How to Pray

To listen to the message given at the outside service on Sunday, June 24^th, click here.

Greenbelt Baptist Church – Outside Service

How to Make God Angry: in Three Easy Steps

This week we started a new series on the book of Micah. To listen to the message, click here. We looked at three things that make God angry. They are: 1. Idolatry, 2. Injustice, and 3. Uncleanness. What I hoped to show in the message is that these are the same three things that make God angry now. I also tried to show that apart from Christ, we have no hope, and in Christ we have all hope.

I want to say something here about idolatry. The first of the Ten Commandments is against idolatry: “you shall have no gods before Me.” To have “a god” means to worship something and to expect good from it, and to make it a refuge in distress. Worship something is to give that thing a divine status. Now, if we worship the one true and living God, that’s great. You ought to attribute divine status to Him. But to worship something/someone else, then we have just made an idol. That’s a violation of the first commandment.

Many have observed that to break any of the other commandments requires breaking the first. So for instance, when we lie (breaking commandment # 9), we usually do so because we want
something. Now, what is it that we want? Figure out that answer, and you’ve probably just identified an idol. Next time you find yourself bending the truth (even just a little), ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” The answer will probably turn up an idol. If you color the truth so that others will think highly of you, or not be mad at you, you are probably idolizing their acceptance or praise. If you color the truth to get out of something you don’t want to do (“I’m sorry, I’d love to help you but I’m busy that day…too bad.”), you are idolizing comfort and the easy life. If you do it to get money (like if you lie on your taxes—which is also steeling), you are worshiping money.

The good news is that Jesus has come to get rid of our idols. He does this by removing our sin, so that we can truly worship God. In case you haven’t noticed (and I assume you have noticed), you can’t just get rid of idols by telling yourself not to worship them anymore. This is why breaking addictions is so hard. You see, the human heart is made to worship something. It can’t just stop worshiping. But what you can do is begin worshiping God. Find in Him your refuge, your happiness, your identity. The more and more you attribute these things to God, the less and less you will be drawn into idolatry.

This coming week, we will look at Micah 1-2 again. This time, instead of paying attention to what we do that makes God angry, we will look at what God does when he is angry. I think we will see that what God does is both terrifying and comforting.

The Call of Discipleship

To listen to the last message in the series on John, go here.

The meaning of Baptism

To listen to this Sunday’s message on Romans 6 click here.

A Woman who fears the Lord

This year’s mother’s day message was from Proverbs 31. I have to admit, the initial reaction to doing Proverbs 31 wasn’t overwhelmingly positive. It seems like a very high standard. Is it even remotely possible to live up to? But I think if we approach it just as a standard, we miss the point. We should look at it as a picture of a beautiful life and our first goal should be to approach the beauty. To listen to the message click here. (If you are using google, you may need to right click and save the file)

Crying out to God: Resting in His Love

Listen to some troubling quotes. Some of us, I’m sure, can relate first hand. But, all of us probably know someone who would articulate something like this.

• “I feel like I was walking through a field of dead flowers and found one beautiful rose, but when I bent down to smell it, I fell into an invisible hole.”
  
• “I can’t go on,” said a twelve year old girl.
  
• I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for,” said the great preacher Charles Spurgeon
  
• Abraham Lincoln described his pain thusly: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not.
  
• “I do not care if I lived or died. Each morning I wished I would not have woken up.”
  

 

To listen to the rest of the message, click here.

In which Caterpillar goes to Harpers Ferry and Sara Joy rides the bus

               

Easter Sunday

I greatly enjoyed my first Easter as pastor of GBC. On Easter Sunday, we looked at John 20, which is John’s record of Christ’s resurrection. John seems particularly interested in showing how the resurrection leads people to believe in Christ. In our culture, the Easter season is often a celebration of newness, which leads to happy and warm feelings. But this is far removed from the true meaning of Easter. Easter is about, not newness in general, but the physical resurrection of Christ. And the effect that His resurrection should have in us is far more than hyped up sentimentality. It is the specific belief that Jesus died for all those who place their trust in Him, and his resurrection means a literal, physical resurrection, also for all those who believe in Him. The three points from the message were (1) the persistent nature of unbelief, (2) how belief is born, and (3) why belief must be shared.

 

I shared one illustration that is worth repeating:

 

Suppose Bill and Bob are climbing a ladder to get up on a roof. Bill’s ladder is broken and will never hold him. But, for some unknown reason, Bill strongly believes in his ladder. Bob, in contrast, has a perfectly fine ladder. Yet he is filled with doubts about it. Which one—Bill or Bob—is going to get up to the roof safely? Bob, right? Yes, he will go up sweating and with great fear. But, he will go up. Why?—because his ladder will hold. Bill, the guy with the broken ladder, will get part way, and he will fall. His faith will not save him. Why can’t his faith save him? Because his faith is in the wrong thing.

 

As we conclude this Easter season, my prayer for us as a church is that our faith would be in the right thing, namely the resurrected and exalted Christ.

 

• If you want to listen to the Easter message click here.
• Last week’s message on John 19 is now available online here.

   

This week I watched a great You Tube Video on the essence of the gospel. To see it, click here. The speaker is one of my former professors, Dr. Lane Tipton. Dr. Tipton is a former college football player with a passion for the gospel. This content in here might stretch you a little. But, I would encourage you to give it a try. He presents a beautiful picture of the gospel in terms of our redemption accomplished (that is what Christ did on the cross and in his resurrection in order to create redemption) and redemption applied (that is, how the redemption which Christ purchased actually gets to us).

He Has Risen That You May Indeed Believe

To listen to the Easter sermon click here.