Archive for the ‘Love’ Tag
Once Greedy, Now Generous!
Bible Verse: 2 Cor 8:1, 2 Cor 9:6-15
Introduction:
The grace of God works deeply into us so that it can also work out of us to benefit others. Grace
hoarded is grace squandered; in fact, it may be grace misunderstood or even unexperienced. God’s
gracious gifts are meant to be held loosely with generosity, not held onto tightly with greed. Our
motivation for living with generosity comes from God’s exceeding generosity to us in giving us the
fullness of His Son despite our total spiritual bankruptcy. Because we have been given the eternal
riches of His glory in Christ Jesus, we are compelled to live generously, not reluctantly, and with joy
and gratitude.
Theological Theme:
God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit already owns all that we have. He has called us to be stewards of the wealth He entrusts to us.
Christ Connection:
In Jesus Christ, we have both a model and a motivation for generosity. Because God has been
merciful and generous to us by giving us His Son, we are empowered to be merciful and generous
toward others.
Missional Application:
God gives us wealth in order that we might share it with others in need, not out of a sense of guilt or
obligation but cheerfully and willingly.
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John Has A Vision Of Jesus!
Part A:
Part B:
Full Message:
Bible Verse: Revelation 1
Introduction:
In the Book of Revelation, Jesus revealed Himself in a vision to His beloved disciple John. He revealed
Himself in the glory of the most holy triune God, affirming that He is the Son of God the Father. He
revealed His power over time, death, and hell, each of which factor significantly in the Book of Revelation.
This vision also revealed Jesus with His church—with us—giving us hope and confidence as we strive to
remain faithful to the mission He has given us while waiting for His return.
Theological Theme:
The reality of Jesus’ glorious presence gives hope to Christians today.
Christ Connection:
When Jesus revealed Himself to John, He pointed to His identity as the First and the Last, the Living
One. He also pointed to the work He accomplished while on earth—defeating death and hell through
His crucifixion and resurrection. The same Jesus who was once crucified in shame is the Jesus who is
now exalted in glory.
Missional Application:
God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit calls us to believe John’s testimony about Jesus and to trust that Jesus is present with His people as they fulfill His mission!
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JESUS: The Most Important PERSON and TASK For Everyone! Part 5 (Jesus’ Crucifixion / The Biblical Worldview)

Part 5A:
Part 5B:
Full Message:
Bible Verses: Mark 15 Psalm 22 Isaiah 53
Introduction:
On this Transfiguration Sunday we are reminded that the Whole God Father Son and Holy Spirit loves you/us so much that he has suffered for you/us in the Life of the Son made flesh! The Father-Son-Holy-Spirit-God loves you so much that together, in Their utter Oneness, Each distinct Person somehow shares in the humanity of the Son of God in Jesus (only the Son became human!), having suffered for you and having resisted all evil and every temptation on your behalf and in your place! In Jesus, Who sustains you from within his own human nature, you have victory over all evil principalities and powers. Even your present sufferings cannot and will not prevent you from receiving your victory in Christ! Christ’s victory is so full of the glory and love of God that you will consider your present sufferings to be light in comparison to the glory you will receive! Whereas sin and evil have no future, you have an immortal and eternal life to look forward to with Jesus in His eternal relationship with the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Transfiguration is a picture of our transformation in Him!
Theological Theme:
On one hand is the non-relational, unfeeling god of our sinful imaginations; the God more interested in law and punishment and sin than he is interested in us. On the other hand is the One and only True God – Father-Son-Holy-Spirit – Merciful and compassionate! The Relational, loving God revealed in the Person of Jesus! The triune God WITH US & FOR US despite our sin! The God Who includes us all in His Life & Love, permanently, in Jesus – Who atoned for the sins of the world!
Christ Connection:
Do you have this great vision of the Gospel before you????? You are being made fit for eternal life, and by God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit you WILL be fit with the spiritual muscle of Jesus Who has transformed our human nature in His own, turning it back fully to the Father. Our Father does nothing halfway! In Christ and by the Spirit you are becoming who and what you really are and you will be that (or you won’t be at all!) The death of Jesus means the death of death, and a nature turned from God and corrupted now turned back to God in a glorified and permanent way.
Missional Application:
As believers in union with Jesus Christ, and in the light of Who He is and what He has done, we proclaim and witness to others not yet in spiritual union with Jesus that, as George Hunsinger has well-stated “There’s always more grace in God, than there is sin in us!”, therefore, repent and believe, receive the Good News and enter a trust relationship with the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit!
JESUS: The Most Important PERSON and TASK For Everyone! Part 3 (Jesus’ Suffering / The Biblical Worldview)
Part 3A:
Part 3B:
Full Message:
Bible Verses: Luke 4: 1-28
Introduction:
In this series we continue understanding the Person of Jesus and the Father’s Work in Him, and what the entire course of His Incarnate Human Life (God in Human Flesh) meant and means for us. We’re understanding more accurately and biblically what it means to place our trust in and say “Jesus Christ!”
Theological Theme:
We’re in the process of answering the question “Who are You Lord?” and Jesus’ own answer back to us as the revelation of God, in the Holy Spirit, is that He is, Himself, God, and therefore He is the human expression of God’s Love. It is Revealed in Jesus that because God is Love and God is a Relationship in His own Being, God stoops and draws near to His creation, to sustain it, and, when it falls into sin, He seizes and lifts it up again in His Son, renewed. He does not forsake His own or turn from what He has made, He fulfills that which He has purposed! He literally fulfills it in Himself! The story of Who God is and Who he has revealed Himself to be for us in Jesus is the Greatest Love Story there is!
Christ Connection:
As the One Who becomes human taking our place in the entire range of our human activity, Jesus is also the one who substitutes for us in our suffering, and our death. With Representation, Substitution and Renewal in mind, we can receive that the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus isn’t about the wrath of the Father against His Son, but the Father, Son and Holy Spirit against sin and for our complete and total salvation! The suffering of Jesus is not about God the Father needing to have a pound of flesh (or an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth) so that he could be satisfied (the Lord does not take pleasure in the death of anyone – Ezekiel 18:23, 32, 33:11!) but because the Father is intent to absorb every drop of evil out of our nature and give us a renewed and healed nature in its place! The suffering and cross of Jesus is not about the Father punishing His Son because He hates us, but about us punishing His Son because we have hated him in the evil of sin! Jesus did take on the punishment we deserved but it was sinners who dealt it out!
God is not afraid of sin as if he is intimidated by it and can’t get near to or touch it. He can and must get near it (assume it by getting inside of it) to get rid of it. His goodness absorbs it completely because he is completely righteous and doesn’t sin at all, therefore “mopping up” the mess of sin – undoing it !
Missional Application:
Because of Jesus, sinners can draw near to God to be healed, reconciled and redeemed. God in Christ touched lepers! Sick people touched him! It was the sickness that was defeated and overcome when Jesus drew near, not Jesus! This is what we proclaim to the world of pre-believers that they might turn from their sin and put their trust in Jesus. This is also why St. Augustine wrote about the Spirit Jesus now sends in this way:
“There is nothing too subtle or dense for the Spirit to penetrate or too sinful for the Spirit to cleanse or too weary for the Spirit to refresh or too dead for the Spirit to breathe life into again. The Spirit strives with us, prays for us, groans with us (Rom. 8:18–27; Augustine, Hom. on 1 John 8).”
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“JESUS: The Most Important PERSON and TASK For Everyone! Part 2” (Jesus’ Human Life / The Biblical Worldview)
Part 2A:
Part 2B:
Part 2C:
Full Message:
Bible Verses: Luke 2: 52 (Various Scriptures)
Theological Theme:
In relationship with Jesus His faith in us causes us to seek understanding about Who He is in His Person and Deeds, taking into account the entire course of His Human Life, with the help of the Holy Spirit. We’ve rehearsed Jesus’ Person and Work by grasping more of the meaning of His Virgin Birth. In this message we understand more basic and fundamentally the meaning of His Incarnate Life!
Christ Connection:
When Jesus lived He lived our life, meaning that as the Son of the Father united to us in our human nature He was the God/Man renewing our fallen human nature from the inside because he never sinned in it. Just as in Adam the human nature in which we all have shared became fallen, so in the one person of Christ the human nature in which we all shared was made right and saved! Jesus is more significant than Adam because He not only shared in our fallen human nature, but was also the One in, through, for and by Whom all things are created and made! He was both God and Man. This means that by his one human life, the human nature of everyone is now set on an entirely new basis! Where sin abounded (Adam), God’s grace in abounds even more (in Jesus!!)
Missional Application:
“Jesus embodied the unreserved presence of God with and for sinners. “Those who are well have no need of physician,” Jesus declares, “but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt. 9:12f.). Christ’s incarnate humanity — his entire life, death, and resurrection among and on behalf of sinners — provides the basis for and the reality of reconciliation. He stands in our place and acts on our behalf to heal our humanity. His vicarious humanity — i.e., his substitutionary life and death in our place and representative humanity on our behalf — reconciles us to one another and to God. Social reconciliation is both an indicative and an imperative of the gospel of Jesus Christ, both gift and task, both command and promise.” – Ray Anderson
So, as we experience reconciliation with the Father-Son-Holy-Spirit-God that Christ accomplished, and because it is social – touching the lives of every human being – we share this Good News with others that they, too, might trust Christ and experience the gift and promise of real human life before the Father along with other believers!
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The Most Important TASK Done For Everyone Everywhere – JESUS CHRIST! (Our Christmas and Biblical Worldview)
Part A:
Part B:
Full Message:
Bible Verse: Luke 2
Introduction:
Can you see from reading this section of the Nicene Creed what would be missing if as Christians we ONLY spoke about Jesus in terms of His birth (Christmas), His suffering, death and resurrection?
Excerpt about Jesus from the Nicence Creed
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.”
What happens if we leave out His incarnate life for 33 years? What if after speaking about His Resurrection we stopped and never addressed His human Ascension and Bodily Return?
Theological Theme:
“Christ does not heal us as an ordinary doctor might, by standing over us, diagnosing our sickness, prescribing medicine for us to take and then going away, leaving us to get better as we follow His instructions. No, He becomes the patient. He assumes that very humanity which is in need of redemption, and by being anointed by the Spirit in our humanity, by a life of perfect obedience, by dying and rising again, for us, our humanity is healed in Him, in His person. We are not just healed through Christ, because of the work of Christ, but in and through Christ. Person and work must not be separated.” – James Torrance
Christ Connection:
Christ emptied himself so we may be filled
“The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.
He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor. He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.
He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.” – St. Gregory The Theologian
Missional Application:
Just as Jesus took on all the parts of our human nature and flesh through the history of a human life to bring us Salvation, as those in union with Jesus in the Spirit we participate with Him in all the parts of His human history and continued Lordship, pointing others to Him as their Salvation also!
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The Most Important PERSON For Everyone Everywhere – JESUS CHRIST! (Our Christmas and Biblical Worldview)
Part A:
Part B:
Full Message:
Bible Verse: Luke 2
Introduction:
Luke 1:26-38
1:26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
1:27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
1:28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
1:29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
1:30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
1:31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
1:32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.
1:33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
1:34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
1:35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.
1:36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.
1:37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”
1:38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Theological Theme:
This story in Luke, noted above, is a good example of how we can preach and witness to others similarly about the Gospel!
vv.26-31 “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” You should start your witnessing with Who God is as Revealed in Jesus and who we are in Him – Favored!
v.31 “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” ONLY AFTER PROCLAIMING WHO GOD IS IN HIS WORDS AND DEEDS do you proclaim our participation with Him!
v.34 “Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’, 35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.’”
All of this happens by the grace of God – from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit!
Christ Connection:
“God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged [promised and given] his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualized [made actual and real] his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”- (T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 94)
Missional Application:
As we are filled with the Love of the Father and Son Relationship in the Holy Spirit, we participate with God, compelled to go to all and say:
“In and through Jesus, God has included all people everywhere in a particular relationship with himself for just these purposes so that what has been fulfilled for us objectively in Jesus by the Spirit, will then be fulfilled in us personally (subjectively) by the Spirit via our deliberate, purposeful participation (response) as subjects who are moral, spiritual agents. What Christ did for us, he did so that the Holy Spirit could work a response out in us. When we understand that the person and work of Christ establishes or reestablishes a living, vital, personal relationship with all humanity, then the biblical teachings concerning inviting, admonishing, encouraging, directing, commanding and warning in regard to setting forth the fitting or appropriate response make sense.” – Gary Deddo