…The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God. (Isaiah 61:1–2 ESV)

Isaiah prophesies about 700 years before the arrival of Jesus. Providing context to this prophecy, Isaiah is proclaiming a message of restoration and hope. The people of Israel had broken God’s covenant. Therefore, Isaiah prophesies that the people will be captured and carried away into Babylonian exile and Jerusalem will be destroyed. But the hope for the people is not over and God’s plan to save the world and draw people to him has not been thwarted. Hope is being pictured. If you have grown up in the pews this text may sound familiar. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus reads this part of Isaiah’s scroll in the synagogue and declares that it has been fulfilled through him. Jesus is the picture of Isaiah 61:1-2. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, for he was anointed to bring the good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and to proclaim the day of vengeance. These are pictures of what Jesus would do when we came. It is easy to stop the reading of Isaiah at this point since this is part of the text that Luke quotes to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s coming anointed one. But notice that we are stopping in the middle of the sentence of this prophecy. We need to continue reading because Isaiah is going to describe our purpose and what we will do when Christ comes…

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David’s desire was to assemble all Israel together in worship as God was coming to be with his people in Jerusalem. After a failed attempt to bring the ark of God to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 13), David has inquired of the Lord and brought the ark successfully to Jerusalem because he followed the instructions given concerning the ark (1 Chronicles 15). Chapter 16 of 1 Chronicles begins by showing the ark was placed in the tabernacle and burnt offerings and peace offerings are being sacrificed (16:1). David has prepared for this moment, establishing various people for this worship that will now happen in Jerusalem. Verse 7 tells us that this is the record of how they gave praise to the Lord. This is what Asaph and his brothers sang to the Lord. What is recorded for us in 1 Chronicles 16 are three psalms that were used for worship now that the Lord had come to be with his people again. This chapter is going to show us why to worship and how to praise the Lord…

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One of the key messages of the scriptures that the religious world seems to forget is that our first priority is worship. In 1 Chronicles, the first thing we see King David desiring to do after taking the throne and settling his kingdom is to worship the Lord. Our morning and evening lessons today are going to be about worship. David shows us that the way into the presence of God is in worship. Open your copies of God’s word to 1 Chronicles 13…

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The title of our lesson is, “Why We Don’t Repent.” Why don’t we repent? Why don’t we have radical repentance? But this is not a question that merely I am asking each of us. It is a question that God is asking. Listen to how God presents his case to his people in Jeremiah 8.

You shall say to them, Thus says the LORD: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return. (Jeremiah 8:4-5 ESV)

The Lord is asking a great rhetorical question. When people fall down, don’t they get back up again? Don’t people turn around when they go the wrong way? The obvious answer is yes. You get up when you fall down. You turn around when you are going the wrong way. So now God asks, not the world, but his people. Why won’t these people turn around? Why won’t these people get up? Why do they continue to go the wrong way? Why are they perpetually backsliding? Why do they refuse to return? What God is going to do is explain the problem to help them see why they are not getting up and why they are not turning around. As God tells his people about why they are not repenting, we will learn about ourselves and what holds us back from coming to God the way God desires…

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I have an important question for you as we begin our lesson today. What gives you confidence that you are right with God? What would you point to so that you know that you are in right standing with God? As you think about this, I would like for you to open your copies of God’s word to the book of Jeremiah and we are going to look at Jeremiah 7. Jeremiah has been told to go preach a sermon. In Jeremiah 7:1-2 we are told that Jeremiah is told to preach at the entryway to the temple complex to all the people who are coming to worship the Lord. Now I want you to think about this before we begin. Jeremiah is not preaching to the world. Jeremiah is not preaching to the non-worshipers in Israel. He is standing at the temple entryway, preaching to everyone who is coming into the temple complex to worship the Lord. What does God want to say to his people through his prophet, Jeremiah?

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We noticed in the prior lesson that 1 Chronicles is quickly bringing us to the life of David. After moving through an important genealogy in which accounts of faithfulness and unfaithfulness are recorded to show the people how to move forward and remind them of their past. Moving forward with God means not breaking faith. King Saul’s kingship and dynasty was removed from him because he was unfaithful to God and because he did not inquire guidance from God (cf. 1 Chronicles 10:13-14). The Chronicler shows that God’s people must remain faithful to the Lord or experience devastating consequences for disobedience. Chapter 11 opens with David. You will notice that the Chronicler is not paying attention to the early days of David’s life nor about his difficulties during the reign of Saul. The start point for David’s life for the Chronicler is with David on the throne…

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We have been looking at some common problems people experience in which they go through a deconstruction of their faith. This series is put forward as a way to help reconstruct the faith of those who are considering leaving God, leaving Jesus, leaving the faith, leaving the church, or leaving the scriptures. In our lesson we talked about the challenges that are made against the local church. Do we even need the church? Why do we have to do this? I hope the primary take away from the last lesson was that we need each other and to be faithful to him, we must work together, worship together, and love one another. God does not tell us that we can practice our faith before him in isolation. Rather, we are repeatedly taught that we belong to a body in which each part is important and is needed for the body to function and grow properly…

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We are beginning a new series for these two months called Restoring The Fallen. One of the amazing pictures about God is that he did not send all of his prophets condemning his people for their wickedness, only to leave them forever. God sent his prophets and his people rejected God’s message. So the people were punished and taken into exile. Yet God did not leave them in their sins and in the prison of exile in Babylon. We recently studied the books of Ezra and Nehemiah where we saw God bring his people back, giving them the strength to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem. But Ezra and Nehemiah are now gone and the people have been left in Jerusalem. Now what? What hope is there for these people who have failed God in their past? Is there a path forward with God despite all of their sinning and failures? …

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We are in a series called Deconstructing and Reconstructing Faith. My goal in this series to answer some of the questions that I have seen and heard people facing, which is moving people to consider leaving the Lord, leaving the faith, leaving the scriptures, or leaving the church. In this lesson I want to talk about the church. There are a number of challenges to the church today. Do you believe you need to go to church to be a Christian? …

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We have the tendency to drown out noise that becomes loud and repetitive. Car alarms fall into this category. We hear a car alarm and after a few seconds we can ignore its sounds. You might have seen parents do this with their screaming or nagging children. The child is just yelling but the parent does not even to seem to notice it anymore. But it is entirely different story when it comes to the alarm in your home in the middle of the night. If your fire alarm or your security alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I don’t think anyone’s first reaction is to roll over and go back to sleep. You are going to get up. You are going to have the adrenaline running and your heart racing. You are going to start looking for your phone, ready to call emergency service. You are going to get ready…

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