Bread of Life Fellowship

The sins of the believer are addressed and culminate in the most shocking charge of all. Worldiness is adultery! And God is righteously jealous.

Hedonism says my personal pleasure is the ultimate good. Holiness means to be set apart from God. Holiness says "I am set apart for the pleasure of God alone."

Like a mighty river that settles into a calm deep channel of blessing. God's work of salvation flows out of the meek servant like water into a desert. James gives to us in James 3:17 a portrait of this river of wisdom as it flows out of our lives and into our world... We will consider what each expression looks like and also why this is.

A short consideration of the meekness and the purity that is expressed in those operating under the wisdom that comes from above.

We are told the earthly wisdom is made up of zeal and ambition gone in the wrong direction. The problem is that this kind of wisdom can easily appear to be spiritual in nature because there is a certain zeal and ambition also present in the practice of true wisdom. So how can you tell? What is the sign of a ministry conducted in earthly wisdom?

From one of the harshests passages in the New Testament exposing the hellishness of the tongue we discover some a most powerful encouragement. Here we discover the oughts of the unregenerate man or woman in contrast to the ought of the born again person.

James has a warning for teachers. A warning in which he includes himself. Things to consider before you preach or before you sit under the teacher.

What does it mean that our "salvation is nearer than when we first believed"? We consider the force with which Paul encourages love in the church. We consider the context in which we are to live in obedience to Christ. And from which direction light is coming our way.

Love is a debt owed to all. The law is the payment plan of love. Love paid out in the Holy Spirit's fullness is the fulfillment of the law. Love seeks not harm but blessing on its object.

Romans 13:1-7 How can this be applied to despotic governments? What is our relationship to governments as members of a heavenly kingdom? Must we always be in subjection to human governments since they are all appointed by God? What actually is our duty to our nation?

God alone has the perfect knowledge of the conditions that bring about people's evil actions, the motives that drive those actions, and the far-reaching impact of those actions upon others. This perfect knowledge is necessary for God to act with perfect justice. We, on the other hand, do not know these things and so we leave judgement and the execution of justice to God. And yet we have a part in his justice when with goodness we heap coals upon the heads of our enemies.

These are the thoughts we are to have of ourselves and we are to think towards others. We see them and think to ourselves: They are important to God. They have their unique battles and struggles with sin and with this sin riddled world. They are receiving grace and mercy from God... they need daily mercy and grace. Now that we are to think this way we must discipline our thought life against what would hindered us in growing in our love for them...

Romans 12:16 which in the King James tells us to "be of the same mind toward one another" and in the ESV says "Live in harmony with one another" more letterally reads, "think the same things toward one another." This means that what we think both of ourselves and our fellow Christians will produce a harmony or sympathy with one another. But what is that thing we are to think of us both?

From Exodus 12 consider the purpose and practice of the first passover and its revealing of God, his judgment, his mercy, his salvation.

The Angel's sermon on Resurrection Sunday reveals that ours is a faith that rests in the garden and not in the graveyard.

Consider the endurance and generosity of a hope filled love from Romans 12:12-15

Consider the fire that should inflame our zeal and the service in zeal we are to offer to one another. "In zeal do not be hesitant, in the Spirit be boiling, serving the Lord."

From Romans 12:10 consider the love we are to have for one another as it expresses itself in the family of God. Consider also how such true love rushes in to give honor to others in a way that honors what Christ has done and is doing in them.

Most people begin life in such a circumstance where they are getting primed to love. We have to receive love before we can give love. Most babies come into the world and arrive in loving arms. That mother gets an extra measure of love stoked in her as that baby comes to her breast. She is giving herself in love and so from the start we humans are gaining something of the love we will return to the next generation after us. It is a common grace of homes all over the world that love is received and then given out and the cycle can go like that from generation to generation. What is true of this most basic element of human interaction... this glue of love that binds and stimulates anything healthy in any society... is supernaturally true of the Chrisitan life and community. We have to receive love in order to give love.

Is the gift of prophecy present today? Is the residual of this grace still active in the church? If so how are we to receive it?

Brothers and sisters before us in the text are three things that are to instruct and guide our lives together. Three things essential for life before one another in the church. 1st You must think of yourself rightly. You must think of yourself first before you think of others. 2nd You must then accept yourself among the others God has placed you. 3rd You must then apply yourself in the grace God has given you for the benefit of others.

In order to live morally you have to have words, words you can think about and consider and respond to. Words that direct you to God and his will and allow you in this moral sense to think God's thoughts after him. It is in this area of words and thoughts that our enemy has set up his battle lines against us. Satan's strategic battle is for the mind. He attacks us at the command center of our thoughts before he goes after our actions. If we would live morally congruent lives to the glory of God we must learn how to win the battle for the mind. The question for us today is how how do we win this battle?

A strange sacrifice God asks of us. Presenting our bodies? Consider up to this point in Romans 12:1 what Paul has told us of our bodies. Then consider the miracle of God as we present that body to him!

The simple words principally found in Romans 12:1 will show us the wonderful foundation for the Christian's ethic and moral practice…and our approach to our morals.

Paul is brought to this exclamation of praise and adoration and wonder as he begins to see that God uses our sins teach us the value of his mercy. God knows all the details of information that can and would bear in upon your life. God wisely in keeping with his justice, holiness and love charts a way or a path to your life. To maximize the moment when you might come under the outpoured richness of His own life through mercy and grace.

Here is the Mystery: God has a plan to bring his salvation upon all the nations, culminating in the final and full redemption of the nation of Israel. God will do this by bringing all under the conviction of their disobedience so that they will understand that a right standing before Him can only come through His mercy— it is not earned or gained by moral effort, it is only received by faith.

Judaism is at our roots. It is the ladder by which we are brought up into the promise of Jesus Christ. Don't neglect your Old Testament. Don't look down upon the Israel of God. Don't think you can stand in your Christianity apart from the undergirding and the promises God gave and will keep to all of Israel. The Gentile believers Paul was writing to could not trace the faithfulness of God through their own fathers who were pagans. And so, they may have felt as if they stood out as singly the people who have been birthed by God. Paul tells them, you are here because of God's faithfulness to the Jewish fathers and his promises to them. Don't boast over them be humble.

There is an incentive for Paul as an Apostle to the Gentiles to continue to seek to bring some of the Jews to Christ. They represent a bridge into God's salvation for the whole nation. And Paul knows the salvation of the nation as a whole will only increase the blessings of the World and the believing Gentiles as a whole. Israel's falling away has precipitated a movement of the Gospel upon the Gentile world and brought to them salvation and riches and reconciliation... This can only mean to Paul that their return will mean a fuller expression of that salvation, greater riches and a more enriched and vigorous experience of the abundance of life we have in Jesus Christ.

An interesting observation in the writings of the Prophets will reveal a cross current of love and hatred. The prophet will pray and plead for and with his nation to turn them back to the Lord and next he will be railing against them in their sins. He will be found in his prayers, defending them before the Lord in one turn and then in the next speaking of them with great disdain and anger

Simply consider what it means to obey the gospel. "But they have not all obeyed the gospel..."

Last week we spoke on the Urgency of our Prayer – "My hearts desire and prayer is for all of Israel to be saved." And we spoke on the centrality of our Proclamation "That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you shall be saved." And now we must turn to embrace the Necessity of Evangelism as our Profession. the prayers and the proclamation that rise from this great hope... now lead us to a point of identity... we come to a point where our Profession is embraced.

Romans 10:1-13 brings us to the peak application of the book of Romans. Here Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, brings us into the culminating expressions of the Christian before the glory of the Gospel.

Paul guides us to consider the sovereignty of God that lies behind this gospel. God is sovereign in how he saves (in mercy to those who believe). God is sovereign in who he saves (as we will see God crafts for fitness the vessels of mercy). And God is sovereign in order and timing in which he brings his salvation to the nations.

An overview of Romans 9 brings us to verse 22-24 and the challenge to the obstinate heart. Who are to to say to the one who has formed you? Consider God's sovereignty before your Salvation.

From James 1:9-11 the danger of finding our identity in temporary things is corrected by the truth found in God's Saving GRACE!

God entices us to ask for wisdom holding out to us a promise, a provision, and His own generous presence. Finally He entices us with a precedent set. God is a giving God. Finally there one proviso... Ask in faith and don't doubt the Provider. Introductory words on the author James and then an in depth look at the promise to give wisdom to those who lack it.

When Jesus cried out, "If anyone thirst come to me and drink" we must understand that he was present before those he was inviting. He still is. The waters of revival are not far from us but right before us.

Ruble #1 - We lose sight of God's power; Ruble #2 - we replace the authority of His word with our own renditions and our own needs, the doctrines are replaced with ethics and moralisms and we forget all that Christ has delivered us from and does deliver us from. Ruble #3 - We become dispossessed of the wonderful doctrines of justification, regeneration and therefore our understanding of sanctification is just something like, Try harder, be better, we all stumble and fall so pick yourself up, dust yourself off and do your best. And with this #4 the final load of Rubble in the Well is A THOUSAND LITTLE THINGS!

The doctrine of the new birth is faintly preached in our day. The reason is that it would not be received with joy in many congregations. 1 John was a letter most gladly received to its initial recipients. The same letter preached in many of our churches would be sobering and greatly convicting. So be it!

Deny or stifle a robust emotional expressions of guilt, shame or fear and you lose your hold on the greatness of the doctrine of justification. What the individuals need is not that these emotions be tamped down. Instead they must be raised in them to an acute level. This is what the Holy Spirit is doing as he convicts of sin, righteousness and judgment. Then when at full flame these emotions drive us to an answer for them in the cross of Christ.

The topic is Illumination. The same Spirit that revealed God's message through the authors of Scripture must illumine that message to the Christian. The danger of imposing your sovereignty (read wishful thinking or assumed virtues) over the text of scripture was presented in our last message. On the other side of such such subjectivism, we may inappropriately come before God's Word is a smug self confident textualism. Because God's special revelation may be understood through the application of common sense hermeneutical principles does not mean that this word can be known without the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Once you lose faith in a Sovereign all powerful God you lose confidence in His Word. The authority of God's Word is lost in the church and must be restored.

What blocks the well keeping us from the revival waters of Christ's life? The first piece of Rubble that must go is a diminished view of God. The Rubble of unbelief in a sovereign, active, all powerful God blocks our way to the water in the well,

Follow the examples of spiritual giants on their way back to the wells of salvation.

Many in our generation have wandered from the wells of salvation and worked out a certain kind of success apart from this well. But the time has come to separate from the world and get back to what our spiritual fathers drank. The problem is that during our absence the enemy has filled this well with rubble and refuse. Satan wants to deny us the joy of our salvation found in Christ.

A controversial passage traditionally viewed through the window of God's sovereignty. We have instead recognize that the primary attribute that should guide our understanding of this passage is to be the attribute of God's mercy.

What does Paul mean when he says that "not all of Israel are of Israel?" The best way to answer that question is to ask, "What is the primary focus of Romans Chapter 9?"Answer that question correctly and you will then be in a position to understand what is the argument of Romans Chapter 9:6-13?

The grief of Paul over Israel reveals the proper point of grief for the intercessor who pleads for those under judgement.

The bestowments that God has given to Israel that Paul mentions in Romans 9:4 are like dormant seeds. We may see that Paul is interceding over these latent hopes seeking that God would cause them to sprout and bring forward their fulfillment of blessing for that nation. Here we learn more of the hope that should lie in our intercessions for others.

Paul's intercession for the Jews begins with the name He gave to their nation.