psalm 19 7-14 click for audio

The Bible Shows the Grace of God

Psalm 19:7-14

TT- The Bible is completely inspired and authoritative and teaches us Christ.

How do we know God?

The first six verses from Psalm 19 are eye-opening verses.  They show us that when we look up and consider creation we behold God’s glory.  The Psalmist wants us to understand that the heavens, the sun, and all creation are busy proclaiming or literally sounding forth like a trumpet the glory of God.  The Sun is like a circuit riding preacher as it declares the glory of God day after day.

When we couple these verses with Romans 1, we can also see that because there is no place the heat of the sun cannot be felt or the light seen, there is no human soul that will be without excuse for not acknowledging God as Creator.  Everyone who does not acknowledge God and who lives for his or her own sin is without excuse when judgment time comes.

We also learned last week that this knowledge understood by every human being is not enough to save anyone.  More knowledge is needed.  While creation exhaustively preaches God’s glory it takes God Himself to reveal grace.  He does this through the Bible.  Just as the sun penetrates the earth with heat and light, so God’s Word penetrates the human heart. Continue Reading

The Kingdom of God

Luke 13:18-21

All through Jesus’ ministry He has experienced opposition.  Whether it is Satan and the demonic realm or the religious leaders or even at times, His own followers His ministry has been opposed.  Luke, probably more than any other Gospel writer, seeks to show us that very thing.  Luke also shows, more than any other Gospel writer, that Jesus’ ministry is one of preaching the Kingdom of God and healing.

If we were one of His followers, back then, we would have heard this same message many times, some 18-19 times in the Gospel of Luke already.

What’s troubling to the disciples is that yeah, they’ve seen Jesus heal and do miracles, such as the woman last week, but they’ve not seen anything that might resemble a kingdom.  They believe Jesus and they believe His credentials and yet if He is the Messiah why then all this opposition and why doesn’t He begin His rule and set up His kingdom?  What was confusing to them was rather than the religious leaders of His day signing on, they’re signing out.  Rather than lining up to follow Jesus, they were lining up to destroy Him.  It doesn’t seem at times that Jesus is helping matters all that much either.  Like we saw last week, He called the synagogue ruler a hypocrite.  Not a great way to get the religious leaders on your side.  The disciples do believe but things are not adding up very well.  They were not seeing the visible manifestation of a Kingdom.

They have also read the prophecies like Isaiah 9…

Is 9:7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. 

Lk 1:33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

There seems to be some discrepancies.  The problem was not with Jesus; the problem was the disciple’s understanding of what God’s Kingdom is all about and what it looks like.

Because of their confusion Jesus addresses the Kingdom of God. Continue Reading

Luke 13.6-17

Glorifying or Grumbling, Two States of the Human Heart

Luke 13:10-17

TT- A believer hungers for the Word of God and then lives their life in submission to it.

At first reading this section in Luke’s account seems a little out of place.  He’s just shown us Jesus’ words regarding the vital need for everyone to repent.  Jesus has given us God’s will for us when He very clearly said, unless you repent you all will likewise perish.  Then, He tells us a parable showing the fig tree that should be producing fruit but is not.  Israel had been given such privileges and yet the people would not repent and would not bear fruit.  However, Jesus in His mercy is depicted as the vinedresser and gives Israel one last opportunity to repent.  Rather than turning from sin and turning to Christ and embracing Him as the One sent from God, they refuse.  History tells us that this generation of Israelites perished.

Luke shows us in this text today the difference between one who has repented and is producing fruit and one who remains hard-hearted and in his sin.

I’d like to reread the parable from last week because it is the connection between these two accounts. Continue Reading

Luke 13.1-9

Unless You Repent

Luke 13:1-9

Luke tells us in verse 1 that there were some in the crowd who began reporting a current news event.  If we look at what they say it probably is a result of Jesus’ challenge in chapter 12.

Lk 12:54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens.

Lk 12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens.

Lk 12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Someone in the crowd wanted Jesus to see that they understood the signs of the times.  We do understand, Jesus.  We understand that bad things happen to bad people.  When we heard of the slaughter of those Jews in the Temple we did put two and two together and realize that they must have been terrible sinners. 

As with many people today who want to try and figure out the signs of the times, they brought up a current news event as a means of discerning what God is doing. It’s like some folks today, who read about an event in the Middle East for example and immediately want to draw a line between that event and a prophecy in the Book of Revelation as if they are God and can predict things that our Lord did not know while on earth.

The crowd here in our text today is bringing up a tragic event and concluding that God gets even with extremely bad sinners.  This is almost exactly what we heard ten years ago with 911.  Everyone had an opinion as to why the towers fell.  Some said it was God’s judgment on America.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re speaking about 911 or the tsunami of 2004 or more recently the tidal wave that hit Japan; the questions are basically the same.  Who is responsible and why did these things happen? Continue Reading