Things end in the wilderness. Old habits and patterns end. Standards of living come to an end. “The good times” as we knew them often evaporate into past as we walk into the wilderness. But as visible as what’s ending is in the wilderness, God is often using it to create new beginnings. Such was the case with our salvation. Such was the case with Paul when he was converted. Such may be the case for you in the wilderness you’re walking through.
Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness are not about teaching us a lesson about resisting temptation. They’re not even a moral teaching about how we should endure in the wilderness.
Jesus entered the wilderness because Adam, Israel and every one of us had already entered the wilderness over and over again and at every time had failed to follow God without sin in the wilderness. In light of this, we can understand that what Matthew 4:1-11 is about is Jesus’ perfect wilderness wandering. He is the suffering servant. He came to stand in our place. Not only on the cross, but in His life, as He succeeded at every point we had failed. Listen to this week’s sermon and learn the central and most important lesson we could each possibly learn - belief in Jesus - about how to successfully walk through the wilderness.
The hard truth is that sometimes, the wilderness is the experience of facing the consequences of our own actions. But if and when this is the case, does it mean that God has turned His back on you? Does it mean God has left you? For those who are in Christ, the answer is “no”. The fact of the matter is that when our own sin is the reason we’re in the wilderness, God has led us into the wilderness to draw us as sons and daughters and people of promise back to Him. Listen to this week’s sermon from 2 Kings 24:10-17 to learn that God exiles us from what draws us away from Him.
David was “the man after God’s own heart”, the greatest king in Israel’s history and someone who experienced incredible prosperity. Yet, his life was also riddled with grueling experiences in the wilderness - both literal and metaphorical. Most of us will never experience the wrenching isolation, injustice, deprivation or grief that David did.
In every wilderness episode we walk through in our lives, “the story we believe we are in determined what we think about ourselves and consequently how we live”. In the Psalms, we see David wrestling with the competing stories about what was happening to him. At the end of the day, though, only one story won out. David knew that because God was his God, he was in a good story. Listen to this week’s sermon to learn about the true story in your wilderness.
God led the Nation of Israel into the wilderness after liberating them from the hands of the Egyptians. He promised to be their God and bring them into a land of promise; a “new Eden”. But on their way, they complained about the wilderness and even expressed a desire to return to Egypt. When they saw the promised land, they feared the power of the current inhabitants. When God denied them entry on the basis of their lack of faith, they tried to force their way in.
Israel teaches us that in the wilderness, settling for lesser Edens and trying to force our way out of the wilderness are equally ineffective. There is only one way out of the wilderness - and the answer may be surprising to you.
As we remain in a season of the effects of a global pandemic dictating new norms for daily life, social and political turmoil and the regular everyday challenges of life, it can become difficult to know where this is all going. Or if God is doing anything at all. This past Sunday, as we began our series concerning the Biblical concept of “wilderness”, we learned that every wilderness is a part of and subsumed by the first wilderness experience - the exile from the Garden of Eden because of sin. We also learned that because of God’s redemption, those who trust in Christ are being led bak to Eden as we walk through the wilderness. We also learned from the first of 6 characters in Scripture who walked through a distinct wilderness of their own - Moses. Moses stands as an example of how God will oftentimes use the wilderness to divest of worldly influence and prosperity in order to make us useful for His Kingdom. Listen to this week’s sermon and consider what God might be stripping you of during this season of wilderness to make you useful for His Kingdom.
This past Sunday, we were treated in all kinds of ways - we were able to Livestream our service from our new Sunday home - the Ebell Club of Santa Ana. We also heard from the wisdom of Jim Cunningham. Further, we were able to hear him teach compassionately, yet courageously on a subject we might not have expected we needed to hear during this crazy season. Jim reminded us from Romans 1 that the greatest threat to humanity has nothing to do with the crises of 2020, whether it’s massive wildfires, a pandemic or even racism, deplorable as it is. The greatest threat to humanity is God’s wrath. And it threatens everybody. But contained within the pages of Scripture is also the only solution to the greatest threat - the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Take 40 minutes out of your day and listen to a message that everyone - Christian or non-Christian, could do well to listen to.
After months plumbing the depths of truth and grace contained in the pages of Paul’s first letter to the church in Thesslonica, we encountered his final words to the church. These last four verses reflect Paul’s friendship toward these brothers and sisters and teach us something about a subject very infrequently taught in churches - Christian friendship. We find that Christians should be the best kind of friends, because we’ve been befriended by the very best Friend Himself.
Listen to this week’s sermon here.
God will do what you can’t to get you to where you want to be. While you and I are called to follow the directives of 1 Thess. 5:12-22 with vigor and sincerity, at the end of the day, no amount of obedience will get us to the end. Only God, working by His Spirit, through the finished work of His Son, will bring us to the end. Our ultimate hope is in Him. And 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 poignantly reminds us of this. Listen to this last Sunday’s sermon from Christopher Erkelens to learn how God secures us until the end.
Listen to this week’s sermon here.
You and I and everyone else have an innate desire to know. During this season of crisis, that desire is oftentimes intensified. But in a world and in a time when information is more abundant and available for immediate access than ever before, where do you go for the best information?
Since God is the origin and source of truth, we need to limit our information diet as much as possible to whatever comes from Him. In this week’s message from 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, we discover that God speaks through the men and women around you who are filled with His Spirit. We need to listen for God’s voice in them. However, we would all do well to constantly test everything, including social media and the news, against what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is God’s voice.
Listen to this week’s sermon here.
