Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text: Acts 18 22-23

Thesis: Biblical fellowship lead to greater fruitfulness and joy in ministry.

Notes:

• Unity
• Community
• Harmony
• Ministry
• Maturity

Unity:

John 17:9–11 “I pray…for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours…all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them…keep them through Your name… that they may be one as We are.” NKJV

Community:

Harmony:

Ministry:

Maturity:

Live it out!

• Ask yourself some hard questions.
  • Am I disconnected?
  • Is the reason I’m drifting from my church family, because I’m drifting from Jesus?
  • Is your love for fellow believers waning or fanning?
• Make time.
  • Add fellowship into your calendar.
• Make phone calls or texts.
  • Keep in touch with other believers.

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text:  Acts 18:18-23

Theme: Reflect, Refresh, & Renew

Notes:

Refreshing the Body and Soul

1. The Sabbath rest is for everyone
   • The pattern of resting one day out of seven precedes the giving of the Law
   • Genesis 2:1
   • Mark 2:27-28, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”
   • The Sabbath was given:
     • As a rest
     • As a remembrance
2. Rest restores our identity
   • The Sabbath was given as a distinctive mark for God’s people
   • It shows that our bodies, our time, and our finances belong to God
     • That He will provide because He is good
     • That while He commands us to labor, He is not dependent on our labor
3. Rest reminds us that it is about relationship
   • A God-initiated relationship
   • The rest we enjoy is Christ’s rest, because it was Christ who labored for our salvation–not us
4. Rest restores the soul
   • We need physical rest–but we also need spiritual and emotional rest
   • Our weekly church attendance is part of that spiritual and emotional rest
   • Psalm 23:1-3
   • “He makes me to lie down”
     • There are many times when God not only leads us to rest–but makes us do it
     • How many times have we overlabored until God providentially allowed sickness to force us to rest
     • Schaeffer, even good activity can be idolatry
     • Chambers, waiting & rest indicate a healthy faith
5. Rest should be purposeful
   • If relentless labor produced changed lives, then we don’t really need faith
   • There are lazy people that need to work harder
   • There are working people that need to rest
   • God is glorified by faith-fueled labor AND faith-fueled rest

Live It Out!

1. Take intentional time to refresh your body and soul
2. You need physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual rest
3. Depending on what your normal job is, rest might be different for you than others
4. Take rests from media and screens:
   • to rest and reset your attention span
   • to rest & redevelop your thinking skills
   • to quiet your soul
5. There are consequences to NOT resting:
   • physical: health
   • spiritual: relationships
   • You can’t steal sleep–you can only borrow it
6. Owning stuff can be labor as well
   • Every thing you own also owns you

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text: Acts 18:18-23

Thesis: Taking time to reflect, renew, and refresh will lead to greater fruitfulness and joy in ministry.

Notes:

• Purpose: what is my purpose in life?
• Parts: are all of the parts of my life falling in line with my purpose?

Three potential ways of living:

1. Proactive — living purposefully
2. Reactive — living by reaction to circumstances
3. Inactive — living by following any other calling except Christ

If you get the calling to follow Christ right, the other parts (vocation, relationships, etc.) will fall into place

It is easy to fool yourself to into thinking you are yielded to Christ in every area because you are yielded in some areas.

What God desires is whatever you are least willing to yield to Him.

Supporting missions to “all peoples” includes, and does not obviate, reaching our own neighbors.

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Preacher: Bruce Miller

Text: Matthew 6:19-34

Theme: A Better You in ’22

Notes:

We will come up short if we seek:

• Earthly Treasure
• Earthly Wisdom
• Earthly Comforts

The Remedy:

• Seek God
• Seek His Kingdom
• Seek His Righteousness

Are you seeking a relationship with God
with the same desire that He is seeking a relationship with you?

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text: Acts 18:1-18a

Theme: Church on Fire

Thesis: Take intentional time to reflect on God’s goodness.

Notes:

These verses cover a 1500 mile trek taking time to reflect, renew and refresh will lead to greater fruitfulness and joy in ministry. Paul is a church planter and is heading to Antioch the first church that Paul planted. Aquila and Pricilla went with him, to set up a new branch of their tent making business to help support the missions.

Paul took a Nazarite vow, a common Jewish practice, to show his support for saving Jews.

People in the Bible who took Nazarite vows:

1. 1. Sampson
   2. Samuel
   3. John the Baptist

What do we see as far as Gods work in Paul’s life?

• Reflect on God’s goodness.
  • God gave him fruitful ministry.
    • Paul conducted regular Nazarite vows.
    • Paul was overflowing with thankfulness

Take intentional time to reflect on God’s goodness.

Every time we stop and thank God, we recalibrate our hearts and refocus on God’s plan.

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text: Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 3, 1 Corinthians 6

Theme:

Thesis: the church must glorify God by being clear, compelling, and compassionate on issues of sexuality and gender.

Notes:

How we walk in this world

• Walk in light
• Walk in love
• Walk in wisdom
• Walk in the Spirit

Why God created marriage

• Sanctification–holiness>happiness
• Illustration–marriage is a picture of the gospel
• Union–marriage is a covenant relationship between husband & wife–and God
• Procreation–

Union

• The marriage relationship is a covenant relationship
• There are times when affection won’t carry the marriage–but covenant will
• Union is both love and law
• God gave physical intimacy as a gift to deepen the bond of the covenant relationship
• Gods gifts enjoyed outside the parameters of Gods design will result in sin and sorrow

Procreation

• In one sense, God means procreation to be a means of multiplying and filling the earth

Why the church must speak clearly

• Salt and light is what we are
• It matters to God
• It is part of the creation mandate
• It is part of loving our neighbor
• It is a moral issue
• The church is a pillar and ground of the truth
• It’s a gospel issue

Live It Out!

1. We need to be clear
2. We need to be compelling
3. We need to be compassionate
4. We need to offer hope

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text: Ephesians 5, Genesis 1

Theme: Why We Must Have A Biblical View of Family

Notes:

The Church must be:

1. Clear
2. Compelling
3. Compassionate

on the issues of sexuality and gender

God created the world with purpose, harmony, and order.

God uniquely made mankind in His image.

God’s commands for His creation provide basis for humans to flourish.

Why Did God Create Marriage?

1. Sanctification–God uses the spouses to help one another become more holy
2. Illustration–God uses the members of the marriage to picture God and the gospel
3. Procreation–not just producing physical children to fulfil the cultural mandate given in Genesis

Why not just ‘let the world be the world’?

We are called to be salt & light–neither of which are inert,
and neither of which have a null impact  where they reach.

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Preacher: Caleb Ogle

Texts:

• Genesis 3:8, God dwelled with man in the garden
• Leviticus 26:11, God dwelled with man in the tabernacle
• Numbers 35:34, God dwelled with man in the land of Israel
• 1 Kings 6:13
• Isaiah 57:15
• Ezekiel 37:27
• John 1:14, God dwelled with man as a man
  • “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”
  • “dwelt” = “tabernacled”
• John 6:56-58
• Romans 8:10
• 1 Corinthians 6:19, God dwells with us internally as Spirit
• Galatians 2:20
• 1 John 4:13
• John 14:2, We will dwell with God eternally
• Revelation 21:3-4

Theme: God With Us

Notes:

God has always done whatever was necessary to dwell with His people–but are we dwelling with Him?

Idolatry isn’t always idolizing good things–it is often idolizing good gifts God has given.

When someone consistently responds to requests for time with “I’m busy”,
the message is abundantly clear what is important to them–and what is not.

Application: How to make a consistent devotional time of Bible study & prayer with God

1. Have a time–just like with budgeting, you usually do what you plan/budget to do
2. Have a place–laying in bed is not often a productive place for devotions
3. Have a plan–get a Bible reading plan, or a devotional book, or some structure to guide your study
4. Have a journal–Humans are the only creature that stores information outside their own bodies; writing down what God has been teaching you will help you learn, trust God, and remember answered prayers.

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Preacher: Jeremy Herbert

Text:

• 1 Timothy 3:16
• John 1:1-14

Theme: Christmas: Why It Matters

Thesis: Celebrate the beauty and wonder of the incarnation by understanding it doctrinally.

Notes:

Errors in understanding the incarnation of Christ either:

1. Deny His full godhood
   • Deny His eternality
   • Deny His full divinity
   • a being less than fully God is unworthy to make sacrifice for sins
2. Deny His full humanity
   • Deny He had a real human body
   • Deny He had a real human nature
   • a being less than fully human cannot stand in place of humans

Why Does It Matter?

1. Jesus identified with sinners in order to rescue them
   • Hebrews 2, “He himself shared in the same”
2. Jesus fulfilled the law as a human
   • Galatians 4, “Born of a woman, born under the law”
3. Jesus was our substitute
   • Hebrews 2, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect…to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
   • Colossians 1, “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds”
   • In the OT, animals (lesser creatures than man) were sacrificed to pay for sins–but the sacrifices were only temporary
   • In the NT, Christ’s sacrifice is better (and permanent) because He is a greater than man
   • 1 Peter 3, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit”
4. Jesus is our sympathetic High Priest
   • Hebrews 4, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
   • While Jesus had no sin, He felt all the effects of sin and brokenness in this world
5. Jesus is our model of true humanity

Live It Out!

1. Be thankful
2. Be different
3. Be comforted
4. Be hopeful

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