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Showing posts from November, 2006
A Sanctified Life! – Romans 6:8-23 by Pastor Lee Hemen November 26, 2006 Whether it’s preschoolers or puppies, a person often finds themselves repeating phrases over and over. You know like, “Come here. Come here! Come HERE!” or “Stop that. Stop that! STOP that!” I thought that this was the case when I overheard a woman an aisle over at WinCo, a local grocery store, repeating, “You really do not need that. You really do not need that. You REALLY do not NEED that!” I came around the corner expecting to see her with a unruly preschooler in her shopping cart and them having a concerted “discussion” about something that the child wanted to have. I was surprised to discover she was alone. She looked up at me sheepishly and confessed, “I am on a diet and I have to remind myself that I do not really need certain things to eat.” Someone once said that “repetition is good for the soul.” Paul must have adhered to this concept because he is fond of repeating himself concerning certain spiritual t
Sanctification for Life! – Romans 6:1-7 by Pastor Lee Hemen November 19, 2006 At no time did I think that when my best friend and I got caught for taking pop bottles from the back of John’s Grandway, a local grocery store, that we would be told not to do it again and let go. And make no mistake we never dreamed that because we were forgiven the first time that we should press our luck and try doing it again. Yet there are those who actually think this is true! They think that God is their best buddy and that He just kind of winks at sin, because didn’t Jesus die for our sins, and God is love after all, right? This is convoluted thinking. We discover that there were those in Paul’s day who had the same misguided notion about Jesus. They may have not actually believed that what they were saying was true, but they wanted others to think that this is what Paul was teaching about God and His view of our sin. Now before you think I was a Juvenile delinquent and that I made a habit of pilferi
Adam and Jesus– Romans 5:12-21 by Pastor Lee Hemen November 12, 2006 Certain people are very important in our lives. Parents, grandparents, friends, and our church family. All of these become extremely important to our lives because each affects us in someway or another for either good or bad. However, there are others who have effected our lives, yet we may have never met them personally or interacted with them in anyway whatsoever. Politicians, doctors, lawyers, famous persons present or from the past may have affected our lives without us ever having met them. Two such prominent men are Adam and Jesus. they have affected each of our lives, even though we have never personally nor physically met either of them. Paul explains to us exactly how that is possible and the importance what it means for each of us. We discovered within the past several weeks that possessing the Law was no salvation for the Jews. The Law did not remedy the problem of sin but only caused sin to increase so th
What Faith Does -- Romans 5:1-11 by Pastor Lee Hemen November 5, 2006 As parents we send our children off to school in hopes that they get some sort of education out of it. We send them off to college in sometimes a vain hope that they will learn the specifics of whatever they decide to do with the rest of their lives, whether it is medical, professional, legal, or otherwise. That is a desired outcome. In life we invest in certain things in order to gain a specific outcome for our investment. Did you know that the same is true for our faith? In fact, in these next passages of Scripture, we discover that they are especially noteworthy of our day and age where everything is measured by the axiom, “What’s in it for me?” Herein Paul describes for us exactly what our faith in Jesus Christ does for us! We have discovered in the last few weeks that Abraham’s faith was not by works, the law, or by rituals. His faith was in what God promised. We now enjoy the same relationship when we decide t