Many years ago, A.W. Tozer said, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on, and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.” Since Tozer made that statement in the 1950s, what would he say about the church today?
This is the theme of the sermon for the celebration of our thirteenth anniversary as a church. Our text will be from Acts 2:1-47, which describes the birthday of the Church.

When a person received Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, they also enlisted in the Lord’s army, and they were called to fight against God’s enemies. However, our battle is not with people or the human organizations they represent. Our conflict is with “the rulers of the darkness of this age, [and] against [the] spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And we do not fight with weapons of the flesh, “but with the whole armor of God.”

No believer is safe who faces Satan in his strength alone, but no believer is more secure than he who goes into battle wearing the whole armor of God. This is the subject of our last sermon in this series on “The Believer’s Call to Spiritual Warfare.”

In his book, Gleanings from Genesis, author Arthur Pink said there are more than 100 parallels between Joseph and Jesus. We will look at a view of those parallels in our final Sunday evening service for the year. The title of this sermon is, “The Dream of Joseph – the Revelation of Jesus.”

The Bible never predicts the end of the world! In fact, the phrase, “world without end,” is used twice in the King James Bible – Isaiah 45:17, and Ephesians 3:21. Therefore, when someone says we are near the end, we need to be able to explain to them that, while we will never see the “end of the world”, we have arrived at:

· The end of the church age – The Day of the Gentiles will end with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!
· The end of the current world system – when Jesus comes again, He will rule the world with “truth and grace” – no political systems at all.
· The end of the current natural world – when Jesus comes again, heaven will come to earth as well, as will the tabernacle of God!

The writer of Hebrews referred to a priest named Melchizedek as a pre-incarnate figure of Christ; a man who “resembled the Son of God.” The fact that Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek confirmed his godlikeness.

However, the priesthood of Melchizedek was for a time, and while he may have been the epitome of righteousness in his day, Jesus is the true King of Righteousness, who came to earth to bring peace through His sacrificial death and resurrection. Jesus is also “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek,” but not through his lineage.

This is the subject of our Sunday night sermon, “A King and a Priest,” as we continue our sermon series entitled “Follow the Lamb.”

There is no easy way to say this, but it’s not what happens to us that determines our spiritual maturity, but how we respond. What happens to each one of us is about the same for everyone – “trouble troubles us all,” but how we respond to it reveals our understanding of spiritual warfare.
This is the subject of our next sermon in this series on Spiritual Warfare. The title is “The Believer’s Call to Spiritual Warfare.” In this sermon, we will look at the armor of God we must wear if we are to be victorious in our battle against Satan.

According to an article by Michael Snyder, we are literally on the brink of an apocalyptic war between Israel and Iran. While the current conflict is with Hamas, the main concern is what will Iran do. If Iran gets involved in this conflict in a major way, in my opinion, the United States will have no choice but to come to Israel’s aid, which will cause the Arab countries to retaliate, and we have the makings of WWIII. Since both Israel and Iran have nuclear weapons, there could be massive death and destruction like we’ve never seen before.

This is the subject of our Wednesday Night Bible Study – “The Prophetic Significance of the Israel-Gaza War.”

Dear Heritage Family and Friends,

Sunday evening at 6:00 PM, I will present an hour-long sermon on the biblical prophecies now unfolding in Israel. We will look at the potential for the Psalm 83 war, the desolation of Damascus, the Gog-Magog war, and the Battle of Armageddon.

While all wars are instigated over some temporal issue, all wars between mankind are, at their core, the fleshing out of that divine war between God and Satan; the forces of good and the forces of evil. Therefore, all wars, regardless of their temporal agenda, began in Genesis 3:15 and will end when Jesus returns to the earth and defeats Satan. These wars in the Middle East are setting the stage for the final prophetic events of this age.

Understandably, the war in Israel has captured our hearts and minds, and we must pray for the families of those who have lost loved ones, and for those whose family members are being held hostage. Of course, we must pray for peace to be restored, but true peace is not the absence of conflict, true peace is the ability to trust the Lord even when we are in the midst of the battle.

However, as Christians, we must not allow the barbarity and savagery of this war to capture our hearts and minds, lest we give Satan an opportunity to fill our hearts with the same evil spirit that is in the hearts of the terrorists. “No hate,” said Betsy ten boon to her sister, Corrie, after one of the guards at Ravensbruck concentration camp had beaten her brutally. As Corrie discovered, that which we are unable to do, because of our sin nature, the Lord Jesus who is in us, can do, and will do, if we will yield to him. Hatred is in the DNA of the devil – love is in the DNA of every born again believer!

I have no crystal ball into the future. However, if you haven’t already you best be putting on the whole armor of God. This is the subject of our next sermon in this series on Spiritual Warfare. The title is “The Believer’s Call to Spiritual Warfare.”

Dear Heritage Family and Friends,

Sunday evening at 6:00 PM, I will have an hour-long sermon on the biblical prophecies now unfolding in Israel. We will look at the potential for the Psalm 83 war, and the potential desolation of Damascus.