Everyone deserves a participation Trophy

But it's not what your thinking...

 Some years ago my daughter played T-Ball, growing up playing sports I felt that it was important for her to learn to win graciously and when she lost to learn to work harder to improve and give it her all. She loved being on the field and cheering on her team...and the other team too. We quickly realized that maybe sports wasn't for her. At the end of the season all the teams got together and had a valley wide pizza party where everyone got a participation trophy. It's the proverbial thanks for showing up there's no reason they deserved one, they didn't do anything to earn it, if I remember correctly they didn't even keep score, and at that age I don't think they should, but to get a prize just for showing up? 

 

But that's not what this post is about. I want to share with you a couple of verses from the Bible that give us some insight why we all deserve a different kind of participation trophy.

2 Peter 1: 3-4 according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:  (4) whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.  (NKJV)

 

Did you see that? Let's go a little deeper...and dive in to

 

v 3. talks about a Divine power that has been given to us, it includes all things that are associated with life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him. Let's start with the Him, who is that? verse 2 tells that that He is Jesus. Let's look a little deeper here, we see that all things that pertain to life and godliness. You see when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior we are saying that we commit our living our life for Him and His glory. We no longer live for ourselves. We need to remember that it is not because of anything that we do but that redemption comes from Jesus alone. When we try to be godly on our own we can't it only comes from Jesus. He called us. The Bible says that He knew us before we were even born.

 

Let's now look at what has been given to us that allows us righteousness. Divine Power the word that was used in the Greek for Divine is Theios~ the meaning of this word is of Christ, the Holy Spirit, or the Father.  It is referring to our God, it's not saying that we're going to become gods but we get to participate in His power. Let's look at what happened when Jesus sent the disciples out. Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. The disciples of Jesus were able to do the same things He did, but that's not completely what Peter is referring to here, it's eternal. This divine power Peter is referring to is the same eternal life we receive when we follow Christ.

 

How does that sound? Salvation isn't just about fire insurance, what it is about is spending eternity with Jesus

 

Here is the good part. Verse 4 is where we learn how to get that participation trophy. Let me let you in on a little secret...it is FREE! We so often go through life trying to do things on our own, as Christians there are times that others will tell us that if we are not good or mess up that we will lose our salvation, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The first part of this verse confirms this, our salvation is granted by Jesus, it’s nothing that we can get apart from God. It is a promise as written in the Gospel of John 3:16-18.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world,^[a] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

 

Being a Christian isn’t just about being a good person, that is a byproduct, but it is about being able to spend eternity with Christ, there are several things that happen when we accept Jesus as our Savior, the first thing is we get that participation trophy, that is the Divine nature that allows us to escape the corruption that our sin brings. The second is that when the time happens, we get to partake in the glory of a redeemed body and spend eternity with Jesus, I can tell you this I don’t want the alternative. I love that when we receive the divine nature that we are freed from the sin and corruption of sin in this world. 

 

In closing let’s review.

 

·      Divine Power-In all things

·      Called by Him-Who? Jesus

·      To what? His own glory and excellence

·      Who gave us our trophy? Jesus

·      Are we able to earn it? Nope, its free can’t do anything to get it and can’t do anything to lose it

·      What does it bring us? The ability to live in the new life that Jesus has given us freed from the bondage of sin and in the peace of God. That’s something that I want to shout from the rooftops!

 

Blessings,

 

Nick

 

 

The Day Before

Luke 23: 55-56

⁵ The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. ⁵⁶ Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

 

This was the Friday that Jesus died, the curtain was torn in two. The sacrifice had been made, even the Roman centurion believed He was the Son of God. No one else was there watching Him as He was buried except Mary Magdalene, Jesus' mother Mary, Joseph of Arimathea who provided the tomb. They all knew where He was buried. What happens now? They went home and prepared the spices for his burial, this had to be done before the Sabbath, because God had commanded them to rest. Then comes the waiting day, you see Good Friday we celebrate that the ultimate sacrifice was made the penalty that had to have the shedding of blood which was usually made by a spotless lamb was made by the perfect Lamb of God. This is the now what day, God is still there He didn't disappear when Jesus died, He was silent, waiting on the perfect moment to fulfill all that He had promised.

 

 

Sometimes it's hard to wait, I'm sure Peter and the rest of Jesus's disciples didn't know what was to come. The day before has to be the hardest one, you're in the middle of waiting on the promise of God to be fulfilled and God is basically silent. Mark's gospel tells us who was there, that Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome showed up to anoint Jesus' body. They still didn't understand that He was going to rise again. Luke's gospel gives us a little more insight as to what happens, Luke 24 tells us that two men (angels) asked them "why do you seek the living among the dead? ⁶ He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” back in Mark they specifically tell the women to tell the disciples and Peter. They then went and did just that, Peter sprinted to the tomb, why? He remembered what Jesus said, I'm sure it clicked, everything made sense. Those promises are fulfilled.

This is the same for us, we have those days where it seems like the worse thing in the world is happening and then silence, do we remember God's word in that He said he would provide? That He loves us and is always there? We need to remember that the promises of God always come to pass. He promised it and it will happen. It's that day before that is the hardest. But we have to remember that God will always fulfill His promises. Which is what we get to celebrate tomorrow.

He is Risen!

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

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.

5 months too long

OK so it has been 5 months and the few of you that still check on my blog are so faithful I am stoked to know that you still find some value in those words of a broken man. I will say this these last few months have been really like a new beginning for me well actually the last couple of weeks. You see I was not very humble and the Lord decided to break me of that pride that I had in myself I thought that if I was good enough that I could accomplish whatever was put before me. And secondly that pride had caused me to place my faith in the wrong thing. I was in the sin of pride and making sacrifices to God that were not what He was wanting.

Psalm 51
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (esv)

As I spent a week working in Hawaii these verses were running in my mind and as I dealt with being broken I had such a Joy that I cannot even begin to describe what I felt. When someone realizes that they have placed there hope in... and not in Christ, whatever happens to you will not go as planned, it really matters what happens because your hope is in the wrong thing. When we place our hope in the One who has called us and not in... it will not matter what happens. Because our hope is in the One who NEVER fails.

Matt 6:33
Seek First the Kingdom of God and its Righteousness and all these things Shall Be Added unto you. (emphasis added)(esv)