This month we have been emphasizing the five acts of worship, focusing each Sunday on one of them. Last week we discussed preaching and your words were so encouraging. This church has a heart to ensure we let God change us. Let me share two ideas given to me last Sunday. In that sermon about preaching and God’s plan for it to…

Over the last few years, individuals have started making lists of the things they want to be sure they accomplish before they die. The term used for these lists is bucket lists. This phrase likely is used because it contains the goals a person plans to reach before they “kick the bucket.” I have a niece whose list contains the goal of…

It is remarkable how intertwined Biblical truths are. To fully understand one opens the door to better understanding of another truth found in His word. This is true concerning the truth about the resurrection and the nature of the kingdom Jesus promised to establish. There is no way the idea of a future millennial reign of Jesus in Jerusalem where He will…

Our Lord promised those disciples in the first century that the kingdom would come in their lifetime. Read the following words carefully as though you were standing in the presence of Jesus. What would you have understood when He said, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of…

There were eighty-four divinely sent messengers who proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven was about to be established. Beginning with John the Baptist (Matt. 3:2), then with Jesus (Matt. 4:17), then the twelve apostles (Matt. 10:7), and finally the 70 disciples Jesus sent out, the message was, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” No one can deny that those in the…

Our world is so blinded by the teaching of many about the kingdom of God. It has always been this way. When Jesus was on this earth, many expected Him to establish a kingdom like those kingdoms they had known in the past and like those physical kingdoms in the first century world. Herod the Great did not understand the kingdom. His…

In Bible times, birds were hunted and served as delicacies for food. There were skilled archers whose arrows took the lives of those birds that fled. Their only hope was to run from the places of safety and flee to the mountains where they might escape. The psalmist, in the eleventh psalm, saw all of this and then used this illustration to…

It is remarkable how easy it is to overlook how God has expressed great truths using some of the simplest language. When Paul wrote the Corinthians he used the expression “first of all.” We sometimes use this expression when we have a long list of things which are of equal importance. We talk of the first item, not because it has greater…