The devil is called the father of lies in the Bible, and when a child of God bears false witness and tells lies, they are aligning themselves with the character of Satan. Today, Pastor Bill will be challenging you to be a light in this dark world, and to take upon yourself the characteristics of your Father in Heaven! God gave His chosen nation Israel very clear instructions which included being truthful to one another. God wants His people to be separate from the world, and to act in a holy manner.

Voting, even participating in peaceful rallies for specific causes, and other forms of civic engagement can be good things. They can be a part of your responsibility as a citizen. But, there’s a danger that you’ll malign people and point the finger of blame at a specific group when all of us are responsible for our sin as a nation. We also risk creating division that works against our most important mission in this life, which is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as Pastor Bill will remind us in today’s message.

In everything you do, you can worship God. Everything. Attending church on Sunday morning, singing songs, and hearing the Word of God preached are essential forms of worship, but God desires much more than just that. Throughout your week – at your job, in your home, in your private time - the posture of your heart in all of those things deeply matters. As Pastor Bill will remind us in today’s message, God desires our true worship, both inside and outside of the walls of the church.

The Church, through the centuries, has added all kinds of rituals and conditions to the simple practice Christ demonstrated as He met with His disciples that last time before His crucifixion. Scripture only portrays Him saying “this do in remembrance of me”. He didn’t add any extra rules and regulations to it. It should be something we take seriously, but as Pastor Bill will point out in today’s message, this sacrament is something we can do on our own as an authentic act of worship and gratitude to God.

Listen to the news or scroll through your social media feed for long enough and it becomes apparent that we live in a broken, hurting world. The peace of God is absent in the hearts of humanity. We’re really good at distracting ourselves with momentary pleasures and putting on a good face, but deep down, we’re falling apart. As Pastor Bill will encourage us in today’s message, God can provide the peace we need, and once He fills your heart, He wants it to overflow onto the lost around you.

God wants us to be a pleasing aroma to Him, a useful instrument to share His glory with the world. All we do FOR God brings praise and honor TO God. But, as Pastor Bill will point out today, there are areas in everyone’s lives that are not honoring your Creator. And sometimes, God needs to expose those sins so that you can repent and change! It’s not easy to see the parts of your heart that aren’t exactly following Jesus – in fact, it’s probably going to be a bit painful! But the end result will be well worth the discomfort!

There’s an important part of the Salvation message that we’d rather gloss over – the fact that we NEED salvation in the first place. Why is that so? Because we sin – every single one of us. Every human being is born into this broken world, and we’ve all failed our Creator. But – God’s given you the chance to repent of your sins, to come clean about all the wrong you’ve done! Pastor Bill is going to encourage you to take that step today – repent and walk away from your sin, and grab hold of God’s forgiveness!

Serving Jesus can be presented as a bit of a fairy tale story sometimes. You get to do good things, pointing people to Jesus, helping out, and making an impact – and in the end, you’ll feel great! But it’s not always like that – Pastor Bill will share today that serving Jesus can be hard. It can be difficult to keep loving people who aren’t easily lovable. And the enemy is going to do his best to get in your way. But there will be a happy ending – your Heavenly Father will be so proud of you for enduring!

As Pastor Bill continues to share about the sacrifices required of the Israelites today, you may be wondering how someone could afford all of this! Having to sacrifice an animal to atone for all your sins? It would really start to add up – it would cost you something. And that’s the point Pastor Bill wants to make today – sin is costly. But God wanted to give everyone a chance to be redeemed, no matter their station in life. And now, He’s made a way for all of us to be redeemed – all because of the ultimate sacrifice – Jesus!

Pastor Bill will talk more today about the animal sacrifices described in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. These necessary deaths were meant to cover your sin – the animal died so that you wouldn’t have to. It took your place. However, as you just heard Pastor Bill say, the sacrifice only temporarily covered the sin – it didn’t remove the guilt permanently from your life! Animal sacrifice would have to be performed again and again to continue to cover. That is until Jesus came – and He takes away sin, FOREVER!