In this PODCAST, get ready to meet a man whose heart beats in sync with my own—as well as with your own, I rather suspect.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
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God bless you richly as you listen.
I cannot put into words the encouragement I received while preparing this PODCAST. But I will try.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” But as you are about to hear in this PODCAST, one word can be worth a thousand pictures.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
As our title implies, and as this PODCAST will explain, and as James and Jesus understand…
When someone hurts us, it’s not as easy as forgive and forget. There is so much more to this story.
Have you ever been hurt? Deeply wounded? If so, you are about to receive a boatload of healing and hope.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
I am coming off of an exhilarating week with the BEST high school students you’d ever want to meet.
In this PODCAST, you will hear my opening night message at Hartland Christian Camp. Believing that “openness begets openness,” I get very open, very real, very fast—with them, and now with you.
May my words be a blessing.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
You’ve perhaps heard the old line, “Things aren’t always as they appear to be.”
Well, as you are about to hear in this PODCAST, sometimes things are exactly as they appear to be.
Case in point, Peter’s exposé of Simon the Samaritan Sorcerer.
Kudos to Peter. The apostle properly diagnosed the terminal condition of Simon’s tortured soul with pinpoint accuracy.
A diagnosis that, were I to be honest with you, hits me way too close to home. For as much as I am ashamed to admit it to you, I have battled this very demon too.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Welcome to Peter’s first-ever sermon.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, this fisherman-turned-preacher’s initial foray into the world of sermonizing is memorable in extreme.
And whether you realize it or not, Peter’s first sermon out of the gate is all about… Grasshoppers. As in locusts. Lots and lots of locusts.
A plague of locusts. A past-plague of locusts. A coming plague of locusts. And a future (even future for us) plague of locusts. See it there in Acts 2:14-16?
Listen as I read it to you, and see if you can hear ominous chomps of locusts:
Then Peter stepped forward with the eleven other apostles and shouted to the crowd, “Listen carefully, all of you, fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem! Make no mistake about this. These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming. Nine o’clock in the morning is much too early for that. No, what you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel.”
See any locusts in that? No? Well, then, keep listening. Because as you are about to hear, it is vital that we do.
His name is Joel. He is one of so-called 12 “Minor Prophets.” But make no mistake about this: Joel may have been a “Minor Prophet.” But there was absolutely nothing minor about his message.
Let me ever-so-briefly remind you of structure of the Old Testament…
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God bless you richly as you listen.
“Jesus said…”
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the fact of the matter is this: Jesus said seven statements, this as His life was literally dripping out of Him drop by precious drop. Each one of the seven — when considered separately — tells a most-dramatic tale. All of the seven — when considered collectively — give us an unparalleled insight into the heart of Jesus.
It was, after all, Jesus who much earlier in His ministry said this:
“For whatever is in your heart determines what you say” (Matthew 12).
On yet another occasion, Luke 6, Jesus said,
“What you say flows from what is in your heart.”
So if we want to know what is in Jesus’ heart, we need look no further than what Jesus said. His words.
And as we are about to learn, what Jesus said from the cross, in the closing moments of His storied life, reveals perhaps most clearly of all exactly what was in His sizable heart. What a beautiful heart His was and is.
So join me now at the foot of the cross as we hear for ourselves the final words of Jesus as His innocent and holy life comes to a violently calamitous close.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Let me tell you! If you want to see in crystal-clarity the character and the heart of God, this is it. Right here, right now, in real time, in this PODCAST.
This in a breathtaking public display for all the world to see, at which the whole world will marvel. The broken heart of our God whom Peter described as “not wanting anyone to be destroyed (a word that means to destroy fully, to bring to nothing) but (who) wants everyone to repent.”
This portrait of our God — Who persistently pursues everyone in every way, making every effort to bring every sinner to repentance — comes at very end of Olivet Discourse in Matthew 25.
Here we will see, in this parable of the end of the age, the eternal separation of committed Christ-followers from those who defiantly and unrepentantly want nothing to do with Jesus. Plus, we will see their ultimate eternal destiny in what Jesus called “the eternal fire prepared for devil and his demons.”
An unpleasant topic, to be sure. But a #Most.Important.One, because we are talking about the eternal destinies of multiplied millions of people.
Specifically, what did Jesus mean by eternal fire? For whom is it intended? What happens to those goats (in contrast to His sheep) who are sadly, tragically, yet-justly cast into the eternal fire?
And of course, at the heart of this entire discussion sits this all-important and all too-common question: Does the loving God of the Bible — who defines Himself as not wanting anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent — really send people to Hell?
Allow me to set up this discussion in this way: I find it most-intriguing, and most-ironic in a most-purposeful sort of way that Jesus’ Hebrew name Yeshua, means “God Saves.” That’s right out of first chapter of the New Testament (Matthew 1:21): “Mary will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Yeshua, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Now watch this. Only God could create this wonder of the words. This, as you are about to hear, is not coincidental.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
I was away this week, sharing a precious memorial service for my dearly beloved mom with my family. Consequently, I have selected one of the MOST IMPORTANT podcasts that we have recorded in our Jesus in HD series.
In this Encore PODCAST, as we continue in our chronological study of the life and ministry of Jesus, we come to Matthew 18:15-17 — one of the most seriously significant passages in all of the New Testament, the so-called “Church Discipline” passage.
Church Discipline, a teaching in many local churches that really rose into prominence in the late 1970’s and became quite the trend.
I can remember attending church leadership conferences back then and hearing pastors — I’ll use word “boast.” — of the fact that they recently removed individuals from their congregations, thereby “preserving the purity of their churches.” Others would then oooh and ahhh at the boldness of these pastors in confronting the sin in his church and taking decisive action in order to preserve the purity of his church by the process of Church Discipline as outline by Jesus here in Matthew 18.
Today, one of this nation’s leading Church Discipline proponents insists that church discipline, as outlined in Matthew 18, is one of the marks of a healthy church. He writes this on his website, clearly articulating the prevailing view of Church Discipline, and indeed includes this as one of his main talking points as he addresses pastors’ conferences throughout the country, encouraging them to do the same:
“Church discipline is the act of correcting sin in the life of the body, including the possible final step of excluding a professing Christian from membership in the church and participation in the Lord’s Supper because of serious unrepentant sin.”
Consequently, it has become standard practice to “exclude” or remove or excommunicate (you choose the term) unrepentant sinners from their local churches. This notion of Church Discipline is certainly included in many if not most of our evangelical churches’ bylaws.
Well, in light of the above definition — More importantly, in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 — I must ask, Is that really what Jesus taught to His disciples and to us?
Let’s discover the answer together.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you as you listen.
Dewey Bertolini’s Podcast
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Dewey Bertolini 