Current Studies

The Inclusion of the Gospel (Romans 11)

The message of Romans 9-11 is that the mercy of God is here. The mercy of God is available to all who will receive it. In Romans 9 we observed Paul asking us to consider what we are doing with God’s mercy. Is God’s mercy moving us to serve him or to resist him? In our second lesson from Romans 9:30-10:4 we saw that the reason people resist God’s mercy is because they are establishing their own way of righteousness. We do not want to do things God’s way. We want to do things our way and believe that we are saved and that we are God’s people. In Romans 10 we saw Paul teach that it is not too hard or too far out of reach to do what God has asked us to do. God has not asked the impossible from us. The problem is not that it is too hard but that we do not want to listen. If we believed, then we would be transformed in heart to obey the gospel. This brings us to Romans 11. As we come to Romans 11 I want us to think about why God keeps telling us about his judgment and his offer of mercy. Is God being mean or insensitive or uncaring by telling us about his wrath and coming judgment? This is a common response that people have to hearing about the idea of wrath, judgment, hell, and the like. I want us to notice where this teaching concludes in Romans 11…

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Ruled By Power (Judges 3)

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The Hearing of the Gospel (Romans 10)

Have you ever considered something to be too hard to do so that you do not even try to do it? There have been things that I have looked at, maybe did a little research on it, and then decided that it was too hard for me to do. This has been particularly true when it comes to working on my car. I have watched videos, saw the degree of difficulty, and thought that there was no way that I could do what I am watching. What I want us to think about as we begin is that there are many things in life that we do not attempt because we think it will be too hard to do. Sometimes this thinking bleeds into how we look at serving the Lord. Moses addressed this in one of his final sermons to the people of Israel…

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The Power of Influence (2 Chronicles 21-24)

There is great power in influence. We even have a term today for a special group of people that we call influencers. An influencer is someone that people listen to and, because of that, are able to use their good will to encourage people to do or not do things. Businesses understand the power of influencers and will try to pay them or send them free products so that they will review their product and influence people to buy their product or service. Influence is powerful. We have another term for influence called peer pressure. Because we care about what other people think and respond, we will do certain things because of their influence. Things that we would not consider doing we might consider doing because of the influence of others. Influence is powerful. This is the key message that we are going to study in this lesson from 2 Chronicles 21-24. In these chapters were are going to read three examples of influence. As we read about these influencers I want us to think about who is influencing us and who are we influencing…

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