One of the ways to grow spiritually is to read and apply the Word of God to your life. We are issuing a challenge in 2008 to enter the AmazinG Race through the Bible. Using the One Year Bible, we've presented a plan, check point dates and a group for encouragement in the race to read the Bible in 2008. Take the challenge and see if it changes your life for good and for Christ. |
In our race to read through the Bible in one year this week we read through Proverbs 21 which deals a lot with leadership and the power of leadership. There is much wisdom here that citizens can garner to lead them in making important decisions concerning both the proper leaders to follow and the proper issues to see as important. Not only do we have an amazing race for the leadership of our country, but we also have an AmazinG Race for the leadership of our soul. The Scriptures are an excellent guide for leading us toward the right path in our life, if we use them responsibly.
We live in scary times for a nation that has been used to having it their way and having it all. Because of our lust for more and for bigger and to get it all right now rather than waiting for it as God blesses it and hard work produces it, we have found ourselves in the middle of massive foreclosures, a falling economy, rising gas prices, and uncertainty about a solid future. In scary times our values, or the lack thereof, rise to the surface. The counsel that God gives us in Psalm 40 out of David’s life will serve to guide us in making our decisions based upon principle rather than circumstance. |
- March 30 - New Testament Idol: Whackos, Critics, and the Rock Star of My Life - Dig Deeper - Outline
This message is from the March 24 - 30 readings in the One Year Bible. We follow Jesus in his ministry as He takes the show on the road. Like a Rock Star in present day He has all sorts of whacked, needy groupies following Him, who all came to believe in Jesus as the Son of God with a faith that caused Jesus to marvel at them. And just like a Rock Star, Jesus had his critics - the "normal" people who had nothing wrong with them and lived in the proper and fashionable way. They looked good, smelled good, talked right, lived right, but they did not get Jesus. It was those who had much to be forgiven that enjoyed His forgiveness. It is still true today - those who think they are good enough get left behind in the Gospel, but isn't it true, we are all a little bit whacked and in need of a Savior?
This message is taken from the March 31 - April 5 readings in the One Year Bible. Like the controversial game show on TV right now, this leg of the AmazinG Race leads us to the place where Jesus must prove that He is telling the truth. For Jesus to be the Messiah there must be no falsehood in Him and everything that He says must be proven to be true. Like the contestants on The Moment of Truth, Jesus is up to the task - or is He? It's either all in with the truth and every answer be true or just one false answer and there is no prize - all in or all out! Is Jesus God? Is He the Son of God as He claims? Is Jesus the Messiah as Peter exclaims? That answer is... TRUE. He passes His Moment of Truth - His Prize, the ability to save humanity from itself. Now your Moment of Truth is upon you. Jesus begins asking the important questions in your quest for the truth. What are you going to do with the Truth of the Gospel? |
Many of us are racing through the Bible this year as we read the One Year Bible. In reading through the Bible we can come across things that just really cause us to wrinkle our foreheads and wonder about the relevancy or even the ethicality of the Bible, especially when we get into the Old Testament, a series of books written around 5000 years ago.
What can a book of Law like Exodus, written 5000 years ago teach us that will help us in a 2000 AD world? What can a book about Ancient Law show me that might help me deal with my present rat race, raising kids in an Xbox world, Bling Bling economics, and red and blue states? What does cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk have to do with a world that could dream up global terrorism? How can instructions on blood and sacrificial offerings help me balance my checkbook?
Those are great questions and ones that we will tackle as we look at the relevance of reading through the Bible. Is this just a great classic literature exercise or are there answers in these 5000 BC passages that can help me live a full life? We will examine the passages in Exodus this week and seek to apply their relevance to our 2008 lives.
As we continue the AmazinG Race this week, things get really weird. How can we apply anything in our hectic 2008 lives from a record of how to build a church in the middle of the desert? Surely there is nothing in this that applies to me.
And yet a closer look reveals a building that applies several practical keys to living a full life! First, God loves those who are gifted crafts people and believe that what they produce with their hands is ministry. God makes room for all kinds of people in His world and does not create a hierarchy of value when it comes to people. He filled those who could build and decorate and create with His Holy Spirit so they could build a beautiful place of worship and community called the Tabernacle.
Within the creation of the Tabernacle, God communicated the key concept of Grace - the offering of a gift to someone who has done nothing to deserve it or earn it. The sacrificial system of OT Law involved the saving of a life by a substitutionary death and atonement of an innocent. God provided through the OT Sacrificial system a way for grace and forgiveness to be substituted for sin and death and used both the Tabernacle and the sacrificial system to point to the ultimate sacrifice: Jesus' death on the Cross for our sins. Even as the OT people had to accept the forgiveness of the substitute so do we in 2008 AD. |
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One of the ways to grow spiritually is to read and apply the Word of God to your life. We are issuing a challenge to enter the AmazinG RACE through the Bible. Using the One Year Bible, we've presented a plan, check point dates and a group for encouragement in the race to read the Bible in 2008. Take the challenge and see if it changes your life for good and for Christ.
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