Divided Kingdom

2 Samuel 2:4b-3:1

Welcome back to 2 Samuel and this second message in our second series on the life of David, the second king of Israel. Last time Carl reintroduced us to this amazing man and his heart to obey and honor God. When David was a youth, God had chosen him for his purposes and sent the prophet Samuel to anoint him king over the people of Israel. But, as we saw, his path to the throne was full of ups and downs and twists and turns, many of which were caused by Saul, who was jealously clinging to the remnants of his own regal authority after being rejected by God for going his own way. David had helped and served King Saul in several ways, but Saul perceived him as a rival and pursued him relentlessly to try to get rid of him. However, with God protecting and encouraging him, David had managed to stay one step ahead of Saul and had actually grown stronger, despite being on the run.

David: Kingdom Builder Introduction

David: Kingdom Builder Introduction

Welcome! Once again, we are having church via video conferencing, in our “new normal.” You may remember that before our world took this sudden dramatic shift to social distancing, isolation, and all the strangeness that goes along with this, we were doing a series on the book of Matthew. We interrupted this series for a set of 3 messages addressing the new world we found ourselves in, and following this, on Palm Sunday we had a message on Christ in the Passover, and last Sunday we had our Easter message along with the world premiere of the movie spectacular, Rogue Twelve.

 

Well, today we begin a new series on David, based on the book of 2 Samuel. You may be wondering what happened to the rest of the Matthew series. Well, the plan all along was to only go through the first half of Matthew, up through Chapter 12, and to finish Matthew in a separate series at a later date. We ended up making it through Chapter 9 of Matthew. We have decided to make the three planned final messages of the current Matthew series become the first three messages of the later series. Matthew 10 will need to wait. Ironically, this passage is all about Jesus sending out the twelve into various towns throughout Israel. Israel is currently in a lockdown just like us. You could say that Jesus’ disciples will just have to wait before going on their journey, just like us.

In any case, as we know, and as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 states, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” And so let us pray that God gives us ears to hear and hearts to apply the timeless truths of 2 Samuel.

Eye Witnesses

Eye Witnesses

Good Morning Saints. Under normal circumstances on Easter Morning we would greet each person at the door of the church or in the church parking lot with the statement “He has risen!” and the person coming in would respond “He has risen indeed!.  However, as you know these are not normal circumstances. Never the Less I still want to say to you all “He is Risen!”

Let’s Pray!

Christ in the Passover

Christ in the Passover

Welcome! Months ago, before our world was turned upside down with this virus, we had planned to do a Passover Seder as a church together. We had chosen today as the date to do this, as it is fitting with our celebration of Palm Sunday today and Easter one week away.

Well, the world has changed, and although it is easy enough for us to partake of communion together even though we are physically separated (as we did last week), I felt that it would be completely inappropriate to ask you to hunt around town for the various elements of the Passover ceremony and meal so that we could do something similar to celebrate a Passover Seder.

But I really didn’t want to drop the topic altogether, so today’s message will be a little different from normal as we talk about the elements of a Passover ceremony, looking at the original experience as described in Exodus as well as the modern ceremony. Most importantly, we will look at how both the ancient and modern expressions of Passover point remarkably to Jesus Christ. That the modern Passover points to Christ is quite remarkable, even miraculous, because it is the result of modifications and adjustments made by people who professed not to believe in Christ! How has this happened? Why has this happened? I believe it is because God still loves the Jewish people and the Holy Spirit continues to draw them, to whisper to them, and although it may be possible to reject Him, it is impossible to truly run away from Him (a lesson that Adam and Eve learned in the Garden).