Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Signal Jammed?

Much is made of prayer in the local church and for good reason, it is the direct line of communication we have with our creator. 

People often ask for prayers for sickness, grief, or troubles, they offer praises for all sorts of things such as new babies or for healing. But when we pray are we praying as effectively as we can? 

God is very much concerned about the condition of our hearts and when we come to him with often very pressing and valid requests we need to ensure that the lines of communication are clear and open. Meaning we need to be right before God.... 

Check it out -- 

I am sure that we could far more than this but for the sake of simplicity here are 7 conditions that hinder prayer as indicated in Scripture...

1. Known or un-confessed sin (Psalm 66:18; Isaiah 59:1-2

2. Rejecting the clearly revealed will of God (1 Sam. 8:18; Prov. 28:9)

3. Praying with the wrong motive (James 4:3)

4. Harboring idols (Ezekiel 14:3)

5. An unforgiving spirit (Mark 11:25-26)

6. Failure to respond to the needs of the poor (Prov. 21:13)

7. Domestic conflict (1 Peter 3:7)

When we pray it is important that we search our own hearts first - read these passages - God's not joking around with it... 

Let's change the world with prayer starting with our own hearts... 

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Two feet of Silver Dollars...

Week 5 we are looking at Judah’s blessing (Genesis 49:8-12) which is the clearest picture of the Messiah we have so far, Messianic prophecies were given throughout the Old Testament so we would recognize the Messiah when he came. Some told what he would do, some described his birth, others revealed what would happen to him at the hands of others. Many are details that could in no way be manipulated by a counterfeit.

There are between 350-450 Messianic prophecies found in the Old Testament All of which were foretold between 400 and 1,000 years before Christ was born. That’s a pretty impressive number. Now the really cool part. Jesus fulfilled them all! That adds some veracity to the claims he made about Himself, doesn’t it?

What’s the probability that one person (Jesus) could fulfill multiple prophecies?

Peter Stoner, Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College, with the help of 600 students, worked out the probability that one man could fulfill only eight prophecies. His numbers were widely reviewed by scientists and skeptics alike and found to be sound. The chance he came up with? One in 10 to the 17th power. That’s a one with seventeen zeros.

1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 – so One in One Hundred Quadrillion…that someone could fulfill 8 prophecies much less 300+

To help us wrap our brains around that figure, he provided this analogy:


Suppose that we take 10 to the 17th silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They’ll cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would’ve had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them in their own wisdom.

Hope to see you on Sunday when we look at this particular prophecy in more detail!

Friday, January 15, 2016

The Promise of Abraham

The last three weeks what did we see? God created a kingdom, and is the King. He created mankind to uniquely represent him in that kingdom however Adam and Eve rejected that call. As a result of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God’s perfect plan sin and death entered the picture. However God did not leave them without hope as we saw last week, God provided a plan for a redeemer.

This week we are going to see how that plan continues to unfold in scriptures specifically in the life of Abraham.

Genesis 11 we have the story of the Tower of Babel – up to this chapter in Genesis we have been focused the human race as a whole – setting the table for the understanding of a universal history. It is here in chapter 11 that history is contracted and becomes national. It isn’t the design of Scripture to record the famous deeds of all men everywhere, to trace the rise and fall of the kingdoms of the world, rather to unfold the spiritual dealings of God with man. The author of Genesis therefore, after marking the downward tendency of mankind, now calls attention to a man on who, God’s light had shined, who was to be the only hope of a world which had nearly perished in the ruins of its corruption.

God chose Abraham that He might make him a worthy ancestor of the children of faith, and the founder of a nation by means of which he was to illustrate the ways of His providence and grace.

The knowledge of God had nearly disappeared from the world it had been over 400 years since the last recorded communication from heaven… The call of Abraham was a spiritual revival – a fresh starting place in the religious history of mankind. 

Genesis 12:1-4

1 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives,
and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you,
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt,
and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.

Friday, January 08, 2016

Life as a screw up…

The last two weeks we’ve been looking at the picture of how God intended life to be. As he created it and declared it to be very good (Genesis 1:31). This week we are going to look at the result of mankind’s failure to adhere to God’s standard and God’s promise to defeat the Serpent through the seed of the woman… 

Adam and Eve were created with a purpose (Genesis 1:28) “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

This really should not have been at this point in time a difficult task as creation was remember “very good”.  In fact In Genesis 2:15-16 when God placed him in the garden to care for it he was only given one warning, not to eat of one single tree… The rest of the creation was at his fingertips Genesis 1:29-30 says that every green plant was given for food…

But as we see in this week’s passage man wasn’t satisfied. We are good at screwing up a good thing aren’t we? Guess it comes natural… Adam and Eve rejected God’s perfect plan for themselves and brought pain and destruction down on the rest of mankind for what seemed like eternity. When they fell they hid… They ran from God because they were scared…

But God wasn’t going to leave them without hope… And in Genesis 3:15 we have a blueprint for hope being introduced.

I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

It the midst of what looks like a very dark providence, God’s smiling face shines through in the most amazing way. Humanity may be cursed as a result of sin but God doesn’t leave them without hope. It was as if God was commuting their sentence even while he pronounced it…

The consequences of sin were serious and still are some 6000 years later… Pain in childbirth, relational conflict, toil in work, expulsion from the garden, and the worst of it death and separation from God…

But what a great God not allowing sing to have the last word!

This hostility was not some simple rivalry that would fade away and be forgotten over time nor would it be resolved quickly. Rather it would continue for many generations to come until eventually in God’s perfect time the true Son would deliver the final crushing blow to the head of the Serpent when he was hung on the cross.

As the prophecy of Genesis 3:15 unfolds in the early chapters of the Bible, we can see the themes for the rest of the redemptive story in action.  We can see God’s sovereign hand in all of it. You see all of Genesis 4-11, and really the rest of Scripture, is an outworking of Genesis 3:15.

While the hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent was a real lasting battle, the promise found in this very first proclamation of the good news was never in doubt.


God created a kingdom, and he is the King, but he made man to represent him in that kingdom. Adam and Eve rejected that call, which led to sin and death. But God promised to defeat the Serpent through the seed of the woman.

Friday, January 01, 2016

Made in ???

Where a product is grown or manufactured has become an important aspect of many people's lives - we want to know that the food we put on the table for our families is grown and handled in safe ways. Cars, electronics, clothes, medicine, if you see a made in the USA stamp on it more people are apt to trust the quality. All because of where it's made... 

Last week as we began by laying the foundation for our faith we looked at Genesis 1:31, God’s declaration that his creation, his kingdom was complete, and it was “very good.” God created a kingdom, and he is the King is where we left off but God’s creation doesn’t end with that. He made human beings to represent him in that Kingdom – Look at Genesis chapter 1 again, this time let’s look at verse 27-28:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Even though God had every right to rule his creation, God chose not to do it alone. Instead, he created Adam and Eve as the crowning achievement -- the pinnacle of His creation. Just as everything else in creation Adam and Eve were created for a specific role… to serve as his image bearers, or representatives, in creation.

When we stop for a moment to consider what it means to be made in the image of God, it doesn’t take long to get lost in a maze of theological discussion – this is a major point of contention and has been debated by scholars for centuries thus we don’t have time to unpack all the different arguments here but there are a couple of key options we need to consider this morning.

Some argue that the image of God is primarily related to our ability to use reason and intellect. Some argue it is tied to our ability to relate to God and our fellow man. Others say that the image of God is tied to the task and mission that God gave to Adam and Eve. In reality it is most likely a combination; our image is found in both the characteristics AND the relational aspects that we share with God.

In the ancient world, an image of one of the pagan gods would be placed in a temple in order to represent that god. While it’s not a perfect parallel between that pagan practice and the concept of the image of God, we could say that we too are God’s representatives here on earth. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:20a “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us...”

This doesn’t mean that we are to walk around worshiping each other – instead, it means that we are able to fulfill the commission that he has given to us found in Genesis 1:27-28…

By being created in the image of God Adam and Eve were able to do what God had called them (and us) to do…

But are we the image God made us to be? Can we fulfill our mission if we are living in rebellion against the Creator?

Hope to see you Sunday as we explore what it means to be created in the image of our Creator!