Sunday Worship Good Morning!!! Let your worship show forth your devotional love and heart felt gratitude… He is worthy! /
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Author Archive: Pastor Mark
For the LORD gives Wisdom!
Like Proverbs 1, the second chapter offers conditions for better understanding the Fear of the Lord and obtaining the knowledge of God. These bear much in common with Jesus’ teaching on the heart soils in Mark 4. Furthermore, you can see the words of this chapter in the New Testament letters of both Paul and James.
God stores up wisdom for us to store up in our hearts. He goes before us and prepares wisdom, insight and understanding for those who meet the conditions outlined at the beginning of the chapter but He goes on record as guaranteeing that we WILL receive it from Him!
This is a very important chapter in the overall book of Proverbs – primarily due to the clearly stated conditions for obtaining knowledge of God and understanding the Fear of the Lord!
Invaluable!
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Faith & Good Works Pt. 3
In our series on Maturity & Ministry we have been looking at the need to maintain good works. As we continue in James, we learned today about the very real possibility of hearing the Word so much with a heart that intellectually believes it, without considering our lives in the light of it. To hear the word and NOT produce the ‘good works’ of the word.
James offers controlling what comes out of your mouth as proof of ‘good works’ produced by faith. He also mentioned caring for widows (especially those of your own family) and orphans as a demonstration of true worship of God.
We ended in chapter 2 verse 17 where James really begins to bear down on the fact that true saving faith is always accompanied by works. He then introduced the unique subject of ‘dead faith’, which we will learn more about next week beginning in verse 18.
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Wisdom shouts in the streets
Proverbs is the “goto” spot in scripture for wisdom of all sorts for all sorts of people. So it is naturally fitting that the first chapter of Proverbs would spend the first several verses telling us what types of wisdom can be found in these first 9 chapters. Furthermore, it informs us how to be the sort of person who can benefit from this wisdom.
After this, chapter one addresses all who read as children and tell us to listen to the words of a father and mother. This isn’t because all parents are inherently wise, but is more indicative of ideal and designed tutorship God baked into the parent child relationship which is first and foremost relational in a familial sense. The wisdom afforded a child runs contrary to the popular advice most children receive from their peers and that is the first example we are offered.
The chapter wraps up with wisdom presented as a woman crying out in the streets. Specifically she shouts out in the places of societal gatherings, judicial courts and commerce. She offers counsel that even the naive and simple can appropriate and spurns all those who turn up the nose at her.
Quite the intro… this most valuable book should be an informative and helpful read!
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Faith & Good Works Pt. 2
Last week we turned to James for more wisdom on living out our confession of Jesus as our Lord having first read what Romans 2 and Hebrews 10 had to say about ‘Good Works’.
James bears down on the necessity of faith in the production of ‘Good Works’. To do this he starts off with how the believer is to approach times of temptation which James tells us is a testing of our faith as well as our character.
He offers seeking God for wisdom and how the poor and rich should approach life as examples.
He wraps up with a teaching on temptation and where to set our focus which offers us more insight on the topic than perhaps any single author in the New Testament.
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