Two ways to Pray – Luke 18:9-14

9 11 2009

Jesus talks TO them not about them. 9

It’s easier to talk about people because…

  1. their not there to defend themselves

  2. There is no confrontation

The two ways to pray are…

1. Trusting God for your righteousness

2. Trusting in your righteousness.

It’s easier to trust yourself than God. 9

1. Trusting your righteousness leads to a better than you syndrome. 11

  • This kind of righteousness is compelled to compare because it could not feel righteous any other way.
  • John Denver’s Song “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” is really saying thank God I’m not a city boy.  The same thing is going on in this verse.  What the Pharasee means by “Thank God I’m not like other men” is “Thank God I’m a good person.”

2. Trusting your righteousness leads to RCD (Religious Compulsive Disorder). 12

  • He did religious stuff so he could say thank God I’m a good person.
  • It’s like those who say, “Oh you did pray before you ate your going to get sick.”  As if doing the religious thing would fix everything.  God does not want to do good things so we can say we are good people.  He wants us to do good things because He is a good God.
  • Those who do religious things to earn something from God are no better than the person who does no religious thing.

3. Trusting your righteousness leads to the bobble head effect. 9, 11

  • Boasting is the enemy of the cross.
  • No body likes to be around some one who brags about their self constantly.
  • There is no one in this church who is better than anyone else. If you think you’re better just because you’ve given more money, or worked harder and longer, or because you’ve been here longer, then you are acting like the Pharisee in this passage.
  • 5 “I’s” in the Pharisee’s prayer

4. Trusting your righteousness leads blanket dispassionate praying.

  • When we do righteous deeds to prove your worthy, we tend to be less passionate and just pray in general terms, because after all we just want to be able to say we did the right thing.

God WILL do one of two things… v. 14

1. God will humble the self exalting

2. God will exalt the humble


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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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NFL Part 3 – The Bench Warmer – Gen. 40

31 08 2009

The Bench Warmer – Gen. 40

At this point in Joseph’s life he was in the whole he was dressed in prison God waiting on God’s plan to move him forward. Many of us may feel like Joseph. Sitting on the sidelines waiting for the time when things will turn around. There are some lessons we should learn from Joseph when we are in that situation.

1. Do you wait patiently when you’re on the sidelines? 1

  • Joseph’s theme songs could have been “While I’m Waiting” by John Waller from the Movie Fireproof.

I’m waiting, I’m waiting on You, Lord, And I am hopeful, I’m waiting on You, Lord, Though it is painful, But patiently, I will wait, I will move ahead, bold and confident, Takeing every step in obedience, While I’m waiting, I will serve You, While I’m waiting, I will worship, While I’m waiting, I will not faint, I’ll be running the race, Even while I wait

  • The way to be patient is to remember
  1. God does not owe you anything?
  2. God is in control
  3. You are here to live for God no matter what.

  • Don’t be God’s back seat driver.

2. How are you doing at telling the truth?

  • When the truth is good its easy tell 12-14 – That’s why Love spreads quicker
  • When the truths is bad its hard to share. 18-19
  • The Gospel truth. – If the gospel doesn’t first make you feel bad about your sin, then you didn’t get it.
  • What made Joseph different than his brothers was that he always told the truth.
  • Sometimes you will suffer for telling the truth?
  • Do you tell the truth when it could hurt you?

3. How is your boasting? 8

  • “interpretations belong to God”
  • “I could do better than that”
  • Do you give yourself all the credit? Or do you give God the credit?
  • “It’s all about me” or “It’s all about God”
  • We Can’t help people, but God can.
  • Gal. 6:14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

4. Do you show concern for others? 7

  • Concern for others leads to opportunity for God to use you.
  • When things aren’t going well for us it’s hard to be concerned about others.

5. Do you get forgotten with humility? 23 41:1

  • Phil 2:3 humility count others more significant than yourselves
  • the humble don’t criticize others to bring themselves up

It all about Jesus

Jesus is humble.

  • Phil. 2:8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus is put others first.

Jesus Gave credit to God.

  • John 6:32 but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

Jesus is patient.

  • 1 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Jesus is the truth.


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Self evaluation questions from Psalm 66

19 08 2009

Psalm 66

Am I praising God enough? 1-4

  • If the only time we are praising God is at church on Sundays through songs and prayer then we are not praising God enough.
  • Praise Him everyday
  • Praise Him throughout the day.
  • Start your prayers with praise to God, just as this Psalm starts with praise to God.

Am I expecting awesome things from God? 5-7

  • Do we expect God to work in our lives?
  • Do we expect God to use us for his glory?
  • Do we expect God to do anything when we come to church?
  • If we don’t expect God to do anything, then it affects the way we live.
  • If we expect His to do things, we look for it, we desire it, we are more willing to be apart of it.

Am I trusting more in my self or in my God to sustain me? 8-12

  • So much of the time we trust our self, our ways, our thoughts and not God and His ways.
  • His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways.
  • We need to trust God.  When we trust him we step out on faith more often.  When we trust our selves we only step out when we can control the situation and get it back the way we want it if we don’t like it.

Am I sacrificing all that God asks of me 13-15

  • Sacrifice is just that.  It is something that cost you to give up.
  • We should not assume that our level of sacrifice a year ago or even yesterday is the same amount of sacrifice God is asking from us today.
  • Do I need to give more financially, time, energy, etc.?

Am I hiding any sin in my life? 16-19

  • It is a lie we tell our self that our sin does not affect our relationship with God, with others or hinder our prayer life.

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What is a Biblical Church? Part 3

21 07 2009

What Does the Church Do?

It Gathers to worship God.

  • A church that does not meet to worship is not a biblical church.
  • When?
  • Mainly they have met on Sunday, but not exclusively.
  • The disciples got together on Sunday after Jesus died and rose again John 20:19, 26
  • Rev. 1 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet
  • where?
  • In houses
  • Rom. 16:5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia.
  • the house of Mary, mother of Mark, in Acts 12:12
  • In public places
  • in the outer court of the temple in Acts 2-4
  • the great era of church buildings began in the fourth century. So there is no local congregation in the Bible that had a building.
  • The Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church lead by the late D. James Kennedy was organized on May 22, 1960, beginning with a congregation of 45 that worshiped in McNab Elementary School cafeteria.
  • There are currently over 10,000 churches meeting in public schools in America.

What does it do in these gatherings?

It preaches and listens to preaching

  • How?
  • A monologue.
  • This is the way Jesus did it.
  • Matt. 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
  • This is the way Peter, Paul and other apostles did it.
  • Not to say that interviews, dramas, plays, or videos are of no value, just that they are not preaching. And the clear Biblical example is preaching.
  • Why?
  • 2 Tim. 4:2-5 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
  • Preaching confronts us in ways that other ways of communicating a point do not.
  • Preaching is harder to listen too than to preach.

It sings to God, about God and for God.

  • Col. 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
  • Some songs are not bad songs, but shouldn’t be sung in church because the have little to do with God.
  • And mainly we should sing about the good news of Jesus because…
  1. because it’s God full revelation of himself
  2. because it’s God ’s perfect display of his love

It participates in the Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  Acts

  • A church that does not do these things is not a biblical church.
  • These two things are biblical pictures of the gospel to us.

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God’s Choice to Bless – Gen. 12:1-9

5 02 2009

Here is a small segment of the sermon


It’s about God.

1. His work in Abram

  • Sometimes when we look at the story of Abraham we look at how great he was.  When tend to make the story about him and by default his God.  The story of Abram is not mainly about him, but God and his choice to bless Abram.  If God would not have acted, then we would not even know who Abraham was.

2. His work through his people

  • It’s not even about what God is doing in one person, Abram, but about God’s gracious plan for a people he is choosing to be His.

3. His work in the world for all time.

  • The story is even much bigger than God’s choice of Abram and his descendants.  It is a prophecy of Jesus.   Jesus is how God is going top fulfill the promise “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

It’s about God’s call of Abram.

1. It’s a call from his people.

  • God called Abram to leave everything he had ever known.  God called Abram to leave is people who worshiped idols.
  • Sometimes we must get out from under the influence of those around us so that we begin to grow.  God called Abram to leave because he was calling him to be different.  He was calling him to godliness.

2. It’s a call to God.

  • It is not just a call away from something, but its mainly a call to God.  There is no way of going toward God in obedience without leaving behind the old way of life.

3. It’s a call to action.

  • God’s call of Abram was not a call that simply needed a verbal recognition, “Yes, Lord.”  It was a call to do something.  Abram could have said, “Yes, Lord” and not done anything, but that would not have been answering the call.  He had to act in order to follow God.  It is no different today.  The beginning of believing is leaving.

Why did God call Abram?

1. Was it because Abram was a righteous man already?

  • He came from an idolatrous family – Joshua 24:2-3, 14 – Laban still had god in Gen. 31
  • He was even the most righteous man at the time – Melchizedek, Job?
  • God’s choice was not based on Abram’s goodness in the past.

2. Was it because God saw that Abram was going to be a righteous man in the future?

  • Some people will acknowledge that it wasn’t because Abram was good in the past, but then they say that it was because God looked into the future and saw that Abram was going to be a good person.
  • First of all we see that he was a liar after God called him. 12:13, 20:2
  • Later he failed to trust God to provide a son by is wife so he slept with his wife’s servant.
  • So, God’s choice was not based on Abram’s goodness in the future.
  • We know that the Bible teaches us that we are not saved by work past present or future. Eph. 2:8-9, Titus 3:4-5
  • Abraham is called upon as an example in the New Testament more than once to show that we are not saved by works. Rom. 4:1-5, Gal. 3:7-9

3. Then why?

  • Because of God’s merciful decision alone.
  • Rom. 9:15-16  For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
  • Abram would have never met God if God had not come to him.
  • God called Abram.  Abram did not go looking for God.

It’s about God’s promise of blessing.

  • God is the only one who can truly say “I will.”
  • God’s promise is unconditional.
  • consider the obstacle to God fulfilling the blessing he promised.
  • We must understand the blessing of God.
  • Until a person has a right understanding of the blessing of God they will always choice sin over God. They will love the so called happiness of sin rather than Jesus.
  • Do you think that leaving the sinful life behind for God is going to be a loss for you? Not at all! It is like leaving the fire of Hell for the beauty of Heaven. It’s like leaving a roach infested one bed-room apartment for a mansion. It’s like leaving homelessness to go live with the King.

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