Shepherd's Garage

Jesus loves the church.  How can we love as he does?

Want to meet a man in love?  This sermon looks at Nehemiah and how he loves the Lord and wants to make sure He is glorified.

As we continue the series, "he other Christian trinity," (faith, hope, love) we turn our attention to love.  God is not concerned with our feelings so much as our actions when he commands us to love one another.  How can we do this?  

Hope has several elements but learning to he a good "waiter" is important.  So is integrity.  Hope depends on our integrity.

Hope.  Christian hope is not wishful thinking.  It is grouded in God and His faithfulness.  Hope is also not a feeling.  Sometimes hope is still moving forward when you do not feel like it.  Think of hope this way:  Hope is making heaven happen here.

The steadfast love of the Lord sounds good to our ears.  However, have you noticed the context in which those words are written.  It was a time of lost hope.  Yet it speaks of hope so beautifully.  Hope is hard.  Hope is not some emotion we have it's a commitment that God is merciful and will keep his word.

Faith is belief, trust and obedience but is there another word we could use besides faith.  Matthew Bates has suggested that the word allegiance may be a better word to use in understading the Biblical idea of faith.

When reading Hebrews 11 there are at least three elements to faith.  Belief, trust and obedience.  Focus for today is on trust.

Faith is certainly belief but it also is a recognition of the authority of Jesus and obedience to him.

What is the gospel and what does it mean that Jesus is messiah?  The gospel is so much more than Jesus died for our sins.  Messiah may be better understood as king.  

"Without faith it is impossible to please God."  But we do need to be sure that we have good sense of what Biblical faith is.

We want to be wise and do the right thing and yet we will still find ourselves struggling to be wise.  How do we resolve this?  Ecclesiastes 7:19-29 has some answers for us.  There is one righteous one who never sinned,  That makes all the difference.  Give it a listen and see what you think.

As we study through Joshua and Judges we keep running into the problem of idolatry.  It is easy to dismiss this as a problem they had but we do not struggle with.  We have our idols and we keep them for a number of reasons.  One reason we keep them around is that we stay focued on what we want instead of what we need.  God is more interested in what we need than what we want.  So when He does not give in to what we want we look to other places.

Just like the Israelites had a territory to conqueor in Joshua and Judges, we have one as well.  Ourselves.  That is the hardest thing we will have to conqueor in this life.  There are lots of things we can look at and learn from the story of Joshua and Judges but maybe the prime one is this.  The last verse of Judges sums up the problem.  "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."  Strive to move beyond yourself and do what is right in the eyes of God.

Abel's blood cries for one things.  Jesus blood speaks a better word to us.  It's why we can say Happy Easter.

Ecclesiastes chapter 7 begins with the importance of a good name.   Ecclesiastes 7:13 tell us this.  Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? ESV. Life will at times be crooked and it was God who made it crooked.  What's that all about?  Let's explore.

We read through the book of Joshua and it's easy to just look at the stories.  What meaning do these stories have for us today.  Maybe if you looked at like this:  We all have a territory to conquer.  That territory is ourself.  Read this way, Joshua is very useful for us as we see the the ways in which the battles we fight are either won or lost.  

Will you be Rahab or Achan?  Good question to ask yourself.  Will you have faith and work for God's purposes or will you work toward your own ends?

Joshua gets to meet the commander of the Lord's army and then hear a word from the Lord.  Lots to talk about here but the main point for today:  Quit trying to get God on your side and make sure you are on God's side.

Ecclesiastes 7:9-13 continues the discussion about how to have a good name.  Two things are emphasized:  Control your anger and do not live in the past.

When is someone ready to be baptized?  Important question, let's explore.

Everyone has questions they want answers to and should try to get answered.  Why and I here and what should I be doing.  The Bible has answers to these questions and others.

In Joshua chapter 1 Joshua is taking over from Moses as the leader of the Israelites.  God gives him some instructions to be a great leader.  However, the advice God gives to him is not what you would hear in leadership seminars today in this world.  It's pretty basic.  Be holy and obedient.  Let's see why this makes all the difference.

Joshua chapter one describes the land that the Israelites will one day occupy.  Yet, to my knowledge, they never occupied all this territory.  Why?  Was it a failure on the part of God or the people or something else?  Let's explore.

Correction.  It's hard to give and hard to take but so essential to all aspects of our life, especially spriritually.

Luke 15:  The Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son.  Tough being lost and tough being the one who lost something important.  What can we do about it.  This is not just stories about lost but asking us what we will do about the lost.

How is the day of death better than the day of birth?  Sound counter intuitive.  Very interesting passage from Ecclesiastes 7:1-8. Let's tak a look at what it means to have a good name.

For the Christmas story let's consider Joseph.  He was a righteous man and that made all the difference.

Why do we sing?  We sing for lots of reasons and singing is vital to our worship.  Let's explore why.

 started a short series about thanksgiving:   Being thankful for things we usually do not think about being thankful for.  November 9 was was this:  Be thankful that Jesus can redeem our suffering.  November 16 learned to be thankful that Jesus redeems our mistakes.  Today we talk about being thankful that Jesus teaches us about our diet.  We are what we eat and each week we have the honor of joining Jesus at his table.  A table he asked us to come to and that is the best food you will have all week.

This morning I want us to reflect on being thankful that God works in our failures.  With God, our failures do not have to be the final word on our lives.  God can redeem our suffering and he can redeem our failures as well.

November in my mind gets to thinking about Thanksgiving.  As I get older I find Thanksgiving to be a favorite holiday.  The theme of Thanksgiving is very Biblical so it is always appropriate to focus on it.  When we usually ask what someone is thankful for we get the usual and appropriate, answers like family, health etc.  I want us to focus on some other things we may not usually think of first.  The sermon today is about being thankful that in Jesus our suffering will be redeemed.  If we suffer as a Christian we can find joy in that.  Pick your battles in life and if you choose them well then the struggle and fight will be worth it.  Promise!  Dustin will be leading our singing Sunday and he has selected these songs and an explanation as to why they were selected.

The phrase Jesus uses about passing from death to life by believing is interesting.  We still will die but we have moved from death to life?  With other things in John, there is a deeper meaning than the surface one.  Could be that we now have eternal life and that is what is meant.  Could also be that we move from a dead way of living to a way of living that is fully alive.  Eternal life starts now and because of what we have it changes everything about how we live now.  The future determines the present for Christians.  We often like to say that we are not guaranteed tomorrow and there is a sense in which this is true.  But in Christ, we are promised tomorrow, an eternity of them!

It is good to be strong and to persist in something.  I admore who people who are persistent.  However, there is also a great strength in learning when to let go of something.  If it is something you need to let go of it's really going to hurt when god finally rips it from your hand.

Fear and faith with start with an “F” but with faith we should not fear.  That slogan sounds good but fear is with us all the time.  Maybe it is not so much about ever getting rid of fear as it is realizing that if your faith is in what is stronger than your fear then you should overcome your fear.  Maybe think not so much in terms of feelings, but action.  If we make fear about how we feel, then we will always be fearful.  But of we think of courage as moving ahead in spite of our fears there we are not “fearful” but faithful.

The question has come to me about charging interest.  Is it right or not.  Let's take a look.

It seems like all can agree that the world is a mess.  We are like the prodigal son who told his father to give him what he has coming and he will do things his own way.  Didn't work out well for the prodigal and it's not working out well for us either.  It's time to come to our senses and return to the father.

The question was brought to me about why we meet on Sunday and what about churches that meet on Saturday evening.  Is that all right.  Take a listen.

Why is contentment so hard?  Ecclesiastes chaper 6 has some insight as to why.

What does it take to get heard?  It seems like to really get attention you have to be over the top these days.  That should have an effect on how we listen and judge others as they speak in this day and age when pretty much anyone can pick up a mike and potentially broadcast their ideas to millions.

Jesus asks us to daily take up our cross and follow him.  Maybe to understand this cross should not be understood as a burden, but as a mission.  The cross is not a problem but a purpose.

The last in this series of looking at the Happy Lies book.  The last installment looks at seeker sensitive churches and her criticism of those.

This may be the sinner's prayer we all need to be praying.  "God be merciful to me a sinner."  Why?  Let's explore.

As we continue to look at the book "Happy Lies" I discuss the idea that I want Jesus to save me from myself, not to affirm me.  It makes a lot of difference as to how we listen to him.

People come to Jesus for all kinds of reasons.  Some are spiritual and some are not.  Jesus welcomed all who came for whatever reason.  We should too.

Let's take a break from the review of "Happy Lies" and look at the other side.  There are those who have not had success in life and they do need to hear a message that life can be more than what they currently have.  I'll get back to reviewing the book next week, but want to pause for a side commentary.

Do you want to get well?  This is a question asked by Jesus a long time ago and we need to be asking ourselves.  Our first response might be, "Yes, of course."  But do we really.  Many do not want to get well.  Why?

If we ask and God does not do what we ask is that a lack of faith on our part?  If we just had more faith would God give us what we want?  Maybe not.  It is likely something else.  Let's explore.

In John 4 there is the story of the official whose son was near death.  Jesus spoke the word and the son lived.  However, the man had to wait the night to gete the news that his son was well.  How hard is it when Jesus makes a promise but we have to wait for it to be experienced?  Sometimes it can be a day and sometimes it can be years.  Jesus can still be believed.  

We take a look at Chapter 7 of the book Happy Lies.  Is there any danger to the Law of Attraction?