Weekly Encouragement
Good Wednesday Everyone,
Weekly blessings to all. We all received needed rain this week. The Lord is GOOD. As we continue through to the end of this week we should get some more. Tonight, take a break and join us for our Wednesday Night Fellowship. This night is focused on conversation and togetherness for our Bethel church family. The menu tonight has an adjustment and will be meatballs with gravy rice, and green beans. Bring something in you can. Come for the food and stay for the fellowship with God’s people.
After dinner, we continue our video discipleship series “Experiencing God”. This video series does not present a “What to do” but rather a “What to recognize” in daily Christian life. The most inconvenient or inefficient things in your day, are most likely exactly where God wants you to be and with whom God wants you to meet. Christians have good news for all people. Therefore, we can encourage, help, listen, and pray for those we contact. God places you exactly where He wants you to be, and this discipleship series encourages us to recognize such situations. Please join our study after dinner in the sanctuary.
We continue our latest Sunday sermon series “Meet the Messiah” through the Gospel of Matthew. We have reached the point where Jesus Christ has entered fully into His public Ministry. The crowds are coming, and Jesus is responding. There is an unknown span of time between Matthew 4 with the calling of the first disciples, and Matthew’s documentation of the greatest sermon ever preached, “The Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7. If you can this week, read these chapters. What Jesus says is “astonishing”. This is the word Matthew uses to describe the people’s reaction at the conclusion of Jesus’ sermon. We need the strongest of words to describe the greatness of this sermon. No one has ever said better things than Jesus did to the people then and to us today.
We must answer one critical question throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Our answer must filter every thought spoken by Jesus Christ at the beginning, in the center, and at the conclusion of His words. Here is the question: Who is Jesus Christ to say such things? Anyone could memorize these documented words and recite them before others. Actor’s portraying Jesus Christ have done it for years, preachers have pulled from Jesus’ words this day for centuries. But who is Jesus Christ to originate such words? This is where Matthew helps answer this question.
We come back to the span of time between Jesus entering His public ministry and The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus spent His time doing two things with people, multitudes of people. Jesus proclaimed, “the gospel of the kingdom,” and Jesus healed, “every disease and every affliction.” Matthew told us this because the identity of Jesus must be at the least considered, and He cannot be ignored, put aside, or rejected. A decision must be made about Jesus. Jesus was clearly doing things only God could do. Why? Jesus Christ is God. Matthew lays this truth before us so when He preached The Sermon on the Mount it was from absolute authority of who Jesus Christ is. If Jesus Christ has the power to heal everyone’s physical suffering, then He has the authority to solve everyone’s spiritual suffering.
Spiritual suffering is at the core of Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Not everyone had a need of physical healing who came to Jesus, but everyone came with a spiritual disease and affliction. Jesus Christ addressed every spiritual issue applicable in our lives. This was always the intent of God’s Law: To heal people spiritually; To guide people; To protect people; TO perfect people. Do you know at what point in the sermon Jesus preached about perfection? Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Perfection the ultimate application and completion of God’s Law. And in all the places to say this, Jesus says it when He is telling us to, “Love your enemies.” Why say this here? Because it tells us how perfect God is how far away we are from being perfect. God loves His enemies. And when we learn to love God in return, He heals our spiritual sufferings. God changes our hearts and literally gives us new life. Christians possess the cure for everyone’s spiritual disease, “They just don’t know it yet!!” This phrase is given towards the end of our encouragements, but do we believe it ourselves? Spiritual healing, or perfection will only come from Christ Jesus, through Christ Jesus, and by Christ Jesus as received by faith in Him. Christians are walking, talking billboards for what Christ has done for them. Spiritual healing can begin with a kind word, a sincere invitation, and a faithful prayer to those around us every day. Pray for someone. Invite someone. Repeat. Hear Jesus this week.
In Christ Jesus,
Pastor Michael
