HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

This month the Lord has given my Dad another year of life. Throughout this year I have seen how the Lord has sanctified and blessed my Dad.

I want to give some reasons for being thankful for my Dad, and in this way I hope to honor him.

1. First, I want to thank God for my father because my father is a godly man, and not ashamed to show and share it.
2. I thank God that He's given me a father that cares for my soul and salvation.
3. I'm thankful that my Dad strives to teach my family and I the Word of God, and so obeying the commandment in Deuteronomy 11:19.
   
4. I thank God that my Dad pushes me and teaches me how to be a man.
   
5. I'm also thankful that my Dad is an example to me of how a hard working man should look.
6. Lastly, My Dad doesn't leave me to live my life alone, he wants to be involved in my life and to help me walk in the way that the Word says that I should.

PICTURES OF MY DAD:

MY MOTHER AND FATHER.

DAD, MYSELF, AND MY LITTLE BROTHERS.

MY DAD AND I.
Happy birthday Dad.
I love you.

ALERT Cadet

Recently, my Dad and I joined a group that was formed several months ago in my church by Mr. J. Tsantels called the ALERT Cadets.

The purpose of ALERT is to strengthen the relationship of the fathers and sons in our church and also to bring them together with other fathers and sons to learn practical skills.

It's like a boy-scout kind-of-thing, but with fathers leading, and keeping the focus on the Lord.
We also has a new blog that I manage and update for our troop. Click this link to see it: Strong to Overcome.

The Lord's Prayer

Mathew 6:5-15
The Lord's Prayer

The first part of this section is where the Lord teaches His disciples how not to pray. The first way not to pray is to pray hypocritically. We do this when we pray in public so that the people who are around us can see how "holy" we are. We do so this to bring glory to ourselves. At that time, when Jesus taught this, the hypocrites he was talking about were the religious leaders. They loved to pray, to babble for hours... so that the people would be impressed. The Lord says here that the ones who do this will have their reward, but their reward will come from men.

The Lord shows that He will bless us when we pray in secret for the sake of taking our petitions and prayers to God. When we do this, the Lord says, He will even reward us openly.

These are several things that hinder prayer:

1. Secret sins,
2. Not hearing the law,
3. Obsession with ourselves,
4. The lack of listening and asking God for mercy,
5. Marital breakdown (1 Peter 3:7),
6. Faithless asking.

The Lord also tells us not to pray with many words thinking that that is the reason we will be heard.

In verse 8 we see that the Lord knows the things that we need before we ask for them. Some people say that because of this they do not have to pray. But God is our father, and like a father waiting for his struggling child to ask him for help, God is waiting for us to ask Him as our loving father.

The first part of the prayer given by the Lord shows that when we pray we have to hollow the name of the Lord in words and the way we pray. In a sense, when we pray, we are glorifying God.

The second part of the prayer shows us we should pray for the kingdom of God to come. The kingdom of God, in this passage, is the true presence of God in His people on earth.

The Lord loves when we come to him with our everyday needs, just like any good father, except He is the best father.

When we come to the Lord in prayer, we should come in humility and with the knowledge that we are in debt to God. And because of our debt, we should come to Him begging for the forgiveness of the many grievances we have committed against Him and His law.

Nearing the end of the prayer, the Lord shows that we should forgive because when we don't, the Lord will not forgive us. In verses 14 and 15 we see that if we do not forgive the trespasses of others, the Lord will not forgive our trespasses.

When we become sons and daughters of Christ, we will not be free from the evil of this world. The Lord sometimes tempts us to test our love for Him. Also, the Lord, if we continually disobey Him may just give us up to the evil one.

Again, we see that we should always acknowledge God as the one with all power and glory.

The Four Speaches of Moses - Part 2

The fifth commandment commands us to honor our father and mother because the Lord has commanded us to do so and the promise if we do is that we will live long on the earth and it will go well with us. This is the first commandment with a promise.

All authority is come from God, even the most wicked authority is from the Lord. There are certain ways that we should treat all authorities: with respect, honor, and obedience. All authority starts in the family. If authority is not honored in the family, it will not be honored in the church, and if it is not honored in the church than the authority of the civil magistrate will not be honored. We see the continuation of this commandments in 16:18-18-22.


The sixth commandment states that we should not murder. When we think of murder we think about someone brutally taking the life of someone else. But in Mathew 5:21-22 it says that when you hate your brother you are committing murder in your heart. As humans, we see differently than how God sees sin. The continuation of this commandment in 19:1-22:8.

The seventh says that we should not commit adultery. Again, we can see that the Lords ways are not our ways. In Mathew 5:27-28 we see that when we look at a woman to think evil thoughts about her we commit adultery in our hearts. This is also found in 22:9-23:19.

You shall not steal is the eight commandment. There are many ways to steal from people. Some of the ways that you can steal are found in 23:19-25:12. Some of the ways are taking a newly-wed man into the army. In doing this you are stealing from him, if he dies in battle, the fruits of his wife, land, and life. You are also stealing the husband from the wife. When we use our life and our possessions for the glory and pleasure of ourselves, we are stealing from God what belongs to Him. When you do not tithe, you are stealing from God (Malachi 3:8).

The ninth of the commandments is that we should not bear false witness against our neighbor. If we do, then we disobey the command given by God which is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.

The last commandment is that we should not covet anything that is our neighbors. The Lord decides what to give to His children and if we covet anything of this world that our neighbor has, we are declaring that God is not sufficient for us. We should do the most to glorify God with what we have(26:1-15).

The last of the three speeches is found in ch.27-31:13. If we love God we will want to listen and obey all that He commands. We do this as part of repenting of our sins and accepting God as our savior and allowing God to work in our lives. There are no carnal Christians. You either don't obey and the Lord curses you, or you obey the Lord and He blesses you in the way that He chooses.

Here are the links to sermon reports to the last parts of this chapter: The first sermon of the year, and The last days of Moses.

The Four Speaches of Moses - Part 1

Listen and Observe, That You May Live
Deuteronomy 1-34

This is the last sermon on Deuteronomy given by my elders in Hope Baptist Church. This sermon, by Mr. Brown (one of the elders at Hope,) is a review of the book of Deuteronomy.

The first of Moses' sermons can be found in Deuteronomy, chapters 1-4. The Lord desires to have control and authority over our time, our energy, our thoughts, our actions... even though all these things are His already. The Lord also wants to carry us through the wilderness...the times of trouble in our lives that we have to go through to get to the promised land. We must also take and let the Word of God change and take control of our lives.

Six things about the book of Deuteronomy:

1. Going through and studying this book, we can see that it covers our whole life.
   
2. It confronts the "sufficiency" of the "wisdom" and feelings of our heart and life.
   
3. It shows our deprivation: (spiritually and physically).
4. We can find the picture of the Gospel and the glory of God throughout it.
5. It shows the superiority of God and His ways.
   
6. Lastly, it causes us to love what Jesus loved.

The second and longest speech can be found in Ch. 5-26.
The laws given in chapter 5 are given to us to protect and guide us in a land of idolatry. And since these laws come from God we must obey them. But the ultimate protection and guidance comes from God.

The first of the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God is that you shall no other god but Him (God). There are many "gods" in this world and all have worshipers. There's entertainment, security, money, nature, "toys." All these things are gods that people can worship. There are many more Gods of this world, hundreds and thousands of more things that people can worship or take as a god. Our security should be in God, not in this world or the things that it can offer. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also(Mathew 6:21). We can see this played out in chapters 6-11. This is the first and greatest commandment.

The second commandment is that we should not make any image of God. I take this in a literal sense. I believe that we should not make any drawing, painting, or image of Christ. Why do people do this anyway? To try to make us "see" what Jesus did or looked like. It's also a way to worship the picture instead of the real God. Take, for example, the movie, The Passion. The creators of the movie tried to picture what Jesus did and how He died here on earth. When people watch this, they get emotional because they think that this is really how Jesus lived and was killed here on earth. This is simply not true! No one on earth can possibly picture how Jesus looked and how He was beaten and tortured. It is proud and disrespectful to think we can make an image of God. This is also true when people make images and miniatures of Jesus on the cross. The reason that Jesus suffered so much was not because of the abuse of men, it was because when He was dieing, He suffered the extreme wrath of God. He took all the punishment and guilt of every sin ever committed by every person ever born or to be born when He died. That was the true terribleness of the death of Christ and since this commandment connects with the first commandment, we, as Christians, are called to conquer all "gods" and images of God in this world. We see this in 12:1-13-13:18

The third commandment is that you should not take the Lords name in vain. There are many ways to take the Lord's name in vain, not just by swearing. One way we take the Lord's name in vain is when we call ourselves Christians and act like the world (14:1-21.) If we say we are a Christian we are to act and live like a Christian.

The fourth is that we must keep the sabbath day holy. This is the day that the Lord has commanded to be a day of rest. This is a day where we are to meditate on the word of God and to bring glory to God. When it says that we cannot work, it doesn't mean that we cannot prepare food or clean up from our daily living. If it will bring glory to God you are allowed to do it, for example having someone for dinner and cleaning up afterward. On the sabbath we are not supposed to sell or buy anything. We can find all of these guidelines in ch.14:22-16:17.

To be continued in Part II.

Happy Birthday!!

To my GRANDPA!
Who's birthday was last week.
Happy Birthday!!!
I Love You Papo!

The Last Days of Moses

Sermon Report from Sunday, January 23.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

These verses speak about the last days in Moses's life. After he blesses 11 of the 12 tribes of Israel (the tribe of Issachar was absorbed into the tribe of Zebulun), he climbs to the highest peak of mount Nebo, where as the Lord willed, Moses died.

Before the Lord ends Moses life, He shows Moses the promised land from the top of the mountain where He again reminds Moses that he will not enter the promised land. One thing that I want to point out is that you see, in verse 1,2,and 3, the Lord showing Moses the land that the tribes will have. It may be that Moses prophesied or that the Lord actually showed Moses a vision of the land where each tribe would live.

After the sight seeing, the Lord takes Moses life and then the Lord himself buries him. Until this day no one has found the grave of Moses. One reason I learned from the sermon and I agree with is that the Lord did this because He did not want the children of Israel to worship the body of Moses as they may have been tempted to do. The devil has created many other "gods" for us to worship instead of the one true God. (Before the reformation and even now, relics and important dead people were worshiped.) In Jude 1:9 it says that the archangel Michal fought with the devil over the body of Moses. The reason the devil wanted the body is that he wanted Israel to have superstitions and glorify the body of Moses and turn them away from glorifying God to glorifying the acts of Moses.

I also want to point out that when Moses died, he did not die from bad health or old age. In verse 7 it says: "Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor diminished." Think about this! This is amazing! It may be a blessing for a believer to die without having to pass through physical pain and sickness. God does bless some more than others. Also, think about this, Moses had to climb more than 3000 ft. in elevation and he was a 120 year old man! I don't know any 120 year old man who could do this today!

After Moses died, the people of Israel, according to tradition, mourned for Moses thirty days. We also see this happening when Aaron, Moses's brother dies. There is a certain way that Christians should treat the bodies of the deceased. We have to treat them with respect. The burial of Jesus and many others were placed in the tombs, which is part of the earth. The Bible does not say to burn the bodies to ashes, as some other religions do. The bodies of humans are the Lords temple here on earth.

The people of Israel had proved that they needed a leader, so the Lord chose Joshua as the next leader over Israel. Here in this chapter is a Biblical example of the passing on of leadership. To win the leadership in this age, the candidates make themselves look like the saviors of the generation, and when they win, they criticize the last leader and try to make themselves seem better than the last leader. But here in this passage we see a beautiful taking up and passing on of the leadership of the children of Israel. Throughout his life, Joshua was under the tutorship of Moses. Some of the attributes that Joshua had which qualified him for leadership are that he "was full of the spirit of wisdom," his commission was given by God, he was successful with the people, he was faithful to Moses and the Lord. Instead of trying to take the rule of the people and being jealous of Moses, like Miriam and Aaron, He submitted to God's plans for his life.

There are some special things that we see about Moses in the last two verses. First, we see that, like John the Baptist, there never has been or will be a prophet like Moses. Than we see that he was special because the Lord allowed him to know Him face to face(no one has ever lived seeing God face to face). Then the Lord used him to do His signs and wonders. In Numbers 12:3 it states that Moses was the most humble man on earth. Humility and meekness are the marks of true men of God.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Matthew 11:28-30.