Outline The proof of love The essence of love The source of love Introduction ‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love….’ ‘All you need is love….’ The world knows that the human heart is full of hate and crying out for love, yet it cannot fix itself. Every independent attempt to build a human society has resulted in a loveless self-destructive catastrophe. The Communisitic egalitarian agenda; the Hindu caste system; our secular humanistic self-defining humanity, no matter what it is, every attempt will end in human unhappiness and us destroying not loving one another. Think of the ideal human community that the 21st century West is pursuing, it is the imaginary realm of John Lennon. It is a world where there is no religion, no class distinctions, where we all get to self-define according to our own inner desires. So far we have legalised baby killing in abortion, reawakening the eugenics program and population control regimes of Hitler. We are endangering our elderly by legalising euthanasia. We have destroyed marriage by legalising homosexual marriage exposing every potential child to an environment that is not governed by a holy covenant life-long love. We have legalised harmful practices like gambling, pornography, prostitution, alcohol consumption and will soon be legalising marijuana. The trajectory for the path we are on is a hopeless one, it can only end in tragedy and suffering, and is presently churning out broken people, and yet it is presently being presented as the world’s great answer to all its problems. We are too drugged to feel the pain. We live under a constant stream of Netflix numbing and distracting the mind with entertainment. We are caught in the business and attention grabbing distraction of a technology filled life. We may just be on anti-depressants, full stop, trying...

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Outline The ark of the covenant The God of the covenant The king of the covenant Introduction The domestication of God, familiarity with God, trivialising God, underestimating God, these are the sins of our ignorant and sinful hearts. The holiness of God is something we will always insult by our conceptions, our worship and our actions. Until we see Him and are worshipping in a perfected state we will always fall short of the glory He deserves. 2 Sam. 6 is a chapter which shows David and Israel doing the same thing. They made light of God, they did not fear Him and obey His word, and there were consequences. 2 Sam. 6 is an important chapter not only for the lessons it teaches us but because it is a major turning point in the history of Israel. One of the important things that was going to result from the Conquest of Canaan was a chosen place where God would insist that all Israel offer their sacrifices and celebrate the 3 annual feasts perpetually. Deut 12:2-7, ‘You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution...

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Outline The office The responsibility Introduction John Harper was born in Scotland in 1872. He was converted at 14 and from an early age began to tell others about Jesus. He ended up planting a church in London with 25 members which grew to over 500 when he left 13 years later. He had married and was widowed but had a daughter. The Moody church in America sought out this fervent evangelist to run evangelistic meetings at his church. So he set off with his daughter to America on a ship. A few days into the journey, he woke up his daughter in the middle of the night because the ship was sinking, he put her on a lifeboat with a cousin. That ship was the Titanic. It was only a few months later at a prayer meeting in Ontario that what happened to John Harper come to light. A young Scotsman told the extraordinary story. ‘He explained that he had been on the Titanic the night it struck the iceberg. He clung to a piece of floating debris in the freezing waters. ‘Suddenly’ he said, ‘a wave brought a man near, John Harper. He, too, was holding a piece of wreckage. ‘He called out, ‘Man, are you saved?’ ‘No, I am not,’ I replied. He shouted back, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ ‘The waves bore [Harper] away, but a little later, he was washed back beside me again. ‘Are you saved now?’ he called out. ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ ‘Then losing his hold on the wood, [Harper] sank. And there, alone in the night with two miles of water under me, I trusted Christ as my saviour. I am John Harper’s last convert.’...

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Outline The nature of sin The deceitfulness of sin Introduction How would you feel if your husband or your wife committed adultery against you? This is probably one of the most difficult betrayals to come to terms with. That thought as painful as it is, helps us prepare to understand the nature of our betrayal against God, except we are worse. In our sins against God we have not merely committed adultery, we have gone off and become prostitutes not merely adulterers. This is the message of Jeremiah’s first sermon to Israel in Jer. 2:1-3:5. 3:1, ‘…you have played the whore with many lovers….’ 3:2, ‘…you have polluted the land with your vile whoredom.’ 3:3, ‘…you have the forehead of a whore yet you refuse to be ashamed.’ The message I want to look at today was written to God’s OT people, a people who were believers and unbelievers, that means that the message is relevant for both groups today. We have grown cold to the reality of sin. We use it to entertain ourselves, it is psychologised away as nature or nurture, and it is defined as only criminal acts or things done against other people. The portion we have before us is one of the most powerful explanations of the nature of sin. The early chapters of Jeremiah are written during the reign of Josiah. We know that he had a rather prosperous reign, and some might even look on it as a golden era. The time of Josiah was good because the king was godly; however, his influence on the nation was from the top down. In other words, although it appeared for all intents and purposes like the nation was doing well spiritually; but it was from the top down it was not a bottom up...

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Outline Ascendancy Occupancy Prosperity Victory Introduction Chapter five acts as a scrapbook collection of God’s promises fulfilled to David. We have been looking at David’s long journey and preparation to be king. We have followed David the young boy anointed king who fought in Saul’s army; David the refugee running for his life; David the mercenary and his stint in the Philistine army; and David the king of one tribe in the midst of a civil war. Chapter 5 acts to show God’s promises to David fulfilled, and how it pulls out some highlights to indicate God’s faithfulness. This is highlighted by the fact that this chapter is not a straight chronological narrative. V1-3 David being coroneted king would have come first. Then the Philistine attacks of v17-25; then David would have secured Jerusalem 6-10; and then in the last ten years of his life Hiram of Tyre would have sent supplies to build David a house, v11-12. There are four events pulled out for us to appreciate, they are David’s ascendancy to the throne; his occupancy of Jerusalem; his prosperity; and his victory over his enemies.

Outline Unity of the Spirit Baptism of the Spirit Drinking of the Spirit Introduction What is baptism?  For some it is a cultural tradition which goes along with your nationality.  For some it is a private devotional moment that becomes subject to personal taste and timing.  For others it is something irrelevant you don’t have to worry about, an optional extra like a fashion accessory.  For some it is baby insurance applied to babies as a type of protection.  There are many things we could say about baptism but today we want to focus on baptism as a command of Christ for every Christian that pictures and formalises our unity with Christ’s church by the receiving of His Spirit.  In the middle of a discussion on the spiritual gifts, Paul alludes to our baptism into Christ in 1 Cor. 12:12-13, ‘ For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.’  We are familiar with the context, Paul is speaking about the diversity of gifts that are active in the diversity of spiritual gifts in the church.  Having stressed this diversity by the one Spirit he wants to reemphasize the oneness of the body and he does this in the text we are considering by talking about our baptisms.  What is baptism?  For some it is a cultural tradition which goes along with your nationality.  For some it is a private devotional moment that becomes subject to personal taste and timing.  For others it is something irrelevant you don’t have to worry about, an optional extra like...

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Outline Abner Joab David Introduction The change of governments and especially civil war is a hard time for any government. The corruption, the ambitions of men, the manipulations, blackmail, negotiations, the deceit, the murder and all this mixed with civil war. This is what we find in our portion. Yet the will of God triumphs, the promises of God come to pass. Why do we have the details in the 7 ½ year period before David becomes king recorded? To show that God’s promises will triumph; but not without a lot of interference and trouble along the way. One commentator in surveying these chapters tells us that the section clearly teaches us three things: No kingdom can overcome the kingdom (Abner, Chap. 2) No folly can thwart the kingdom (Joab, Chap. 3) No injustice can establish the kingdom (Baanah and Rechab, Chap. 4) The ambition, the folly, and the injustice of man do not produce the kingdom of God, but nor can they overthrow it. These three points revolve around the three main characters we want to look at, Abner, Joab and David. The true main character in all of this though is God who brings His sovereign purposes to pass despite the sinfulness of man. Let us look at these three men as it leads to the point David will become king.

Outline Modern views Biblical practice Introduction The pastor walked to the front of the stage while the band was softly playing and said, ‘The Spirit has told me that an anointing for healing is here tonight. If anyone wants to be healed come to the front and we will pray for you.’ Sitting in the front row was a girl with a birth defect sitting in a wheelchair. She had been born with five vertebrae missing. Two young men heard the pastor and saw the girl and went to the girl in the wheelchair and prayed for her and pulled her out of the chair to try and get her to walk. She was not healed. That girl was the sister of one of my ex-girlfriends, and one of those young men was me. The gift of healing; that is what we want to consider today. 1 Corinthians 12:9 talks about ‘gifts of healing.’ The book of Acts is filled with many acts of healing, not to mention the ministry of Christ. Is the gift of healing something that we should expect to see functioning in the church today? It is not a revelatory gift, so it need not cease like prophecy, are the men and women who claim this gift actually empowered by God to heal? Today we want to consider this gift as it is defined by its modern practitioners, and then we will consider the bible’s teaching on the matter.

Outline David seeks the kingdom Abner seeks the kingdom Introduction Saul is dead and you would expect that David who had been anointed King years earlier would suddenly ascend to the throne and rule Israel. This is not the case. Chapters 2-4 cover a 7 ½ year period, only at the end of which David will be the uncontested king. These chapters will be dominated by two men seeking to make themselves king in Israel, David and Abner. David seeks God’s will and God’s kingdom, Abner seeks his own. The overarching theme in the opening 5 chapters of 2 Samuel is that God keeps His promise to make David King, we zoom in now to look at how David as a believer cooperates with God in His providential outworking of this promise, noting the triumphs and failures, and we also want to remind ourselves of the stubborn blindness of unbelief that always resists God’s kingdom.

Outline Hospitality in the bible Hospitality today Introduction What do you think was one of the most effective tools for the spread of the gospel in the first century? They did not have the internet with Facebook, podcasts, or YouTube. They did not have the printing press with access to thousands of good books. They did not have church buildings in which they could meet and invite the community into. Not everyone in the early church could even read and write. We know that it was the work of God by His Spirit, but one of the everyday tools that He used to spread the gospel in the first century was, the home. Hospitality was an important tool that God used, and continues to use to spread His word. We are doing a series on the spiritual gifts looking at Romans 12:6-8. We stated at the first that we would branch out to some of the other gifts not mentioned here, hospitality is one of them. Today we want to look at hospitality in the bible and then today.