than seeking the glory of Jesus Christ alone. They were leading people out of a secure salvation by grace alone through faith alone and into a insecure salvation based on works. These people were without a sincere faith, a pure heart and a good conscience and had wandered from the true Gospel. They were abusing the Law rather than teaching it. Instead, Paul explains to Timothy about the Law and that the Law is indeed good! He explains that the proper use of the Law is to restrain people from doing evil. That rules and laws are not for those who are obedient but to correct and train those who are disobedient. The Law cannot save anybody, but only reveal their need of a Saviour. In v9-11 Paul gives some examples of those who are breaking the Law willfully. Into this mix, Timothy, is thrown! Timbo! (1 Timothy 1:18-20) Timbo to those of us who are Australian, and Timothy for the rest of you! Timothy's mum was a Jewess and his father a Gentile. Timothy was converted to Christianity early on in his life and was taken by Paul to assist him in his work for the Gospel. In particular to encourage the new churches sprouting up! So Timothy was basically an assistant Apostle! Paul, without a doubt, had taught Timothy in private as they travelled and conversed. Paul endearingly calls Timothy "his son" even though he probably didn't bring Timothy to faith. Here, Timothy is instructed by Paul to keep fighting the good fight, battling the false teachers (Read v18-19). Timothy, and therefore the church in Ephesus has a choice to make. They can keep following Paul and accept his wisdom. Or they can succumb to the wiles and whims of the false teachers. Timothy has been instructed to silence the troublemakers yet he would also be feeling the pressure to conform to the whims of those very same troublemakers. What is Timothy to do? He has a choice to make! Timothy is instructed to remember what was told to him in the past. We don't know what those prophecies were but it does seem when they were uttered, Timothy was set apart for ministry. Much like Adam was at his baptism. Timothy is to keep going and persevering in the true faith and doctrine of Jesus Christ. He is commanded! He is to have a moral obligation and duty to do as Paul has instructed and he is to fight and defend the truth against the error filled agitators. Timothy has 2 things of great worth: the objectivity of an apostolic faith and the subjectivity of a good conscience. Apostolic faith is belief and a good conscience is action. If he holds on and uses both of them, Timothy will have fought the good fight of faith. By preserving a good conscience, Timothy will keep the faith. By remembering what he believes as apostolic truth, Timothy will be reminded to behave correctly. Belief and behaviour are co-joined. What is truly believed, will affect behaviour. That is where the two blasphemers in verse 20, Alexander and Hymenaeus had gone wrong. Their apostasy and behaviour was so bad, that Paul had to exert church discipline against them, just as he had excommunicated somebody from the Corinthian church. Radical as it seems to us today, remember the church is still in an embryonic and formative state. This excommunication, was it permanent? It seems by the use of the word "taught" that they could be welcomed back into fellowship if they were willing to truly repent, to learn and then be restored. So that is Timothy but what do we learn here of Paul? Paul (1 Timothy 1:1-3 & 12-14) Paul we know is an apostle, a church leader! He has been set apart for this role by God and by Jesus the Son. He is impassioned here in this deeply personal letter to Timothy. You can almost imagine Paul writing imploringly to Timothy. What ever Paul does for the glory of God, its because God Himself is strengthening him. Paul - once an opponent and oppressor of Christ and His church - now commanded to be a dynamic servant of this Jesus. This Paul, who was a blasphemer and persecutor of the church has been transformed! Paul cannot forget what he had done to the early church, persecuting it and thereby also persecuting Jesus Christ. Paul cannot forget how he was transformed from a violet sinner into a servant of Jesus Christ! How did this come about? Not through his own doing but through the inexhaustible patience and work of Jesus Christ, transforming him via the twin wellsprings of grace and mercy. God's amazing grace and mercy, so abundantly poured out upon him. Paul's faith and love are in and for Jesus Christ and Him alone. When Paul says he is the "worst of sinners" in verse 16, is that not a very personal statement to make? Because when each of us confesses our sin to God, we all feel as if we are the worst of the worst. Or at least I know I do! So Paul is compelled and thrust forward - not by his own inner strength - but solely by the love of God and of Jesus Christ. God (1 Timothy 1:15-17) Now let us come to Paul's God! The true God, as opposed to the "different" god which was being proposed by the false teachers. The first thing we see about Paul's God is in verse 1! God is a saving God and is also the saviour - Jesus Christ! This God is our hope, exclaims Paul! Forget the "different god" being proposed by the miscreants - God alone is to be our hope exclaims Paul! This saving God of hope, is imbued with grace, mercy and peace! Because of God's grace and mercy, Paul was now saved and one of God's servants and apostles. Mercy springs forth from grace, because from God's mercy there is forgiveness of sins. Without grace and mercy, peace with God is unobtainable. A God of mercy, means that the follower of Jesus, the Christian, has a throne of grace to run to with boldness in order to seek the help of the great King of Majesty! WOW! This sound doctrine conforms to the blessed Gospel and teachings of Jesus Christ rather than opposing it. In verse 15, Paul sums up the Gospel "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners"! WOW, isn't that good news! Because of Jesus Christ, eternal life is granted to those whose hope and faith is in Him alone! Just as Jesus was immensely patient with Paul, so he was with each of us who are Christians. Just, as He is patient with those still outside His church, and not following Him. This God is a personal God! WOW! Do you know these truths of God for yourself? This great and awesome King is still calling people to follow Him. He is still calling people to accept the free offer of salvation through Jesus Christ alone, by grace alone through faith alone. Are you one of His followers yet, or are still exercising Jesus' great patience with you, just as Jesus did with Paul? Now Paul explodes into a line of utter and complete adoration about God! This God, this King, is eternal, immortal, invisible, the only One! This God is before time, outside of time, and after time! WOW! Amazing! This God entered time in the person of Jesus Christ to save humanity which was thoroughly incapable of saving themselves. Forget genealogies, you trouble makers, and remember God's salvation by grace alone through faith alone! Paul ecstatically exclaims that God is King - a mighty ruler, majestic sovereign over all! This God has established a Kingdom through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit who lives within His people! This King is eternal, the King of all Kings and the King of all the ages - past, present and future - and not bound by the unstable ebb and flow of time's fluctuations. God the King eternal, He of the ages, and beyond the ages, is often called so in Old Testament worship. This King is immortal, beyond the ravages and decay of time! This immortal King is incorruptible, imperishable and unchanging! This King is invisible, beyond the scope of vision of mere mortal humanity! Yet humanity had once glimpsed His glory, when the God who is outside of time and space, entered time and space in the God-man Jesus Christ. This King is also the One and Only God who is the One and Only great King! This King is unique, majestic, and without rival or parallel. Because this King is eternal, immortal, invisible and the Only, He alone is worthy of honour and glory. WOW! God the King of Holy Majesty! Moreover, this God is personal! Look again at the personal pronouns Paul uses to describe relationship with God! Verse 1 - our Saviour ... our hope, Verse 11 - he entrusted to me. ... Verse 12 - our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Verse 14 - The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly along with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Verse 16 - I was shown mercy so that in me, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. So what? So there you have it. It is 64AD. The church in Ephesus is in a mess. Timothy is drowning under the pressure to conform. Paul has heard about it and is writing to encourage Timothy. Timothy has a choice to make. Succumb to the pressures thrust upon him by the false teachers, trouble-makers and miscreants to follow a false God, a false Jesus - or continue to follow the true God - the eternal, immortal, invisible and only King and the apostolic doctrines as taught to him by Paul, the Apostle by command of God. What about us today? In a lot of churches today, the word 'doctrine' is unfashionable. I have had people say to me just this last week, that doctrine belongs to a time gone by, and that what is needed is new experiences of God and miracles from God! That is the way forward for the church, they say. Or don't go to that service, it might be a bit too heavy or too light for you. We are starting a new thing - come along! Is that new thing or new way of thinking about God, really of God or is it the result of human pride or even a trick of the devil? I am sure that you are aware that's how the cults started. Jehovah Witnesses & Mormons starting something new as a supposed continuation of biblical Christianity. Doctrine is for all those who consider themselves Christians, regardless of the level of academic achievement (or none);·regardless of the length of time they have been a Christian; and regardless of their status in the church they attend, whether as a church leader or an ordinary church member who sits in the congregation. Let us not be afraid of doctrine. For every Christian, doctrine matters. If we have solid, biblical doctrine being practised in our life, then we will be seen to be living a life of total submission and obedience to Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to the praise of God the Father. As the mind is renewed and transformed with teaching about Jesus Christ, and the Christian puts into practice what the mind learns, the very life of the Christian is seen to be transforming into the image of Jesus. Then people will ask questions. Questions regarding the reason why you and I are being transformed and the reason for the hope we hold onto. That way the Gospel and Good News of Jesus Christ is spread, for doctrine in practise is also evangelism - telling others about this wondrous one and only King who is eternal, immortal, invisible yet made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Another reason, learning solid doctrine is important is so that we can discern solid Apostolic & biblical teaching from the false teaching of heretics and those who want to lead Christians astray. By knowing good doctrine, we will be enabled to start discerning true beliefs from false beliefs and ultimately engage biblical doctrine into living a life worthy of Jesus Christ. Did Steve Chalke's recent missive about homosexuality not being sinful, have its origins in his changing of the doctrine of atonement a few years ago? After all if Jesus sacrifice was not an atoning sacrifice, how then could the Old Testament atoning sacrifice for sin be fulfilled? Did Mr Chalke's diminished view of the atonement inevitably lead to a diminished and dumbed down view of sin? Just as Timothy had a choice to make - succumb to the troublemakers or submit to God via Paul, we also have choices to make in our daily life. Do we conform to the world or to Jesus Christ? We are to be in the world but not to take the values of the world. That is a command of Jesus Christ who is our master. Finally, and it is hard to ask these questions, but they have been laid on my heart. I asked God if I could skip asking them, but as usual I was told to behave and just do it. Several times. Questions like... Which Gospel are we showing and telling others? Is it the gospel as explicitly given by Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15 or do we deliberately or inadvertently live and tell another gospel - a false gospel, just as the Ephesian troublemakers were doing. Which God do we tell others about? Is it the God of the Bible who is Tri-unity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - of whom humanity is made in the image of? Or is it some kind of false God made in our own image? Which Jesus do we confess and live for? Is it the Jesus who said in Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to me, all of you who are weary and over-burdened, and I will give you rest! Put on my yoke and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Is it the Jesus who was welcoming to all but made demands on them in order to transform them -such as the rich young man who left distraught at the demands made upon him by Jesus or the woman at the well who had her sins forgiven but was told by Jesus to stop her lifestyle of sin? Or is the Jesus we share some kind of modern day Jesus who makes no demands at all? And some churches do indeed preach and teach that kind of insipid, powerless, nodding-head Jesus. Are we wanting to enjoy all the benefits of being a Christian? Things such as our salvation, our sins being forgiven, access to that glorious throne of grace - without enjoying the Joy-giver who wants to transform us willingly into the image of Jesus Christ the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. It is simply idolatry to want to enjoy these benefits without enjoying and submitting to the benefit giver, the Majestic King who is the only true God. It is idolatry because those other things are taking precedence over worship to the King. Why do we take for granted our salvation and our meeting together with other Christians when we can? Why do our prayer meetings and services not fill with Christians wanting to worship, be taught and to pray for this church, this town and the mission work around the world? And finally, you will be glad to know, why are there people coming into this church who are not Christian, and there are, and yet are not going on to follow Jesus and be baptised? There hasn't been a baptism here for over a year. Why not? Again if you are here and haven't been baptised, and you would like to be please do go see Bruce! He would welcome you with open arms! Or perhaps you are not yet one of His followers, still exercising Jesus' great patience with you to accept Him as Lord of your life? If that is so, please don't leave here tonight without talking to somebody about how you can start following this Jesus. Don't leave it too late. You wont regret following Jesus but you may regret it if you don't start. Finally, for the rest of us, we have a great opportunity on February 14 to gather to reach out into town along with other churches in the town, to tell about a God of love on the day of love. Let us go out of here, making a choice to submit to the power of the Holy Spirit, follow Jesus closely to the praise and honour of God the Father. Let His light shine out from us into a town that is in spiritual darkness, dying to know personally our majestic King who is God. Let His love shine out of us as we learn and submit to him - loving others, loving each other to reflect a God of love. Put your thinking and doctrine of God into practise which is evangelism. If the God we serve is the God of 1 Timothy - a majestic King who is personal, ageless, without decay or corruption, invisible and the only God - then we are duty bound to tell and show others about Him. After all, each of us who are Christians here tonight have had somebody tell us about the offer to succumb to the fathomless patience of Jesus and accept Him as master of their life. Let us go! Are you ready? Right mouse click or tap here to save/download this Sermon as a MP3 file
Darren Carlson Nehemiah 8 The Book for Which God's People Stood
This week, we look at the line, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” from the Apostles' Creed. What do we mean when we say we believe in God? Which God is this? The Apostles' Creed leads us to the one who laid the foundations of the earth, who precedes time and space. To be a Christian is to be one who acknowledges creatureliness. We are not our own; we are made. What are the implications of believing we were not only created, but created by the same God who created everything and everyone else? How might having a Maker bring meaning to our lives?
Which God does Mormonism teach about? Is it the God of the Bible?Find out in this weeks episode.
Which God does Mormonism teach about-- Is it the God of the Bible---Find out in this weeks episode.
And I want a PhD. In something...spacey. like astrophysics. Or engineering. Something that would qualify me to be an astronaught. You want to be an astronaught? Maybe. I thought you wanted to be a DJ. UH. I want to be a DJ in space. For what?! Doesn't matter, Satan. Just make it happen. Consider it done. I'm Not finished. I figured… ________ And! Hands off my offspring, Satan. No untimely deaths, no debilitating diseases; and no country music fans--without providing said child gains a noteworthy career in country music. What? But my kids--no touchy. Any of them ever. They stay with God. Which God? Not you. _____ And I get to keep possession of my soul, until all this is said and done; signed,sealed, delivered. Are you kidding me? Why would I kid around with Satan? Seems dangerous. Mm. So, I keep my soul until everything outlined in this contract is fulfilled. This...is a lifetimes worth of achievements. What's wrong? Devil can't dance? Actually, I'm a very good dancer. Alright then, let's do this. This is...a lot of specifics. I'm going to need some collateral… Collateral? I don't have anything valuable. Why else would I be here?! You have a point. And you have a pointy tail, in real life. Nice flex though. Thank you. Okay look. I don't have anything anybody would want or need; that's pretty much why I summoned you for in the first place. Mm, no I can't be summoned--thats a myth. Mmkay, well then how did you get here? I'm pretty much always around. Oh. Yeah, I uh. Own property in Vegas. Who doesn't? You. Well I want property in Vegas. That's not in the-- Look...harder. ...wow. So if you can't be summoned, how do I have the "honor" of your grotesque presence, today. Well, I pray on the weak. Clearly. I've been watching you for awhile, now. That was you? Amongst others. Like who? You'll see. Huh. Plus, you're pretty cute. Uhhh. Might stay like this for awhile. I could really probably fuck shit up. {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.
![[ENTER THE MULTIVERSE]](https://ivyfm.s3.amazonaws.com/i320/1184481.jpg)
And I want a PhD. In something...spacey. like astrophysics. Or engineering. Something that would qualify me to be an astronaught. You want to be an astronaught? Maybe. I thought you wanted to be a DJ. UH. I want to be a DJ in space. For what?! Doesn't matter, Satan. Just make it happen. Consider it done. I'm Not finished. I figured… ________ And! Hands off my offspring, Satan. No untimely deaths, no debilitating diseases; and no country music fans--without providing said child gains a noteworthy career in country music. What? But my kids--no touchy. Any of them ever. They stay with God. Which God? Not you. _____ And I get to keep possession of my soul, until all this is said and done; signed,sealed, delivered. Are you kidding me? Why would I kid around with Satan? Seems dangerous. Mm. So, I keep my soul until everything outlined in this contract is fulfilled. This...is a lifetimes worth of achievements. What's wrong? Devil can't dance? Actually, I'm a very good dancer. Alright then, let's do this. This is...a lot of specifics. I'm going to need some collateral… Collateral? I don't have anything valuable. Why else would I be here?! You have a point. And you have a pointy tail, in real life. Nice flex though. Thank you. Okay look. I don't have anything anybody would want or need; that's pretty much why I summoned you for in the first place. Mm, no I can't be summoned--thats a myth. Mmkay, well then how did you get here? I'm pretty much always around. Oh. Yeah, I uh. Own property in Vegas. Who doesn't? You. Well I want property in Vegas. That's not in the-- Look...harder. ...wow. So if you can't be summoned, how do I have the "honor" of your grotesque presence, today. Well, I pray on the weak. Clearly. I've been watching you for awhile, now. That was you? Amongst others. Like who? You'll see. Huh. Plus, you're pretty cute. Uhhh. Might stay like this for awhile. I could really probably fuck shit up. {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.
And I want a PhD. In something...spacey. like astrophysics. Or engineering. Something that would qualify me to be an astronaught. You want to be an astronaught? Maybe. I thought you wanted to be a DJ. UH. I want to be a DJ in space. For what?! Doesn't matter, Satan. Just make it happen. Consider it done. I'm Not finished. I figured… ________ And! Hands off my offspring, Satan. No untimely deaths, no debilitating diseases; and no country music fans--without providing said child gains a noteworthy career in country music. What? But my kids--no touchy. Any of them ever. They stay with God. Which God? Not you. _____ And I get to keep possession of my soul, until all this is said and done; signed,sealed, delivered. Are you kidding me? Why would I kid around with Satan? Seems dangerous. Mm. So, I keep my soul until everything outlined in this contract is fulfilled. This...is a lifetimes worth of achievements. What's wrong? Devil can't dance? Actually, I'm a very good dancer. Alright then, let's do this. This is...a lot of specifics. I'm going to need some collateral… Collateral? I don't have anything valuable. Why else would I be here?! You have a point. And you have a pointy tail, in real life. Nice flex though. Thank you. Okay look. I don't have anything anybody would want or need; that's pretty much why I summoned you for in the first place. Mm, no I can't be summoned--thats a myth. Mmkay, well then how did you get here? I'm pretty much always around. Oh. Yeah, I uh. Own property in Vegas. Who doesn't? You. Well I want property in Vegas. That's not in the-- Look...harder. ...wow. So if you can't be summoned, how do I have the "honor" of your grotesque presence, today. Well, I pray on the weak. Clearly. I've been watching you for awhile, now. That was you? Amongst others. Like who? You'll see. Huh. Plus, you're pretty cute. Uhhh. Might stay like this for awhile. I could really probably fuck shit up. {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.
And I want a PhD. In something...spacey. like astrophysics. Or engineering. Something that would qualify me to be an astronaught. You want to be an astronaught? Maybe. I thought you wanted to be a DJ. UH. I want to be a DJ in space. For what?! Doesn't matter, Satan. Just make it happen. Consider it done. I'm Not finished. I figured… ________ And! Hands off my offspring, Satan. No untimely deaths, no debilitating diseases; and no country music fans--without providing said child gains a noteworthy career in country music. What? But my kids--no touchy. Any of them ever. They stay with God. Which God? Not you. _____ And I get to keep possession of my soul, until all this is said and done; signed,sealed, delivered. Are you kidding me? Why would I kid around with Satan? Seems dangerous. Mm. So, I keep my soul until everything outlined in this contract is fulfilled. This...is a lifetimes worth of achievements. What's wrong? Devil can't dance? Actually, I'm a very good dancer. Alright then, let's do this. This is...a lot of specifics. I'm going to need some collateral… Collateral? I don't have anything valuable. Why else would I be here?! You have a point. And you have a pointy tail, in real life. Nice flex though. Thank you. Okay look. I don't have anything anybody would want or need; that's pretty much why I summoned you for in the first place. Mm, no I can't be summoned--thats a myth. Mmkay, well then how did you get here? I'm pretty much always around. Oh. Yeah, I uh. Own property in Vegas. Who doesn't? You. Well I want property in Vegas. That's not in the-- Look...harder. ...wow. So if you can't be summoned, how do I have the "honor" of your grotesque presence, today. Well, I pray on the weak. Clearly. I've been watching you for awhile, now. That was you? Amongst others. Like who? You'll see. Huh. Plus, you're pretty cute. Uhhh. Might stay like this for awhile. I could really probably fuck shit up. {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.
Jesus Ministries, Joan Boney ... Exodus 4 21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go. 22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is MY son, even MY firstborn: 23 And I say unto thee, Let MY son go, that he may serve ME: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn. (Which God did with the 10th plague and after that Pharaoh was glad to be rid of the children of Israel.)
… The post John Clayton – Session 4: WHICH GOD? appeared first on Campus Ministry United.
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“Does each religion have its own god? Is one religion better than another? Which God can beat up all the other gods?” These questions are common in the minds of those who do not know the Bible. In today's podcast and post we continue our series by examining the assumptions about Hell which fuel our […] The post 388: 3-The Hell of Religion appeared first on Keven Winder.
r this message is available Introduction James 5 We are in our penultimate study of the book of James. One more to go after this. We end the book of James next week on Easter Sunday. Now if you were with us last time, we looked at the beginning of this concluding paragraph of James. James is concluding his letter with a call for prayer. Why? Because in a letter that is all about giving us evidences of faith, he closes with the greatest evidence. He closes with the slam dunk. What is it? It is prayer. There is no greater evidence. And that's not just homiletical hype. It's just a fact. Suppose a man's boat is sinking at sea. That man needs a power outside of himself, an outside entity like the coast guard to come save him. What would be the evidence of that? He would get on the radio and call for help. That would be the irrefutable evidence of the location of his greatest source of hope. And so James concludes his letter by saying, you want to know how to tell if you have faith in God? You want to know where your true hope lies. Do you trust in self-repair? Do you trust in your ability to bail water faster than it is coming in? Do you trust in your dingy of self-effort? Or do you trust in the life-saving power of the God of the Universe? The evidence that you trust in God will be prayer. Prayer, prayer, prayer. So last week, James said: If you are suffering, here's what I want you to do: pray. If you are rejoicing, here's what I want you to do: pray. If you are physically sick or spiritually weak, here's what I want you to do: pray. And last week we closed with the first half of verse 16. The exhortation was to pray. Now today what James is going to do is inspire us that this is not just a spiritual exercise without a point. There can be tremendous power in prayer. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” And today we are going to see what it is that makes prayer powerful. Now to instruct us, he gives us an example. Now here's what we are going to do. Let's first just tell tell the story that James is referencing. Then at the very end, we'll re-read James and I think the application will just drop right in place. So the story of Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal comes from 1 Kings 17-18. A little background. When we open up chapter 17, it's been about one hundred years since the united monarchy. The kingdom is now divided between Israel in the North and Judah in the South. Ahab is King along with his lovely wife, Jezebel. Ahab and Jezebel, together, were on a campaign to try to and make Israel religiously tolerant. They have torn down many of the altars to YHWH. They have replaced them with idols to Baal who was a great rain god, a storm god. And Baal worship and Ashera worship was horribly immoral on so many levels. And of course God is not happy about this. God wants to turn the hearts of his people back to him. So what does God do? Well, God's leading prophet at the time is Elijah. So the Lord sends his prophet Elijah to Ahab and Jezebel and in verse 1 we read, 1 Kings 17 Now why does God cause a drought? Because it's God's way of challenging the slick and shiny new god Baal that had become so popular. Baal is the god of the storm, the god of rain. So really he's saying, “Go ahead and pray for rain. Pray to Baal all you want. Pray it up. We'll see who's the Lord of the storm.” Because god is God, Elijah says, you can pray all day long and it will do ZERO because Baal does not give rain. YHWH does. And YHWH, BECAUSE HE IS REAL, has decreed ZERO rain until I give the word. Now if you know anything about the climate of Israel you know that a drought of that magnitude never happens. Israel is a desert climate and there have always been droughts but it always rains some. I pulled the weather data for Israel for the last hundred years. The least amount of rain they ever received in the last 100 years was 7 inches (by comparison we get about 12 here).So here we are told in the text that they would receive neither dew nor rain unless Elijah spoke the word. That would truly be a miracle. Israel is sitting right off the Mediteranian sea. You have this monster body of water and all that moisture just right there. Your going to get some rain. And yet ZERO. NADA. And they wait. So the rest of chapter 17 is Elijah along with the rest of Israel suffering this out. This where you get to story of Elijah being fed by the ravens and staying with the Widow and raising her son and all that. 1 Kings 18 Three years. This is way serious. So Elijah is sent to Ahab to put an an end to all this. God is going to send rain and demonstrate that he is the God of the storm, not Baal. Now watch how this interaction goes down between Elijah and Ahab. A time is arranged for the two of them to meet and we read in verse 17: Ahab sees Elijah and sticks out his bony finger. You! You troubler of Israel. Elijah says, “Ha you think I'm the problem?!” No sir. You are the problem. You have drug the name of YHWH through the mud. You have scorned his commands. You have worshiped other Gods. And you think I'm the problem? You're abandonment of God has caused this drought, not me. I am just the messenger. I am the Postal worker handing you a letter. Now if you pause for a second, what you have here are two interpretations of the same event. We both agree there is no rain. Why? Ahab's interpretation is, it's because of Elijah. Elijah's interpretation is it's because of Ahab. Whose right? Let's setup a little experiment which both parties agree would be ultimately conclusive. So here's what Elijah suggests. The question that is being asked is this, “Who controls the weather?” That is not a trivia question. They are all suffering. Deeply suffering. Animals are dying. People are dying. Crops are dying. This is not an inconsequential moment. It's not a question of who controls the rain. It's a question of whose God can bring us salvation? Which God is real? Which God has power? Which God cares? Let's setup an experiment to see. Now everyone is here knowing this is a contest. And Elijah confronts them before the contest starts. How long will you go limping between two opinions? Here's what Elijah is saying: There are only two positions, Israel. You can't logically stay neutral. Either the claim of YHWH is true or the claim of YHWH is false. "Either YHWH is the one and only God or he is not. Which is it? Either there is one god or many. You are either for God or against him. You either believe his claims or you don't. Decide. To be neutral, to not take a stand, is delusional. To stand in the swmapy middle is to get the benefit of neither and to get the scorn of both. You can't limp between two opinions. C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” Choose. Elijah is really pressing on this point. And apparently the logic silences the people. They see they are in checkmate. We can't say we believe in YHWH because if we believe in YHWH, then we need to do what YHWH says and YHWH says we are supposed to destroy the Baals and we like the Baals. So they stay silent. The nation of Israel has become comfortable with a logical inconsistency. They have come to the point where they have said, “No, YHWH, he's a great God. We like YHWH. We will totally sacrifice to him. We also like Baal. We also like Asherah." And Elijah forces them to this uncomfortable point, "If you say you love YHWH then you must hate Baal and Asherah. There is no other option.” They have no answer. Elijah takes their silence as permission to proceed with the showdown. So for starters that's not very good odds. Don't forget there's also 400 prophets of Asherah present. So we have 850:1. Not good odds. But this is the pattern of God. God goes out of the way to create these sorts of moments. He loves when the weak things of the world shame the wise. So now we get the rules. Here's the contest rules. Here's how we compare in a fair and equitable way. In other words, we both get an altar. We both get wood. We both get a bull. But neither of us gets fire. The God who provides the fire is the real God. Who can deny that this would be the great evidence of which God is real? I mean, that would pretty much seal the deal, right? Who could deny it? You guys are many. You should be able to do this a bit quicker than me. You guys go first. After four hours of screaming and wailing they are answered with silence. Nothing. And so Elijah interjects and begins to help them interpret the silence. He says, maybe the problem is your lack earnestness and sincerity. I think you need to turn up the volume. And so Elijah who has a PhD in sarcasm, begins to mock them. And I imagine Elijah's sarcasm really just screwing down their resolve. Mockery has a way of shoveling coal into the engine that protects our pride. And they work themselves into a frothing, foaming mess. What a graphic picture. And how sad! The gushing blood of self-destruction. This is the graphic end of all idol worship, self-destruction. It could be the worship of money, sex, power, image, acceptance, whatever…. You give and you give and you give yourself to your god and the price becomes steeper and steeper and so you give more and more. You give your sweat your tears, you give your blood, you give your life, you sacrifice everything and because it is no god at all, it will not answer you and will not deliver you and will not satisfy you. And you lay on the ground panting and dying and without life. Look at the scene. Here they are after the full day is spent and still thirsty. They are cut open and dying. The sun is out baking their exhausted frames. And there is nothing. Why? Lack of sincerity? Lack of zeal? No. It's because Baal isn't real. At the end of the day, is not this the only question that matters? What's real? Sincerity apart from truth equals destruction. So just silence. Blood all over the ground. Bodies passed out from exhaustion. Panting weak frames. No attention. No response. No answer. Just deafening silence. So Elijah steps forward. Have you had enough? Man, that's a statement. You see this altar you ordered to be tore down, Ahab. That was a mistake. Perhaps you have abandoned the very thing that could have saved you? Your discernment of what has worth is a bit off, Ahab. And you can imagine Elijah, the sole prophet surrounded by thousands of people. And the sound of those stones clanking one against another. So let's just consider the odds: You have 850 prophets versus 1 You have dry wood versus soaked wood. You have a dry bull versus soaked bull. And no trench of water versus full trench of water. Elijah is in this incredible position of weakness and honestly foolishness. Why? You want to know why? So God can flex. God's gonna flex. It's a statement, "I want to show you just how in control of this whole thing I am. I want to demonstrate that nothing that happens is accidental. I want to demonstrate that at my word creation leaps into obedience. God loves weakness. He loves to use weak. Who among us feels weak right now? Who feels drug down by life? Who feels like a failure and absolutely unable to do anything for God's kingdom. Well then you are perfect material. That's exactly who God loves to use. The Prayer It's now Elijah's turn. All eyes were on him. I'm sure the Baal worshipers are licking their jobs. There are some people sharpening their spears. And I'm sure Elijah is thinking, “I hope this works.” The other prophets danced. They screamed. It was a frenzy. There was potions and screaming and cutting. It would have been chaos to watch. By contrast. One prophet. And Elijah does no ritual. He just talks conversationally to God. And here is what he prays: Next comes the most explicit purpose statement in all the story. We'll come back to it but just read it for now. So that's the prayer. The prayer is TWO SENTENCES. I just love that. TWO SENTENCES. The prophets of Baal have been at it for FOUR HOURS and Elijah prays TWO SENTENCES. And now it's just quiet. Now, I want you to think about what everyone at this point is likely expecting. Why did they setup this contest? They are wanting what? They are wanting rain. And so they said, “He who answers by fire is the true God.” So what do you think they were expecting? Or to say it another way, in what form do you think they expected the fire to come? Lighting, right. I think they would have expected the clouds to slowly build. Okay the clouds are rolling in. They are getting thicker and thicker. That's what everyone wants. We want the gods to break the drought. Now let's just say the clouds start rolling in. Everyone gets excited, “One of them is answering.” **But the question is, “Which God is causing this to happen?** That's the great question, right? Whose the God of the rain?” And so the lighting is going to answer. Strike the altar of Baal. He's God. Strike the altar of Elijah, YHWH'S God. That's what everybody is expecting. Who knows, maybe even Elijah is expecting this. But God wants it to be totally clear. I don't want this to be a guessing game or maybe that this is some rando accidental stray lighting bolt. After Elijah's two sentence prayer out of the CLEAR BLUE SKY… The bull. The wood. The water. The stones — even the stones. Consumed in a flash. You can kind of imagine the shock, the surprise, the terror. Can you imagine the freakin scene? You have all these prophets and their knees turn to jelly and they fall with their face in the sand. Just zoom out and observe the the dual: Over here you have the side of Baal. You have the prophets pealing their faces off the dirt with mouths wide open. They have blood dripping down their arms. You have the altar with this giant bull and the blood is dried on his fur and his tongue is just hanging out of his mouth and there are flies just buzzing around. That's Baal. And then you have the side of YHWH. And there's just a smoldering hole in the earth where the soaked animal, on the soaked wood on the soaked stones once stood. And there's one man, Elijah, with fire in his eyes. Dang. That would leave an impression. Now what was the purpose of this whole deal? We said we'd come back to verse 37: There are two purposes for this miracle. Purpose #1. YHWH is God. YHWH is not an idea. YHWH is not folk tradition or a memory. YHWH is not a figurehead of some religion. YHWH is not something that exists only in the imagination. YHWH is not a cultural expression of a particular people group. YHWH is not a force. He's not a symbol. YHWH is GOD — the living, active, fire-sending, sin-hating, idolatry-destroying, prayer-hearing, personal God. “when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The LORD, he is God” Purpose #1 accomplished. There was a second purpose. Purpose #2 was that “that this people may know that you have turned their hearts back.” Cause the people of Israel to know that God did it. Let's make a really clear distinction between what they did and what God did. Here's what they did. Their hearts ran after the Baals and Asheroths. Their hearts betrayed God. Their hearts Spurned God. Their hearts Belittled God. Their hearts loved other things more than God. Their hearts had Devalued God. That's what they did And here's what God did. God intervened. He showed his power. He flexed. He turned them back. God saved. God rescued. God did it. That's the point of the story. Hang on to that as we come back to James. Now the prophets of Baal are rounded up an executed. Even though it is not explicitly stated in the text, my guess is that this was a pre-agreed upon arrangement. The prophets of the losing god die. Whose doing the seizing? Elijah was by himself, remember? Answer: the people whose hearts have been turned back! Part of repentance is destroying whatever God you had been worshiping. Now God had promised that their would be rain that day. And now we can almost taste it. God said it would rain. But just because God says something is ABSOLUTELY going to happen, doesn't mean vehicles aren't necessary to make it happen. I can decide to go to Costco, but I need a vehicle. Right? God says it will rain. He chooses to do it through the vehicle of Elijah's prayer. Think about it: the OMNIPOTENT power of God is like a passenger who rides the vehicle of Elijah's prayer. So here is Elijah, a normal man, a common man, a man with a nature like ours and it's his prayer which becomes the vehicle that carries the power of the RAIN CREATING God of the universe. What? What a privilege. He's dead serious. He's desperate. He's fervent. And he prays. Now why do you think he got up and had his messenger look? Because he thought his first prayer worked. And it didn't. So what did he do? He prayed again. And why do you think he sent his messenger a second time? Because he thought, surely, now God will answer. It's time. It's past time. But it didn't. So he prayed a third. Nothing. A fourth. Nothing. A fifth. Nothing. A sixth. Nothing. But then finally it happened. Okay, so that's the story. We needed to do all that work (and it wasn't really work; that was fun!). We did that review so we could apply our text today. So let's go back to the book of James: Now what is James' point here? James wants us to pray? You suffering? Pray. You joyful? Pray. You sick spiritually or physically? Pray. That's what I want you to do. Now because we are weak humans, we need encouragement. Have you ever felt like your prayers were ineffective? Have you ever felt like your prayers were not answered in the way you hoped. You ever prayed once, twice, three, four, five times and felt like your prayers did nothing. Well James is here to inspire us and to remind us of the power of prayer. And you are asking the question, what do I need to do to make my prayers effective? James has an answer. I think this point comes as one of the greatest points of encouragement. It's the same sort of encouragement a weekend golfer receives when he watches a PGA tour pro shank his drive straight into the pond. Okay, you are human. There's a sort of sick delight that comes from that. It's not actually encouraging to watch top-notch excellence all day long because none of us can relate. That's not me. They are amazing. They can play the piano so fast I can't see their fingers and they never make a mistake. Those basketball players are freaks of nature. That Musk guy can build a company that shoots rockets into space, while also managing a boring company and a solar company and a car company and a battery company. Wow. I can't do that. I barely know how to change the battery in my smoke alarm. We look at excellence and we say, “I know that none of this is attainable for me.” I don't have the genetics. I don't have the money, the educational advantages, the connections, the skills. I wasn't dealt that deck of cards. It doesn't matter how much I train, how much I dedicate myself. I'm too far behind. I could never be that. They are amazing. I am a loser. But here we have this man, Elijah, and the first thing we are told is that the man Elijah had a nature just like you and I. There was absolutely nothing exceptional about Elijah. Here's what Elijah was. He was human. If you are human you have everything necessary to experience the same world shaping power of prayer as Elijah experienced. Folks, that is encouraging. Elijah's prayer accomplished much. We see this clearly in the text. He prayed fervently that it would not rain… We see it. Face between his knees. Once, twice, three four five times. What is the place of fervency? Clearly, fervency is important. Do you remember the story of the persistent neighbor. The story is of a man who comes to his neighbor at night asking for break. And the guy's in the middle of his sleep and he's all warm in his blankets and he says, "Dude, go back home." But he keeps asking. And eventually, he gives in, not because he's a friend but because he's annoyed and wants to sleep. Jesus commends persistence. He loves fervency. Why? It's not that Jesus wants to be annoyed. He can't be annoyed. The reason fervency honors the Lord is because it's a confident assertion of where help really lies.It's the great indicator that a “no” from God does not mean, “God has abandoned me, turn to other sources of help.” When we continue to pray we proclaim, “Nothing else can help me. I have nowhere else to turn. It's the great proclamation.” The cry of a child to his parents, however annoying and disrespectful it may be, does say one thing loud and clear. You and you alone can help. I'm not going to go randomly ask some stranger on the sidewalk. I'm asking you mom, because I know you care. You want to know why kids at foster homes don't cry? Because they've learned that these care workers won't help me. It's pointless to cry. My persistence does nothing. My fervency is ignored. Persistent prayer is an indicator of faith. Persistent prayer is trust in the love of caring father. It's an indicator of faith. But persistent prayer by itself is not enough. Do you see the fervency of the Baal worshippers. They were fervent. They got nothing. Fervency must be coupled with righteousness. The effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much. I want to rescue this term from what I'm guessing you think it means. We use this term so improperly. We would describe a man as righteous and in doing so what comes to mind is law-abiding, a man who does good works, a man who abstains from evil. Its almost a synonym for moral. Disabuse your mind of that. That is not how the Bible uses the word. Righteous means, RIGHT WITH GOD. If you are righteous you are right with God and if you are unrighteous you are NOT RIGHT WITH GOD. That's all the word means. So when we talk about being someone who is self-righteous, what we are saying is that this person is trying to get right with God by themselves. They are trying to make themselves right with God by their good works, by their performance, by their effort. The Bible says there is only one kind of righteous person. The only way to be righteous is to receive a righteousness that is not your own. The only way to be righteous is to let someone else make you righteous. You don't work yourself into a froth like the Baal worshipers to make yourself acceptable to God. God said to Elijah, I am going to perform this great wonder so that they may know that they will know who I am and that I turned their hearts back to me. In Elijah's day, that's righteousness. Acknowledge what God has done. The sacrifice has been accepted. He is God. Today is Palm Sunday where we acknowledge Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, riding into Jerusalem to be nailed to a tree. What are we looking at here? God the father is saying, "I am going to perform this great wonder so that they may know that they will know who I am and that I turned their hearts back to me." We are approaching Easter where God breaks jaws of death. We approach Easter where resurrection life is realized through this great wonder of the cross. We come to Easter to receive a gift of life that is not achieved through the frothy foamy self-righteousness. Receive that gift and your prayer becomes a vehicle for the God of the universe. The prayer of that man, that man who has received a righteousness not his own, that prayer of that man is effective.
As we read through the Bible together this year, it's easy to notice all the violence in the Old Testament. As the voices of God's critics are getting louder, one of the major criticisms we hear today is how God seems to condone "holy war" telling His people to occupy the land and kill anyone that tries to stop them. And then Jesus comes along in the New Testament telling people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.So then the critical voices ask: Which God do you serve? The genocidal general of the Old Testament, or the peace-loving, merciful God of the New? Because surely these extremely different character traits can't be the same deity, right? And if they are, doesn't that make God problematic?As we reclaim a healthy understanding of the historical and biblical narrative, it answers some of the criticisms of the modern skeptic. But it still doesn't fully deal with those drastic marching orders where God commands them to show no mercy and kill everything that breathes. As we study this in its biblical and historical context, we believe you'll walk away more assured of the goodness of God.
Happy Holidays! Does that greeting offend you? One Nation Under God? Which God? We are a nation that claims religious freedom and worship but when it comes to December Holidays, Christianity rules the season. Why do Christians claim December 25 as the day of their saviors birth? Today Rene’, Trish and Liz will have some… Read More »She Became Visible: Episode 26: It’s Not All About You! The History Of Christmas The post She Became Visible: Episode 26: It’s Not All About You! The History Of Christmas appeared first on Mormon Discussions Podcasts - Full Lineup.
Please make an end-of-year donation to Ap315!https://apologetics315.com/donate/In this episode, Brian Auten and Chad Gross interview Clay Jones on the topic “Why Does God Allow Evil?”1:53 - What is the best Christmas movie? 3:43 - Intro about Clay Jones4:56 - Interview begins5:03 - Clay's history reteaching and teaching the subject7:55 - How do we define evil?9:00 - Evil is not a “thing”10:30 - Is the curse of the ground a punishment or a limitation?12:15 - God using things to teach people13:28 - Which God are we defending?15:53 - Getting too philosophical when defending the faith?17:22 - Why is evil man's problem (not God's)?22:18 - Genocide is something that people do24:13 - Who does God allow humans?28:09 - God is not done with the story yet, judgment and learning lessons31:32 - How having an eternal perspective will illuminate the issue35:00 - What about natural evils in the world?41:15 - Why would God instruct Israel to slaughter the Canaanites?38:12 - What about those carrying out the punishments?51:58 - Can evil be used in an argument for the existence of God?54:58 - Encouragement for those struggling ================================*Helpful links:*Clay Jones Biohttps://clayjones.net/#aboutWe Don't Hate Sin So We Don't Understand What Happened to the Canaanites - https://a315.co/WeDontHateSinClay Jones' blog:https://clayjones.net/blog/BOOKS:Why Does God Allow Evil?: Compelling Answers for Life's Toughest Questions - https://a315.co/3UHCB5OImmortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It - https://a315.co/3UMSQi2Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning - https://a315.co/3iSQDo2The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang - https://a315.co/3YbtBsG================================We appreciate your feedback.If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
Join the Creation Research team for PART 2 of the review of The Faraday Institute's 'God Made the Dinosaurs'. Heresy or no? What does the book teach about dinosaurs? Which God are they actually talking about? Who do they believe actually made the dinosaurs? Was it Jesus Christ, as the Bible teaches, or was it another god?
Join the Creation Research team as they review a book from The Faraday Institute: 'God Made the Dinosaurs'. Heresy or no? What does the book teach about dinosaurs? Which God are they actually talking about? Who do they believe actually made the dinosaurs? Was it Jesus Christ, as the Bible teaches, or was it another god?
What will be covered: How can I speak to God? Does God even listen to my prayers? How do I pray to God? Which God do I actually pray to? What is the true meaning of The Sabbath? What are the secrets to communion with my Soul and is communion with God and the Creator the same? The Perennial Truth and so much more...Publications Quick Links► The Perennial Truth Foundation : https://bit.ly/3DEH4S0► The Perennial Truth - Awakening of the Soul : https://bit.ly/3CXRdqM► The Disillusioned Christian : https://bit.ly/3TqGGLP► Maha Khala Meditation : https://bit.ly/3Sp1GBa► Know Thy Ego MasterCourse : https://bit.ly/3eQSpExJoin The Perennial Truth Community! Keep Smiling Y'All!Support the showAccess more exclusive digital content and engage in discussion on our private community forum, register at www.theperennialtruthfoundation.org
When God meets Moses for the first time on his mountain, he asks for clarity about God's name. Which God is He? What's His connection to the Hebrews and Moses? The answers are more surprising than you think. To support the podcast - join the tribe!
We remained focused on the nurturing of the sheep by the Shepherd. Which God said He was going to feed His sheep, in which we referenced Jesus doing for the body of Christ -His Church-, the called-out ones, in which they are feed the word of God. As the true Shepherd He truly nurtures them, with all maternal or should I say paternal care one could receive. The tenderness with which He lavishes upon them shows that love, that lays down His life for the sheep.
This TUESDAY TUESDAY TUESDAY, Gods will come from near and far to DUKE IT OUT. Which God has what it takes? Ohhhh take a listen, and hear how your personal God fares in the 6th Annual Intergalactic God Congress! Invocation Announcement about Stickers, Live Show Liturgical Reading: The 6th Annual Intergalactic God Congress Closing Statements Check back in two weeks and a new Story loaf will rise from our yeasty declarations. STICKERS: http://BabyNeedsDaddy.com BOOKS: http://thestorymustbetold.com LIVE SHOW: https://www.axs.com/events/430541/last-podcast-on-the-left-tickets PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/tsmbt
The Blessing Jacob got without tricking his Father was the real deal in Gen 28 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and [a]charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. 2 Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. 3 “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; 4 And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In[b] which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” 5 So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
Synopsis: This is the audio version of the 1-page article I wrote entitled, Etzba Elohim: The Finger of WHICH God? Most people assume that Egypt first acknowledged Hashem's involvement during the third plague, when Paroh's sorcerers said, "it is the finger of God!" But not everyone agrees. It all depends on who they were talking about when they said "God."----------The content on this podcast has been sponsored by my Patrons on Patreon. The total cost of maintaining my five podcasts in 2021 amounted to over $2000 - all of which would have come out of my own pocket were it not for your generosity. Thank you for helping me make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone!----------If you have questions, comments, or feedback, I would love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.----------If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.----------Patreon: patreon.com/rabbischneeweissYouTube Channel: youtube.com/rabbischneeweissBlog: kolhaseridim.blogspot.com/"The Mishlei Podcast": mishlei.buzzsprout.com"The Stoic Jew" Podcast: thestoicjew.buzzsprout.com"Rambam Bekius" Podcast: rambambekius.buzzsprout.com"Machshavah Lab" Podcast: machshavahlab.buzzsprout.com"The Tefilah Podcast": tefilah.buzzsprout.comGuide to the Torah Content of Rabbi Matt Schneeweiss: kolhaseridim.blogspot.com/2021/04/links-to-torah-content-of-rabbi-matt.htmlAmazon Wishlist: amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/Y72CSP86S24W?ref_=wl_sharel
What are you willing to die for? What flag will you stand for? Which God will you kneel to? In this episode, I share some thoughts about war and what I'm willing to die for. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did when I recorded it.
留言告訴我你對這一集的想法： https://open.firstory.me/story/cl00iy3h61oxy0896rhzf7nym?m=comment Mandarin Lessons: https://www.yunfei.world/languages/mandarin/Book lessons with this code to get more discount: huimin F Email: zhuimin9698@gmail.comF IG@ ministar723 What are the most common God and Goddess in Taiwan? Which God you should pray if you are looking for a partner for marriage Why do people in Taiwan worship their ancestors like the way they worship the God? Check out this episode and find more about the customs of religions in Taiwan 生詞shēngcí （Vocabulary） 1. 宗教 Zōngjiào 2. 多元duōyuán :diverse 3. 土地公tǔd gōng : God of earth 4. 息息相關xíxíxiāngguān 5. 保佑bǎo yòu 6. 風調雨順fēngtiáoyǔshùn 7. 收成shōuchéng : 8. 財神cáishén : God of fortune 9. 媽祖māzǔ :Goddess of the sea 10. 台灣海峽tái wān hǎi xiá 11. 信仰xìn yǎng : religious belief 12. 功能gōng néng 13. 文昌君wén chāng jūn : god of literature 14. 霞海城隍廟xiá hǎi chéng huáng miào : the name of the Yuelao temple 15. 月老yuè lǎo : the god who unites persons in marriage, matchmaker 16. 有求必應yǒu qiú bìyìng 17. 求qiú: to request 18. 靈驗 língyàn 19. 祖先zǔ xiān 20. 儒家思想rújiā sīxiǎng ： Confucianism 21. 孝順xiàoshùn 22. 尊敬zūnjìng 23. 儀式yíshì 24. 飲水思源yǐn shuǐ sī yuán : 25. 源頭yuán tóu 26. 祭如在jì rú zài: worship as if they were alive 27. 代表性dài biǎo xìng 28. 燒香shāo xiāng : burn the incense 29. 紙錢zhǐ qián :paper money (to the god or the dead) 30. 去世qùshì: pass away 31. 連結liánjié 32. 思念sī'niàn Powered by Firstory Hosting
Order of Service: - Prelude - The Versicles and Gloria Patri (p. 108) - The Confession of Sin (p. 108) - Hymn 189 - in House and Home Where Man and Wife - Genesis 27:46-28:5: And Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. - Devotion - The Responsory (p. 108) - The Collect (p. 108) - The Canticle (p. 108) - Hymn 178 - I Pray Thee, Dear Lord Jesus - Postlude Service Participants: Chaplain Don Moldstad (Preacher), Nathan Wildauer (Organist)
Chaplain Don Moldstad was preacher for this service. Genesis 27:46-28:5: And Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
"#ThreeDaysToAwakening" which can be understood as three steps, three actions of mind of self-recognition. We are looking more detailed at the first and second action of mind in the Awakening related to darkness vanishing in the Light, perception being useless and replaced by Knowledge and recognizing our Self as the Thought in Which God created us in His like Quality - For I am still as God created me.#Devavan shares from his new book "3 Days To Awakening - Day One - Looking for a Way out of Here" the instructional words of Jesus Christ in Chapter 11-vi-1. & 3-v-4.,6.-7.Also LIVE and archived on YouTube of DevAvan: https://youtu.be/freWEBIhq5k
Which God do you have faith in? Are you sure you trust the right God?
When God talks about destroying the world, He's not talking the physical earth or world, because it is what He so Loved He gave His only Begotten Son, but it is this world's system -Satanic-. Which God created but has become Behemoth -Monster-, full of the ism of The Devil -Satan, The Dragon, That Old Serpent-, of only He can vanquish.
One of the most important questions to ask about God is "Which God do we worship?" For Christians, it's important to understand that we don't worship "God" alone, we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It really matters. ► LINKS MENTIONED DURING THE VIDEO The "Get to know God" series looking at the Trinity is here: https://understandthebible.uk/posts/god-is-three-persons-trinity/ - the bottom of that page includes links to all the books I mention. You can see the whole Catechism online here: https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-shorter-catechism/ ► SUBSCRIBE Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to make sure you don't miss new episodes. If you have a moment, perhaps you could leave a rating / review - it really helps new people to discover it. ► WEBSITE Understand the Bible - teaching the Christian faith online. Lots more on the website, including free courses: https://understandthebible.uk ► LINKS • YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FHWCupn6tq39btG6z4Oqg • Facebook - https://facebook.com/bible.understand • Twitter - https://twitter.com/UnderstandTheB1 • Podcast - https://anchor.fm/understand-the-bible ► DONATE If you appreciate Understand the Bible and would like to support it financially, it would be massively appreciated. You can do that via PayPal - see this page for more info: https://understandthebible.uk/about/support/
“Thou shalt love none above GOD”.. yes? Which God is that? The one in your book, where you read that sentence from? Or the One in heaven? Bc the that's the one that actually matters, not your OFFENSE of/at His messenger. You remember, “you shall not love any other gods? You shall have ONE God?” HE is my God, Judge, & Father. How can you worship both? Well, there must be two! Bc one told you to write the book... another expects you to follow Him, not “it..?” Which is it? Hmm.. did He write it? Or does He expect you to LIVE it... perhaps even try to be CHRISTians (y'know: #LoveALL)...? without HAVING TO. WRITE. IT. DOWN!? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/christiantruth/message
South Indian Classical (Carnatic) Music Archive: Classes / Lessons
Full Notations -> http://www.shivkumar.org/music/#v Ragam: madhyamAvati {22nd Melakartha (Kharaharapriya) Janyam} ARO: S R2 M1 P N2 S || AVA: S N2 P M1 R2 S || Talam: Adi Composer: Tyagaraja Version: Ram Kaushik Lyrics Courtesy: Lakshman Ragde Pallavi: vinAyakuni valEnu brOvavE ninu vInA vElpulavaramma Anupallavi: anAtha rakSaki shrI kAmAkSi sujanAgha mOcani shankari janani Charanam: 1: nArAdhamulakunu varAlosaga nuNDa rAmulai bhUsurAdi dEvatulu rAyadini jendarAdu daya jUDa rAdA kAncIpurAdi nAyaki 2: pitAmahuDu jana hitArthamai ninnu tE teliya vEDa tALimi gala avatArametti ikanu tAmasamu sEya tALa jAlamu natArti hAriNi 3: birAna dayacE girAlu mAkuniki rAjEsi brOcu rAjadhari tyAgarAjuni hrdaya sarOja mElina murAri sOdari parAshakti nanu Meaning: (Courtesy: V Govindan http://www.vgovindan.info/nadopasaka/Tyagaraja%20Kritis/English/V/vinAyakuni-madhyamAvati.html) Gist: O Mother SrI kAmAkshi – the Protector of destitutes! O Reliever of the sins of pious people! O Mother who causes Auspiciousness! O Presiding Deity of the town of kAnci! O Reliever of the distress of those who worship You! O Wearer of (digit of) the Moon! O Mother parA Sakti - Sister of Lord SrI rAma - who rules the Lotus of the heart of this tyAgarAja! Which God is there for us other than You? Because You bestowed boons to base people, it is not appropriate that brAhmaNas, celestials and others should be troubled by being tormented; won't You deign to show mercy on us? Because brahmA, for the sake of welfare of the people, prayed to You so that he could know You, having taken a peaceful form, if You still delay (to show mercy), we will not be able to withstand. You, earlier, mercifully protected a dumb by restoring his speech. Please protect me like Your son vinAyaka.
A biblical definition of evil - Satan's focus and attacks the 4 Divine Institutions created by God. 1. Volition 2. Marriage (and it's relationships) 3. Family (and it's relationships) 4. Nations (and it's relationships) We are warned and commanded not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. Unbelievers are involved with and trapped by evil, even when not aware of it and are in need of escape from it. Which God has freely offered through accepting the work of His Son's death on a cross.
Which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.
Which God do you choose? (Judges 10-11)
Hey friends! We are back with a new season! We are so exited to be back and I truly missed talking to y'all! Which God do you know? The one the world tells you to know, the one your parents told you about or do you know Him for yourself? I pray that after listening to this you begin to seek God for yourself in a fresh knew way. I pray you have a supernatural experience with Him that is so personal and intimate it changes your life forever! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/shanyirobinson/support
With a finite number of days available to us to live, how should we live wisely? Whose commands should we keep? Which God should we fear? Watch again as Toby Skipper leads us through our final session in Ecclesiastes.
As the five Agents of the Boston office of the Department of Esoteric Relics and Parchment look upon their lodgings for the night, the owner of the home claims that they will meet God this very evening. Which God remains to be seen. --- Music from "The Great Old Ones And Other Beings" by Graham Plowman, found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyFjXaKiJLk&t=761s Website: https://www.Withoutanetpod.com Discord link https://discord.gg/TbE5Ajc If you like the show, swing by our Patreon where you can get access to over 15 extra hours of content. Email us: Withoutanetpod@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WithoutANetPodcast Copyright: Without A Net Podcast, 2019, and now 2020?
They handled the ark of God wrong and it costs Uzzah his life, If David would have sought the Lord regarding touching the Holy Things in Which God had already said if one touches the Holy things they would die. .The question for each one today what will one do with the word of God obey or disobey.. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pastorjim/support
What style is YOUR God? Vindictive? Prankster? Delegator? Out To Lunch? ■ Does God forgive horrible people? ■ Why is Satan represented by a goat? ■ How is religion a lot like sports? ■ Which God team has the most fabulous uniforms? ■ Why people-worshipers are stupid ■ All this and more in Sinners’ Sunday #59!
Special Guest Calik Stillsik "Christian Hip Hop Artist" 9:30 Pm April 12, 2019 Listen in on the conversation Anchor.fm, Apple Podcast, Overcast, Castbox, Spotify, Itunes, Stitcher, Radiopublic, Breaker, Google Podcast Calik Stillsik Bio (Christian hip hop artist) A Little about Myself Subject: Calik Stillsik links... fb. Calik Stillsik instagram. Calik Stillsik tw. Calik Stillsik snapchat. Calik Stillsik videos page youtube. Calik Stillsik Latest video... Big Sexy https://youtu.be/KhhuKfXGPYY Movie starred in...The Parable (short film) https://youtu.be/9JtGHdyQFpo My born name is Cleve` Tashan Peoples. My stage and performance name in this ministry God has given me is Calik also known as Calik Stillsik across social medias. I have a great passion for hip hop and all sorts of music. I myself am a hip hop artist and have been for many years. Which God has led me home to His kingdom to do it for His glory. Since I can remember I've always had a heart for making a difference always been apart of groups such as I.N.C.A.R. International Committee Against Racism and at a young age and now affiliated with organizations like the Lions Club a major moving outreach organization around the globe. Although I am an artist rapping to inspire and encourage lives I also look to give back and meet the needs of our people in less fortunate situations. The A.M.B.U.S.H is a vision God has given me straight out the book of Joshua where God sends us into the enemy territory to take the back our city by restoring hope. Imploding with love and compassion sharing our struggles pain and similarities to show them there is a God and together we will overcome. In this we need as much help as we can get by teaming up with anyone who share the same interest. I am in big expectation that God will move on this matter and lives will be saved in Jesus name! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/radio--tv-entertainment-n/message
Is America trying to bring down a Divine judgement upon her? Why is America passing laws that is against the will of the most high? Which God is it that America is truly serving? Come and hear the words of truth from Priest Arayah Yasharahla here on Liberation Tabernacle Ministries. Sorry family the show was cut off. So to hear the full show check it out at https://www.talkshoe.com/conf/show/liberation-tabernacle-ministries
Is America trying to bring down a Divine judgement upon her? Why is America passing laws that is against the will of the most high? Which God is it that America is truly serving? Come and hear the words of truth from Priest Arayah Yasharahla here on Liberation Tabernacle Ministries. Sorry family for the echo.
Is America trying to bring down a Divine judgement upon her? Why is America passing laws that is against the will of the most high? Which God is it that America is truly serving? Come and hear the words of truth from Priest Arayah Yasharahla here on Liberation Tabernacle Ministries. Sorry family the show was cut off. So to hear the full show check it out at https://www.talkshoe.com/conf/show/liberation-tabernacle-ministries
Hr 1: Nancy Pelosi stated a year ago that the Democrats do #God's work. REALLY? Which God would THAT be Nancy? Xander Gibb, talk show host of X-RAD. Hr 2: Gen Paul Vallely joins Joe to discuss ISIS, IRAN and more of what's happening in the Middle East. AND... Every country realizes that our treaties are out of date for 2019. Weapons have advanced so much since the treaties were signed. It's time to update. Hr 3: Democrat lawmaker said she sponsored the late-term abortion bill before reading it... WOW! Don't you feel better about that now? It's her JOB! Just do your job! Have you had your healthy dose of reality lately?
Sermon Title: "That Won't Burn" Jan 28, 2018 1 Kings 18:16-39 Passage asks two questions: Which God brings fire? Who are you? "There was no sound, [...]
“On this episode of Law and Profits we talk about the dreaded T word, Theocracy. Which God is better? The God of the Bible, or the God of Venezuela?”
People often wonder whether or not God exists. Yet, instead of asking, "Does God Exists?" perhaps the questions should be -- "Which God exists?" If we put the question in that way, we have to assume the hypothesis that 'God' is a real entity worthy of investigation. If we continue to follow that line of reasoning, then the question of which God falls directly in line. How do we determine that? Does the answer matter? Join me as returning guest and apologist Evan Minton from Cerebral Faith as he tackles the hard questions of faith and introduces his new book, "Inference to the One True God". You can call in at 646-668-8485, press 1 to be live on air. Or, you can download Stitcher on your mobile device. Or, click on the link here.
When talking to others about Jesus, we're often asked tough questions we don't know how to answer.For the sake of giving them at least some answer, Glen has come up with 16 response that can help get the conversation going. They are not meant to be ‘silver bullets' to end all arguments, rather, they seek to draw out deeper depth from the questions.Here, we discuss the following:(click to tweet them too!)“Suffering rules out God.”Which God? To be sure many gods are incompatible with suffering but what about the crucified God?“To say Jesus is The One Way is narrow.”But u insist on One Way to consider religions. That's narrow. The cosmic Christ isn't “To say sex/marriage is for 1 man and 1 woman is homophobic.”Think of a Buddhist. Is their vegetarianism carnivore-phobic?“Religions cause all wars.”Nope, about 7%*. God isn't the common denominator in war. Humanity is. *https://carm.org/religion-cause-warSupport the show
Order or chaos - Which God? by Refresh Church
I have to be honest with you, I have always struggled with prayer my entire Christian life. From the very beginning of my Christian life, I wasn't really sure how prayer worked. I'm still not entirely sure how it works. I remember early, maybe a few months after I came to Christ, I was being discipled by a guy with Campus Crusade for Christ. We were working on a car. I'll never forget this. I was trying to get a spark plug changed and it just wouldn't work. We worked on it together for about an hour, to the point where I couldn't even look at the car anymore. I was so frustrated by this. He said, "Why don't we pray?" I said, "Why should we pray?" He said, "What?" I said, "Well, why should we pray? God's just going to do what He's going to do, anyway." He rebuked me without giving me an answer to that deep theological question. We never did get that spark plug in. I'll never forget driving my car with one of the spark plugs out. It sounds worse than if it has no muffler. I'll never forget the guy running out and telling me to turn the engine off. I’ll never forget that. He said, "One of the spark plugs is missing!" Well, we knew that. We said that we couldn't get the spark plug in and he looked at me like I was lower than a worm. "You couldn't get a spark plug in?" he said, "Give it to me." He took the spark plug and reached back and his hand came back empty. I said, "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm going to get a wrench to tighten it. It's in." It was just like that. I felt like a total loser. Now, Tim, my discipler later said, "God answered our prayer. The spark plug got put in." I said, "Yeah, but I didn't want all that trouble and I didn't want to be ashamed." And still those words that I spoke years ago have plagued me and haunted me in reference to prayer. Why should I pray? God's going to do what He's going to do anyway. Have you ever struggled with prayer? Do you struggle now? Would any of you say that your prayer lives are exactly what they should be? Well, I don't know anyone that would say that. Even those that are flourishing the most in prayer, still yearn for more. There was a time in Luke 11 when Jesus's disciples came upon Him praying. They watched Him praying and they watched Him finish His time of prayer. They said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray." I feel that don't you. Say, "Lord, teach me to pray. I want to pray, better than I do." It seems to me that in Ephesians 1 and again later we'll see in Ephesians 3, the Lord has to some degree said to all of us, "Have you considered My servant Paul? He'll teach you to pray." We can learn from the Apostle Paul, what to pray for and how to pray. So, as we come to Ephesians 1 and we're going to focus this morning on 15-17, we're going to learn better how to pray. My desire is that as a result of this sermon and this study, all of us will pray better. That we will flourish actually in our prayer lives, that we will pray better individually, that we will pray better corporately because we need that. Thanksgiving for the Ephesians’ Genuine Conversion Now, Paul begins in verses 15 and 16 with thanksgiving for the Ephesians’ genuine conversion. The Apostle Paul has already unfolded in verses 3-14, I would say the single most magnificent sentence in all of scripture. It's one long sentence, 12 verses. He has unfolded in a very quick way, the theology of the Ephesians’ salvation. How it began “before the foundation of the world.” How God chose them in Christ before the foundation of the world and how “God the Father predestined them in love to be adopted as His sons” and how God planned this entire salvation out before anything came to be. And how then, Jesus, God the Son, shed His blood. We have “redemption” in verse 7 “through His blood,” and how God the Spirit applies that to us individually when we “heard to word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation having believed we were sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So we have the work of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the salvation of these Ephesian Christians. What Moved Paul to Pray? Paul tells them how he’s been praying for them. He says in verses 15 and 16, "For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers." We have Paul beginning with thanksgiving and also we see his intercession for them. There are parts of prayer that are adoration and thanksgiving in which we thank God for who He is and what He's done. We worship Him, we praise Him. We then acknowledge our own neediness and our inadequacy for the challenges and we confess those things to God and say, "We need You. We have to have Your help." So we are confessing that God is all sufficient and we are needy. So, Paul begins with thanksgiving and then he moves on to intercession, making requests for the Ephesians. Now, what was it, he says that moved Paul to pray for the Ephesians? He says, "Ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints," Paul had heard greatly encouraging reports about how the Gospel had transformed their lives. In other words, he had compelling evidence of their genuine conversion to Christ. Marks of Genuine Conversion So, what are marks of genuine conversion? How can you know that you're born again? How can you know that you're elect? How can you know that you're saved? He talks first about faith in the Lord Jesus. It's not enough for someone to believe in God. A lot of people say that they believe in God. Jews believe in God. Muslims will say that they believe in God. Hindus believe in God. Paul is moved specifically by their reports of their faith in the Lord Jesus. They believe in the Lord Jesus, he says. Now, the Gospel came to Ephesus and at the center of the Gospel is the truth about the Lord Jesus. This cuts to the center of what a sinner has to believe to be saved. Jesus is the center of the Gospel, specifically His saving work on the cross. Look again at verse 7, “in Him,” that is in Jesus, “we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” So faith in the Lord Jesus means, "I have renounced any effort at self salvation. I am not self sufficient. I cannot atone for my own sins. I am a sinner. I have cast myself on the saving work of Jesus on the cross. I have trusted in Him to save me. But, who was this person who died on the cross? Who was this individual? The simple two words, Lord Jesus, sums up a lot of doctrine about the Christian religion. "Lord" emphasizes the deity of Christ. "Jesus" emphasizes the humanity. This man, this human being, born of the virgin Mary, in the ordinary way as a baby was raised and grew physically, he grew in wisdom, stature and in favor with God and man. He just grew up before the eyes of witnesses, of neighbors who saw Him grow up from a little boy. He had flesh and bones and blood. Who needed food, air and water in order to survive. He, in many ways, was just the same as you and me. He had no “physical appearance, beauty or majesty, there was nothing in His appearance that was unique.” He wasn't glowing with the glory of God all the time. He did, on the Mount of Transfiguration, but that wasn't His consistent appearance. He looked ordinary, very ordinary. He was a normal human being. He got tired and needed to sleep. Most of all, He could die. He was a human being in that He could die. That's the humanity of Jesus. We also see the deity of Christ, the Lord. The deity of Christ. We believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, that He is truly the Lord Jesus Christ. The Ephesians came to believe that their Savior was not only human, able to shed His blood and die, but also God as proven by the resurrection from the dead. He was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. This is essential to our salvation. It says in Romans 10:9, "If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." You have to confess to the deity of this man, Jesus. This confession, this conviction, that Jesus who lived 2000 years ago is actually God in the flesh, can only come about by the direct working of the Holy Spirit of God on your heart. Only if the Holy Spirit of God works on you and in you, will you ever be able, truthfully, to make the confession “Jesus is Lord.” It says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, "No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." We can never make that confession except by the direct action of the Spirit of God. Paul believed and had heard that these Ephesians could make that confession. They believed in the Lord Jesus. They had left their pagan ways, their belief in many gods and goddesses. They turned their backs on all of that and they believed that Lord Jesus was their personal savior and their God. This is the first evidence of their genuine conversion. Secondly, he talks about their “love for all the saints.” This is the other great transformation in the Holy Spirit, not only vertically, believing in the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, believing that Jesus is God vertically, but horizontally. It transforms how you treat others, and especially how you treat other Christians, how you feel about other Christians he mentions. Now, the natural man not born again, has no special desire for fellowship with other Christians. I know I didn't. Before I was converted, I didn't like Christians. I didn't want to be around them. I think that the Apostle Paul would say, " I was in the exact same condition, brother. I didn't like Christians at all. As a matter of fact, I used to drag them off to prison, both men and women." Paul hated other Christians. He had no desire for fellowship with them. So, non-Christians tend to see us Christians in a number of bad ways. They see us as narrow-minded bigots, perhaps. You're going to hear that kind expression more and more as the 21st century unfolds here in the US, narrow-minded bigots. Killjoys, hypocrites, perhaps uneducated in some ways, worthy of mockery and disdain, this is the way that non Christians see Christians. But, once someone has been genuinely born again, that all changes. It is impossible to love the Father and not love His children. One of the great evidences of the transforming work of the Spirit of God is your love for all the saints, for other Christians. How can we explain this? How can we explain that I would say that any genuine Christian who is sitting and listening to me today, would much rather be in the extended presence of another spirit-filled Christian than even the most famous, or influential, or fascinating or athletically skillful non-Christian for a day. I would much rather spend the day or travel with a Spirit-filled Christian than even the most famous or influential non-Christian. I think you all know exactly why. “What fellowship does light have with darkness?” What are we going to talk about? We're going to disagree about the most important things. It doesn't mean that we can't have a communication or a relationship, we do try. I’m just telling you that I have deep love and attraction for other Christians, even if I've never met them. You know what I'm talking about. You can be with another Christian from another country. You could not even share the same language, but through a translator you have immediate fellowship with that person, man or woman, boy or girl. It is beautiful, the “love for all the saints.” The Holy Spirit had worked in these Ephesians, a genuine work of conversion, a belief in the deity of Christ, the Lord Jesus, and a genuine love for all the saints. Now, let me just stop and apply this right now to you. Do you see these two things in your life? Can you rightly assess yourself and say, "I believe that Jesus is Lord. I believe in the deity of Jesus. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins. I believe that I am a sinner, saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus and I have called on the name of the Lord Jesus for my salvation. I believe that God raised Him from the dead, proving that He is Lord." Can you make that assertion and is it played out in you life by the way you treat other Christians? The genuine love that you have for the brothers and sisters. 1 John says a lot about this. You can't say “I love God and hate your brother.” If you are a genuine Christian, you're going to love other Christians. Do you see these evidences in yourself and if not I just plead with you now to trust in Christ for the salvation of your soul. It could be as Daniel said earlier, "This is the very reason why you came here today." That perhaps for the first time you understand the Gospel and now you call on the name of the Lord for your own salvation. Thanksgiving: God is Responsible for Every Genuine Conversion Well, Paul goes from this evidence that they're genuinely born again to thanksgiving to the God who brought it all about. I think this is just so vital. It could be that some of us are depressed, and sad, and struggling in life because we don't give thanks enough. We're not thankful to God in any and every circumstance. We haven't learned the discipline of thanking God at all times. So these two evidences of genuine conversion move Paul to thanksgiving. He thanked God because God the Father had sovereignly worked these things out through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Paul gave credit where credit is due. It's so important that we see the theology of thanksgiving. There are so many things that I could say about that but what I want to go to is, you thank the one responsible. To the one who gave the gift, you say thank you to that one. We see the sovereignty of God in salvation by what Paul thanks God for. He thinks God is responsible for their salvation so He thanks God for it. I see the same thing in Romans 6:17. It's one of my favorite theology of thanksgiving verses. Romans 6:17 says this, "Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” I preached a sermon once with this simplified title from Romans 6:17, "Thank God You Obeyed." Now, meditate on that for the rest of the afternoon. How in the world can I give God credit for something I did? Paul did. Thank God you obeyed. Thank God you believed. Thank God you repented. It is God who worked these things in you. Thank God you're a Christian! Paul does that. He gives thanks. Paul continually thanked God for his own conversion, but here he goes beyond that. He thanks God for other people's conversion. Thank God you obeyed, not just thank God I obeyed. I'm grateful for that, oh eternally grateful. But, I'm grateful for your salvation too and as a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that it's reasonable to be equally thankful for your salvation as for mine. The same God worked them both. So, I am growing in that discipline of thanking God. I know that when I get to Heaven I will be equally thankful for the salvation of all of my brothers and sisters in Christ as I am for my own because it will be a clear display of the sovereign grace of God. We need to give God thanks. We need to give thanks for our own salvation. You need to be like that one leper, the Samaritan, remember, that came back, the other nine walking on their way. Ten lepers cleansed. One of them remembered to go back and give thanks in Luke 17. He fell at Jesus's feet and couldn't stop crying and thanking God for his cleansing. We have received a greater cleansing than that. We have received cleansing from sin. We have been delivered from Hell. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of the living God. Thank Jesus every day. Thank God for your salvation, but then go beyond that. Thank God for other people's salvation. Do it in prayer. That's what Paul does. Perseverance in Prayer We also see the perseverance in prayer here. Paul says that from the first he heard, he has never stopped thanking God for them. He didn't just say one thanksgiving prayer, "Thank God for the Ephesian Christians." But he continued to thank God. Look at verses 15 and 16, "For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and you love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you. I have not ceased giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers." The Need for Perseverance in Prayer We need perseverance in prayer and this may be the rub here, this may be the problem. The fact that God is not a vending machine and that He doesn't immediately dispense the things that we ask Him for, even though they may very well be in His plan and may very well be in accordance with scripture. In Luke 18:1, Jesus taught them the parable of the persistent widow for the reason that they should always pray and never give up. Why are we tempted to give up? Because God's timetable is not our own. Because God will not be ruled by us. He is the King, we are the suppliants. We are the servants asking for grace and mercy. He's not the servant, the slave that comes immediately and does whatever we ask, but He takes into consideration our requests and does what His wise plan has ordained to do. Also, because prayer is meant to transform us as well as to transform circumstances. We are to be genuinely, gradually, consistently transformed by a habit of prayer. I think often of the idea of a piece of cold, black iron being put into a bed of coals and then the bellows by the blacksmith blowing air on it. It just has to be in there a while to get it heated up and soft, yielded to the blacksmith so it can be shaped and molded. My heart starts in prayer, cold and distant so I need to be there for a while. Not on just any one given prayer time but over a long period of time in my life. I need to ask again and again and again for these things. Prayer is a form of training of our souls. What physical trainer ever says, "I want you to do one push up and one sit up for me today, there you're done." I know you'd love a trainer like that but you would have a kind of secret instinct that he or she wasn't doing you much good. You don't seem to be getting into better shape. I think you know why. But, a physical trainer that wisely pushes you close to the breaking point, you know that trainer is doing you some good. The Lord doesn't instantly answer our prayers. He wants to grow and to develop in maturity, to learn how dependent we are on Him. He wants us to care more about the things we're praying for and so we need perseverance in prayer. Paul prays day after day. He refused to rest. He refused to cease. He continued to give thanks for them. God was as worthy of thanksgiving on Wednesday as He had been on Tuesday of the previous week. It never changes. God is immutable. He always is worthy of thanksgiving. Paul literally made remembrance, he continued to think about them, remembering their names. He spoke their names to God in prayer and so should we be in our prayer lives. We notice that he also gives prayer to the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory.” Look at verse 17, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him." Prayer to the God of Our Lord Jesus, the “Father of Glory” Paul’s Prayer: Directed to God the Father Paul's prayer is directly to God the Father. Here I want to give you a Trinitarian theology of prayer, based on scriptural evidence. The usual pattern of prayer is that prayer is made to God the Father by the mediating work of God the Son, Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit. As far as I know, there is no biblical evidence whatsoever for prayer directly to the Holy Spirit. As far as I can find there is only one prayer in the New Testament that is directly to Jesus. That is when Stephen was being martyred and he looked up and he saw heaven open and he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. He said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Now, I don't think it's wrong to prayer to Jesus or wrong to pray to the Holy Spirit. Considering the Holy Spirit, if you can blaspheme to the Spirit, why couldn't you speak or address the Spirit. I think you can. But, I think that the Bible gives us the pattern of prayer to the Father. One thing I'm concerned about is that people have a reluctance to come to the Father that they don't feel toward Jesus. They seem to have much more of an affinity toward Jesus than to the Father. That would be completely wrong and heartbreaking. Jesus came to bring us to the Father. He came to be the mediator, to point us to the Father. He always wanted us to be able to see the Father in Him. He came to reveal the Father to us and so we should prayer in the regular pattern. Prayer to God the Father through the mediating work of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think we see that in Ephesians 2:18. Maybe you could look ahead just a few verses. It says, "For through Him," that is through Jesus, the mediatorial work like He is a new and living way open for us, "through Him we both, Jews and Gentiles, have access to the Father by one Spirit." That's a Trinitarian verse on prayer. We have access to the Father. Prayer goes to the Father. We get there by the mediatorial work of Jesus on the cross. True Prayer Begins with Remembering Who You’re Speaking To! I think that true prayer should begin with remembering who you're speaking to. I think we should stop. We should pause. We should be extremely reverential as we go in to pray. I love what it says in Ecclesiastes 5. He said, "Do not be quick with your mouth and do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in Heaven and you are on earth so let your words be few." Now, that's all about reverence, isn't it? Don't just run glibly into God's presence. Pause, stop, be mindful. “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed by your name.” That kind of thing, a sense of greatness and majesty of God. Let's think about it. He is the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory.” Think about that before you go in. Paul Prays to “The God of Our Lord Jesus Christ” Now, what does Paul mean by, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ?" Well, this is an identifier of God. Which God are we praying to? Remember how Paul was in Athens and he saw some shrine marked with these words, "To the unknown god." They were polytheists so they were trying to cover all the bases. I wonder if that unknown god would have been pleased with that or offended. But, we're not polytheists. We don't believe in an unknown god. We believe in One God and that He has revealed Himself to us by means of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and by means of the Holy Spirit's work in the scripture and in creation. God identifies Himself. In the Old Testament you see this again and again. “I am the God of Abraham” or “I am the God who appeared to you at Bethel.” Or He says to Moses at the burning bush, "I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." He identifies Himself that way. "I am the God who appeared to your fathers." But, Jesus is the mediator of a new and better covenant. This is a better way to identify the God that we're praying to. He is the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, our Lord Jesus, approached God the Father as a man. He believed in the Father. He trusted the Father. He obeyed the Father. He loved His Father. He prayed to His Heavenly Father. He sought to please His Father at every moment. After His resurrection, He spoke to the redeemed. He spoke to the church in this way in John 20:17, He said, "Go to my brothers and tell them I'm returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” The exact same relationship I have with the Father, I have now made for you." So, He is our Father as He is also Jesus's Father. Now, He is the only begotten Son of God. We are adopted children, but He is our Father. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus came into the world to reveal the Father to us. Hebrews 1:3, "He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being." "When we see Him, we've seen the Father," it says in John 14. Now, here Paul calls Him the Father of Glory. Think about that. What does that mean, the Father of Glory? The NIV has “the Glorious Father,” but I like the Father of Glory as though He is not only glorious Himself, but He is the Father of all Glory, all emanations of illumination and radiation that there is in the universe, come from God as the source. He is the source of all the rivers of glory that there are in the universe. Everything comes from God. Now, what is the glory of God the Father? We think of the radiant display of God's perfections, the shining radiance who He is. He is the Father of Glory. It says in 1 Timothy 6:16, "God alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light." I was meditating on that, "unapproachable light." I was thinkin about, what is that like? You know, it says in Isaiah 6, "The seraphim were covering their faces." Unapproachable light, the glory of God. I pictured the sun, 93 million miles away, but I thought, "Wouldn't it be something is God could make a special deal for us for just a day, and we could be 1000 miles away from the sun." He'd have to do a Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thing, surrounding us with a bubble of protection from the heat and radiation of the sun. But, we're just thinking about light. The sun is 103 times larger across the diameter than the earth so you could fit 103 earths, stacked up across the diameter. Let's say that we're at 51, right in the middle and were about 500,000 miles away from the sun. You'd look up in the sky and all you would see would be fire, raging, overwhelming light and fire. No heat because we have that special Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego bubble. We would be there and there's radiant light. That's what I think of being unapproachable light. That is the God that we're praying to, the Father of Glory. There will come a day in the New Heaven and the New Earth when the sun will be going. The sun, the moon and the stars will be gone. The whole world will shine, it will be radiating with the Glory of God through Jesus. That's the Father of Glory. He is the source of all glory. As we begin to pray, we come with a sense of overwhelming awe and reverence. There is a sense of the majesty, the infinite majesty of God and how great He is. Now, what is the goal of this prayer? Well, it's knowing God. Look again at verse 17, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him." The Goal of Prayer: Knowing God Paul’s First Intercession Now, this is the first of a series of intercessions. We're not going to deal with the rest of them today, there's just too many of them, and they are wonderful. We're just going to zero in on the first intercession. We come to God because He is capable of giving us infinitely more than all we could ask or imagine. We glorify God by asking for great things because He's a great God and God wants to make our requests made known to Him. And the first request should be, "Oh, God, I want to know you better. And I want this brother and this sister to know you better. That's what I want. I want the knowledge of God." Now, Paul is going to pray many more things than this, but he starts with this, that the Ephesian Christians would have the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God,” that they would know Him. They are already Christians, already born again and he's praying, "Oh, that they would know you better. That they would know you more fully, more deeply and more richly. An Infinite Study A.W. Tozer in his classic, "Knowledge of the Holy," said this, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." What comes into your mind when you think about God? It's the most important thing about you. So said A.W. Tozer and J.I. Packer, in his classic, "Knowing God," said this, "What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination, something which lays hold of our allegiance. This the Christian has, in a way that no other person has, for what higher, more exalted and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?" That is the organizing directive of your life from here to eternity, beyond the time when you're raised from the dead in a resurrection body. On into the New Heaven and New Earth, you're going to still be learning God, forever, the knowledge of God. It's an infinite study and we're going to be studying it forever. Jesus’ Deep Heart Cry for Us Now, this is Jesus's deep cry in John 17. This is His definition of eternal in John 17:3, "Now this is eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." That's what eternal is, to know God. This is the great tragedy of the lostness of the world. John 17:25 says, "Righteous Father, the world has not known You." This is the work that Jesus does in every Christian at conversion. John 17:6, "I have revealed You to those whom You have given to Me out of the world.” I revealed You to them. This is the ongoing work that He wants to continue doing. John 17:26, "I have made You known to them and I will continue to make You known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and I myself may be in them." What is this “Knowledge”? So, what is this knowledge of God? What does it mean that they may know God? Well, it is factual. It is knowledge about God, facts about God, truths about God that come from scripture. Who He is, what He's done, His great acts in the past, these come from the pages of scripture. Facts about God. We should be zealous to gain as many facts as we can from the Bible about who God is, about His attributes, His actions, about His plans and purposes in the world, what it teaches about Him. Facts about God, but God wants far more than just that. Now, we know that no true relationship can be without factual knowledge. You can imagine a couple just beginning their relationship. They're sitting down, they're having a cup of coffee and they have one thing on their mind. Tell me about yourself, I want to know who you are. Maybe it started with eHarmony.com, I don't know. I mean, it begins with something. It's amazing how people get together these days. I was talking to a Christian about that and he said, "Are you OK with that?" I said, "Well look what happened with Isaac and Rebekah and that whole camel thing. He went and got a servant, came back with her and that was that. They got married." So, I'm not sure what they conversed about on their wedding night. It's like, "Tell me your name, at least. Let's get to know each other." There's some information that we need to have here. So, I'm thinking eHarmony has more filtering going on than happened with Rebekah and Isaac. But, the servant went out and he was serving Abraham and brought the wife back for Isaac and it worked out great. Be careful with what you do with what I just said. I'm not going to that "Nth" degree, "Pastor said it was fine!" All I'm saying is that relationships begin with a passing, a giving and receiving of factual knowledge. That’s what I’m saying. There's no relationship without it. I actually knew a couple once that had no common language between them when they got married. They got married in the 1920's, a Swedish woman and an Italian man. They both spoke broken English, so that was interesting. Anyway, moving on. The passing of factual information is not enough. There needs to be a covenant love, a deep love relationship. Think about James 2:19, "You believe that there is One God, good. Even the demons believe that and they shudder." Demons have more factual knowledge about God than you do. Factual knowledge is essential, but it's not enough. There has to be a heart of love, a covenant love relationship of affection. In Matthew 7 Jesus said this, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven but only those who do the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name and in your name, drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers." What is Jesus saying there? Not, I don't have any facts about you. Oh, He has all the facts about them, 100% of the facts. But, they had no love relationship. So, are you conscious of the presence of God in your life by the Holy Spirit? Do you have a sense of His presence with you? A sense of intimacy with God? A sense that He loves you? That He calls you His son or daughter, that He calls you by name. If you have a sense of intimacy and love affection with God, that's what knowledge of God means. A sense of close covenant relationship. Like David said in Psalm 63, "Oh, God you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for You. My body longs for You in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory because Your love is better than life. My lips will glorify You." A sense of that kind of intimacy with Moses and God on Mount Sinai where he says, " Now show me Your glory." And He says, "No one can see My face and live. I'll put in the cleft of the rock and I'll cover you with My hand. You'll see My back as I do by." There's that intimacy between God and Moses. Do you have a sense of a love relationship with God? A sense of the presence of God? I think it's a matter of savoring God, of tasting, of seeing and savoring God. Like it says in Psalm 34:8, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Imagine, picture a table with a heavy white linen tablecloth and like a cut crystal dish and a scoop of raspberry sorbet and a heavy spoon next to it, plated with silver. Imagine picking up that heavy spoon and scooping out raspberry sorbet, and putting it in your mouth and it's melting on your tongue. You can taste the raspberry and then swallow. Well, that description is not the same as eating the raspberry sorbet. There's nothing that I can say verbally that will be equal to experience of actually having it on your tongue. Have you experienced the love of God? Jonathan Edwards, in his classic sermon, "Divine and Supernatural Light," put it this way, "There's a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There's a difference in having a rational judgement that honey is sweet and having a sense of that sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes but a man cannot have the later unless he has had the idea of the taste of honey in his mind.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” The Means to That Goal: The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation “Spirit” not “spirit” of Wisdom Alright, so that's the end of Paul's prayer for the Ephesians. What's the means to the end? He says that it's the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” Well, here I believe, different than almost every English translation, that the "S" in Spirit should be capitalized. I don't know if it is in the ESV. I know it's not in the NIV. So, what's the difference in lowercase “spirit” and uppercase “Spirit”? Well, uppercase Spirit would refer to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Lowercase spirit would be a disposition in the human heart, a spirit inside yourself. Thank kind of thing. A spirit of wisdom. I think it makes perfect sense that we were just a moment ago talking about the sealing of the Spirit. That this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God, to give you “wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him.” It is the Holy Spirit's work to unveil God and to make God appear glorious to you. It is the Holy Spirit's work to do this in our hearts. That is the Spirit of revelation. 1 Corinthians 2:10, 11 says, "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's Spirit within him. In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” So the Spirit searches these things and brings them to us. The Spirit of Revelation Now, He doesn't do this by extrabiblical revelations. That's where cults start. Muhammad had a revelation from an angel and wrote the Koran. Joseph Smith had a revelation from an angel and wrote the Book of Mormon. Mary Baker Eddy had a revelation and started Christian Science. Those are cults or false religions. I'm not talking about a spirit of revelation that comes outside the bible. I think it comes from what the Lord has given us through the ministry of the Apostles and Prophets, the church built on the foundation of the Scripture, the Apostles and Prophets, and the Holy Spirit takes the scripture and makes the truths about God clear to you. He illuminates your mind and your heart. We'll talk more about that, God willing, in the future. The Holy Spirit illuminates and makes these things clear, without that illumination, you'll never know God. Martin Lloyd-Jones told the story about a relationship between William Wilberforce who was an evangelical Christian, politician, tremendous leader in England in the early part of the 1800's, who was instrumental in the fight against the slave trade and eventually against slavery itself. He had a good friend named William Pitt, who was Prime Minister, not a believer. Wilberforce was deeply concerned with his friend. Deeply concerned with his soul. He would try to give him books. He would try to share different things with him. William Pitt was a brilliant man. The two of them had interesting, spicy conversations but still, nothing. Well, one day, William Wilberforce heard that a famous preacher, a power preacher named Richard Cecil was preaching nearby where they lived. So, he persuaded William Pitt to go with him to hear. Wilberforce said, "I had never heard a clearer exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Never clearer explanation of the deity of Christ, the death of Christ on the cross, His resurrection from the dead and the need for repentance and faith. So much so that Wilberforce was swimming in tears. But, Pitt sitting next to him was not moved at all and afterward Wilberforce asked, "Well, what did you think?" He said, "I must tell you, Wilberforce, I concentrated carefully on everything that man said. I tried to follow his train of thought and his argumentation and honestly, I have no idea what he's talking about." Now, William Pitt was more intelligent than Wilberforce, but if the Spirit of God does not give you wisdom and “revelation and the knowing of Him,” you will never know Him. But, if the Spirit of God does give you wisdom and revelation, you will know Him more and more. That is the work of the Spirit. Application & Prayer Now, what can we take from this. What I would say is, I've already made an appeal to non-Christians to believe. I'm now going to make an appeal to you Christians to pray like this. This is a simple application. Look at your prayer life and say, "Do I pray like Paul prayed? Do I pray without ceasing with thanksgiving to God the Father in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit? And do I pray for other Christians like this and for myself? And, if not, I'm going to urge you and plead with you. Go to God and say, "Make me a prayer warrior. Change my prayer life. Give me this kind of intimacy that you gave to the Apostle Paul." Father, we thank you now for what we've learned in Ephesians concerning Paul's prayer life and concerning what he prayed for, for the Ephesian Christians and we give you thanks for it. We ask that you would transform our prayer lives, oh Lord. Make us powerful prayer warriors. Enable us, oh Lord, to pray as Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians, that we would see an unleashing of power here in First Baptist Church as we have never seen before even in our lifetime. We pray in Jesus's name. Amen.
In this sermon we look at Moses' encounter with God and the burning bush we see in Exodus 3. In a time when there were so many gods, Moses asks an often overlooked question, "Which God are you?"
In this sermon we look at Moses' encounter with God and the burning bush we see in Exodus 3. In a time when there were so many gods, Moses asks an often overlooked question, "Which God are you?"
Today Fr. Kevin Maney looks at the apparently contradictory messages contained in our OT, epistle, and gospel lessons. Which God are we talking about? The God who pronounces fearsome judgment on his people through his prophet or the God about whom Jesus and Paul speak? The key to understanding the heart and mind of God, of course, is to keep our eyes focused squarely on Jesus. Doing so will help us see the astonishing Good News of God's love for us contained in the parables of the lost sheep and coin and experienced first-hand by Paul. If you suffer from a broken heart or spirit, or wonder what is your purpose in life, this sermon is for you. Check it and and see what you think. Lectionary texts for today are Jeremiah 4:11–12, 22–28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1.12-17; Luke 15.1-10.
This morning we have the privilege of beginning a new book. In terms of ministries of expository preaching and teaching, it is often the case that time flows by teaching rather than by the chronology of the calendar. I was just recently in California with the ministry of Dr. John MacArthur who has preached through the course of 40 years through the entire New Testament, word by word. And when people talk about when they were born there, they will say I was born during the Gospel of John. And we got married during the epistle to the Romans. And our children went to high school during the Gospel of Luke. That's the way it works. In the ministry of Dr. WA Criswell, at the First Baptist Church of Dallas, people would say, “I joined the church during Exodus, and that my mom and dad came and joined the church during Isaiah. An expository ministry is measured by text more than by time. And I say that as a word of warning. We are entering into the book of Genesis, and we are entering into 50 chapters of the book of Genesis. Children will be conceived and born, and may well enter into higher education, by the time we find ourselves at the end of this book. And we need to say right up front, that's the plan. To rush through Genesis would be to miss the point of going word by word and verse by verse through this book. As we consider what it means to begin in the beginning, we need to recognize that there is a hunger on the part of any thinking person to understand exactly what the book of Genesis will address for us. Every worldview has to have an account of how things came to be. This is one of the most fundamental human needs. This is something we're going to track as we follow along, not only in the doctrine of creation, but in the other absolutely fundamentally important truths that are revealed in the book of Genesis. Without the book of Genesis, we would not know the who in terms of creation. Without the book of Genesis, we would not know the how, but more importantly, we would not know the who and the why. We would not know for instance, what has happened to human beings without the account of the fall that we find in Genesis chapter three. We would not understand a great deal of the confusion that marks humanity without the account of the Tower of Babel. We would not understand God's covenantal promises to Israel without his doings with Abraham. And that is just what we might say comes in the first half or first third of the book of Genesis, with far more to come. Every worldview has to have an account of why there is something, rather than nothing. Every worldview, every thinking mind, has to rest upon some assumption, some revelation, some claim as to how things have come to be. And by the way, this starts very, very early. There was a book recently written by an evolutionary scientist who is trying to answer the question, why is it that very small children tend, by the very disposition of their minds, to disbelieve in evolution and to believe in intelligent creation. And this scientist thought, “well, we're gonna have to answer this question because it turns out that children are not blank slates when it comes to something like creation.” And this is true of children. Not only those who have Christian parents, and are raised in Christian homes, and are taught the book of Genesis. It is not just children who've been exposed to the storyline of scripture with creation, fall, redemption and recreation. It's children in general, it's children across cultures, it's children in secular homes and in Christian homes. Children are not naturally born evolutionists. So this evolutionary scientist, perplexed by this reality, did a study and discovered that, this is gonna be shocking to you, that when they see something, assume that someone made it. Now, how do they come to that conclusion? They come to that conclusion because just about everything they see is explained by the fact that someone made it. Who built the house, somebody built it. How did this building come to be? Somebody designed it, somebody built it, somebody furnished it. How did all this happen to be? How did the park come to be? How did my school come to be? How did all these things come to be? And then when they look at the world, they look at what we would call the created order. They see exactly the same thing. Nothing I know happened by accident. Not only that, children, and this is a very insightful point of her research, children very early assume that the greater the detail of the object, the greater the intelligence of the one who created it. Now, where in the world will they get that idea? Well, they know what they can build. You give them blocks, they'll build a house, but they're not gonna live in it. They'll look at the house in which they live, they're rational creatures, it's a lot more complex. It requires knowledge they don't have. It requires strength they don't have. Needless to say, it requires financial resources they don't have. They get to live in it. They know they didn't build it, but they trust that someone built it. When they look at the world, they come up with the same understanding. Every intelligent mind asks the question, as did the ancient philosopher: why is there something rather than nothing?Genesis begins the biblical story at this point. As we look at the opening of the book of Genesis, we recognize that, as we are looking at the first words of the book of Genesis, we are looking at the first words of the Bible. Now, in what sense is that important to us? Well, it's important to us because we need to recognize that the Bible is not an accidental ordering of books. The canon of scripture, the 66 books of the Bible, the 39 books of the Old Testament, the 27 books of the New Testament, these are not randomly arranged. And when you think about it, each one of the testaments is arranged in the way that genuinely does make the most sense to us in terms of the storyline of the Bible. The New Testament, for example, does not begin with a book of Acts. It does not begin with the epistles of Paul. It begins with the four Gospels because we cannot understand what the New Testament is about unless we begin with the promise of Christ, the birth of Christ, and the earthly ministry of Christ. And only then are we able to turn to the birth of the Church in the book of Acts, and the spread of the gospel in that same book, and then the life of the churches, and instruction of the churches that follows, and all that continues. And of course, the book of Revelation at the end is the book that is most intensely, although not uniquely, but it is the most intensely focused upon those things yet to come. And as we come to understand the New Testament, we see that thus there is a natural order between the Gospels, and then history, and then pastoral exhortation, and finally the prophetic apocalyptic text that comes at the end of the book of Revelation. So also in the Old Testament, where would we begin? We divide the Old Testament into certain kinds of literature. First of all, the Pentateuch, the five books that are written by Moses, the five books of the law, that which is known primarily amongst the Jews as Torah. There the story begins. Then after that our historical books, beginning, of course, with Joshua and following through the historical books that deal with the monarchy of Israel, then there is the wisdom literature and that is the Psalter of Israel. And of course it includes also the book of Job and the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, the book of Proverbs, and most centrally the Psalms themselves. Then follow the prophetic literature, which is the rest of the Old Testament divided between the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets. Now, when I heard that as a boy, I heard that like the major leagues and the minor leagues. That is not the case. We're not talking about the importance of the prophets. We're talking about the length of their books. The Major Prophets are named major simply because of the size of the books, and the Minor Prophets, known collectively as the book of the 12, are grouped together at the end. So what we have here is a natural way of beginning, and we're also dealing with those things that not only in terms of temporal priority, but of logical priority, come first. We can't imagine starting the New Testament with the book of Acts, because how can you begin, for instance, with the day of Pentecost when you don't know what has come before it? How in the world could we begin anywhere else in terms of the book of God in the Old Testament than with the book of Genesis? Because if we didn't begin here, we'd have to keep coming back to this over and over again, because it would be impossible to talk of anything that follows without making constant reference explaining questions that we should have explained before. That's why in the wisdom of the Scripture, we have Genesis up front. Genesis, of course, as we just said, is one of five books of the Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These function much like the Gospels in the New Testament. They are the fundamental set of books that establish the storyline to which everything that follows is absolutely accountable. When you think about the five books of Moses, the five books of the Pentateuch, without them, you really don't know how in the world the storyline is going to work. You don't know what's come before, and you really don't even understand the promises that have been made that are yet to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, if you just look at the number of words in the Old Testament that are invested in the Pentateuch, and then you think about the chronology of time that is invested in the Pentateuch, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, then you'll recognize that so much of what we know, not only about the Old Testament, but of course about the entire Scripture is found right here in these books. And in particular, in the book of Genesis, the word Genesis comes from the Latin meaning origin, or it's literally in the beginning, the Genesis of all things. This is how it has to start. We have to begin in the beginning. When we look at the book of Genesis, we need to settle a couple of issues up front, including the issue of its authorship. Now here there are controversial issues that have only become controversial in the last 200 years. If you take 20 centuries of church history, if you go from the book of Acts until the time of the dawn of the 21st century, for 18 of those 20 centuries, no one seriously questioned that Moses was himself the human author of the first five books of the Bible. The rise of historical criticism, and especially of that which is known as higher criticism of liberal biblical criticism, an anti-supernaturalistic attempt to understand the Bible as a human historical artifact, about 200 years ago, there arose arguments that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch and that Moses couldn't have written the Pentateuch. Now, here we come across some arguments. So we're just gonna have to consider them head on. Now the main argument does not come from where the middle school class would go. I can remember knowing that it was believed that Moses wrote these books. And then the first time I read through the Bible cover to cover, and I did it from Genesis to Revelation, I just figured that's the way you're supposed to do it. I still think, by the way, that's a good way to do it. I was about 13 and I got to the end of Deuteronomy and it talks about the death of Moses. And I thought, how do you write about his own death? That is the middle school objection to the Mosaic authorship. And the simple answer to that is it was completed by someone who finished the work, documenting the death of Moses, and that that's not really a problem. That's a middle school problem. The larger problem is in the rise of historical criticism, there arose the theory that what we have in the Pentateuch, in the first five books of the Bible, is not the work of any single inspired author that was written contemporaneously with the time of Moses. But rather what we have is the work of four different historical sources each with his own political agenda. And what we have is an edited colation that is known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory of the Pentateuch, dividing the five books into four different strains: J, E, P, and D. And that's the Deuteronomist, the Priestly, the Elohist, and the Jahwehist. And suggesting that what you have here is an edited, politically motivated compilation of things that emerge, at least many of them, from far after the centuries after the time of Moses. Now, I say that just in order to say that if you were to go to any liberal, biblical seminary, anywhere in the modern world, they would tell you that that's exactly what the Pentateuch is. It is a human collection of different writings edited over time for different political purposes, some to support the monarchy, some to support the priestly class, the Deuteronomist limited to the purpose in Deuteronomy. And if you do that, and if you look at the Pentateuch in that way, and if you take that kind of approach, not only to the Pentateuch, but to the entire scripture as logically you must, then all you're gonna do when you read the Bible is read about the beliefs of ancient people. And all you're left with is an historical argument, that there were many people who lived thousands of years ago who actually believed things reflected in these texts. And what we would do is an archeological kind of study, a deconstructive literary exercise, in which we would try to say, alright, I think what they meant by this was they evidently believed that because of this reason, they wrote that for this purpose. But let me just remind you that if that's what you believe about the scripture, then all you're left with is the historical imagination and curiosity of what ancient people believed. We are not approaching the verse by verse, word by word, study of the book of Genesis because we are interested primarily in what ancient people believed. We are approaching this book because we believe that it is indeed the inerrant, infallible word of God that was indeed revealed by God to Moses.Now, understand that when you're talking about authorship, in this case, that in the scriptures there are different ways that authorship is attributed. For instance, you have books in which authorship is clearly irrelevant such as the book of Hebrews. When we went through that book verse by verse, we were reminded of the fact that we don't know who wrote Hebrews and evidently, since the Bible is sufficient, we're not needful of knowing who wrote the book of Hebrews because evidently we're to read the book of Hebrews without reference to any particular congregational cause. Evidently the Holy Spirit would have us to read the book of Hebrews without trying to understand what was happening in the timeline of the human inspired author at that time. Contrast that with Paul. Paul's letters are clearly marked. Paul identifies himself: “Paul, an apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ.” And it is important in our understanding of the Pauline epistles, the Pauline letters, to know that Paul did write this. Paul will tell accounts of his own personal life and of his own personal testimony in his letters. And furthermore, it's important for us to know in the flow of the letters what was going on. When he writes to the Romans in Romans chapter one, “I long to be with you, but I've been hindered from coming to you.” We understand that that fits where, in the book of Acts, it tells us that he received a vision of a man from Macedonia who called him to Greece, prevented him, delayed him at least, from getting to Rome. And you understand, while evidently there, the authorship by the epistles identified to Paul, the Pauline authorship then becomes very important. That's certainly true also in a letter like Second Peter because Second Peter is making the point that what he relates, the inspired author, the human author of Second Peter says that “it is important that you know that I am an eyewitness of these things.” And thus, it's not just church tradition that identifies Peter as the author of Second Peter, Peter identifies himself as the author of Second Peter, and says, “You need to know I was there when it happened.” If Peter thus is not the author of second Peter, then whoever did write Second Peter lied. There is another form, however, of attributed authorship. And that fits what we're talking about here. And that comes down to this. We know that the books of Moses are rightly associated with the Mosaic authorship, not mostly because of anything found within Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy. We come to understand that within both the Old and the New Testament, the authorship of Moses is so assumed that, referring to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the subsequent witnesses of scripture will refer to this as “Moses said.” So it's not there in the beginning. Genesis 1:1 does not begin “Moses, appointed by the one true and living God.” Rather, it simply begins, “In the beginning.” When we talk about the attribution of these five books of Moses, we know that this is clearly a link to Mosaic authorship and to Mosaic authority. This is our understanding of how to begin an understanding of the book of Genesis. Thus, we consider what we are about to confront in the text of the book of Genesis is that, which is the God inspired, word for word God-inspired text with which scripture, both in terms of the canon of scripture and the storyline of scripture begins. When you look at the actual text of Genesis, the first verse is one of the most familiar verses of all the scripture. It's short, it's poetic in its concision. It's not overly elaborate in terms of any use of words, and yet it encompasses the entire story. So in other words, it's almost as if the entire storyline of the Bible comes down to this first verse as being equivalent to getting the entire story underway with far more here than we might imagine in the economy of words. “In the beginning.” Where else would you start here? We have another problem: in the beginning of what? This isn't in the beginning of God. As we will learn in scripture, God doesn't have a beginning, but we have a beginning. Our story has a beginning. The story of the cosmos has a beginning. And isn't in the beginning God created himself. It's “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The storyline begins chronologically just the way, in our hearts and in our imagination, we want it to start. We don't want it to start at some subsequent point that will only make reference back to what happened in the beginning. We need to start right in the beginning. And the first words of God's inspired word begin right there “in the beginning.” The beginning is an interesting word because when you think about how to start a story, you start with some beginning.If you tell of who you are, if you start to tell your own autobiography, if you sit down next to someone on a plane and you just try to identify yourself, you have to start somewhere. And eventually, if you're gonna tell your story in any adequate way, you're gonna have to go back to your beginning. Well, where was your beginning? Well, I was born in Lakeland, Florida, October 19th, 1959. You've all been wondering about that. Lakeland, Florida, there in Polk County. And I was born. And that's the beginning of my story. By the way, even though I was there and I have paperwork to prove it, I have no living memory of the occasion. I'm dependent upon others to tell me in the beginning. However, you don't have to get very old until you realize that's not an adequate beginning because something happened before you. So as you're a child, you begin to push the beginning back. You discover that these huge people you know as your parents also had a beginning. Where were you born? And when? Prehistoric times it sounds like. But nonetheless you begin to understand, “My parents are both born in 1936 in Plan City, Florida. Just about 15 miles away. Seemed like a long time away when I was a little child. It's shorter than the distance between my home and Highview Baptist Church right now. But nonetheless, that's where they were born. I wasn't there. Then I have to take that on faith. They told me they were born in Plant City, Florida. Eventually, when doing a genealogical project, I saw their birth certificates. Low and behold, there is proof that they were born in Plant City, Florida, but I'm still taking it on faith. But then you come to understand that it doesn't go there. You go further and further and further and further back. I have a professional genealogical study of my paternal lineage going all the way back to the early 17th century in Basil, Switzerland, complete with marriage certificates and birth certificates and cemetery information and the ship's log of the ship thistle upon which my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather came over from Switzerland and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Amish family. I come to understand, at least that part of the family. But you know what? That's not even an adequate beginning because that only goes back to the early 17th century. That already implies there were 17 centuries prior to this. And not only that, there's time prior to that. So our beginning is problematic because we're never sure we can get far enough back. We just have to, at some point, trust there's enough beginning we can go forward. That's why if we had to have the genealogy traced for every one of us in every way we possibly could, in order to know who we are, most of us would never find out who we are. There's not enough documentation. Well, you think about the beginning of an organization, or you think about the beginning of a church. So someone says, “when was this church founded?” Well, it kind of depends on what you mean. This church was organized in Louisville, Kentucky to a certain date, but it was actually founded by the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 16. It was actually inaugurated in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. So that's when this church was founded. It had a beginning. But the church as a story, before there was a church, in other words, the beginning's problematic for any of us. The beginning we're talking about here is not the beginning of God in which there's no beginning. It is rather the beginning of the cosmos, the storyline of creation. And here we find a very simple statement that the most important thing we come to understand is not a when, but a who. The central issue of Genesis 1:1 is who. “In the beginning,” introductory language, “God.” Now let's just assume that we're considering a condensed version of the scriptures. Back about 30 plus years ago, Reader's Digest, which was famous for condensing novels in other books, and putting them out in a very popular series of readers, a reader's digest of condensed books, decided to condense the Bible. It was a rather controversial project as you might imagine. One Christian magazine lampooned it by condensing the Bible down to a hilarious paragraph. And you realize it really can't be done. And the Reader's Digest's condensed Bible, despite the hopes of Reader's Digest, did not become a bestselling book. It just resists that kind of condensation. But you know, if you were to consider how to condense the Bible down to just a few statements, you could certainly imagine condensing the Bible down to, if you just had to, if you were running out of time, and you had to say what the Bible's about, you might go first to John 3:16, “For God to love the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” It certainly condenses the storyline of Jesus, the account of Jesus and the Gospels and the teaching of Jesus concerning why he came, and the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection. It's all right there. God's purpose in the incarnation is right there. But you know, you could say that everything in the Bible comes down actually to the first four words in the English translation of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God.” Now the reason why that's important is this, not only is Genesis 1:1 primarily about the, who, the who explains everything that follows. Not everything that follows in Genesis, everything that follows, period. Because as the author, and as the originator, as the designer, and as the creator of all the cosmos, then, as BB Warfield, the famous Princeton theologian, said, “He by definition names it, claims it, and owns it, such that everything that follows follows from the fact that it's his.” He is the agent who creates in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Now, another interesting thing here, of course, is if we were reading Genesis for the first time, if we don't know anything else about the storyline of scripture, and we don't know anything else about Christianity, or even if we didn't know anything about Judaism in terms of the Old Testament, and we just picked up this book and we read “In the beginning God created the heavens on the earth.” How would we know who this God is? Well, which God? Does it not strike you as something odd that it just says, “God.” By the time this was written, there were already various paganism and idolatries. There were already alternative accounts of creation and how the world came to be. The peoples around Israel had their own accounts. They had their own understanding. After all, we're talking about Moses here through whom this came to be written. And by the time you're talking about Moses, you're talking about the people of Israel in captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Egyptians had their own creation story. And they had their own collection of gods. And of course they're all around them, the Canaanite and all the others that as we shall see, Abraham certainly would have known. In fact, out of which Abraham himself came, they had their own creation stories. They had their own gods. Why the simplicity of this statement “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God, is that enough? Well, here, we need to understand something else about the entire storyline of the Bible. The entire storyline of the Bible, beginning in Genesis 1:1, identifies the only God that matters as the God who created the heavens and the earth. As a matter of fact, what is going to distinguish Jehovah, YHWH, the God of Israel, is going to be that he actually did create all these things. He is the only uncreated being. Everything else is created. And when, last week, we were looking at Isaiah chapter 44 and the issue of idolatry, one of the things that became most clear, the folly of idolatry is in the fact that the idols are things that are made. God isn't made, He makes. So even though we have the simple statement “In the beginning God,” it's because the Holy Spirit would have us clearly to understand that the only God that is is the God who does this. And as more is revealed about him in his word that follows everything we will know then is tracked back to the fact that the God who exists, the one true God, is that God whom created the heavens and the earth. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Thus, the first thing we know about God is that he is the creator. And that is a title that he will retain throughout the entirety of the biblical canon. He is the one who creates. Remember your creator in the day of your youth. He again will claim of himself, “Did I not make you, Job?” at that great climactic conclusion to the book of Job. God will speak to Job and say, “Excuse me, let's remember the difference between us. Were you there when I created this? Were you there when I created that? Obviously, even Job is in the position of saying, “No, sir.” Which isn't even necessary. It's not even answered in scripture. It's so clear. But God says, “look, I was there. I did this. You look at that creature, I made that. You look at that artifact, that wonder of creation, I made that. Where were you? Which one of us is God? I'll tell you which one's God. It is the one who is creator, not the one who is created. “In the beginning God created.” You'll notice the singularity of this. God creates alone. He doesn't require others to be about his task of creation. What we will learn as we move forward through Genesis chapter one, and also as we look at Genesis chapter two, is that God will create verbally. He will speak. And when he speaks, it is created. He doesn't have to have minions and workers. He doesn't have a construction crew. He simply speaks and it is.“In the beginning God created.” Created is a verb. God is acting. One of the first things we learn about God is not only that he is the origin of all things, that he is the one who has created, and thus He is sovereign over all things. That establishes the fact that he owns all things, but it also makes very, very clear that he acts. God acts. God, not merely is, God acts. That becomes very important too. Because one of the things we will learn about his human creatures is that we are made in his image. And a part of what we're going to learn, that Genesis will reveal, is about human beings being made uniquely in God's image. We too, verb, we act. A part of what it means to be made in God's image is to be able to act. And by the way, also to create. We do create things. The problem is that we don't create in the same way that God creates. We create out of stuff. God creates the stuff. We're gonna learn, as we look through Genesis one, that it is essential to understand God's creation as ex nihilo. We'll talk about that. That is the Latin term, as the word “genesis” itself is a Latin term. That means out of nothing. He doesn't create out of stuff. He doesn't take preexisting stuff because nothing's preexisting except himself. He creates the stuff. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In other words, the totality of all there is. In the ancient cosmology, limited as they were in their prehistoric ignorance, they assumed that everything that was was either seen by looking down or looking up. In our advanced sophistication, so much wiser and accumulated so much knowledge and wisdom, since then having gained so much in our understanding we're in a different position. Except we're not. We still know that everything that is to be known in terms of creation is by looking down or looking up. In other words, it's here on this earth or it's out there in the heavens. In other words, our world picture may be more sophisticated because of our astronomical and scientific knowledge, but we're stuck in the same human predicament. We're looking up and we're looking down. God created the heavens. We look up everything and we see God has created. You put the Hubble telescope up there, which Moses didn't know about, and the Hubble telescope can look millions of light years out into the future, or I guess actually into the past. And what does it see? It sees the heavens. That's what it's looking at. In other words, there is no dimension other than this, the heavens and the earth. This is everything. He created everything that is. You look down, everything you see, God created. You look up, everything you see, God created. The distinction between the heavens and the earth is crucial here, but mostly because together they represent the totality of everything that is. The first verse of scripture tells us, most importantly, who: God. Which God? The God who does this, as we shall see. The only God who deserves to be called God. The God who will say, “bring no other gods before me.” The God who will say, “Where were you when I did this?” The God who will say, “Remember who I am. I am the creator of all things. I made it. I own it. I claim it. I rule it. It's mine.”In the beginning the God who already existed. In the beginning he created, he acted. He freely acted. Nothing was constraining him to have to create. No external force required him to create. He created because he freely willed to do so. And as we shall see, he tells us why he willed to do so. In the beginning, God created, he acted, he willed. He sovereignly created out of nothing, as we shall see, the heavens and the earth, everything that is. Now, just imagine where we would be if we did not have those few words. We wouldn't know the who. We wouldn't have a clue of how to know the why. We wouldn't know the what. We wouldn't know anything that is absolutely necessary to our understanding of the storyline of scripture. But now we know everything we need to know in the beginning. And now as we follow word by word, through the book of Genesis, we're gonna learn a great deal more. And we will be coming back time and time again, to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”Let's pray. Our father, we are so thankful that you have given us not only in this passage, but in your word, access to your truth. And otherwise we would never know. Father you have to tell us these things because we have no access to them but by the free and merciful gift of your revelation. Father, thank you for giving us Genesis. Thank you for giving us the entirety of scripture. But thank you this day for giving us this one short verse with which the entire canon of your word begins. In order that we can understand where to begin in the beginning. And father, we are so thankful to be reminded by this text, informed by this text, instructed by this text, that we begin not with a when, but, most importantly, with a who. And so father, we end by praising you as the one who created us and created all things and rules over us and rules over all things. Father we conclude by thanking you that we know you not only as creator, but as redeemer and thus in thankfulness. We come to you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Amen. Look forward to being back with you next Sunday for verse two.You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.
Do you want a mush God, the God who is there for you during the good times? Or do you want a mighty God, who is there for you no whatever you want? Everyone these days interact with the MUSH God. The mush god is there in the prayers before games, when people want him to be around, and is not jealous of anything. He loves to share his spotlight with any other god you throw at him. The MIGHTY God has standards for our lives and is jealous when other gods in our lives. But the mighty God is there for you when you don't want Him around. He is there during the good and bad times in our lives. Which God do you want in your life?
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