There is NOTHING new under the sun

Yesterday was a great day at our church. We had our regular morning activities and then in the afternoon, we hosted our annual church picnic. There is nothing like the smell of grilled burgers and dogs while you sit around in the shade and socialize with others. It is a great way to celebrate the changing of seasons as summer finally gives way to fall.

The Dangers of a Critical Spirit

I have the privilege tonight to meet up with our young teens during our AWANA program. I love meeting up with these kids and studying the Scriptures. I am very proud of them for all of the hard work that they put in memorizing Scripture. I wish I would have begun memorizing Scripture at that age. I am grateful to be part of the team that ministers to these young men and women. They are going to do great things for the Lord! This week, we are going to study and interesting passage of Scripture to learn the difference between serving others and criticizing others. It is very easy to criticize others. Stepping up and serving those in need is much more difficult. Many more people will sit around and criticize rather than help. Few step up, roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty, and help others. This is true in daily life outside the church. Unfortunately, it’s also true within the organization of the church. We are always going to be faced with the choice of criticizing or helping. I heard an old adage years ago that has stuck with me ever since.

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.

Faith and Obedience go hand in hand

This coming Sunday, at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to study John chapter five. This is the story of the healing of the lame man. Last week, we learned about Jesus, the healer in the Gospel of Mark, chapter five. This week, we are also going to learn more about Jesus the healer. The healing that Jesus offers leads to eternal life. This healing changes us for all of eternity.

As a church, we are walking through the entire Bible, from cover to cover, over a three year period. We are now in year three. It took us three years to walk through the Old Testament. We have been studying the Gospels for about two months now. Each lesson just keeps getting better and better.

Jesus on Divorce

Over past 2 weeks, I have had an opportunity to teach Matthew 19 several different times. I wanted to share some of the insights with you here. Many people have questions about divorce. Many others have their own opinions on the subject of divorce. In order to find answers, we need to go to the source of wisdom, Jesus Christ, Himself. Jesus teaches on the subject of divorce in Matthew 19. I would like to examine this teaching here in this article.

The teachings of the Pharisees vs. The teachings of Christ

I am so excited about being able to teach this chapter of Scripture this coming Monday to my preschool teachers. We have already walked through 7 chapters of the Gospel of Mark. It has been life changing to experience the life and ministry of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I just think that it is so neat for people who have been in church for most of their lives jump into the Gospel passages and study them inductively for the first time. If you know me, you know that I love to study and teach the Bible inductively. I believe it is the Biblical way. We see the idea of questions being asked by the teacher and students responding to those questions with the Biblical text. The best example is the Apostle Paul. In his epistles, he asks questions and then anticipates the answer, or, he gives the Biblical answer and then anticipates your next question based on the previous, Biblical answer. We also see this method used by him in Acts. The verb “to reason” from the Scriptures is used 10 different times in Acts. In order to understand this concept, we must understand the meaning of the verb “to reason” as used in the Biblical text. It means to converse in the form of question and answer. The teacher asks the questions and the students respond with answers from the text. This is not a lecture or a sermon. This is not an argument over the meaning of words and phrases. This is a form of inductive Bible study, a method that means “going into the text to find the answers”. This method places the speaker and the audience under the authority of the text. Now that we chased that little rabbit, let’s move our attention back to Mark 8 and see what we can discover. But, before we begin, if you have not been following the series, you can read the previous lessons here:

Did Jesus contradict the Bible by not stoning the woman caught in adultery?

Those who do not want to believe the Bible is the Word of God will stop at nothing to try and disprove the Bible (even making fools of themselves claiming that there are “contradictions” in the Bible and then using lame arguments based on vaguely similar passages that “seem” to contradict each other). Here is the latest “argument” for a contradiction in the Bible. Was Jesus contradicting Moses when He did not command the woman caught in adultery to be stoned? Let’s take a look at the Word of God and see what we can determine.