Episodes
Sunday Jan 01, 2017
FAKE COLA, FAKE NEWS, and FAKE GOSPELS (2 Peter 2:14-18)
Sunday Jan 01, 2017
Sunday Jan 01, 2017
Coke-Cola used to have a slogan saying that it was the Real Thing. This inferred that all of the other colas were fake colas or not real. Now, I know there are people with strong preferences of one cola over another, but to be honest, I don’t drink enough of it to be able to tell a Coke, from a Pepsi, or a Shasta.
In our news media, there is talk of fake news, and there certainly is. Truth seems to be at premium in our news and social media applications. Political bias, ideology, hunger for power and the wealth that comes with that power, and a desire to live a lifestyle that has been considered immoral, and often illegal for most of this country’s history, all seem to be the drivers of wanting to push the general public into supporting one political group, agenda, or person, or another. They want you to believe they are the real thing, and all the others are fake, or not real. The news media blatantly say they no longer have an obligation to report the truth. Instead, their purpose is to destroy the values and morals that have been the foundation of this country.
When a nation rejects God, gross immorality is usually at the heart of that nation. When a politician embraces liberalism and progressivism, gross immorality and corruption are usually at the heart of that person’s desire to do so. You cannot believe in the liberal, progressive, political platform and believe the Words of the Bible. You are deceiving yourself if you think that is possible.
These progressive leaders know that this is true so they plan, and they strategize, on how they can lure people away from the truth of God’s Word. They don’t want to destroy Christianity, as much as they want to corrupt it, to draw it away from the teachings of God, to lay alongside it their own corrupted ideology and religious teachings. They want to so corrupt the corporate world of Christianity that they can use it to move their own agenda forward. They want to make their own ideas on what is right and wrong the accepted, or normal, behavior in our society. They want the power that comes with drawing people to their movements, and they want the money that comes from these people.
There will always be false teachers, false prophets, and apostates, in our churches. Always. Therefore, we must be able to identify them, in order to remove them. That is the reason Peter is spending so much time on defining what these false teachers look like, act like, and talk like.
Listen to this podcast to learn how to identify that which false, from that which is the true Word of God.
Sunday Nov 27, 2016
UNMASKING THE FALSE (2 Peter 2:1)
Sunday Nov 27, 2016
Sunday Nov 27, 2016
We are surrounded by different kinds of religion. There are Baptists and Buddhists, Islamists and Methodists, Catholicism and Confucianism, Evolutionism and Gnosticism. There are as many religions as there are colors in crayon box. If you don’t like the way one religion makes you feel, pick another, or another. We are encouraged to believe that we all worship the same God, and there are just different ways of coming to Him. Unfortunately, we are being encouraged to believe a lie. When you look at all of the religions of the world, and you analyze the differences between them, when you boil it down to the basics, there are but two kinds of religion, the true and the false. That’s it, the true and the false. That which is authentic from God, and that which in inauthentic and has the curse of God upon it. If it is false it is dangerous and the world is full of dangerous doctrines.
I am going to say something that does not fit in our politically correct society. It is likely to cause college students across the nation to run to their safe zones, to grab a cup of hot cocoa and a binky, and curl up on the coach in their jammies, afraid to face an idea that does not meet their narrative. They may even need counseling after they hear this.
There is but one God, and there is but one way to Him, and that is through His Son Jesus Christ. It is not a religion that will give you eternal life in heaven, it is a relationship with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior that will give it to you. It is a relationship, not a religion.
Yet, you can hear false doctrines from false teachers on every corner, on every website, and in the pulpits of churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues everywhere. Peter knew that this was true in his day, and the Holy Spirit knew it would be true in our day. There are false teachers among us today, in our own churches, and so we are going to spend the next several weeks studying about that which is authentic and that which is false. If you are going to be effective in your witness you must be able to recognize that which is authentic from that which is false.
Now, I think everyone would agree that it is wrong to tell a lie. You would agree with me on that, right? It is wrong to tell a lie. It is even worse to teach a lie, but it is monstrous to teach a lie about God. There is no greater crime in the eyes of God than to be a false prophet, or a false teacher, who preaches lies about God. God takes this crime very seriously. In the days of the Old Testament prophets, God had this to say about false prophets.
Deut 18:20
20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
KJV
Now if God acted with a bolt of lightning every time a false prophet spoke a lie about Him, that would certainly thin out the ranks of false prophets. Unfortunately, God does not always act on our time frame. However, make no mistake, God hates lies taught about Himself, and He will punish the false prophet. The Bible says, even that prophet shall die.
2 Peter 2:12
12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;
KJV
Jesus told the Pharisees that God has reserved a special place for them in Hell because they had led the people away from God. So, it is important that we know and understand that which is authentic and that which is false. We need to be able to unmask the false prophets and teachers so we are not deceived.
Listen to this podcast so that you can know how to unmask the false teachers who are among us.
Sunday Nov 20, 2016
MORE SURE THAN THAT (2 Peter 1:19-21)
Sunday Nov 20, 2016
Sunday Nov 20, 2016
For most things, if we want to know that something is really true, or actually real, we want to see it, touch it, hold it in our hands, shake it around, and simply check it out for ourselves. I am not likely to buy something sight unseen, just because somebody tells me about it.
Important events in our lives are easier to accept if we are able to physically be there, or see them happen. For example, if you told me one of my family members had been seriously hurt, my first reaction would be to immediately go to them so that I could see for myself how they were. When a major tornado hit Wichita, it happened on the other side of town from where I live. I could hear about the destruction on the news. I could see it in the video coverage, and read about it in the newspaper. However, nothing brought home the real amount of damage the tornado caused until I went to see the damage personally. Seeing whole neighborhoods completely flattened made the storm more than just another news story that we hear about every day, it made it real.
This is how many people feel about Christ and the gospel message of salvation. They hear that Jesus Christ was real and that He is the Son of God, and they say, show me. They hear that there is life beyond the grave and they say, show me. They hear that heaven and hell are real and that you will spend eternity in one of them, and they say, show me. They say if you want me to believe that God exists, show me.
God certainly knows that this is true about us, and so He designed a world that no man could possibly create, and no amount of science could explain, no matter how hard they try. He did this so that man would know that an all powerful Creator existed. God made man so intricate in the mechanical and biological portions of his body, that man would know that he was created, and could not possibly have come into existence by accident. Yet, knowing a Creator existed, and that we were the product of that Creator’s work was not enough to allow a holy God to forgive all of the sin that exists in the world. We needed a loving God to provide a path to our salvation from an eternity in hell without God, to an eternity in heaven with God. We needed a Savior, and so God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross that man might find salvation in His Creator.
And so Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, came to this earth to live as a Man, God incarnate in man, fully God and fully man. He did great miracles as signs to show mankind who He truly was. He healed the sick by the thousands. He made the lame walk. He raised the dead, and He fed thousands using the contents of a lunch box from a small boy. Jesus Christ came knowing that He would be rejected, knowing that He would be beaten and mangled, and knowing that He would be crucified and suffer a horrible death. He did this because He knew that it was only His sacrifice and His precious blood that would allow the terrible sins of man to be forgiven by a righteous God. The blood of animals would never be enough. The blood of mortal man would never be enough. It had to be the precious blood of the Son of God that would wash the sin away in the eyes of God.
God, then raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus walked around in His resurrected body for 40 days and he was seen by hundreds of people. People touched Him, felt of Him, put their fingers through the holes in His hands, and ate with Him. People believed because they had seen Him do those miracles, and they had seen Him die and then rise again. They saw Him, they felt Him, and they touched Him. He was real, all those things really happened, and so they believed.
Yet, all those things happened two thousand years ago. Today, people say they would also like to believe, if only they could see those things as well. If they could see Jesus Christ perform miracles, then maybe they would believe that He was truly the Son of God. If they could see Him in His resurrected form, then they would believe that there was life after death, and they would accept the gospel message of salvation. If only, they could see Him, feel Him, and shake Him around a little just to make sure He was real, then they would believe.
Yet, even if God did do this, we know that many would still reject Christ. Christ was seen by many thousands of people, and still He was crucified. So, seeing is not always enough. Sometimes we need something more. Our memories are faulty, that is why we take pictures and videos of our lives, because we forget. We remember how we want to remember things.
God knew this about us. He knew that seeing, touching, and shaking was not enough. People who did not want to believe would corrupt those memories handed down by oral tradition. He knew these things and so He gave us something more sure than that. He gave us His more sure word of prophecy.
Listen to this podcast to learn how God gave us His written Word, and how we can depend on it to live our lives in His will.
Sunday Nov 06, 2016
THE WORD OF GOD SURVIVES HUMAN MEMORY (2 Peter 1:12-15)
Sunday Nov 06, 2016
Sunday Nov 06, 2016
Tuesday Nov 01, 2016
BLESSED ASSURANCE (2 Peter 1:8-11)
Tuesday Nov 01, 2016
Tuesday Nov 01, 2016
Monday Oct 17, 2016
GOD'S PROVISIONS, GOD'S PROMISES (2 Peter 1:3-4)
Monday Oct 17, 2016
Monday Oct 17, 2016
Monday Oct 03, 2016
GOD'S GLORY AND GOD'S GRACE (1 Peter 5:10-14)
Monday Oct 03, 2016
Monday Oct 03, 2016
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
RULES FOR MEMBERS OF GOD'S CHURCH (1 Peter 5:5-9)
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
This week we are going to talk about how to be an effective church member. So, as I was preparing this lesson, I got to thinking about the role of a church member. And to be honest, compared to the pastor, church members have it pretty easy. All they have to do is show up on Sunday for worship services, and maybe again on Wednesday night just to add a little extra learning.
I mean, it is the pastor and the church staff who are supposed to do all of the work of the church. If there are people to witness to or souls to save, call the pastor. If there are letters to send out, call the church secretary. If there are people to visit either as prospects, or at the hospital, or home bound, that is what the associate pastor is supposed to do. If there are teenagers or children to be mentored and taught, that is what the youth minister and children’s director are for.
Now, members may need to bring some food, every once in a while, for a fellowship or a funeral, but all of the rest of the stuff like cleaning the church, replacing light bulbs that have gone out, or repairs around the church, that is what we pay the staff for. My job as a member is to sit in that chair or pew on Sunday morning, stay awake during the sermon, say amen when the preacher says something good, and then go on my merry way letting the staff take care of everything else. Right?
If I tore up the bulletin into little pieces during the sermon to keep my mind occupied, it is my job to leave it on the floor of the sanctuary for the janitor to pick it up. If something is not right with the building, it is my job to find the maintenance guy and let him know about it. If we are not singing the right kind of music to suit my taste, it is my job to let the music director know. If the sermons are too long, and the pastor is causing me to be late for the buffet line at the local restaurant for lunch, it is my job to tell the pastor about that, right? He needs to know the problems he is causing.
Now, I hope everyone knows that I am being sarcastic here, and most people would say that this is not really true. It is not the job of the shepherd to make more sheep, it is the sheep who make more sheep. Right? I also know that there are a lot of pastors out there saying, hey, he’s not being sarcastic at all, that is just what my members think and do.
So maybe we start looking at actions rather than words. Think about it. When was the last time you made a new sheep in God’s flock? When was the last time you saw something that needed to be done for the church, and you just took care of it? A visitor needed to be shown around the church, and you just did it. A fellow brother or sister in Christ was at the hospital and his family needed a meal, or to be prayed over, and you just did it. A paper towel dispenser in the bathroom was empty, and you refilled it. You didn’t tell somebody about it, so they could fix it, you just did it.
We live in a secular world where people get paid to take care of all of our needs. The buildings we work in have maintenance personnel. The streets we drive on have repair crews and cleaners. The restaurants we eat at have servers. So we have this expectation that a church works in the same way as the secular world, but does it?
Are the offerings we give to the church best used to maintain the building and pay the salaries of the staff, or touch souls for Christ? Now, make no mistake about it, I am speaking to myself as much as anyone else. I have often called the maintenance guy to take care of a problem, and in some cases, he probably would prefer we let him know about it, rather than doing a poor job of it ourselves, making the job harder for him. But the core of my question is what should our attitude be about our service for God? Should we expect others to be the servants of God, or are we, the members, the servants of God?
Listen to this podcast to learn how to be an effective church member. How we are to wear the garment of humility, how we are to deal with all of our problems and worries, and most of all, how we are to stand and resist our true adversary, Satan.
Sunday Sep 11, 2016
I AM NOT ASHAMED TO BE A CHRISTIAN (1 Peter 4:16-19)
Sunday Sep 11, 2016
Sunday Sep 11, 2016
Monday Sep 05, 2016
THE CAUSE AND EFFECT OF SUFFERING (1 Peter 4:12-15)
Monday Sep 05, 2016
Monday Sep 05, 2016