Bethel Church

We are getting to the end of our current series entitled 10 Words every Christian should know — today we are we are going to take some time and talk about “faith” even though we spent a lot of time dealing with that word last week in our discussion of Justification. Last week if you remember we said that Justification is being declared righteous by God and the grounds for this declaration is faith or believing. The verse we looked at for most of our time is Paul’s quotation of Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4; “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” and we looked at the first part of that verse for some time — and he believed — or and he had faith — really it is the same word in Greek. But let’s take just a few minutes here at the beginning at talk about the nature of the faith that we are talking about. Really the idea of faith or believing is a little bit difficult for us because of how the words are used — we say things like “well you just gotta have faith” or “just believe” as if the universe around is us is fundamentally friendly at the core so things might get better — when we say these things what we are really saying — whether we realize it or not is that — we believe faith is merely hope held onto tenaciously even in the face of difficulty. “I know that you are going through a difficult time — you just have to keep your head up.” This is faith without any corresponding object of trust — and this is not faith as far as the bible is concerned — do you see what I mean though?— when we say, “just believe and things well get better” or “You just gotta have faith” there is no object of trust clearly defined — faith is what? Faith in faith perhaps — and that is just nonsense.....

Sunday Sep 14, 2014

September 14, 2014 - 10 Words Every Christian Should Know: Justification

Sunday Sep 14, 2014

Romans 4:1-5

Very simply justification is God’s action of pronouncing sinners righteous in his sight. It is a matter of being forgiven and declared to have fulfilled all that the law of God requires of us. To say that Justification isn't practical would be pretty far off base then wouldn’t it?— really what we are doing is asking the very practical question: How can I be right with God? How can a sinner like me be accepted by and holy and righteous God?

Sunday Sep 07, 2014

September 7, 2014 10 Words Every Christian Should Know: Grace

Sunday Sep 07, 2014

Ephesians 2:1-10

And this is the great tragedy of today — the meaning of grace is really not appreciated in a lot of christian circles. For the past 100 years or so the subject has been neglected by some groups and handled very poorly by others — and the centrality and the importance of it that so many in our past fought so hard to pass on has almost vanished in the lives of some groups. Of course the word — the word “grace” hasn't vanished — we use the word as part of our vocabulary and we sing songs with the word — and we know it to be important we just do not have any idea why. One of the — if not the greatest need today in our churches across America is a renewed awareness of what the grace of God really is.

Sunday Aug 31, 2014

August 31, 2014 Ten Words Every Christian should Know: Reconciliation

Sunday Aug 31, 2014

Monday Aug 25, 2014

August 24, 2014 Ten Words Every Christian Should Know: Depravity - Isaiah 64:6; Romans 3:9-20

Monday Aug 25, 2014

You see Depravity isn’t something that is only external from us — something that we are immune from — it is something that plagues US — it is who WE are on this side of Christ coming back and our obtaining resurrected bodies. So when we are talking about depravity today — we are not only talking about the evil that makes the headlines — we are talking about our own — mine and yours — our tendency toward evil. This is a principle that Christians really universally agree on — let me see if I can explain.

Monday Aug 18, 2014

August 17, 2014 Ten Words Every Christian Should Know: Election Romans 8:28-30

Monday Aug 18, 2014

This doctrine — just as we saw when we looked at God’s sovereignty and His holiness — ought to lead us to humility and worship — not pride - or presumptuousness — complacency— and laziness. The fact is — when this doctrine is introduced in Scripture - in far more places than you might think by the way - when this doctrine is taught it is for the purpose of showing us how great the grace is that saved us — it is taught to move us to the correct response of worship - to live a life worthy of the Gospel in humility.

Monday Aug 11, 2014

August 10, 2014 Ten Words Every Christian Should Know: Holiness - Isaiah 6:1-7

Monday Aug 11, 2014

Holiness - this is our second word in our series “10 words every Christian should know” - and it is a big one - and difficult to grasp - you see when we talk about holiness - or the holiness of God - we are talking about how God is “separate” how he is “other” - see on the one hand we all say, “yes we know that God is separate and different that when we are - we are not Gods - He is. But to grasp what the Bible means when it talks about holiness goes much further

Tuesday Aug 05, 2014

August 3, 2014 - What is Your Treasure? 2 Kings 5:15-27

Tuesday Aug 05, 2014

Kenneth de Wet