The Word of God transforms a family

Today, our church will head to a local elementary school to impart the Holy Word of God with public school children. We have a “Good News Club” that meets weekly. We are studying the miracles of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Each week, we focus on a different miracle performed by Jesus to learn why He performed the miracle and what the results were. In our first meeting, we studied the miracle of turning the water into wine at the wedding of Cana of Galilee. During the first lesson, we began to memorize John 3:16. The key to this verse is “faith“. In fact, the Gospel writer John, explains why Jesus performed His miracles and why he (John) chose to compile them in his Gospel.

Jesus’ first miracle

On Tuesday of this past week, we began our Good News Club at one of our local elementary schools. What a great opportunity to share the message of the Gospel in our community! Our children are being bombarded daily with all kinds of ungodliness and as Christ followers, we have a sacred calling to take the life changing message of the Gospel to these kids. I take this calling seriously and I pray that you do as well. Along with a group of volunteers from our church, Southern Calvert Baptist Church, I had the privilege of teaching Christ to over 20 children. I want to share the lesson with you here in this article.

Embracing the Gospel in deceptive times

In the past few years, we have a new term in our vocabulary. You probably hear and read it daily. It is the phrase, “fake news“. It’s a new term but the idea behind it has been around since sin entered the world. The Apostle Paul had to confront fake news almost 2,000 years ago in his second epistle to the church in Corinth. This week, at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to study II Corinthians 11 where we will discover how the Apostle Paul dealt with the fake news of his day. This lesson will give us much insight into how we can confront fake news today. People have always been easily deceived and our enemy, the Devil, loves to use fake news tactics to deceive us today, especially when it comes to spiritual teachings. As I mentioned earlier, fake news has been around forever. There is a pattern to fake news and we will discover that pattern as we examine Paul’s letter.

Receiving Spiritual Sight

As we continue to walk through the Bible, and specifically the New Testament, we are discovering that Jesus came to rescue us from our age old enemy, our sin nature. In the previous lesson, we discovered that Jesus leads us to faith to rescue us from our sin nature and that faith is manifested in our obedience. They go hand in hand.

Elisha chooses mercy and grace

This past Sunday, we looked at our second lesson on the life and ministry of the prophet Elisha. We saw how Elijah took Elisha under his wing and trained him for the ministry. In the beginning of his ministry, Elisha was not quick to extend mercy and grace to his enemies. Instead, he called down fire from heaven on two different occasions to consume his enemies. But, as he continued to minister, we see him change to a person who extends mercy and grace to those around him, even to his enemies.

The passage that we studied in class comes from II Kings 6. But, I want to give some context by quickly recapping what took place in II Kings 4-5. Elisha the prophet has several encounter with several different people in these chapters and there are some common character traits among these people.

Elijah and The Widow

At Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are continuing to study through the Gospel Project, a three year comprehensive study of the entire Bible. We have arrived at the book of I Kings.

At this point in the history of Israel, things are bad. There is a king named Ahab who is a very ungodly man. God has a faithful follower named Elijah. God had trained Elijah to act during this difficult time. Elijah stands before king Ahab and prays that the Lord will withhold the rain from His people. This prayer comes from the Word of God. In Deuteronomy, the Lord told His people that if they obeyed Him, He would send rain at the right time. He also said that if His people did not obey Him, then He would shut off the rain from heaven. Elijah prayed that the rain would stop, according to the Word of God. The Lord kept His Word and shut off the rain from heaven. How is God going to be glorified in the midst of all of this? Suffering is coming. The drought is going to lead to famine. What is the Lord doing? Is there a purpose in this? Yes, of course there is. Eventually, after three and a half years, the people are going to repent and return to the Lord. Also, the Lord is going to use this situation to draw a person who is seeking Him to Himself.

Belief is more than a confession

I am getting ready to teach tonight at our church. I have a lesson with the AWANA kids and we are going to study John 11. This is a fascinating chapter because in verse 35, we find the shortest verse in the Bible. Why did Jesus weep? Some say that it is because He was heartbroken over the death of Lazarus. Others claim that He wept because Mary and Martha were mourning over the death of their brother. While those seem like logical conclusions, I do not feel that the text leads us to that conclusion. We read that into the text based on our own experienced. There are three key players in this text that work together to explain the purpose of this passage in the Bible. One of the key players is Jesus. He is referenced more in this passage than anyone else. The verb “believe” is referenced 8 times in this chapter, making it another key player in the story. Another word that is mentioned three times in this chapter is “resurrection”. All three of these key players lead us to the logical conclusion of the text.

The Lifestyle of a Child of God

It has been amazing teaching through the New Testament this quarter in our Sunday School classes. We started the year off with walking through the book of Acts. Since the beginning of this new quarter, we have been studying the epistles in the New Testament. God has much to teach His church in these epistles and we have learned a lot. Some of our previous lessons include:

The church plant in Philippi

I am getting ready to teach our kids this coming Sunday about the Apostle Paul’s Second missionary journey. Part of that journey included a church plant in the city of Philippi. As we saw when Paul was on his first missionary trip, he did not set out to plant churches. He was called by God to go and make disciples. The churches were formed as a result of people being discipled. This is the model for church planting. The modern approach is exactly backwards. We seek to plant churches and then disciple people once they become part of the church. Our modern form of church has much to learn from the Biblical approach. There are many areas where we are far from the Bible in our approach to modern ministry. 

Belief, Signs, and Palm Sunday

While preparing to teach/preach a sermon on Palm Sunday a couple of years ago I had an “aha” moment in the Gospel of John. I was asked by a minister friend of mine to fill in for him on last minute’s notice. I was racking my brain in trying to figure out a message. I did not want to do the same old “Palm Sunday” sermon that I heard a million times (not that it is not interesting but just wanted a change of pace this time).