Grace in Tullahoma

2 Timothy 1:13-18

2 Timothy 1:8-12

2 Timothy 1:1-7

Joshua 1:2-9 – 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

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“A blind man walked into a bar. [pause] Then a table. Then a chair.” I’ve told you before, unlike Brother Tim, I’m not very good at telling jokes. But I have heard that if you ever want to mess with a blind person, just rearrange the furniture. I know…I know…But how many of you ever feel like following God’s plan in your life feels like stumbling over rearranged furniture?

Today, we are honoring graduates, and while this message is geared towards them as they seek the future God has planned, I hope the rest of us who have long since walked in their shoes can look back and see how God has been faithful even through life’s mistakes and disappointments.

You’ve heard the saying, hindsight is 20/20. For those of us who are older than these graduates, I want you to think back on your life. Does it look now like you thought it would when you were their age? Did you follow God perfectly every step of the way since you graduated? Did you ever not know where God was leading? Did you walk in obedience no matter what?

If you are in church today, there’s a good indication that you want to follow God. We all do. We tell God we will follow Him and desire to do so. But deep inside, if we’re honest, we either feel like we won’t be able to follow through when it comes down to it, or we just have no clue where He is leading…like we’re walking around blind…or we’re too comfortable with where we are right now to go any further with Him. So, often we decide we just won’t go. Not in a blatant, rebellious way. But in a subtle, idle way. I know you have been there, like me, because that’s the pattern of the saints throughout the entire narrative of the Bible.

We see Abraham trust God enough to move from the comforts of his homeland, yet stumble and fall when it came to waiting for God’s promise of a son. He jumped the gun by sleeping with his maidservant to try to speed up God’s plan. Still, God’s plan prevailed. We see Jonah run from God’s plan to preach to those at Nineveh and was swallowed by a big fish. After repenting, he finally obeyed God, and the people turned from their sins and were spared. We see Moses, Elijah, David, the disciples, and just about every other person mentioned in the Bible want to follow God, yet struggle at some point in living out the details of His plan. We are no different. We all want to follow God yet struggle at some point in living out the details of His plan. We can relate to their thoughts of not being good enough or feelings of being the only one on earth who se

Psalm 127

Wk 4 | Body and Soul

God has made us both body and soul.

Genesis 2:7 – then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

We are called to love God and others with our bodies and our souls.

One way we love God with our souls is when we learn to think biblically.

Romans 12:2 – Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The way to love God with your body is to responsibly steward your body.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

What are some of the greatest things people have created…like wonders of the world? What can people create that lasts the longest?

God has created humans with the capacity to make something that lasts forever—other human beings.

Physical things in this world pass away, including our bodies, but each person has a soul that will literally last forever. Think about this…after a trillion, trillion, trillion years from now, you will have just as much time left in eternity as you do today. Crazy!

I love what C.S. Lewis said about there being no ordinary people.

“You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”[1]

This is why Satan is intent on twisting God’s good design for sex and the family.

To understand Satan’s schemes for today, we must go back to the Genesis creation story and see what it reveals about his character.

In Genesis 1 we see over and over that everything God made was good, and He made humans to populate the earth and live in it, which shows us, among other things, that sex is designed for good. God has made a good world so people can populate it and live in loving relationship with Him and with other people.

In Genesis 3, though, Satan shows up and begins to undermine God’s good plan and design for the world and people. As a result, sin entered the world, corrupting it, and nothing has ever been the same.

Satan hasn’t changed his tactics. He is the same now as he was then. Here are three elements of Satan’s strategy that we can see from this story and apply it to our battle with living out God’s good design.

1. Satan corrupts.

He takes that which God has made good and corrupts it. John 8:44 tells us he is the father of lies. He corrupts goodness and truth. He corrupts the good purposes of food (nourishment, pleasure) by tempting people to either eat too much (gluttony) or eat too little (anorexia). He corrupts the good purpose of work by tempting people to either ignore it (laziness) or find their identity in it (workaholism).

Satan takes the same corrupting approach to sex, love, and relationships. He corrupts biblical marriage by encouraging divorce. He corrupts natural human desires by disseminating pornography. He corrupts God’s design for humans as gendered beings by undermining the objective reality of male and female. Satan is a corrupter of good.

2. Satan deceives.

He didn’t directly tell Adam and Eve that God is not good. Rather, he asked them questions to subtly undermine their confidence in God’s character…His goodness. He does the same for us today. He seeks to subtly deceive us, without us knowing.

2 Corinthians 11:14 – even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

He is also a cunning deceiver. He talked Adam and Eve into doing the wrong thing and convinced them they were doing what was right. He does the same thing with us today, as you can see from the culture around us. What is wrong is

1 Timothy 6:17-21

Wk 3 | True Love

Ephesians 5:25-29

What is something you love? We toss around that word so often and so flippantly. It means so many different things. We use it to say, “I love waffles,” and in the same breath can say, “She is the love of my life.”

What is love? How would you define it?

So, we’re in a series about relationships. What does the Bible have to say about love and relationships, and what can we learn from it about what it means to love?

Read Ephesians 5:25-29

Before we get to this kind of love, we need to understand the different forms of love in their culture. We have one word, “love.” They had four which translate to our one word. What language was the New Testament written in? Greek. Out of the four Greek words for “love,” three of them are found in the Bible.

eros – Sexual love; This is the word that, though it was prevalent in their culture, it is not found in the Bible. This word was used in such instances when referring to cult prostitutes. It emphasized loving the beauty or sensuality of something. It’s where we get our word erotic from. To be honest, I think this is the what a boy or girl at your age means most of the time when they say “I love you.” They have very strong feelings for you. But, what are those feelings based on? As we will see in a little bit, are those feelings willing to sacrifice?

philia – friendship love; This word is rarely found in the New Testament, and it’s always paired with another word. When you see the word “brotherly love,” this Greek word is within it. This is the type love that good friends have for one another. It’s where the city Philadelphia gets its name. Do you know what they call Philadelphia? The city of brotherly love.

storge – family love; Like eros, this word is not found, as is, in the Bible. But, the opposite of this word is found. If you take a word and put “a” in front of it, what does it mean? What is a theist? Someone who believes in God. Put an “a” in front of it. What is an atheist? Someone who doesn’t believe in God. We find the Greek word astorgos which is translated as “heartless.” In Romans 1:31, unrighteous people are described as “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” The word “heartless” is astorgos. And in 2 Timothy 3:3, the disobedient generation living in the last days is marked as “heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good.” Again, “heartless” is translated from astorgos. So, a lack of storge, the natural love among family members, is a sign of end times.

agape – unconditional love; By far, this is the word used for love in the Bible. Over 90% of the time you see the word “love” in your New Testament, it is referring to this type of love. Thomas Aquinas referred to this type of love as “to will the good of the other.” Thomas Merton said of this type of love, “love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved.” This type of love, agape, is often translated as “charity,” which shows you some of its intention. It exists for the good of another.

It shouldn’t be overlooked that of the many words for love that existed in the time, that the primary form of love to be expressed in the Bible is self-sacrificial love for the sake of another.

Agape is self-sacrificial love for the sake of another.

Now back to our text. This is the type of love that is meant between a man and a woman, specifically within marriage.

How is a husband to love his wife according to this text? As Christ loved the church…and gave Himself for her. Sacrificed Himself for her…for you. Out of love. For your good.

Love is a commitment to the best of another, even if the other doesn’t recognize or accept the reality of the good.

The best thing you can do for someone is to tell them about Jesus. Even if they don’t recognize it and don’t believe it. Telling someone about God’s sacrificial love for them ends up for their earthly and eternal good if they believe it. That is THE best you can do.

T

Kevin Clay Testimony & Don Whitt Message

Don Whitt Galatians 6:7