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We need to know that GOD HATES HUMAN SUFFERING. He hates your suffering as much as you do. Always has – always will. He didn’t make humans to suffer. He made them to live in paradise forever. He didn’t make anything to suffer, not even Lucifer.  He did, however, make them with the freedom to choose against His will and that is what has brought all this suffering. There was no suffering in Eden before sin came and there will be no suffering in the New Jerusalem – forever! God hates it and will not allow it in His presence. “In Your presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.” (Ps.16:11)

When Jesus came He spent almost all of His ministry alleviating human suffering. He made the blind to see and the deaf to hear. He healed the lepers and cast out demons. He destroyed the works of the devil (1Jn.3:8). Just like Jesus, when the Spirit came upon the church they went about healing everyone. There was no suffering from poverty or sickness in the Jerusalem Church (Acts 4:343-35; 5:14-16). Jesus had commissioned them to heal the sick and cast out demons, and they did. Suffering comes from sin and Satan.

Who loves to see humans suffer? The devil and his hosts of demons do. They steal, kill and destroy; Jesus came to give life (Jn.10:10) and to destroy the works of the devil. “God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power and He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38) Satan delights to see humans suffer, but God hates suffering as much as you do.

God hates human suffering so much that in the gospel He took all our sufferings and pain, and placed them on Jesus so we wouldn’t have to suffer. Mt.8:16-17 says so. In bearing our sins, He also bore the consequences of our sins, all the pain and sorrow that comes with sicknesses, diseases, and natural disasters.

If God hates human suffering so much, why does He allow it? The answer to that comes in what theologians call “Original Sin.” God gave man dominion over everything on earth, natural and spiritual. That means he ruled over the devil, the original “creeping thing.” God told man there was one thing he must never do and if he did, he would die (and bring death on the earth). God did not stop Adam from disobeying Him, because He had given man the responsibility to rule over Satan the snake. Suffering came from the sin of man.

Here’s the way the Bible puts it: “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (Rm.5:12) Human suffering does not necessarily come by any particular sin of any sufferer. By Adam’s sin his descendants are born sinners. The consequences of man’s choice in the beginning brought all this suffering. That does not mean our individual sins don’t have any consequences of suffering. I have buried too many smokers who died from cancer. Drunk drivers kill multitudes on our highways every year. Drugs kill even more. But mainly suffering does not come through particular sins.

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8/31/2025 Sunday Morning Sermon

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   Working our way through John chapter nine, this blind man was healed by Jesus. He was questioned repeatedly about how he was healed and who had healed him. He knew virtually nothing about the miracle of how he was healed or who had healed him. He couldn’t tell them because he didn’t know. That’s why they kept asking him. He didn’t know who or where Jesus was. He admitted he didn’t know everything.

It is a great advantage to confess what little you do know, but you should know some things and you should know and confess that you know them. If you can’t say it, you don’t know it. “One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.” (Jn.9:25) He told them a man called Jesus anointed him with mud made from His spit and told him to go wash it off, and then he was able to see for the first time in your life.

We all need this foundation, the bottom line, the starting block from which all other knowledge of the Lord comes. “I am not the same since Jesus told me to repent and believe in Him. I did and I am not the same.” Besides that, in the beginning we don’t know much. But God can work with that. Later Jesus found the man and told him who He was and then he began to worship Him and no doubt began to follow Him (Jn.9:35-38).

It’s very simple to come to Jesus. “I am a sinner and He is the Savior. I trust Him to save me.” But we fail to realize that this is just the beginning of the Christian life. Jesus said, “Come to Me, and take My yoke on you and learn from Me.” (Mt.11:28-30) We need to admit we don’t know everything there is to know about being a Christian and living the Christian life. Everything hinges on this admission that you don’t know everything. You can’t begin to rehabilitate till you admit you need rehabilitation. You can’t begin to be Christlike until you admit you need to be more like Jesus. Like Paul, you too have not arrived. Never stop learning, because  you never learn it all.

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8/24/2025 Sunday Evening Speaker: Leslie Bailey "The Riches of His Glorious Inheritance"

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Sunday, August 24, 2025. Summary of Acts Chapter Two

I. The Force, 1:8    This is for others. It’s rivers of living waters. What happened in Acts 2 was the fulfillment of the words spoken by Jesus just 40 days before in Acts 1:8, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be My witnesses…” The point of this force is effectiveness. Jesus did not begin His powerful ministry of word, and works to back up His words, until after He was endued with power by the Holy Spirit. That’s huge! He did all His teaching and miracles after He was baptized with the Spirit. Likewise, just before He went to heaven He told His disciples not to begin their witness until after they were filled with the force of the Holy Spirit. Before Paul ever did or said anything, he was filled with the Spirit (Acts 9:17). This is no small thing. We accomplish little without this experience in our own lives. Are you filled with the force? Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” Well, you can do a lot, but it will not amount to much, without what Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The church needs this force backing our words. YOU need this force. Jesus did, the disciples did, and so do we. Make sure you have this experience.

II. The Fullness, v.4    This is for you. Paul called it being “filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph.3:19) Jesus was filled with the Spirit and so were the disciples; God commands us to be filled in Eph.5:18. This is necessary for our bearing the fruit of the Spirit; it is His fruit that will fill our hearts and lives. Are you filled with the Spirit? You must answer yes or you can’t be all that God wants you to be and the world needs you to be.

III. The Phenomena, 2:5-13; 1:8; 2:43; Jn.12:14    This was speaking in tongues. It was a strange thing for the people in Jerusalem that day, and also to the disciples who were doing it, because they had not learned these languages! A phenomenon is a significant event, an exceptional and unusual occurrence, something not normal or natural. It attracts people and makes them ask, “What is this?” Then we get to explain to them what God has done and is doing. This will seem like foolishness to many. They were accused of being drunk. But this was not the effect of being filled with wine, it was the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph.5:18).

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Joy is a precious commodity. It is the strength of the Christian. “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” And “The fruit of the Spirit is joy.” Then we have the famous verse that says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy and at Your right hand are pleasures forever more.” (Ps.16:11) If you are living in the presence of God you will have joy, no matter what. Joy is the nectar that supplies the honey in our lives. Its sweetness attracts.

But we need to know there are enemies of our joy that are on the loose! Satan wants to kill your joy! This hater of men can’t stand people having joy, or enjoying righteous things. He is the father of all the other killjoys that can invade your life. And they come uninvited; they are intruders disguised as guests. They look like they’re shopping in your store, but they are shoplifters; they have come to steal your joy (Jn.10:10a).

A man arrived home from the grocery store with his 8 year old son and discovered he had a candy bar that he hadn’t paid for. The dad was upset and immediately told him to get back into the car and then drove him to the … jewelry store. Joy is located in the jewelry store of your life. To have this taken is no candy bar theft; Satan is taking this jewel of your life. Joy is what makes life enJOYable. See Acts 13:52.

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“Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”  (1Corinthians 14:3)

I want our church to be the church as it is in the Bible. Do you want that? You should, because it’s what God wants. We know that because the Bible is the Holy Word of God where He tells us what He likes and the way He wants things done in His house. My dad was the boss in his own house. Even after I grew up and moved out of his house, when I went to his house I knew what he liked and disliked. For example, I would never dishonor him by changing the tv station to something I wanted to see. I can hear him now, “Now son, I was watching that. I own this house and that tv, so don’t be changing the station away from something I’m watching. God wants done in His house what He wants done and He tells it to us in the Bible. We should want that too. You don’t go to someone’s house and tell the owner what you want to do and not do. Especially God’s.

It doesn’t really matter what we want or like, does it? The aim of our lives is to please Him in everything and that certainly includes what we do in church. We have an audience of one and our sole goal is to please Him. That’s what we see in Acts 2 when Jesus instituted the church. What He did then and the way it was then is to continue until He returns. That is The Model Church we are to model our church after.

One of the greatest and most life-changing truths I have ever received into my heart is this, that God invites me to join Him in the work of building His eternal family who will live with Him forever. Little ole me! And He will use me to speak His word and in so doing save the lost, heal the sick, and bless others immeasurably in a hundred different ways. And I get eternal rewards for working with Him in this.

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“He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and anointed the eyes of the man with the clay. And He said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool.’ So he went and washed, and came back seeing.” (John 9:7)

Families have their own ways of doing things. They are called family traditions. God has ways of doing things, but they do not usually become traditions because He is always changing the way He does things.

I. Unusual Methods.   

God has always used unusual methods of doing things. He does not think they way we do or do things the way we would do them. We see this clearly in the healing of this man born blind. A few years after Pentecost at a church convention two men began to discuss how Jesus healed their blindness. One said, “Isn’t it wonderful how Jesus makes mud out of His spit and dirt, anoints us with the mud, they go and wash, and they are healed.” The other man replied, “Well, He does not heal blind people that way at all. He simply spoke and I was healed.” The discussion was so heated they made two denominations: the Mudites and the Anti-Mudites. You never know how God may heal or deliver you. He is God and He chooses the methods He uses to do it.

We see this all the way through the O.T. The most glaring example of this is Naaman. He had the fatal disease of leprosy and the prophet told him to go dip seven times in the dirty Jordan River. He reasoned and refused to do what the Lord had said. But His servants said to him, “`If he had told you to do something great, would you not have done it?” So he went and dipped seven times in the Jordan, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.” (2Kings 5:9-15)

God always does these unusual things by speaking them. All God’s works are voice-activated, and He uses our voices. They are what we call prophetic words, “Thus says the Lord…” is a phrase used hundreds of times in the Old Testament. That’s how God did things, by speaking them through people.

Did you ever notice that Jesus healed a lot of people but never prayed for anyone to be healed? He just spoke a word to them and it was almost always something for them to do. “Go, show yourselves to the priests… And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.” (Lk.17:14) He told the man with the withered hand to stretch forth that hand (the very thing he couldn’t do) and when he did it was healed (Mt.12:13). He told the lame man, “Arise, take up your bed and go to your house. And he arose (the very thing he couldn’t do) and departed to his house.” (Mt.9:7) Jesus said to Peter, “Come,” and he walked on the water (Mt.14:29). “Jesus rebuked the devil and it came out of him, and the child was cured.” (Mt.17:18) Those are only a few from the one book of Matthew. Here we have an example of this in the book of John.

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“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues,

as the Spirit gave them utterance.”  (Acts 2:4)

In our lessons from Acts 2 we are looking again at verse four. The following context of that verse is clear that every person in that upper room on the Day of Pentecost participated in the ministry of the word and Spirit. The apostles were the human leaders, but the Spirit was the true leader and He made all of them ministers of the word. “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues.” And “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans?”

To make the church all it can be, God must use all the members; therefore, every member of the body must participate in the ministry of Christ. All are necessary to make the fullest impact on this world and our loved ones. The church today is not living up to its potential as it did in the Model Church. And probably no member is doing that either. We could all do better to be all that we can be. It’s true in our natural life on this planet when it comes to things we want to accomplish. Thomas Edison once said, “The harder I work the luckier I get.” And this is equally true in spiritual matters and in the church. God wants us to live up to our potential. You should too. You want that for your kids and God wants that for His.

The question is – how can we best do this? First we learn that the church is only the church when it is gathered. We are each individual members, but only when the body comes together are we the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We function as a body when all the parts of it are together, and when everyone is participating in the function of that church.

The church is God’s supernatural body of people gathered together to do supernatural things. That’s what we find in Acts. We are not just a PTO meeting, or a session of congress, or a school board meeting. A team is only a team when it is together. We are a meeting of Christ’s team and every member of that team needs to show up for every practice and game. We are a supernatural team, endued with the power of God to do spiritual gifts which enable us to raise the spiritually dead to life by the preaching of the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, give helpful prophetic words, speak in tongues with interpretation, and other such wonderful and powerful things.

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Wednesday, August 6, 2025. John 9:1-12

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