Christ in You, the Hope of Glory
The Greeting
An Assignment for Obadiah
Read: 1 Kings 18:1-16
Text: verses 7-16
“What we need to fear is disobeying God. If we are doing what God tells us to do, there is no reason to fear and the Bible makes is clear that God expects his people to have the kind of trust in God that excludes fear. As Psalm 118:6 expresses it, “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” Jesus speaks of this as well in his farewell message to his disciples. In John 16:33, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.””
Sermon Series: The Message of Elijah
Famine, Rain and Ahab
“Ahab did not care for the sheep that had been entrusted to his care. They were perishing because of his stubborn sinfulness, and Ahab was more concerned about his horses. But Jesus was and is the opposite. He leads his sheep in paths of righteousness. He gives his life for his sheep and he is committed to see to it that not one of his sheep will perish. See the great contrast between King Ahab and parched and barren land under his rule, and King Jesus and the kingdom of life and flourishing under his rule. And order your life accordingly.”
Sermon Series: The Message of Elijah
“As the LORD, the God of Israel lives.”
Read: 1 Kings 16:29 - 17:7
“There are a lot of warnings in Scripture. But these warnings are motivated by God’s grace and mercy and they all anticipate Jesus and his mission because it is in him that we escape the punishments that are the consequences of sin.”
Sermon Series: The Message of Elijah
The Authority of the Word
Read: Luke 1:1-4
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image….” (2) Worship and the Word
“The relationship between Jesus Christ and the second commandment is very significant because in Jesus Christ, God has provided an image whom we are not only allowed to worship, but whom we are required to worship. In Colossians 1:15 Paul refers to Jesus as “the image of the invisible God.” And in verse 19 of the same chapter, he tells us that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell….””
Sermon Series: The Ten Commandments
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
“The fact of the matter is that we are all inclined to be atheists by nature. We all suppress the truth of God that comes to us from the creation, from Moses and the Prophets and from Jesus and the apostles. In 1 Corinthians 2:14 Paul writes, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” That is all of us by nature. The reason that there is atheism is not that the evidence for the existence of God is weak. The reason that there is atheism is that human beings have sinful hearts that suppress the truth about God in the creation and in the word of God.”
Sermon Series: The Ten Commandments
Truths of the Reformation (9) The Holy Spirit
Read: 1 Corinthians 2
“What this means is that while accepting the Bible as God’s Word is something that we do with our minds, it is more fundamentally something that the Holy Spirit works in us. And the result of the Holy Spirit’s work is not simply an intellectual persuasion, but an inner spiritual perception of the glory of God as revealed in the Scriptures and an inner spiritual perception of the authority of God speaking in the Scriptures.”