Sunday April 9, 2023 The Gospel of John Week 13– John 3:22-30 “Jealousy and Joy”

Sunday – April 9, 2023

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Word On Worship – Sunday – April 9, 2023

Romans 4:23-25
Now not for his [Abraham’s] sake only was it written that it [faith] was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”

If I were to ask, “What is the most crucial question for which you would like a definitive answer?” we would probably get many different answers. Some might say, “What career path should I pursue?” Others may say, “Whom should I marry?” Or, “Where can I find a decent-paying job?” Some might want to know, “How can I live longer with good health?” These are all important questions, of course. But as I’ve often said, the most crucial question that we all must answer is Jesus’ question to His disciples (Matt. 16:15), “But who do you say that I am?” Your answer to that question not only determines how you will live the rest of your life, but also where you will spend eternity.

The correct answer to that question largely rests on the historic fact that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. If that is really true, then He is who He claimed to be, the eternal Son of God in human flesh, the Lord of all creation, who is coming to judge the living and the dead. That means that you must trust in Him as your Savior and bring all of your thoughts, words, and deeds under His lordship. If you trust in Him as your risen Lord and Savior, He promised that you will spend eternity with Him.

In the Book of Romans, Paul says that Jesus “was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). This does not mean that He became the Son of God through the resurrection, but rather that the resurrection distinguished Jesus to be who He is, the eternal Son of God. By virtue of His resurrection, Jesus was appointed to be seated at God’s right hand of power. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Phil. 2:9-11).

Paul’s reference to “Jesus our Lord” in Romans 4:23-25 emphasizes again both His deity and His humanity. Jesus took on human flesh so that He could bear our sins, but He did not give up His deity. He is the Lord. When Paul says that Jesus “was delivered over because of our transgressions,” he means that Jesus died to pay the just penalty for our sins. When he says that Jesus “was raised because of our justification,” he means that when God raised Jesus, He put His seal of approval on Christ’s death as obtaining our justification. Because Jesus was raised, we can know that God accepted His substitutionary death on the cross, so that if we believe in Jesus our sins are upon Him.

Sunday December 25, 2022 Christmas “Prophecies of the Messiah pt 3”

Sunday – December 25, 2022

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Word On Worship – Sunday – December 25, 2022

Matthew 1:16
And Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

At some point in your life, you will have to wrestle with the question, “Is Christianity really true?” Perhaps you were raised in a Christian home and have never questioned the Christian faith, but at some point, you will. Maybe something you read raises serious questions that threaten Christianity. A friend tells you that he is an agnostic and gives many reasons why he doubts the Bible. Or, perhaps you made a profession of faith in Christ and never have doubted your faith, but then you’re hit with difficult trials that shake your world. You pray, but God seems to be on vacation. Doubts start creeping in, slowly undermining your trust in God and His promises. The attacks leave your head spinning and you begin to wonder, “Could Christianity be just a bunch of legends?”

What should you do at such times? When I’m there, I come back to the most crucial question that every person needs to answer. This question is far more important than the questions of what career you should pursue, where you should live, or whom you should marry. It’s the question that Jesus asked His disciples. He began with the safer question (Matt. 16:13), “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples answered, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asked the crucial question, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter gave the profound answer (Matt. 16:16), “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus affirmed Peter’s answer saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

The four Gospels don’t leave us in the dark on this crucial question of who Jesus is. Repeatedly they show us how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead, and calmed the stormy sea with a word. Matthew opens his Gospel by tracing the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham through David to show that Jesus is the promised seed of Abraham who would bless the nations. He is the Son of David who would rule on his throne forever.

At this time every year, people wander through stores looking for the right gifts as the sound systems play Charles Wesley’s, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” with its verse, “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity; pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.” But they miss that profound truth of who Jesus is while they go on shopping! Don’t miss it yourself: Jesus is fully God and fully man, the Savior of sinners, no less than God with us! Put your trust in Him and you will have an anchor for your soul whenever the storms of doubt or trials assault you.

Sunday – February 7, 2021 Job 38 to 42 “Christian Thinking During COVID 19” Pt 6

Sunday – February 7, 2021

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Word On Worship – Sunday – February 7, 2021

Job 38:1-2
Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

As an adult, I understand there are individuals whose identity is defined by their suffering. But I have also learned that suffering, whether physical or emotional, can nourish depression, affect our health, and cause us to withdraw from friends and abandon spiritual hope. Job’s staggering losses and his friends’ shallow spiritual advice only deepened his despair. Job wanted answers, because, like all of us, we believe answers can justify the whys of life and make us feel better.

Then God shows up. At last! Now we’re getting somewhere. Get out your Bible, pen and notepad because God will give us the answers, justify the tragedies and make all the hurt go away. But, instead of certitudes, God confronts Job with questions that powerfully define the chasm between what we can know in this world and the mind of the God who is greater than creation and time. In Job 3:3, Job told his friends, “I want to speak to the Almighty.” Job wants God to explain his suffering, but he also wants to prove his friends’ disturbing religious ideas wrong.

God responds to Job with two speeches (38:2-40:2 and 40:7-41:6) with a barrage of questions, but never a direct answer. God’s voice out of a whirlwind is a force beyond human understanding and control. We learn some wonderful truths from this unique encounter. Job has felt abandoned by God, left to suffer alone. But the text reveals that God heard every word Job and his friends spoke. Tragedy and evil are not evidence of God’s indifference, but a call to seek God and hold on to him until the storm is past. God is sovereign.

We are not God. God planned and created the world, filled with marvels and tragedy. Sunlight is essential to life, yet it can scorch the ground and cause skin cancer. Crops cannot grow without rain, but rain can cause flooding and death. God’s words to Job speak of the limits placed on creation (vv. 8-10).  God is not angered by nor afraid of our questions. God loves us. But we must never forget there are things we will not understand, questions that will not be answered to our satisfaction in this world. Loving and serving God can be challenging and circumstances can be confusing. Our questions seldom find easy answers.

Sunday – June 28, 2015 “The Man Who Rejoiced in an Invasion” Habakkuk 1 to 3

Sunday – Sunday – June 28, 2015 – Read the Word on Worship

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Habakkuk 1:2-4
“How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save. Why do You make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted. “

Every Christian wrestles with two problems: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers sometimes? And, why does God allow the evil to prosper while the righteous suffer? What is the purpose of God when sin is celebrated by a nation and yet, from our position, it seems God sits in the distance not hearing the cries of the righteous? We especially wrestle with these two questions when they converge on us personally. When an evil person is harming us or someone we love, and we pray, but God does not answer, it is especially tough.

The prophet Habakkuk wrestled with these sorts of questions. He is unique among the prophets in that he did not, in his written message, speak for God to the people, but rather spoke to God about his struggles over these basic human questions. Why does God allow evil to go unchecked, especially when the righteous cry out to Him for justice?

Habakkuk took his questions and complaints to the Lord and worked through them in prayer, waiting on God for answers. When you wrestle with doubts on difficult issues like the problem of evil, you must proceed with caution. Some wrongly withdraw from God and His people into their own world of depression and pouting. Others angrily pull the plug on God entirely and go their own way into the world, convincing themselves that God must not exist or He wouldn’t allow the terrible things that go on every day in this evil world. Still others hang on to their faith, but it becomes a mindless, anti-intellectual, subjective experience where they just don’t think about disturbing questions.

That’s what Habakkuk did. He kept crying out to God for an answer, and when God’s even more difficult answer came, he stationed himself at his guard post to keep watch until the Lord would speak and reprove him (2:1). God’s second answer to Habakkuk included the great verse, “The righteous will live by his faith” (2:4b). When Habakkuk comes to his final prayer in chapter 3:1-19 he doesn’t have all the answers, just as you and I often do not have all the answers to why issues of pain and suffering have come upon us. We cannot fully understand the ways of the sovereign God, just as Habakkuk did not understand God’s ways. But he had grown in understanding and he could by faith pray with joy, knowing that God was his salvation and strength.

Sunday May 3, 2015 “The Man Who Prayed About the Weather” -1st Kings 17-19

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Sunday May 3, 2015 “The Man Who Prayed About the Weather” -1st Kings 17-19
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1 Kings 18:36-37
At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said: “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word. “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.”

Elijah came on the scene in the midst of the most corrupt reign in Israel’s history. The weak-willed Ahab had married the Phoenician princess, Jezebel, who introduced and aggressively promoted Baal worship on a wide scale (16:31-33). She had exterminated the prophets of Yahweh, except for 100 who were hidden by Obadiah, Ahab’s chief of staff, who was a secret believer (18:3, 13). Though they survived, those 100 prophets seemed to be silenced for the time being.

Certainly our times rival Elijah’s times for ungodliness. The American church desperately needs revival. Although polls show that at least one-third of Americans claim to be born again, a surface glance at our culture tells you that they understand something quite different than the Bible does by that term. Most Americans believe that there is no absolute standard of morality. Church people, including Christian leaders, are falling into sin at alarming rates. Many American Christians are entangled with greed and self-centered living.

I suspect that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in evangelism is that we are so much like the people around us that we have very little to which we can call them. We hang around church buildings a little more. We abstain from a few things. But we simply aren’t that different. As a result of this unfortunate accommodation, Christianity is reduced to little more than a spiritual crutch to help us through the minefields of the upwardly mobile life. God is there to help us get our promotions, our house in the suburbs, and our bills paid. Somehow God has become a co-conspirator in our agendas instead of our becoming a co-conspirator in His.

We desperately need God to send His fire to cleanse our sins and His showers of blessing to refresh us, that everyone would know that He alone is God, so that many sinners would turn to Him. It may not happen dramatically every time. But God wants us to join Elijah in praying about the weather – the spiritual weather – in our land. Though it is an ungodly time, through the prayers of the godly, God can make His glory known by turning many sinners to Himself.