I Am Bowed Down

Psalm 38
 
Let’s pray before we look into Psalm 38,

Lord Jesus, thank you for including Psalm 38 in Your Word.  Sometimes we do feel far away from You.  We allow our sin to separate us from You.  We desire to draw near to You.  I pray that You would speak to us this morning.  Teach us to enjoy sweet fellowship with You.  We ask this now in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

I happened to give the message on Psalm 16 back in January.  I remember I complimented David for setting the example of not dwelling on his circumstances.  In the first verse of Psalm 16, David cries out to the Lord to keep him safe, but from there on, David praises God.  It is a good thing to “rejoice always.”  That is a clear exhortation from Philippians 4.

But Psalm 38 is an anguished and even desperate plea.  So, if the right thing to do is to “rejoice always,” why did God allow Psalm 38?  I think it’s here in part because it is real, it is genuine, and it is honest.  We are told to cast our cares on him because he cares for us.  Sometimes our cares are so big that we can barely articulate them much less speak of them with praise.

Failure and Preparation

Numbers

Welcome! Today we come to our third message in the series entitled Law and Grace, focused on looking at the Old Testament law and then the gospel of grace as explained in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Two weeks ago we looked at Exodus, and last week we looked at Leviticus. I want to start by giving you a quick summary of what we have talked about so far.

Both Exodus and Leviticus combine a sequential telling of the story of the Israelites’ history and God’s progressive revelation of His Law for the Israelites. God’s first command to the Israelites was to celebrate a new holiday called the Passover, commemorating God’s delivery of the Israelites from Egypt. He gave them this command, telling them to do it every year, even as He was preparing them for the night in which the firstborn of the Egyptians would die. The Israelites were released and then crossed through the miraculously parted sea. Then they were led by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and given water and the manna, and then reached Sinai. There they were given the Ten Commandments along with other regulations. On multiple occasions during these events the Israelites grumbled and complained against their God, and they even made an idol to worship while the Ten Commandments were first being given to Moses, who smashed the tablets when he saw what his people were doing. Moses went back up the mountain and received a second set, and when he came down, he began instructing the people in what God required of them. 

Sacrifice and Sanctification

Leviticus

Welcome! Today we continue our series entitled Law and Grace, looking at the book of Leviticus as a whole. As I explained last week, the reason we are going through the Law is that it helps us to better understand grace, and in the second half of this series we will go through the book of Galatians, using what we have learned in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to better understand and appreciate the incredible gift of grace we have received through Christ.

Leviticus is a big book; we could spend many weeks exploring it. My approach this week is to first give a general overview of the book, and then say a little about each chapter, focusing on what people of the Law really had to do and, also, explaining how these things are hints of Christ.

The name “Leviticus” comes from the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament into Greek made a few hundred years before Christ. Leviticus means “of the Levites,” and the Levites were set apart to serve as tabernacle caretakers and priests. A significant portion of Leviticus focuses on what the Levites were to do in their service to God.

Redemption and the Tabernacle

 Exodus

Welcome! I am excited to begin a new series called Law and Grace. This series really has two parts. The first part focuses on the Law, also called more specifically the Mosaic Law, based on scriptures in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the second part focuses on Grace, based on the book of Galatians. You may wonder why these two topics are paired together. It is because Galatians becomes much richer when you better understand what it is talking about when it refers to the Law. Indeed, this is not just true of Galatians but of many New Testament books, but Galatians specifically, I think, has some wonderful truths open up when you really understand the Law.

This month and a little bit into the next, we begin our first part, on the Law. Today we focus on those parts of the Law given in the book of Exodus. What comes to your mind when you think about the Law? For many Christians, I think the whole issue of what we are to do with the Law is kind of fuzzy. Clearly, Christians do not keep the entire Law today. Unless you completely abstain from pork, only eat bread that is unleavened during the Passover, go to Israel annually for the feast of Ingathering, bring animals to Jewish priests to be sacrificed, and so on, you do not keep the Law.

He Heals

John 4:43-5:15

Good morning, welcome.  Today, we will continue our study of the book of John near the end of chapter 4.  Before we start that passage, I thought we might take a couple of minutes to review what has occurred in the previous chapters so far.  Chapter 1 begins with the beautiful testimony of Jesus as the Word of God and that “in Him was life, and that life was the light of man.”  Then, we were introduced to John the Baptist who came “to testify concerning the light, so that through him all men might believe.”  John the Baptist is not the light and he denies openly to the people that he is not the Christ.  Then, when Jesus arrives the next day, John declares, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!  This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

One of the attributes of the Bible which I marvel at again and again is its truthfulness.  When you read the Word of God, there is no feeling that something is being concealed about the lives of the men and women.  If I were writing a book about heroes, about the chosen prophets, the spokesmen of God, I would try to leave out their warts and weaknesses.  But the Bible seems to go the opposite direction.  It is almost as if God went out of His way to include the weaknesses of the men and women of the Bible.

He Fills Our Thirst

John 4:1-42

Welcome! Today we continue our series from the book of John, digging in to Chapter 4. Last week we looked at John Chapter 3. As a reminder, we talked about Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish scholar and leader Nicodemus. Recall that Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, a statement that bewildered Nicodemus. Jesus went on to tell him that man must be born of water and the Spirit if he wishes to enter the kingdom of God. He also told Nicodemus the heart of the gospel, from John 3:16 and 17: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

Last week we also saw John the Baptist confronted with the fact that his ministry was waning while Jesus’ was growing. John’s beautiful response began with saying, “A man can only receive what is given him from heaven.” He described himself as the friend of the bridegroom, a specific role in Jewish weddings of that time, and he described himself as full of joy in knowing that Jesus had come, and that his (John’s) role as a forerunner, as preparer, as announcer of Jesus was coming to a close.

He Brings New Life

John 3:1-36

Welcome! Today we continue our journey through the book of John, going through Chapter 3. This chapter includes perhaps the most well-known verse in the New Testament, John 3:16, which says, For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

As we dig into Chapter 3, I think it will help to first review a few things from the second half of the previous chapter. Just before the Passover, Jesus had gone with His disciples into Jerusalem, and there He drove the moneychangers and people selling animals for sacrifice out of the temple area, saying “Get out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” This of course created quite a stir, and Jesus no doubt was noticed by not only those in the marketplace, but also many of the people gathering for the Passover as well as the Pharisees and teachers of the Law.

That My Heart May Sing

Psalm 30

It’s easy to get sidetracked when you read the Bible.  You can study the Bible, memorize it, or learn everything about it in the original Hebrew or Greek.  You can systematically categorize every doctrine found in the passage and learn how to refute every objection that is brought up against it.  But we need to careful that we don’t forget the number one reason we read the Bible.  Jesus rebuked the Jews that had been persecuting Him by saying, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” John 5:39-40 (NIV ’84).

 In Jesus day there were people who had memorized the whole Old Testament.  They could recite the Bible forwards and backwards.  They could articulate their theology better than anyone else, and yet they only knew the Bible, they didn’t know God.  They thought they had eternal life because they had studied the Bible but they needed to know God in order to have eternal life.  So, our number one goal in reading the Bible is to know God.

As we read Psalm 30 I want you to take note of anything that you learned about God.  I want you to underline whatever grabs your attention.  You might find a verse that talks about what God is like.  You might find a verse that talks about what God has done or what He will do.  Just highlight anything that you can learn about God from this passage.

He Cleanses

John 2:12-25 

Before we start, I would like to take a minute to pray and ask God to really come here and fill this room and fill our hearts that we might be blessed today through His word.

We thank you, Oh thank You Lord, for our salvation for the wonderful gospel Lord.  The good news that our sins are paid for by Your death on the cross and we don't have to work our way to Heaven; Lord, that You have provided a way for us to put our trust in You and enjoy salvation for all eternity.  God, I pray that if anyone is here today that doesn't know You, that You are not Lord of their life, Lord I pray that they would be moved today to enter into a permanent relationship with You from now through all eternity.  Lord Your word is given away free, I think of the verse, "That buy truth and don't sell it."  Lord we don't want to sell truth here today we want to give it away freely.  I pray that You would bless the hearts of Your people.  Help us Lord be spiritually encouraged and strengthened for Your task at hand.  For reaching the world with the gospel, Lord, for seeing Your kingdom come.  Seeing Your will be done here on earth as it is in Heaven.  I thank You Lord for your word.  I thank You for this time here this morning and pray You would bless it.  In Your name Jesus, amen.

I had a couple of thoughts, as you know we are continuing the series in the book of John.  Carl started last week and he got up to verse 11 in John chapter 2 I think. So I am going to take John chapter 2 verse 12 through the end of the chapter, verse 25.  We only have 13 verses to go through so, hopefully they will be pretty simple and everyone will understand them and we will get out early, but I can't promise that.

He Reveals

John 1:35-2:1

Welcome! Today we continue our exploration of the wonderful book of John. If you recall, we spent the month of January looking at the first two-thirds of the first chapter, what you might call the grand re-beginning of the Bible, that opens with the famous words “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” The Word, that is, Jesus, was there in Genesis. He was there when God said, “Let us make man in our own image.” And He was there with God, and as God, through all of the historical events recorded in the Old Testament. And He was there with God and as God in the hearts and minds of the prophets and poets and everyone else who contributed to the Old Testament Scripture, led word for word by the Spirit of God.