Purity vs Infidelity

What is purity?

According to "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary" purity is defined as "the quality or state of being pure" and when a substance is referred to as pure, it can also be known as, " spotless, unmixed with any other matter, characterized by no appreciable alteration, marked by chastity, and containing nothing that does not properly belong." Some synonyms of pure are: innocent, guiltless, unblemished, chaste, clean, uncorrupted, unmixed, and genuine. We here people use the term pure gold when speaking of the value of this precious metal.

Even though the value of gold has risen over time, the value of spiritual purity has lowered in our world over time. People continually discover new ways to compromise their spiritual purity and find ways to attempt to justify it to themselves and others.

Wisdom vs. Folly

We are going to continue the topical series on the book of Proverbs that Carl introduced last week. This is a topical series because if you read the Proverbs, it is kind of like reading the dictionary. There are many different topics in a single chapter. The neat thing about that is by reading a single chapter of Proverbs, you are exposed to wisdom applied to a wide spectrum of your life. So, God allowed Proverbs in the best possible way. However, for a message like today, it would be a challenge to go line by line through Proverbs. So, we are going to take a topical approach looking at wisdom and folly.

Wisdom versus Folly. What a title! It is an epic battle isn’t it? Wisdom squares off against Folly in a fight to the finish. Could you imagine?

In this corner, shining brighter than the dawn, radiant in truth, formed by God Himself before the foundations of the world, we have Wisdom. And in this corner, lurking in the shadows, bringing only punishment, causing wounds to fester, is Folly.

Introduction to Proverbs

Good morning! Today we begin a new series on the Book of Proverbs. Today we are going to begin by talking about the book in general and look at the opening verses of the book.

To start, what is a proverb? It is some kind of a saying. It is usually short, and it is meant to make you think and reflect. The proverb is supposed to teach you something, share something of wisdom.

One place you see proverbs in the world today is inside fortune cookies. Did you know that fortune cookies are based on a Japanese cookie not a Chinese one, although the modern kinds of messages in the cookies is a distinctly American custom only going back to the late 1800s. Fortune cookies are almost unheard of in China. About 3 billion fortune cookies are made per year, and almost all of them are consumed in the United States.

The Resurrection of Love

He is risen! Good morning. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, risen from the dead, a historical fact as sure as any you have ever heard. People saw Him. They spoke with Him, and He spoke with them. They touched Him, and He touched them. He was not a ghost. He was not a figment of their imagination. He was real. He was flesh and blood, and yet, somehow, more. I want to start this morning by reading the account in the gospel of Mark.

It was the third hour when they crucified Him. The written notice of the charge against Him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” – Mark 15:25-30

If you do not know what irony is, this passage is a good example. Jesus was going to destroy the “temple” and build it in three days, but the “temple” wasn’t the mere building down there in Jerusalem; the place that had been the location of the Holy of Holies, the Holy Spirit. The “temple” was another location of God, the body of Jesus Christ. And no, it wasn’t that He couldn’t come down from the cross; it was that He wouldn’t. He had come to Earth for this very reason, and He was not going to stop. To come down from that cross might have saved Himself, but it would have lost the whole world. Jesus had come to lay down His life, to pay for their sins.

The Death of Love

I want to tell two stories today. One story is about me. The other story is about Jesus.

Last Sunday, a few of us were talking after church. We were marveling at God’s grace toward us in spite of ourselves. Do you know what I mean? Every Christian can tell how they stubbornly sinned and rejected God, but He kept on loving us, He kept on calling us, He kept on sending people after us, until we accepted His love. In spite of whatever we might have done, God wants us to turn to him because he loves every one of us.

Bob Schmitt mentioned that we should put out on the sign in front of the church for everyone to see, “Sinners Anonymous, All are welcome.” The reason is that when we’ve been walking with the Lord for a while, sometimes others can’t really see how the Lord has cleaned us up and put our lives back together. The truth of the matter is that in every single believer, in every single Christian, in every single Christ-follower, there is a messed up sinner who was saved by the grace of God. Any good thing that is in our lives now, any love that we can express to others, any kindness or sacrifice that we can make, it comes from the love of God.

Power Revealed

2 Peter 3
 
Welcome! Today we are going to talk about all kinds of interesting things: mortality and immortality, nuclear particles and forces, the nature of time… like I said, all kinds of interesting things! To start, I would like to ask you to raise your hand if you know you are going to die. Well, this is kind of a trick question, because it tests what you really believe about the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. If your first response was to automatically raise your hand and think, "Of course I am going to die!" then this reveals that the second coming of Christ is either something you don’t truly believe or it is something you think will happen in some far away future. Well, if this describes you, I hope that today’s message from 2 Peter 3 will give you the biblical way to think about these things.

We simply don’t know when Jesus will return. It may well happen before we die, in which case we will avoid death. But there is one person who absolutely knew he would die before Jesus’ return. Do you know who this is? It is Peter! During Jesus’ meeting with Peter after the resurrection, the meeting in which Jesus restored Peter and called on him to take care of Jesus’ sheep, to feed Jesus’ lambs, Jesus told Peter this:

Power Corrupted

2 Peter 2

Welcome! Last week and the week before we looked at II Peter Chapter 1 which exhorted us to take radical steps in growing our character. Two weeks ago, we learned that God has equipped us with everything we need to live for Him, and we learned that living for Him means, in part, being like a choir-master, actively striving to assemble a choir of “heroic” goodness, knowledge applied to life, Olympic athlete-like self-control, Winston Churchill-like perseverance, godliness based on the continual worship of God, brotherly kindness based on deep caring for one another, and agape, love that delights to sacrifice self for the sake of others.

The Power of Grace

Welcome! Today we will have a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and then a sharing time. Last week we began to explore the book of II Peter and went in detail into Chapter 1. The chapter exhorts us to take radical steps in growing our character. Today I want to talk about God’s grace and how grace is related to the ideas of this chapter. I will start by rereading the first part of II Peter 1 and summarizing the ideas we talked about last time.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. – II Peter 1:1-4

Divine Power

 2 Peter 1

Welcome! I encourage you to continue praying the secret prayer. Today we begin a journey into the book of II Peter. The message this week is entitled Divine Power. In my opinion, power is a unifying sort of theme throughout the book of II Peter, and we will touch on this as we go through the series.

This series was prayerfully planned several months ago, and it was then that I first saw this theme of power running through II Peter. As you all know, the world has been witness to a different kind of power in the last week and a half. I looked up information on the Richter scale to see just how powerful a 9 point earthquake really is, to get some kind of equivalent measure that I could compare it to. I found that a 9.0 earthquake has the energy release equivalent to 476 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had an energy release equivalent to about 15 kilotons of TNT. In other words, the recent earthquake in Japan had the energy release of more than 30,000 nuclear bombs of the type that destroyed Hiroshima.

Living to Serve

1 Peter 4:12-5:14

Welcome! Today we finish up our look into the Book of I Peter, focusing on the end of Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5. I will start by backing up a few verses and looking at the verses we ended with last week:

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. – I Peter 4:12-15