A splendid time was enjoyed by all. Tugalo Holler played for us including their popular Old Man Noah song with exotic animal sounds. Adam Hopkins shared a message from Psalm 73, and of course there was barbecue.
Messenger: Adam Hopkins
When Jesus’ disciples asked who is the greatest in His Kingdom, Jesus showed them a little child and proclaimed that if we don’t come to Him with childlike faith, we cannot even enter His Kingdom, much less be great in it. We can do nothing to earn our salvation. We must simply believe in Him and His Gospel unreservedly as an innocent child believes.
If you were to ask someone if there was a particular person in their life who most strongly exemplified devotion to our LORD Jesus and service to His Kingdom, very likely they would tell you it was their mother or grandmother. Rarely, will they mention a man in their life. Instead, they will usually mention a woman. As we celebrate Mothers’ Day this year, it is appropriate that we reflect on some of the devoted women found in the Scripture. As we shall see, these devoted women were far from perfect, but rather they reflected the perfect love of our LORD to others in their lives – particularly the children. Praise God that He has endowed the heart of woman with such tenderness and devotion.
God has chosen each of His followers for His specific purposes. Some of us will seem to move from blessing to blessing while others will have to endure seemingly endless sorrows and frustrations. From time to time, most of us question God’s purposes as we make our way along the path God has ordained for us. We are tempted to compare our own lives with those of others – particularly other believers. In such seasons, we need to always remember that God is sovereign in all things and He is always working His perfect plans in our lives and through our lives. So instead of comparing our own circumstances with those of others, we must seek to learn God’s purpose in the things He has led us to and move confidently in assurance that whatever God has led us to He will also lead us through for His own glory.
In His parable of the workers in the vineyard, Jesus admonishes us to refrain from comparing ourselves to others, but to faithfully serve our LORD being grateful and joyful for the the rewards He has granted us without falling into the temptation of covetousness regarding the rewards He has granted to His other servants.
All of us have caused harm to someone during our lives – even our new lives in Christ – either intentionally or unintentionally. Our sins can harm not only ourselves but often have widespread consequences for those around us – especially our loved ones. Likewise, the sins of others can have unforeseen impacts upon us. Every Christian needs to seek forgiveness for our sins not only from God, but also from those whom we harm through our sins. Even more importantly, we need to be committed to offer grace, mercy, and forgiveness to those whose sins hurt us. In this we model Jesus’ own love, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.
Our Father seeks those who are lost – apart from Him despite His infinite and enduring love. When the legalistic leaders of Jewish society condemned Him for consorting with sinners and outcasts, Jesus told three parables illustrating God’s diligent outreach to His lost children. Perhaps the most well-known of these is the parable of the prodigal son. But in fact all of us are lost and estranged from God before we finally come to faith in Jesus’ Gospel and call upon the Name of Jesus for salvation. None of us is “good” apart from God, as we learn from the illustration of the “good” son in this parable who was shown to be just as lost as his prodigal brother.
When we consider the story of God’s call upon Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, we usually don’t think of Abraham’s obedience as an act of worship, but true worship and obedience to God’s calling are tied together.
After the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, he tried to change four young Hebrew captives Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah from being servants of the true God as reflected in their Hebrew names into being servants of the Babylonian’s false gods – by renaming them with Babylonian names and trying to make them conform to a Babylonian lifestyle and diet. But Daniel and the other three young Hebrew captives remained true to the God of Israel. Similarly, the sinful worldly system symbolized by Babylon in God’s Word tries to make us leave the service of God into which He has called us and return to a worldly life apart from God. From this story of the four young Hebrew captives, we can take encouragement and strength in our daily lives to remain true to our godly calling and resist the temptations and call of the world.
God’s Word tells us that peacemakers are blessed. He also promises that He will give His peace that surpasses human understanding to those who live our lives for Christ. But we must always remember that His peace, and our abilities and opportunities to share that peace are gifts from God – not anything we should take our own pride in. Instead, we should rejoice that He has called us, and that He has rescued us out of death to write our names in His book of life.
