The Living One - Week 1: Did He Really Live?
Awake Us Now
This teaching compares non-Christian writings of Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius and Pliny from the first and second centuries to the New Testament writings. The evidence is clear and calls us to recognize we are sinners in need of a Savior, The Living One!
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Big Questions - Power... When the Holy Spirit Comes
Awake Us Now
Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit to believers, is all about the power of God -- the power to live a new life, the power to give glory to the Living God, the power of faith that transforms us and that beckons to others to come to God as well!
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Big Questions - My Witnesses... To the Ends of the Earth
Awake Us Now
It is easy to get distracted by other things — some of them perhaps important things — but Jesus makes it clear to His followers that our primary task is make disciples. To that end, we are to be His witnesses, "even to the ends of the earth."
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Dig Deeper - Week 2: The "Submission" Passage
Awake Us Now
Today’s class is a study of Ephesians 5:21-33. A group of verses that are controversial, often attacked and many times misunderstood. Ephesians 5:21-22 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, [submit] yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” In the original Greek text the second [submit] word is not there. There is not a verb in this sentence and so in traditional Greek practice, you take the verb from the previous sentence and insert it into the next sentence. Please note that this is really important - because what this is saying is,...
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Big Questions - Obey... Everything I Have Commanded
Awake Us Now
Obedience is not optional - it is command from Jesus Himself. But we are not saved because we obey; rather, we obey the Lord because He has saved us!
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Big Questions - All Authority... in Heaven and on Earth
Awake Us Now
God has chosen you and me not simply to be religious, but to be disciples. We are to follow Jesus faithfully, grow in the knowledge and love of Him, and share with others the powerful things He has done so that they become disciples too!
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Questions - Week 13: Is Marriage Outdated?
Awake Us Now
In this message we will look at what the Scriptures have to say about marriage, analyze concerns and questions raised in our day, overview the cultural changes that have led to many questioning the value and benefit of marriage, and do so from a Christian worldview. We will also take a look at some secular contemporary research and what it indicates. Common Reactions: 1. The culture has changed: - Married Couples comprised: 1950 — 78% of all US households 2020 — 47%...
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Kings & Prophets: From Solomon to Jeremiah - Week 4
Awake Us Now
Our study opens with a look at Civil War between Rehoboam and Judah vs. Jeroboam and Israel (931-910 BC). 1 Kings 12:1 We read that Rehoboam went to Shechem, “for all Israel had gone there to make him king.” Shechem was an historic site for the nation from about 500 years early when Levitical priests recited the blessings and the curses from Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. Shechem is the city near these two mountains. In verses 3 and 4 we read that Jeroboam challenges Rehoboam. Reheboam goes to 2 advisory boards. One was the elders that had served under his father, Solomon. They...
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Big Questions - Lord and God! Jesus' Amazing Claims
Awake Us Now
Lord and God? A great moral teacher? A very good man? What claims did Jesus actually make about His identity?
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Big Questions - Stop Doubting and... Believe!
Awake Us Now
Faith is essential ... but in what do place our faith? The scriptures make it clear that we are to place our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Savior of all the nations, and the Hope of all the earth!
info_outlineThe Gospel of John Week 12
Scripture: John 7:53 - 8:58.
Pastor begins today’s class with the story found in John 7:53-8:11, which is a controversial piece of the Bible because not all manuscripts have these verses. Pastor shares that whether originally there or whether they were added later, there’s much to learn from these verses about who Jesus is.
As this text opens we see that the Jewish religious leaders continue to struggle with unbelief in who Jesus is and work to discredit Him using religious traps. Their desire is to come up with reasons to show Jesus needs to be punished - put to death - so they continue working at setting Him up hoping for a major blunder that they can accuse Him of. But Jesus is too brilliant! This is a story with some wonderful truths about Jesus. We see the following behaviors of Jesus:
⁃ Total Comprehension of all that is going on
⁃ He shares a Full Disclosure
⁃ He has Holy Compassion for the woman that is at the center of this story
⁃ Gives True Forgiveness
⁃ Offers a New Beginning
As we continue at verse 12 of chapter 8 we read the story of the “dispute over Jesus’ testimony.” He says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Pastor shares that when Jesus says that He’s the Light of the World, He is in the Temple Courts in Jerusalem for the festival, the Feast of Tabernacles. Tabernacles is the most joyous of the major Jewish festivals. During this festival four extremely large golden menorahs were set up in the Temple court. Each was 75 feet high with a huge golden bowl. Each of the four bowls for the four stands was filled with oil and during the festival the menorahs were lit every evening at sundown burning through to midnight. From rabbinic writings we read how these bowls of lights could be seen from all over the city and people sang and danced while they were lit. This is then that Jesus cries out, “I am the Light of the World!”
Jesus is claiming to be Deity! But the religious leaders respond with a challenge to His testimony and Jesus responds with several truths and is very direct with them.
Then He goes on to say, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.” To the religious leaders Jesus goes on to say they do not know Him because they do not know God. And the dispute over who He is continues. Many people in the courts listening, believed, but the religious leaders continued in disbelief and their anger toward Jesus continued to escalate.
In chapter 8 verses 31-47 we read the dispute over whose children Jesus’ opponents are. Are they God the Father’s or are they the devil’s? Jesus confronts them with a description of the devil and that the devil is the father of lies. Jesus tells the religious leaders that they belong to the devil because they cannot see the truth of what He continues to tell them about who He is.
In verses 48-58 the conversation continues with Jesus going on to make several more claims of who He is. Jesus closes with, “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!” Again Jesus claims deity so they become so angry they pick up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and slipped away from the temple grounds.
Next week we will read of Jesus healing a blind man. We will study the story of this physical healing but also explore spiritual blindness and how this story has much to teach us still today.
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⁃ The Gospel of John study is part five of five of our Two Year Study of the Gospels.
⁃ The Gospel of John may be one of the most powerful books ever written. Many people have come to faith after reading only this book of the Bible. Scholarly and archeological discoveries in recent decades give us new insight on details in the Gospel of John. We can now understand it as the most Jewish rather than the most “Gentile/Greek” of the Gospels, and when we do that we see many things that we missed before.
Our 2 year study of the gospels is great for large group, small group or home group study and can be started at any time!