Love God with All You’ve Got – Luke 10:25-37

21 10 2009

Loving God with all you’ve got eliminates

1. Loop holes 29

  • I love my neighbors as my self. All the ones that live within a mile. lol
  • We look for loop holes everywhere, don’t we. “I love God, but…” “Just because I don’t _______ doesn’t mean I don’t love God.”

2. Coasting

  • When you begin to coast through life, then you know you are not giving it ALL you’ve got.

3. Racism, Hatred, intolerance

  • Loving God first leads to loving others. If we have a problem loving others, then we have a problem with our love for God.

Loving God with all you’ve got leads to…

1. Compassion 33

  • One reason I’m happy to be a Southern Baptist is because we have the second largest disaster relief program in the nation next to the Red Cross.

  • If you don’t love the stranger, then you don’t love God.

2. Sacrifice

  • this guy gave his money

3. Stress

  • If stress meant what you were doing was bad, then I would quit a lot of good things.

  • If you are going to have stress in your life, have it from doing in the Lord’s work, but worldly things.

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Categories : Scripture, Sermon

Two Ways to Live – Matt. 7:24-27

14 10 2009

This is the conclusion of the sermon on the mount. The entire sermon on the mount Jesus intends to be culture shifting. He is trying to shatter the major thought patterns of the day and reshape them into kingdom thought patterns.

It is often said that the two ways to live in this parable is a comparison between the good and the wicked, between apples and oranges. A closer look reveals this is a comparison not of the righteous on the rock and the wicked on the sand, but of the religious who call out Lord, Lord while being founded on the sand and the truly saved who obey and trust in Jesus day by day. So it is not a comparison between apples and oranges, but between apples and apples with rotten cores.

What is the same?

1. They both hear word

  • Jesus is speaking into a religious world. He is not contrasting those who are religious and those who aren’t. He is contrasting those who are religious and those who follow him.

2. They both build a house

  • Both work hard and look good.
  • Is seems that might have even used the same substance to build their house.
  • This is not the story of the big bad wolf come to blow their house down.
  • Both houses might looked the same from the outside.

3. Both experienced the same difficulty.

  • Ecc. 9:2 the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked,
  • When you get squeezed what comes out?
  • When you get pricked what kind of blood do you bleed?
  • When you get insulted what kind of words come out of your mouth?

What is different?

1. one obeyed, one didn’t

  • he is contrasting those who say Lord, Lord and don’t with those who say it and do.

2. One built on rock, the other on sand

  • you can build the way of Jesus or the way of religion.
  • Or you can build the way of the religious
  • “Jesus calls for his audience to decide between himself and the religious establishment” ESV Study Bible
  • They both follow the city codes and regulations for building a house.   Neither one of them took short cuts when in came to the building itself.
  • Neither of them build with the intention of their house falling apart. They are both confident in their works. If you asked them is your house solid? They would say yes.

3. One house remained, the other fell.

  • In this parable the difference is the foundation.

Which foundation are you?

1. Where do you get your beliefs.

2. Do you stop doing what Jesus say, when the storm comes?


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Categories : Scripture, Sermon, Video

NFL 7 – The Victory Speech – Gen. 50:19-21

6 10 2009

Gen. 50:19-21 is like Joseph’s victory speech.  It is important to learn how to honor God in our victory speech.  What do we say when God blesses are lives?  Do we point to ourselves or to our God.

We are not God.

  • “am I in the place of God”
  • Adidas – Impossible is nothing
  • Who died and left you in charge.

Remeber revenge is the Lord’s

  • Rom. 12:17 & 19 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
  • revenge says I’m god
  • revenge destroys the gospel
  • revenge fail to care
  • If you seek revenge you are not giving the credit to God.
  • Just punishment is the gospel

Don’t water down evil, lift up forgiveness.

  • Joseph didn’t say their sin was not that bad in order to make everything ok.
  • Jesus didn’t say “Father forgive them” because what they were doing wasn’t that bad.
  • We diminish love.
  • When we do this we give the impression that there are some sins that are forgivable and others that are not.
  • God doesn’t forgive us because are sins are less bad than others. He forgives us even though our sins are evil. That’s love

Remember God is still in control when evil is happening

  • The purpose is unseen at least for awhile
  • The purpose here was salvation from famine.
  • God put me here for you says Joseph
  • God works all for good!

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Categories : Scripture, Sermon, Uncategorized

NFL 6 – The Scouting Report – Gen. 44-46

28 09 2009

There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness is one thing, reconciliation is trusting them again.

How do you know if you’ve forgiven someone?

  1. When you are not seeking revenge.
  2. When you are being kind to them.
  3. When you are seeking reconciliation.

Don’t trust people who have wronged you until they have been tested and found worthy.

1. People who have sinned against you should not be trusted again right away.

  • Joseph forgave but he didn’t trust his brothers.

2. People who have sinned against you should be tested.

  • Joseph tested his brothers to see if they were still going to act the way they did when they tried to kill him and then decided to sale him into slavery instead2. .

3. The person who has done the sinning needs to be the one putting the most effort toward making it right.

  • It was the brothers who had to put forth the effort to show they could be trusted not Joseph.  Joseph didn’t need to prove himself.

He is testing their honesty.

  • 42:20
  • Money in bag passed – 43:20ff
  • “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.”  ~Abraham Lincoln
  • On a scale of 1 to 10 how is your honesty?

He tested their jealousy.

  • By giving one brother more – 43:34
  • by seeing how they will react when that brother is taken from them. 44

Joseph weeps for his brothers who wronged him. 43:30

Salvation and Joseph

The very thing that we resist is many times the thing we need to do to find salvation. 43:1-10

  • The brothers dreaded going back to Egypt and they never would have went if they would not have been desperate enough.  God lead them to desperation so that they would do what they previously didn’t want to do so that they would be saved from starving to death.
  • You may say your not going to do what God wants, but you are more in need spiritually than Joseph’s brothers were physically.
  • When you get to desperation you have a whatever it takes mentality.
  • “Okay God, whatever you want,” becomes your prayer.

You get what you don’t deserve.

When they finally did what they didn’t want to do they were amazed at what happened.

  • They got Joseph back 45:3
  • They got provisions for the journey. 45:16ff
  • They provision to save their life 45:7
  • They got a new home 46:6

When we follow God we will be amazed at what God does on our behalf even though we don’t deserve it.


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Categories : Scripture, Sermon

NFL Part 5 – QB Sneak – Gen. 42

16 09 2009

By Donald Greenfield

Gen. 42 – Joseph is not in charge and he runs a sneak play when his brother come back into the picture.

1. Joseph’s Family was Famished v. 1-5

2. Joseph finds these guys familiar.

3. Joseph’s God-given dreams become fact. v. 6

4. Joseph is fearsome… but just for a little while

5. Joseph is still faithful to God. v. 18

6. Joseph’s brothers are forgiven.

7. Joseph’s family is fearful. v. 26-38


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Categories : Scripture, Sermon

NFL Prt 4 – From Bench Warmer to Quarter Back Gen. 41

8 09 2009

God is making the Egyptians recognize his power by…

1. Stumping Pharaoh. 8

  • Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
  • Kings our not in control.
  • Prov. 21:1 The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.
  • Pharaoh was considered a god himself.
  • You know you are not much of a god if you have to ask a slave what’s going to happen in your kingdom.

2. Showing them that there gods can’t control anything. 8

  • Some believe in other gods.
  • The God of the Bible is not a god that people would have created.
  • They believed in many gods. Polytheism.

3. Showing them that he alone can interpret the revelation he gives. 16

  • When God reveals something only God can tell us what it means.

4. Showing them that he holds the future 32

  • Open theism
  • God’s sovereignty and mans responsibilities.
  • God was sovereign to show him where he would one day be, but Joseph needed to keep working for the Lord.
  • God was sovereign over the whether, but people had to respond in order to be saved..

Joseph kept believing God.

  • Joseph believed what he could not see and acted like it was going to be.
  • Joseph believed what he could not see and ended up being the guy everyone will come to see.
  • Joseph believed what he could not see and ended up being the one everybody wanted to be.

Joseph’s senior year at the school of hard knocks he was voted least likely to succeed, but God had other plans.

Joseph was the least likely because…

  1. He was a prisoner.

  2. He was a foreigner.

  3. He was a slave.

  4. He was only 30 – v.46


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