Advent Sunday 2

Last Sunday was the first Sunday of advent. I wrote an article about the first Sunday of advent and you can read it here. Since I wrote about the first Sunday of advent last week, I decided to write about the second Sunday of advent here. As we consider the second Sunday of advent, we will focus mainly on four Biblical texts.

The Transfiguration

This coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to cover the subject of the transfiguration of Christ during our Connect Groups. This is an important event for Jesus’ disciples as well as an important event for us today. Our passage is the Gospel of Matthew, chapter seventeen. In our last lesson, we took a look at the faith needed to walk on water. It was an important lesson for us because of the times in which we live. Peter and the other disciples had to make a choice; to surrender to faith in the midst of life’s storms or, to surrender to fear. They immediately chose fear yet, Jesus reminded them of faith and it made all of the difference.

Faith to walk on water

I am so excited to prepare this lesson for our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church because, we are officially meeting in person again on site at the church!!! Last week was our first official, in person meeting of our Connect Groups since March. For the past five and a half months, we have been meeting via video chat. Praise God for technology and the ability to continue to study the Word together but, there is nothing like an in person, face to face Bible study.

Jesus’ Call to Discipleship

Here are Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are continuing our journey through the entire Bible over a three year period. Currently, we are in year three and we are studying the Gospel of Luke. We spent two years walking through the Old Testament tracing the promise of the coming Messiah and how God worked in human history to fulfill that promise. Almost two thousand years ago, several Jewish people who had spent their lives looking forward to the coming of the Messiah were blessed to be an integral part of the fulfilled Promise. These people all had several things in common. They were all good students of the Word of God. They had all surrendered to the will of God in their lives. In other words, they all had a relationship with God, based on the fact that they were looking forward to the coming Messiah to be their Savior.

Patriotism and the Gospel

Did the title get your attention? I hope that it did. I have recently seen a lot of information coming from pastors, good God-fearing men, who claim that the idea of patriotism is not Biblical. Do you agree with that statement? I sure don’t because I see the exact opposite taught in the Scriptures.

The Gospel & Social Media

I am sitting here in my home office preparing to preach this message at Southern Calvert Baptist Church this coming Sunday. I am so excited to have the opportunity to share God’s Word with His people. Have you ever thought about how you could use Social Media to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

In our church this coming Sunday, there will probably be between 300 and 350 people in attendance. According to the latest statistics, there are 2.3 billion people on the Social Media platform known as Facebook. The average Facebook user spends 35 minutes a day on Facebook. The average Facebook user has about 155 friends on Facebook. If each of the 300 people in attendance this coming Sunday were to share Gospel via Facebook, on Sunday, we could potentially reach 46,500 people with the Gospel. There are 8 billion video views a day on Facebook so simply sharing the live sermon during the service has the chance of being seen multiple times among the 8 billion views that day. Why do so few Christians share the Gospel on Social Media?

Solomon’s Prayer

At Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are continuing to walk through the Bible, book by book, over a three year period. We are covering I Kings 8 this week. This is when King Solomon dedicates the Temple to the Lord. His prayer is a beautiful prayer and that is what we are going to study this week. As we observe this prayer, I want us to keep in mind the outline of the Lord’s Prayer. One version of the Lord’s Prayer is found in the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 6.

9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
10 ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]

David takes a stand for the Lord

We live in a world where people are afraid to take a stand for the Lord because of political correctness. People have been trained to keep their heads down when it comes to social issues, like gay marriage, because if you take a stand and speak out, you get noticed and being noticed causes problems to your daily life. This is not something new. The Bible teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Almost 2,000 years ago, during the lifetime of Jesus, the dilemma of taking a stand for the Lord was just as complex as today.

Christ’s Resurrection and Commissioning

I have been teaching through the Gospel of Mark with a group of men and it has been amazing to see the ministry of Jesus Christ, especially how relevant it is today. This is the final lesson in a 3 part series on the Gospel of Mark. I began teaching it back in the Fall of 2018. We are currently in the Summer of 2019. It is the shortest Gospel in the New Testament but, it is powerful and full of amazing information that stirs up life transformation. If you have not been following along through the entire study, the following 16 articles will be very helpful in helping you catch up.

I will never leave you, nor forsake you

The title of this message comes from the Word of God.

“The LORD is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deuteronomy 31:8)

The author of the book of Hebrews uses this quote in his message about the sufficiency of Christ as the Redeemer of all mankind.

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU,” (Hebrews 13:5)