THINGS THAT THE FAITHFUL HAVE IN COMMON WITH GREAT PEOPLE OF THE BIBLE

Sometimes I wonder why so few in many churches seem to attend only the morning assemblies. That is true in many congregations. But every time I begin thinking about this I find myself going down the same path of understanding. Truth is I’ll never understand. It hurts my spirit, my brain aches just trying to make sense of it. I imagine that you all have thought about this, and it probably has caused your spirit to be heavy also but, you all need to realize, as I do, that apart from prayer, letters, face to face encouragement there is little else you can do. You chose to be here, and others chose not to come. You want the fellowship together, others do not. Your soul is in the hand of God, and so are the others. God will judge you, and God will judge them. There is a song which I often sing to myself when I get into a funk about this. The Song is Farther Along.

Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long
While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong
When death has come and taken our loved ones, it leaves our home so lonely and dreary
Then do we wonder why others prosper living so wicked year after year
Farther along we’ll know all about it; farther along we’ll understand why
Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we’ll understand it all by and by
Faithful till death said our loving master; a few more days to labor and wait
Toils of the road will then seem as nothing as we sweep through the beautiful gates
Farther along we’ll know all about it…
Yes, we’ll understand it all by and by…

This song reminds me that in the end – if I myself am faithful – I’ll understand why – and that for now – I just need to live and serve and put all my trust in Him who saved me. That is also true of all who believe whether you knew it or not – you want the same things.

IDENTITY OF THE CHURCH
WALK WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING

Paul wrote, “1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1-3).

The moment after one is baptized “all” their sins are forgiven, they are added to the body of Christ, which is the church, and then something truly wonderful begins.

That person now has a purpose.
They are now the chosen, redeemed, predestined, adopted, heirs, saved, reconciled and now they begin a glorious transformation as they are recipients of wisdom from above.
Why? So that God will be glorified through His saints!
His glory and His wisdom would be on display as Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:21 which summarizes the calling, that God would be glorified through us (the church) and through Jesus for all generations forever and ever. That is our calling in this life.

So, in this less we’ll learn a bit of what it means to be…

We can love each other all the while still not seeing “eye to eye” on various points and still draw closer when we differ in our understanding.
Those who are more mature in the faith must remember they didn’t start where they are now.
We all must, with all lowliness and gentleness longsuffering, bear with one another in love.

In this lesson I will stress three points…

Walking worthy is necessary if we are going to have unity.
Christ Like Character brings Christian Unity.
And Three, there is a charge, or command from Paul to maintain Christian unity.

We begin with understanding that for this to happen we must “Walk Worthy” (4:1)…

MIND OF CHRIST – PART 4
WHY JESUS

Ever consider how powerful the little word Come is?

My House – Movie – Walk – Visit my Church

Jesus:

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” – Matt. 16:24
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden” – Matt. 11:28
Jesus said to Peter “Come…out of the boat, walk on the water and walk to Me” – Matt 14:29
“…come to Me and drink…out of YOUR heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:37-38

Jesus invites all to come to Him, come live as I lived, come raise your children right, come and follow me to heaven where I Am!

IT IS THE INVITATION OF GOD

Therefore, for a little while today we’re going to talk about why Jesus.

MIND OF CHRIST PART 6
WILDERNESS ENCOUNTER

In this our sixth lesson we continue seeking to know the mind of Christ. As God’s dear children, we want to learn how to deal with all of life’s trials and temptations.

And the best way is to learn from the master’s mind, the mind of Christ

Paul wrote, “we have the mind of Christ” (1Cor. 2:16)
Powerfully, that eliminates “divisions”
Allowing us to be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1Cor. 1:10)
“with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27)
The clear result is that we with, “one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6)
So, as we live and breathe, before God Our Father, let’s, “gird up the loins of our mind, be sober, and rest our hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1Pet. 1:13)

We receive the mind of Christ by seeing, through the word of God, how Jesus, and His apostles dealt with, error, difficult people, and life situations and the devil himself. You may have guessed from our scripture reading that today we want to learn from Jesus how he dealt with temptation and then apply the same principals to our lives. We will not be led up into the wilderness by the devil as was our Lord, but we all must face temptations in our lifetime. We all must make decisions, and live with the outcomes of those choices, whether good, or bad.

So, let’s learn from the master’s “Wilderness Encounter”…

IDENTITY OF THE CHURCH
THAT YOU MAY KNOW

In the previous 5 lessons from Paul’s letter to the saints at Ephesus Paul is telling them, and us, who we are in Christ. Describing the many spiritual blessings that are found in Christ Paul says we are the saints, chosen, predestined, adopted, redeemed, and sealed. Let me describe two ways we can practice our faith.

Vertical Christianity: Godly Love – Service, Sacrifice, and Obedience. Faithfulness – To God’s Word till Death. Horizontal Christianity: Genine Fellowship within the Family of God that extends love toward all the saints.
Genuine Love for the Lost that Develops a need for sharing the good news. Vertical Christianity practicing the faith once delivered in hope of the return of Jesus, by pressing “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14), by serving the Lord and Master Jesus. While Horizontal Christianity is reaching out to others, being, …rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for ourselves a good foundation for the time to come, that we may lay hold on eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:18-19). Truth is, we cannot be faithful and love the things of this world (1 John 2:15). We cannot be faithful and not practice love toward our brothers and sisters (1 Pet. 2:17), nor can we be faithful and not desire to help seek and save lost souls as our Lord did for us (Luke 19:10).
Our Christianity hangs on these two principles from Jesus: “37…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37-39).

Truth demands that we live beyond ourselves. As God’s children, we cannot live for self, we must live for Jesus.
We are called to live according to will of God (Matt. 7:21) thus we live to “serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb. 12:28), we live to “serve one another” (Gal. 5:13), and we “walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8) exposing the works of darkness (Eph. 5:11).

In our lesson we will learn from Paul two things: What God Wants You To Have (1:15-17) and What God Wants You To Know (1:18-23)…

IDENTITY OF THE CHURCH – PART 5 YOU ARE HEIRS

You are Heirs

Because we have been redeemed by the applied blood of Christ, our sin debt has been paid, and being restored we are now heirs – God’s inheritance. At verse 11 we read…

“In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,” (Eph. 1:11)

The first point that needs to be explored is this.

We must not make the mistake of connecting “obtaining an inheritance” to the promise of a home in heaven Jesus made us (John 14:1-3, 6).
The “inheritance” means you are now one of the people of God, God’s child, not the home in heaven, but that God is now your Father, and you are His precious child.

Consider the promises of God to His chosen people Israel…

THE MIND OF CHRIST – CONNECT THE DOTS

We are continuing our evening series on the mind of Christ

Our goal is to know more about Jesus
To learn from His thoughts to try as best we can to make them our thoughts
To see how Jesus handles day to day dealings with people who both love Him and even those who hated Him

Today, turn with me to the book of John, and chapter John 6:59-69…

IDENTITY OF THE CHURCH – YOU ARE REDEEMED PART 4

In this our 4th lesson we’ll learn part of what all this means as we study what it means to be redeemed. We begin at verse 7 of chapter one which reads:

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”  (Ephesians 11:7)

Our redemption was made possible only because of God’s great love. Redemption defined: (ἀπολυτρόω signifying a. to redeem one by paying the price). The Oxford Dictionary has, “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil. God’s plans for the redemption of his world”.

Only through Christ do we have redemption.

As Paul said, redeemed through His blood

 John wrote of Jesus saying, “…You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9)

We have been made free, the debt we could not pay for our sin was paid for by Jesus’ own blood…

IDENTITY OF THE CHURCH – YOU ARE PREDESTINED TO ADAOPTION PART 3

These are the words of the Apostle Paul to the saints in Ephesus.

“5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He [a]made us accepted in the Beloved.”  (Ephesians 1:5-6)

Before the foundation of the world, God, in His infinite mind, planned for the church to exist. The church was predestined to be occupied by individuals who will obey the Gospel. In the physical sense it would be like a man designing plans for a “building” with intention of filling it for some specific purpose. The building by itself is just a building – until occupied. What is inside defines what name is on the building.  Let me explain:

In the 1900’s a man named William Isaly designed a building and had it built in Mansfield, Ohio
He then filled the building with Ice-cream products and Isley’s was born.

Years passed and Isley’s went out of business and the same building became Austin’s Outlet Store. 

Again Mr. Austin passed and the building was purchased by Barberton Check Cashing. 

Again, that business closed and the building became Redline Train and Hobbies. . .

Then after they closed up, Billy Bob bought it. . .

Finally, Billy Bob retired, and the Fellowship Community church purchased the building.

God is the original designer for His church, and had a purpose for the building before the building existed and listen, God’s building the church, is eternal, for it exists now, and is the only thing that will be delivered up to Heaven to the Father when the end of the physical comes as Paul wrote, “Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.”   (1 Corinthians 15:24). God the Father is eternal and He therefore, never dies as we read what John wrote, “The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8).

Who was and is and is to come means He is eternal…

THE MIND OF CHRIST PART 2 “UNITY”

To begin our study we will consider some of the attitudes which are necessary for unity. Therefore, as we seek to know the mind of Christ, let’s consider attitudes Necessary for Unity. 

We will begin with Lowliness of mind, then finnish up with unselfishness, …