Bethany Church Columbia

#DeathHasNoPower

“The point here in verses 23 to 26 is this, death is no match for our king. Death to Jesus is, in fact, like sleep. It's temporary to Jesus. It's reversible to Jesus. That's good news because just a couple years later, Jesus, as he said he would be, was taken away. He was placed in a tomb, but he didn't stay dead. After three days in the grave, he rose.”

#EternalHealing

“When we see Jesus, all indwelling sin will be removed. We will be made perfect both behaviorally and bodily. If we've lost our ability to walk like the paralytic did, we will regain it when we receive our new bodies in the new heavens and the new earth. The question for the believer is not, will Jesus heal my body? The question is simply this, when will he heal me? That's it.”

#BeTheLight

“And what's made clear in both Isaiah 42 and Matthew five is that God is the one who makes this light. In short, what Jesus is telling us is to be what you are. If I were to give you one main idea to take away from today, it's simply this. Be the light that God has made you. You didn't make yourself light. God made you light. Now, just be that.”

#JesusSaves

“God is in the boat, and he's coming back. Is he more amazing than fall foliage or ravens overtime wins or sheet cakes that taste awesome? Is the amazing reality that Jesus stepped down to earth to spend himself for us, then sacrifice himself at the cross where he goes and he bears all the wrath that all of our sin deserves. And through his pierced hands and feet, we can be forgiven. And it's through his blood that we're entered into a new covenant, an unbreakable covenant, a a bond of peace that's made between a holy father and us as imperfect creatures.”

#NewHeartInChrist

“But then, let me remind you that the most important miracle God can do is the miracle of taking a sinner with a heart of stone and making them new, giving them a heart of flesh. For scripture tells us that everyone who was made new in Christ will one day receive a resurrection body which has no ailments. And it also tells us that everyone who rejects Christ will spend eternity separated from God in hell regardless of whether or not they got their healing on earth.”

#FearOfGod

“What he's showing us is what we know to be true as well. If you just try to fix yourself with some behavior modification and say, here's 10 steps to doing what I know I should do, it always disappoints us. But only the fear of God has the ability to uproot the idols that we'd otherwise worship. Only the fear of God has the ability to remind us that God who reigns over us also comforts us. Only the fear of God can reorient and re script and redirect your entire life to be for the glory of God.”

#TrustGodsCall

“He doesn't often give you a guarantee that the thing he's leading you to do is going to work out. He just says, this is what I want you to do. Will you trust me? Requires faith. It requires a belief that the only way you fail is to be like Jonah and run from the Lord's calling. So I just wanna ask a young person, what is God calling you to pursue in this season?”

#TrustGodsPlan

“But Solomon says, just as we can't explain that, we do not know the work of God who makes everything. We do not often know what God is up to. We do know what God is calling us to do. We just don't know how he's gonna use it. We don't know how he's gonna use the things he calls us to, and then it gets hard. And we're like, God, I don't understand why you'd call me to do this, and then it got hard, but he has a purpose in all of it. If we can just acknowledge that not understanding how everything is supposed to work is the way it's supposed to be, we can break free from the paralysis that can come when we think we must have all the answers before we proceed in investing our lives in the way that God calls us to do. We just invest and leave the results up to God.”

#ChristTheTrueKing

“See, Solomon talks about life under the s u n. But you and I know that he was pointing toward a better king, one greater than Solomon, one who embodied the power the wisdom of God, the s o n of God, Christ Jesus, who came to earth, who lived the sinless life, died the sacrificial death, rose to offer us this new life that we could never dream of on our own. And one day soon, he's gonna return and restore all that is shattered in this life under the sun.”

#UnshakableInChrist

“This is what wisdom looks like. Recognizing that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, placing our faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross, and then by God's grace, following him for the rest of our days. Yes, we're gonna face storms. Many of those storms we never will see coming. But if Christ is our foundation, we will never be shaken. And when that one storm comes that we all know is coming, death, we will then spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. It's the one sure thing for those who are in Christ.”

“His point here is that if God provides for birds, which are of much less value to him than we are, will he not provide for us? He then asked a question in verse 27. It's a sobering question. In which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? I think the point of him asking that question is to tell us that the type of worry or anxiety he's talking about is counterproductive. It's not wise planning, which the bible encourages. It's ruminating. It's acting like we actually have the ability to think through all the possible things that could happen and then control the future. We can't. The truth is even the duration of our lives is in God's hands.”