October 16, 2011 | John Bayles | Go Into All The World: Jesus Is Praying (John 17:1-26)

The last prayer of Jesus on earth contains a wellspring of desire and projection, for his disciples and for us. In this third sermon in the series, "Go Into All The World", we are taken into a most intimate moment – the desire and prayer of the Lord for those who would take the gospel to the four winds of the earth. Far from a mere hope, Jesus prays with an absolute resolve. Today we will hear more than twenty points of assurance and hope from the lips of the Lord as he prays to the Father on our behalf.

October 9, 2011 | W.A. Young | Moses and the People of God (1 Corinthians 10:11)

Moses was one of three men God used to initiate a covenant that was purposed to unfold the revelation of God. Those "covenants"  and their intent would eventually express themselves in the fulfillment found in the Person of Jesus Christ. During their time in Egypt, God was forming them as His people destined to show the nations who God was. While in Egypt, they were being taught a message and how to be the messenger. What God had for them could only be achieved against the background of a demon-driven culture like Egypt.

October 2, 2011 | John Bayles | Go Into All The World: Will The Message Die? (Matthew 28:16-20)

The virgin birth is almost fifty years past. The wisdom displayed by a young twelve year old boy among the leading scribes of his day is remembered by a few. The great preacher made his mark, gathered his flock, but now had gone the way of the martyr: tried, crucified, dead, and buried. The great hope was gone – even those who believed most fervently were crushed, afraid, and hiding. Who would die next? And for what?

September 25, 2011 | John Bayles | Go Into All The World: An Obedient Passion (2 Corinthians 5:14-6:1)

In a time of trial and suffering, the Apostle Paul writes to the Church in Corinth for a third time. In his first two letters, he invested a great deal of time seeking to draw back these new Christians from the brink of the disaster of trying to live as if all the benefits of the resurrection of the Lord had already taken place. The result of this over-realized eschatology (or view of the end) had plummeted the church into unhealthy and ungodly practices of denying the propriety of the marriage covenant and engaging in disruptive and disturbing worship practices more identified with pagans. They had become tangled up in a degrading of marriage, a hyper indulgent view of sexuality, the wholesale speaking in tongues in the guise of being "like the angels", and dishonoring the communion table by drunkenness and gluttony.

September 18, 2011 | John Bayles | The End Is Near (Malachi 4:4-6)

In this last sermon in the series, Malachi leaves the tact of pressing disputes against Israel and turns to the making of two amazing announcements. The first is that Israel must not lose her tether to the historic law of God. Identity and calling were directly and indelibly tied to the Law of Moses and the historic epiphany through which the ten commandments came from Mt. Sinai. To lose their relationship to the law would be to lose their relationship to God Himself.

September 11, 2011 | John Bayles | The Sixth Dispute: A Lawless People (Malachi 3:13-4:4)

In this last dispute Malachi returns to an issue that stems from the continued degrading of the Nation of Israel with Yahweh. In this instance they have ceased to function as the people of the covenant. They have drifted from the rule of law and developed a standard of their own. Injustice and lawlessness is the result. Because the law is a direct reflection of His nature and character, a rejection of it is a rejection of God himself. This the core of the dispute: they have taken unto themselves a law that is self-promoting arrogance, a redefinition of right and wrong, and even holding this standard as better than the Mosaic revelation.

September 4, 2011 | John Bayles | The Fifth Dispute: Return To Me! (Malachi 3:6-12)

Imagine the living God, the Eternal One, the Holy One, the One who created and sustains the universe, the loving, redeeming, and restoring Almighty who created man and draws him into personal fellowship. If we have difficulty appreciating this sentence, then we may very well have some of the same challenges that Malachi found in the nation of Israel. They had lost the understanding of the nature of their God and they had forgotten that He was both loving and just. They had come to think that God was an idea shaped by their personal liking and that He would not hold them responsible to His holy standards.

August 21, 2011 | John Bayles | The Fourth Dispute: The Weariness of Injustice (Malachi 2:17-3:6)

Weariness can be an erosive force. It's power is in delay. As the Proverbs state: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." Waiting for the full restoration of their nation, the people had lost touch with the God who formed them, built them, disciplined and deported them, and finally re-formed them. Sadly, after only a short period of time they had lost touch with their God and lost hope in their historic identity. In this malaise, Israel established their own system of morality and from it their own brand of justice.

August 14, 2011 | John Bayles | The Third Dispute: The Faithless People (Malachi 2:10-16)

Malachi moves from the priests to the people in this third dispute. What is the core purpose of humanity? What did God create man to be and do? If these questions can be answered, then it will lead to an understanding of why God had gone to such an extent to preserve his fallen progeny. We see man's mandate is an understanding of Genesis 1:26, when God stated, "Let us make man to be our image bearer." Far from simply being like God or looking like God, man was to be the reflector of God's communicable attributes: love, goodness, truthfulness, and faithfulness.

August 7, 2011 | John Bayles | The Second Dispute: The Fear and Honor of His Name (Malachi 1:6-2:9)

Though God had demonstrated his love and care for Israel over their entire existence, He, in love had taken them into exile. For seventy years they were disciplined, and, in a remarkable move, God brought them back into their own land, rebuilt their temple, reconstructed their walls and reengaged their temple sacrificial system. This is an incredible and exclusive demonstration of an historic people group becoming literally extinct and then reemerging as a nation state. Who would believe that they would ever forget this mercy or cease to give thanks and honor to the One who brought them through this long pilgrimage? Obviously, Israel had forgotten their own history, and lost their thanks and honor for Yahweh in a few short years.