Two Year Gospel Study Week 89
Awake Us Now
The Gospel of John Week 11 Scripture: John 7:22-59. Pastor opens by sharing details of the Feast of Tabernacles and the scriptures of the Living Water that were read during this 8 day festival. Festival readings included: Ezekiel 47:1-12, Zechariah 14:8 and Jeremiah 17:13b. As our story opens, it is the Feast of Tabernacles and these scriptures would have been read. Pastor goes on to share that there has been much learned over the last 100 years and especially in the last 15 or so that helps to bring this text and the story alive. As we look at what we know about the time of Jesus and...
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The Life of a Christ-Follower #12 - Celebrate!
Awake Us Now
On the day Jesus returns, we want to be among those who hear Him say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Those who know the Lord Jesus will want to live out His love, mercy, and forgiveness in their daily lives; they will celebrate, not fear, His return!
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The Life of a Christ-Follower #11 - Leadership
Awake Us Now
"Follow the leader..." Who is the leader? Human leadership is always flawed and always disappoints. But there is a leader who is flawless, always in control, and upon whose Word and leadership we can rely - the Living God!
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The Life of a Christ-Follower #10 - Obedience
Awake Us Now
We may think, "I'll start obeying God when my faith is strong enough," but God says: "Follow me TODAY, and watch what I will do tomorrow." Obedience flows from faith, and then faith grows from obedience.
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Kings & Prophets: From Solomon to Jeremiah - Week 1
Awake Us Now
Scripture: 1 Kings 1-11, 1 Chronicles 28-29, 2 Chronicles 1-9, 2 Samuel12:24-25, 1 kings 1, 1 Kings 2:2-3, 1 Kings 2:13ff. This study will take us on an adventure through a period of approximately 400 years, a highly significant time when God was moving in a mighty way among His people, Israel. It will cover from around 970 BC when Solomon took the throne until 586 BC when Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. It is a time filled with incredible stories, amazing truths, especially applicable truths and lessons for us in our lives today. There is an amazing cast of characters,...
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The Life of a Christ-Follower #9 - Peace
Awake Us Now
The word "peace" means far more than "no war or conflict." It means everything being right and in harmony with God. It is a word God desires to make real in each one of our lives today!
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The Life of a Christ-Follower #8 - Hope
Awake Us Now
By "hope," people often mean "something that might happen but probably won't." But God promises us a hope that is absolutely certain, a hope secured for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a hope that nothing and no one can take away!
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David and the Heart of God - Week 10: Moral Collapse
Awake Us Now
Scripture: 2 Samuel 11-12, 1 Corinthians 10:12, Psalm 51, Matthew 21:9. This message deals with the difficult topic of moral collapse, specifically in David’s life. Painful as it is, it can teach us much about the importance of walking faithfully before the Lord and resisting temptation. David fell into temptation after seeing Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam (a trusted soldier) and the wife of Uriah (one of David’s elite soldiers). David had her brought to the palace and he slept with her resulting in her pregnancy. Instead of coming clean, David goes deeper into a dark place with more...
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Rescued by Truth: Week 36
Awake Us Now
There will be a judgment to come - the final judgment - and only those who are found in Christ Jesus can face that judgment with confidence and without fear. When we live in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, live in faith in the Father who sent the Son, and live in faith in the Holy Spirit who speaks God’s truth into our hearts, we have nothing to fear! Everything is all about God, about His goodness, because we have Jesus as our Provision and our Savior.
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Two Year Gospel Study Week 88
Awake Us Now
The Gospel of John Week 10 Scripture: John 6:22-7:24. Our teaching today starts with Jesus saying He is the Bread of Life. He is teaching from the synagogue at Capernaum. Jesus is the rabbi that is teaching. In a service in the synagogue in the first century, people talk back and forth asking questions and engaging with the rabbi. It can get heated - and what Jesus says is causing things to become heated. He continues to say many things in this dialogue: ⁃ I am the Bread of Life ⁃ Believe in Me and you will not hunger...
info_outlineScripture: 2 Samuel 6, Psalm 30:4-5, Hebrews 9:5, Romans 3:25.
Today’s story of David is one that is an oft time ignored account from David’s life, but we will see ways it dramatically impacts and applies to our lives.
We open with 2 Samuel 6:2 “David and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark.”
Pastor shares the history of the Ark from the Book of Exodus during the time of Moses, its description, and rules and regulations from God to the Israelites about the Ark. Pastor also goes into the annual Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and what the practice was with the Ark. But by the time of David the Ark was mostly forgotten.
The Ark has a fascinating history and Pastor shares a chronology based on what we know from the Bible:
ARK OF THE COVENANT
⁃ Mount Sinai - 1445 BC
⁃ Promised Land 1406 BC
⁃ Shiloh - ca. 1399-1075 BC
⁃ Kiribati Jearim - ca. 1074-1003 BC
⁃ Jerusalem - ca. 1003-586 BC
And then the Ark disappears. While we do not know where or what happened to the Ark, we do know that during the time of David, he sought to restore bring the Ark back and to bring worship of God in Israel.
2 Samuel 6:3-5 “They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets,[d] harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals.”
However, we see that they are not doing this as the Torah instructed. It was to be moved only by priests, and by holding onto the Ark’s handles with the ark completely covered from view. Ahia and Uzzah were priests but were not moving the Ark as God had instructed. On the walk, Uzzah reaches out and touches the Ark because the oxen stumbled and God’s anger burned against Uzzah for his irreverent act and God struck him down and he died beside the Ark of God.
God desires to be taken seriously. Their intentions were good but the directions in the scripture were clear and straightforward and they had ignored them. Next we read that David ask the Lord, “how can the Ark of the Lord ever come to me?”
God is capricious. God is holy and He’s not to be trifled with. We are not to ignore what He says.
Today, many live in fear of God. But what He desires to communicate to us today is that He is holy. But He’s more than that, we will find He is merciful AND He is Salvation!
David wouldn’t take the Ark into his city, after Uzzah died, instead he left it with Obed-Edom to see what would happen to him. And over the next three months Obed-Edom and his entire household were blessed, so David then moves the Ark the City of David with great rejoicing. They understood that God is merciful, that He is a generous and forgiving God.
This time they follow what God has prescribed. The priests carry it, it’s covered and no cart is used.
David wrote Psalm 30 during this time and it expresses what he learned:
Psalm 30:4-5 “Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
It was an incredible celebration, a joyous time, because David and the rest understood that God is good, that God is merciful and that God can be trusted. They placed the Ark in the Tent that David had prepared and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord.
David organized the ongoing care of the Ark which we can read in 1 Chronicles 23 - 26 setting it up so that the priests would do what they were supposed to do. It also helped the children of Israel worship God the way they were supposed to. David wanted to ensure things were done God’s way, just as God had directed in the Book of Exodus to Moses.
Pastor closes today with, “God is Salvation.” God desires all to be saved. He is calling His children back to Himself. Pastor shares great insight to the “Mercy Seat” using Romans 3:25 “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.”
Sacrifice of atonement or sometimes stated as “propitiation” are English translations of the Greek word for “mercy seat.” What this verse literally means is that God presented Christ as a mercy seat through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.
David and people of the Old Testament era had their sins removed once a year on the Day of Atonement, which finds its ultimate fulfillment once and for all, not once a year, but once forever in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He is the mercy seat of God. It’s His blood that covers our sin. And so what we have seen in 2 Samuel 6 gets its fulfillment in the One who is the Son of God.
God is holy.
God is merciful.
GOD IS SALVATION.
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