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On Easter, those who follow Jesus found everything they’d lost and more. Death lost control and power, yet those who continue to use and follow the world’s ways are still subject to it. But those who follow the way of the cross gain life and freedom.
Going beyond the typical Palm Sunday story, Pastor Josh looks at the incidents of Jesus cursing the fig tree and driving the merchants out of the temple and how Jesus confronted the loss and disappointment of Israel not living up to their calling.
In the intertestamental period, a span of about 400 years, God was silent. There were no prophets speaking to God’s people and nothing being written that would later be canonized into scripture. This time was even prophesied about in the book of Amos. But we would not have had John 1:1, where the Word became flesh, without that period of silence. The Word of God is life to those who need it.
Continuing in our Lost & Found series leading up to Easter, Pastor Josh reflects on the nature of exile as seen through the story of the Israelites and examines how we can find ourselves in exile-like situations having lost a home, job, place, time etc, that is important to us.
At one point or another through our sin and rebellion, we have rejected God as our Father and King. We have lost our heritage and lineage. Jesus came as our King to establish a Kingdom not of this world. He refused to allow His followers to make Him king by force but instead retreated to be by Himself and spend time with the Father. Jesus regathers the lineage and the people that had been scattered and calls them back to follow Him in discipleship. When our lineage is restored, our authority to minister is also restored.
In this life, each of us has experienced loss: loss of relationship, innocence, loved ones, time, etc. In this first sermon of our new series “Lost & Found” which will lead up to Easter, we’ll be looking at how what we’ve lost in this life is recovered in the Kingdom of God. This week, Pastor Josh examines the first loss that people experienced when they were exiled from the Garden of Eden after allowing sin to enter in. But when we really sit with the scriptures in Genesis, what we discover is not just how much we lost, but how much God the Father lost.
The First Fruits Festival celebrated in ancient Israel is a beautiful foreshadowing of the resurrected life of Jesus. Jesus, the first fruit of humankind, is the model of who we are created and destined to be. Like Jesus, we can rely on the Holy Spirit, and see God do amazing things through the gifts and abilities He gives us. Our responsibility is to take up those things the Father is doing in us and be obedient to get started on the work before us and offer the first of our blessings to him with thanks for the rest of the harvest we know He will bring to completion in His time.
Both as a church and as individuals and families, we need to set our values and priorities in regard to giving and have those be what informs our practices instead of having our giving ebb and flow as a reaction to our current financial situation. It’s important to our discipleship that we have hearts of gratitude, love and justice from which generosity flows instead of giving out of legalism, obligation or guilt. Hearts with a healthy attitude toward finances and giving will be able to be wise and purposeful even in times of abundance and generous even in times of scarcity. This teaching ends with a review of the current financial picture of the church.
When the author of Genesis writes that we are made in God’s image, he is referring not to a physical likeless but one of function and purpose. This same idea is found in Romans and we see that the work of God over time conforms us. There are things in our lives that do not conform to the pattern of Jesus and those things must be left behind.
People who spend time in God’s presence have evidence of that experience manifest in their lives. The fruit of spending time in God’s presence is humility, change, mission, diligence and blessing.
To have the fullness of God that Paul talks about in Ephesians, we cannot remain on the surface. We have to understand what makes us Kingdom people and let those truths soak deep into us, not trivial devotions that change daily.
When we want to *practice* the presence of God, we have to understand that the practice is much more about seeing, hearing and understanding, rather than earning or achieving. Developing these ways of perceiving the Presence of God may seem simple yet prove to be challenging to our normal ways of perceiving the world.
This week in our Pursuing the Presence of God series, Pastor Josh discusses the passage, or the path to the presence of God. In contrast to the process, ritual, and restrictions associated with entering the temple in ancient Israel, the curtain was torn at Jesus’ death and the way in to God’s presence has been made clear and accessible to all who come through Jesus. However, it is not a path to be taken lightly. As explained in Hebrews, we must not trample the sacrifice of Christ but must honor Him and pursue holiness. We don’t “trample the Son of God underfoot” by continuing in our sin because grace and holiness go hand in hand.
Pastor Josh begins a new sermon series this week, Pursuing the Presence of God, by looking at what it is that we’re actually pursuing about God. In truly pursuing His presence, we must long for the essence of God, not the peripheral things.
Eric Geelen, of Amadeo Vineyard Church in Phoenix, Arizona joins us to teach about the power and reality of The Kingdom of God.
Part of the miracle of Christmas is that Love, God’s perfect Divine Love, came to the earth in human form. This week after our Everyone Gets To Nativity Play, we wrapped up Advent with a brief sermon about the power of the presence of Love itself at Christmas, in community, and through us.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “happiness depends on circumstances, joy does not”. Joy accentuates the pleasurable, good things of life. Joy shared in community brings something of the Kingdom of God. Joy with God is not one directional or transactional. The joy of the Lord is reciprocal in its nature - we give and He gives. In Advent, there is joy in God’s coming and closeness. The key to lasting joy isn’t in seeking joy itself, but in pursuing the joy bringer.
Advent places the church, every year, in longing for the fullness of the throne of God to be realized. We need Advent, even if we never reach Christmas morning. What we long for is not a nostalgic look back or presents, what we’re longing for is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Hope is what grounds us now in the expectation and preparation for God’s future. In order to get from our past to God’s future, we must go through some pivot point, something that will connect those two disjointed realities: Jesus is the connection.
Pastor Josh wraps up this Identity In Christ Royal Priesthood by looking at the calling on God’s people to be a Royal Priesthood that has both authority and responsibility to serve as kingly priests and to spend ourselves serving those on the outside who do not yet know Jesus.
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