As we have been studying Leviticus I hope it has become increasingly clear that God is holy and calls his people to be holy. This call to holiness and sanctification certainly involves how we are to worship God. But does it involve our day to day activities? Does living for God extend to what we eat or how we dress, or how we behave? Well the easy answer is yes. But why? In our midweek Bible study we have been in the book of Galatians, where Paul is defending the gospel and telling them not to return under the yoke of the law. We have been set free and are indeed free in Christ. But there are two ditches on either side of the road that we must avoid. We must avoid legalism, where you must do X in order to stay saved, and the other is antinomianism, where there is no room for God’s law. Both of these are mistakes. As we turn to our text we are going to be discussing the dietary laws God issued to the Israelites. Are we still bound by these laws? Most importantly, what is the main concept in the giving of these laws? Let’s find out.
Dangerous Jobs. Fatal Mistakes. Worker injuries. Electricians are killed when they mistakenly touch live wires. Some folks have lost limb or life while operating heavy machinery or manufacturing equipment. Doctors caring for patients on the front lines combatting disease such as Ebola, SARS, MERS and now Covid-19, have contracted the disease themselves and died. Nurses and other healthcare workers make mistakes with needles and have contracted HIV, or other infectious blood diseases. Pilots and their passengers have been killed because of mistakes or negligence. I remember watching a show about plane crashes and in this one particular crash, investigators discovered from the black box conversations that the pilot was drunk and unable to properly decipher his instrument panel and thinking the plane was about to stall put the plane into a nosedive killing everyone on board. Even Pastors have been killed. Not that our job is crazy dangerous, at least not in our part of the world. I had a co-worker whose husband was a pastor and he was killed in the baptistry; electrocuted by the microphone. Deadly mistakes happen. Some jobs are inherently more dangerous, and/or have the potential hazard of the worker getting killed. When you work in one of these jobs, you must always be on the alert, because a small mistake, error in judgment, can mean the difference between life and death. So what does that have to do with us this morning, you might ask? Let’s find out together as we turn to our text.
Bible Text: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18 | Preacher: Pastor Arnold | Series: 2 Thessalonians | 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18 A Warning Against Idle Brethren
Bible Text: 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 | Preacher: Pastor Arnold | Series: 2 Thessalonians | 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 The Faithfulness and Steadfastness of Jesus
There’s a new series out that I have enjoyed very much called The Chosen. You can see it on Pureflix or on youtube. It’s very well done and captures some of the historical picture during Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus indeed chooses his diciples. They did not seek to become disciples. They in fact had their lives turned upside down and started over in a sense. And that’s who we are as well. We are chosen. We move from death to life. He chooses us. He then calls us. Calls us to faith. And just as the disciples would learn, we must then stand for the faith. Stand for what we believe, as taught by Jesus. We don’t get to make stuff up. We follow the Master, the Rabbi, the Teacher. No student is above his teacher, and the same holds for us his disciples. but we must remain faithful, because we have been chosen and called to do so.
Sound the alarm! I think I’m losing my mind! Have things ever been so out of control in your life you just want to pull the covers over your head and throw in the towel? Have you ever panicked about missing an appointment only to find out that it was scheduled on a different day? And you wonder how you could be so silly to get so worked up about such a thing. Stressing over nothing. Sometimes when you don’t have sufficient information or the information you have is wrong, we can get worked up, stressed out, become anxious over nothing. And this is what the church in Thessalonica was facing. And as we will find today, Paul wrote to encourage them, and to warn them and remind them that God is sovereign and all powerful. I think it’s good for us to be reminded in the same way. It’s good for us to be reminded of key doctrines and most importantly, the gospel.
Bible Text: 2 Thessalonians 1 | Preacher: Pastor Arnold | Series: 2 Thessalonians | 2 Thessalonians 1 The Coming Judgment of Jesus
As Easter is fast approaching, the Sunday before is Palm Sunday which begins the Passion Week, or Holy Week. A great way to spend this week is daily in the Word, read about the events that took place. You can find these in Matthew chapters 21-27; Mark chapters 11-15; Luke chapters 19-23; and John chapters 12-19. This morning I am going to touch on the first two events from the gospel of Luke, The Triumphal Entry and Jesus Weeping over Jerusalem.