This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapters 3 and 4.

He spoke about power, and the counter-cultural nature of the Gospel.

The Corinthian church was full of human wisdom. Their jealousy, divisions and quarreling were proof of their worldliness and immaturity. In his letter to them, Paul calls them to the alternative way of living by the spirit. A way that was not compatible with their behavior.

People who have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot act in the same manner as those who have not. We must live crucified lives with Christ. Lives which are laid down for others and are founded upon humility. Our allegiance must be to the Kingdom of God and not to our countries or cultures. Our lives and our values must be shaped by the crucifixion, as God’s power is lived out by way of the cross.

Paul boasts about the very things that the Corinthians distained, and he calls out their hypocrisy. The values that they held (their power, honor and riches) were the opposite of all that Paul and therefore Christ was calling them to.

The power of God is expressed in a life that blesses those who curse, endures persecution, answers kindly to those who slander, practices forgiveness and lays their life down for Jesus and other people. We cannot receive the benefits of the cross without laying our lives down daily. We can not lay our lives down daily while being filled with human pride.

Paul reminded the Corinthian church that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing; a message that is repeated all the way through the Bible. We live in a culture that doesn’t teach this.

We as the church need to stop getting into fights and quarrels that have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. We need to begin to look like Jesus. We need to lay our lives down and not get caught up in worldly things.

This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Corinthians series, this week focusing on Chapters 1 and 2.

The church in Corinth was experiencing huge amounts of division amongst themselves and against Paul.

They were fighting over different teachers and ranking them against one another. They were forming clicks and dividing over them, quarreling amongst one another in the name of wisdom.

Unfortunately, we see evidence of this trend continue in the church today as Christians bicker and divide over their consumer preferences.

In his letter, Paul is lovingly exposing their sin. He asks them: where is your humility and your reverence?

He points them back to the example of Jesus Christ and asks them to consider His life and death. He points them back to Jesus’s life of humility and of “going low;” concepts that were completely counter-cultural to both the culture of the time, and our current day.

The foolishness and simplicity of the Gospel remains the most powerful thing on the planet. If we are going to boast, let us boast in Christ and in the Gospel.

This week, Pastor Luke introduced our 12 week 1 Corinthians series.

He encouraged us to dive into the series alongside our devotional that can be picked up from the church or found online at: www.waypointomaha.com/1corinthians

1 Corinthians is a letter written by the apostle Paul. It was written to real people in a real place, which is why it’s important to understand it within its historical context.

Paul arrived in Corinth as part of his second missionary journey and stayed there for 18 months. We can read about his time in Corinth in Acts 18. Corinth was the biggest city that Paul had visited.

Four things that are important to know about Corinth:

Corinth was extremely wealthy. They were a huge trade and port city.
Corinth was very multicultural.
Corinth was very religious. There were at least 26 sacred places of worship within the city. It was also the home of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
Corinth was very sexual.

A few years after his departure from them, Paul wrote multiple letters to the Corinthian church. He was addressing various issues within the church including divisions, sexual misconduct, false practices and theological misunderstandings.

He encourages the Corinthian church to be set apart from the culture and the city around them.

Pastor Luke concluded his message with two thoughts about the church in Omaha.

The call for this moment in time is unity in our church and holiness in our behavior.
We are to be a laundromat. We are to be a place where we point people to get clean through the Holy Spirit and because of what Jesus does in and through us.

STOP THE SHOW

This week, Pastor Jermaine kicked off the year with a sermon out of Matthew 23:13-28.

He spoke about hypocrisy.

In this passage Jesus tells the Pharisees that it is possible to have the appearance of being alive, but really be in a state of death and decay inside. People who look alive, but are dying.

We need to care more about being alive, than having the appearance of being alive. Excellence is great, but it should never trump intimacy.

We must all understand that we are lacking without Jesus. Many of us are trying to be like Christ without Christ. It’s religious acting and we need to stop the show.

The truth us if we are not abiding and remaining, we are dying.

We need to abide in Christ, to have a lasting and persistent faith. We need to stand.

It’s not our job to make ourselves look alive, it’s our job to seek and abide. If you get proximity to Jesus right, everything else with be right.

This week, Tyler Schenzel led us in a word on revival.

He spoke out of Hosea 10:12:

“ Sow righteousness for yourselves,
reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground;
for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes
and showers his righteousness on you”.

The great revivalist Charles Finney said that revival needs to begin with three things; conviction of sin on the part of the church, a deep searching of the heart, and a persons faith being renewed.

In order to be a part of this, we need to take the plow into our hearts and break up the unplowed ground within us. Five symptoms we have unplowed ground within our hearts:

We have little to no revelation of Scripture
We have not recently confessed sin to the Lord or a loved one.
We lack tears.
We are bored and/or indifferent.
We have no vision or passion.

If we find ourselves in a place where any of these things are true, there is good news, and that is the plough is in our hands. Through perseverance and prayer we can create good soil within us; a place where God can give us dreams, revelation and passion. We simply need to plough.

This process begins by humbling ourselves, confessing our sin, and repenting and turning back to the Lord.

The invitation is to plough the areas of our hearts so we can be led into wholeness and intimacy with Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

Pastor Matthew concludes our "Hark!" series with a special Christmas Eve message about Mary, the mother of Jesus. What must it have been like for Mary? With all the uncertainty she experienced... yet she chose to trust God.

Today we find ourselves in the midst of uncertain times; will we choose to trust God?

This week, Pastor Luke continued on with Week 3 of our Christmas sermon series ‘Hark’.

He spoke about the joyous gift of obedience and the freedom that comes from enjoying God’s gifts in their proper time and space.

He spoke about the shema out of Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and gave three reasons we are to obey the Lord:

1. We obey God is because we’re in an exclusive relationship that has history.
2. We obey God because His reputation is tied to our obedience.
3. We obey God for the sake of the legacy of you, your family and the Church.

This week, Pastor Matthew preached week two of our Hark Christmas sermon series.

He launched his message from Hebrews 1:1-2:
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe”.
Our world is breaking, and it needs the church to break with compassion as well. The world needs Jesus as He is their Savior. Because of this, the world also needs the church to be able to cut through the emotions and hear from Jesus in these times.

As we learn to hear the voice of God, we must hear it through the life of Jesus as He has so much to say about the times we are living in, if only we will listen.

Jesus’s life was filled with prophetic signs. He turned water into wine, He healed people, He fed the multitudes, He gave sight to the blind, He walked on water and He raised the dead to life. All of these were signs that Jesus was doing a new thing and bringing life to people.

In the times that we are living in, instead of asking who is to blame we should ask: what is Jesus doing?

Jesus is the light of the world, and as His people we are called to be the same. Jesus was the center and must be the center of it all. In Him we need to simultaneously relax and be ready.

We need to make the Lord’s prayer a lifestyle; slowing down to be with God, drawing near to Him, living out the Kingdom of God and loving the people around us well.

We need to be living lifestyles of repentance and forgiveness, starting with lament over our broken world.

This week, Pastor Jermaine kicked off our Christmas series ‘Hark’ with the topic of ‘How do we hear God in this crazy season?’

He preached out of Luke Chapter 2: 8-14 and Isaiah 9 and 42.

Our Christmas sermon series is called ‘Hark’ which means to listen, pay attention and look back.

Isaiah 9:6 says this:

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”.

The context of this passage is important as this was 700 years prior to the birth of Jesus.
The people of God at the time were in rebellion and facing extremely hard times, and yet in the midst of this turmoil came this prophetic declaration. They were not deserving of the hark, just as we are not deserving. God’s goodness is not based on how good we are, but on how good He is.

What ties us and them together is the question: how will the Godly respond? In many ways, we have the same problem as the church of old; we have not heeded to what God has already spoken.

The first step to hearing God is repentance. A returning to what God has said, and a response of listening and obedience. We need to not only hear but to act on our hearing, as what we do with what God speaks or has spoken will greatly determine what we hear.

There are three groups of people today:

Those who hear and obey God’s message
Those who hear and disobey God’s message
Those who are yet to hear God’s message

Sometimes the only way to go forward is to go backward and acknowledge our sin and then move forward in the embrace of Gods promises.

Are you having problems hearing the voice of God today? Could it be that you have failed to hear what has already been said? Have you excused your lack of obedience?

Before we receive the new, we must acknowledge what we have done with the old. We must repent of what we have done or haven’t done with what God has already spoken.

Repentance is a gift, because as we draw near to God our unrighteousness is revealed and we are stripped of the things that hinder us from intimacy with God. Repentance is not just about judgement, it is about refinement, intimacy and acknowledging the Lordship of God.

We must prepare ourselves to hear. If we expect nothing, we will succeed every time. But, if we come in expectance that God will speak and prepare our hearts for Him to do so; He will.

This week Pastor Matthew preached a special message called "A Prophetic Warning for Today", based on the minor prophet Malachi. Malachi was written 100 years after the Jews returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity and after the temple was rebuilt. While God's people had many hope-filled prophecies of a coming Savior, the exile had not turned their hearts back to God as He had intended.
God's Objections with His People:

1.The Love of God was Doubted (Malachi 1:2-5) - They did not fully trust God anymore.
Instead of obeying Him, they spent their time asking God WHY?


2.The Presence of the Lord Had Become a Burden to the People (Malachi 1:6-14) - The
Israelites had made a covenant with God on Mt. Sinai, where they committed to be God's people and obey His commands. We have the laws in Leviticus and specific instructions for the temple because that sacrificial system was how a just and holy God could dwell in the midst of a sinful and unholy people. Malachi had strong words for the Israelites to remind them that they were called to be a people set apart for God, and they were called to live like it.

3. Unfaithfulness is Now the Norm (Malachi 2:10-16) - The Israelites had married women who did not believe in God and had divorced their believing wives. This activity was a direct reflection of the unfaithfulness in their relationships with God as well. Malachi reminds the people that there was a great cost to following God.

4. Sin Becomes Good and God is to Blame for Injustice (Malachi 2:17, 3:1-5) - The Israelites had begun to normalize sin. They had begun to call good evil and evil good. We live in a society that refuses to talk about sin - a society that has begun to blame God for the injustice caused by the sin of the world!

5. Return to God and He Will Return to You (Malachi 3:6-12) - Malachi calls the Israelites to turn from their wickedness, to return to God's commands, and to cultivate His presence. God promises to return to us as we return to Him. We need to be all-in for Him, the world needs us to be all-in for Him. God tells us that if we go all-in, He will reveal Himself to us.

6. Living as Though It Is Pointless to Live as God Asks (Malachi 3:13-14) - The Israelites thought there was no benefit to living righteously, but Malachi reminds them that obeying His commands is always worth it!
Many Christians believe that the "great and awesome day of the Lord" and His return is imminent, and whether or not that is true, the church needs not to be afraid of His return.
The return of Jesus is a day where darkness is pushed back and Jesus returns in victory! (Malachi 4:1-3)