2 Timothy 4:1-5

Transcription : The passage the teaching is based on is printed in your bulletin. It’s a 1 John 3 and we got a long section, fairly long section printed there but tonight we are just going to look at the first verse and even, well, the first verse. Because as we begin looking at this section last week, what you have in this is an outburst. John the Apostle is writing a letter, a letter of instruction, when he gets to this spot he suddenly has an outburst. Let me read it to you and then we are going to look at it. And he says, “how great is the love, the Father has lavished on us that we should be called Children of God and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us, is that it did not know Him. Dear friends now we are Children of God in what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know when he appears we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him, purifies Himself just as He is pure.” But let’s just take a look at this ou...

Transcription : Now every single week we are looking at the story ark of the whole bible. We are understanding that the bible is not so much a set of disconnected stories each with a little lesson on how to live your life but the bible actually comprises a single story that tells us what’s wrong with the human race with the world, what God has done to put it right in Jesus Christ and then as a result how history is going to turn out in the end. And we are looking at Romans 1, 2, 3 and 4 because here we have Paul summarizing the story of the bible and here in chapter 3, the last half of chapter 3, and the beginning of chapter 4, we probably have the Paul’s most, best most essential summary of what he thinks the bible’s all about and what this salvation is that God has done to put the world right and there are three phrases that are, that actually are in a sense repeated and they’re brought in the relationships with each other in different ways throughout these few verses but those...

Transcription : We are, “we Christians”, are the biggest faith group in the world. We are still twice, Christianity is twice the size of the next religion at this point in the world and the only way that we are going to break this is not to say, “what is wrong with you secular people, why are you being so mean to us?” Christians have to recognize number one, that you are big part of the problem and number two that we can also be at the heart of the solution. Two minutes and I’m done. There are two basic ways of thinking about your self-image. One is one I’m going to call a moral-performance narrative. A moral-performance narrative says, “I’m ok, I’m a good person, I feel significant and I have worth because I’m achieving something.” So if you are a liberal person and you feel like I’m a good person because I am working for the poor and working for human rights and I’m open minded, you can’t help, in a moral performance narrative, your self-image is based your performance as a gener...

Transcription : We are looking some more at this subject wisdom in the book of Proverbs. In the bible wisdom is certainly not less than being moral and good but it’s much more. It’s being so in touch with reality that you know what is the right thing to do in the vast majority of the situations that the moral rules don’t apply to. The vast majority of your choices, your decisions, you’re going have a whole lot of different choices in front of you and in most cases no matter what your understanding of morality is, no matter what your moral standards are there will be many many many options that are all moral, they are all allowable morally but which one is the wise one? Wisdom is the ability to know what the right thing is to do in the situations that the moral rules don’t address! Now the theme today is a cruel one in the book of proverbs. Proverbs says you’re not going to be a wise person, you will not lead a wise life unless you are great at choosing, forging and keeping terrific...