MAC KIRK

 Jonah the first few verses of chapter 1. Our responsibility, God's Will and Our way Jonah. The First Few VS . Series. Today we will dive into Jonah. vs. 1-4 of ch. 1. Jonah "the prophet" and "servant" ( from 2 Kings 14:25). The word servant in Hebrew is the same word for slave, abad. This is true in the NT as well used for Christians who are servants, slaves of the Lord. A prophet is nabi in Hebrew , a spokesman or speaker for God the Lord. God spoke to this man, son of Amittai (truth of God). When God speaks to an individual, this is a wonderful thing, yet it is a terrible thing as well. We as Christians , believers in the Lord are carriers of God's Word to others. I say this is an awesome and wonderful responsibility. As the Apostle Paul said about this in I Corinthians 4: " Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mystery of God. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.....he that judge...

 Jonah and the Sea Jonah - A Beginning Overview for Summer Series Certainly this book is a sea story and for any of us who ever been to sea it is captivating. It is a book for all, and I say it is a book that is a book of imagination and that is especially true for young people. It is also a book for all people to know of the purposes of God, especially for Israel and their relationship to others. This has application for us as in the church for the church is for all people as well, and not just the officers, the members and the attenders. But what I like most of all is that is not just a wonderful record of a big fish ( whale?) and a spell binding story. It has a theme. DR Morgan of London said it well: " The incidental things are the ship, the storm, the whale, the gourd, the wind and Nineveh... The essential matters of the book are the transactions between Jehovah ( God) and Jonah." That is the rub is it not? That is true for us as well. The incidentals are our lives and w...

 Jude 20-25    The last section of Jude closes with a benediction for his followers that follow Christ.  20-23 is a  practical section about how to made value judments about people around us.  Outwardly this seems contradictory of Jesus' famous words in Matthew 7 " Judge not lest ye be judged" , but it actually fills these words out.  We are obviously making judgments every day.  Jesus is saying watch out how we judge. Jude's comments about discerning others actions and words follow positive thoughts in vs. 20 " But ye beloved building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,  keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." But we are to discern between people who are in great need of our compassion and those  who we " save with fear, pulling them out of the fire" vs 23  So it is how we judge that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 7.   Jude, hi...

 Jude vs 20 ( and all that comes before)   " But ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." vs. 20 “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself...

 Jude 8-11        Errorism is terrorism for sure as one commentator put it.  But positively Jude speaks to the believers who are preserved & continually preserved in Jesus Christ, and called /loved by God Himself.  We are looking at vs 8-13 in their highlights illustrated by the apostasy of Israel, the rebellion of some of the Angels, the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Covenant and applying this to the "ungodly men" , vs 4, and of course the  unbelief that pervades all of this.   We left off with the end of vs 7 in our previous message and it was something we briefly touched on, " the vengeance of eternal fire."  The so-called believers, called ungodly,  that actually were apostates, ( that is they had fallen away from real belief in Jesus Christ) were like the angels that fell away--- Jude , the brother of Jesus , tells us.  They were arrogant and prideful as well as those who practiced the unbelief an...

 Holy Communion. I Corinthians 11: 26 & 28 Two words from the NT illuminate the Sacrament. 1.  "  For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Show is katangello means pronounce, proclaim the Lord's death till He come.  Hebrews 9:15-16 " He is the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death...for where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator." Robert Bruce , 5 Sermons on the Sacraments:"  The Sacrament is appointed that we may get a better grip of Christ nor we get in the simple word.  The Sacraments are appointed that I might have Him more full in my soul." Who is to take?  Confirmed people, that is those who have professed faith in Christ with the Elders, the Session & they have publically joined the Fellowship/Church. ---"the feast of Passover, the Old Testament type of the Lord’s Supper, “did not admit all guests indiscriminately,but wa...

 Jude 5-7  Three Loving Reminders or Warnings.    Have you ever wished someone had given you a proper warning before you did something ?  When I was in support of the Haiti invasion in 1994,  I was deployed to Puerto Rico as the Chaplain .  There I happened on a Chaplain friend who had been with me in California.  We enjoyed getting reacquainted.  While there I was in San Juan, the capital, and bought some dried fish that was in the display window.  I got very sick after eating it and was put in our unit medical facility.  Later the Chaplain I knew said, " Oh, I could have told you , ' don't eat the dried fish.'"  After all my misery I wished he had told me before I ate it. Jude says to remember.  2 Peter 1:12 the similar book to Jude says , " I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance ( of the steps in the Christian life)".  Even though Jude says, " you once knew this, how that the Lord , having saved t...