Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, November 12. We talk about religion, salvation, politics, and even the date on which Christ was born.
Good morning, Good morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to turning on the Lights for Tuesday November 12, 2024!
A little bit of everything happening this morning. I am stuck on the Gospel of John and salvation only through the Son of God, but I stray a bit into education, politics, and even the date on which Christ was born.
I hope that you enjoy this. I pray that it strengthens you. I am glad to have this opportunity.
Please go to the YouTube channel and subscribe and/or to the podcast “Turning On the Lights” and subscribe. Let’s get out the WORD!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, November 12, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, November 12, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Good morning. Good morning. My brothers and my sisters. You see, I’ve got the sanctuary all set up for turning on the lights. We are all ready to go for this weekend. I did that yesterday. I’m so excited. I’m so excited about this weekend. I got the church already yesterday. Look at all the water and the snacks. Come for the snacks. No, don’t just come for the snacks. Look at this gorgeous, gorgeous day outside. Absolutely amazing and wonderful and fantastic and I hope that you are all having amazing and wonderful and fantastic mornings. I hope that if you’re listening to this later in the day or if you’re listening to it tomorrow or whenever you may be on the podcast and it may be 2 years from now and you’re listening to it and I hope that you’re having a fantastic and wonderful day. There is the eye on the sanctuary from the back seat. This is where a lot of the children gather and play. I will look there from the pulpit and I will see a circle of children and several adults tending to them and every once in a while, a child will just pop out and go somewhere else in the sanctuary. It’s kind of funny. It’s a lot of fun actually. We’re walking up to the altar. There are our wonderful instruments right there. Yamaha, Clavinova, Yamaha B2. I think it is upright piano cabinet. There’s a big old organ over. Oh my gosh. What a church. What a church if you read my post from the other day and you see it was so amazing on Sunday cuz this pastor I make the order. I make the order. I consult with people of course and we’re team effort, but ultimately I make the order and everything is as it should be the way that I would like it to be and I put in a song for me to play on the guitar shine Jesus shine and we got to that song and I was like. I never prepared for this. I never pulled the music. I never practiced in my guitar was still in the case and the thing is between the the sermon and our time of prayer. We usually do an acapella course. We get up. We stretch our legs. We stretch our lungs a little bit. We have a bit of a transitional period. Some people have to leave at that time. Some people go to the bathroom and come back whatever the case may be so we normally have a transitional chorus there and I didn’t give it a second thought. I put I plugged in a song there that I was going to play and never give it a second thought because it’s going to be a transitional chorus and so I’m there and I owned it like I’m not ready guys. This is what happened. This is how I am and a fellow in the congregation said we’ve got the lyrics. Let’s sing it and of course you know the tech people had the lyrics up there on the screen and like you want to sing the whole thing acapella and they’re like yeah. so we all stood up and we started belting it out and it was fantastic. It was awesome and that’s if you’ve never experienced church town, that’s kind of who we are like what you see is what you get. We’re people in church singing and praying and fellowshipping and going into God’s word and it’s not some sort of dog and pony show ever. It’s it’s us trying to figure it out every week. You know wanting to glorify God wanting to honor him with what we do and how we do it and it’s we don’t want to we don’t want that glory and that you can, but it’s we’re not liturgical in the sense that here’s the same order every week and here minute for minute. This is what we do. I believe glory and honor to God can come through that. That’s for sure, but that’s not us and so this week, for example, the order of worship is completely different because we’re doing child dedication, six children being dedicated to the church and then a baptism after the service. So we’ve got a lot going on this weekend as well. So the church is just thriving and people always ask me or you know, maybe whether it’s a pastor friend or somebody who knows I’m a pastor or it is somebody who says, you know, what do you do? And I said, I’m a pastor church. Oh, it’s your church growing. First question we want to we want to measure the growth of a church by the metrics of the world is it growing and what they mean is numbers. Of course, that is what it has to mean right and I say I don’t know, but I think so you’d have to ask them that’s become my standard answer over the past few years because my priorities are not numbers. I believe that if I and we are faithful, the Lord will bring whomever he wants whomever may need to hear a single message may stop in for a single week. Right person who may be whatever the church may be in need of a particular gifts or talents. Good morning guys, particular gifts or talents and then the Lord brings those people to the church. It’s not coincidence. I could name a couple names a couple situations that we have and a couple of folks who have started coming to church town who then have walked up to me and said, well, do you know that I do this for a living? No, I did not, but that’s exactly what needs to be done. So that’s what’s happening and it is amazing to just experience the spirit working and doing what he does. We’ve talked about the growth of the church numerically as well and we always have this idea that it’s gonna grow from the outside in right people are gonna come off the street or people come from other churches or there’ll be converts who invite friends or we’ll have a youth group and then we’ll get the teenagers here and the parents will come to see whatever the case may be and for years we that’s kind of a way of thinking right you gotta get yourself out there. You gotta get known and you gotta whatever good morning Barry. But what we’ve experienced is great growth really as I said people do come and people come as couples and one person of a couple will invite the other the other half as a couple and maybe they’re married. Maybe they’re not, but that is happening here and and then people will invite friends and they’re like, oh, this is cool and so that’s all happening as well. But really the growth that the Lord has brought to church town has been from the inside out. If I go around the church 1234566 couples six young couples within the church we have performed. I’ve performed the marriage ceremony for. Three of those six couples have had babies very very recently they’re going to be dedicated to the church on Sunday. They have other people in the church couples etcetera have older children toddlers that they want to be dedicated church. That’s going to happen on Sunday and so the Lord has brought on top of those six couples. There are two others that are not married yet. Yet. I don’t know what I’m trying to say he’s grown us from the inside out and it is so such a blessing so honoring. It’s so joyful to look out and see the work that the Lord has done for a little old church town and it is humbling father. We pray your word will go out today and penetrate hearts and minds people will turn people will repent people will know you as their savior and the Lord of their lives in Jesus name. Amen. We prayed that and we talked about that on Sunday. Knowing the Lord as your savior that’s it that is the cornerstone when we brought out the scriptures on Sunday, we got really stuck on the first chapter three of Matthew five, which is the first of the Beatitudes right you are in the best spiritual condition of your life when you know how desperately you need a savior like that is the primary condition breaking through your pride breaking through your arrogance breaking through your intellect and humbling yourself before the Lord that be attitude is been interpreted or translated many different ways because the word blessed as it is used in that context is a it’s a unique word that was originally used. That means you are blessed. You are in the best position to receive God’s blessing when you know that you are depraved in spirit. And so we harped on that for quite a while because just as we harp good morning deep just as we harp on the fact that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the church. The cornerstone of salvation is your understanding your humility your willingness to break through your pride and turn to God. All of your experience to that point in your opinion in your experience may not lead to God and you’re like what’s happening here. But you break through those lives that you’ve been living in you break through the idea that somehow you are all of that and you are that important to everything and you humble yourself before a holy God and you know that you are depraved in spirit. Repent turn to God be filled with his spirit and now as Paul teaches now our spirit reaches to his blend blends with his spirit and now we understand now we know now we can experience who we truly were created to be as a man as a woman as a husband as a wife as a child as a grandchild as a grandparent etcetera etcetera as a disciple ultimately of Christ. Speaking of that and I was reading through John right so the next gospel that I’m going to read through and is John. And I just the you know and maybe this is just again the the Lord puts me in these cycles wash rinse repeat wash rinse repeat and I hear the foundational right now. It’s the foundational principles of what we believe and why we believe it in John three. There is no you can say that about a lot of text right, but there is no better text to teach about what it means to be saved than John three when he’s discussing being born again of the spirit. So you can tie that to the opening beatitude. You can tie that to blessed are those who know that they are poor in spirit and in desperate need of a savior right and let’s read it right here for God so loved the world. That he gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. That’s what people where people like to stop, but we need to read more in order to understand what salvation means and what it looks like in general terms in the larger picture of church kingdom of God kingdom of Satan. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him, but anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only son. There’s the big picture and this is what I talk about all the time. I the radical inclusiveness of God’s kingdom because really when it comes down to it, you can throw race color creed out the door. There are men and there are women and there are those who are in the kingdom of God and those who are outside of the kingdom of God and the thing is the kingdom of God is open to all who will repent and believe. That’s radical inclusiveness, the exact opposite of the lies of Satan that are told through all of the media streams and every opportunity that he has to share some sort of wicked lie about church about the kingdom of God about Christians, whatever the case may be and it flies in the face of those who want to use the name Christian and demonstrate this radical inclusivity by adopting the sin of the world. The truth of the gospel is true, so you can’t have the truth that marriage is between a man and a woman. You cannot have the truth that God created man and woman. You cannot have the truth of what marriage looks like, of what healthy human sexuality looks like. You cannot have the truth of what an ordered family looks like and what an ordered society looks like and not have it be divisive. You say, well, now you’re throwing these terms around inclusive, divisive. We must go back to John 3 when we talk about the kingdom of God, the Orthodox Christian church who believes the truth of scripture and those outside the kingdom of God and the radical inclusivity, right? There’s a line of division between those two. There is no doubt about that. That’s what so-called Christians might have a real problem with this line of division, this line of truth. But the radical inclusivity is that the invitation extends to every sinner on earth. And that exclude that that has nothing that does not include, right? It does not exclude or talk about race or color or creed or sin. Whatever your sin is, repent and believe and come into the kingdom. Whatever your color is, whatever your race is, whatever you’re believing now, whatever false religion, false teacher, idol worship, whatever repent. And be filled with God’s Holy Spirit and enter the kingdom of God. So do you see how you can use those two terms simultaneously? There is a dividing line between truth and lie. If there weren’t, then scripture could not be declared true. And we believe that it is true. If we believe that it is the truth, as Jesus says, I am the way and the truth. Then we must believe that other belief systems, other teaching, other whatever is not true. So there is a line of division between the kingdom of God and those outside the kingdom of God. But the key to all of this is that the kingdom of God has its arms open. Come and hear the truth. Repent of your sin. Turn and submit yourself to your savior and enter the kingdom of God. That is where life is and life eternal. If it works the other way, it brings death and condemnation and damnation eternal. This is the message that we have to our wicked world. Come come and taste that the Lord is good. Come and hear the truth. Come and know know who you really are as he knew you when he formed you in your mother’s womb. Come. That’s the message. Come for eternal life. Be born again as Jesus now says. The judgment is based on this fact and this is what we were just talking about. God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light for their actions were evil. We have truth and we have lie. We have good and we have evil and the good is God and the of course, let’s say the representative of God is Jesus Christ, but he is God. So it’s very difficult to use Trinitarian language at that. But here is God incarnate the truth, the way, the life eternal. We have all of the prophecy of him. We have him. We have all of the result of this salvation of his resurrection. We have all of that. He has come into the world. We have all of the information that we need to make this decision choose light or choose darkness. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be revealed. There’s that pride. There’s that arrogance. There’s that. Fear of being humiliated even as you look in the mirror. Because ultimately conviction comes when you hear the truth of the word and an individual will sometimes absolutely repulsive Lee rebel against that like all angrily like demonically. And it is attached to the fact that you just can’t let go of your self image. Your pride your ego. Some. They say this is what I need to hear. This is what I’ve been waiting to hear. This is I know this is true. What’s next? And everything in between seen it all, but those who do what is right come into the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants. Then Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and went into the Judean countryside. Jesus spent some time with their baptizing people. So there you go. We talk about salvation. We talk about being born again. We talk about the power of God’s Holy Spirit and he’s teaching Nicodemus as you know the scriptures. He says. How can an old man? There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee after one dark evening dark light dark light. He came to speak with Jesus. Rabbi. He said we all know that God has sent you to teach us your miraculous signs or evidence that God is with you. Jesus replied. I tell you the truth. Unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. And this is the spiritual rebirth of God’s Holy Spirit. So there you go. Simple message today. Simplicity is on my mind. I don’t know what I’m going to write about in the church town weekly. But probably something along these lines and I’m getting really geared up for Sunday, which is going to be a magnificent day in the life of the church as we experience the growth that God brings from the inside out as his spirit has brought individuals here. And we’ve watched generation compound on generation until we look out and we see five generations of individuals worshiping together as it should be raising their voices praying together. And it is just a powerful experience that I am I walk away from both exhausted and exhilarated as God pours himself here. Oh, we’ll do a whole section when we get closer to Christmas. We’ll talk about the. We’ll talk about the the birth of Jesus and all of that stuff. There’s a lot of stuff that you can find good teaching online. Go to fifteen seventeen go to Bible hub that sort of thing you can look that sort of thing up, but there are different ideas about Jesus’s birth etcetera. We know when his death and resurrection because we have those dates so to speak, but his birth again a lot of scripture. A lot of scripture rosy here’s a good example when we talk about having any of the original manuscripts of scripture. We don’t have any we have thousands of copies, which is. Exponentially more than we have for any other ancient text, but we don’t have those original why cuz God knows our heart rosy. He knows that we would be worshiping those pieces of paper. We still have in the church today, Ethan or Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism where they worship the bones or they have the bones of different saints and this and that and he knows our heart. Are we gonna worship a date? We don’t know the dates of many things except the resurrection right the sacrifice and the resurrection there it is for the son of man must be lifted up. And we know that he is lifted up. We know that he died. We know that he is resurrected. That is the cornerstone. Yes, we wanna celebrate his birth and we have the birth stories in the Gospels three of them anyway. But we don’t wanna celebrate a date. We don’t want to build churches around a date or build churches around a piece of paper or build churches around a Saint’s bones. We wanna worship as Jesus Christ teaches the Samaritan woman in spirit and in truth in spirit and in truth, he knows our hearts and how quickly we will make idols out of anything and I mean anything and so when we look at the ambiguity of certain things in scripture, this is why. Once we’re still tearing apart scripture, we’re still digging into scriptures. We’re still interpreting scripture the best that we can 2000 years later and so that we are not worshiping idols even idols that may be derived from scripture or idols that may be derived from the exercise of our Christian faith. We need to be very careful. I talk about our church all the time. I do love this place. If you can love a place, I love this place but II need to be very intentional. I’m not getting that in the way of why I’m here and who I’m worshiping. We can’t make idols out of our churches. We can’t make idols out of our vocations. You see so many pastors that make idols out of themselves and they want the attention and the God knows how quickly we go down those rabbit holes as individuals and as a race human race as a people. And so ultimately your answer is that you can fish around. Michael Heiser did a lot of work on dates and so forth but even the best most meticulous scholars can’t nail it down. And I believe it’s for that reason. Right, we are focused on his willing sacrifice, his death and his resurrection. Without that, nothing happens. You can argue well without his birth, none of that happens of course. Okay, and that’s why it’s in three of the four Gospels. In a sense, it’s in John right in the beginning and then the light came into the world. So in a sense, it’s in John as well. But everything that we believe, everything that brings eternal life, the plan of salvation hinges upon death and the power of death being crushed upon sin and the power of sin in our lives being crushed. So we know the resurrection and we’re ambiguous about the birth. But we celebrate it. We celebrate it, right? Because it’s worthy of celebration. Is it worthy of like what Western culture has done with Christmas? I love celebrating Christmas, but I’m not like, you know, and you see America backing down a little bit from this as well, but I’m just not that guy. I never have been. Okay, so that’s it. I hope that you are all surviving well in post-election America. Good heavens. Talk about idol worship. You need to be careful in the political realm. You talk about good and evil and truth and lie. It’s very discouraging. You see what several generations of a federally organized educational department, Department of Education has done to the American populace. People believe that a person can be lawfully elected President of the United States and then the next day declare themselves dictator for life. They believe that that can happen. They believe that a man or a woman can be elected, lawfully elected President of the United States and then just start taking away human rights and civil rights and they believe that this can happen. Unfettered, unchecked. And that’s what my heart breaks for the American populace. We know that when Jefferson said this is only going to work if we have an educated populace and really set about in the early 1800s trying to create some sort of a system where reading, writing, arithmetic can be taught to the average person, the citizen and along that with that for all of those generations were strong courses in American government and civics. How does it work? What is the Constitution? I remember as a child in the 70s reading the Constitution. But that was already on its way out and like I said, once the Department of Education was created. What we were educating our people, how we were educating them and what we were teaching them dramatically changed and now you have generations of people who will believe anything. We pray for that. We pray for our republic. It is a great experiment. The only one like it ever on the face of the planet. Like I said before the election, I know what I want, but what I want is very, very subservient to God’s will. Not my will but thine, oh Lord. Father, we pray in the name of your son Jesus Christ that truth will prevail. In all arenas, Father God. But we do pray that your church, your kingdom will be light and will be attractive to individuals. That the truth will penetrate that darkness. And continue to change the world. One human soul at a time. We pray for the conviction to live our lives as your disciples. Because we know we very well may be the only Bible that some people ever read. Thank you Lord and Amen. God bless you guys. Take care of yourselves. Good Lord willing in the river don’t rise. We will see you Thursday morning for turning on the lights. I’m in a good mood. I got a lot to do today though. Gee whiz. But I’m in a really good mood. You have a great day too.
0 Comments