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July - December 1999
Matthew 7:7-12 Prayer is asking and receiving. It is talking with God. It is making our requests known to Him who created us. There are two kinds of prayers. The kind that reaches God and the kind that doesn't. Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the Publican to illustrate that fact. In the Gospel of Luke chapter 18, verses 10-14. For some religious people the story is quite surprising. I. In Matthew 7 Jesus teaches us three aspects of Prayer. II. There are many reasons why we should pray. III. There are many places to pray. A. The disciples prayed in the upper room. Acts 1:13,14 When we pray we are agreeing that God is our source and guide. We are cooperating with Him in changing our world, enlarging the kingdom and bring men, women, boys and girls to Christ. We are able to do all things through Him who gives us strength and prayer taps that strength. We need to be a people of prayer because that is the true source of the power we need to be all that God has called us to be. Prayer as a source of Assurance Luke 18:1-8 We know a great deal about Jesus. We know that, as Christians, we want very much to be like Him. Yet we feel that we fall far short of the kind of life Jesus lived and the confidence and power He expressed. I. We know that Jesus acted with power and authority. II. We have the promise of power and authority. III. The source of that power and authority is available to us. If we will devote ourselves to even a fraction of the kind of prayer Jesus did we can expect the kind of power Jesus exercised to be released through us. We need to commit ourselves to that same kind of prayer life and seeking after God. Filled with Holy Spirit Acts 10:25-48 Most teaching on the filling of the Spirit would begin with Acts 2, not Acts 10. However, it seems to me that Acts 10 is more to the point for us since it was the first occasion when non-Jews were filled with Holy Spirit. Since we are a part of the non-Jewish world it should be helpful to see what is going on when these Italians were filled. I. Holy Spirit Filling had been promised. II. The Holy Spirit "fell" on Cornelius' household. There is much less mystery concerning being filled with the Spirit in the Bible than there is in most teaching we hear today. God greatly desires to fill His people and to flow throught hem to change the world. Jesus promised it would be true. John 7:37-39 We must let the Spirit of God cleanse us, prepare us and then fill us. Then we will change the world we live in. John 14:12-27 Jesus, in the last days of His earthly life, wanted His loved ones to know they would not be alone. He assured them of His ongoing concern for them and of His promise they would not be left alone. This promise is with us as well. All the promises of God belong to all the people of God. (Galatians 3:13-14) I. Never Alone II. Because I live you will live also. III. The Helper will teach us ALL THINGS! New Christians (and often older ones) feel we do not know how to pray or what to say when it is time to pray. Not to worry! The Spirit of Truth has come to live in us and will guide us in all things. Trust the Spirit within and prayer will become as natural as breathing. Rest on Him not on our own understanding then we will be able to ask and receive because we ask what God already wants to give. Wilderness? …or Land of Promise? Isaiah 35:1-10 Isaiah sees a time in which the wilderness blooms, the joy of the Lord fills the earth, the weak are helped and the fearful are strengthened. He is seeing spiritual truth unfolding. This was partly fulfilled in the life of Jesus on earth. It shall ultimately be fulfilled in the coming of the Lord and the Kingdom on earth. However, along the way we are able to enjoy moments of this full life God alone gives. I. Being in the Wilderness as a Believer. 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 II. God has a better intention for us. 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 III. While we await the Coming the Spirit and Kingdom live in us. We do not have to live in the wilderness of this world. Holy Spirit has been poured out on those who have received Jesus as Lord and has enabled us to walk according the Spirit and not according to the flesh. We must believe this in the same manner we believed for our salvation. Having believed we need to walk in it. Praise God we can! John 14:15-21 Much of what we teach and receive about our relationship to Jesus refers to Christ being in us. Yet most of the passages in the Bible refer to our being in Jesus. Yes, He is in us and without that we are not saved. But His coming into us causes us to be able to rejoice in being IN HIM and to enjoy the strength and protection that provides. Imagine one of those little Russian dolls. The larger doll is opened and the next smaller is inside it. You can only see one at a time but all are inside the first. Well, we were in Jesus, in the Father. Jesus is in us. NOTHING can approach you without passing Him. I. We were IN HIM before the world began. Ephesians 1:4 II. When we celebrate the Lord's Supper we celebrate this truth. III. IN HIM we have all we need to live our daily lives. John tells us that eternal life is Jesus. When He comes into us we have eternal life. However, He knew who let Him in before He created the universe and He prepared for us all our lives before we were ever born. Nothing passes our way that He does not inspect and allow, or reject, according to our higher need. We too often live in our base needs but He never does. He allows us to walk through the deep waters of life because He walks with us. We never walk alone. Galatians 6:1-10 The idea of the church being a hospital for sinners is a sound one. However to too many of us the concept is flawed. A hospital is a facility which is usually ran by experts and specialists for the care of patients who are largely passive in their treatment. The church often has been morphed into just that kind of institution. However it is a hospital which often wants its patients to be treated outside the facility and then brought in when their illness is socially acceptable. Those that do bring in the ill for treatment still leave the care to paid professionals. Is this what God had in mind when He established the church? I. The Scriptures are filled with admonitions to serve others. II. The power of God is given, not for our good, but for others. 1. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. III. Our best care comes from each other. The world around us has accepted the idea that the church is not a place of care, concern and support. In order to have these things we turn to organizations and individuals outside the body of Christ. This should not be so. Isaiah 48:17-19 Our lives go along from day to day with too little rejoicing and confidence that we are blessed by God. Many know they are saved but do not 'feel' the presence of God. What's up? Why do we fall short of our own intentions and purposes. Why do we fall short of God's intentions and purposes for our lives? I. God proclaims He is to be our Instructor. II. If we had just listened! III. The result would be many descendants. We grow up to the Lord and He naturally gives us offspring. God's intention is not to slam His people or to put them down but to build them up. Yet He cannot work in our lives as He wishes because we have not met His conditions. This is a process we need to enter into. The lord's Supper is a good place to begin. We must examine ourselves. We must determine to repent and return and He is ever ready to bless and restore. What we have never had He will give. Even what we have lost will be returned! Joel 2:25 Psalm 86:8-15 We seem to forget that God is directing our lives. We often act in our own strength and ability and give God the credit. We act as though God is like the world around but He is not. He is not only greater. His will and way are different from that of the world. Like Moses, we must know God's way. Exodus 33:12-15 I. There is no other 'god' like Him. II. We must learn His way, not just His will! III. He is the God who cares (for us and all the world) The God who cares for us enough to die for us will givee us knowledge of His way as well as His will. He will not call us to an activity without showing us how to do it. In our church, in our community, in our families, in our personal lives, He will show us His will and then He will show us His way. We must wait on both parts of His plan and then we will have His kind of success. It may not look to the world like success but it will to God and that is what counts. The "Gray Areas of Life" Roman 6:1-18 We profess to admire the "saints" and we equally are repulsed by the "sinners" around. Yet, most of the time, most us live as though there is a "gray area" within which we are not quite "sinning" but maybe not quite "righteous". We are taught to think this way by the world around us. This way of thinking leads us into powerlessness and uselessness in the kingdom of God. We do have a desire to be useful and to be effective in the kingdom but many of us have given up on any real hope of it happening. I. There is a great hope for righteous living in Scripture. II. We can choose to live the Christian life. That choice will not be made for us. III. Whatever we choose, we ARE God's children, if we are in Christ Jesus. Not if we live like it. We have the ability, through the power of Holy Spirit within us, to live out the Christian life. We may not feel like it but we do have it. We often do not act like it but we have it. We literally "can do all things" through Christ". We must focus our minds carefully obeying and living out the life that God has put in. The "Simplicity of Life" John 10:1-18 Jesus spoke to His disciples of His relationship to them in very simple terms. Here, He presents Himself as "The Good Sheperd". Thus implying their responsibility is to simply be sheep. He enlarges the illustration as it becomes obvious they do not understand. He is the "Door"; He is the way to the Father and He makes Himself know to His sheep. They both know Him and can follow Him. He lays down His life to give His sheep abundant life. Yet most Christians seem to be on a quest for the very thing Jesus said He has already given. I. We seek life apart from Christ. II. God's way is not our way. Proverbs 3:3-12 III. God's way -- not the world's way -- in all things. Living by the Spirit excludes living by the rules of the world. The Christian church has indeed been bewitched. We have turned to the world's way of dealing with most matters in life and we, as a group, have become progressively unhappy and incomplete. We cannot live by the flesh and be filled with God's blessing at the same time. We must return and repent. He will gladly gather us and walk with us. A Heart Prepared for God I Samuel 16:1-13 From earliest times the Bible speaks of the heart as of greatest significance in our relationship to God. As we come to the communion table we are reminded that the Apostle instructed us to examine ourselves before we partake. To do that let's look at what scripture tells us about our hearts. I. We are to set our heart to follow God. II. We must have a clean heart. III. We must not harden our hearts. Hebrews 3:8 IV. We must guard our hearts and allow it to be guarded. We need to examine ourselves and allow God to do His work in us. David saw his need after a time of great sin in his life when he cried out to God. In Psalm 51:7-12 he recognized that the cleansing comes from God alone. We cannot cleanse ourselves but God can. As we approach the Lord's Table we need to allow Him to do His work in our lives. 1 John 1:8-10 Deuteronomy 11:8-25 We live in an age when loving is related to sex and serving is something related to an underclass. Love is an act of our will which is carried out by many small and seemingly insignificant acts. Serving as a part of that process of loving. We have been called to follow the example of our Lord who served others in every way. We are to be like our Master. If so, that will require us to be faithful in loving and serving God. To do that we will love and serve people. This will result in feelings of love. I. To love the Lord is our basic command. Deut. 6:4-9 II. What does God ask us? Deut. 10:12 III. God will do the work to prepare us to love Him. Deut. 30:6 We love God in our everyday life by reading His word, praying and then putting into action what we have heard and said. We can reflect fully the power of God by allowing Him to flow through us. He will gladly do this as we respond to Him in love and service. It is a joyous thing the love and serve God. Ezekiel 33:10, 11 Ezekiel is probably most remembered for his vision of a wheel within a wheel that is often touted as an example of a UFO. Or, he is remembered as the prophet who saw the Vally of Dry Bones come to life again. Well he had much more than that to tell us. This passage raises the question that we all should face. Now the thrust of it is not "should we live this way or that way" it is "if this is the nature of our relationship to God, how can we live?" This question cannot be fully answered under the law. It must await an Age of Grace. Now the grace of God has always been the way people came to Him but it was not nearly so clear before Jesus. I. Job struggled with this and began the answer. Job 9:2 II. Jesus came to fully answer the question of "how". Gal. 3:10-14 III. We Can Live by Faith! Gal. 2:20 When we look at the lives we live in the light of the word of God we might dispair. However when we look at the life Jesus lives in us we know he can do all we need done (1 Thes. 5:23, 24). Praise God, we can live by faith because "He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Phil 1:6b Exodus 12: 1-11 Passover is the Feast out of which our Lord's Supper, or Communion, grew. Jesus met with His disciples at the Passover Feast prior to being arrested. He made some changes in the order of the Passover. He took the hidden bread and the fourth cup and said, "This is My Body", and "This is My Blood". We are to "do this in remembrance of" Jesus. I. "Communion" appears in the King James Bible 3 times. (this is the source of our use of the word for the Lord's Supper.) II. "Participation" III. We "Fellowship" with Christ and other believers. When we come to Communion we come to Christ and to the fellowship of believers. When that fellowship is broken restoration is guaranteed if we will come to Him. We do not have to wonder if He will forgive. He already has! We need to confess for our own information. We need to know we are forgiven. Luke 1:26-38 Mary was a young woman, a virgin, who had an opportunity to serve God. Not to become God, or even the mother of God, but to become the mother of Jesus. Now, we know, Jesus is God but Mary was the mother of the human part of Jesus. His spirit came directly from God. She had to be prepared to follow in obedience in every way. She had to face the task of bearing the Messiah and of living with the consequences. How could she bear such a great responsibility? I. Mary was prepared in advance II. She knew WHAT He would be if not exactly "Who". III. We celebrate Christmas with many of the same limitations. Enjoy Christmas! If you must, learn like Dicken's "Scrooge" how to keep Christmas well. It is a time of giving and rejoicing. It should focus on the greatest gift of all. The Son of God who gave His life that we may live. We should live our lives in order to please and honor Him. Matthew 1:18-25 I. She was found to be with Child of the Holy Spirit. II. Joseph was a just (upright or honorable) man. III. Joseph was obedient to God. Joseph, faced with embarrassment and contempt, took Mary and, when the Child was born, called Him "The Savior". You see, "Jesus" is the English rendering of a Greek word that translates a Hebrew word that means "Yahweh is Salvation". This Name is a name above every name. "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;" Philippians 2:10 Galatians 4:4-7 We know nothing about the early years of Jesus' life except that He "grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." There are fantastic, false, stories about the boy but nothing we can count on. The Bible moves from His birth to His presentation to His ministry with no details to fill the void our curiosity supplies. In fact, two of the four gospels simply begin with Jesus' ministry. Yet Matthew and Luke place importance on Jesus' growing up years. I. We know He was "born under the law" II. Born to Redeem III. Born to bring the redeemed to a sense of sonship Jesus probably lived a very normal childhood. He had siblings in His family and was the older brother. The family was very Jewish and probably very strict in discipline. There must have been much of the conflict we encounter in our families. We do know his brothers did not believe He was Messiah until after His crucifixion and resurrection. His brother, James, became the leader of The Way in Jerusalem very early and wrote the book of James in the NT. Jesus' influence must have been strong in James' life as well as in that of His other brothers and sisters. (Mat. 13:55, 56) See also…
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