It’s all about hearing the echoes.
In this PODCAST, you’ll be hearing lots of echoes. Attention-grabbers each.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
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God bless you richly as you listen.
You are in for a treat (if I do say so myself).
As you will hear in the PODCAST, a veritable banquet table of culinary delights, every tasty morsel of which comes courtesy of the Apostle Paul and his original Galatian readers.
Take a deep breath, pull up a chair, make yourself comfortable… and enjoy!
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” do indeed “know.”
In this PODCAST, you will learn who knows, and what they know.
And I am happy to report that you are on the right side of this discussion.
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.
Once again, while I am away speaking (at my final conference of the summer), I have not left you Podcast-less!
Welcome to Decision Night at Hartland Christian Camp.
As you will hear in the PODCAST, even though this message was not delivered at Safe Haven, it is the perfect followup to last week’s discussion of Passover.
I mentioned last week, and will remind you now, that before His arrest, Jesus had to keep a divine appointment in the Garden of Gethsemane. I didn’t explain that then; I do explain it now.
If you want to know what it meant for Jesus to bear the weight of your sin (and mine), this is THE picture of exactly what that meant.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST…
A futile night of fishing…
A breakfast on a beach…
A cringeworthy conversation…
Changed EVERYTHING.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, Peter begins his first lovely little letter literally with a literary explosion. It’s as if he has so much that he wants to say so quickly, that the syllables come pouring out of him like a waterfall of words.
Believe it or not, verse 3 all the way to verse 12 is one long and winding and wondrously scenic sentence. You heard that right. A grand total of 315 words (in the NLT), all of which form one single sentence. Only the first part of which we will discuss now, with so much more rich and glorious truth to follow in the coming weeks.
There is an life-altering, soul-stirring insight embedded in verse 3 that we would do well to consider. Since verses 1 & 2 serve as Peter’s greeting, the letter itself actually begins with Verse 3.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
A rather remarkable statement given dire circumstances in which Peter’s original readers were living. We’ve already detailed them for you in the previous two podcasts. I’ll simply remind you that due to circumstances beyond their control—an empire-wide persecution at the bloody hands the infamously ruthless Nero—these were precious people—committed Christ-followers each, each our ancestors in faith—who had literally lost everything.
Even to the point of potentially losing their freedom and even their lives.
Theirs were the darkest of clouds with no silver linings.
A very fragile people living on the precipice with no safety net, clinging to their lives lived under the capricious actions of an unpredictable madman.
So if you were Peter, someone who fully understood and appreciated their seemingly insurmountable challenges—fears, insecurities, uncertainties—why would you begin your letter to them with the words,
“Blessed be the God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
Does that not sound like a typically empty Christian cliché?
What prompted Peter to write with such audacity as to command his readers—including us—to bless God:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Even in the absolute worst of circumstances?
Obviously, Peter’s words, “Bless be the God,” did not come out of a vacuum. Fact is, there is a long and rich history to these words, and the life-altering, soul-stirring insight embedded within them.
Peter’s opening line was anything but a cutesy little Christian cliché. Not to his original readers. After hearing this podcast, not to us.
Although this does raise one intriguing question:
Bless God?
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
I thought God blesses us.
How in the world do you and I bless God?
The answer to that question will change your life.
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 you are about to hear in this PODCAST, The Apostle Paul made an astonishing statement to the committed-Christ-Followers living in Rome.
In other words, to those living in the belly of the beast.
So to encourage these embattled believers living right there as residence of this ancient sin-city, Paul wrote this amazing statement in his letter to the Roman believers,
“What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” (Romans 8:31)
In a city where everyone was against these beleaguered believers in Jesus, Paul assured them that God would never be against them. God would never be against then because God was for them.
Guess what? He is for you too!
A blessedly-beautiful three-in-one proposition.
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 you are about to hear in this new PODCAST, a new day dawned upon these first committed Christ-followers.
If that metaphor of a new day seemingly overstates the case, then at least we can say that a dark cloud now-shadowed the sun for these first committed Christ-followers. Not quite on the level of our eclipse; but portentous just the same. An ominous bellwether that signaled for these early believers a change in the temperature of Holy City.
For the first eight-12 weeks following Crucifixion and Resurrection, these early believers were able to bask in the glow of their newfound faith unmolested.
Not any more.
Persecution was about to break out for first time in the now-2000 year history of Church. Relatively mild at first. No one died. No one was beaten. It was limited to Peter and John.
But as you will hear, it did involve intimidation, incarceration, and threats of greater reprisals if the apostles refused to cease and desist as far as their preaching in Jesus’ name was concerned.
Refuse they did.
This was a harbinger of things to come. A dark cloud heralding a storm. A storm that continues to rage unabated to our day. Not here in America so much. But certainly in many parts of our troubled world, where committed Christ-followers today attend gatherings at great risk of life-threatening peril to themselves and their families.
As is becoming increasing clear in our ongoing study of Peter in HD, we stand in awe at the strength and resilience of these very first believers—our ancestors in faith, to whom we owe so much, and who have SO MUCH to teach us. As they will do here in this week’s study.
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.
Dewey Bertolini’s Podcast
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Dewey Bertolini 