All the Sermons

Deuteronomy 2:7 , John 14:6 Key Verse:  Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 “The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.  He has watched over your journey through this vast desert.  These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.” (Deuteronomy 2:7) In the Exodus, God provided a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day to guide them. He gave them laws to live by and food to eat.  He provided wisdom, encouragement, guidance and strength.  Now, through His Holy Spirit, He guides those who are His sheep into His will by showing them the way, in truth, to eternal life. All that God was for His chosen then, He is still for us today.  We have trouble discerning His presence at times, but He is just as real for us now as He was for Israel then. In this statement, “I am the way, and the truth and the lif...

Exodus 3:7-8 A,  John 11:25-26 Key Verse: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, Even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. John 11:25-26 Our God is a God of hope. He sees His people in their suffering and offers hope to those who have none. The people in Israel had been in slavery, in Egypt, for a long time. They had been away from the land of Canaan for more than 400 years. They had not come to Egypt to become slaves. They had come to Egypt originally to preserve their lives in a time of famine. Over time, however, like the frog in the pot, their refuge enslaved them and made their existence a bitter cross to bear. They cried out to the Lord in their anguish. They remembered the promise that He had made to their Father Abraham and they clung to the hope that, even after so long, God would still hear and rescue. We see that their hope is rewarded. God tells Moses that He has indee...

Numbers 10:11-13 , 33-36 , Ezekiel 34 , John 10:11-15 Key Verse:  “I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me.” John 10:14 Earlier in John 10, Jesus had described the false shepherds. “All who ever came before Me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”  (John 10:8)  In Ezekiel 34, the Lord describes exactly what those bad shepherds did. They behaved selfishly, caring little for the sheep, and as a result, the flock of Israel was ruined. The Shepherd image that Jesus is referring to here has more than one meaning. First, we see God as a physical shepherd as He leads His people from one place to another in their wanderings in the wilderness during the Exodus. In fact, the journey to the Promised Land can be seen as the shepherd leading his flock to good pasture. This is how we usually see a shepherd, as a leader and protector of the sheep. However, in Ezekiel, we also see the shepherd as a spiritual leader, such as...

Exodus 14:19-20 , John 10:7-9 Key Verse:  “Therefore,” Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.” John 10:7 This verse reminds me of a little chorus that we used to sing in Sunday school.   “One door and only one and yet its sides are two. Inside and outside on which side are you?  One door and only one and yet its sides are two.  I’m on the inside on which side are you? A gate, or a door, is useful for two things.  It can admit those with whom we wish to keep company and keep out those with whom we do not wish to associate.  The gate serves as a filter of protection for our lives. We see this again in the Exodus from Egypt.  We talked yesterday about the pillar of cloud and fire that gave light to the people of Israel, but plunged the Egyptians into darkness.  Yet, this pillar also served as a door, a barrier, keeping the people of Israel safe by keeping the Egyptians away.  “God is our refuge and st...

Exodus 13:21-22 ,  John 8:12 ,  2 Corinthians 4:7-12 Key Verse:  "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows Me will never walk in Darkness, but will have the light of life." John 8:12 Again, we have already visited this theme earlier and in those earlier messages we described how Jesus, as the light, reveals God's truth and love and also how we are to reflect that truth and love, in our own lives, to the world around us.  Today however, I wish to continue exploring how God demonstrated this concept in the wilderness, as a part of His sketch to Moses and then revealed it fully in Christ. Here we see God not only as a light to reveal truth and love, but as a physical guide for life itself.  The Children of Israel saw before them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  They could physically see that they were never away from His presence.  This is what makes their sin even more amazing!  They could see God...

Exodus 16:14-15 , John 6:35 -&- 48-59 Key Verse:  Then Jesus declared:  "I am the bread of life.  He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty." John 6:35 "What is it," the Children of Israel asked, when they saw the little flakes lying on the desert sand.  Similarly, the Jews said, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?"  They were as puzzled as their ancestors about this "Bread from Heaven." First Jesus gave water and now He is bread.  He makes the same claim about both:  His water and His bread give eternal life.  We don't need to work hard at drawing an analogy in this case.  Jesus draws it for us. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever."  (John 6:51)  He is like the manna that miraculously came down from heaven and sustained His people for forty years in the wilderness.  This amazing food w...

Exodus 17:1-6 , Numbers 20:2-13 & John 4:13-14 Key Verse:  "Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give will become, in that person, a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14 While Jesus does not directly say here, "I am the water of life," I have chosen to begin here, because of how God provided water for His people, in the wilderness.   We need water to live.  A person can go for days, or even weeks without food because the body is capable of storing nourishment within the fat cells, as a reserve.  However, there is no reserve system like this for liquid.  We use what we drink.  Water hydrates and flushes impurities from the body.  If we retain it, we become unhealthy very quickly.  Water is our most basic and constant need. There were two different incidents in the wilderness journey in which the Lord provided water for His people:  Rephidim (or Horeb) and Meribah....

Exodus 3:14-15 ,  John 1:1-3 , &  8:58 ,  1 John 1:1-5  &  Revelation 1:8  &  17-19 Key Verse:  "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." Revelation 1:8 Note that except for the passage in Exodus, all of the passages mentioned above were penned by the Apostle John, who always referred to himself as, "the one Jesus loved."  All of us should say the same.  It was of the utmost importance to John to establish the divinity of Jesus.  Jesus was not merely a man, empowered by the Holy Spirit with special powers and abilities.  He was not merely God appearing in human form.  Jesus was fully God and fully man.  "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  (John 1:2) It may seem that we are staying too long on this point, but that is because this is the main point of the entire gospel.  Jesus was and is and who is to come....

Exodus 3:1-15 Key Verse: God said to Moses, "I Am who I Am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites:  "I Am has sent me to you." Exodus 3:14 Okay, I'm sure that at today's reading, you are scratching your head and wondering if I have lost track of the subject matter altogether. This is meant to be an exercise in helping us to get to know Jesus better. Why in the world are we back on Moses again? We discussed this subject once before as Jesus was sparring with the Jewish leadership.  Jesus had really made them angry by referring to Himself as, "I Am," a name that in their Jewish minds could only mean the Holy God of the burning bush, "JYWH."   Yet, we now know for certain that Jesus was speaking the truth. It's understandable, in human terms that the leaders did not recognize Him. When God told Moses, "I am that I am." He let the statement stand on its own. He gave no description in words, yet, His actions s...

Psalm 49 Key Verse:  "But God will redeem my life from the grave; He will surely take me to Himself." Psalm 49:15 "The ransom of a life is costly, no payment is ever enough that he should live on forever and not see decay."  (Ps.49:8-9)  Life is precious, a priceless commodity.  We can't create it, call it forth or lengthen it.  We can only destroy it.  No matter how wealthy one may be, in the end, our lives aren't really under our control.  In the span of time, our lives are like grass, young and green with growth, and easily withered and dead, all in a brief moment that only seems like forever to us while we are living it. Christ, however, is not us.  He became like us, He became visible to us, "the image of the invisible God," ( Col. 1:15 ) but He is not just a man, He is all God and all man.  Unlike us, He is eternal.  He is without beginning or end.  Only a life that valuable, that beyond us, could do what we could...

Colossians 1:15-24 Key Verse: He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17 When we began our journey almost a year ago, it took us 22 days before Jesus even began to arrive on the scene.  I'm sure that many of you were becoming impatient as day followed day and the old familiar Christmas story still wasn't being introduced. I wanted to lay a foundation to explain our need for Jesus from the beginning of time. Now, I suppose, for many of you, again you are questioning what else there could possibly be to say? We've covered Christ's birth and life, his death and resurrection. We've colored in the background with the help of writings from the prophets and the Epistles: What else needs to be said? If Jesus were simply an historic figure then your questioning would be correct. Jesus lived, died, rose again and ascended to heaven. That's more than what a human life consists of already. As we already know, however, Jesu...

Acts 2:37-47 Key Verse: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Acts 2:38 Repentance must come before revival!  It is important to clean out the old to make room for the new.  When the old is gone, however and the new has come, what an amazing gift is bestowed on those who would receive it! Jesus had told His disciples in the upper room, "By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  ( John 13:35 )  This was no longer a rule, however.  When the Holy Spirit came, love was written on men's hearts.  Love was no longer a rule for people to follow in hopes of pleasing God.  No!  It was a response in gratitude for the fact that God had forgiven completely.  The unmerciful servants became merciful toward their fellow man.  Love became natural and spontaneous because the old way...

2 Corinthians 5:11-21 Key Verse:  "If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul may have written this passage of scripture to the Corinthians, but this could just as easily have served as part of Peter's first sermon on the day of Pentecost.  It puts forth so clearly why Christ came to this earth.  His ministry was not one of judgment, but to create a means by which sinful man could be reconciled with a Holy God. "Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." ( Acts 2:36 ) Yet Paul says: "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor. 5:21)  All this is to say, man may have done the deed, but it was all done with God's approval. It was God's plan all along, He was in control, so that we could be renewed. In being renewed, a new creat...

Jeremiah 31:31-34 & 2 Corinthians 3:1-3 Key Verse: "You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."  2 Corinthians 3:3 When God first called Abram, out of Ur of the Chaldeans , He called Abram into a relationship.  He separated Abram from everything that he knew, friends, family, familiar lands and he asked Abram to trust Him. We think of Peter stepping out of the boat as a big act of faith, but Abram's stepping out of everything familiar was no less spectacular. For twenty-five years, Abram learned how to walk with God until God finally fulfilled His promise to Abram and gave him Isaac, his son. Abram's trust was secure enough in Jehovah that, when God then asked him to sacrifice that same promised Son, Abram, now Abraham, demonstrated his trust through his act of submissive obedience. As generations came and wen...

Psalm 16 , Acts 2:25-35 Key Verse: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." Psalm 16:11 What a difference in the meaning of this Psalm depending upon who is speaking it.  When we see it as a poem or hymn written by David, the man after God's own heart, we see it as a testimony, by a man, of God's faithfulness through some difficult times.  David says, "I have set the Lord always before me.  Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."  (Ps. 16:8)  We can understand David in human terms because we ourselves are human and need the reassurance that the Lord is with us and guiding us. Peter, however, gives this Psalm a whole new meaning when he applies it to Jesus. Jesus can relate to our human frailty and dependence on God, but Peter calls us to look deeper and ascribe these words to Jesus directly as applying to Jesus' own situation. We se...

This Was Worth Waiting For!   Acts 2:1-41 Key Verse:  "Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."  Acts 2:36   When Jesus was crucified, Pilate had a sign placed above the cross, written in Latin, Greek and Aramaic, proclaiming His crime: "King of the Jews!" ( John 19:19-22 ) Now, at Pentecost, Babble was undone and each heard in his own language, "God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:36B) In other words, Pilate had been correct. Now, the whole world knew it.   What a sermon Peter preached! He does not hold back from the truth of who Jesus was and is. He also states boldly who is responsible for what was done to Him. He lays out the sin of the Jewish people in terms that cannot be denied.  Yet, Peter's sermon is not simply a gloom and doom, wringing of the hands type sermon without hope. No, he also proclaims the assurance to the...