Sovereign King Church Sermons
Web Site: Sovereign King Church
Total Sermons: 69
Total Amens: 2
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3rd John`
John in his first letter gave the church two options for how to interact with each other. John said you are either actively loving one another or you are actively hating each other. Though our hearts might think there is some middle ground like indifference or dislike, John doesn't give us that option. I John 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. John's point was that the evidence that you know Jesus Christ as your Lord is Savior is found in whether or not you love. Loving means you have life. If you are not loving, you are hating, and hating is death which is evidence of not being transformed by Jesus. This is the big bold claim of Christianity that has been forgotten. If this were the reputation of the church in America, heck if it was the reputation of Sovereign King in Garner, no church could build enough seats to hold the people that would want to be a part of that community. You see, the only way you can live out this seemingly impossible truth is to recognize and realize that this is the kind of love that Jesus showed to you. He laid down His life on your behalf so that you would lay down yours for others. There is a direct correlation at play. - The depth to which you understand your sin and what Christ did to overcome it will be the depth to which you will love people who are hurting and in need. - Live with a big, present realization of your sin and Christ's work for it, and you will love others no matter what because that is how you are loved. - Live with a small or non-existent realization of your sin, and you will wait for people to get on your level before you love them. In all practicality though, what does our laying down of our life look like? Verse 17 tells us 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. John essentially says, "Put feet on your faith." With whatever you have, help those in need. If you close your heart against those in need, you must not understand that Jesus loved you while you were still in need. Jesus loved you while you were still a sinner; He laid down His life for the unrighteous. You couldn't get cleaned up enough for Jesus to love you. Our God got dirty and loved the dirty. Let's not talk about loving then. Let's do love. Let our love be seen in not only truth speaking, but also in love doing. This week at Sovereign King, we are closing out our "House Rules" series: one that has been more transformational to the life of this church than any other I can of. And today, we are going to study the entire letter of 3 John. There, John is going to give us an example of two people who will live out the two extremes that we just mentioned. One guy is named Gaius and another is named Diotrephes. Their names give sort of the impression of a Greek Tragedy, and sadly, their story would probably make a good one. Mark Dever in his book "Promises Kept" will describe these guys in this way. - He says one of them is a trouble maker for the Gospel. - The other is a trouble taker for the Gospel. - One makes problems. The other takes on problems. Now here is what I don't want to do. I've been through the fire as a preacher's kid and now as a preacher, seeing the absolute dirty underbelly of Christianity. I have seen things that are so repugnant that they have literally led me to vomit. But that is a story for another day. I also have heard many of your stories, and some of you must have seen the same things I saw that led me to puke my guts up. This sermon is not going to rehash the worst of Christianity. We are going to take a look at these two men. One of them is going to be a life to avoid, and one of them is going to be a life to emulate and we going to avoid one and emulate another. - And as we do each Sunday at SK, we try to answer at least one Big Picture Question in each sermon. So this week's Big Picture Question is this: Big Picture: What is the difference between a maker of trouble and a taker of trouble for the sake of the Gospel?
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2nd John
Well this week at Sovereign King, we get to look a very brief but powerful book of the Bible in 2 John. And John is going encourage the recipients of that letter as well us to shut our mouths, bend our knees, put on our reading glasses, and pursue the wisdom of God in His scriptures. And just like John, I'm going to encourage you to do the same thing. In fact, when this worship service is done, I'm not only going to encourage you to read the scriptures, I'm to encourage you to do the even harder but wise task of applying those scriptures to your life.
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Assurance, Intercession, and Purity
Do any of you know people that are amazingly self-assured? Their confidence just overflows when you are around them. Sometimes being around them can be encouraging, and quite honestly, some times it can be intimidating. Maybe they have the effect on you that you try your best to be at your sharpest, wittiest, and most intelligent when you are interacting with them. Either way, everyone in the room senses their confidence. A lot of athletes are like that. When the game is on the line, they want the ball in their hands. When the Super Bowl is on the line, they want the ball thrown their way. They want to stand at the plate at the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded. Moments like that are what many kids dream of and play out in the backyard every day. I had that moment my very first organized baseball game. I may have told you guys this story before, but it bears telling again. I was in 4th grade in my very first little league game. I had not stepped onto the field the entire time. My uniform would not even need cleaning. It was the bottom of the ninth, we were down, there were 2 men on base, and my coach decides to put me in as a pinch hitter. I watched the last two pitches whiz by, I struck out, and we lost the game. I handled that like many other 9 year olds do by crying my eyes out. Fast forward 20 years later, and the exact same situation came up. I was playing church softball, it was the playoffs, and I step up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. It was not lost on me at that last time that I was in the same situation, and the last time I was there I didn't come through. However, this time, I hit a bloop single that brought in two runners, and we won the game. Winning the game was enough to erase most of the pain of the 4th grade, but I was pretty sure that I was never going to be any team's go to guy on the baseball field. No matter whether you are confident or not, built into self-assurance or self-confidence is this attitude that sounds like the expression, "If it is going to be, it is up to me." There is a sense in some folks, right or wrong, that they just know if something needs to get done, they know they can count on themselves. Though this issue wavers back and forth between confidence and pride, it got me thinking about confidence and assurance in God. If I asked many of you, "Is God powerful enough to do anything?" I think many if not most of you would say, "Yes." "Is he powerful enough to create, heal, call things into existence by His very word?? I think most of you would say yes. But if I asked you if He was powerful enough to keep your salvation secure and in the process assure you that your salvation is real, I don't know if I would get as many affirmations. For some reason, we think God is powerful enough to do anything He wants in the material world, but when it comes to our heart, salvation, and assurance of that salvation, we think God either cannot or has chosen not to make us secure with Him. This Sunday, at Sovereign King, I want to remove that doubt today. Rather, John in this last sermon from 1 John wants to. John is going to use language like "knowing we believe" and "knowing you have eternal life" and "having confidence" in God. He is going to talk about what the life looks like that has confidence in God and what God has done.
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Overcoming the World
I was in Texas for less than 48 hours this week, but in that brief time, I made a few observations. One: the folks in Texas don't know how to handle ice and snow any better than folks in NC. I never saw so many wrecks in my life. Two: even my non-English speaking taxi driver was an expert on the Dallas Cowboys and his ideas about how to fix them are better than the ones I hear from the present coaching staff. Three: When they say everything is big in Texas, they aren't joking. Even the churches are huge. I was in an area where on 3 different corners there were churches of over 10,000 folks each and there was a 4th just a mile up the road When you take a look at some of the pastors and churches in Texas, you'll notice that a large number of them have built their ministries upon the idea that all that God has done in this world and through Christ is really just for you and once we realize all that God has done, we will become better people. Within that philosophy of ministry, I hear nuggets of truth, but upon further consideration, it seems to fall short of the full picture. This point became clear when I heard two pastors speak at the conference One did this incredibly well done video piece of him teaching his son to ride a bike. In it, he talked about how through our failure, we learn how to succeed. His mantra was: try, fail, learn, adjust. He closed by saying that failure was God's way of making you a winner. Now that sounds like a decent theology right? Learn from your failures. God doesn't intend for us to hang our heads in the sand and mope when things don't go well. Yet, it still seemed a bit incomplete. Then, the next speaker came up on the stage, Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. If you know anything about Driscoll, he is about a straight shooter as they come, and he is unconcerned and unimpressed with Christian celebrities. He spoke of Righteousness, Risk and Repentance warning pastors like myself not to base our righteousness on the success of our ministries, not to not become addicted to or too scared of risk, and to continually walk in repentance. Then as he closed, he offered this correction to the prior speaker. He said, "Oh yeah, one more thing: only in America will a pastor tell you that that the purpose of failure is so God can make you a winner. You might just fail, and all you will have left is Jesus. The bigger question is, ‘Is Jesus enough for you?'" That bold rebuke struck home to my heart. Folks, when we are said and done here on the dusty bowl called planet Earth, the fundamental question is going to be, "Do you have Jesus or not?" The size of this church, the job you have, the things that make you comfortable, are not going to count. Jesus is what counts. If I preach this sermon or if I preach them all year long, if Sovereign King grows, if we have 4, 6, 8 CE Groups, if we are serving the police well, if we do all of those things and lives are not changed and transformed because of Jesus Christ, we are wasting our time. If your life is not impacted and transformed because you met the risen Savior, then I'm wasting my time up here. Don't let the structure of things going on here distract you. I think our CE Groups are vital and the men's and women's study are vital, but they are means to an end and not and end unto themselves Instead allow the structure of going on here instruct you how you and those you know can be transformed by Jesus. Jesus is not a means to an end. He is not your way to have a happy, healthy, wealthy life. Jesus is the end. The goal is Jesus. When we get done with our day, whether or not it has gone our way or whether or not we feel blessed, ask yourself, "Was Jesus enough for me today?" If the answer is no, it is not because Jesus was insufficient. It was because you found Him insufficient and desired other things. What we are going to find in I John today is that He is going to describe the folks that get that, the folks that get that Jesus is the point. He is going to describe those folks as those that overcome the world.
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Living Without Fear
Generally, when we think of fear, it is associated with bumps in the night or what is lurking in the dark, or at the least, the fear of the unknown. As a kid, I went through the horror movie phase where that was all I wanted to watch. My horror movie obsession culminated in a 16th birthday party sleepover where we watched Friday the 13th movies parts1-5 straight through. However, fear is much more of an ever-present reality than the movies or even our consciousness wants to recognize. Fear rarely has to do with machete wielding, hockey masked villains or striped sweater wearing bad guys that visit you in your nightmares. But one the reasons folks watch suspenseful or scary movies is to prove to themselves that they are not scared. To many, admitting fear is admitting weakness, and very few people have enough honesty to admit that they live with a certain amount of fear. But here is a little social secret. Ironically, many of the people who make a point to demonstrate that they never fear anything are actually the people that are most scared. Generally, the most blustery of people that I know are just people that are incredibly fearful. - They fear that people will think they are not smart so they are constantly trying to show how smart they are. - They fear that people will not respect them so they demand respect constantly and take offense at the first hint of disrespect (whether real or imaginary). - They fear that they will be rejected so they act like they don't care if people accept them or not. - They fear that they won't be loved so they act like it doesn't matter if people love them or not which makes loving someone like this pretty hard. It's a pretty lonely existence to live in fear. So, folks cover up all that fear with over-confidence or critique of others or a prideful spirit. These are people constantly telling others what they have done or constantly giving you a social or even religious resume. All the while, they would never admit that they are just plain scared or as we said in Johnston County, "scart." Here is another social secret. To some extent or another, I have just described all of you. Everyone has a built protection device to keep their fears at bay. But what we are going to see this week at Sovereign King in I John is a proclamation that God is so powerful, He can overcome your fears. He can part the Red Sea, raise the dead, and yes, overcome your fears.
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What Does It Mean For Your Life to Preach Christ?
When I was in seminary, my professors always encouraged us with a very simple plea. They would say, "In your sermons, always preach Christ." Towards that end, they would encourage us to ask these questions: - Where is Christ in the text? - Is He explicitly proclaimed? - Do we see Him in type or shadow? - Does the author speak of the benefits of His completed work? - Do we see His attributes extolled? - What Is Jesus teaching about Himself? For every student of scripture, once you learn to find Him in the text, your goal at every reading of scripture changes. No longer are you just seeking to build up knowledge. No, your reading of the scriptures causes you to savor Christ all the more and ultimately, I hope that you might then show an even greater expression of your savoring Him in the day to day moments of your lives. The great writer and preacher, John Piper, expressed that thought in this way. About the idea of Savoring Jesus, he said, "When you see something as true and beautiful and valuable, you savor it. That is, you treasure it. You cherish and admire and prize it. Spiritual seeing and spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be fair to say: If you don't savor Christ, you haven't seen Christ for who he is. If you don't prize him above all things, you haven't apprehended his true worth." John's point is that if we have truly experienced Jesus through His revelation in scripture, if we have experienced His transforming forgiveness, and if we have touched Him within the expression of His body the church, we have no choice but then to savor Him. He will be not only the value of our life, He will be the sum total of it. When I stand up and preach, no matter what passage is before me, I am to preach in the way Paul says I should in I Corinthians 1: though my preaching be foolishness, I am to preach Christ and Christ crucified. Now, this idea of preaching Christ may seem like an idea that none of you have to worry about since I'm the one getting up in front people every week. But the call on your life is no different. You share in the responsibility of preaching Christ crucified. Again, to quote John Piper in his book "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ," he says, "Christ does not exist in order to make much of us. We exist in order to enjoy making much of him. Knowing the glories of Christ is an end, not a means. Christ is not glorious so that we get wealthy or healthy. Christ is glorious so that rich or poor, sick or sound, we might be satisfied in him. We exist and our chief end is to give glory to God and His son, Jesus. So, much like the last few weeks at Sovereign King, the book of 1 John is asking us to examine our lives in light of His teaching. And this week, he is asking if your life preaches Christ. I want you to ask yourself that question silently for a moment. Ask yourself, "Does my life preach Christ?" I had a moment to consider that thought this week as I bumped into an old high school friend on facebook. This friend said, "I always knew you would be a preacher." I found this statement amazing because as a young man, I always boldly declared that I didn't want to be one. But even more surprising was that this friend saw it in me. I had a time in my teenage years where I did have a passion for Christ, but my life was wildly inconsistent. I saw very little evidences of understanding grace at that point. I thought that the best way for me to proclaim Christ was trying to be so holy in everyone's presence. I didn't' realize that what I was actually doing was trying to live like I didn't need Jesus instead of living like I did. As a pastor now, I still ask that question, "What does it mean for me to live in such a way to proclaim Christ and Christ alone?" I think that is a pretty good question to consider in the sermon this week
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My Brother's Keeper?
Last week at Sovereign King, we talked about living with a sense that God might do great things among us. I even went so far as to describe that feeling as a holy despair that God might not. Those great things of God require of us a necessary Godliness so that we might best be used by God when those opportunities arise. We also talked about the fact that if we aren't preparing for Godliness, then we assume that God will do not great things among us, and He probably won't. And the hope was that we would be radically transformed in the image of Christ this year. I encourage you all to pray with a holy despair that God would do great things among us. Despair that God might pass us by. We should love each other and our community with a radical love that causes people to be uncontrollably attracted to this community but ultimately to Jesus Christ. This week, John continues describing what the life of Godliness does and does not look like, and John is going to use the story of Can and Abel to help frame that picture. Towards that end, I think it is helpful to remind ourselves about the story of Cain and Abel. Abel was a kind hearted but more than likely a pretty smelly shepherd, and his brother, Cain was more than likely an athletic, young farmer. Well, the time came for both of them to make an offering to God. Cain brought the fruit of the ground and Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. Now when you read Genesis 4, we see that God found favor in Abel's offerings and not in Cain's. Maybe Cain didn't bring the best of the fruit of the ground. Maybe he only brought brown bananas and moldy peaches. But we know that Abel found favor before God because giving the first born is always a step of faith. Giving the first born says, "I have no guarantee of another sheep giving birth, but I will give this one that I have to God in faith. Essentially, Abel's offering required faith. Cain's didn't. (Always another reminder that if what we give doesn't hurt it a bit, it ain't faith). God ultimately rejects Cain's offering, so Cain decides to go off and pout about it essentially becoming the world's first bratty child. God, ever gracious and patient, gives Cain this ominous warning. He says, "Cain, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is to overtake you. You however, must overtake and rule it." What startling words. Sin is like an intruder hiding in your house waiting to seize you and rob you. Sin is the dark character of every horror movie ever written sitting just out of sight but just within your reach. However, Cain could not get beyond the jealousy he had over his brother, so sin ruled Cain and Cain murdered his brother Abel. Cain wanted to be good and righteous on his terms and not God's. He wanted to offer God His second best and have that count as if it was his first. God confronted him and asked, "Where is your brother Abel?" Cain response was, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The obvious answer was, "Yes, you are your brother's keeper." So, with that story as our backdrop, this week we are going to ask two questions as they relate to what Godliness looks like: -- What does it look like for you to be your brother's keeper? -- What does that look like specifically at Sovereign King Church?
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The Great Things of God
Since arriving in Garner to plant Sovereign King Church, I have had what I will call a holy despair. Let me explain that because "holy" and "despair" seem to be contradictory. You see, I don't want when it is all said and done, for Sovereign King to launch and have everything we need (buildings, youth ministries, great music, etc), and God not do something great among us. It is quite possible for us to have a great building, an incredible ministry to all ages and stages of life and have rocking, professional level music, and we never come close to sniffing great things for God. When I look into the coming year, I see a bunch of those things becoming reality. This will be the year Sovereign King will become financially self-sufficient, and we will begin looking towards greater platforms for ministry. More than likely, we will not finish 2009 in the same building that we are in now. I imagine we will build on the efforts of Children's Church and the events we did this past summer, and our children's/youth activities will flourish and become much more consistent. And the temptation of our hearts when all of those things happen is to think that we have arrived, that the goal has been accomplished, God has blessed us, and the central struggle is over. Do not, and I repeat, do not give in that type of thinking. If we have those things, and I pray we do, that does not mean that God is doing great things with us. And I pray and plead to God and to you for great things. We are in dangerous territory because at least in our culture, those very good things (financially stability, good facilities, great music) can actually be enemies of great things because we see them, we grow complacent, and lose our desire for the great things of God. This week, as we return to the book of I John, I want us to ask, "What do the great things of God look like?"
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Jesus in The Prophets
Over this Christmas season, we have been attempting to add some depth to the celebration of Advent by finding a rich foundation of God's plan for Jesus throughout the Old Testament. Two weeks ago we saw that Jesus was the word by which all existence came into creation. In addition, He upholds that existence by the word of His power. Last Sunday, we saw that Jesus was all that the law pointed to. - Instead of a human priest who enters into a human dwelling where God dwells, He is the perfect priest who enters into the presence of God. - Instead of human priest who offers up an offering of someone else's blood each year for the sins of the people, Jesus offers up Himself and His blood as a once and for all sacrifice that covers the sins from the foundation of the world to the end of the age. This week, as we conclude our study of Christ in the OT, we want to see how the prophets spoke of Christ. But to do that, we need to cover the time from Moses giving the law all the way through the kings of Israel to the prophets of God. Much like our telling of the story between the Garden of Eden and Mount Sinai, we will see that this story is not too pretty either. The people of God are wandering in the wilderness and are in need of water. They just keep whining and whining, so God tells Moses to give them some by speaking to a rock. But Moses gets so tired of their whining; he has a senior moment and strikes the rock in anger instead. The people get their water and Moses gets disciplined by God. God tells him he will never get to live in the promised land of God's people. So Moses dies and they bury him on a mountain that overlooks the Promised Land. It is sort of ironic and bitter. God places Moses' right hand man, Joshua, in charge of the people. God tells him that every place his foot steps, God will give to the people, and 3x times tells him not to be afraid. What happens? Well, despite God's strong promise, there is a strange story about the spies of the people being hidden by a prostitute and then God commands His people to march around Jericho 7 times in silence and then the walls come down and the people take the land. But as soon as the people move in, the scriptures say they broke faith with God. Apparently, a couple of guys took some items used in worship to sell them to the local pawnshop. God hands them over to defeat. This faith and sin cycle continues until Joshua dies and God institutes the time of the Judges who serve like prophets and police officers. Think God ordained, righteous Dirty Harry's. We get a colorful array of characters. - Deborah - the only female judge who leads Israel to defeat the Canaanites - Samson – a man with a penchant for long hair and loose women who somehow has the ability to tie 100 foxes tails together. He ultimately destroys an Old Testament equivalent of Yankee Stadium to enact the judgment of God. - Samuel - a judge and a prophet who would ultimately lead a rebellious people who rejected God as their king. The people were suffering from pagan envy and wanted to be like every other nation in the world with an earthly king. Unfortunately they get what they want and deserve. They get Saul, the first king of Israel. He is described as handsome and a head taller than everyone else. Whenever I think of Saul I think of Kronk from the Emperors New Groove: handsome and strong, neither smart nor godly. God takes the throne away from Saul after a string of disobedient and arrogant sins. First, Saul gets impatient and can't seem to wait for Samuel to offer a sacrifice. Saul offers one of his own. Later on God tells Saul to destroy everything in his invasion of the Amalekites, but instead Saul keeps some sheep for himself. Saul offers one of the all time great rationalizations when he says he was keeping the sheep to offer sacrifice God. Right. God got strips him of his throne and Saul eventually kills himself. So much for the first King of Israel God then gives the throne to a puny shepherd boy named David who goes on to be the great King of God's people. Before He gets there He kills a guy named Goliath with a slingshot...seriously. He ultimately gathers Israel together and leads them in Godliness. But one day he got fat and lazy, decided not to go to war with him men and instead decides to commit adultery and murder. God punishes him by taking his son from him but eventually he gives David another son, Solomon, who would go on to be the wisest man in the world. Unfortunately, Solomon has a penchant for land, slaves, money, and wives. God takes the throne from him and on on it goes through Israel's 19 kings. Finally, God issues the ultimate judgment on His people by decreeing that the godless, pagan nation of Babylon would destroy Jerusalem, the temple and take the people into captivity to be slaves once again. They remained slaves for nearly 50 years. God brings them back to Israel, it takes over 20 years for this temple to be restored. It was during the time of leading up, during and directly after the exile into Babylon that God sent His prophets to speak to His people, and then God goes silent. Nothing is heard for 400 years. It is during this time leading up to the exile, during, and return that we find the majority of the work of God's prophets. In it, let us explore and find our Savior.
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Jesus in the Law as seen from Exodus
As we continue our look at Jesus in the Old Testament this holiday season, this week, we are going to make a leap through Biblical history and find our way from the Garden of Eden to the giving of the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai. What lies between is the equivalent of a raw hamburger: a bloody mess. After the Garden of Eden debacle, God bars Adam and Eve from the paradise that they have ruined and sends them out. This is the short story of what happens next. --- Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. --- Cain's great, great, great grandson is named Lamech. Lamech has a short fuse and kills a man because they got into a tussle and who knows where the local buffet for all we know. Lamech also has the distinction of being the first polygamist. --- Things get so bad on the earth that God says every man's heart and intention is evil. So he takes the one semi decent guy, Noah, and tells him to build a boat. Everyone makes fun of Noah when he tells them its going to rain and they say, "What is this rain you speak of?" God puts Noah and his family along with a gang of smelly animals in the boat and floods the earth killing everybody else. Good times. --- God makes a promise to Noah never to flood the earth again, and Noah celebrates by getting drunk one night and passing out in his tent naked. --- A few years later, all the people of the earth have a Led Zeppelin moment and build a stairway to heaven once again trying to be like God on their own terms. God knocks down their puny tower, makes scrambled eggs out of everybody's language and we seem to be right back to the mess we started. --- So God gathers a people to Himself. He starts with a guy that is old, sterile, and has a cranky unbelieving wife. His named is Abraham. --- Not believing that God keeps his word, they decided for Abraham to make a baby momma out of one of their slaves. --- Along the way, God destroys a place called Sodom because they had a morality that was so bad that it made Amsterdam seem like an Amish community. --- Finally, Abraham and his wife have a child the old fashioned way and God goes about creating a people from that son, Isaac. --- From there, God creates a people who grow and grow and grow. --- One of Abraham's relatives, a guy named Joseph with a fancy nancy coat eventually works his way from slave to assistant to head man in charge in Egypt and he saves all of God's people from a drought. --- So the people of God are like the Jefferson's and they move on up to the big house in the sky of Egypt. --- The problem is that they are incredibly fertile. They are start having a gaggle of kids, and the next leader of Egypt the Pharaoh decides to make a work force out of them with no pay. He makes them slaves. --- The groaning of God's people does not go unheard. So God raises up a cowardly, stuttering man named Moses to go to tell Pharaoh, "Let my people go." --- Pharaoh is more wise in business than He is the ways of God, and He is unwilling to release his entire workforce. --- God sends blood, frogs, locust, and every other manner of plague on Pharaoh. Still Pharaoh says nope. So God kills every first born male in the whole city except those of His people. --- Pharaoh finally lets them go but in a schizophrenic moment, decides to send his army after the people of God to kill them. --- God once again destroys his enemies by water as the people of God walk across dry land but Pharaoh's army drowns in the Red Sea. So the people of God gather together, and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to meet with God so God can give them the law by which this new community is to live. While Moses is up on the mountain, the people grow impatient; they sell all their jewelry to goldforcash.com, make a calf, and start worshipping it. Moses in his anger breaks the Ten Commandments, burns the calf and takes the ashes grinds them up into a nasty ale and forces the people of God to drink it. God threatens to blot His people out of existence but instead extends grace to what He calls "an obstinate people." So here we are. God gives His ugly, obstinate, and unfaithful people a law. If Jesus is going to be about restoring the image of God in people, He has some work to do. As we begin to understand what Jesus would have to do with a bunch of laws that range from not eating shellfish to not working on the Sabbath, we need to understand the dedication made at the very onset.
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