If you will permit me to quote myself, “It is today as it was then.”
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST: Boy, is it ever today as it was then. All courtesy of the Apostle Paul.
May God use the words of an ancient Prophet to elevate your soul, as they have my own.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
“With all of the religions in the world, how do you know that Jesus is the real deal?”
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, I am asked this question every summer at Middle School and High School Camp. Every summer.
Well, courtesy of the Apostle Paul, and his first-ever recorded sermon in the New Testament, you will hear the answer.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
There is a play-on-words in 1 Peter 1:22.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, an insightful play-on-words that we miss to our peril.
Coming as it does from Peter’s pen, I can assure you that this play-on-words is most-intentional. Pregnant with meaning poignantly personal to Peter, and to us as well.
This play-on-words is a bit of a pun—not humorous at all, but serious in the extreme—that goes straight to the heart of what it means to be committed-Christ-follower now, today, in our current Christian culture.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
What does it mean to “be holy”?
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the answer is remarkably simple and practical. So simple and practical that you don’t need a seminary degree to understand this.
And yet, were I a betting man, I would be willing to wager that “be holy” means something vastly different than many of us have been led to believe it means.
You, my friend, are in for a treat!
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 want you to imagine for a moment this scenario. (As you will hear in this PODCAST, a potentially familiar biblical story to you.)
That being said, see if you can guess the name of its principle player.
His people were ravaged by a barbarically blood-thirsty Empire, the armies of which decimated his land, desecrated his holy places, and butchered his people.
His hatred for these pagan barbarians flamed in his guts with the white-hot fury of volcanic rage. A smoldering-just-beneath-the-surface-anger that could have understandably erupted into a deadly confrontation at the slightest provocation.
But God is a God of mercy, isn’t he?
So He asked this man to set aside his prejudices, to extinguish the fiery rage that blazed within him. And in the face of the mountain of abuses he and his people suffered at the hands of these hedonistic heathens, these merciless marauders, to travel into the very power-center of this occupying power in order to share with the people there the Good News of God’s redemptive love.
The notion that he would engage these interlopers on any level was utterly repugnant to him. Not to mention his absolute inability even to entertain the slightest possibility that some such as these might spend an eternity with him in Heaven.
He didn’t want God to save them; He wanted God to obliterate them.
So down to the seaport city of Joppa he went (that’s your clue to this mystery man’s identity) where he confronted a personal crisis of faith unlike he had ever experienced before.
Does he walk away in rebellion against God? Does he get into a boat and sail away, in direct defiance of God’s revealed will?
Or does he submit himself to the task to which God called him, knowing full-well that in doing so he may-well place himself squarely in the crosshairs of his sworn enemy?
To whom am I referring? Who was this singularly-selected servant of God, forced to face such a potentially life-threatening, history-altering choice?
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.
His legacy is forever set in stone, indelibly etched in granite as Simon the Sorcerer.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, Simon the Sorcerer is the very first person we meet outside of the cozy confines of the Holy City, Jerusalem. #ThisIsHuge!
You talk about a guy who had the deck stacked against him, meet this Simon the Samaritan Sorcerer.
That gasp you just heard was the rush of disbelieving air exploding out of the collapsing lungs of Luke’s original readers.
Trust me: We should gasp 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.
It is called, appropriately enough, the Via Dolorosa, Latin for “The Way of Sorrows.”
For Jesus, it absolutely was a way of sorrows — every single excruciatingly painful step of it, from the Antonia Fortress (where Pilate sentenced Him), to Golgotha (where Jesus’ execution awaited Him).
In this PODCAST, we will walk that path 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 richly as you listen.
There is No.Clearer.Picture in all of the Bible of the heart of God towards sinners — I’m talking the hardest of hardhearted sinners — than this one right here in Luke 13.
A Scriptural snapshot that will go a long way to defining your biblical view of God and your biblical understanding of Jesus, both as a man and as God.
If you think of the Bible as a picture book, Luke paints for us a portrait of Jesus that is, quite frankly, irresistible, and most refreshing to my soul. It will be to yours as well. Guaranteed.
One that comes to us, ironically enough, thanks to a small cadre of good Pharisees. Yes! Heard me right. Good Pharisees.
The Pharisees as a group, as we have discussed in weeks gone by, and as you therefore understand, were historically among Jesus’ chief tormentors. That being said, there were in the minority some good Pharisees.
This, my dear friends, is quite a gripping story.
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.
The Latest News from Jerusalem
Dewey Bertolini 