The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 7
Awake Us Now
In Week 7, we hear more of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus calls us salt and light. What does He mean when He uses these words to describe how we are to be? As historians have looked at world history, more and more of them are coming to the realization Christianity changed everything. Jesus has had a greater impact on the human condition than anyone in all of history. What Jesus produces in people, changes them!
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 6
Awake Us Now
We finish Matthew 4 on following Jesus, and begin the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that opens with the Beatitudes.
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 5
Awake Us Now
Week 5 of our Matthew study digs into chapter 4 on the Temptation of Jesus, His three temptations and the reality of an unseen spiritual world.
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Ten Words - Week 2: God Alone!
Awake Us Now
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-3, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 14:1, Psalm 33:8, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 22:36-38, Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s God alone that we are to worship, honor and follow. Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me.” The 10 Commandments have shaped so much of Western civilization and culture. Yet these ten words/commandments are often ignored - And what we see as people’s god is the god of chance. Our culture, and much of the time our educational system, teach us that all that exists is the result of a gigantic cosmic accident. That chance is the author of...
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 4
Awake Us Now
Week 4 of our Matthew study is all about John the Baptist and his message of repentance, a message that can be difficult for the religious to accept.
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Two Year Gospel Study Week 54
Awake Us Now
Scripture - Luke 18:1-8; “The Widow’s Plea” The Parable: “The Widow’s Plea” is an earthly narrative with a heavenly meaning - We should always pray and not give up! This is a story that lets us know that there will be challenges and difficulties that we all will face. But in this parable Jesus is teaching us to endure - to not give up and to do so through prayer - leaning into Him and trusting Him. The parable begins be telling of a judge that didn’t know God and didn’t care at all about people - and there’s a widow that continues to go to the judge for justice against...
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 3
Awake Us Now
In our study of Matthew this week we look at chapters 2 and 3, with an emphasis on deliverance through Jesus the Messiah and the fulfillment of the New Covenant through Him as well.
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 2
Awake Us Now
This week our study of Matthew takes us into chapter 2 and the story of Jesus’ birth focusing on the Magi, their interaction with Herod, and their interesting gifts to Jesus.
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The Gospel According to Matthew - Week 1
Awake Us Now
The Gospel of Matthew emphasizes Jesus as Israel’s long awaited Messiah. Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophetic promises in God’s Word, the Deliverer, Savior and King. Matthew zeroes in on Jesus’ call to discipleship. Will we heed this call today and commit fully to the King of Kings, the promised Savior of the world? Matthew chose to follow Jesus and Jesus changed Matthew’s life. If we choose to follow Jesus, He will change our lives, too. Why is the Gospel of Matthew Pastor Dodge's favorite? Why is this Gospel the first book of the New Testament? Jesus changed Matthew's life when...
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Ten Words - And God Spoke
Awake Us Now
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-2 What are the Ten Words? We read in Exodus 20:1, “And God spoke all these words.” “Words is referring to the Ten Commandments God spoke on Mount Sinai to Moses. God’s Ten Commandments are found in the rest of Exodus 20 and also in Deuteronomy 5. Because these commandments are unnumbered in the Bible, there have been several ways these 10 Words have been numbered, but it doesn’t matter how you number them - what matters is whether you listen to them or not. Exodus 20:2 God continues, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of...
info_outlineToday’s teaching is on enemy territory and the reality of spiritual warfare. In a fallen world the battle is not between people - it is between the Living God and the powers of darkness, It is between the Body of Christ and those under the spell of the devil.
Ephesus was the center of worship of Artemis and also a hotbed of the occult, magic, eastern religions, drugs, alcohol and many of the same things we encounter in our world today. Ephesus is where Paul carried out some of his most important mission work and it is where God shows us some important lifetime truths through how He worked in Ephesus nearly 2000 years ago.
Where we left off last week was with Paul spending two years teaching daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. Verse 10 of Acts chapter 19 tells us that all Jews and Greeks in the area heard the word of the Lord. Paul and others were training up believers to share their faith and so the Gospel message was shared all over Asia.
During Paul’s time in Ephesus he experienced more push back than ever before. God was doing extraordinary miracles through Paul and many were healed physically but Paul was also casting out demons and healing people from spiritual illness.
DIVINE POWER
We need to be connected to the Living God. Our faith is not to be a little bit of head knowledge, a song and a prayer. Our faith is to be life changing, it is to be the heart of who we are.
Because God was doing amazing miracles through Paul, news traveled that Paul was not only healing physically but also doing spiritual battle and that He was healing in the name of Jesus.
Ephesus was a town filled with evil but the DIVINE POWER of God was so obviously being displayed in the miraculous healings done in Jesus’ name, that it caused the name of Jesus to be held in high honor and it caused a reaction of believers to openly confess what they had done as part of the evil in Ephesus.
TAKE GOD SERIOUSLY
A massive move of God caused people to take Him very seriously.
Our faith molds and transforms us because we are delivered from bondage to sin and death. God offers deliverance from the power of the demonic and the things that can so easily destroy our lives.
CLEANING HOUSE
People who had practiced sorcery burned their scrolls publicly and the word of the Lord continued to spread and grow in power.
as believers changed and non-believers become believers people grew and matured in their faith and suddenly began to realize they needed to do a house cleaning in their lives.
God’s Holy Spirit is gracious and reveals things to us as we grow and mature in faith. We are not fully mature the moment we believe - It is a life-long process.
God’s desire is that we clean house in our lives, in our homes, in anything that gets in the way of our love and worship of God, anything that controls us in ways that are dangerous and spiritually defiling.
With all the awakening to the reality of the Gospel Power of Jesus and the importance of a God-pleasing life of faith, those who didn’t have that faith were began to try to stop all that was happening in Jesus’ name.
WORLD VIEWS COLLIDE
A worker who made silver shrines to Artemus was very concerned about his economic future in light of the amazing growth of Christianity. And so he spoke out publicly, drawing a crowd and the two sides began to collide.
World views are colliding in our world today. The world view of our culture is:
All that matters is me
All that matters is what I want
All that matters is that you don’t stand in my way and say anything to upset me.
The world view of the Bible is:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
God sent His one and only Son
The Living God took on flesh and brought life and forgiveness through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection from the grave.
In Jesus there is life, forgiveness and power. The power to live a new life.
And so their two world views clashed then and they are still clashing today.
We are called not to fight with human weapons, but to recognize the reality of spiritual war and to use the weapons of the Holy Spirit:
Prayer
Trust in God
God’s Word
The power of our testimonies
Today’s scripture reading ends with the whole city in an uproar - both sides shouting and many joining in the near riot.
CROWD FOLLOWERS
It can be easy to just go along with the crowd
Yet God warns us not to follow the crowd. Exodus 23:2 says, “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.”
Wise words for us today!
Scripture: Acts 19:11-41, Ephesians 6:12 and Exodus 23:2
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