God's Faithfulness: The Promise and Power of Salvation

1) "And that covenant says that the Lord God has special plans for Israel. They are supposed to be a light to the nations. To tell the nations who God is. And to call all people to place their faith in Him. And if they are faithful to do all of the things that God tells them to do, and they do not turn aside and worship other gods, then He will be their God forever. And they will dwell in that promised land forever. However, if they turn away from the Lord in sin, and they worship other gods, then He says they will be disciplined. And if they persist in their faith, in their turning away from God, then He will turn away from them and take them out of the land." [24:09] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "But the problem, problem that people seem to have with Jesus is that repentance piece. That's a little bit of a sticky wicket. Because Jesus defines sin much more broadly than they were used to thinking of it. Jesus says that the law of God is summarized in two commands. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself. And He goes further when He says that what truly matters isn't just the deeds that you do, not just the words that you say, not just the sacrifices that you bring, but what truly matters is what lies in your heart." [30:37] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Now they justified it to themselves, saying that it was better that one innocent man die than it would be for them to lose everything that they had built for themselves. so they arrested Him in secret. They tried Him in secret. And through political pressure and maneuvering, they had Him nailed to a Roman cross to die. But the thing is that Jesus knew what it was that they were trying to do. He even told His disciples what would happen. And He submitted Himself to it." [32:36] (32 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "And on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Spirit came in power, enabling the disciples to speak in languages that they didn't know, as a sign of the power and of the authority to proclaim the Good News, the Gospel, the coming of the Kingdom of God under King Jesus, and their authority to call all people to repent of their sins and to place their trust in Him. And on that day, the Church of Christ was born. And out of those 120 faithful disciples who had gathered together, 3,000 people placed their faith in Jesus and were baptized on that day." [34:30] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "And so for them, there's no other way, there's no other way, that he could have been healed other than the Lord God to reach down and to touch him. But if somebody today experiences that sort of healing, and I do believe that God can and does heal people, but that healing is often met with joy by believers, yes, skepticism by most, and apathy by others. Because in an age where there's a pill for everything and a surgery for the rest, and everyone is trained to be skeptical of everything, healing isn't a sign, for us, the way that it would have been for them." [42:03] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "See, we live in a time and a place where nobody ever admits they are wrong. They may know they are wrong, and they might get caught in it, but they will never ever admit it. And you've seen it. People do something wrong, and then they get caught, and then they deny, and they deny, or they justify and justify, long after everybody knows what really went down. So in an age like that, repentance becomes something that really catches even the most skeptical atheist off guard. And we can do that. We can repent of our sins to the people around us, because we believe, as Christians, that our worth and our value isn't tied to our success or our failure, but our value is found in Jesus' success in our place." [43:11] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "What sort of a sign would it be to the world around us if we, as the people of God, repented wholeheartedly and completely of our sin? I think another sign that we should be seeking in our lives is peace, that peace that passes all understanding. Again, the world around us is filled with outrage and with fear, and that is being exploited and fueled by everybody under the sun for their own purposes. And so what if we, as the people of God, cultivated a spirit of peace in the face of turmoil? To be unperturbed by the things that the world says we should be afraid of or angry about?" [43:45] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "And if we will just wait until the end when he does finish telling the story, then we will find that he has indeed healed every wound and righted every wrong. And we can be confident of that fact because Jesus died and then he rose again. And if we will follow him in repentance and faith, if we will share in a death like his, then we will share in a glorified eternal life with him as well. So this man's healing is a sign of the nature of the kingdom." [50:07] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9) "Yes, we were dead in our sins, but God, because of his great love for us, has raised us to a new life, a kingdom life, an eternal life. And we enter into this life by his grace. It's not because we've done our very best. It's not because we've achieved some arbitrary standard of goodness. It's not because we've avoided all of the really bad stuff. But we are welcomed, welcomed into this eternal life, every one of us, as a gift freely given by God to sinners who deserve death. And we enter into that life, Paul says, by faith, by believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, who died for our sins and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven and is one day returning to make all things new." [52:58] (61 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10) "Now maybe you, dead in your sins, can't be patient. But if you've placed your faith in Jesus, then the same Spirit, that made this man walk, dwells in you, teaching you, and training you to be more patient. Maybe you cannot forgive. The Holy Spirit, friend, is at work in you, training you, and teaching you, not just to forgive, but how to be reconciled, even, to your brother who has wronged you. Maybe you cannot love the way that you are supposed to love. The Spirit, though, lives in you to empower you to love God and to love others the way that you never thought that you would be able to. In your life, live in the power of the Spirit to do the things that were impossible for you to do before." [55:14] (54 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)