Faith Sermons and Studies: Recent Episodes
Joe DiVietro
Join Pastor Joe DiVietro's passionate and in-depth sermons and studies of the Bible from his home church of Faith Baptist Church in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, where he has pastored since 2014. Pastor Joe has lead 3 churches for the last 19 years and holds Masters degrees in Divinity, Theology and Pastoral Studies from Heart of America Seminary.
If I were to come to your house—let’s say you invited my family over for dinner. And we pulled into your driveway and walked up your sidewalk and came to your front door, what would I do? The first thing I would do would be to knock on your door. You would here this “knock, knock, knock”. Or maybe I’d ring the doorbell, or use the door knocker. I used to think door knockers were for rich people until I lived in an apartment and every door had them. But I knock. And that knock is a sign to you—help me out: what does that knock say to you? It says someone is here, and it says come open the door right? Not always. For you it may elicit several different responses. Maybe it’s excitement: “oh, they’re here, let’s get the door.” It could be confusion: “now who could that be at this hour?” Perhaps it’s: “shhhh! Go hide! It’s the neighbor kids selling candy, let’s pretend we’re not home.” Or it could be “turn up the tv and pretend we don’t hear it, it’s that salesman again.” All kind of different responses, but we know when we hear that sound, we have to make a choice. It’s a universal symbol in most of the first world—that sound means someone is at the door, and I have to choose; am I going to open it and see who it is, or am I going to run and hide.
Believers in Jesus have a very similar spiritual decision they have to make, because we have that same knocking sound in our spiritual lives. Sometimes God comes knocking at the door to our spiritual lives. And we have a choice—a decision to make. Are we going to open up and let him in, or are we going to run and hide. And as we come to Jonah, we find that he had this same decision to make. Let’s review where we’ve been so far. God tells Jonah “Go cry against Nineveh, that wicked city.” Jonah says “No way!” And boarded a ship to flee from God. And then we hear it—knock, knock, knock. God comes knocking at Jonah’s door by way of a storm—God hurls a storm on the waters to get ahold of Jonah, but Jonah wasn’t through running from God. He told the sailors to throw him overboard, and they do. But again we hear that all too familiar sound—knock, knock, knock, as God knocks on Jonah’s door again by way of a fish. And we pick up our story as Jonah is swallowed whole and we find him sitting inside of the fish and we hear the knocking again as God waits for Jonah to open up the door. And God begins to work on Jonah’s heart, and eventually he does open up. God is knocking at the door to our spiritual lives as well—will you let him in? From this section in our story of Jonah this morning we learn one key truth for our lives:
Big Idea:God's grace knocks at the door to our hearts, and God expects us to answer
One of the clearest signs that someone owns a dog is this little device—a retractable leash. If you’ve ever used one, you know how it works: the dog has freedom to wander a bit, but it never leaves the control of its owner. The line may stretch, but there’s always a limit. And when the dog strays too far—or when danger comes—the owner pushes a button and reels it back in.
What a fitting picture of God’s grace. We are all inescapably tied to God with a very similar bungee chord called grace. Grace connects us to God. It allows us to have a perceived level of freedom, but if we get too far, God’s grace brings us back. We see the inescapable anchor of God’s grace displayed openly for us through the story of Jonah. He ran from God—fast and far—but he never escaped God’s gracious pursuit.
God works this way in our lives as well. When we run from God, he pulls us back. When we think we’ve escaped, we haven’t left at all. And in Jonah 1, we find good news for all of us who have a tendency to run:
Big idea: God graciously pursues his children
One of the most obvious indications that someone is a runner is the shoes. You can tell a runner, often times, by the shoes they wear. I used to do a lot of running, not as much any more, but I was really into running shoes. I can tell the difference between brooks, saucony, hoka, and altra without too much difficulty. Running shoes are designed for running. But often times you can really tell a runner by the kind of shape their running shoes are in. Some runner’s shoes look almost brand new. Now this could be an indication that they just got them, but sometimes it indicates that they’re not really that much of a runner at all.
I brought with me some running shoes. This is my oldest pair right now, and they’ve been around. I can’t remember how long I’ve had these, but it’s been a while. And you can tell if you look closely. The decals on the side are peeling off. The tread on the bottom is thin and worn. And they have holes all over—they don’t work too well in the rain. But you can look at these shoes and tell that I’ve put in the miles and time on the trail.
Some of us, most of us, in fact, probably all of us have a pair of shoes like this. A pair of worn, old, past their life time shoes. I’m not talking about physical running shoes, I’m talking about spiritual running shoes. In our hearts we have an imaginary closet, and in this closet, at least if you’re anything like me, is a pair of running shoes. They’re worn, which indicates we’ve used them a lot. They’re old, which means we’ve been using them for a while. But they are the shoes that we use when we run from God. And just like my running shoes are full of holes and old and worn out from use, so are the shoes we use to run from God, because we do it regularly and easily. We are all, at times, experienced runners from God. We have all tried to run from God in various ways.
What does it look like to run from God? Well, we run from God every time we do something God doesn’t want us to do. When we respond incorrectly in life, we run from God. When we give into sin—whether it pride or gossip or lust or anger or anxiety—whenever we sin we are running from God, because we know this is not what God wants us to do. In this sense, we are all runners; we are all experienced runners from God. As we come to the book of Jonah this morning, we learn that Jonah was also a runner from God. Jonah continued the oldest spiritual endurance event known to man—running from God. Ever since Adam and Eve mankind has been running from God. And Jonah demonstrates that for us in his life story. From the story of Jonah in our text today, we learn a very important truth for our spiritual lives:
Big idea: You cannot run from God; so stop trying!
Have you ever played hide and seek with a young child? It is quite fun. Maybe you have young children, or grandchildren, and kids enjoy playing hid and seek. The problem is, they are often not very good at it. Right? They just don’t get the concept. Maybe they go and get in their hiding spot and you would hear them giggling. Or they hide, but only partially. They might hide their heads, or hide their eyes, when the rest of them is in plain sight. Or they’ll just stand in the corner and cover their eyes, thinking that if they cannot see you, you cannot see them. Doesn’t really work that way, does it?
I want you to think about that for a moment, because sometimes I think this is how we are with God. With God’s working, with God’s pan, and with God’s grace. We might give into the false believe that if we cannot see God, if we can’t see him working with our own eyes, then he must not be there. And we might even put our hands in front of our face— “God, I can’t see you. Where are you God? Oh he must not be there because I can’t see him.” This is especially true with the grace of God. We might try to pretend, like God isn’t there, like God is not as gracious as he actually is, or that if we refuse to see it, we can actually escape from the presence of God and his grace. But just because we refuse to see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. This was the mistake Jonah made. Jonah tried to run from God. He was a prophet—he knew better. But he tried to run from God, he tried to hide himself from God’s grace that God was intent on giving to Nineveh. But despite seemingly trying to put his eyes in front of his face and pretend that God wasn’t going to do what he desired, Jonah learned that just because we refuse to see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Jonah tried to run from God, and to pretend like God’s grace was not there. But that didn’t change God’s grace at all. Jonah thought he was running from God. But in reality, he was running into God’s grace! And the very same grace that he was trying to pretend was not there, we find is the very same grace that he actually needed himself. Ho did Jonah try to run from the grace of God and how did he actually run into God’s grace? Let’s look at the story to find out.
Can you remember when the reality of suicide first touched your life? I remember where I was when I first had the reality of suicide touch my life. I was in 4-5 grade . . .
We’ve all been touched by those who have felt those types of things; maybe you’ve even felt them yourself. But it is what we do when we have those types of feelings, when we reach the point of utter despair, that becomes incredibly important. Do we let these feelings consume and control us, or do we bring them to God in faith and trust. And in our story today we find a man who was in despair. And in the midst of his despair, he lost sight of the sovereignty and control of God, and he decided to take matters into his own hands and end his life. But we see clearly that ending his life did not allow him to get the escape he desired, and that there actually was still hope if he had held on for just a little bit longer.
In his famous novel “The Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens contrasts the cities of London and Paris. Written during the French Revolution, the novel describes the stark contrast between these two large cities based on how the residents experienced the revolution. Paris was in the grip of the revolution, and was marked by violence, mob rule, and mass executions. The tale shows the horror of a society consumed by self pursuit and violence. London however, was a stable place with mostly law and order, and was a refuge of safety for those fleeing France.
"Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities to show the contrast between London and Paris during revolution. Similarly, 1 Samuel gives us a tale of two kings: Saul and David. Both had proximity to God. Only one had a real relationship. Today we’re going to see their story and ask ourselves the question: which king am I more like?
They thought it was just kids playing pranks, but it turned out to be an angry 72 year old man, instead. From 2003-2005, a number of former teachers and school admins in NY reported a rash of vandalism at their homes. They would wake up to punctured car tires from roofing nails scattered across their driveways… and garage doors & mailboxes splattered w/paint. Some victims complained of being hit every two weeks.
It went on for nearly 2 years until perpetrator was caught…
Turned out vandal wasn’t a rebellious student but a former co-worker named Thomas Haberbush who was still angry about poor performance reviews he had received in 1977, when he was dismissed as teacher. The police investigator… “I’ve never seen anyone carry around a grudge like that for 30 yrs…it’s bizarre”
Another man went to his doctor after he was bitten by a stray dog… Doctor comes in and says… “Yes indeed, you do have rabies.” As soon as heard that, man got out pen and paper… and began making a list of people… Doctor said “Listen, no need to call all those people… you’re not going to die. There is a cure for rabies.” Man answered… “Oh, I know that. I’m just makin’ a list of all the people I’m gonna bite.”
Yet another story I read was about a woman who was in a department store checking out… As she opened her purse to get her wallet, the sales clerk noticed a TV remote inside. “Need batteries?” She said… “Oh no. My husband wouldn’t come shopping with me today because he’s trying to flip back and forth between 2 football games at once. So I figured that taking the remote while he wasn’t looking was the most evil thing I could do to him without getting in trouble.”
These are humorous stories, but they are also relatable. What makes these stories resonate with us? What makes us chuckle but in an understanding sort of way? Truth is, while we might not use the same tactics these individuals used—maybe we’re too mature for that, we at least understand the desire behind them. The desire for revenge. Sweet revenge. We are all familiar with that desire, even if we haven’t acted upon it. We all can understand the desire to even the score, to get back and someone who did something to us, or to achieve a sense of satisfaction from getting even with someone else.
But revenge has a cost. It might make us feel good for a little while, but it always costs us. . .
Have you ever been treated unjustly? We live in a world today that is hyper vigilant for justice. Every wrong committed needs to be righted. And oftentimes we seek for a sense of vindication for the wrongs that have been done to us. This isn't a bad desire necessarily, but it can easily lead us to try to provide our own vindication from our wrongs rather than trusting God to set things right in his timing. The problem is when we try to right wrongs on our own we often end up doing it in the wrong way.We feel like we have a reason to get upset or hurt and perhaps we might, but that can cause us to give in to the desire to lash out and treat someone else with the very same injustice that we have been treated with ourselves. And it can be easy, all too easy to lash out at those who have mistreated us, or to criticize those who have been against us or even those with whom we disagree.
But here's the problem: while we may have legitimately been mistreated or treated in an unjust way, using the same tactics towards that person or persons does not solve the problem. In fact, it makes things much worse. Two wrongs do not make a right. Responding wrongly to another wrong does not resolve the situation. Yet sometimes we think it does, and we are all too willing to take the posture of justice and vindication and let that excuse our unrighteous actions. But it is never right to do wrong in order to produce something that is right.
As we come to our passage for today in I Samuel 24, this is a lesson that David learned. David had been on the run; hiding from Saul in caves. And he had the opportunity to vindicate himself. He was presented with the perfect chance to enact judgment on his enemy and stopped the mistreatment that had been happening in his life. And for a moment David gave in to this compulsion and took steps to get back at his enemy and put him in his place. But we'll find in our text this morning that those who walk with God have a conscience that convicts them and ultimately stops them from using their own unrighteous desires to their advantages. If you've ever struggled with getting even and trying to vindicate yourself under someone in authority over you who has not treated you in the best way, you're going to want to consider this episode in the life of David.
Have you ever felt alone? I mean really alone? . . .
You might be able to resonate to this feeling of aloneness—of being alone. Sad to say, this is the state of many men in our world today—alone. God has a special mission for men in the church, but manhood is in a state of flux . . .
Why? Much of this is the fact that men are alone. Sure they have wives, families, even male friends, but despite all of these, many men are alone. Add to this the reality that nobody knows what a man is or what he should be doing. Men are either over-masculinized , with the teaching that men don’t show emotions or real men don’t cry. They’re just told to go do something manly—eat some meat or go hunting, and be stronger, stoic, and more independent, as if this is what defines a real man. Or they are under-emphasized, and told that gender is fluid, and you can basically choose whether or not you want to be one, and your version of manhood is whatever you want it to be. The result is men who don’t really act like men. They are wandering aimlessly, searching, but not even sure what they are searching for.
But as we look at the friendship between two men in I Samuel—Jonathan and David, we see no such thing. Sure they were alone—David spent much time running in fear for his life. Yet while he may have been by himself, he wasn’t really alone. Because he had a friend, a true friend, in Jonathan. One that encouraged him, supported him, and lifted him up in times of despair. Most men do not have a Jonathan in their lives today, but they need one. All men need a brother—a kindred spirit who can walk with them through the ups and downs of life. Who can encourage them when they need encouragement, push them to fulfill God’s purpose their lives, and have hard conversations when need be. God never intended for men to go through life alone. Today we’re going to look at David and Jonathan, and consider 4 specific episodes in their friendship to see what we can learn this Father’s day about the importance of brother hood in the life of men. Our big idea for today:
Big Idea: without a brother, we will likely fall
I don't know if you've ever done any boating, but I enjoy being on the water. This week Emily and I were reflecting on how, before we had children, every summer we would go out to the Stillwater area and go canoeing on the Saint Croix River. There was always a great time of adventure and navigation. But have you ever had a less-than-desirable experience on the water? The type of scenario that causes you some fear, anxiety, or perhaps even desperation? I remember having this feeling when I was a young boy. I was probably 7 years old, and our church put on an annual father-and-son camp out. This particular camp out we rented canoes and canoed down a river. Only the night before we left, there had been some storms and a lot of rain, so there were downed trees and the water was moving pretty steadily. As we came around one bend, we saw some canoers in our party in desperation. One of my friends, Ryan, and his dad were trapped next to a log. The log was hanging over on the surface of the water and their canoe was stuck next to it tilted sideways as the water raged underneath the log trying to suck them in. I remember the desperation on their faces, and I was afraid for them. Some of the other canoers in our party went back to try to help them, and they made it out OK, but I'm sure they were very nervous during the rest of the trip.
We've all had feelings of desperation in life. Times when we're not sure what to do, where to turn, or what will happen. What do you do when you face desperation? This is a very important question for us to consider. What we do when we face desperation says a lot about us. Oftentimes, when we face desperation, we are not thinking clearly. We make quick, irrational decisions without much thought. Oftentimes, we are just reacting like a pinball and a pinball machine, bumping back and forth between the burdens of life. How do we find our bearings when we're feeling like that? What we do during those times is so very vitally important period because times of desperation can cause us to make one of two choices. We could take some time, settle our hearts, and rely on God. Or we could start to rely on ourselves. And the decision we make during times like this is absolutely critical to our ability to handle difficult circumstances, whether we are to be successful or be destroyed by them.
We learn this lesson so very clearly from the life of David. As we open our text today, in first Samuel 21, David is on the run from Saul. He is in complete and utter desperation. Fleeing for his life, looking for his next meal, and trying to create a strategy for what he should do. And as we encounter him in chapter 21, David makes some poor decisions. His desperation leads him to begin to rely on his own wisdom, skill, and abilities. And the result is disastrous in the country of Israel. But as we continue on in the story, we see that David learned his lesson. Rather than trusting his own human reasoning, he began to trust in God and experience a different result. So we're going to look at the life of David from 1 Samuel 21-23 and compare these two episodes in the life of David to see what we can learn from his example. As we do, I want you to consider our big idea for this morning:
Big idea: When desperation leads us to self-dependence instead of God-dependence, it always ends in disaster
Jealousy. It’s been around since the beginning of time. One could argue that was the root of the original sin with Adam and Eve in the garden—being possessive over what God had told them they couldn’t have. This emotion is what eventually led Cain to murder his brother Abel. We see the caution in the 10 commandments to not covet something that is not yours. Covet means to desire something you don’t have—that’s jealousy! And we see this taking place over and over throughout the Old Testament, with the historical books and the kings who were fighting for rulership. We see this in the prophetic period as Israel kept wandering from God in pursuit of false gods—again, desiring something they weren’t allowed to have. We see this in the New Testament era as well, even with the Pharisees and religious leaders who were envious of Jesus and the following he had, not wanting him to take power from themselves. Later on in Roman Catholic ideology the concept of the 7 Deadly Sins arose, one of which is envy. The fact is clear—human beings struggle with jealousy! . . .
It starts inside—love of self is what fuels jealousy. And this becomes a problem when we make a decision inside—a decision that changes everything on the outside. It is the decision that we are going to live for ourselves. We are going to live for what we want, choose our way, and make ourselves the king of our own kingdom. We see this displayed so very clearly for us today through the life of Saul. Saul determined he was going to stop living for God and was going to start living for himself. And we see so very clearly how this internal desire didn’t just stay inside, it affect all those around him. Saul’s decision to live for himself controlled every decision he made and affected many of those around him. Saul experienced what I’ve heard called a clash of kingdoms. Everything went well for Saul as long as he was king of his own life domain, but the minute someone didn’t give him what he wanted—his personal kingdom clashed with that of someone else, there was utter chaos.
We can learn a lot from studying this part in the life of King Saul. From our text this morning, chapters 18-20 of I Samuel, we see how the choice to live for ourselves affects all those around us. And we will learn how to avoid this choice at all costs. We see the big idea for us today from this section of Scripture:
Big Idea: When you are living for self, you cannot be living for God
Have you ever tried to develop yourself in any particular sort of way? One thing potential employers look for oftentimes is the ability to develop new skills. They like to see attempts to learn something new, take a class, get a certification of some sorts. And often times, if an employer can see that you are trying to better yourself by developing more specialties in your field, you will be more hirable to the employee. So it’s important to not simply stay were you are, but to work on progressing so you can be better and achieve growth. This is important for many areas of our lives, whether it work, or school, or things at home. We ought to be constantly growing and developing into a better version of ourselves.
This is especially true in our spiritual lives. God expects us to develop spiritually. He doesn’t want us to just stay how we currently are, he wants us to grow and develop into godly people whom he can use for his service. But this begs the question—are there any skills that God wants us to develop in order to be used by him? What does God look for in a leader? Are there certain skillsets or abilities that God wants in the servants he uses?
Our text today addresses this and many more questions. From the example of David who was a man after God’s own heart. But David had to work to become that, it didn’t just happen in our story, it happened long before. And we get to see the end result and why God chose him. We get to see what God looks for in those he uses, and how we can develop those qualities ourselves.
Have you ever done a job halfway? Maybe you did most of what you should do, but you missed a step? There are consequences to not following instructions completely, some bigger than others, but consequences nonetheless. Can you think of some things where not following instructions might cause some issues? . . .
This concept translates very specifically into the spiritual realm. It is possible to believe you are following God, and only do part of what he says. It is possible to go through the Christian life, believe in Jesus, claim the name of Christ, but have a heart that is divided. To have obedience to the things of God, but only partial obedience. God demands more than partial obedience, and he wants all of our hearts.
And as we come to our text today from I Samuel 15:1-35, we see very clearly how this worked out in the life of King Saul. We see Saul being sent on a mission from God with very clear instructions, only he didn’t follow them. He followed most of them, but there were some instructions from God that Saul failed to follow. And Saul learned, just as we learn today, when we follow God incompletely, there is a high cost. So as we unpack our text together today, I hope you’ll take this truth home with you:
Big idea: Divided hearts lead to rejected servants
Heartache. We’ve all faced it at some point. If you haven’t yet, you will. When a family member takes his or her last breath; when the doctor gives you the news you didn’t want to hear; when you get the phone call late at night that there’s been a horrible accident; when the doctor says you’ve lost the baby. We all can relate to the feeling of heartache. Deep dark despair. It’s part of our human existence in a sinful world, but we never get used to it. . .
And you’ve felt it you; we’ve all had those experiences in life that cut us to the core. When such deep deep heartache occurs in our lives, it can easily rattle us to the point where we begin to question. Why did this happen? How can good come out of this? Where was God in the midst of this? And we ask those questions which often times remain unanswered. How do we hope when heartache comes, and we seek answers to all of these unanswered questions? Where can we turn when life seems to be caving in around us?
As we come to our text today from I Samuel 2, we meet a woman who was no stranger to heartache. We meet Hannah, and we see her burden—her heartache over her inability to have children. But our focus today is where her heartache led her, because she learned to bring her heartache to God, and as result she was able to find both comfort and purpose in the midst of her trials, and if we follow the model of Hannah, we can do the same as well. So let’s look to the life of Hannah this morning, and as we do, I hope you’ll take one truth home with you today:
Big Idea: Through the depth of heartache we experience the richness of the character of God
The event made headlines all across the country. How could something like this happen? 13 people dead, 145 wounded; what went wrong? What I am referring to is the collapse of the I-94 bridge in 2007. Our state was devastated. People marveled at the amount of times they had driven over the bridge, and now it had suddenly fell. This was Minnesota’s third busiest bridge, carrying 140k vehicles every day. Yet due to a design flaw, it came crashing down only 39 years after it’s opening.
The bridge looked fine on the outside. For 39 years it held the daily commute of thousands. But despite its external appearance, the bridge was weakening and eventually self-destructed.
It’s easy to hide what is under the surface, isn’t it? We can easily put on a public image for all to see when things are crumbling on the inside. When that happens—when we self-destruct, it always happens from the inside out. Things were going on within long before they were discernable on the outside. This is often the case leaders—those who have an influence on others. Leaders can start out well, but sometimes can be distracted. Things might look great on the surface level, but it can be easy for anyone who has any sort of influence to stop leading people out of submission to God and begin leading of our pride and self-service.
This was the case for Israel’s new king, Saul. He began being more concerned with his own public image than he was with God, and that became his downfall. As we look at this episode in the of Saul, we learn some valuable lessons about how we can be corrupted by our own desire for influence. And we learn the big idea for today:
Big Idea: Social image without spiritual integrity leads to self-destruction
I’d like to ask you a question this morning, a question that is debated, and depending who you ask you’ll get a different answer. So here it goes: how does one measure health? Everyone has a slightly different metric that is used to measure health and the condition of one’s body. . .
All sorts of ways to determine health and well being and whether someone is in a good position physically. But what about spiritually? How do you determine the condition of one spiritually? And even more, how about a group of God’s people? How do we determine the spiritual state and condition of God’s people as a whole? While the world measures health by vitals, weight, or cholesterol, God measures health by the condition of the heart. And just like physical health affects the body as a whole, spiritual health affects the body of Christ—the Church. When it comes to both individually and especially corporately as a whole, the way to determine spiritual health is not on the outside, it is on the inside. The way to determine the spiritual health of God’s people is to look at the heart. This vital way to examine God’s people is often overlooked, but it is so very important.
And as we transition to our text this morning we see that Samuel brings to light this issue in Israel. Saul had been anointed to be king, he had led the people into a great victory, and it is coronation day. Samuel is preparing to make Saul the official ruler of God’s people. But Samuel highlights something for Israel that is vitally important for people of God today. What Samuel highlights is the reality that a leader is not responsible for the hearts of the people. Israel was excited! They were getting a new king! And with that comes all sorts of positive momentum. Where will he lead us? Will he make our nation great? And all sorts of pressure on this one man to change the tide of their nation and help them be great. And in the midst of this Samuel reminds the people of Israel, and he reminds us today: the health of God’s people is related to the health of each person. Samuel tells them— “Don’t put all this pressure on one man, your new king. Your nation will only be as healthy as the people in it.” This is the same message God would have for churches today—a group of God’s followers is only as healthy as those who make up the group. Samuel continues to give a dose of cold hard reality to the people of Israel, and we’re going to look at that today because it is so very applicable to churches today as well. From this text, and from Samuel’s admonition to Israel, I want us to consider this big idea today:
Big idea: The health of God’s people starts in the heart of each person
We live in a world that is based on truth and facts. But truth and facts need verified. We like to have evidence. We like to see proof that something is real, that a statement is accurate, or that we can rely on the information we’ve been given. Think about some scenarios in which is is important to have proof . . .
It’s clear that we live in a world of evidence and proof. We don’t want to believe anything unless there is proof—real, hard, concrete proof. We want assurances before we commit. And the problem with all this comes about when it comes to spiritual things, specifically the message about Jesus. And when it comes to life’s biggest questions—about death, hope, eternity, and whether Jesus really rose from the dead—people want the same thing: proof. We want indisputable evidence that Jesus was a human, and lived a sinless life, and died, and rose from the dead. And this brings about all sorts of issues further, because what counts as proof? And how much evidence is enough? And what if there is evidence but not enough to convince someone?
Thankfully, God doesn’t bog himself down with those details, he simply gives us the evidence for us to evaluate and expects us to make a reasonable decision based on what he reveals. And the evidence God gives us good convincing proof, and God is very clear in giving it to us. In our text today, Luke 24:36-46, Jesus meets with his disciples after his resurrection and as we walk through this account we find real, clear, tangible, and trustworthy evidence concerning who Jesus is and his resurrection from the dead—we have evidence that Jesus is who he said he was.
My goal this morning is simple: I want to walk through this text of scripture and look at 6 lines of evidence that Jesus is who he says he is and view that as the reason why we need to believe in him.
Big Idea: Christ's resurrection is a fact, your resurrection is a choice
Do you like to pick up heavy things? I like to pick up heavy things. For the past 6 months or so I have been lifting weights 3x a week. And I enjoy lifting kettle bells. I like kettle bell swings, and overhead presses. My favorite is the snatch, where you pick up the weight off the ground and snatch it up into the air. But when it comes to kettelbells, or lifting weights, or lifting heavy things in general, the more conditioned your muscle is, the better you’ll be able to pick up the weight. If you aren’t used to picking up weights you’re going to have to start small and build your muscle in order to go heavier.
Now if you have some heavy things to lift, and you don’t lift weights very often, you can choose to do it yourself and that might be difficult, or you could get some help. Let me get a volunteer . . .
As you can see from that simple illustration, you can be a lot more efficient, and get a lot more done if you have help. The same is true in our spiritual lives. Sometimes we try to do our spiritual lives, or ministry, on our own. We try to do it in our own power and our own strength. And when that happens, we might be able to get it done. We might be able to make some things happen, but not as well as if we were doing it in the power of God. It’s in our attempts to serve God that we must come to realize a very important truth which we learn from our text today:
Big Idea: Our best ministry resource is God himself. Because God is our best ministry resources, we need to rely completely on the power of God for service to him
People today have an obsession for freedom and feeling free. They idolize the feeling of having no restraints, being able to do anything, and feel like life is beyond limits. As such, people choose things, certain things that might contribute to the feeling of being limitless, having no restraints, and completely beyond restriction. Can you think of some things people do today in order to be free? Some people choose travel—they like to explore new places and see new things, and feel untied to the rhythm of life when they travel and explore new things. For others it is some sort of adventure—maybe they try sky diving, or parasailing, or hang gliding, or bungee jumping. These extreme activities make them feel unattached to the things of this world—a sense of freedom. Some find it in meditation and mindfulness—some sort of spiritual practice that enlightens the mind and brings a sense of freedom. Other find freedom in charity or volunteer work—if you focus on giving back it brings a sense of freedom and peace inside—I am not held back and unencumbered by the things of this life. Freedom. We like to be free. We like to make our own choices and experience a level of real or perceived independence.
But there is a danger in the pursuit of so called freedom. This desire for freedom might create a spiritual desire for freedom—a desire for freedom from God. Just like we might like to feel free physically, as if we have no restraints or things holding us down, if we are not careful, we can begin to feel the same way about God. Just like some of our physical attempts at freedom, it is always a risky move to attempt freedom from God . . .
Big Idea: even freedom has a cost
I don’t know if you work on cars. I’ve done some things on cars before. I don't really consider myself a mechanic but I do have kind of an inquisitive mind so I like to try to figure things out. And I've figured many things out on our vehicle before in the past but there are some things I cannot do. I certainly cannot change an engine. I've never taken apart a transmission or some of the inner components of an engine. But one thing I I'm sure I am unable to do is perform an alignment. If you have a car you recognize the importance of an alignment. All four tires need to be aligned perfectly just in the right direction so that the car can go straight without having negative impact. Mechanics have special tools and machines that they use to perform an alignment and they have to have it just right down to the exact millimeter to get your car working the way it should. I did some research this week and was surprised to find all of the effects of not having an alignment . . .
There are many benefits to having your wheels in line and if they are not aligned it can cause many different types of problems.
The same thing is true in our spiritual lives some. Sometimes our hearts can come out of alignment. Maybe we've slowly or subtly let things creep into our lives or perhaps we've given our time and energy into things that maybe God doesn't want us to invest in. Either way sometimes our hearts can become out of alignment with where God wants us to be in our spiritual lives. And it's important that we develop the ability to be able to recognize that and determine how to get our hearts back into alignment so that we are in right fellowship with God and this word.
And in our text today we catch up with God's people Israel as they had, you could say, been out of alignment in their spiritual lives. We looked at last week how they had tried to use God for themselves and God made it very clear that he will not be used. This week we pick up the story as Israel has just had the ark of the covenant returned back to them. And as they look back at where they've been and now plan to chart a pathway forward we find that they are evaluating their hearts. And Samuel the prophet gives Israel a stern message that their hearts were out of alignment with God. Thankfully Samuel doesn't just leave them there Samuel shows them how to realign their hearts so that they can be back in step with God and serving him rightly. And what Samuel tells the people of Israel is so vitally important for our own spiritual lives as well because the steps back to alignment with God that Samuel gives Israel are the very same steps that we need in our lives when we recognize that there have been issues in our own spiritual lives. Our text this morning is Chapter 7 of first Samuel and as we begin to look at our passage starting in verse 2, I want you to consider our big idea for today, it is this:
Big Idea: Repentance before God always restores our relationship with God
Have you ever had a good luck charm? Maybe you don’t have something exactly you carry to give you good luck, some people do. When I was a kid, it was common to have a lucky rabbits food on a key chain—something that you carried around which was thought to give good luck. Maybe you don’t have a luck charm exactly, but you do something that is kind of a ritual or tradition thought to make things go well for you. I don’t know what it is for you, but we see this a lot of times with professional athletes. They have their rhythms or routines that they do every single time to make things work. The baseball player, rubs his cleats in the dirt the same number of times every single time, and does the same number of practice swings. The golfer, who shakes his legs the same way before each swing. The boxer who touches his gloves together the same way each time before a fight. This rhythm or routine is thought to give them some sort of luck or help them in practicing their craft.
Sometimes we have other forms of good luck charms—a cross or pendant worn around the neck thought maybe to give some sort of protection. The picture or bracelet from your dead loved one to remind you of their presence. A piece of clothing or tattoo that points you to some memory that you never want to forget. We can all have something like that—a routine or a practice, or an item that puts us in a certain state of mind or reminds us of something, or even might give us good look. A fisherman might have his “lucky lure”, a hunter his “lucky spot”, or a runner can have their favorite pair of running gear that always helps them have a good workout. Maybe it’s just tradition, or lore, but it is there.
The same types of things can happen spiritually. Maybe it is a crucifix that someone wears around their neck that they think will ward off evil spirits. This type of thing led emperor Constantine in 320 A.D. into battle—as he had a vision where he heard “under this sign, conquer”, and he committed all sorts of brutality in the name of Christ and while carrying versions of the cross.
Now I’m not saying it’s wrong necessarily to have things that remind you of things, or to even have a sort of superstition—my favorite fishing lure. But we do need to be very careful how we treat God. Because though it is important to have God with us, and to live in constant connection with the presence of God, we need to make sure we maintain a healthy reverence for God and who he is. If we’re not careful, we might begin to treat God as a sort of good luck charm. We take him with us and he’s always there for when we need him, but only use him when we need him. And it can be easy to think that we can do things to buy the favor of God in our lives, and use God as a sort of totem, or we carry around a cross as if it has mystical powers, or we even use the name of Jesus in a way that treats him like a magic potion to get what we want. But God will not be used by his children. He is not there for us, as much as we are there for him. But sometimes we like to use God for our purposes. And when we use God for our purposes, we find that God cannot use us for his. That’s our big idea for today.
Big Idea: When we try to use God for our purposes, he will not use us for his purposes
All throughout history men have searched for their next leader. Nations, are looking for a ruler. Kingdoms, searching for a king. Corporations, looking for a CEO. Schools looking for a principal. Churches looking for a pastor. There isn’t a realm of the world that you can go to that doesn’t have some sort of leader or leader figure. You can go to the remotest tribes in the jungles of Africa and find that even they have a chief. You can’t get away from it—people need someone to follow. The Apostle Paul recognized this in I Corinthians 11 when Paul said “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” We all need someone to follow!
But what do you look for in a leader? Well, I suppose it depends on what type of leader you are looking for. Different types of leaders require different sets of skills. And EVERYBODY has their own ideas and opinions about what those qualifications should be. For instance—if you’re talking about the president of the United States, there are all kinds of ideas about what that leaders should have for qualifications. And you can see a broad spectrum—we’ve had politicians, we’ve had a movie star, we currently have a successful entrepreneur. If you’re talking the CEO of a company, you’re probably going to want someone with some business experience, who has a proven track record in leadership and has met with success in their career. If you’re talking about a university, well then you’re going to want a head who has a doctorate and skill in educational management. All kinds of qualifications necessary to be used in various settings.
But what about the person God uses? What are the requirements to be used of God? Often times we try to come up with our own requirements for the person God uses. Maybe it’s the resident theologue—the person who knows all about doctrine and can detail all the nuances of theology. Maybe we think it is the educated person—they went to Bible college or a little seminary, or here at Faith—they completed the entire FBI course so they are most likely to be used of God. Maybe we think it’s the person who’s been saved the longest, they obviously have more experience in serving God. Or maybe we think it has something to do with spiritual disciplines—this person always has long prayers so they must be spiritual and the type of person God is looking for.
In reality, none of those are accurate. While those are all God things, God’s metric for choosing people to be his servants is drastically different that we might sometimes expect. So what determines the type of person God prefers to use? What type of person is the first choice for being used of God?
The story we have today from I Samuel 2-3 answers that question for us. We meet two leaders—I call it the tale of two leaders. One current leader and one future leader. And their stories are intentionally intertwined, and they are pitted against each other to demonstrate who God uses, and who God doesn’t.
Have you ever wanted something, wanted something so very badly, that it just consumed you? Maybe it was a good thing, something God wanted you to do or have, but you were asking God and asking God for it and it just didn’t happen, or hadn’t happened yet? Maybe it was healing from the cancer. Perhaps it was relief from the burden of debt. Maybe it was for a family member to change the direction of poor choices and you keep praying and asking and waiting and praying and asking and waiting, and nothing happened yet? Maybe it was for a spouse or child to turn to Christ, or perhaps the desperation of a bill you cannot pay or not having enough money to put food on the table.. If you’ve ever felt such a feeling, do you remember the desperation? The feeling of hopelessness? The weight of desiring relief from that pressure and not being able to get that? . . .
And chance are you’ve felt that too. You get hit will bill after bill after bill and don’t know how you will afford to pay. Or you get hit with a difficult health issue and you’re not sure how you will come out of it. If you’ve ever felt like this, then you can understand how Hannah felt. Hannah is in our passage today, and as we encounter Hannah, we see her in desperation as she brings her impossible prayer request to the Lord. And I think from the example of Hannah, we can learn how we can find the same hope, help, and comfort that she found when she laid all her cares before the Lord and she determined to desire him above all else.
Guest speaker David Levy finishes a weekend of evangelism training with a sermon on the compassion Jesus had for the lost and how we can develop this in our own lives.
The tale is nearly old as time itself. The saga has continued in almost every country and nation. It has been experienced by nearly every ethnicity and people group. The annals of history are filled with records of the same happenings over and over and over again. It has taken place under varying set of circumstances, by varying individuals, and in a multitude of time periods and locations, yet the quest remains the same. What is this epoch in history to which I am referring? It is the all too common battle over who is going to be king. For millennia people have battled and died to claim the throne of one nation or another. Conquerors have come, kings have fled, warriors have died over the simple but profound reality: every nation needs a ruler, and everyone wants to be that king . . .
All of these wars and battles, fought over who is going to rule.
The same battles are in place today for our spiritual lives--who is going to rule. Who will we allow to lead our lives? Will it be God? Or will it be ourselves?
As we come to the book of I Samuel today, we find that I Samuel deals with this issue--the issue of who will be king. And we find that I Samuel is filled with stories of the saga between God and Israel, as they battle this issue of letting God lead and rule.
So today we’re going to look at the book of I Samuel. And my task this morning is monumental--we’re going to go over the entire book in one sermon. In fact, these overview sermons I often find to be the hardest because I’m taking an entire book of the Bible and breaking it down into a 35 or 40 minute talk. But that’s what we’re going to do today. And I would like to look at 4 specific episodes that point us to some of the key themes in the book of I Samuel, and 4 specific verses that teach us what it is like when God is our king. So as we begin to look at the book as a whole, I want you to take this big idea with you today:
Big Idea: when God leads your life, you’ll always go in the right direction
I've heard it said that one of the best places to hide is in plain sight. I don't know if you've ever experienced that, but you can get away with an awful lot if you have that type of mentality. "I'm going to hide in plain sight." Sometimes it's harder to see things that are right in front of you, right under your nose, than to spot things that aren't as in open sight. You might experience that when you go to grab your keys or grab your wallet and, "Oh, where are they?" You're looking all around, and they were right in front of you. I may have had that experience in my life.
I was thinking about this concept of hiding in plain sight. Our kids are at the age where they're really into animals right now. Aiden did some zoology for science class a few years ago, and he was into learning about all the animals. I remember learning about some of the things that he would talk about, that the camouflage in a way that certain animals could manipulate their bodies to hide in plain sight. Camouflage gives many animals the ability to kind of disappear even though they're right in front of you . . .
Many times, believers can become masters at hiding in plain sight. Let me talk about what I mean by that. You can get so involved and so busy in serving God, the things that God wants us to do, that we hide behind that. The result is that it can be really easy for us to look good on the outside when we have stuff going on that we're not dealing with on the inside that nobody knows about. Nobody can see, nobody can tell because we're hiding in plain sight. We can say the right things. We can do the right things along with everyone else, but inside, things can be radically wrong.
Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight. So maybe we immerse ourselves in church culture. We do things believers do. We serve alongside everyone else. We have our ministry in music or teaching Sunday school or sound room or grounds work or whatever it is that you do. And we do these things, and it looks like there's nothing wrong. It's like we're a great model of what a godly believer ought to be, but it's easy to hide in plain sight. Oftentimes, there can be deeper things going on in our hearts that we really need to deal with. And so maybe we come to church and we do the Christian thing, and we serve God. But God gets left behind in our service because our hearts aren't really in it to begin with.
Now as we come to our text today, Isaiah chapter 29, verses 13 through 14, we find that God's people Israel struggled with the same exact thing in their spiritual life. They struggled with hiding in plain sight. They did everything right on the outside. They offered their service to God like everyone else, but it was mere externals. They were hiding things on the inside. And we learn the hard lesson that they learned when they tried to hide in plain sight. And that's very simple: you can't hide from God. You can't hide from God. God knows what's in our hearts, and in our passage today, God kind of steps into Israel's life and he kind of isolates for them what their issues were and what he sees and observes in their lives. And he cautions them because they had all the right externals, but there was no heart. And I am concerned that that is far too often the case with believers today.
So we're going to unpack this passage for us, see what God has to say to Israel and what God has to say to us today. And as we do, there's one big idea that I want you to take away this morning--if this is all you remember, remember this:
Big Idea:external discipline can hide internal difficulties
We’re going to be in Jeremiah 2 this morning; Jeremiah chapter two, looking at a verse that is near and dear to my heart, and we’re continuing our series when God gets left behind. We looked at when God gets left behind in our hearts, when God gets left behind in our worship, and today we’ll be looking at when God gets left behind in our pursuits, and next week, when God gets left behind in our service.
Let’s talk about pursuits. We all have them. We all have something that we pursue. Call it a hobby if you will, or a recreational activity, but we all have things that we pursue in our lives. And one thing I’ve noticed about our pursuits is the simple fact that we always pursue what we love most. And you can often tell by a person’s lifestyle what they are pursuing. Some of this is just practical and simple observation. A runner on the side of the road, or a cyclist on the city trail is pursuing some sort of health and fitness. The shacks on the lake show some sort of pursuit of the outdoors or sport fishing. Subscriptions to Netflix show some sort of pursuit of entertainment. We have these pursuits and we pursue what we love.
I remember when I really began to pursue what I loved when I was dating my wife. I loved her, and I still do. But when I first started to “fall in love with her” so to speak, I make conscious choices to pursue that love. I would find myself at her house regularly. . .
As we come to Jeremiah 2:13, our main verse for today, I think Jeremiah shares with us a similar observation in our spiritual lives—we always pursue what we love. And this can be a really good thing in our spiritual lives if we love the right things—if we love God and His Word and the truths of the Bible. But this can be a really, really bad thing if we don’t. And as we unpack our text for today, we’re going to find that Jeremiah found that God’s people Israel, were in a really bad place. Because he found it to be true that people always pursue what they love, only God’s people Israel were pursuing the wrong things. They were pursuing what they loved, but he came to realize that they were not loving the right things, thus they were pursuing the wrong things! He observed this cause and effect relationship between what a people love, and what they pursue, and in this case, this led them down a very dark and empty road. So, God steps in and gives Jeremiah a caution concerning God’s people and where they were at in their own spiritual walk as God seeks to use the prophet Jeremiah to call them back to himself.
I’m concerned that we do not walk down the same pathway that Israel began pursuing. I’m concerned that we, both individually as believers and corporately as a church, make certain that we are loving the right things and thus pursuing the right things. So as we begin to unpack this passage, there is one big idea I want us to keep in the front of our minds this morning, it’s the observation that God makes of Israel in this text:
Big Idea:you always pursue what you love
Have you ever been struggling, and tried to hide it? Maybe you had a physical injury or health problem, and you kind of acted like things were normal--you didn’t really want anyone to know. Or perhaps you had a financial burden--a bill that was crushing you, but you pretended like things were normal. Or thing were really hard at work, maybe you even wondered if you were going to get laid off, but you kept that burden from your spouse or your family. Ever try to be tough on the outside when you’re hurting on the inside? Sometimes we might try to do this. And at times it can be a good thing to protect those we love. But often times we are hiding. Trying to mask or disguise ourselves on the outside so that people don’t really know what is going on inside. . .
I think the same thing is true of us spiritually, in our spiritual lives. It can be really easy for us to have what appears to be a spiritually healthy lifestyle when we are not really spiritually healthy. We are so good at putting on a show and making everyone else think that we are spiritual and living rightly and right with God when in reality we are not. And if we are not careful, we can leave God behind in our spiritual lives.
This can be a specific problem in our worship. We come to worship God, maybe it’s at a church service, and our hearts aren’t right. But instead of taking care of things, or maybe we have been denying what’s there, we just come and we sing and we listen to the word from the Lord and we do the “Christian thing” and act as if everything is ok and our lives are doing fine. And we walk away from the church, maybe we greet the pastor at the door “great message today pastor”, but we don’t do anything about it. It can be so easy to leave God behind in our worship. And this is not a good place to be, because we turn God into something he is not. In essence, God kind of becomes entertainment to us, and spiritual things or church worship can easily turn into something only for the purpose of amusement. You don’t want to go here in your spiritual life, but it can be such an easy path for us to travel down! And so today we’re going to talk about what it looks like when God gets left behind in our worship. And we’re going to look at a passage in Ezekiel 33 where we see Israel leaving behind God in their worship. And from their example, we will see to illustrations—two cautions for us about what it looks like when God gets left behind in our worship.
BIG IDEA: A spiritual lifestyle does not always make you spiritually healthy
Recently I’ve been on a journey. It’s a journey of health an fitness. For the past 4 months or so I’ve been trying to eat healthier and work out regularly. I started lifting kettlebells 3x a week and have been doing that faithfully for about 4 months. I also decided to do a running streak of at least a mile a day, every day. Today will be day 85--yes I do intend to go for a run today. And I’ve lost something like 15-17 lbs and have really enjoyed this journey.
But one thing I’ve come to realize about this, is that it starts on the inside. It all starts with what you put into your body. What type of food you eat, how much, all of those things. So I started counting my calories to make sure I am not overeating. And as you control what you eat, it starts to change things on the inside. Things like cravings change. Blood flow increases, energy and stamina increases, sleep quality increases. Other things that can’t even see begin to change--blood sugar, cholesterol, your body starts to morph from the inside out. Those are all the internal things. But eventually change starts to be external. You achieve more gains in your exercise--you can lift more or run faster or go longer. You start to shrink in size. Your clothes get baggy, and your body slowly starts to change shape on the outside. Those internal changes have now started to become external, and as such they become more and more visible. Internal changes affect your eternal lifestyle.
Isn’t it the same way in our spiritual lives? The gospel, when it first comes to us, starts inside. Gospel means good news--it is the good news about Jesus. And when it first starts to work in our lives, it starts internally. It begins with salvation, God saves us through the work of his Spirit and our faith in the work of Christ. And things start to happen inside. Desires change. Thought processes change. The outlook on life changes. And after a while, those internal changes become external. The person starts changing certain ways that they live. Certain lifestyle choices they made before are now different. They start reading the Bible, and praying. And they start telling others about Jesus and the change he makes in their life. Their internal change became external, and not it is externally affecting those around. This is how the Gospel ought to work in our lives.
Here’s the reality thought--many times it doesn’t. Many times it stops at the internal and doesn’t change us externally they way it really should, and the result is we don’t make the impact on the world around us the way God wants us to. This is so true when it comes to our topic for today, sanctity of life Sunday. Too many believers have settled for internal change, and have not that change affect them externally in regards to their thoughts on things like abortion and how they stand up for the truths of Scripture. And in our text today Paul addresses this. Paul gives us the needed reminder that we are children of light, and we need to live as such. Throughout this text Paul teaches us how we can set up our lives so that we are externally changed by the good news about Jesus.
Big Idea: Internal Gospel change produces an external Gospel lifestyle
Today I’d like to share something kind of personal about me. Though it probably won’t surprise you, you may not have realized what I am about to tell you about me. I have a unique hobby of sorts that I enjoy doing. I like growing my beard. In fact, I’ve had some sort of facial hair almost as long as I can remember. In nearly 15 years of marriage, my wife has never seen me without some sort of facial hair. I’ve experimented with different styles over the years, early on in our marriage I had a goatee and mustache. I’ve had short beards, I’ve had beards even longer than the one I’m sporting now, but I enjoy growing my beard. There are some things you may not have known about beadsmen—yes, that is the correct term for a man who grows and grooms his beard himself. You don’t just wake up with a nice beard overnight. It takes some work. So in order to groom my beard and make it look presentable I have some equipment that I use. I have a bear brush—this is a bore hair bristle brush that helps keep straggly hairs in line. I also have a cedarwood beard come. Not only does is smell great, but it helps keep everything in line as well. There are also specific products you put on your beard. One that I use is beard oil. This helps to soften the hair so that it can be pliable and moldable, and it is scented so it smells nice. Then there’s the beard balm. This a produce that helps to soften the hair but also has a slight hold to it so everything stays in place just the way I want it to. If I’m really trying to style it, I have some wax that I use. This is mainly for styling my mustache, but my wife doesn’t really like the handlebar look so I don’t usually do that.
But there are all of these products that I use, and really guys, if you want to get a nice beard that is shaped right and looks nice you ought to consider some of these things. But you now, there’s one thing I have noticed about this whole regimen I have. If I fail to use it, I’m going to have some problems. Pretty soon hairs are going every which direction and no matter how hard you brush them they seem to have a mind of their own. And if I’m not careful to use some of these basic steps to help “tame my mane”, it can get pretty out of control. It doesn’t take long before you look like a Minnesota mountain man! So I have to regularly take some of these steps to prevent a beard that is unwieldy and out of control.
As I thought about this during this week, I began to see some parallels to our spiritual lives. There are certain elements in our spiritual lives that are absolutely vital. They help tame our heart and control our soul, and if we forget or neglect them, our spiritual lives can start to become kind of out of control. It can be so easy to get so busy with our lives that we begin to let some of these things slip. That we give ourselves a pass on this or that or the other thing, and before we even realize it we are living our lives on our own and we realize that we have left God behind; we’ve been doing life without him. Yes, we are “spiritual” people, yes we come to church and perform or ministries of service. We may even have a regular time of reading God’s Word, but we’ve lost something. We’ve lost the heart. Everything we have is in the head, and we’ve left God out of our hearts.
And so today, and over the next few weeks, I’d like to talk about how God can get left behind in specific areas of our lives. I’d like to address four specific areas in our lives during this series. This week we’ll talk about how God can get left behind in our hearts. And I’d like us to consider a passage in the book of Ezekiel that show to us how easy it is for God to get left behind in our hearts in a way that we replace him completely with other things.
BIG IDEA: Don’t leave God out of your heart!
Join us for our Sunday school series on church revitalization, as we finish talking through the 9 Marks of a Healthy Church and end our series by talking about a physical pathway for churches to move forward.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been into bodybuilding but it’s quite an interesting sport. I’ve never been into bodybuilding, though I do lift with kettlebells several times a week.
But I remember when I was 12 or 13 or so my dad started teaching me how to workout. My dad was pretty fit back in the day; he had some pretty solid muscle and he used to go to the gym and workout with some guys, and he knew a good bit about lifting and bodybuilding and he began to teach me. It’s not something I really got into, but the sport itself is really fascinating. It takes a lot of dedication to be a bodybuilder!
If you’ve ever learned anything about professional bodybuilding—like the Arnold Schwarzenegger variety, you know that only a part of their time is spent in the weight room. A large amount of time is spent in front of a mirror. They do this not necessarily because they are vain, though that might be the case, but because they are trying to cut muscles. They are looking for balance and symmetry—if one shoulder is more built up than the other they need to be able to identify that. So they specifically hone in on areas of weakness and imbalance so that they can strengthen their weaker parts and have a well-rounded strong physique. Another large part of their sport is in the kitchen. It’s not uncommon for bodybuilders to eat 7 meals a day, and to count everything. They focus on calories in and calories out. Fat, protein, carbs, all of that needs to be in just the right balance for a bodybuilder. Then there’s the supplements—protein powder, whey, creatine, all kinds of pills designed to give the right amount of nutrients and help to build the strength of their muscles.
Why do they do all of this? They take great care so that they can identify and focus on their weaknesses and strengthen them. They don’t just strengthen the big muscles, though they do that, they try to strengthen the weak ones as well so that they can be one entire specimen of a strong physique.
It’s kind of the same way in our spiritual lives. God wants us to have a strong, well rounded devotion to him. And in order to do that, we need to take great care to focus on areas that might need to be strengthened. Sometimes we need to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror of God’s Word so that we can find our weaknesses and focus on them. We need to eat a steady diet of God’s Word so that we can grow and get stronger. But just like bodybuilders spend a very focused amount of time working on their own strength, so we must spend time strengthening our own spiritual lives.
But here’s the problem—many times we don’t. Many times we have kind of a lazy approach to our spiritual lives. We settle for “good enough”—I don’t have any life dominating sins; life is going fairly well right now; I can manage the trials that I do have; and instead of really strengthening ourselves we kind of just get by spiritually. And when difficult times come in our lives, we struggle. We’re unprepared. Or, we might even leave the faith. God doesn’t want this to happen! So God gave us the answers to solve this problem in his word. And in II Timothy 2:1-7, we find the answers we need. Paul challenges Timothy to not just scrape by in his spiritual life, but to thrive, and to grow and to maintain his devotion to the Lord, and we can learn from Paul’s admonition to Timothy as well. So as we come to this text, here’s the big idea for today:
BIG IDEA: Commitment today reinforces character for tomorrow
Are you a conspiracy theorist? There are some of those in the world today. I don’t know if you are a conspiracy theorist, but there are many conspiracy theories going on around the world. Conspiracy theories are usually an attempt to explain those unique oddities in our world that don’t quite make sense. Unexplained happenings that just don’t seem to make sense. Some individuals allow their imaginations to run wild and come up with all sorts of explanations or theories for how or why something happened. . .
All these theories. In a world of conspiracy theories, theories about everything, it’s important to know the truth, right? We don’t want theories, ideas, or suggestions, we want truth. This is especially true when it comes to Jesus. There are many theories, call them conspiracy theories if you will, about Jesus. Specifically, there are many ideas relating to the humanity of Jesus. Was Jesus God? Was he man? Was he both? Was he partially God and partially man? How should we think about the humanity of Jesus? Many different theories have come about to explain and describe this, some of them even go as far as to deny the humanity of Jesus—saying he only seemed to be man but wasn’t really.
In a world of differing theories about Jesus, we need to know and embrace the truth. And as we come to our text today, John sets us straight about the humanity of Jesus. We saw over the last two weeks, the deity of Jesus. That Jesus is truly, genuinely God. He was in the beginning with God, he was involved in creation, and he is God himself. But today in our text, John tackles the humanity of Jesus. He teaches us that while Jesus was fully God, he also added to himself a genuine humanity. And in an effort to explain this for us today, John tells us that Jesus was indeed fully human, and he tells us why this matters.
This is incredibly important for the time of year we find ourselves in today—it’s the Sunday before Christmas. This is the time of year that we celebrate the fact the Jesus did come to earth to be born of a virgin, and we celebrate that today. But how should we think about that and why does it matter? John helps us with that today. And he gives us three compelling reasons why the humanity of Jesus matters. So as we unpack our text today, I want to give you one truth to take home with you today. It’s our big idea for this morning.
Big Idea: God the Son became completely human so that he could completely provide for your salvation
Have you ever heard the phrase “seeing is believing?” Sometimes we say this phrase, or we highlight the reality that in order to believe something, you have to be able to see it with your own eyes. And we have this idea that in order to believe something, or to really appreciate it, you have to be able to see it for yourself. A picture alone won’t really do it justice. Think of something like the Grand Canyon. How many have ever been there? I haven’t, but these are the types of places you say “oh you have to see it to believe it.” Or if you’ve ever been to the Black Hills, seen the buffalo roam, or places like Devil’s Tower, just incredible places, you might say you have to see it to really appreciate how wonderful and glorious it actually it.
I remember such an experience in my life. I was a missions major in Bible college and I had to do a summer internship. I spent 2 months in the summer of 2007 in the mountains of Riobamba, Ecuador. We were 10k ft above sea level, and Riobamba pretty close to Mt. Chimborazo, among some of the highest elevations in South America at 20k feet. It was about a 2 hr drive to the base, but you could look out the window and see then entire mountain when it wasn’t cloudy. Such a beautiful sight! In fact the missionaries had a little window in their shower area, which was in an upper level of the house, and you could look outside while you were taking your shower in the morning and see out over all the houses and they had a clear view of Mt. Chimborazo—imagine that every morning! And we drove to the base, which started at 14k feet and hiked up to 17k feet, the rest of the trip I’m told would have taken 8 hours, and you only do it at night due to to the cloudiness, and it’s a very dangerous ascent, lives have been lost trying to climb the mountain. But it was marvelous and beautiful to see. The type of thing where a picture doesn’t do it justice. You have to see it in order to believe how wonderful it truly is—seeing is believing.
But as we come to our passage today, we see that while seeing is believing might work in our physical world, seeing is believing does not really hold up to spiritual things. In fact, it is possible to see or know first hand spiritual facts, or have spiritual knowledge or experiences, and still reject them when it comes to believing. This is especially true when it comes to the message of Jesus—seeing does not always equal believing. And in our text this morning we’re going to learn about the message of Jesus and this message coming into to the world and how there were many people who saw him, who saw the things that he did and heard his teaching yet they still rejected him. When it comes to Jesus, seeing is not always believing. And our passage points us to the reality that there is a difference between seeing and believing. And not all those who see will end up believing. So as we begin to look at our text, the big idea I want you to remember is this:
Big Idea: when it comes to the message of Jesus, seeing is not always believing
Join us for our Sunday school series on church revitalization, as we talk through the 9 Marks of a Healthy Church.
Join us for our Sunday school series on church revitalization, as we talk through the 9 Marks of a Healthy Church.
Do you have trust issues? Anyone here have trust issues? Sometimes people have trust issues. They just find it difficult to trust somebody. Anybody like that here today?
There are several types of reasons people may have trust issues. Oftentimes people have trust issues due to a past experience. Maybe you got burned by someone whom you depended on for something, or you relied on someone and they let you down. You’ve learned the hard way that you aren’t always able to rely on people, so you have determined you are not going to let anybody else into your life. You are like a fortress, you keep everything close to your chest, and maybe you don’t let anybody in. That’s one type of trust issue. Sometimes people have trust issues because of other things. Perhaps it’s actually a sense of pride—I like to do things myself, or I think I can do things better on my own, so I’m not going to let anybody else to anything for me. This is the type of person who is described as a self-made man, or someone who pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. They don’t need anybody, so they haven’t learned to trust anyone because they haven’t really needed anyone. Trust issues could also be from a low self-esteem, maybe you’re not a very confident person, so letting people in is just out of the question. Many different reasons, but the outcome is the same—you have trouble trusting people. You have trust issues.
Sometimes, it is possible to have spiritual trust issues. Whether you have trust issues with those around or not, at times it can be hard for us to trust God. Maybe we like do do things on our own and in our own way. Perhaps we just find it hard to commit our lives to someone we can’t visibly see or audibly hear. Or maybe we just like to do things on our own so we struggle to place our lives into the hands of another. Whatever the case, sometimes trusting God can be a struggle.
This especially comes into play around Christmas time. At Christmas time we come face to face with the reality that God came to earth in the form of a baby, lived a human life, and died and rose again all so that we can trust him. So we really are faced with the question of what will you do with Jesus? What will you do with Jesus? Perhaps the most important question you will ever answer in your life is the question of what are you going to do with Jesus. There is much confusion today when it comes to Jesus Christ. Who was He? A man? The Son of God? A good teacher? A prophet? Did He even exist? The most important question you can answer in your life is what will you do with Jesus. Many have denied the fact that Jesus is God in the flesh, and deemed it a myth or misunderstanding. But the Bible teaches that Jesus actually did come in the flesh and He is God. That’s what we celebrate here at Christmas time. We celebrate that truth that Jesus Christ came to earth, was born of a virgin, and was actually God in the flesh.
But what are you going to do with that information? What are you going to do what the Bible says about Him? Will you trust Him? Or will you decide to live life in your own way? What will you do with Jesus. Over the next few weeks we’re going to focus on Jesus. From the book of John in the Bible we’re going to examine what Scripture says about who He was, and I want you to walk away with the question in your mind—what will I do with Jesus. It doesn’t matter where you are in your spiritual life. You could be here just to check out this “church thing” and see what we do. You could be here because you’re a true believer in Jesus and want to celebrate with other believers. This morning I want you to encounter Jesus, and I want you to walk away wondering “what am I going to do now.” So with that question in mind today, I want to give you the big idea from our text this morning:
Big Idea: Even if you have trust issues, you can trust Jesus!
Tune in to our Sunday school series on the topic of church revitalization. This week we talk about pathway towards revitalization and start a discussion on a spiritual pathway.
Structure is important. If buildings or other things are build on the right structure, they will turn out well. But if they are not, they could collapse or not last.
Many of you know I spend a few short years in the construction industry. We were a general contractors so I got to see a lot of different trades and I was on some pretty important buildings from very early on until the end. One building I was on for a year and a half was a convention center with a 14 story Marriott hotel on top. I came on site when they were preparing to pour the concrete for the 5th floor—that’s all the higher the building was. And I stayed until the building opened. It was quite the experience. But one thing I learned is that structure is important. Everything needed to be built to spec. I remember watching them pour the concrete for the floors. They had to get all the rebar right and tie it exactly how the blueprint demanded. Then they had these special cables called post motioning cables that ran through the concrete and held it all together. And there were certain specs and guidelines so that the structure was right—having the right structure made it work.
It’s the same way in the church. Having the right structure can make or break a ministry. Having a ministry structure that is based on Scripture and in the Bible is vitally important. Too often churches have the wrong structure. They have things we don’t find in the Bible. Or maybe they have the right structure—the right categories, but they misunderstand those categories or positions in the church. Whatever the case, the Bible needs to be our guide when it comes to the organizational structure and leadership structure within the church.
So as we come to our text today in Acts chapter 6, we are going to look at the office of deacon in the Bible, and how to understand deacon roles. Every year at the end of the year we have deacon elections for the upcoming year. And it is important that we understand the role of deacon—what a deacon is, what a deacon isn’t. So that we can know how God wants us to choose those men who serve us in this way. So today I’d like to look at the first passage that addresses deacons in Scripture, Acts 6. Here we see the first deacons, or some have called them proto-deacons. And I’d like us to consider the role and function of deacons as we prepare for nominations and elections coming up at the end of the year. This essentially is what I talk with our deacons about, this is a part of the training and instruction I give them on what I expect of them, but this will also shape our understanding of what God expects as well.
Big Idea: Churches need the right underlying structure in order to thrive. Because God has a specific structure for the church, we need to make sure our structure of deacon ministry is based on God’s expectations!
Have you ever made a compromise? I’m sure you have—there are lots of things that we make compromises over or make compromises for. The word compromise has Latin roots, and a direct translation from the Latin is that a compromise is a consent to arbitration or to promise together. Basically, a compromise is finding something that both parties can agree on. There are many ways that we do this.
Sometimes, a compromise is settling a dispute by mutual concession. “You agree to one thing and I’ll agree to another.” “I’ll do my best to not get upset at you if you’ll do your best to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. Sometimes a compromise is to accept standards that are lower than you desire. A company might says “we are not prepared to compromise on our employees safety!” Another form of compromise is to ruin one’s reputation through foolish or reckless behavior. “Martha Stewart became compromise through insider trading.” We have this idea or term of compromise, and we all deal with compromises all the time. When you bought your house, you likely negotiated on a price—that’s a compromise. When you got your family out of bed this morning maybe you made some compromises—“time to get up! Please, 5 more minutes!” We live in a world of acceptable compromises.
But when it comes to the church, things get a little bit different. Because though we may compromise in everyday life, Jesus does not compromise with the church. Thinking of a compromise in which both sides give concession, Jesus does not negotiate with His church when it comes to godliness and our responsibility to live out the truths of God’s Word! And as we come to our text today, Paul makes it very clear that Jesus does not compromise with His church! God holds His people to a high standard! This standard is obedience and submission to God and His Word. So as we return to our text today, I have one big idea for you today:
Big Idea: We don’t want to be a compromised church!
Listen to our Sunday School series on revitalization as we talk about place and purpose in revitalization.
Chesley Sullenberger III was born in Denison, Texas in 1951. As a child, Sullenberger built model planes and aircraft carriers and eventually became interested in flying after seeing military jets at an air force base near where he lived . . .
But you wouldn’t know Sullenberger from those achievements. Upon discharge Sullenberger flew for US Airways from 1980-2010. You might recognize him from his nickname Sully, or from his connection with Flight 1549. . .
Despite the fact that the plane he was flying had lost all power and was left to fall out of the sky, he did not panic. He did not lose his ability to reason. A plane with 155 people was falling out of the sky, and he made a plan. He was able to hold himself together make a plan that would save the lives of everyone on board and make him a hero for his bravery and quick decision making.
And as we come to our text today, I think Paul challenges Timothy to make some of the very same choices Sully had to make. Things were getting tough in the church at Ephesus. As we will see from our text, people were leaving the faith, they were rejecting truth, and they were turning toward other things. Just like Sully’s plane was falling out of the sky, Timothy’s church was collapsing from the inside out. And God recognizes this and he gives a message to Timothy—no matter what is going on around him, he needs to keep a cool head and maintain the right focus. And Paul gives Timothy some priorities for ministry. When things seem to not be going well, he needs to remember certain truths about ministry, and he needs to develop a Biblically driven philosophy of ministry. And our big idea last week as well as this week is this:
Big Idea: Ministries that last are firmly planted on Biblical principles
Listen to our Sunday School series on revitalization as we talk about evaluating perspectives and people in helping churches move forward.
Join us for our Sunday school discussion on priorities and pace in church revitalization.
I like quotes. I like to read quotes—sometimes I read something and the author just has a way with words and it just kind of sticks out to me. Quotes about ministry, quotes about the church—I just like them. And I have collected them in my memory and every once in a while I come back to them. Here are some quotes I enjoy . . .
Here’s one that I read in Bible college, in a missions class, from a book on church planting. And this quote has so moved me that it stuck with me all these years: If you want to grow something to last a season—plant flowers. If you want to grow something to last a lifetime—plant trees. If you want to grow something to last through eternity—plant churches. —David Hesselgrave
What a great way to put it! Churches last forever! Not necessarily their physical building, but when you invest in a church and church ministries—you invest in the body of Christ, you have an investment that will last forever!
But it’s not that simple, right? For a church, physically to last on the earth—for it’s ministry to continue, there are certain things that need to be vital components of that ministry. You can’t just do church however you want and expect it to last forever.
God does not leave us to wonder what ministry should look like, and how to have a ministry that lasts through the ages. God gives us some help here, through the Apostle Paul and his message to Timothy, and we can learn Biblical priorities for our church based on this text. So let’s read together—II Timothy 4:1-5.
As we unpack this text this morning, there’s one big idea I want you to remember about ministries that last through the ages:
Big Idea: Ministries that last are firmly planted on Biblical principles
Join us for week 5 of our series on church revitalization as we discuss eight characteristics of dying churches.
I want you to think with me this morning, think of some things that are both difficult, both taxing, but also rewarding. Things that are hard, but if you persevere and push through, you'll end up reaping the benefit of your labor. Can you think of anything like that, both taxing and rewarding?
I thought of some things that came to my mind. For the kids here, school, school, school's difficult, maybe if you're like me, maybe not like me, and you love school, but it's not really your favorite thing in the world. It can be a little difficult, but if you push through it, you graduate, maybe go off in the workplace, maybe go to college, it's rewarding. Sports, some of you played sports when you were younger, some of you play sports right now. Sports, something that's kind of taxing, have to put some effort into, but if you put in the practice, you're going to reap the benefit. Marriage, marriage can be difficult, it can be hard to live with another person and try to navigate your different personalities and your different preferences, but it can be rewarding if you push through and enjoy that life together. Parenting, parenting can be taxing, can be difficult, you worry about your kids, you pray over them that they'll turn out right, but if you train them, the way God wants us to train them, it can lead to some great reward. How about relationships in general? Relationships can be taxing, they can be difficult, but if you push through and work through, they can be rewarding as well. There are all these things in our life and our world today that are both difficult and rewarding. They're hard to work, effort, but if we push through, keep going, we're going to reap the benefit.
One thing we didn't mention is ministry, serving God. Can following God be difficult yet rewarding? It can be, can it? Doing what God wants, following His will, obeying His word, that can be sometimes very, very difficult, but if we're able to do it, we're able to endure and push through when life gets hard, we will find that service to God is incredibly rewarding. And as we come to our texts this morning, this was the discovery that Apostle Paul made at the very end of his life.
Most of us here are familiar with the story of the Apostle Paul. We understand all the things he went through, all the suffering that he had experienced in his life. Here he is, sitting at the end of his life, in a deep, dark prison, contemplating his last few months before death. And it would have been so easy for the Apostle Paul to give up, to throw in his towel, to say I’ve completed enough ministry, I’ve done everything I need to do for the Lord! And by our standards, perhaps, we would agree. Paul had done more in his short few years as a believer in Jesus than many of us have done in our entire lifetime! But that didn’t cause him to give up. That didn’t cause him to quit. And in our text today, as he is sitting in prison contemplating death we find him still continuing faithfully in ministry. What caused him to keep going, amidst everything going on in his life? What caused him not to quit when things get tough? Many times we are tempted to quit when life gets tough. How do we keep that from happening? How do we model the example of the Apostle Paul and not quit when life is increasingly difficult? I think from our text today Paul gives us the answer. He shares with us his mentality even during his last days while sitting in prison, for how he continued on and persevered in the faith even when life is tough. And from his example we learn one key truth that we can remember today:
Big Idea: our spiritual life is worth the effort. Because our spiritual life is worth the effort, we must persevere when life gets tough.
Join us for week 4 of our Sunday school series on church revitalization. This week we talk about knowing your community and characteristics of dying churches.
Are you a risk taker? Some people are inherent risk takers. They’re the type of person who is always pushing the limit, trying to see how far they can go or what they can do. If I’d have to admit it, I’d say I am not really a risk taker. Nobody who has ever known me well has called me a daredevil. I like to play it safe. Part of this I guess is being a dad, but there’s more to it. I’m just not the type of guy who likes to live on the edge. I’ve noticed this specifically in a few areas of my life. For instance, if I am riding a bicycle, I am not the one to go barreling down a hill. I’m the guy riding the brake the whole time. I get to about 25 mph and start thinking to myself “hmm, I wonder what would happen if my tires fell off? What if a tire fell off and I went crashing down? That would not be fun, so I better slow down.” Those are the things that go through my mind. I’m out on the lake with the boat, throttling up, and I might—might get it to full throttle, but just to say I hit it, I’m not staying there for long. I just don’t like living on the edge like that. Sometimes Emily and I will talk about things like would you ever want to go skydiving, or bungee jumping, and my answer is always absolutely not! I couldn’t handle that! Maybe you could. Some people just have a daredevil type of personality. I’m not that person!
But as we think about our spiritual lives, I wonder what we are willing to risk? What about Jesus? How much would you be willing to risk for Jesus? Too often believers in Jesus are willing to risk for things like bungee jumping or the stock market, but lose commitment when it comes to taking risks for Jesus. God’s desire for every one of His followers is that we take risks. That we be willing to “lay it all on the line” for the cause of Christ. Today we are going to study a man who did this—who took risks to follow God. This man is Elisha, and from his life we learn that we must follow God no matter what! That’s our big idea this morning.
Big Idea: God expects his followers to risk everything in service to Him
A recording of our Sunday school series on church revitalization. In this session we talk about the typology of churches that need revitalized.
Have you ever made an investment? People make all sorts of investments today. Some people make investments in property—you have rentals that you lease out to people, or condominiums. Recently, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin became the buzz, and some people made out quite well investing in things like bitcoin. or certain types of cryptocurrency. Some people invest in the stock market, and they invest their money and are able to multiply it through playing the stock market. Others invest in bonds, or you could invest in a small business. People invest in all kinds of things. I wonder—what investments have you made? . . .
God also made an investment. It is not an investment in cryptocurrency or the stock market, it is an investment in our salvation. And it’s an investment that cost him dearly—he invested everything for our salvation. What is the investment God made in salvation? Well the ultimate investment is the death of his Son Jesus—God sent his very own son to accomplish our salvation. And this is something that didn’t just start with the coming of Jesus to earth, this started before the earth was formed when God predestined it to happen. That’s why I use the term investment here and I want to make sure you know the investment we are talking about, because God risked so much for us!
But many times we question God’s investment. We wonder if it really worked, is God really committed to us in that way, or we minimize it and it loses it’s value to us. But that doesn’t change the fact that God made this investment! And as we close our text today, week 4 of our fall theology series, we see firsthand how God guaranteed that he will not go back on his investment through the presence of the Holy Spirit. That’s what our big idea tells us today:
Big Idea: The free gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will not go back on his investment
A recording of our Sunday school series on church revitalization. In this session we talk about internal and external factors that affect the need for revitalization.
There is a sense of satisfaction that comes from finishing a project. Have you ever experienced that? Whether it be a big project or a small one, there is satisfaction in completing it.
One of the biggest projects we had recently was our basement. Many of you know the saga—we went for the final inspection on our home in July of 2023 and found water seeping into the utility room in the basement. All signs pointed to some gutters that should have been added when our addition was put on a few years before, so we added gutters and regraded around the outside. We waited and waited and waited for the water on the outside of the basement wall to finally stop seeping, and it just about stopped when we noticed it coming up through the foundation underneath the sill plate on an interior wall. For a while we thought it was still rain related, despite being a dry season. But when it would’t stop and started getting worse, we knew something needed to be done. We were finally able to meet with an excavator and what we found that while the original problem was likely caused by water sitting near the foundation from not having gutters, the current problem was due to a broken water supply line. So we had to do some excavating and there was a huge hole in our front yard and we tore up the basement. Finally over Christmas I took vacation during the week between Christmas and New Years, and we were able to redo the flooring in the basement and have the project settled. It was such a good feeling. It was even more so to not have water in the basement this summer. But there was a joy, fulfilment, satisfaction in knowing the project was completed.
Sometimes I wonder if this is how God feels in reference to our salvation. It is done, he did everything necessary to complete it. But then we come along. And we try to take this beautiful wonderful thing that God has finished on his own, and we try to make it better. And we try to work, and we try to achieve it on our own strengths and our own merits. And in the process we tend to forget God altogether and make it about us and our work and what we can do. How sad it must be to God when we take his wonderful work of salvation and make it about us—look what I did, look how good I was, look how much I accomplished.
God doesn’t want salvation to be like that. God worked so that we wouldn’t have to try to do our spiritual life on our own strength, he worked so that we could rest in him. Too often we don’t. Maybe even we have our doctrine right—we know we can’t achieve our own salvation, at least in theory, but we still try to do spiritual things on our own so we can give ourselves a pat on the back.
Our text today, which we’ve been in for two weeks now, demonstrates for us the work that God did for our salvation. Specifically, in our verses this week, we see the work of Jesus Christ, and all that it accomplished. And as we observe the work that Jesus has done for us, the response that God has for us today is not to try to make it better, or try to do the same things on our own. The response that God has for us is to take a moment and feel the weight of what Jesus has done for us, and recognize that all the work needed to accomplish salvation has already been done. That’s our big idea for today:
Big Idea: the work of Jesus on the cross accomplished everything that needed to happen for our salvation to be completed
A recording of our Sunday school series on church revitalization. In this session we give an intro to the topic of revitalization and define key terms.
Are you a forgetful person? I must admit, at times I can be very forgetful. At times I have the experience of putting something where I know I will remember it, and then forgetting where I put it. And I run around the house frantically—where is this item, I know I put it somewhere, I just can’t remember where. And I start blaming people—who moved this item? It was right here, I know it was, now it is gone. Who moved it? Where did you put it? Then finally, after searching and searching, I find it. And usually I’m like “oh, that’s right, I moved it here so I would remember.” We can be forgetful. In fact, I’ve had this experience so many times that I’ve learned to not get reactionary, at least not in a frantic way. I’ve learned that whatever item was lost, it will turn up eventually. I just need to keep my cool, be patient, and wait it out. And usually, it does turn up. Have you ever had these types of experiences? We can be forgetful. It’s part of human existence. Sometimes I think it’s not as much as we get forgetful, it’s that we have too much on our minds that things get crowded out by more important things.
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Do you think this can happen spiritually? You get spiritually forgetful? The important things of life get crowded out by other things? This can certainly be a struggle in our spiritual lives. We can be so busy with good things, important things, that we forget about spiritual things. That we lose our fervor for the things God has done for us, and we forget about the marvelous character of our God. Today as we look at the work of God the Father in salvation, we going to be reminded about the works of God. Lest we forget, Paul writes to remind us that God the Father has a special and unique involvement in our salvation. Too often however, we forget. It’s been too long since we marveled at the wonders of what God has done for us in salvation. So Paul writes to remind us. And he gives us a healthy dose of theology—a shot in the arm if you will, to help us remember what God has done for us and respond in praise. Our big idea today is this:
Big Idea: we must not forget to praise God the Father for unique involvement in our salvation
Have you ever lacked desire to be involved in something? Maybe you had a project that you were supposed to be involved in, but you lacked the passion to finish? Maybe you started well on something only to lack the desire and ended up not finishing the project?
I had this scenario growing up. I had this project for science class, it was as science fair project, and I decided for this project I was going to build a Van De Graaff generator. Do you know what they are? They are the types of things you see at science museums, where you put your hand on a bowl shaped piece of metal and your hair stands up from the static electricity. But we were going to build one of these, and my dad brought home a little DC motor from work and we built this thing. But there was one problem, it wouldn’t work. We got all the pieces together and assembled the unit, and the belts would not spin—they would slip on the spindle of the motor. We had to hand craft our own belt and it didn’t work as we thought, so we had to brainstorm. The only problem is that we spent so much time brain storming and putting the project on hold, that we never actually finished it. In fact for years, even after I was married and left the house, I would go visit my parents and find my old high school project still sitting in my parents basement. I lost the drive to actually finish the project, and we learned that it is a lot harder than we thought to create a Van De Graaf generator.
Sometimes we lose desire or lack initiative in things, or maybe we have a tendency to start things and then just let them go. We bow out, lose interest, or simple just want to let things how they are. Have you ever had that experience in life?
The interesting thing about this, is what I just described is how some people view God. Some people view God as unmotivated or uninterested in the lives of his creation. Some have the idea that maybe he lost interest, or he lost motivation in the world—he set things off to start and then just checked out. Others view God as someone who just sits up in heaven, almost as if he were watching a movie, waiting to see how things are going to turn out. But as we consider this picture of God that some have, and we compare it to scripture, we find this perspective greatly lacking. In fact, God is very interested in the lives of his creatures. He is not unmotivated or uninterested, and in fact he has taken great care to be intimately involved in the lives of his creatures.
Today I would like to take us to a Bible passage that clearly lays out for us God’s involvement in our lives. And we’re going to just brush the surface of our text today, and then dive in deeper over the next 3 weeks, so if you want to hear more you can come back. But our passage shows us God’s involvement in our lives in one specific area. Certainly God is involved in things like creation of the world, but our passage today hones in as it were on one specific aspect of God’s involvement, and that is God’s provision of salvation. And we get to see very clearly from our passage how God, the creator of the universe, in all his glory, specifically planned and provided for the salvation of mankind. If you’ve ever struggled with, or wondered about God’s involvement in the world, this passage is for you today. Because it not only teaches about God’s involvement, it demonstrates how God has taken great care to be involved in the salvation of mankind. So as we examine our passage in Ephesians 1, there’s one big idea I want you to take home with you today. If this is the only thing you take with you today, I want you to remember this:
Big Idea: the God of the universe has taken special interest in our salvation
Anyone here ever went sailing? Few of you. I don't know why, but I've always been kind of infatuated with sailboats. To me, there's nothing more tranquil than watching a sailboat go across the horizon as the sun sets, and imagine the warm wind blowing, pushing the sailboat across the ocean.
Well, I've had one opportunity to be on a sailboat, I was in college, and one man at the church that we were at, he had a sailboat. And if you know anything about sailing, you know, there's really big sailboats that you can fit dozens of people, and there's really tiny ones. This one was on the smaller side. It was a 22-foot sailboat, and you could fit maybe two people underneath for a night on the lake, and maybe 5-6 up top.You could spend the night on a lake, and that was about it. But we had five or six of us riding in the sailboat on top, and this was in Upper Wisconsin. In April. So if you think of that, the water probably recently just got done thawing. It was cold. And the captain of the ship assured us that he was an able-bodied captain, and that was something that we would eventually come to question. But we decided to go sailing with this guy, and all of a sudden, we were out in the middle of this lake enjoying the breeze, and the wind changed. And we caught a crosswind, and our boat started to kind of turn up on its side. I think I have a picture up here of something what this might have looked like. I was on the top side, and as I'm going up, I'm looking down, and our sailboat, the bottom side, starts to dip underneath the water. And water starts flowing in, and I'm starting to question, what am I doing out here? At the same time, the captain, who was the only one who had any sailing experience, he was on the bottom side, and he was on the bottom side, he fell out. And so I'm starting to get just a little bit worried. Fortunately, before the boat left him, he was able to grab on. I think he grabbed onto a road or a guideline or something, and we pulled him in. The boat leveled back. Everything was okay, but we couldn't get off the water soon enough for my liking.I was done, and I've never been sailing again in my life, though I might be willing to try it.
Sometimes our lives can seem like an episode on my sailing adventures. Sometimes it can seem like things are just about ready to capsize into the dark, icy waters. Maybe you've had experiences like that, where you feel like you are falling out of the boat, and you're grasping for something. You're trying to reach, to pull yourself back in. I wonder, when life seems to be that way for you, when life seems to be getting tough, when things seem to be going bad, maybe you feel like you're about to capsize in life. Where do you turn? What is it that you reach for, like the captain of the boat that we were in reached for whatever he could grab a hold of to pull himself back into the boat?What do you reach for?
In the passage we're going to look at today, we see the example of the Apostle Paul and we see what he reached for. What he grabbed a hold of when his life got tough, he turned to God. He turned to God when things were difficult, when he felt alone. When he literally was alone, as we'll see in our passage, he turned to God, he reached out, and he found hope in God. And so as we look at this text this morning, we're going to learn a really practical example from the Apostle Paul of how he reached for God and found God as a source of strength and hope when things got tough in his life.And so as we begin to unpack this passage, there's one truth that I want you to remember today. It's our big idea for this morning.
Big Idea: When the waters of life overtake you, reach out for God. He'll keep you afloat.
Love is an interesting thing. I wonder how would you describe love? In today’s world love means different things to different people. Some describe it as a feeling; others a choice. Love can be an admiration you hold for your life’s hero, an affection you feel towards an animal, or a passion that rages inside. You can love you brother, you can love your dog, you can love spaghetti, and you can love fishing, but these are all different kinds of love. Love can be something that takes you unawares—you “fall in love.” But love can also be a decision you make, where you choose to love someone unlovable. We talk about love at first sight, yet people can fall out of love just as fast. In our world today, love seems less and less of a commitment and more and more like a fleeting passion that changes without notice.
But there’s one thing I know about love, love is very, very powerful. And with that power, things we love, good things, can easily turn into bad things. If we’re not careful to control our loves, the things we love can start to control us. We’ve all seen this type of thing happen. Someone’s pursuit for pleasure turns into an addiction. Someones pursuit of income turns into an obsession. Someone’s pursuit of a relaxing hobby quickly morphs into an all-consuming idol. The things we love, if we don’t keep them in check, can take control of us.
As we turn to the book of Revelation today we find a discussion on love. Not a commitment type of love, but more of a fading passion type of love. The type of love demonstrated in this passage is the type of love we are not to have. We find this lack of genuine love not in an uncommitted, careless individual, but in a local church—the church at Ephesus. Can you imagine? We find a church—the people of God—who have lost their love! Let’s read together Revelation 2:1-7 and learn about this church who lost their passion for God. So let’s read our text, and as we do there’s on big idea I want you to remember:
Big Idea: take control of what you love, before what you love controls you
Have you ever received a speeding ticket? I can tell by some of your reactions that you have. If you drive the same route to work every day you begin to know where the police officers like to sit—right? For me when I was driving into the cities for work, I knew that under specific bridges I needed to be careful. It’s funny to watch people’s reactions when they come around a curve in the highway and the police officer is sitting there clocking your speed. Everyone instantly slows down. As if that’s really going to help! As if somehow you have special powers that make you so quick that you can slow down before the radar gun has reached you. Not really.
But I have to admit, to this day I have never gotten a speeding ticket. Now, before you get too amazed and start asking me for my secrets, or come for my autograph, note that I said I have never received a speeding ticket, not that I have never been pulled over for speeding. I have been pulled over for speeding. I remember one time back when I was in seminary I was coming home from work at night. I got off work at 10 pm, I was coming home from work, and I was anxious to get home. As I sped past the car in front of me on the highway, which seemed to be going incredibly slow, I saw the flashing red and blue lights. It turned out the car I sped around was a police officer, and I was caught. Fortunately, the officer was very kind and did not give me a ticket for speeding. Rather, he wrote me up for obstruction of view, as I had something hanging from my mirror. But I was guilty! The law said I should have been fined. But this officer freed me from the law.
Our story this morning is all about how Jesus mends the brokenness of our sin to free us from the law. Not the physical law, not the law of the government, but the law of God. The law of God declares us guilty. It imprisons us, and marks us as those who have broken it. But as we will see this morning, Jesus mends our brokenness by sin. So as we try to see what this story teaches us, I think the big idea is this:
Big idea: Jesus mends the brokenness of our sin by offering freedom from the law
Have you ever felt the weight of crushing sorrow? The fear, anxiety, or worry that comes over you when something happens that is just out of your control? The grief and pain that happens when life seems to be unraveling and you don’t know how to stop it? These feelings are things that most of us have experienced in life. The crushing weight of life that seems to be caving it. Have you felt that? Can you remember how that felt? What scenario caused you to feel completely and utterly broken? . . .
I remember feeling this type of brokenness when I got the news that my brother had died. My brother was 7 years younger than me, and he died a little over 8 years ago at the age of 24. We had grew up together, played together, built legos together. Until I left home to be married, we even shared a room together. And I remember exactly where I was when I got the phone call, and all my dad said was “Joe is gone.” I didn’t even know what that meant; I was in shock. “How could this happen! There must be some mistake—is this really even happening!” And I remember being utterly and completely broken.
Chances are, you’ve felt this way to. You remember where you were, what you were doing, when you got to news. And you realized the course of your life was taking a turn. Where do you turn during a time like that? How do you pick yourself up? How do you even go on when you feel like you cannot God on? . . .
Today we’re going to look at a Bible story in the Old Testament, and it’s a Bible story about someone who experienced brokenness as well. Some of the works brokenness you could imagine, this woman has experienced it. Yet instead of turning to despair, she believed in God. And from the story we see that in the midst of her brokenness and heartache, God mended her. And we learn the valuable lesson that God mends our broken hearts. And because God mends our broken hearts, we need to run to God in the midst of our brokenness. That’s our big idea for today:
Big idea: because God mends our broken hearts, we need to run to God in the midst of our brokenness
For hundreds of years, men have searched for endless life and youthful vitality. According to tradition, the quest for youthful vigor led conquistador Ponce de Leon to Florida in search of the ever-elusive Fountain of Youth. Men have spent much of their lives searching for the mythical spring which supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes therein. But the search for the Fountain of Youth, as fascinating as it may be, has always been unsuccessful. Men, like Ponce de Leon, have exhausted huge fortunes searching for the solution to a longer and more youthful existence.
We even still see this in today’s society. From pills to various injections or medications, mankind seeks to evade the process of aging and death. But these attempts are pointless, for none of these things deal with the reason for aging and death.
The reason men die is because of sin. It doesn’t matter how many pills you take or herbs you ingest, these items will never detoxify oneself from the venom of sin. Because of sin, men die. Romans 5:12 tells us this. Try as men may, they cannot escape death on their own attempts.
But God provided a way. In sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins God has provided a solution for men to erase the effects of sin. This solution is not simply for those who would exhaust their fortunes in search of it or spend their entire lives attempting to find it. This life-giving spring is available to all. This solution to the problem of death Christ calls living water. It is not a fountain hidden for someone to find, but the living water of the Gospel is free to all who would partake.
But sometimes we do not view it this way. We perhaps put limitations on the Gospel. We hinder its progression because of our own sinful biases and inclinations. Maybe we view the Gospel as limited. It’s limited in our own lives, in the ability to heal our past mistakes. Or it’s limited in its ability to heal the mistakes of others, so we refuse and reject them.In our passage today Jesus says that He provides the living water of the Gospel to anyone who believes. It mends even the brokenness of our sin, specifically in this text, its mends our relationships.
That is the topic of our new sermon mini—series called mended. Over the next 4 weeks, we’re going to look at how Jesus heals our brokenness, and we’re going to look at four specific areas of our brokenness that Jesus heals. Today we’re going to walk through a story that emphasizes our relational brokenness, and teaches that the living water of the Gospel mends our relationships that are broken by our sin. Our text is John 4:1-42, and our big idea for this morning is:
Big Idea: The living water of the Gospel heals our relational brokenness
Have you ever seen or heard something that is too good to be true? Perhaps you got an add, email, phone call, saying you won something or you were a grand prize winner, only give out your banking info, or send a small payment, and you will get what you supposedly one. There is something in those types of things that intrigues us. Even though many times we might even see through it, there is usually just enough truth in it to hook us or intrigue us, and if we’re not careful we can be taken for a scam.
This happened to me one time a few years ago. I got a request to come speak at a conference in Europe. And nothing strokes a pastor’s ego more than a request to come speak—we’ve been listening to your sermons and they are so good and we want you to come speak at this conference. And for a moment, I was excited, wow they want me to come speak! But it didn’t take too long to notice that this indeed was a scam. There was no conference and somehow I was just being baited. Why do things like this work? They work because there is usually enough truth mixed in with the lie that it becomes believable.
Unfortunately, the same can be said many times for Christian communities—for churches. Things look great on the outside! They are such a loving church, they care about one another, there is so much unity, the Spirit is really working there. And it looks good on the outside, until you get on the inside. That’s when the fractures and fissures that weren’t evident on the outside become truly evident. There was just enough truth on the outside to make one interested, only to find out things weren’t what they seemed . . . Too many churches have enough on the outside to be believable, but when you get on the inside, you find there are all sorts of issues—fighting, bickering, division, gossip, all sorts of things that make a christian community unbelievable. This is not God’s vision for the church!
As we come to the last section in the book of Titus this morning, we get to see an inside picture of how believers in the church ought to relate to one another. We get to see how believers in the early church responded or were to respond to one another, and I think we get a vision for how we ought to be in the church today. How we claim to be as a church ought to be believable, and should mesh with how we actually do treat one another in the church. And from our text I think we learn four characteristics of a believable community of believers. Our big idea this morning is simply this:
Big Idea: A community of believers ought to be believable
The average person today wastes a lot of time. I read some statistics this week for 2024, talking about the average time a person spends on their phone or in front of a screen. I learned that:
- The average person spends 7 hours and 11 minutes in front of a screen every day
- Screen time accounts for 38-43 percent of waking hours; in some countries as high as 60%
- A typical internet user spends 4 hrs and 16 minutes on the internet on their phone each day
- People spend an average of 3 hrs 24 minutes watching tv every day
- Mobile phones are the most widely used internet device, accounting fort 55% of web traffic
What a large amount of time wasted on things like entertainment and pleasure. One of the things perhaps we waste most in our life is time. We spend far too much time doing what we don’t really need to, and far too little time doing what we should. We waste a lot of time.
There are things we waste in our spiritual lives as well. We waste time, we waste opportunities, we waste our efforts pursuing things that God doesn’t want us to pursue—so much waste! But many times we are not aware. We just go threw life rolling with the punches, navigating, surviving but not thriving. Do you resonate with that? The tendency to let your guard down spiritually and maybe you don’t stop trying, but you’re not trying really hard. This is a tendency we have in our spiritual lives—we waste. We get distracted. We pursue other things.
But as Paul prepares to close the book of Titus in our text this week, he addresses the tendency we all have for this type of distraction; for spiritual waste. We waste our effort and energy on other things. And Paul calls us back to putting our focus and efforts into the right things that God wants us to focus on. This really is the foundation for spiritual maturity—Paul calls us spiritual maturity in our lives, and he does so in three specific areas of our lives, and he helps us to think through these areas and tries to get us to stop wasting those on ourselves or other things. So as we look at our text this morning, Paul reminds us that when we invest in our spiritual lives in the way God wants us to, we can never go wrong. In fact, God wants us to put him first in every area of our lives, and Paul helps us to do that in our text today. Our big idea for today is this:
BIG IDEA: Nothing is wasted when spent on God
Sometimes when you look at something at a closer level, maybe you stop and stare for a while, you begin to see things that weren’t there before. You begin to observe more and are able to marvel at what you maybe saw before, but haven't really gazed upon.
I don’t know if you like rocks, but one time for Christmas our kids got a geode kit. There were these whole geode rocks that came in the kit and they came as a whole, and what you were supposed to do was to take the rocks outside and use a hammer or chisel and break them, and when you break them you could see all the crystals inside. And this was really neat for our kids to see. They had seen geodes before, in the store or in pictures, but now to break them into pieces and handle them and just look at all the facets of each crystal was really quite amazing. They could see so much more than if they looked in a picture or in a store, and they could just stop and stare and look and observe all the beauty of what God had made. And the more they would stop and stare and look, the more they were able to appreciate what they saw—all the sides and facets of each crystal, the ridges and how they were formed, the color schemes and hues of each rock. It was all pretty incredible. But you won’t see all of those things if you just set it on a shelf and never take time to observe. You might miss a lot if you just see it from afar but don’t take the time to truly study and appreciate the beauty of what is there.
In our text today, Paul helps us to stop and take a closer, focused look at our salvation. Paul gives us a detailed description of how salvation happened and he helps us to take some time to better understand what God has done for us. Too many times, believers take for granted the fact that they are a believer. Maybe it’s been a number of years since you first placed your faith in Jesus, perhaps you were even a small child. And as time goes by it can be easy to just simply go through life as someone who is saved without really relishing and cherishing the work that God has done to make it possible. And in our text today, Paul helps us to do this by reminding of the remarkable ways that God has worked to provide our salvation, and from our text we see four remarkable facets of God’s work in salvation for which we can express our praise. Our big idea this morning helps us to think about God’s provision in salvation and our response:
Big Idea: Great provision demands sincere praise!
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about advertising, But one of the best ways to advertise for something is to go public with whatever item or service is being offered. You can go nearly anywhere today and see all sorts of advertisement. I wonder—how many goods or services we have purchased or even simply know about based off an ad.
Driving into church today, chances are you saw vehicles with an advertisement on side—a painting company, a store, a construction company. All these things we know about from a public advertisement. But what I’ve noticed is that the best advertisement for something are actual people—people who buy into something completely and their usage of an item or service has given them a really good experience.
We had this when we moved to town. You don’t really think about it, at lead I didn’t, but when I moved here I had to get connected with a group of professionals who could offer services that I need. For instance—what plumber do you call when you have a pipe break? Or if you have an electrical problem which electrician do you go to? Or what about a car mechanic, you need to find one of those. So what did I do? I asked around. I asked a few people what good or bad experiences they had, and who they would recommend that I go to. So I established a connection with some of these businesses in town and now I’m able to give my own recommendation and refer others to the ones that I use.
This reminds me of our spiritual lives. Just like a good referral goes a long way, the way that we live our lives as believers goes a long way toward giving a personal witness of Jesus Christ. One of the most effective ways that we can share the gospel with those around is very simply by how we live our lives. God wants us to have a public faith! Too often times, our faith isn’t public. Sure, we can be found at church on Sunday and perhaps our neighbors know we go to church, and maybe we even invited them a time or two. But when it comes to publicly living out our faith, we aren’t very good at that. We struggle to witness and share Jesus those around, and though we have our faith, it is’t very public.
In our text today Paul address this, and he gives us some ideas for how we can get better at living our faith out publicly, especially when it comes to how we as believers relate to our civil and governmental authorities. From our text, we see five components to demonstrating public faith in Jesus. So as we read our text, I want us to think about our big idea for today:
BIG IDEA: public faith leads to personal witness; private faith leads to no witness
I don’t know if you have ever read the book “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage”, but it is a remarkable story. Written in 1959 by Alfred Lansing, the story covers the attempt of renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton as he endeavors to navigate a trans-arctic expedition in 1914. . .
Shackleton is known for his newspaper advertisement seeking crew for the journey. The ad read: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.Such a high risk endeavor, yet Shackleton found enough men to step up and accompany him on his dangerous voyage. I can only imagine the difficulty of finding men who were willing to take such risk—men who were willing to lay it all on the line to accomplish their mission and fulfill their destiny.
But this call, given by Shackleton, to embrace a difficult calling reminds me of something. It reminds me of God’s design for men. God’s call on the life of men is to embrace the ups and downs of manhood and fulfill their calling as leaders and providers in our world today. But there’s a problem—just like Ernest Shackleton, there is a shortage of such men. A good and godly man is difficult to find. Men today are too busy doing other things, pursuing other things, to give themselves fully and completely to the calling God has for them. And we are forced to ask the question: “where are all the men? Where are the men who are willing to embrace their calling, despite the difficulty, and lay it all on the line to be a follower of Jesus?” In a world where men are being told they don’t have to accept the responsibility, or even told they don’t have to be men at all, how shall we find such men? And how do we even know what they look like? I think some of those questions can be answered through the life of the Apostle Paul. Paul serves as an example of what the type of man God wants looks like. And from the example of Paul shown in the first few verses of Titus 1, we can learn what a godly man looks like, and what standard for which all men should strive. Our big idea today is simple:
Big Idea: God has a high calling for men today!
I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne, but I remember reading this classic in high school and being sucked into this incredible story. The novel tells the tale of Phileas Fogg, a wealthy Englishman, who lived a humble and solitary life. Fogg carried out his life with great accuracy and precision, and lived by a very scheduled routine. One day at the gentleman's club where Fogg was a member, a discussion broke out about how long it would take one to travel around the entire globe. Fogg being a precise sort of individual with the ability to make accurate mathematical equations, claimed one could go around the globe in 80 days. The other members of the gentleman’s club debated this claim, and finally Fogg determined to prove it for himself. So Fogg accepted a wager from his friends of 20,000 pounds that a man could travel around the globe in 80 days. Taking his newly hired French valet Passpartout, Fogg sets sail in the skies with a hot air balloon, determined to make it back to the gentlemen’s club in 80 days.
The book follows the adventures of Fogg and his valet thorough various unique experiences as they attempted to race back to London in the 80 day time frame. . . He did indeed made it around the world in 80 days. After much celebration and accommodation for what had been accomplished, the book ends with Phileas Fogg going back to his normal life and resuming his daily regimented routine.
I remember reading this book as a young person, and being sucked into the adventure. But then I got to the ending. And I remember thinking—is this it? After all you have seen and heard, are you really just going to go right back to your normal, everyday, boring life?
This experience can happen in our spiritual lives as well. We can lose passion or desire for the things of God. Perhaps they just seem too ordinary or mundane. Maybe they used to hold joy or happiness and now they don’t. Or maybe, we just lose that fire that we once had for spiritual things and they no longer move us as they once did. Sometimes we can lose our love our passion for the things of God. And God doesn’t want us to get there in our spiritual lives. So as we come to our text today, Paul takes time to remind us of what we have in Christ. Lest we become apathetic towards what Jesus has done for us, and lest we become so consumed with doing, that we forget the One we are doing it for, Paul takes time to remind us that there is complete joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction in Jesus. Sometimes we lose sight of that, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. So as we unpack our text this morning, the big idea I want you to remember is this:
Big Idea: we should be completely satisfied with the incredible grace of God.
If you’ve ever made an investment, purchased life insurance, created a retirement account, chances are you had to name a beneficiary. A beneficiary is someone who is designated to receive the benefits or proceeds from someone else’s property when that person passes away. Beneficiaries can be named for many types of property:
- Bank accounts
- Brokerage accounts
- Insurance policies
- Retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s and IRAs
- A will or trust
All of these and more have the option to name a beneficiary, who will take over possession of items or finances when the current owner passes away. And chances are, most of us have beneficiaries of some sort. If you have a will or trust, you’ll have a beneficiary. A retirement account has a beneficiary. I know my wife and I both have life insurance—she’s my beneficiary and I am hers. Why? Because we want each other to be taken care of in the event that something sudden or tragic happens. It makes sense, and it is a good move to have some of these things set up.
But one thing is usually true about beneficiaries. The beneficiary is usually someone who is close to you. It’s someone that means something to you, usually a close relative. But we wouldn’t expect that you would make just any random person the beneficiary on something like this. Most of you are not going to make me the beneficiary on your life insurance. It’s going to be your spouse, or kids, or something like that. You certainly would not name a complete stranger as your beneficiary. We want someone we know, love, and trust to handle our affairs in our absence.
But as I thought about these things this week, I came to realize that there is one exception to this. There is one individual if you will who made his beneficiary to someone who wasn’t a close part of his family, but this individual made his beneficiary, or I should say beneficiaries, individuals who were far off, who had become estranged. And in this unique set of circumstances, treasures more than could ever be valued were heaped upon the most unlikely of recipients. The individual of whom I am talking of course is God, and the goods that were left are the blessings of his grace. The beneficiaries then, are all those who believe on the name of Jesus. If you’re a believer today, that is you. You are a recipient of God’s undeserved favor. And through the death of his son Jesus, all who believe on him become recipients of his divine favor. What a blessing this is! And as we come to our text today, Paul shares some of the items we recieved as beneficiaries of the divine favor of God. He shows us two specific works that God has done to bestow this favor upon us, and we are left to come up with a response to such great blessings. And as we unpack this text today, we encounter the big idea that we can take home with us today:
Big Idea: God deserves our praise for his undeserved favor
I was thinking this week, there is something about someone who does good work that is just attractive. If you see someone who takes their time to put in the work to do something right, and maybe they have a little skill too, but if you see that, it is a pleasurable experience. Maybe it’s a builder or carpenter who gets two joints to fit together perfectly. Or a repairman who goes above and beyond to get the job done, or a landscaper who just makes a property look amazing. That type of worker and work ethic makes you just want to sit back and say “wow,” they really care about what they are doing and they are doing good work!
The same is true in our spiritual lives. There is something that stands out when a person does a good job. Good workers are hard to find, and when someone does a good job, has a good work ethic, that stands out to their employer and also to those around. When we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, he changes every area of our lives, including how we show up to work. And God’s desire for believers is that the way we work at our jobs shows a testimony of the change that Jesus has made in our life. Because what better witness is there than a transformed life? And when we live out our faith at our jobs by how we work, we leave a compelling witness of the transformational power of the Gospel. That’s what Paul talks about in our text this morning. He’s talked about older men and younger men, he talked about older women and younger women, and now he talks about employees on the job. And from Paul’s discussion here we get our big idea for today:
Big Idea: Dedicated work highlights spiritual beliefs
I have heard it said, and I'm sure you have as well, that behind every great man is an even greater woman. I suspect that this is very much the case. Women make us who we are. They give us life, they give us care, and our lives either are currently or have been dependent on them in one way or another. But women are under attack today. Women are under attack on multiple fronts. On one side, you have the feminist movement which seeks to release women from the bondage of men, seeking, to destroy the institution of marriage and free women from the home and even motherhood. On the other hand, we have the transgender movement, where it seems that anybody can decide to be a woman, and in doing so it only cheapens the uniqueness and value of women and femininity. One side overemphasizes femininity to the extreme, seeking liberation from men and masculine structures, while the other side devalues femininity, making it something that can be pursued and obtained by anyone.
But in our text today, Paul teaches us that God places incredible value on women and that biblical femininity is of extreme importance to God. The role that God gives women as women, as wives, and as mothers is a very special and specific God-given mission that women are innately designed to fulfill. And Paul teaches us that when women embrace their God-given role and design and model biblical femininity, this has an evangelistic effect. Because what better to display the transformational power of the gospel then a changed life? And so, in our text today, Paul addresses expectations for women, for wives, and for mothers, and shows us how women in these roles can find meaning and value by embracing the mission God has for them.
Last week we looked at men in the church, this week we look at God’s plan for women. And as we unpack our text this morning, we come to our big idea for today:
Big Idea: God strategically designed biblical femininity as a compelling witness to unbelievers
There’s a lot of power in a testimony of personal experience. Think about some of the things that we might be drawn to based on a person’s personal experience. Perhaps a certain Dr. or clinic—maybe you found your chiropractor based on personal experience. Or certain types of beauty treatments—you go to the same barber your dad went to and grandfather went to because of their personal experience, or you choose your hair stylist because someone you knew and trusted recommended them. Or you go to a restaurant because it has good reviews. There’s just something about a personal testimony.
The same is true in a church. You can’t beat, or match the power of a personal testimony---the power of a life changed by Christ. There are many techniques and programs available that are designed to help you when it comes to things like evangelism, sharing your faith and giving a good gospel witness. However, one of the best techniques you could ever practice is living a transformed life. Nothing reveals the power of Christ in transformation like the clear and visible progress of the transformed life of a believer.And as we come to our text today, this is exactly what Paul tells us. He tells us that the most attractional and convincing model of evangelism is a changed life. And he tells Titus and the churches in Crete what this looks like, and how that healthy churches elevate mission over methods. That’s our big idea for today:
Big Idea: healthy churches elevate mission over methods. Because healthy churches elevate mission over methods, we need to be committed to the mission God has for us.
What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? What does it mean? If someone stopped you on the street and said “hey, real quick, in one sentence, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?” Or perhaps they asked the question in another way—“what difference should Jesus make in your life?” How would you answer? Do you know what you would say?
Titus is all about doctrine and devotion. All about how our right doctrine is vital for our spiritual lives, and then about how we must live rightly base on that doctrine. And our text today talks about that right off the bat. It talks about what a healthy disciple of Jesus looks like and how God expects all his followers to have lives that are built on both doctrine and devotion. So let’s open our text this morning, and as we do, there’s one big idea I want you to remember today:
Big Idea: healthy discipleship involves both doctrine and practice
Perhaps you're familiar with the concept of a deep fake. A deep fake is when someone takes something like an image or video and edits it into another image or video to digitally alter the item and make it appear to be someone else.
But as I thought about this during the week it came to my mind that this is the way some can be in the church there is a presence of deep fakes in the Christian Church even today. Individuals who have all the right appearance on the outside—things look good, they do everything that they're supposed to do, but there is no heart. They have rituals without a relationship. And in our text that we've been looking at over the past two weeks now Paul addresses these types of individuals in the church. He acknowledges that they had crept into the churches in Crete, some of them had been given leadership positions in the church, and they were destroying the body of Christ. Some used false teaching, some used deceitful words, some used immoral lifestyles, and they were distracting people from Jesus and ruining the Church of Christ. So Paul writes to Titus to help him and the church identify individuals in the body of Christ who might be harming the Christian community. And we've been looking at the descriptions that Paul gives of these individuals and how he instructs us to deal with them. We’ve been focusing on the big idea from our passage:
Big Idea: Churches are destroyed from the inside out. Because churches are destroyed from the inside out, we need to be able to identify destructive individuals in the church.
Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase: Ministry would be easy if it weren’t for people. It’s kind of a tongue and cheek comment, noting some of the difficulties of ministry. There is drama, people problems, relational conflict, all kinds of things that come up when you work with people.
But the reality is, if it weren’t for people, there would be no ministry. And our ministry as a church to make disciples, would not be possible without people. People are at the heart of our mission both individually and corporately, to make disciples. And to do that, sometimes we need to get our hands dirty, because people are messy. We’re all messy, aren’t we? We all have our stuff, and God stepped into a mess when he decided to save us, because we were messy and in order to save us he had to work through our mess.
But when you work with people, sometimes you have to step into the midst of their mess—their chaos, their “stuff.” And in our text today Paul addresses the messiness of people ministry, only the individuals he has in mind in our text takes it to a whole new level. He talks about people who are not just messy, they are destructive. And they destroy churches for their own selfish gain. So he writes to warn Titus, and to help Titus and use today to be able to identify these individuals with in the church, and stop them in their destructive deeds.
Big Idea: Churches are destroyed from the inside out. Because churches are destroyed from the inside out, we need to be able to identify destructive members in the church.
I recently read some accounts of artists who destroyed their own work. I have heard of this before, but I didn’t realize that this tradition goes way back to early artists. Individuals who for many various reasons created a piece of artwork and then ended up destroying it after it was completed. I learned of several different artists in history who did this . . .
Why would artists destroy their own work? Why put time and effort into such elaborate works of art only to destroy them later on? We will never know the answer to such questions, but this does go to show us one truth that usually holds true for life: oftentimes, we are our own worst enemy.
The same is true in fact, in the church. Most churches don’t crumble from outside pressure. Churches don’t shrink, or close, due to the things going on around them in the world, they don’t struggle because of opposition from the community or religious persecution, at least not in the US. Churches, when the struggle, shrink, lose people, even close, it is most often an internal problem—they are destroyed from the inside out. There is conflict, apathy, ungodliness, all sorts of things that goes to show, we are our own worst enemy. Or as one man put it: it’s not the ship in the water, but the water in the ship that causes it to sink. This is in fact what the Apostle Paul dealt with on the Island of Crete. Paul dealt with those inside the church who really were their own worst enemy. Men who had gotten into leadership either positional leadership or just being lay leaders, and they were not the type of people believers ought to follow. Perhaps they were false teachers, certainly they had wrong doctrine, and they were ruining the church from the inside out. So Paul sent Titus and instructs him what to do in the church-he instructs him to raise up elders, he gives the qualifications for eldership, and now in our text today he cautions Titus about these destructive men in the church by helping Titus to identify who they are and how to deal with them. And Paul’s caution to Titus is an incredibly relevant caution for us today, because we struggle in much the same way. He reminds us that:
Big Idea: Churches are destroyed from the inside out. Because churches are destroyed from the inside out, we need to be able to identify destructive members in the church.
We live in a world today that is full of opportunity, and full of solutions. There are all kinds of opportunities, and all sorts of solutions. For instance, if you want to put an addition on your house, there are any number of construction firms you could utilize—you can go online and get quotes and estimates from as many companies as you want. The same is true for nearly any project you want to complete. Home repairs, car maintenance, any sort of solution you need in our world today, you can find it, and you can find it easily—we live in a world full of opportunity and solutions.
But this isn’t true when it comes to our spiritual lives. There are all sorts of solutions that people look to in their spiritual lives to find answers and solutions, but many of them don’t really work . . . But there is only one solution to our spiritual problems; there is only one who has the fix for what is going on in our hearts, and that solution in Jesus. Only Jesus can satisfy your soul!
And as we come to our text today, we enter into the middle of an in-depth discussion on the incomparable worth of Jesus Christ. 6 times in verses 9-15 of Colossians 2 we have the phrase in him or with him. This passage is all about Jesus and how his work on the cross meets our deepest need. And as we come to the verses we’re going to focus on today, verses 13-15, there’s one big idea that I think emerges from the text, and this is the bottom line I want you to take away with you this morning:
Big idea: Jesus provides for your deepest need
Have you ever noticed there is a direct correlation between a groups leadership and those who follow that leader? You can search nearly anywhere, and in nearly any setting, you will find, that there is a correlation between a group and how they live or act, and the leader they follow.
The same thing is true in the church. Church leaders, ministry leaders, can have an incredible impact on those who follow them. And in can be the case in the church that church members pick up certain qualities or character traits from their pastor and whether knowingly or not, they can model them. Pastors and teachers in the church have, and can have, a large impact on the people within the church. We’d like to think that is a good impact, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. Pastors are humans too, and sometimes our negative traits can influence church members in a negative way.
And as we come to our text today, this seems to be the case with the churches on Crete. They had pastors and leaders who were living ungodly lives, and their lifestyle had an impact on the members of their churches, which in turn affected the church members in a negative way—they were beginning to be affected by the bad character of their pastors. So Paul sent Titus to set things right in the church and raise up new elders. And as he does that, Paul reminds Titus what churches should look for in a pastor, and why the character of a pastor is so vitally important. Paul teaches Titus:
Big Idea: Leadership influences membership; so churches need to choose the right leaders
A solid foundation is important. Building on a solid foundation is the key to the success of nearly anything in life—a building, an organization, a family—these all require a solid foundation.
Churches are much the same. Churches that have the right foundation, are set up to not just survive, but to thrive. If a church is to thrive, it needs to have the right underlying structure. Churches must have the right structure when it comes to ministerial leaders. That means that churches first of all must have the right kind of leaders, and second of all that leadership must be arranged in the right way. God has a very specific way he wants the leadership of the church to be organized, and he describes very specifically in Scripture what this looks like. And as we unpack our text together he gives us some very specific direction for how church leadership should appear. He reminds us that:
Big Idea: leadership affects direction, so churches need the right leadership in order to move in the right direction.
Most of us regularly lose things: keys, wallets, TV remotes, glasses, and phones. Some of us are more prone to misplacing things than others. It’s not surprising that men are twice as likely to lose their phones than women. One study concluded that the average person misplaces nine things a day and spends an average of fifteen minutes looking for lost items. Why does this happen? What is the psychology and science behind it? It comes down to a breakdown of attention and memory. When we misplace our belongings, "we fail to activate the part of our brain responsible for encoding what we're doing." The hippocampus part of our brain is responsible for taking a snapshot and preserving the memory in a set of neurons that can be activated later. We lose things when we do not have a clear reference point of when or where we put down objects like our keys or glasses.
This can be similar to how things are in our spiritual lives. Sometimes the most intelligent people are the most forgetful. Well what do I mean by that? Sometimes the people who know the most—they have the most spiritual knowledge, they can parse the finer nuances of doctrine, they understand the deeper things of theology, those type of people can easily forget the foundation for the hope and knowledge that they have. It is so often the case that the more you know spiritually, the less you remember about the hope you have in Jesus. Sometimes the more knowledge you have, the more you lose your love for God. Just like we can misplace or forget our physical possessions, we can misplace our hope, peace, joy, and love. And as we come to our text things morning, Paul takes time to remind Titus and the churches in Crete about their hope—he calls it “the hope of eternal life”. And his goal for the believers to whom he ministers in his day, and for all of us today, is that we not forget this wonderful hope that we have. So he reminds them and he reminds us, just what this hope entails. And from this reminder we get our big idea for today:
Big Idea: Don’t forget the hope of Jesus
Have you ever worked for a goal? It can be especially gratifying to have a goal, pursue that goal, and to finally achieve it. It could be the goal of a certain GPA in college or high school, the goal of finishing a special project you worked for many weeks or the goal of finally making the last house payment. Maybe it’s the goal of working towards a special feet like tackling an endurance race or winning a fishing tournament. We all have had goals larger or small, and whatever the goal is, there is a sense of satisfaction in pursuing the mark and working for it and finally completing it. God has goals for us to—goals for our spiritual lives, goals for our relationships, goals for nearly every aspect of our lives. And he wants us to follow his goals! But too many times, our goals do not match God’s goals. We may have our own goals that we pursue and invest in with our effort in our lives, but in doing so we can easily push God’s goals for us aside. God has very specific goals for us in our spiritual lives and as we come to our text today, we start the first section in Titus chapter one, we encounter the Apostle Paul. And we encounter how he lived his life and what he strove for and the goal that he had for every single person on the island of Crete to whom he would minister through Titus. And if we unpack the apostle Paul's words for to his protege Titus in this book, we learn the goals that God has for us as well. So as we unpack this text and we discover what God has for us today we learn the idea that God has goals for our spiritual lives and from this idea we learn our big idea for today, and that's:
Big Idea: God’s goals are greater than our goals!
We all live in a home. We try to make our home the best it possibly can be. But what about our spiritual home? There is a residence that is ours and available to each and every one of us, if we just take advantage of it.
Certain things in the world have this power or ability to affect how we live and act. One thing I’ve noticed that has incredibly power over us, to affect and control our lives, is our fears. Fear has power over us. Fear stems from an internal belief, whether right or wrong, and it affects our actions.
But have you ever allowed the wrong thing to affect you in a wrong way? Ever believed something was a certain way and you acted based on that only to find that you were mistaken? . . . Whether it be our fears, or other areas of our lives, our internal beliefs affect our external behaviors.
The same is true with our spiritual lives. The beliefs we have about God, our lives, and the world affect our external behavior. What we believe about who we are, who God is, and what he expects of us will shape the entire direction of our lives. If we believe the right way, according to the Bible, we will pursue honoring God with our lives. But if we believe the wrong way, or have misunderstandings about God and our relationship with him, this will lead us away from a Christ-honoring way of living. What we believe is important. To the degree we understand doctrine, and understand it rightly will be the degree we live rightly.
And as we come to Titus, and look at doctrine and devotion, Paul wants us to take away one key truth with us today: Internal beliefs affect external behavior
We live in a world of specialists! Everyone wants to go to a specialist! Or everyone is a specialist. Nearly everyone has a degree in one area or another. You go to certain specialists for certain situations. Certain places specialize in particular types of care. You can go to places that have advanced degrees in one specific field.
But where do you go when you need a spiritual specialist? What specialist do you go to when the issues you struggle with are issues of the heart, or the more intangible issues of life? Where do you go when your life seems to fall apart?
When you need a specialist in a very specific issue in your life and you’re not sure how to find one, you can go to God. God specializes in human care. Since every specialist needs a certificate or credentials, God gave us His, it’s called the Bible. And throughout this book we observe the truth that God specializes in the human issues of life. Sometimes, we forget that. We forget that God specializes in helping us through every single issue we experience in life. So this morning we’re going to look at a passage that lays out for us the credentials our God has to specialize in whatever you or I are going through today, or will ever go through. Because God specializes in human care, we can run to him with our deepest needs
We all have things that matter to us. And certain things matter to some people more than others. For some people, having a clear driveway in the winter time really matters. For others, if they can drive over it they will. For some, maybe it’s how housework is done—the dishes or the laundry, there is a right way, and there is a wrong way, and you’d better not do it the wrong way. Some people care about keeping up appearances, and you always are put together when you go out in public. For others, lounge pants and crocs are good enough to go to the store. There are certain things that matter to some people, and certain things that don’t really matter to others. I wonder—what is something that really matters to you?
Just like there are things that matter to us as individuals, there are things that matter to God as well. Certain things that God has written in the Bible matter to him, and God cares if we do them or if we don’t. And today in our text, we encounter one practice that really matters to God, but often times it doesn’t really matter to us. It’s something we treat as extra, as optional, as maybe a good practice, but it can be something we forgo if we don’t really want to do it. So as we unpack our text today, I want you to remember one core truth for today: Giving matters to God
What would you do for your family? Let me flip the question around—what wouldn’t you do for your family? We all have people we care about. It could be a spouse—a husband or wife. It could be your children, or perhaps your grandchildren. Maybe for you it’s a parent—a mom or dad. Or an Aunt or Uncle, cousin, niece or nephew. We all have people that we care about—right? What wouldn’t we do for them? I think in most cases the answer is nothing. There is nothing we wouldn’t do for them. We would lay down our life, if need be, to protect the family members that we care about. . .
In our text this morning, Ephesians chapter 4, as we think about relentlessly forward relationships, the Apostle Paul talks about our relationship with another family—our spiritual family. Just like we would do anything for our physical family, God would do anything for His family. In fact, He did. He gave the life of His Son for His children, and so He paid the ultimate price to show His love to us. And so in this passage Paul talks about our Christian family. He tells us how we are to relate to one another as believers. Since God paid the ultimate price for us, He cares about how we treat our fellow believers. He is concerned about our church relationships. And in this passage, Paul gives us one very important truth for our lives and for our church. Believers must act like a family
Have you ever tuned someone, or something out? You know what I mean—you have that person that is so annoying or bothersome that you don’t really listen to what they are saying? You nod your head in agreement and give a few “uh-huh’s”, but you’re not really listening to what they say. Or maybe it’s a noise that your furnace or your air conditioner unit repeatedly makes that you’ve learned to tune out. Or perhaps you live near an airport or train tracks, and you can tune out that noise.
In our passage today, the disciples desired the same thing for Jesus. They wanted to cancel out the noise of things which they thought were too unimportant for the master. To them, he was too important to be bothered with the insignificant background noise of a group of people who were coming to him. He didn’t need to be bothered by unimportant things. These unimportant things that Jesus wasn’t to be bothered with were not things at all; they were not distracting noises or sounds, they were people. They were children in fact. . .
We find in our story today that the disciples thought Jesus was too busy to be bothered with children. People were bringing children to Jesus, and even though his disciples thought he was too important for them, Jesus told them to let the children come to him. What a profound statement Jesus offered in this text: “let the little children come.” This morning we’re going to talk about how Jesus viewed children. We’re going to be in Matthew 19this morning, and from this passage we learn one key truth for us today: We must value children as Jesus did
I don’t know if you have a lot of kids toys at your home, but we do. And one of the toys we like playing with in our house are hot wheels cars and tracks. Hot wheels cars and tracks are a lot of fun. And they’ve actually developed a lot since I was a kid. When I was a kid you just had a hot wheels track with a rubber band powered pusher that you would pull back and let go. Now they have motorized tracks, in fact one time Aiden had a motorized track that shot the cars through a series of 6 different loops. But hot wheel cars are fun. There are times when our entire living room is filled with hot wheel tracks going up and over and winding around. But there’s one thing I noticed about hot wheel tracks—If you don’t have it set up just right, you can shoot your car off the track. You can derail your hot wheels car and miss the track. If you have a curve right at the bottom of a big hill, your’re going to go off the track. Or if you get too much air, you can easily go off track. Or if the track isn’t assembled just right, it can go off track. That’s just the reality of playing with hot wheel cars and tracks, you can easily jump off the track and start heading in a different direction.
Sometimes this happens in our spiritual lives as well. Sometimes we can get off track. We can get turned around spiritually and we can actually derail from the pathway God wants us to live and start heading in a totally different direction altogether. God doesn’t want us to get off track spiritually. And in our passage today, Paul talks about how to stay on track spiritually. How to keep our lives back on track spiritually. He gives us an example of how he does this in his life. And so as we look at the life of Paul from Philippians 3, the big idea we learn is this: God wants our hearts on track.
I don’t know if you’ve ever gone on an adventure. We like to go on adventures in our home. Many adventures you go on require the ability to navigate where you are going. If you really want to navigate the way you are to go, you need a map. A map is going to help you get your bearings straight and figure out where you are at. And every map has two important things—a legend and a compass. A legend helps you figure out what’s on the map—it helps you interpret what’s there and give you the scale—how close or far the map is zoomed in—how many inches on the map equals a mile etc. A compass is the thing that tells you what direction is north. You need these things to navigate a map. I personally love maps. I like to see them and read them. One adventure my wife and I have embarked on is running marathons. We’ve each done several marathons and ultra-marathons, but I got the nickname in our family of “the cartographer”, because whenever I would spectate one of my wife’s marathons, I would make a life size map of the marathon route. I would make this big large map of the race route and I would map out where the best spots to spectate would be. And I would see her a lot—usually I could get to see her every 3 miles or so because I had everything mapped out just right. If you’re going to navigate on an adventure, you need to know how to navigate a map.
It’s the same way in our spiritual lives. The spiritual life is like a journey. God’s Word the Bible is a map, but we need to navigate the map. What helps us navigate the map on the journey of life? Faith. Faith is what sees us through the journey of life. Too often however, as believers, we don’t live by faith. We want to live by feelings; we want to live based on the things around us.
What’s going to make the difference? What is it that’s going to see you through the journey of life? Faith. Faith will see us through the journey of life
There’s a difference between those who sit on the sidelines, and those who play in the game. Some people get involved in things, and others do not. I remember growing up I was on a football team. This was 5th grade midgets football, and they had a weight limit—you had to be under 100 lbs to play on the team. They didn’t want any bigger kids hurting the younger kids. But I was just over 100 lbs and I remember having to sit on the bench for the first few games and working towards getting to the right weight so I could play in the game. It was hard work! I remember there was another guy, who was a few lbs heavier than me. He was always sitting on the bench. He rarely got to play because he really didn’t want to put in the effort to run a few extra laps or work hard so he could make weight; he sat on the bench most of the season. Sometimes, after sitting on the bench, you get comfortable there. You enjoy the perks of saying you’re part of the team, but you don’t really have to put in the work to play. You get the recognition for the wins of the team but you don’t really have to work hard to make them happen; it’s kind of the best of both worlds.
The same is true in the spiritual realm as well. Sometimes there are those who sit on the sidelines and watch, when they could be getting involved. When everyone else is doing something, they are warming the bench. This tendency can show up in many different ways. It could be something like not making much effort in our spiritual lives. We want to sit on the bench so to speak by not getting involved very much in our own spiritual lives, and so we do minimal Bible reading or prayer or spiritual disciplines—we’re not really pursuing God in our spiritual lives, we’re just maintaining. Maybe it’s something like making other things a priority over God. We have all this other stuff in life and so when we should be serving, or should be getting involved, we don’t. Maybe it’s in the area of witnessing. You know God wants us to share the message about Jesus, but you just struggle doing it; you aren’t building relationships with unbelievers and aren’t having a testimony with unbelievers. Maybe for you it’s something like just not enjoying the salvation you have and savoring a relationship with God. We all have a tendency in some way, shape, or form, to be a bench warming Christian. We all have the tendency to sit on the sidelines when God wants us to get in the middle of the action. God doesn’t want us to just be a sidelines watcher when it comes to our spiritual lives. God doesn’t want us to just sit around on our padded seat cushion; he wants is to get busy! And as we come to our passage for this morning, we see that God wants us to choose worship over watching from the sidelines. He wants us to choose serving over sitting. God doesn’t just want us to sit on the sidelines in our spiritual lives and watch, he wants us to get busy, and he wants us to get busy worshiping and praising him with our lives. And in our passage this morning, we are given the example of some individuals who experienced the truth about Jesus in the most remarkable way, and they had to decide: were they just going to sit on the sidelines and watch, or were they going to get to work and worship. So today we’re going to look at the shepherds in Luke 2, and we’re going to learn from their example how we can be active in pursuing and worshipping God. So from our text, I want you to remember our big idea for today: God wants us to choose worship over watching
His sin is perhaps one of the most well-known sins of all those who follow God. This man in leadership gave in to his carnal desires and ruined the lives of himself, his family, and many others. This godly man who is known for his love for the Lord, had allowed his passion to control him, and they took him to a place he probably never considered going on his own. . . . There were all kinds of results and ramifications from the sin. And perhaps as they saw the affects of what they did, they began to wonder—is this it? Is God done with me? Can I ever be used again? Did I blow it for the last time? How can God forgive this? Perhaps they began to allow themselves to be defined completely by their sin and their past would not stop rearing its ugly head. You can imagine how the results of sin could have seemed too heavy for them to bear. And maybe they began to lose hope—how could God ever be faithful to such unfaithful people?
Maybe you have felt similar feelings in your life. Perhaps you’ve been unfaithful, and you struggle with how you can experience God’s grace in your life. . . . We might begin to wonder: where is there hope amidst all the sin in our lives?
And as we come to our passage this morning, Lamentations chapter 4, we see that God’s people Israel were in the same place we often find ourselves. They had given into sin. They experienced it’s consequences, and perhaps they were beginning to lose hope. How will they ever be as they were? How could God restore them to their former glory? Was there any hope for a people who had given so far into their sin? And Lamentations chapter 4 reminds us that there is hope for sinners. Despite present failures, there is future grace. From this text we see that sin is never the end for believers. And we learn one key truth which I want you to take home this morning: God is faithful to unfaithful people
Nearly everyone, if asked to be truly honest, would admit that they have regrets. Certain things we have done or said or thought or whatever, we have regrets. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20:20. We have things that we wish hadn’t happened. I can think of situations in my own life where I have done something or said something that I later regretted and decided wasn’t a great thing to do. But regret can be a powerful feeling, and if we don’t take care of it rightly it can be a huge issue in our lives. . .
There’s a difference between regret and repentance. In our spiritual lives, we can either be like the first guy I met, who felt the weight of regret for what he’d done but didn’t do anything about it, or we can be like the second guys I encountered, who turned their regret into repentance and got rid of it forever. It seems like a simple choice, but it’s one that we are often times not very willing to make.In our own spiritual lives, it can be easy to experience regret without repentance. We sin, or do something we know we shouldn’t, and we feel bad about it, but we don’t really take care of the issue. Maybe we push it back into the back corner of our lives, or we hide it under the rug, or pretend it isn’t there, but we don’t really take care of things. We don’t really deal with our stuff in a Biblical way. . .
And as we come to Lamentations today, we see that this is very similar to where God’s people were. And as we start chapter 5 today, we see Jeremiah attempting to lead the people towards true Biblical repentance. They perhaps had experienced regret; they certainly felt the affects of sin in their lives as they suffered God’s hand of judgement. And now Jeremiah attempts to lead them in dealing with their regret rightly and moving toward Biblical repentance. As we walk through this passage together, there’s one truth I want you to remember—it’s our big idea for this morning. Repentance is greater than regret.
Have you ever allowed your feelings to control you? I know I have! Sometimes our feelings can be so strong and so intense that they begin to dictate how we live. Sometimes this isn’t that big of a deal, but other times our feelings can have complete control over us!
The Bible describes the Christian life as a life of faith. If you’re going to get through life successfully as a believer, you need to have faith! Yet so many times in our spiritual lives, we let our feelings control us and snuff out our faith.
It can be so easy to live by our feelings—we are prone, in our humanity, go let our feelings push out our faith and guide the course of our lives, especially when dealing with some sort of trial or difficult situation in life. But how do we replace our feelings with faith? How do we overcome our feelings and let our lives be governed by our faith? God has the answers to these questions. And in the book of Lamentations chapter 3 we are taken along on the journey of how the prophet Jeremiah learned to choose his faith over his feelings. So let’s look at lamentations 3, and the big idea I want you to remember this weeks is: God wants us to choose faith over feelings.
He was only 15 years old when he staged his first con. Frank Abagnale, one of the greatest con men to ever practice his tradition of deceit, will forever be remembered as the one who got away over and over again, until he didn’t . . .Even Frank Abagnale, perhaps one of the greatest con artists of all times, couldn’t get away forever.
Isn’t this the case with sin? Sometimes we feel like we can get away with sin. We feel like “well God’s going to forgive me anyway, so maybe it’s not as big of a deal as I thought.” And so we begin to let things slip. Maybe it’s something that’s not very noticeable in our eyes—a little white lie; a quick look at something inappropriate; just a little worry; one slang word. And we think since it’s something that’s small and subtle it won’t really catch up to us. It could be something that we kind of whitewash what it really is—I’m not angry, I’m just a little upset; I’m not worried I’m just a little concerned; it’s not lust, I’m just observing; I’m not bitter, I just have a good memory; it’s not gossip, it’s a prayer request. Everyone struggles with this! And we allow sin to slip into our lives subtlety because we’ve told ourselves it’s not really that bad . . . And lamentations chapter 2 is all about sin catching up with God’s people and what that looked like in their lives. And it serves as a warning for us, and this is the big idea I want you to take away today: You can’t get away with sin forever.
Have you ever traveled internationally? If you travel to other countries, it’s important to understand the currency. You want to make sure you have a right understanding of the exchange rate because you want to get the cost right. You want to make sure you understand the cost before you purchase something.
This reminds me of our spiritual lives. Scripture talks about certain things in our spiritual lives which have a cost which we must know. Scripture says that if we are to follow Christ as his disciples we must count the cost. But scripture also speaks of the cost of sin. Sin has a tremendous cost. It doesn’t cost us anything to give into sin, but when we do give into sin, there is an incredible cost.
Too many times however, we don’t we don’t really understand the cost involved. We don’t really take the time to think about the cost sin will have in our lives. We just get so accustomed to sinning that we just do it! . . . And as we come to Lamentations 1 this morning, we learn of the cost of sin. We learn that sin always has a cost, and we see that cost and its effects in the life of God’s people. So as we come to Lamentations chapter 1, the big idea, and you’ve probably already guessed it, is this: sin always has a cost.
Pain has a way of sobering us, doesn’t it? Life can be going smoothly and well and all of the sudden something happens—someone dies; you get that diagnosis; you bend over to pick something up and your back lets loose; or you break a bone or smash a finger. Pain has a way of bringing us back to reality—doesn’t it? How do you respond?
This is true in our spiritual lives as well. Whenever we face pain, or suffering, or trials in our lives, it serves as a spiritual reality check. “What’s going on? What’s out of balance? What do I need to do to get through this spiritually?” But what we often times fail to realize is that God uses trials as a reality check in our lives. Trials are a way for God to do something in our lives.
And as we come to the book of Lamentations this morning, we see that God gives His people their own reality check. God sends some hard times their way and they are faced with the choice—are they going to turn to God, repent, and follow him? Will they embrace God’s purpose in their suffering? Or will they turn away from Him and keep going their own way. It’s the same decision we have to make when God sends a reality check our way—how will you respond? From this episode in the book of Lamentations we learn some very important truths for our lives when it comes to suffering. We learn how God uses suffering to give us a reality check in our lives, and how God expects us to respond when he allows suffering in our lives for His purpose. Suffering can be a reality check from God
Perhaps you’ve heard the humorous song entitled “Excuses” sung by the Southern Gospel quartet The Kingsmen. The song tells the story of how Satan might try to get professing believers to stay out of church by giving them excuses.
Pastors face an expectation challenge—there are all sorts of expectations for pastors! What should you expect from a pastor? What should his goal first and foremost be? What should you expect from a sermon? What even is a sermon? I hope to answer these questions this week. But we focus specifically today on the focus of a pastor—on what should a pastor focus? What should you expect from him? How does he know if he is successful in his ministry and what ought his ministry to consist of? Our text today helps us to answer these questions, and it helps us to understand what God expects of pastors and how we ought to support a pastor in achieving God’s expectations and approval before God. So as we unpack this text I want you to keep one big idea in your mind today: Successful pastoral ministry takes place in the field of the Word
Have you ever needed to detox? There are all kinds of ways that people detox, but it’s become popular today for people to use, eat, drink, something that would detoxify their body from harmful toxins. I looked up recently—popular ways to detox. I found a wide assortment! First one was fasting. You can do a juice cleanse. You can use a dietary supplement like a pill or powder—some sort of shake that you drink. An easy one is to simply drink more water. There are certain antioxidant foods you can eat. I remember one time my wife and I did a tea cleanse—there was a tea you were supposed to drink to cleanse your system. There are all kinds of ways you can do a detox to try to detoxify your body and get healthy. . . .
The church is very similar—in fact, Scripture describes the church as a body. And just like we can get toxic substances in our body and every so often we just need to detox, sometimes there can be toxic things in the church. Toxic people, toxic ideas, toxic behavior that we just need to detox from. And as we come to our text for today, II Timothy 3:1-9, Paul talks about these types of things in the church, and he gives some stern warnings. In the end of chapter 2, Paul talks about people who were vessels of dishonor in the church, and in this text, he continues his discussion and goes into more detail. So let’s look at the words of life God has for us today, let us open His Word to II Timothy 3:1-9.
Here Paul warns us, cautions us about the reality of toxic people with toxic influences in the church. And from this text I think we come away with one big idea that I would like you to take home this morning: sometimes we need a detox from toxic people
One of Aesop’s fables tells the story of a donkey. As the donkey was wondering about he came upon a lion skin. Apparently some hunters had killed a lion and let it’s skin out to tan and dry in the sun. The donkey had a terrific idea, he decided he was going to put on the lion skin and pretend he was a lion. So he put on the skin and went around to where he lived and all of the animals fled—both animals, and even humans were terrified at the donkey and fled at the very sight of him, not realizing he was a mere donkey in a lion skin. The donkey was filled with delight as he watched everything run away, and he was proud of his newfound power and authority. He was so overjoyed at the events that took place that he let out a loud long bray. At once everyone knew him and came running back, realizing he held no threat to them. The moral of the story is this: Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
Words are important. We all know the necessity of choosing your words wisely. If you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, it can have serious repercussions! But many times in our efforts to choose just the right words to say we might forget that before we choose the words we say we need to choose the kind of words we are going to say—are we going to say good words or bad words? Happy words or sad words? Helpful words or hurtful words? The type of words we prepare to say can make a huge difference in our relationships!
As we come to our text today in II Timothy 2:14-19, Paul has a discussion about words. There are certain words that we ought to be careful of and stay away from, and there other words that we ought to give ourselves to. And as we open this text this morning Paul helps us to understand which words are worth our time and effort and which words are a total waste of time. So as we prepare to read this text, let me give you one big idea to take home today: words matter!
I’d like to talk about something that I would guess every single one of us did before coming to church this morning. In fact, this same habit is something that I would venture to say nearly every single one of you does every single morning. And not only every single morning, you probably do it multiple times a day. It’s the type of discipline you almost never leave home without doing. It’s the type of thing that could make you feel comfortable and confident or could move you to action in an instant. It’s a practice that others in your house engage in, but you probably don’t like to share and do it at the same time. And it’s the type of activity that could take just a few seconds, or a matter of minutes or hours depending on the occasion. Does anyone know what activity I am describing? Looking in the mirror! We all look in the mirror multiple times a day—you probably don’t leave the house without doing it.
Sometimes, we are like this in our spiritual lives. We see something that needs taken care of, and we pretend it isn’t there. Maybe we pretend like we didn’t see, or we get mad at the mirror and brake it because we don’t like what we see, but we don’t do anything about it. We can live in denial in our spiritual lives. Our passage this morning addresses one area in our spiritual lives where we might tend to live in denial. It’s an area that acts like a mirror—but instead of showing us what’s on the outside, it shows us what is on the inside. This area is the area of our tongues. Our tongues show us what is inside, and we need to pay attention. . . . As we come to this text this morning, James describes for us how our tongues can reveal what is truly inside of us, and how we use our tongues reflects the inside coming out. And as we examine this passage today, there’s one bottom line I want you to remember: your tongue shows who you really are inside, and you need to pay attention
Are you a control freak? Do you like to be in control? You plan and over plan and have ever little detail worked out to its minutia? You don’t feel like you’re complete until you have a contingency for every possible scenario? Some people are control freaks. Some are control freaks in the sense that they just like power and like to be in control. While others, just like to be well prepared and have everything well thought out. . .
Control is important in our spiritual lives as well. There are certain parts of our spiritual lives which we ought to control, in fact, we could go so far as to say that we must control. You can probably think of several areas in our spiritual lives where control is an important quality to maintain, but we’re going to continue talking about one specifically this morning—our speech. Our tongues. Controlling our tongues is an important part of our spiritual lives.
The problem is, though we may be control freaks in certain areas of our lives, how we use our speech usually isn’t one of them. In fact, very often it’s just the opposite. We can be very loose and careless with our tongues. . .
And our passage today addresses this tendency that we all have, and the weakness we are prone to display in our speech. And as we open and unpack our passage today, there’s one bottom line I think we learn from this passage, and this is the big idea for this morning: if you don’t control your tongue, it will control you!
Have you ever underestimated your own strength? Maybe you thought you could do something but you really couldn’t? This becomes more and more of an issue as you age. You used to be able to do things and never feel them, but as you get older you start to hurt more.
Do you think we can underestimate things in our spiritual lives? I think we can—our passage for this morning talks about that. And it addresses one very specific area in our spiritual lives that we might be prone to underestimate—it addresses the power of our tongue . . . The fact of the matter is our tongues have power, yet we are prone to underestimate the force behind our speech. And as we come to our passage today, the Bible writer James addresses this tendency head on. He addresses our words and our speech and seeks to help us not underestimate the power that our tongue has in what we say. Never underestimate the power of your tongue
Have you ever not been able to see? Or maybe you couldn’t see clearly? It’s important to be able to see clearly, isn’t it?
If we are to make disciples the way Jesus wants us to, we need to be able to see the world the way Jesus sees the world—we need to develop the eyes of Jesus. Sometimes we get so that we see the world a little bit skewed. Just like we talked about last week, we may start to see things differently than Jesus did, or perhaps we even miss things that Jesus wouldn’t have missed. We struggle to see people. Or maybe we are so busy with our own life and our own agenda that we might be blurred to some of the things God wants us to do—like make disciples. It’s entirely possible that there are people sitting here today who have been actively involved in church for a very long time and have never made another follower of Jesus. And if we are to make disciples as God intended, we need to have a shift in how we view the world—we need to see clearly the way Jesus saw. And so as we come to our text today, it’s all about helping us develop the viewpoint that Jesus had as he saw the multitudes, was moved with compassion, and then presented himself as the shepherd for shepherd-less people. And so, here’s the takeaway for you today: if we are to make disciples, we need to see the world with the eyes of Jesus
Have you ever walked alone at night? Maybe you’ve gone camping or you are a walker or runner going out in the dark. It can kind of be a creepy experience. Sometimes we don’t really like to be alone. We get afraid or we loose confidence. This type of fear can grip our spiritual lives when we seek to make disciples and we step out of our comfort zone into someone else’s life. You might have negative self talk: I can’t do it.
If you’ve ever felt this feeling of being alone, then this passage this morning is for you. We never have to do it alone. Christ promises his enabling presence will be with us. As we look at our passage, remember that you’re never alone in making disciples.
Matthew 28:18-20: And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
If you were a governor and gave a pardon to all the criminals, you’d expect all the them to accept it, wouldn’t you? These parables reveal and conceal. Will everyone who goes to church go to heaven? The parable says everyone won’t. It’s a simple parable, but relates a deep truth.
Matthew 13:24-30
24Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
Certain situations in life require authorization. Maybe you work at a job where you have a special security badge that you have to scan to get to certain areas. Suppose you are going on a vacation where you have to get an approval or authorization.
The same thing is true in our spiritual lives. Call it authority if you will. It has been given to every believer. God expects us to use this authority. It is the authority to make disciples. Jesus has authorized all believers to make disciples. He has commissioned us to do this task.
Too often we as believers can make excuses and follow our own agenda. We can make excuses as to why we can’t step out of our comfort zone. Excuses such as “I’m too busy” or “Isn’t that what church is for?” Oftentimes churches are more full of excuses, but God doesn’t buy our excuses. God wants each of us actively involved in making disciples of those around us. We are going to start a new sermon series on how to step out of our comfort zone and step into someone’s life.
Learning to Rest in the Power of Jesus
Mark 6:7-56
Some things in life, you really have to work for. They require some effort. We can understand that some things in life do take some work, effort and discipline. But have there ever been things you’ve had to work for that just require too much work? What are you to do?
The disciples were experiencing ministry for the first time, but he gives them some instructions as to what they can and can’t do. It almost seems Jesus is making their ministry harder than it needs to be. You might wonder why Jesus was doing this?
We live in a spiritual battle and it is one that is to we waged from the knees—mostly through prayer as we take up the armor of God.
Observe the diligence of a soldier who trains who can fall back on that training. You might not rise to your highest expectation, but you’ll fall to the level of your training. We need to get our training level higher.
Many people are tormented because they cannot get a grip on their minds. You are not what you think you are, but what you think is who you are. Who you hang around with is who you become.
It’s crucial we bring our thoughts into submission of Jesus Christ. All sins begins in our thoughts, which the Bible calls our heart. Jesus says in Mark 7:20: For within the heart of man proceed evil thoughts. No-one commits outward sins without having committed them in the mind. We have to battle against Satan in the space of our mind, not the area of actions, but of pride, lust, greed. They are all sins of the mind. Satan is attacking the mind.
Here’s a strategy for victory.
Romans 4:1-8
I wonder, you like to explore? We like to explore as a family. We like to hike in the woods in the summertime.
When you explore, you’re going to make discoveries. Sometimes small and sometimes large. We like to explore campgrounds with our pop-up camper and then we like to setup and then go explore. Sometimes we make great discoveries and sometimes not.
Have you ever made a great discovery like a precious stone or a place where birds are nesting Maybe you found a secret fishing hole.
We all make discoveries. What I’ve realized that the greater the discovery you’ve made, the more impact it makes on your life. As we come to our text in Roman’s Chapter 4, we meet a man who has made a great discovery. We meet this man through Paul, and how this discovery impacts his life forever. We are invited to come along and make this same discovery. The man is Abraham. What is the great discovery? It’s the discovery of God’s grace, which altered his life forever. Discovering the grace of God changes our lives forever.
Imagine yourself being the owner of a business with the potential to make millions, but you’re dependent upon three kinds of employees to fulfill your potential.
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A lazy employee that comes in late and leaves early.
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A 9-5 worker who does exactly what they are told to do and go home on time.
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A worker that’s willing to come early and stay after to get the work done.
What worker would you choose to build your business with? I think you’d choose the worker that will go the extra mile.
God has a field of workers. When you have a relationship with Christ, you become one of His workers. What kind of worker are you?
From John 5:1-15: A Man Healed at the Pool of Bethesda
Jesus has been preaching and teaching throughout all of Jerusalem and the land. And he taught with authority. The authority that Christ had was the Son of God. Not an authority by men, but Christ was God from beginning to end. He always told stories of spiritual truth. He kept the law and never demonstrated against Rome.
Imagine if you will that we are together in a big, unfamiliar city standing on a street corner. What do you see, hear and smell? We are waiting for the signal to turn at an intersection and we are lost—we are imaginary lost, including not having our phones or GPS.
We must look really lost as a kind stranger comes up to help us. The idea of not having Siri or a map application could terrify you. A kind stranger has given us directions, but has it solved our problem if we deviate from our directions?
She has in her mind a big picture view of the city. She knows the how the neighborhoods connect and the streets intersect. Part of the framework for today’s presentation comes from the book, How People Change. We are going to provide a tool for how to navigate the Bible from a big picture.
There’s two types of people: Those that are people persons and those that aren’t. Those that are people persons are wired that way. And those that are not, can’t wait for the conversation to end. Neither is better, though God is a relational God.
Me personally, I enjoy being around people. I love to spend time together with family. But my wife enjoys quiet time alone on a Saturday. We give each other a break. I might have a little time away, but then I’m go to go to be back with people again.
But when it comes to church life, believers in Jesus can often enjoy their solitude. We can think of church just for a Sunday morning activity, but not involved afterwards. God wants believers that are people people, whose lives are intimately connected. Believers are to be involved in other’s lives.
Every person who walks the earth has two dates with destiny. The first date is the physical death and the second is the appointed one with the Almighty. One of these days we will be standing in judgement. Have you ever wondered what that will be like to stand in God’s courtroom? You’ll see how one sinner fared in his trial.
Zechariah 3:1-7
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan[a] standing at his right hand to oppose him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?”
3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel.
4 Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”
5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.”
So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by.
The Coming Branch
6 Then the Angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, 7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.
On this Easter message, guest preacher Chuck Amundson, presents some patterns of the 3 Days in the Old Testament as we celebrate Christ’s resurrection on the third day.
Matthew 21: 1-14
Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to [a]Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. 3 And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.”
4 [b]All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:
5 “Tell the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your King is coming to you,
Lowly, and sitting on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
6 So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, [c]and set Him on them. 8 And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Hosanna in the highest!”
10 And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?”
11 So the multitudes said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.”
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
12 Then Jesus went into the temple [d]of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”
14 Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.
Two of Jesus’ disciples were sent and Jesus said that immediately they were be there. This took place to fulfill that which was to be fulfilled by the prophet Zecharia in chapter 9. Jesus would become the rightful king.
Just in Matthew alone, this word fulfill was used 16 times. Jesus also came that he would fulfill the prophecies of God’s word. Jesus fulfilled 324 prophecies from the Old Testament. This is evidence of who Christ is. God’s word is infallible. He doesn’t retract it. What he says is true because his word is true.
My brothers and sisters and I grew up on cartoons on Saturday morning and I’ve enjoyed introducing these to my kids. They love the Road Runner, but one of my favorites is the never-ending saga between Bugs Bunny and hunter Elmer Fudd. Bugs Bunny is able to constantly escape due to distractions like the disguise of the Bugs or his over-zealousness.
Satan is also a master of distractions or disguises. He can even use good things as a disguise in our lives. We can even be distracted into believing that we are doing the right things spiritually. These are good things, but can distract us from Jesus. How can we know when we are being distracted from Jesus and by how much?
Today we are going to look at a story in the Bible that is going to illustrate how we can gauge if we are getting distracted from Jesus. Martha was so busy serving in her spiritual life that she didn’t make time for Jesus. Sometimes good things distract us from great things. We are going to find five unmistakable evidences of a heart that is distracted from Jesus in Luke Chapter 10.
Think about something that is both taxing and rewarding. It could be difficult to accomplish, but in the end is difficult, yet rewarding.
I’m going to focus on ministry. Serving God and following Him can be incredibly difficult at times yet also incredible rewarding.
Here in 2 Timothy 4:9-15 near the end of his life, it would easy for Paul to have thrown in the towel so to speak. As he reflects near the end of his life, what caused him to keep going? Be in prison and being alone and ready to be martyred for his faith. What kept him from quitting when he had such a temptation to quit.
2 Timothy 4:9-15
9 Be diligent to come to me quickly; 10 for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia. 11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry. 12 And Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. 13 Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come—and the books, especially the parchments.
14 Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. 15 You also must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words.
How many of you remember growing up and hearing something like this from your parents?
You better find something to do, I’ll find something for you to do.
You knew that you were on the short end of the stick. You needed to find something productive to do and fast.
I’m glad our Heavenly Father is different from our earthly parents. Our ways of doing things are different from His ways. God in his wisdom and sovereignty gives us instructions in his word that tells us exactly what he wants to do.
Oftentimes the problem is not that we are ignorant of what God wants, but we still substitute what we think he wants for what he actually wants.We’ve been told what he wants, but oftentimes we need a reminder.
Micah 6:6-8
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with[a] thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Exodus Chapter 18:13-23
My wife and I enjoy watching HD TV shows that redo houses like Flip or Flop which shows how couples try to remodel a house and resell it. There’s certain factors that determine if the house is going to make a profit or lose money, a flop. Normally if there’s a good structure to the house, it can be profitable, but if it doesn’t have structure, it will be a flop.
Similarly a church needs several factors too so that a church can thrive. How can we get there? What things are are that can contribute to the overall health? There are some good structures that can set them up to thrive and not just survive. We are going to see some of the examples of Jethro and Moses from Exodus chapter 18. These principles will allow churches to thrive! Remember that ministries that just survive won’t thrive. Ministries that have the right structure really make a difference.
I’m going to give you a sermon of hope and a sermon on the reality of what goes on in the world. Whoever controls our minds controls our heart. Satan has figured out that he can insert lies and deceit. He encourages us to believe his lies and then he devours us whole.
In our day and age it’s called indoctrination. We send people to get degrees and they come out with minds full of deprived ideas.
God warns of a depraved mind. They do what they ought not to do. Since they do not seek holiness then the opposite is true. They have no standard unlike those that follow the Bible. If you don’t believe the Bible, then how do you find a standard?
Known as the Bible Memory Man, Tom presents the genealogy of Jesus by memory from Matthew chapter 1 and had recently been on Fox as part of the team that presented the entire New Testament from memory.
It’s easy for us to get off track in life. It’s easy to fall asleep at the wheel. The Bible is full of people who did just that Adam and Eve got off track and banished from the Garden of Eden. All of civilizations got off track and God flooded the world. Abraham and Moses got off track at times. In fact, the entire Old Testament is the story of God’s people who got off track. We even see it in the New Testament, despite the presence of the Messiah.
Why would we expect to be any different? God says “Do not be afraid” 363 times because in much of the Christian life, we are afraid. It’s really easy to get off track even with the best of intentions. None of characters intended to do wrong, but nearly all of them of them did.
Just think about your New Year’s Resolutions you made last year. Most of us haven’t accomplished them. What made you miss? We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God.
What are some of the next steps that God wants us to take in our spiritual lives? We’ve talked about the difference between trying and training? How many have tried and failed vs how many have trained and finished?
If I trained and committed to run a marathon, could I finish a marathon? Yes. The Bible tells us that we are to train: stop trying and start training.
Two of the disciplines of the Christian life are Bible study and prayer. What practical principles can we apply? We are going to see this illustrated in the Bible in Mark 1.
How did your homework go last week? Remember the 15 minutes? 7.5 minutes of Bible reading and 7.5 minutes of prayer. How many would be honest that you did that this past week? I’m going to go out of a limb that you received a blessing from this.
Last week we talked about having a plan and starting a plan. Everyone has to start somewhere. In order to be a teacher you have to have a teaching opportunity. You need to allocate time to develop and follow though with your goals. This week I want to give you some of the equipment.
I want to start with an illustration. I suffer with some of this myself. Have you ever felt like when you’re in your devotion time that you’re in a boxing match. As you’re praying, you’re anxious about all the things you need to do. It’s like a constant battle with God where the battle is in your own brain. “And by the time I’m done, I don’t even know what I prayed as I’m constantly in my own way.” The punches hurt. I’m allowing my brain and schedule to drive my spiritual life.
I want to meet everyone at the practical ground zero. I want you to have victory. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, I think today is going to be helpful for you! I call this Spiritual ADD.
Why do I need Spiritual Disciplines in my life? If the end times are coming, what should I be doing? What spiritual disciplines should I have?
We are told that we should grow in number. Jesus told us to go make disciples in all nations in The Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20.
We could offer free benefits to get people to church, but then the only reason they are coming is to consume or benefit. We could be there to put major guilt trips on people, but God loves you anyway and it’s not tied to our performance.
We could just kidnap people and share the gospel them or we could just hold a service at a stadium. We could do something insane on YouTube and go viral, but none of these things are what Christ intended for his church. The number people in church is not what God is interested in, but in our spiritual disciplines throughout the week.
“They were the best of times and the worst of times.” Doesn’t that fit the world today? We hope you don’t get so caught up in this world that we miss that the time is near.
Jesus was basically asked:
What time is it?
What’s it going to look like?
When are you coming again?
What in the world is going on? How many of you know all the prophecies that have been fulfilled regarding Israel? My goal today is that you will understand what prophecies have been fulfilled by studying what the Bible teaches.
When Noah was building the boat, he had workers helping him. The offer of salvation was available to everyone, but when it was time to get on the boat, who got on the boat? Nobody except Noah and his family.
When Jesus Christ returns there’s going to be a 7 year judgement on the earth called the Tribulation. It’s a future event. It will be a period of judgement on man for his sin and Israel to purify her so when her master returns she will be found ready, praying and watchful.
When is Jesus going to return? It could be at anytime. There’s not a single prophecy that is needed to be fulfilled in order for it to happen.
We know that things have happened in our lifetimes and in recent history that show we are closer. Jesus was asked: What are the signs of your coming? What’s it going to be like when you come? He says keep watch because you do not know the day or the hour.
We can get so distracted by what’s going on in the world that we could put our trust somehow that replace a leader would solve all our problems. The Bible does not teach that the world will be better and better as man rebels against God, but worse. Historic Babylon is gives an example of what happens when man rejects the most high God.
In Revelation 17, we are introduced to a great harlot and ten kings who have not received their crowns. The fact that they don’t have their crowns shows that they don’t have their power yet. This tells us that there is something or someone who is restraining them. Then they attack. They rise to power in one hour and then they hand their power over to one person willingly—the Antichrist. They had been plotting the attack before they were in power. Now it’s not just Satan plotting, but God Himself has ordained this. God ordains Babylon to be destroyed.
What happened on 9-11 is going to happen again, but it’s going to be so much bigger and stronger that the odds of surviving will be low. Who or what might this future Mystery Babylon be?
When we are standing in the presence of God, He is not going to ask you what church you attended, but who did you trust?
Would you be ready to meet Jesus in the air? There’s not one prophecy in the Bible that needs so be fulfilled for the Rapture to occur. Would you be Raptured or would you be left behind? If you think the Rapture is just made up, then today I wish to show you that Jesus himself spoke of the Rapture. Some might ask, what is so bad about being left behind? If I miss the Rapture, then I can get saved during the Tribulation? The problem is you won’t. The Bible teaches that your heart and conscience will be seared towards God.
Have you ever wondered why the second you got saved you weren’t swept up and raptured? If the whole point of life is to win with the most possessions—he who dies with the most toys still dies! Is there more a point to life than just living and dying? Is there hope? What is hope to the perishing? Remember Salomon said, ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Jesus is going to share with us the hope of living.
What gives us as Christians hope? The communion shows his death until he comes. It’s good news for us as how many religions are doing that in their own way or their own names. God allows man to do what man thinks is wise when he is foolish, but still allows him to perform for God’s intention.
As in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” God meant for good to save much people alive. Even though those are working against him in many ways.
We know there are certain events in the future that are going to be terrible, but the fact that God is sovereign gives us hope.We are addressing Mark 13:24-37 today.
The Coming of the Son of Man
24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
The Lesson of the Fig Tree
28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
No One Knows That Day or Hour
32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake.[a] For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants[b] in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows,[c] or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”
Last week we saw the characteristics of the end times and all of them are happening now. We are seeing the building up and the crescendo of the end times.
Let’s begin to walk down this road in the study of eschatology or the study of end times. What’s the timeline? There’s two events that get confused all the time: the Rapture and the Second Coming. Both of those events are intermixed in our context here. We could still figure out the timeline without the New Testament Olivet Discourse. It’s not in chronological order. This is where people get messed up with theology about the end times.
Jesus’ disciples ask Jesus in Matthew 24-25 of the Olivet Discourse: What are the signs of your coming and what is it going to be like in the end of age? Jesus likens the time to like in the Days of Noah. The question is: Are we in the Days of Noah? In many ways we are in the days of Noah leading up to the flood. If we are talking about the outpouring of judgement, we are not in the days of Noah.
Jesus was asked: What are the signs of your coming and what are the marks of the end of the age? There's all kinds of opinions about this, but what does the Bible actually teach? What are the signs going to be when he returns and what the world will look like at the end of the age? There's nobody better to ask than Jesus Christ himself.
We are going to show you five signs that Jesus gives about recognizing the end of the age.
When we remember September 11 we do want to remember too that there are family members that are still dealing with those events today. It is also a microcosm for what will come in the future. Remember when all the churches were full after 9-11 and then we realized that the end had not come yet and everything should get back to normal. Then came COVID and we thought it was the end, but now churches are down 25-50% from before COVID. Remember when everyone said: I just want to get back to normal life. What is normal life? The life I want to have.
All scripture is given by inspiration from God. It’s good for doctrine—teaching and instruction and correction. What are some of the false teachings that are going to be as we get closer to the end times? We know that as we get closer, there will be more false teachers. We need to know what the Bible says so that we can recognize false teachers.
How do we contend for the faith? Jude is the half-brother of Jesus. He’s also the brother of James, a half-brother of Jesus. But more than that he’s a servant. He’s talking to us as fellow believers more than as a half-brother of Jesus. More than wanting to talk about our common salvation, we want to contend for our faith. He explains who we are to contend against. There are those that are out there that are teachers, but the spirit of God is not in them. They might look good on the outside, but are not on the inside.
We’ve been talking about error that was already creeping in at his time. What they were doing in the congregation. These are the easy three that can be recognized. He’s going to point of 3 tactics that come from false teachers.
How many of you have ever gotten a defective product? There is this thing called the instruction manual and there are warnings all over the place. If you have a defective product you can relate that there’s nothing more frustrating than if something is designed to do something and it doesn’t.
Jude is going to argue that false teachers are junk when it comes to the church—defective products. When we decipher what he says, we are going to want to heed the warning: defective product. Just like damaged goods you have to sign for from the post office, we need to be able to discern damaged goods for what they are.
Jude gets tucked away in the Bible, but I believe that this book is more appropriate to our time than most of the other books. Jude was writing “to those who are called, loved by God the Father, and kept in Jesus Christ.” Kept is eternal security. No one can be plucked from the Father’s hands. Eternal security is assured.
Verse 3: “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” There is one faith: the faith. It’s a specific faith that’s universally accepted.
I’m asking you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered. This is the known gospel that is very clearly given by all the writers of scripture.
Jude 3-4: Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
"I'm here to hit the ball, not to talk about it." Hank Aaron to Yogi Berra.
This morning Jude is coming into our attention and there's not going to be any small talk. He's just going to hit the ball. Jude says for his opener, I'm pleading with you to do something. He feel the urgency to get right to the point. Jude is laser focused.
We begin our study on Jude: Contending for Truth is the title of this series. We want relative truth and not absolute truth today. Jude is going to issue for a command to contend for the Truth. The Holy Sprint of God, who inspired Jude to write this book, wants every believer to contend for the truth.
We are just looking at the first two verses and will unpack the two sets of threes.
Jude, a servant[a] of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for[b] Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
This is not the typical message I like to preach. Today is not a theology focus. Instead, I’m going to prep you for what we are going to be doing for July, we will be mining out the book of Jude, which I’d argue has the most powerful application for today. And we will mining out how 2 Peter further expounds on Jude.
Today I want to give you the tools and ask why there’s so many translations in the Bible today? How do I know which one is good or bad?
The Bible is the best-selling, least read and least understood book in the world today! We are going to expand on what we learned last week learning how to determine what the Bible is teaching and what it actually says. How do we interpret the Bible? Deductive vs. Inductive? Deductive can used to justify what is already presupposed by the use of passages. Deductive Bible study might say that you’re going to take the five stones of David to slay the five giants in your life.
While inductive looks to interpret in context to a specific story such as that of David and the Goliath, which was not that he was a gunslinger or using the right rocks, but that he was not going to miss because the victory was not David’s, but God’s! God is able and just and powerful enough to deal with your issues today. David wasn’t doubling God’s ability.
When we look at scriptures in the right way, we can get the right interpretation. I want you to have a Bible reading habit that you can understand and apply to your life. Normally we do Bible study as an act of completion to check the box or to maintain a reading plan that is not necessarily about comprehension and we can miss the right application. In the area of Bible study, everybody struggles. Or almost everyone and I want to present a better way.
The first message of this series was the idea that the objective of studying the Bible is personal change. All Bible study is for the personal change to have us to conform to the teachings of the Bible. We learned that the plot is Jesus Christ. Remember from John 1:1 that Jesus is the Word that became flesh. Now today what we actually want to do is to teach you how to study the Bible. If you don’t have the foundation and didn’t know it’s about personal change and about Jesus, you wouldn’t understand that we are to conform to the image of Jesus Christ and that’s the purpose of studying his Word.
This is the second week of the series: The Bible Unlocked. In the Bible, when God speaks, he often speaks with a thundering sound out of heaven. God’s voice is never pictured very soft in the Bible. Today, God’s voice is heard in his Word. The Bible is the equipping book for everything in our life. The ultimate purpose of the Bible is to inspire personal change for the glory of God. We should be looking for ways to grow and stretch in our spiritual life, which the Bible inspires. What is the plot of the Bible? Yes, there are a collection of books, but they are unified in that the entire book is about one person, Jesus Christ.
We are starting a new series. How do we unlock the Bible. How do we figure out what God’s word says and what it means? How do know if we are reading into the Bible to get it to say what we want it to say. As a goal for this series, I want to put great tools in your hands so you’re not ashamed of the Bible.
There are churches that teach that you cannot interpret the Bible by yourself. That is not true. But we are also warned about private interpretation, which God did not intend. God indented us to use the Bible to know who God is and what he’s asked us to do.
If the church is going to transform the world then we must be united in our love for Christ and our love for one another. Anything short is going to end up in defeat; with in falling short of God’s expectations for us. We are going to look at Ephesians 4:1-6 in this study.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
God has designated us to be in community with one another. As Americans, we are taught be be independent, but the Bible has called us to be one. We can’t do anything individually as powerfully as we can collectively. We know when someone begins leaving a church they isolate and rather than choose to surround themselves with strong spiritual people, they might surround themselves with those that are bitter and angry like them.
We are each individual masterpieces. We are made in the image of God. God has the desire for each of us to be greater by being more different and individual than being the same. Too much of the time, people want to associate with people that are the same of them. We like to have our individualism in groups by associating with others that like the same things that we identify with our own uniqueness.
We are introducing a new series called One of a Kind. God created us as a One of Kind. We are also called to live as one. We need to explore the American culture of self-sufficiency. In Christianity, it’s the exact opposite. God created you to need others and to not be alone. God says it’s not good for man to be alone, but we are taught from an early age to fend for ourselves in American culture. Everything is backwards. Those that can’t go it alone are seen as less capable, but God made us to live in a community of people.
On this special Resurrection Sunday, we begin with two baptisms including the sharing of their faith in coming to the Lord. Christopher Staser and Jacqueline Divietro were already saved and are now being baptized as a public profession of their faith and the beginning of their Christian ministry. The name Faith Baptist Church represents the idea that it’s by faith first that we are saved and then we are baptized.
How many have ever been to a cemetery where there are guards there to prevent the deceased from getting out? They placed the soldier there so the disciples don’t steal the body either. How would he have the power to do that? Jesus had already raised people from the dead—he had a history of doing that. But to make sure, we are going to guard a dead man’s body. Today we worship a risen savior, which is unique in all the world. The tomb is empty and he now sits at the right hand of God!
This is the third message in the series, Love Reigns. God is love, but let’s define love. Is the love you have for your wife or husband the same as the love God has for you? Or your love of ice cream? Or the love of your passions, like airplanes? God’s love is a different love. So if we are told to love one another, is that possible outside of God? Man’s love is usually a conditional love. If we are loved, we love back. In our messed up mind-set we might feel that God needs us. Why then do we exist? What’s the point of the Christian life if God doesn’t need us? God in scripture has given us a lens to look through, but it’s only good if we use it.
There’s a lot of different abilities we have and it’s the pastor’s job to remind you of that and recognize them and find ways to build those abilities and to put those into action. The goal of service is to edify Christ. The pastors need to remind members like you that you play a vital role. We need to recognize that we have a vital role in the church, the young and the old. Everyone has a role. We all need to recognize the we need each other and need to work together. We need to blend and work together. There’s no stage as a church member where you are relegated to play no role, even if you’re older and younger people have taken on your old roles.
Today we are going to talk about how love reigns over your past. If you’re a believer, Jesus Christ has set you free of your past. You are defined today by one person and one person only: Jesus Christ. Because of the love that God demonstrated for us that while we were sinners, he died for us, we are not longer defined by what we were in our past.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
—2 Corinthians Chapter 5:17-21
I want to talk about the future because sometimes when we have fear, it’s oftentimes about the unknown. Before we were saved and after we were saved, we could see Christ in our lives before and after. We could see how he used our history. We could see how he was there in our timeline. If God is sovereign, then he’s in control. What are the odds that if he’s been faithful in the past he will be faithful in the future? You’ve probably heard much about fear in the past week. We’ve been bombarded by fear in the media and culture so let’s deal with this fear thing.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
—Matthew 6: 25-27
This is the forth and final sermon of the Fear Not Series. We have learned many things, but one is that we can be victorious over fear. My goal through this series is to share what the Bible says about anxiety and worry and being fearful.
There’s a lot of fear-mongering in our world today from our governments to our media. On the flip side of victory, we get defeated in these areas. We get discouraged. What’s the core of discouragement? Fear!
Remember how you used to predict the future when you were a kid? Do you remember the Magic 8 Ball? So much of our lives are like a Magic 8 Ball! Asking and making different decisions that the Magic 8 Ball helped in making our decisions. We used it to take away worry and anxiety because it gave us an answer since we don’t know the future. But the good news is that we have someone with us who does know the future. We have an eternal God that’s with us, all the way to the very end of our life. I’m glad I don’t know when my final week of life will be, but God knows.
This is the third week on the Fear Not Series. We’ve learned that there’s healthy fears and unhealthy fears. We’ve learned that all fear belongs in the hands of God. God always cares. Fear and worry and doubt belong with God, not with us. Today we are going to focus on today. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a passage where Jesus speaks about today?
Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
We need to be present to the cares of the day, today. Not tomorrow or of the future. I find this extremely freeing. If we have to live by faith and not by fear, Jesus is going to lead for us. Paul was a wonderful example for us of just how much he lived by this principle.
We’ve been talking about fear. Do we believe that God is greater than our anxiety and fear. Do we believe that God can actually get rid of your fear and anxiety. If so, where does the Bible talk about this? The whole chapter of Philippians 4 address this topic. We will focus on verses 6 and 7. We are taught in verse 4 to ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ no matter what situation.
Philippians 4- 7: 4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
The Greatness of Jesus Christ with Guest Missionary Bill Jenkin III — 2 Peter 1:1-10
2 Peter 1: 3-4 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
A portrait of Jesus Christ and a portrait of you equipped. This tells us who Christ is and this is how it affects you. He is the Christ of Power and without him you can do nothing.
Have you heard or seen anything about fear lately? It seems our world is fixated by fear. All of us have experienced fear. Not all fear is good and not all is bad. There is a healthy fear of self-preservation. It comes from experience. The Bible has a lot to say about it. It's found in almost every book of the Bible and occurs 365 times from Genesis to Revelation. God made sure there would be an overabundance of guidance on it.
David Levy is with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism and is a Good Soil Trainer & Pastoral Coach
His theme is: Believers in Jesus Christ ought to actively participate in fulfilling the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:18-20: 18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This is the last in the Redeeming Your Time series discussing eliminating the hurry in our lives. There’s a difference between being busy and hurried. Jesus was never hurried, but sometimes was so busy he forgot to eat. Jesus was cognizant of time. He also knew when it was time to get away.
We are going to talk about prioritizing our presence. Can we be in more than one place at one time. Jesus did a great job of doing this. While Jesus was omniscient and all-powerful, but he never invoked his omnipresence. He made himself like us. When he took on the form of flesh, he limited himself to a place and time and moment. Let’s find out how Jesus, who created time, showed us how he used time.
We are looking at the idea of redeeming our time and striving to make our yes to be yes and our no to be no. Last week we started a 5 week series called Redeeming Our Time: referencing Ephesians 5:16: “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.“ The Bible clearly tell us what is God’s will and it’s not to live in an empty way, but abundantly. He wants to lavish his love on you. You can’t be foolish, but wise and you need to be known by God. God wants to show us how to manage time.
Jesus spent how many years on earth? 33. How many hours a day did Jesus get? He was a carpenter. He had a carpenter shop. I personally believe he was a stone mason. Jesus knew what a cornerstone was because he understood how a building was made. We are bound by time and God gave us instructions in how to manage time according to his principles and manner as revealed in scripture.
God loves us. We have enough in the Old Testament itself to prove that the God of Heaven loves us. The Cross was His plan from the beginning as it was revealed in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” What Satan intended to be a head shot was a heel shot. This is sometimes called the first Gospel. Before the foundation of the world was made, God's plan was already made to redeem creation because God already knew what would happen in the Garden of Eden.
We’ve been working through a Christmas message from Isaiah 52-53. The Servant described is not Israel, but Jesus Christ himself. If it’s talking about Jesus Christ, then the true spirt of Christmas doesn’t come from a warring spirit but a spirt of sacrifice. We find the humble servant who is giving his life for a cause.
I’ve entitled this Christmas series: For the Glory of God and the Good of Others. Why would Jesus leave God and come to this planet? For the glory of God and the good of others. It’s not what we get, but what we do for others. That’s the whole point of Christianity. If it’s about what you can get, you’re selfish, but if it’s about what you can give, then you’re in the servant mindset. I want to get into the controversy today. If you ask a Jew today what Isaiah 52-53 represents, they would say “Israel.” But the Bible shows that it has to be Jesus Christ.
Over the next 4 weeks we are going to take a look at Isaiah 52-53 in depth. Isaiah is one of the most quoted books in the Bible. Isaiah 52 begins what is the 4th Song and describes the Suffering Servant. I’ve entitled this sermon the Suffering Servant or the Rejected Servant. Jesus was not someone people were seeking. He was nothing spectacular to look at. He was despised and rejected by his people.
Is there a difference in being thankful and giving thanks? Can you give thanks without being thankful? Can you be thankful without a spirit of giving thanks? Philippians 1:1-11
This is the final sermon in the Discipleship Series. Lookin at John 15:1 - 8. Join in the mission of Jesus. A disciple is on mission. There’s a goal for every disciple. It’s to produce fruit. Jesus implies that I designed you for one purpose and one purpose only, produce fruit!
This is the third part of a mini-series on one verse from Luke Chapter 9:23. What does it really mean to "follow me." We know that we play to win. We define a win and play for the win. So in church, what is a win? At our Faith Baptist, it's making more and better disciples. This is how we win as a church.
What's the connection between suffering and glory? From Romans 8:18-30: For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
"Salvation is free but discipleship will cost you everything." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Luke 9:23: And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
We are going to spend 3 weeks looking at one verse. The call that goes along with the verse. The call is for everybody, but there first must be a desire to answer the call. Are you desiring to know God more?
How many of us have heard phrases like these?
Just follow your heart.
Just do it.
You be you!
Be a better you.
All you need is love.
But how foolish it is to follow the wisdom of the world and ignore the Biblical view of man.
We defined a disciple as someone who lovingly follows Jesus and intentionally helps others to follow him. We are encouraged not to follow the ways of the world but God's word, which is the sole faith and authority. Not tradition.
God is the source of Truth and is everlasting. It is absolute, constant. There's a universal truth that will always be true and withstand man's traditions.
What is the mark of a disciple? Somebody who abides in the Word. The Word of God has to be a part of a disciple's life. How much are you in the Word? If we had to measure you, can we ask how much are you in the Word of God?
James 2:19: "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!" Even the demons have faith in God. They believe in God and put their weight that God exists today. They shake in their boots. They are afraid of him and know who he is. They know his power and might and position.
We would do well to know by scripture who God is. The demons don't have believing faith, but believe in him and tremble. Even the demons tremble! It's one thing to have faith, but it's another to actually follow Christ.
If I'm called to be a disciple, I'm called to follow someone. If I'm called to disciple, someone is following me. Who are you discipling? Who are you intentionally working with spending time with and mentoring it the faith to be more like you. Follow me as I follow Christ. This is the essence. The Bible is not calling you to share your faith, but to make disciples wherever you go. The question is: Who can I pour my life into today?