Sermon Notes March 24, 2024

 

The Urgency

“Sending You” 

  1. 1. The Curse of Knowledge: Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it’s like not _______________.

Romans 10:13-15  for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”

Luke 16:19-28,19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.22 The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’25 But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’27 He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’” 

  1. Lesson learned: Everybody ______________________.
  2. Lesson learned: Jesus wanted to make it absolutely clear that when we die, we face either ____________________.
  3. The Rich man does not “appear” to be in trouble but he didn’t have a _______________________ with God.

 


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Sermon Notes March 17, 2024

The Challenge

“Sending You” 

  1. The idea of  “____________________” is what really set                His life apart. 

See: John 4:34; 5:30; 6:29; 6:38; 7:16; 7:28-29; 8:16; 8:29; 9:4; 12:44-45; 12:49; 13:20; 14:24. 

Luke 15:1, 20,  “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus…. So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his fathersaw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” 

  1. To Jesus, nothing mattered more than ______________   what was lost. 

See: Luke 5:32; Matthew 18:14; Luke 19:10; 14:23. 

John 20:21, “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.’” 

  1. Jesus wasn’t just sent on a _____________________; He came to send us on one, too. 
  2. A spiritual narcissism has invaded our thinking where the individual needs and desires of the believer become the                         __________________________________________.

 Are we a Battleship or a Cruise Liner?

 


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Sermon Notes March 03, 2024

Making History: Is This Your Time 

See Esther 4:1-8 

Keys to Making History:

 

  1. First Key, ______________________________.

 

“I believe that in your life you will have countless _____________ presented to you by God to do something ______________ with your life.”

 

  1. Second Key, count the ______________________.

 

“With every _______________ comes a _________________ — there is often a sacrifice involved in doing what God has asked you to do.”

 

See Esther 4:9-11

 

  1. Third Key, A direct challenge to _____________ in face of the risk and in light of the ____________________________.

 

Esther 4:12-14, “When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: ‘Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’” 

So how did Esther respond?  

Esther 4:15-17, “Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 ’Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.’ 17 So Mordecai went away and carried out all of Esther’s instructions.”

 


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Sermon Notes February 25, 2024

Up There Is Coming Down Here                                

 

  Opening Question: What is the gospel that Jesus came to preach?

Mark 1:14-15   After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” He said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”  

Luke 8:1; 9:1-2, “After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God…. When Jesus had called the Twelve together, He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.”                                                         Acts 1:3; 28:31,” After His suffering, He presented Himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God…. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!” 

  1. What was the gospel of Jesus? ______________________

Matthew 6:32-33,” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

  1. What does “righteousness” mean? It is what makes someone ________________________ from the inside.
  2. Your kingdom is where you are _________________. The technical language for this is: Your kingdom is the __________ of your effective will — it’s where you get to ________________.

Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”

See Matthew 13:44 and Romans 14:17

 Matthew 6:9-10, “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”                  

 


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Sermon Notes February 18, 2024

The Testimony of a Tower                                                          “In the Beginning”

Genesis 11:1-9, “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”

  1. When we say, “the tower of Babel,” what are we talking about?  ______________________________________.
  2. This ancient tower wasn’t a place of ________________ but a            place where a god would ______________________.
  3. People would take care of the god, and the god would                    ______________________________________.

 

Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’”… 3:22, “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’”
  1. There are not multiple __________________, just one — the _____________________.

 

Acts 17:26, “From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

 


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Sermon Notes February 11, 2024

What’s Love Look Like?                                                                      “What’s Love REALLY Got to Do With It?”

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 13, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing…  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”                                                                                                       1 Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

  1. Patience is the will, the choice, to wait or endure __________    _______________.
  2. If envy is left unchecked, the desire for the “thing” turns into a dislike for _______________________ who has the “thing”.
  3. In other words, love isn’t concerned with ________________, or self-assertion; it cares more about ___________________.

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President, delivered this on January 17th, 1925: “Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

How do you compare to this description?

Did you see Jesus in this description?

 


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Sermon Notes February 04, 2024

It Looked Like Rain                                                                    “In the Beginning” 

After The Fall: See Genesis 4:1-8 

Genesis 6:1-8  When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

  1. __________ was enough for God to not give up on the world.

                                                                                                                         

The Boat: See Genesis 6:14-22
 

 

The Flood: See Genesis 7:7-24

Genesis 9:12-17 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.  Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

 
  1. In all the calamities of the end times outlined in the book of Revelation, what you won’t find in any mention of any kind of catastrophic __________________. 

 

See Matthew 24:37-39; 1Peter 3:20-22

 


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Sermon Notes January 28,2024

When All Hell Broke Loose                                                      “In the Beginning”                                      

The Garden of Eden  – – See Genesis 2:8-17,25

  1. Of all the things that could have been said to summarize life in the Garden of Eden, it was that it was ____________________.
  2. God created an opportunity — a choice — to make sure that the __________________________ between Him and human beings was really going to be a _________________________.
 

The Temptation—Genesis 3:1-6, Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,  but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will  die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

  1. 3. Who is Satan?   Jesus _____________________________.
 

The Fall – – Genesis 3:7-13, 14-19, 20-24  

 
  1. Result of the Fall, Eve turned from her dependence on God, so now she would depend ________________ — this allows    the husband, or man, to take _____________________ .

 

Romans 8:22, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
 
  1. God let us ___________, and we did, and our ____________  have brought continual pain and heartache and destruction

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Sermon Notes January 21, 2024

The Birds and the Bees                                                            “In the Beginning”

Genesis 1:27, 2:7, 18, 21-24, So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them… Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being…. 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him….” 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

  1. We were _______________…in________________________.   
  2. When God created us, He intentionally created ___________. He deliberately made us a ___________ of man and a ________  of woman.
Biology 101: What Makes us Male or Female?                                                                             
a) Internal reproductive organs. 
                                                                                                                                                    b) External sexual anatomy.   
                                                                                                                                                    c) Endocrine Systems that produce 2nd sex characteristics.                            
 
d) And the presence or absence of a Y chromosome.
 

“This means that _____________ isn’t just about what you do or how you feel. It is about who you are and who you were made and __________________________________.”

Two Different Categories: 

A. Gender Role — the social and cultural aspects of being male or female…  ___________________.                                                                                                                                         
B. Gender Identity — the psychological aspects associated with being male or female… _____________________.
 

Genesis 1:28, God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  

 Deuteronomy 22:5  A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. 

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.    

 Romans 1:26-27 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 

1 Corinthians 6:18-19  Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

 


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Sermon Notes January 14, 2024

Adam and Eve and Charles                                              “In the Beginning”

Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”

Genesis 2:7, 18, 21-24, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being… The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ …So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.23 The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

  1. We were ________________________.      

Date: Summer of 1925; Location: Dayton, TN; Issue: Scopes Trial. Biology teacher John Scopes was charged with violating a law in Tennessee that said, you cannot teach evolution. Winner: __________________________________.

Here is the real issue: The real divide is between a ___________ view of the universe that sees nature as all that there is, and a _________________________ view of the universe that remains very much open to the existence and activity of a “God.”                          

The Problem Evolution Has…

A. The experts admit, there wasn’t enough ________________.   
B. Evolutionists admit that initially life may have been too  _____________________. 
C. How did a purely naturalistic evolutionary process create ever-increasing _____________________.  
D. How did _____________ come from _______________.
2.We were made in the very ___________________________.

#1: How does _________________________ evolve naturalistic out of a pool of primordial slime?     

#2: Why are we so incurably __________________________? 

#3: Where do we get our inner sense of _________________?

 


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