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!

Philippians 3:12
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

This verse has a special place in my heart, as Christians we are far from perfect and yet we strive to be like our Savior Jesus who was. This is what Paul is acknowledging with this verse, he knows that he has a ways to go and also that we acheive perfection when we are finally with Christ. What we should do is strive to make our faith our own and not that of our parents, friends, or pastors. 

We get saved and accept Jesus as our Savior, that is the first step, we have new life in Him. This is what saves us from our sin allowing us to spend eternity with Jesus. The second is called sanctification, this is what happens as Christians when we become more like Christ. Sanctification is a word that is used for setting apart. What it means is that as we grow in our faith we become more like Jesus, we become more holy. But as the Apostle Paul was sharing with the Philippian church here is that it is a work in progress, we need to press in, continually seeking Jesus as it is He who makes us more like Him. How does this look practically. One thing to think about is our responses that we give, one day we might get angry with someone because they slighted us, and we read in our Bible about anger. Proverbs 15:1 that a "soft answer turns away wrath". We see here that God doesn't like it when we get angry and lose our tempers. We also see in Galatians 5:22-25 that the one of the fruits of the Spirit is gentleness and you cannot be gentle when your angry. Now how to we change. One of the ways that that the closer we draw to Christ the easier it will be to let those things that we had to deal with in the past go. It is that growth. We want to please Jesus and bring honor to Him so we make an effort to not do those things that He doesn't want us to do.

 

Look at the last half our this verse. "Christ Jesus has made me His own". Here's the thing we just talked about how we are to become more like Christ, we need to remember that we cannot do this on our own, and once we accept Jesus as our Savior we have a helper in the Holy Spirit

John 16:7
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

 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