Episodes
Monday Mar 04, 2024
The Abrahamic Covenant, Part1
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Monday Mar 04, 2024
What is the biggest promise you've ever made? Most of the time, we don't realize we are making such a promise at the front end. Most of the time, we realize just how big of a promise we've made when we are halfway into that commitment. It can be something small like a bake sale that gets out of control, or it can be something profoundly large like a marriage that needs deep forgiveness within it. When we make big promises, sometimes we can rise to the occasion, and other times we just can't. We often put God in that box. We assume that God may or may not be able to keep up with the promises that He has made. As we will see today, God absolutely fulfills His promises to us, in particular, His promises for our salvation.
It is hard for us to imagine that our salvation is being worked out here with a little man with a funny name from a distant town, but they are. What is happening in these short few verses is nothing less than the shaping of history. This is the working out of one of the most important promise made in the Bible, the Abrahamic covenant. We are going to explore just how important this covenant is by looking at the fulfillment of the three separate promises God makes. God provides His people a place, God provides His people a Savior, and God provides His people a blessing.
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Condescend to Covenant
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Have you ever stopped to think about how it is that you can have a relationship with God? I mean, we hear that a lot in church, but how does that actually work? How do you as a little human being standing on a rock that is floating in space that is 93 billion light years in diameter form a relationship with the God Who made all of that? How is that not an arrogant thing to assume? How are we able to do this? The answer to that lies in this passage in Genesis 12. It has been hinted at in Genesis 3, 6, and 9, but it is going to be spelled out for us in chapters 12, 15, 17, and 22. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Abrahamic covenant.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if you don't understand this covenant, you aren't going to understand any of the others, nor are you really going to understand the New Testament. The promise to Abraham and how it was done is going to provide the basis for Paul's argument for how we are saved by grace in Romans 4. It will form Paul's argument for predestination in Romans 9, and most relevantly for us, it will form Paul's argument for Gentile inclusion in the New Covenant in Galatians 3-4.
And it isn't just the New Testament that finds this important, as it will come up a lot in the rest of the Old Testament as well. While it will be mentioned a lot in Genesis, I want to just draw your attention to Exodus. This covenant will be brought up in Ex 2:24-25 as the reason for why God is about to act. It will be brought back up when Israel needed comfort in Exodus 6 that He really was going to come and save them. Interestingly, it doesn't come up again until God is ready to consume Israel for their sin in Exodus 32, when Moses invokes that covenant as the mediator between God and the nation. What's fascinating is that he doesn't bring up the Mosaic covenant just made on Mountain, but rather he brings up the promise made to Abraham. God spared the entire nation based on the promise that He made to one man.
That is how our God works. When He makes promises, He is going to uphold them. So let's see how God forms relationships and how that applies to us today by looking at our two points: God forms relationships through covenants and God advances His plans through covenants
Monday Feb 19, 2024
God's Escape Hatch
Monday Feb 19, 2024
Monday Feb 19, 2024
Does anyone else feel like there's just too much going on? I saw a video of a man saying—well, screaming—that exact sentiment from his car. Life just has so much happening at any given time, and it can feel like there is just no way to keep up with everything. Part of this comes down to our inability to say no to things. We've created such a culture that looks down on people who aren't overworked that we assume being busy absolutely all the time is what is most honoring to God. This ignores the fourth commandment that explicitly commands rest, but that's another sermon.
Perhaps another possibility for this crazy sense of busyness might be because there is a misquoting (and understanding) of the verse that we are looking at here this morning. I've heard this verse in many conversations over the years saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." This idea that God doesn't overload us can give us permission (or threat) to just keep going with whatever life throws our way. Since God doesn't overload us, then whatever is on our plate must stay on our plate. Since God doesn't give me more than I can handle, then there is no need to ask for help.
As we will see, today, that is not what that verse means—or even says. There is no verse that says that God won't give you more than you can handle. In fact, there is Biblical evidence to show the opposite! One scholar points to 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 "For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death." But then take a look at the rest of the verse:"But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." (Eric Bargerhuff). Do you see the point being made here? God gives you more than you can handle all the time! The very point in doing so is so that you see your true weakness and look to God for help. That is reality! So where do we get this idea from? Well, that likely is coming from 1 Cor. 10:13, which we look at now.
What God does say in that verse is that He is not going to allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able (again, with His help) to escape. That is what we are going to be looking at today as we contemplate our two points today: The danger of falling into temptation is real and **Dependance on God and avoidance of sin is required.
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
Remember to Not Forget
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
Wednesday Feb 14, 2024
Today, we dive into Psalm 103 to see how we are invited to remember God's blessings to feed our joy.
Sunday Feb 04, 2024
The Freedom of Serving Only One Master
Sunday Feb 04, 2024
Sunday Feb 04, 2024
Join us as we listen to our guest preacher Gary Johnson preach at our Mission's Weekend out of Matthew 6!
Monday Jan 29, 2024
The Tower, the Table, and the New Jerusalem
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Have you ever heard of the concept of a spite house? These are houses that are built for the purposes of upsetting neighbors or making a point. One such house is in Freeport, New York, built in 1906. The builder was a developer named John Randall who didn’t like the city’s idea to make a grid system for the roads. To stop this, he built a house on a triangular piece of land that ruined the symmetry of the roads, a consequence you can still see today, over one hundred years later. There is another one in Boston called the Skinny House. Two brothers got a piece of land, but one was away on military duty. When he came back, he found his brother built a house taking up more than a fair share of property. In response, he built a house right next to his brother's, constructed in such a way to block light from the house! It is so close there isn’t a front door, meaning you’ve got to shimmy your way around to the side door (Source).
In a time before regulation, it was possible to preserve one’s feelings about something for over a century in this country, but this isn’t a new thing. Building something to commemorate an event or a person wasn’t invented in 20th century America. In fact, this goes back nearly to the beginning, all the way to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, the original spite house. God’s command was for the people to go out and fill the earth, but they disobeyed this command pretty straightaway with the idea of staying together and building a name for themselves. God is going to intervene with a judgment that is still around even today but will be lifted on that Great Day of the Lord. Today we are going to see God's commandments and judgments produce ultimate good and A broken world is moving towards reunion.
Sunday Jan 21, 2024
The Table of Nations
Sunday Jan 21, 2024
Sunday Jan 21, 2024
Genealogies are one of the most encouraging sections of Scripture. The reason why that sounds like a funny statement is because we don't read them. We don't think about them. We assume that what we are looking at is a dull list of names that have nothing to do with me or very little to do with the Bible. Sure, names like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob show up, but how often are the Jebusites showing up, and even if it is a lot, what difference does it make? How does knowing Nimrod built Nineveh make a difference to my life? Well, if you aren't paying close attention to all of Scripture, yeah, this won't make a difference to you. But I can tell you that's true of all the Scripture. We come to this gold mine of the Bible with nothing but a pan. We will find riches even that way, but oh how blessed is the man who meditates, who brings the pick axe to open up the ground. We are going to need to do some work, but there is gold even here.
We have covered genealogies before in our series through Genesis, most recently in chapter 5. There we saw that God was faithful to His promises and His judgments and that walking close with God brings blessing. God promised Eve that she would have children, and sure enough, Eve had children! Adam and Eve were even able to see it come to pass!
We've just seen some invocations made to God from Noah last week for Shem and Japheth to be blessed and Canaan to be cursed. Well, when we get to chapter 10, it is starting to look like it is going to be a while before we see this. The sons of Ham (including Canaan) are doing pretty well for themselves, while it seems like Shem is taking a minute to get started.
I can imagine that this is really hitting home with the original audience. The descendants of Shem have just left 4 centuries of servitude to Egypt. While they haven't been serving Canaan, it's not like they've been enjoying power in Egypt. Ham's kids are oppressing Shem's kids. Now, the tables have turned recently, but right now the descendants of Shem are sitting in the wilderness. They've just finished complaining about their food situation, longing to go back to Egypt. They are about to face the sons of Canaan, and they are scared to death to face these people. From their perspective, this is a losing battle, always has been, always will be. But you and I, with the benefit of the rest of history, can learn a lesson here. Let's learn some family history as we discover our two points: God's people don't look like much, but God is faithful to His promises in time.
Sunday Jan 14, 2024
A Man at Best
Sunday Jan 14, 2024
Sunday Jan 14, 2024
While you can make fun of someone like me carrying all these tools just in case, it is no laughing matter that most of us are unprepared for the things that are absolutely going to happen that day. I can tell you with 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin before this day is over. Honestly, I have 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin in the next hour! What are you doing about that? If the answer is, "Not much," then this passage is for you. The horror that sin causes even post-Adam and Eve is worth us pausing.
We have an example of this very thing before us in this passage. Noah was, as we saw, a man of incredible faith and trust in God. He built a boat in the middle of the land to prepare for a worldwide flood. He did this in faith for 100 years while all the rest of humanity likely hurled abuse and possibly sabotage on his work. Nevertheless, the Lord vindicated him and preserved him and his family through the flood. Upon leaving the boat, rather than bitter and exhausted from the trip, spent the first days after the flood in worship, offering sacrifice to God.
After that, we have the sad episode in front of us. While sinners drowned in the flood, sin did not. It was still in Noah's heart, too. One scholar put it this way, "'With the opportunity to start an ideal society, Noah was found drunk in his tent'" (qtd in Ross, 212). As it has been said, the best of men are men at best. Adam's sinful nature is passed down to Noah, and as we will see, there will be generational consequences for sin committed here by both Noah and Ham.
We will be looking at two points today: The best of men are subject to sin and the consequences of sin can last.
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Called to Serve
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Monday Jan 08, 2024
It seems to be these days we are always in the midst of an election cycle. We rightly see elections of leaders in our country to be important and not to be taken for granted, as it is a right that not every country grants its citizens. It is a right that has been defended at great cost, and it should be counted as an enormous privilege and responsibility to help shape the country we live in.
As true as all of that is, we are on the verge of something far more important that has impact for eternity. Today, we begin the nominations process for the leaders of our church. Far more is at stake than a tax policy. Far more is at stake than just Knollwood’s reputation in the community. Indeed, the reputation of the gospel in our community and our own spiritual formation is impacted by the decisions that we will make in the power of the Holy Spirit in the coming weeks.
Thankfully, God has not left us to formulate the ideal candidate on our own. God has graciously given to us the profile of a church leader that transcends time, culture, and our individual ideals. You will notice that the list God leaves us with here looks quite different than what we might see on a job requirements list today, even among church job postings. There is no mention of a dynamic personality or success in business, or even previous leadership experience except the candidate’s own household. This list recognizes character not class. It requires integrity not innovation. It prizes a grasp and application of Truth rather than a knowledge and appropriation of trend. We’ve seen the danger of ignoring this list and promoting and then shamefully protecting men who did not have the qualities we are about to see today, so with all of this in mind, let us turn to our points this morning which you can see in your outline. Christ wants character in His elders and Christ wants character in His deacons.
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
How to be Blessed
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Many of us are starting this year with a renewed sense of hope. It’s a New Year. I love new starts. Fresh calendars, new notebooks, new goals, and new equipment to reach those goals from my Christmas haul. “This year is gonna be different,” I repeat from last year, “I can feel it!” That’s asking a lot from a new notebook, calendar, and productivity app, though. Those things can help my mind, but they can’t really change my heart. I want to remind you of something that you need to keep in the forefront of your mind this coming year: blessing only comes from God. Actual, real, long-term blessing (that’s the kind you want) is only going to come from God this year. And really, you can to a certain degree determine how much of a blessing you will receive. Obviously, I am not talking about material prosperity here. You can’t gin up enough faith to make a new car appear in your driveway. You can’t pray a certain prayer and new toys show up in your room. That’s not the kind of blessing I am talking about, nor what this Psalm is talking about.
Psalm 1 is laying out some wisdom for us that is counter-intuitive, even for Christians. This Psalm is telling us things that we wouldn’t know otherwise without this Psalm’s help. So let’s dive in and find out blessing looks like transformation and blessing comes through the word of God