A Sermon for Servants [27:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mark 10:35-45 [+/-]Mark 10:35-45 [35]And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." [36]And he said to them, "What do you want me to do for you?" [37]And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." [38]Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" [39]And they said to him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, [40]but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared." [41]And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. [42]And Jesus called them to him and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. [43]But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, [44]and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. [45]For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (ESV)

Let me introduce you to some deacons. Jesus is one. So are Paul and Timothy. The angels are called deacons so that those of you who are married to deacons can go home today and thank God that He sent you an angel. Barnabas is called a deacon and so are Erastus, Tychius, Onesimus, Onesiphorous, Epaphras, Apollos, along with Phoebe and Peter’s mother-in law. Add to this list the prophets who are called deacons, the women who ministered to Jesus, numerous unnamed companions of Paul and a host of recipients of the Book of Hebrews. The list goes on and on; those who are called deacons and are named and the host of unnamed men and women who are referred to as deacons.

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 Seeing God - Part 2 [42:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Exodus 34:1-9 [+/-]Exodus 34:1-9 [34:1]The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. [2]Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. [3]No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain." [4]So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. [5]The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. [6]The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, [7]keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." [8]And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. [9]And he said, "If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance." (ESV)

Everything that we know of God is the result of God making Himself known to us. We do not climb up to where He is using the steps of reason and logic; He comes to where we are through the revelation of Himself in His Word the center and culmination of which is His Son. We are told in Psalm 138:3 [+/-]Psalm 138:3 [3]On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased.
, “You have exalted above all things Your Name and Your Word.” God makes Himself known to us most particularly and most powerfully in His Holy Word the center of which is the revelation of His Name in all the fullness that we can know it, the name of Jesus. Jesus, there is something about that Name. Philip Graham Ryken says that no matter how far we reach toward God with our reason and our logic, God still has to stoop to reach us.

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 Seeing God - Part 1 [37:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Exodus 34:1-9 [+/-]Exodus 34:1-9 [34:1]The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. [2]Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. [3]No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain." [4]So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. [5]The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. [6]The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, [7]keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." [8]And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. [9]And he said, "If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance." (ESV)

Everything that we know of God is the result of God making Himself known to us. We do not climb up to where He is using the steps of reason and logic; He comes to where we are through the revelation of Himself in His Word the center and culmination of which is His Son. We are told in Psalm 138:3 [+/-]Psalm 138:3 [3]On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased.
, You have exalted above all things Your Name and Your Word. God makes Himself known to us most particularly and most powerfully in His Holy Word the center of which is the revelation of His Name in all the fullness that we can know it, the name of Jesus. Jesus, there is something about that Name. Philip Graham Ryken says that no matter how far we reach toward God with our reason and our logic, God still has to stoop to reach us.

Learn more about this message by downloading the sermon notes here!

 

 When God Passes By [43:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Exodus 33:12-23 [+/-]Exodus 33:12-23 [12]Moses said to the LORD, "See, you say to me, 'Bring up this people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' [13]Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." [14]And he said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." [15]And he said to him, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. [16]For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" [17]And the LORD said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." [18]Moses said, "Please show me your glory." [19]And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. [20]But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." [21]And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, [22]and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. [23]Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen." (ESV)

Wouldn’t it be nice if our journey with Jesus was an ever upward movement toward heaven where each day we grew to be more and more like Him? What it would be like for every day with Jesus really to be sweeter than the day before so that every day is bathed in the beauty of sunlight, garnished with gentle breezes with no difficulties or dark nights of the soul, no problems or pains, no failures or falls but every day we are climbing higher and higher as we reach for glory. Wouldn’t it be nice if walking in the way of Jesus were like floating on a raft down a cool stream on late summer day? But it just isn’t that way, is it? If it is for you then you are either the most to be praised or the most to be pitied. For most of us the journey is jagged. It is a few steps forward and a few steps backward. It is sometimes moving from side to side and then there are those times when we sense that we are going nowhere. The pilgrimage is paused.

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 A Pause that Produces [39:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Exodus 33:1-6 [+/-]Exodus 33:1-6 [33:1]The LORD said to Moses, "Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, 'To your offspring I will give it.' [2]I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. [3]Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people." [4]When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. [5]For the LORD had said to Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, 'You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.'" [6]Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward. (ESV)

If your spiritual pilgrimage were controlled by a remote, how many times along the way has somebody pushed the pause button? You knew that you had not stopped, but you were stalled. Your sense was that you were neither going forward or backward, but nowhere and that very rapidly. It happens to all of us in our pilgrimage in pursuit of being faithful to Jesus. And every time it happens we can be sure of two realities that meet and greet each other during times like this. We can be absolutely certain of God’s total sovereignty. He knows exactly what is happening, why it is happening and what will be the outcome. Hidden within the confines of His secret or perfect will or those times of delight and distress that can take us from the straight and narrow path down a detour that is far away from what He wants for us. But we an also be absolutely certain of our responsibility. Those pauses come at those places in our lives where we are not trusting Him as totally as we should or following Him as faithfully as we ought either because life has become so good that we bless Him for His blessings without bothering to bathe our lives with His presence and power or it has become so bad that we blame Him; either way, whenever there is a pause, a sense that we are going nowhere fast; we have no further to look than our own hearts to find the reasons for the relapse.

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