My reading this week took me to Isaiah 44:9-20, I've been making my way through the book of Isaiah and have noticed a few things. 

1. Israel made idols and worshiped them. 

2. God still loves them. 

3. God even in Israel's sin of idolatry was still with them.

This passage in particular stuck out because it's in between God calling them His chosen people, and His redemption of them. I wanted to focus on this passage here because I think it's pertinent to today and us as people (Christians). One thing I've noticed is that humans create idols and they seem to fashion them after themselves. Things that we worship seem to look like us. Remember we don't know what God looks like and that's for good reason. We create idols that look like us so we can worship us. Idol worship is a worship of self. The way we combat that is by denying ourselves Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:24-25. 

When we do that we have to look to Christ for our needs, comforts and help. Lee Strobel in Case for Christmas, tell us of a family that had virtually nothing and yet they still found comfort in Jesus this family after their story was published in the paper he worked for and they received so many gifts and things they needed after they had lost everything. He had gone back to see them later and they had given most of everything they received away. This to me is the essence of taking up their cross and denying self, they felt that God had already given everything they needed.

As Christians we don't live for the things of this world, we are to live for the kingdom of heaven. This whole statement of don't be so heavenly minded that your of no earthly good, is false. We are to be heavenly minded and that way we can be of earthly good. 

In 2 Peter 3:9 Peter writes through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that God is not willing that ANY should perish. God delays His return so that all will have a chance to turn to Him. If you haven't please do that today, don't delay. The bible says to repent and believe. That is what you need to do. Repent: turn from your sin and turn to God. Second you need to believe that Jesus Christ came to earth to live a sinless life, and become the ultimate sacrifice by dying on the cross and rising again on the third day.

Blessings,

Nick

Sermon Notes Mark 12:13-17

 Let me start with, I don't ever want to get any glory from teaching or preaching Gods word. It all goes to Him. With that when I preach or teach I want to give my all and do my best to present it withing the context that it should be taught. Please feel free to ask any questions about my notes and what the direction of the message was heading.

I.                Stand, Read, Pray, You can be seated.

¹³ And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. ¹⁴ And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances,^[a] but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” ¹⁵ But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius^[b] and let me look at it.” ¹⁶ And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar's.” ¹⁷ Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” And they marveled at him.

II.               Why did they (who are they?) send the Herodians? The persons they employed were the Pharisees and the Herodians, men that in this matter were contrary to one another, and yet concurred against Christ, The Pharisees were great sticklers for the liberty of the Jews, and, if he should say, It is lawful to give tribute to Caesar, they would incense the common people against him, and the Herodians would, underhand, assist them in it. The Herodians were great sticklers for the Roman power, and, if he should discountenance the paying of tribute to Caesar, they would incense the governor against hum, yea, and the Pharisees, against their own principles, would join with them in it. It is no new thing for those that are at variance in other things, to join in a confederacy against Christ.  

III.              Who sent the Pharisees and the Herodians?

1.     They were sent by the other Pharisees whom “went away” to see that we need to look back a few verses Jesus had just called them out 12:9-12.

2.     The Pharisees were pretty ticked off at Jesus because He called them out for not recognizing that He was the prophesied Messiah. v. 10-11 He did this over and over, even later on today we’re going to see that. The Apostle Paul even did it but his was pure Acts 26:2-3 unlike the others.

IV.             Now for the butter up v. 14 This was a common practice for lawyers and others to butter up officials before asking a question. The idea was to get a favorable answer or make them think that they actually cared about the answer they were giving. Have you ever had someone talk with you like that? In this case it was His enemy’s and He knew their hearts.

 

One of my favorite examples is when Kelly wants something from her dad. She will call him and say daaaadddddyyy. You’re such a great daddy… can you help me with…it is easy to butter someone up when you want something, before you ask right?!?

1.     They were trying to get one of two answers from Jesus. Either way If He had said they needed to pay taxes to Cesar. It would have caused an uproar from the Jews who were being oppressed by the Romans

2.     If Jesus had said they shouldn’t pay taxes the Herodians would have gotten Him thrown into jail and they would have been able to accomplish their mission of trying to have Him arrested. Remember v. 12 (read)

3.     This is one of those situations that we need to be conscious of it is why we need to be in sync with the Holy Spirit. We need to make sure that we are careful with our words.

V.               v. 15 really shows us why its important to just ask our questions and not try to butter people up. Jesus of course being God knew “their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” This verse reminds me of another time that the pharisees were called out by Jesus for their hypocrisy. In Matt. 9:2-6

1.     In each instance we see Jesus exercise His authority as God calling the pharisees out for their critical thoughts of Jesus. It stems from the fact that the didn’t believe He was the Son of God. They even said it themselves Matthew 12:22-27, the pharisees called Jesus Beelzebul, repeatedly Jesus calls out the pharisees because of their unbelief. Back in Mark, Jesus is going to answer their question. But the answer He gives isn’t anything close to what they expected. “bring me a denarius.” The Denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer. It wasn’t an insignificant amount of money.

VI.             I love this Jesus asks everyone there who’s face was on the coin, their answer must have been one of complete confusion. I can hear it now, “Caesar’s” Total confusion as to His answer, this passage isn’t so much about paying taxes to the government or not paying taxes. But what we see is in Jesus’ answer let’s look

VII.           “render to Ceasar the things that are Caesar’s and to God things that are Gods.” And they marveled at Him.

1.     Not one person who was there expected that answer. But it is the correct one. We all have things that we think belong to us in reality everything in the world belongs to God. God created everything in it and that’s the beauty of Jesus’ answer God already owns everything in the world. In His answer we have what we need to be doing. God has placed the government in authority to us that means we need to be paying out taxes, we need to be good stewards and do what the government says…UNLESS it infringes on our service to God.

VIII.          Let’s wrap this up. There are a few things that we can take away from this passage of scripture.   

1.     People are going to try and trap us with hard questions, questions that we will not be able to answer on our own without the Holy Spirit. This is why it’s so important too. We see that over and over the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and even Satan himself tried to trip Jesus up.

a.     Be careful of flattery Charles Spurgeon a famous preacher said this to pastors, “It is always best not to know, nor wish to know, what is being said about you, either by friends or foes. Those who praise us are probably as much mistaken as those who abuse us.” We need to give God the glory and not take it for ourselves.

b.     Study God’s word. Study to show yourselves approved 2 Tim 2:15

c.      Listen to Holy Spirit; two things with this and we can look back at the last point. God will never contradict His word. But they will try to use it against us,

d.     I want to encourage you just like I always have to memorize scripture and if you just learn the verse also learn the context it was written in.

e.     Trust that God has your back. He will give you the answers you need when you need them.

f.       And finally, as important as it is to give to Caesar aka the government what is “his” it is also as important to give to God and that is ourselves. And we are going to finish with this 1 Cor 6:19-20

He is risen!!!

Matthew 28:1-10 ESV

 Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ² And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. ⁴ And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he^[a] lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” ⁸ So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

Wow! What a thing to witness, the Apostle Peter outran the beloved Apostle John to the tomb, but the first to see Jesus was Mary Magdalene who along with the other Mary went to the tomb to put spices on the body of Jesus. There was an earthquake and the angel of the Lord appeared rolled away  the stone then told them what was happening. I'm sure that they were pretty scared since the guards fainted, passed out, looked like they had died and this angel was in pure white and I'm sure pretty intimidating. The angel told them that Jesus had risen and to go find Peter and the rest of the disciples.

You're probably wondering why this was significant...During this time, women were not considered to be the same standard or rank as men, lame I know but the fact that they were told to go to get the disciples is super important. Jesus chooses to use things that the world considers foolish to accomplish His tasks, 1 Corinthians 1:27-31. God uses those things that people aren't ready for. Why? The 31st verse here gives the reason. "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord". No one would have expected Mary to be the first one Jesus appeared to, He could have appeared to the Pharisee's and said, Look you killed me but now I'm alive, you should believe those things I told you but you didn't. Jesus chose Mary because He has/had a plan. God can and will use you in the same why. Mary watched Jesus die she also saw Him first after He rose. Don't ever think that God can't use you because He can and if you'll let Him, He will.

Good Friday???

 Was it really good? 

Mark 15:33-39

³³ And when the sixth hour^[a] had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.^{[b] 34} And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ³⁵ And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” ³⁶ And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” ³⁷ And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. ³⁸ And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. ³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he^[c] breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son^[d] of God!

Let's break this down, the 6th hour is noon, think though about the fact that it was completely dark during the middle of the day doesn't it make that kind of weird? Something was off, the Son of Man was hanged on the cross for all to see. It is a historical fact that on this day over 2000 years ago that this happened. The next verse here Jesus cries out with a loud voice, those standing by thought that He was calling for Elijah to come save Him, which is ironic because Elijah couldn't and even Jesus wouldn't save Himself. 

Over this period of 3 hours of darkness that light that had been on the world was off, why is that? Jesus is also know as the light of the world, Matt. 5:14-15 In fact I don't think it's weird at all that darkness had come over the whole land until the 9th hour, wouldn't it be hard as a Father to watch your Son die as the sacrifice. Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be hung on that cross and to suffer and die so that we might be able to have eternity with Him. During this time from Jesus's trial, suffering, and death on the cross there was a Holy work being done. God was accepting that we would no longer have to have a priest atone (pay) for our sin through a sacrifice. This was the final time that it would have to be done for sin. 

You might be asking yourself where is that proof, well it's in the next 2 verses. Verse 38, "and the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom". First of all that curtain was thick, 4" thick, 60' long and 30' wide, it would take over 300 priests to even move it. Here is my first proof, even if they wanted to the priests would have had to have everyone there to rip it, and they wanted nothing to do with Jesus, it was them who condemned Him to death in the first place. Second it was torn from top to bottom. This is one of my favorite verses, because it show that God through accepting Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice that we have access to Him directly and don't need a priest to go in and give a sacrifice on our behalf. Finally, in verse 39 even the Roman centurion declares that Jesus was the Son of God, it doesn't get any more simple than that. Yes, Jesus died the Apostle John in Ch 19 verses 33-34 chronicles it in more detail by saying that "when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. v. 34 But one of the soldiers pierce his side with a speak, and at one there came out blood and water." That couldn't happen unless Jesus was dead.

 It was at the moment Jesus died that our payment was made for our sin. It is because of that payment that we get to have a relationship with God. We don't, can't work off our sin. This is the difference between Christianity and every other Religion in the world. We get to rest in Gods sin payment.

 

So to answer my question I proposed earlier, Yes! today Good Friday is good, very GOOD!

Until the whole world knows 

Nick

Holy Week

 Matthew 21: 1-10

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, ² saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. ³ If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” ⁴ This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

⁵ “Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt,^[a] the foal of a beast of burden.’”

⁶ The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. ⁷ They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. ⁸ Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹ And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” ¹⁰ And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” ¹¹ And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

 

As we begin this week, it's important to remember a couple of things. One this week is a celebration that should occur throughout the year not just during one week, and two we should celebrate this week as a remembrance. It's also Passover week, (the feast of unleavened bread) The Jews were told as they left Egypt to remember the Lord their God who brought them out of Egypt.

A couple of things that stand out to me about our passage for today. 1. Obedience both on the part of Jesus and also His disciples. 2. The donkey

Let's dig in a bit. verse 5 prophetically predicts who Jesus would ride into Jerusalem, it's from Zechariah 9:9, you see without this verse telling the Jews what to look for they wouldn't have been able to know that their Messiah was riding into Jerusalem, and "if" Jesus wasn't the Messiah this prophecy couldn't have been fulfilled. The second part to this is that Jesus of course being God in the form of man knew this and was obedient to fulfill this prophecy, the second part of the obedience we see here is that Jesus told the disciples where they needed to go to get the donkey and if anyone was to say anything what they were to reply. The disciples did as they were instructed they followed His instruction to the letter and Jesus later riding into Jerusalem.

For our second part the donkey...Jesus could have ridden on anything He like, personally I would have chosen a roaring lion, but that's me and I'm not God nor do I want to be. Jesus chose a donkey, this was a sign, you see in those days the Jews were being oppressed by the Romans. They really had no rights other than to survive and pay taxes. They were looking for a king someone who would save them from their earthly troubles. Don't we often do that? We will often run to Jesus when things get hard, I can't tell you all the times that someone has come to me saying, "If only God would save me, I'll do this or that, but only if He saves me." This my friends is the wrong mindset to take we shouldn't run to God just to save us from our earthly troubles, but rather to save us from our sin and the eternal damnation. This donkey represents so much for us, it represents that Jesus came to not just save us from earthly  trouble but our sin and earthly damnation in hell.

Philippians 2:7-- ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,^[a] being born in the likeness of men.

 It represents He came as a humble servant who was to be that ultimate sacrifice the one final sacrifice so that we can spend eternity with Him, worshiping Him forever. Sadly though so many won't see this sacrifice, they are going to miss the servant while looking for the bigger and better thing. 

My hope today is that you would look to the Lamb of God, the One who rode a donkey humbling Himself so we are saved from our sin, we only need to be obedient to the call and surrender ourselves to Him. God's Word says "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved..."Acts 16:31

If you have questions please reach out...leave a comment or send an email. 

Blessings

Nick

Love your neighbors Hebrews 13:1

 In my daily bible reading I've been in Hebrews my what a fantastic read. So much to help in my walk with Christ. Today I want to talk about 13:1

"Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entrained angels unawares." Heb. 13:1 esv

Have you ever ran into someone who you didn't know, that needed help, may have seen that was having a bad day, needed a tire changed, was homeless, or just seemed like they were struggling. This may have been an angel and you didn't  know it. Angels are among us here on earth. They walk around even though we don't know it, they don't show their true selves because it would frighten us. For purposes of what we're talking about today I'm going to keep it pretty simple, this is actually a deeper subject that down the road we'll get into. 

This verse is pretty straight forward. We are called as Christians to show hospitality to be generous with others. Even Jesus told us that as we do unto others we do unto Him. Matthew 22:39, "And a second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself." But we need  to stop for a second and look at the verse before, v. 37-38 says "And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and  with all your  mind. v. 38 This is the great and first commandment." This is the number one thing that we as Christians are supposed to do to love God with our whole heart. That's the number one thing nothing else matters if we don't do that, but Jesus follows up with the second, love your neighbor as ourselves. We all love ourselves right? It's pretty easy to do. I make sure I'm fed, have clean clothing, get what I need first. If we love God won't we be more likely to serve others? I would venture to guess that if we do truly love God we want to follow His commands. Who is your neighbor? Dictionary.com defines neighbor as: "a person who lives near another. a person or thing that is near another. one's fellow human being"...it's those next to us whether we know them or not, so when Jesus said to love your neighbor it means those who are near us, down the street, in our town/city, next door to our home.

The point of our focus verse is not that we should just show hospitality to someone because they could be an angel but that we should show people hosptialty because Jesus called us to show love regardless of whether they are an angel or not. In doing that we show the love of Christ. Our witness is less about our words and more about our actions. 

~Blessings

Nick

Sermon Notes Exodus 13:17-22

 Happy Thursday! 

I wanted to share my notes from my sermon from last night. I hope this blesses you as much as I blesses me. The book of Exodus is full of examples of having to trust God for guidance. What we have to learn is that while the Israelite's after leaving Egypt had the pillar of smoke during the day and the pillar of fire at night to follow. We don't have that same thing, we have the Holy Spirit, we have Gods word. Please reach out if you have any questions.

Exodus 13:17-22

 

I.                 Following God story; God will often call us to Step out in faith, to do that we have to learn to follow God, He’ll have your back! The whole book of Exodus has one central theme, as God’s people we need to follow after God. He will lead us, He will take care of us, He will be our guide. He will allow us to go through things that are uncomfortable to bring us to a place of complete reliance on Him. This evening we’re going to learn how God leads us, why He will sometimes take us the long route to get where we need to be.

II.                v. 17-18 God lead them away from the Philistines the long route.

a.      Why?

1.      Lest the people change their minds.

a.      Israel was not ready for war, having just left Egypt, and witnessing the power of God as He freed them as slaves, the Hebrews had some growing they had to do, they had to learn that their God would sustain them regardless of what seemed like would be a giant task.

b.       How do we know the Jews didn’t have that moxie, that grit that they would need to be able to go into battle, most importantly would be willing to rely on God to save them? Even though God had brought them out of Egypt with such power, they still were not ready for war. Let’s look ahead a little bit turn one chapter ahead to chapter 14 verses 11 (read or have one of the kids read) can see that they were not ready with a preview of the Red Sea, the spies that went to check out the land. (Deuteronomy 1:27) Looking ahead to the battles to come. The spies who went into the land of milk and honey, but they also saw giants. When they came out, they whined again about how God brought them out of Egypt to just kill them???

2.      Towards the Red Sea. The Long way.

a.      God sometimes will take us the long way, 2 reasons

1.      He has something He wants to teach us. God wants us to grow in something most importantly He wants us to grow closer to Him.

a.      Wouldn’t it be nice if life was a straight line? You really think so? But we know that It’s not. When you’re hiking on a trail is the trail ever straight? No? Right? It is always crooked, and if you’re going up a mountain it has switch backs, pop-outs, and really hard parts. But the end result when you get to the top is pretty amazing. Think about the  best view you’ve ever witnessed to get there was pretty rough, I know some of you maybe haven’t experienced it…yet, so think about a hard time or something hard that you accomplished and when you finally got your reward that you earned you knew that it was worth the work.

2.      The reason that God wants us  to grow closer to Him is so that He will get the glory not us. Have you ever felt like you were at the end of your rope and you had nothing left to hold on to? I can tell you that I’ve been there. There are times in my life especially when I was a teen living on my own that I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish something. And boom out of nowhere it was taken care of. The only explanation was God took care of what was going on, the only thing that I could do was to give Him the glory. You may in your life have something going on right now at school, or home, or your job, that it seems like you have no control over. I can tell you without a doubt that God is in control. Letter from Jesus

III.              v. 19 this is a fulfillment of God’s promise to save His people from Egypt.

a.      Another proof of the fulfillment of God’s promise to not leave the Jews in Egypt, even so much so that the bones of Joseph were not left there. So, looking at this here we can see that no one was left behind not even Joseph.

IV.              v. 20-22

a.      Etham was on the edge of the wilderness and one step closer to the Red Sea. the Hebrews are finally leaving Egypt getting out of dodge,

b.      What is the purpose of the fire and the smoke? There is a special reason that we’re going to learn here. The simple answer is that so the Israelite's have something to follow, I mean you because they just up until recently they were slaves but now they leave Egypt and don’t have any sense of direction, so we know the fire and smoke gave them something to look for, something to follow but there is a deeper meaning too, something that is for us.

1. Now we don’t have a pillar of fire or even a cloud of smoke to follow but God has given us some things that we can use to follow so we know that we’re heading in the right direction.  There are a lot of other influences in our lives today. Things that are trying to get us to follow what they are saying.

1.      His word. (“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet”. Psalms 119:105) Turn with me to        1 Tim. 3:16-17

2.      The Holy Spirit (Pentecost) John 16:7-8

a.      How do we know what we’re hearing is from the Holy Spirit is real? By knowing what God’s word says. God will never contradict His word. This is why it’s so important to know God’s word, to ready it and know what it says, to be a student of it

3.      Others (Paul follow me as I follow Christ) There is a challenge with this one because we are human which is why we need to be grounded in God’s word. If that person we’re following isn’t following Christ we’re going to know.

a.      I need all of you to remember there are a lot of influences in your lives today what are some of those? Is it social media, Netflix, twitter, your friends, or where ever you get your news. Those aren’t necessarily bad things but, you need to be wise about that stuff and run it through the lens of the Bible Gods word. We have a lot of noise and it’s easy to get caught up in things that will draw you away from Jesus. They aren’t blatant either usually it will seem like things that might be good but as you begin to dig deeper you need to be aware that it’s drawing you away from Christ and getting you to take your eyes of the fire and smoke.