Before our expository look at scripture, Keith spends some time in some Housekeeping.

"Used with permission from Microsoft."

In our previous request episode on the Holy Spirit empowering the church, the word "it" was used instead of "he". Sorry, it was a slip-up. Also, though tongues were part of the holy spirit moving on the day of Pentecost, we need to be clear that it is not how he works today, His leading, guiding, moving, and speaking come through scripture, and not through a mystical experience. . Even in the context of Acts2, tongues led directly to the gospel sermon that Peter preached. Not the focus, or main goal of the worship experience.

Finally, the closing info has our old, defunct web page mentioned. The other info is OK. Keith also shares a quick word on having a blast at the Cruciform Conference, and the chance to meet folks.

Review

Spine of a Bible ca. 2001, "Used with permission from Microsoft."

The Bread of Life sermon ended with many of Jesus's followers walking away. Even the 12 elect disciples were given the option to go. Peter spoke for all when he said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God"

John 7

Verse 1: The crowd had been on the way to a feast in Jerusalem. Though Jesus and his disciples had been on the way as well, he now lingers in Galilee. Why? He had upset the Jews, and he knew they planned to kill him. About 6 months had passed since the events in chapter six.

We address a problem involving Jesus's seeming desire to avoid death, while elsewhere he tells his followers to not fear death.

Verse 2: The Feast of Booths (tents, tabernacles) was one of the celebrations that required all males to attend. This is in the Fall. Roughly in mid-October. It was a joyful celebration of thanksgiving and harvests.

Verse 3: His brothers. The natural brothers of Jesus. Sons of Mary and Joseph encouraged him to go and do miracles in Jerusalem. Were they afraid that Jesus was making things too hot for them in their hometown? They claimed that Jesus had disciples (students) there who would appreciate his miracles. This would be an ideal time for Jesus to begin his public ministry and market himself. The feast meant people from all over the nation would be there to see Jesus and his signs.

Verse 4: His brothers felt Jesus wanted, or needed, to step up his game, and to be known. Expanding his platform as it was. Time for a more national platform, The world.

Verse 5: Sad to say, but not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus closest relatives misunderstood his mission and identity.

Verse 6: Jesus's time had not come yet, This was Feast of Booths, not Passover. His time. To die. To face wrath was not at hand. His timeline was on a divine schedule, not that of a random marketing opportunity.

What was meant by the statement "Your time? is Always here" For his brothers? To be near to death and wrath? Do you have a better answer? Drop me a line and let me know.

Verse 7: When we go along with the world, conform to it, society can't hate us. However, when we conform to look like Jesus, the world hates us. Society hates truth. Especially the light of the truth that exposes its evil nature,

Verse 8: Jesus told his brothers, "You go. I'm not going." What? Did Jesus lie? No. Of course not. The key to understanding this is in the Greek phrase behind the statement.

Spoiler alert>: He did go, but not with the public entourage.

A challenge to verse 8 goes into some detail in learning that Jesus told the truth. In brief, the word "yet" tells that the intent was to go, but just not now. Jesus also wanted to avoid attention, and go in secret.

How do the blind worship in church?  Find answers to this and other topics this episode with Keith and his brother Terry Heltsley!

Jn 6:60-71 is the text we dive deep into.

What does holiness look like? How can we hope to live a life, set apart for God? We take a survey of a few things to avoid, found in Leviticus. Don't worry, there's plenty of positive practices that put believers on the right path

Spine of a Bible ca. 2001, "Used with permission from Microsoft."

God is often referred to as being holy, and those hoping to be with him are commanded to be holy. Leviticus 20:7,26;

Though this scripture contains a big list of sinful behavior, it is clear on what holiness is not. God assures his followers that he will provide help in being holy.

The command: `You shall consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am the LORD your God.

How to be holy: `You shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you.

Holiness is a matter of what we do, and bad behavior drives us away from it. Some of these get deep into the deviant area.

Don't

* Curse father or mother,

* Commit adultery with another man's wife, with his father's wife, with his daughter-in-law, with a male as those who lie with a woman,

* Marry a woman and her mother, his sister, his father's daughter or his mother's daughter, take his brother's wife,

* lies with an animal or a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it,

* lie with a menstruous woman. Lie with his uncle's wife

* uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister or your father's sister,

Why keep the commands? `You are therefore to keep all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out.

As the Leviticus passage warns:

23 `Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them.

24 `Hence I have said to you, "You are to possess their land, and I will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey." I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples.

Not only do the commands keep us holy, but we can also become Unclean by our environment.

25 `You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird or by anything that creeps on the ground, which I have separated for you as unclean.

When temptation or weakness sets in, God promises to help.

26 `Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.

Culture can creep in to pollute even our worship. Unclean practices drive us away from holiness, and God.

27 `Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.´"

Turning to a more upbeat note, Jesus outlines good things that we can do to help our holiness. Some key verses to pay attention to in the sermon on the mount include, Matthew 5:6,8,29,30,48;

We should have a holy Hunger for righteousness: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Traits of the holy person:

* Merciful receive mercy

* peacemakers called sons of God.

* To be persecuted for righteousness, is the kingdom of heaven.

* To be insulted, persecuted, falsely lied against because of Me, means your reward in heaven is great;

Holiness shows up in Purity: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

The imagery of salt and light and correct living demonstrates hol...

Our special guest who couldn't make the show from 2 weeks ago is on hand. We touch base on those 5 basic questions that Keith and Nathan discussed But the main topic today is on what the Sunday worship experience is like for the disabled. Namely, by blind people.

* Who or what is God?

* How did you arrive at that conclusion (How did you learn about God)?)

* What do you think God wants for us?

* What is the problem that keeps us away from him?

* How can we overcome sin and death?

Main Topic

Terry is the younger brother of Keith. Both went blind later in life, and after plenty of years attending and participating in church. We compare what has become different for us in the experience of Sunday School, and the worship services, both music, and the sermon.

In the churches we both attend, there are options to receive adaptive literature to study the weekly Sunday School lesson. Terry prefers the audiobook version, read by a reader, and recorded on CD, Keith prefers getting the material in digital format. The digital content can be easily streamlined for either personal use, or in leading the class time.

When it comes to worship in the song service, things get more difficult to adapt. Blind people can't see the big screen at the front of the auditorium. Accessible devices and technology can open doors to the environment around us, but it still has plenty of shortcomings. We offer a couple of tips to music leaders that could be helpful if you have blind people in the congregation.

For those interested, Keith has built an online hymnal. Based on converting his digital braille copy of the Baptist Hymnal, 2008, into text. Then slice it up into individual songs, and posting it on a web page that's easily and quickly searchable. The page is set to not be searched by search engines, but it can be found on a sub-domain of his blog.

As far as the sermon goes, blind people also have bible apps on smartphones. The most popular apps are accessible but can take a little extra time to locate the reference that the [pastor may be using. Not all bible apps are created equal, and some are easier to find a scripture reference at the moment than others. The best advice is to allow a little extra time for a verse to be looked up and repeat the reference often.

In the end, we hope this has been informative, and it was helpful in how you might help a blind person in your church or community.

Find out more about Terry and what he does through Madison County Association of the Blind.

Credits

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More on Job. Preached on January 5, 2020 at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, AR by pastor Nathan Caldwell. Text starts at Job 22.1

This wraps up a long chapter, probably the longest chapter in the New Testament. For some background, we review some high points in the events and Jesus's sermon about his being the bread from heaven.

* Jesus fed 5000.

* He fled, but walked on water that night. Seen only by his disciples.

* The crowd finds him and wants to know how he got across the lake.

* Jesus redirects attention from being fed physical bread to his eternal spiritual bread.

* He declares, you cant work your way into heaven. It's about faith, belief.

* But the crowd demanded a sign, like Moses did in the wilderness. Did they think the miracle feeding would continue daily, as it did with mannah in the wilderness?

* Jesus redirects again about the true bread from heaven.

* They saw but didn't believe it.

* His listeners were stuck on the earlier claim about descending from heaven. They seem to have missed eternal security, and gods desire to reconcile.

* They knew his parents, how can he say he came from heaven?

* Jesus really rocks their boat as he gets to the difficult part. He restates he is from the father and has seen him.

* Mannah had a temporary benefit, but those who ate it are dead. Jesus is bread from heaven, eaters will not die.

* Wait. What? Eaters of his flesh? What does he mean by that?

* His claim is that his believers should eat his flesh to receive eternal life.

* The Jews had to deal with what he meant. What does he mean, eat his flesh?

* He is the source of life. Apart from him, our life is not self-sustaining.

Spine of a Bible ca. 2001, "Used with permission from Microsoft."

John 6:60-71

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?"

Disciples. Not limited to the 12, but students at large, an adherance.

It wasn't only the Jews and religious leaders who had a hard time with this concept, even some of his disciples had trouble understanding.

Jesus was polarizing. His messages were Not always about peace and love. If he was all about good vibes, he would never be crucified. His puzzling, difficult saying served to separate the men from the boys, the true followers from those in name only.

But what about the 12 closest disciples?

61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this?

He heard their grumbling, trying to figure out what he meant, but Jesus knew their hearts. The concept of this spiritual bread is a foundational belief about Jesus. As difficult as it is, how can the disciples receive later, more difficult things to be understood?

62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

aThis seems to be Jesus's way of prophesying to them, about what they would see. Men can't save themselves. Eternal life isn't in them. We have nothing but needs. It takes trusting in the atoning price Jesus paid for our eternal life.

Going by the question Jesus asked, was the disciples hung up on his descending from heaven, and not so much on the eating of his flesh as the bread of life?

Something to note. None of the gospels record his ascension. It appears Only in Acts.

63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Jesus short circuits the issue of eating flesh by claiming it is the spirit that gives life. Spiritual bread. The flesh is nothing. Spirit is everything. Again, we are not self-sustaining. No pulling up by bootstraps. The Holy Spirit is central to the bread of life conce...