WARNING - Work in Progress

WARNING - Work in Progress
WARNING - Work in Progress

Thursday, April 12, 2018

His Unfailing Love – 4/15/2018


WARNING PREACHY…

Psalm 13
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

As I get older I feel like the time is flying by (there just aren’t enough hours in the month!) however there have been times when the seconds seem like they take forever to tick by.  As a kid on Christmas Eve night waiting for the morning to come is one such time or when waiting for dad to get home from work when your mother has promised you his wrath is another.  I also remember sitting in detention at school watching the second hand of the clock roll around and feeling like the hour would never end.

In Psalm 13 David knew this feeling well as he was waiting on God to show-up in the midst of his life.  David was agonizing and wrestling in his soul and desperately wanting God to make an appearance and to get him through his inner turmoil.  

Do you too know the feeling of agonizing while the time seems to sit still and praying that God will come to the rescue?  I think everyone does.  Notice then what David writes in verse 5, “But I trust in your unfailing love…”  His unfailing love: most of us non-jews are ignorant to the depth and richness of God’s unfailing love.

In His unfailing love God rescued Abraham’s children from their slavery in Egypt and to them a land that wasn’t their own, in His unfailing love God taught the Israelite’s how to live and be a blessing to the nations, and in His unfailing love, when they messed it all up and repeatedly turned toward other gods He provided to them the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, to die on the Cross for them and redeem the children of Abraham anyway.

Today, we too can trust in God’s unfailing love for us as we too hold onto the promise of Abraham that we might be a blessing to the world.

Romans 9:8
… it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.


Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Empty Tomb – 4/01/2018


WARNING PREACHY…

No Joke, the tomb is empty!  (See what I did there?  Witty right?)

While every Easter sermon this year will begin the same exact way as I began above, I am going to veer here from my contemporaries by proclaiming "yes" that the tomb was indeed empty, but that did not lessen the confusion of the disciples.  (See my Good Friday post about the confusion of the disciples)

When the realization that Jesus was not dead, but alive, worked its way through the community of his disciples, they were confused and doubtful.  The men would not even believe the women who came from the tomb and announced that the angels told them that Jesus was in deed alive.  And don’t be too cross with the men, for believing that a man that you knew to be dead but now alive was not something that is easily believed by anyone.  The turning point came for them when Jesus appeared to them.  When they saw him alive they accepted the reality, but still they were confused; none of it made any sense.

But there was a time when Jesus made it clear to them.  Do you remember when that was? 

John 20:19-23
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.  21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Do you see it?  Look at verse 22. 

At this point all the Pentecostals in the room are shouting amens at their computer screens; as well we all should.  But we shouldn’t accept this passage without also reading its fellow verse.

Luke 24:45
45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.

Now all the Sessationsits are shouting amens.  (I had a friend once who told me that the Pentecostals often forget that there is a Bible and the Sessationists forget that there is a Holy Spirit.  That’s a discussion for another day though.)

Anyhow, the point is that Jesus appeared to the disciples and breathed on them the Holy Spirit so that they could understand the Scriptures about what had just happened.  The Jewish disciples knew the Jewish Scriptures but like pieces of a puzzle, their knowledge of those scriptures were all jumbled and still in the box.  When Jesus gave them the Spirit and opened their minds to the Scriptures, they could see for the first time the whole picture and what those puzzle pieces actually formed. 
So yes, the tomb is empty but the blessing was in the breath of Jesus and the Spirit’s opening of the mind to the Scriptures that explained God’s Messiah.  In other words, the blessing was in knowing and understanding Jesus as God’s fulfillment of his own promise to Israel. An empty tomb is great but the confusion about the Messiah is cast out with the Holy Spirit miracle of having our minds opened by God’s Spirit; today just as it was then.

Who says that God’s miraculous Holy Spirit doesn’t intercede supernaturally today?

I don’t have time to detail the story of God through the promise of Abram from the scripture to the day of Messiah’s resurrection in this post, but if you want to know why they called it Gospel good news then you will need to understand what Jesus revealed to the disciples about their scriptures.  Until that happens, the tomb is indeed empty and that is a sign that you need to listen-up and seek to have him breath on you the Spirit while you begin reading those Scriptures as well.