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God's love and our duty! - Galatians 2:11-21 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 26, 2016 There are folks who confuse God's love with carte blanche which does not exist anywhere within the pages of Scripture. The love of God for us is founded in the person of Jesus and he was not some quasi mushy-hearted let it go good time fella. God does not wink at our sin in any form nor is he accepting of our halfhearted excuses for deliberately trying to circumnavigate our way into his presence through our own convoluted view of who he is. The Bible makes it plain that the gospel is all about God's love and our duty. Paul knew this to be absolutely true. While God accepts anyone from any circumstance he does not accept their sin. In fact, God sees it as abhorrent and totally contrary to his holy nature. This is why Paul got so upset with those who were trying to lead the Galatian Christians astray and back into a works oriented faith practice. And Paul was not afraid to stand up to and toe...

Set apart! - Galatians 2:1-10 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 19, 2016 What do you do when folks spread awful rumors about you that are not true? What do you do as a believer when others spread unfounded rumors and lies about Jesus or your brothers and sisters in Christ? Recently the local media did a story about a "Christian" pastor who related that Christians are to be accepting of anyone and that this was what Jesus preached. Sounds good until you realize that the pastor was gay and was saying that the message of Jesus meant inclusion of ungodly lifestyles, which it does not ever. The good news is not about everybody getting along and accepting each other's perverted proclivities. We are set apart to preach the good news that God has sent Jesus to save those who are lost in sin and separated from God. Paul fully understood that and knew that if people tried to add to the good news or to take away from the simple gospel message they were to be thoroughly condemned. Pau k...

Paul's past, present, and future! - Galatians 1:11-24 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 12, 2016 Everyone who comes to Jesus has a personal testimony they can relate to others. I came to the Lord one night at work after a co-worker and friend challenged me to read the Gospel of John. I went out at lunch, purchased a Bible, and begin reading it. I could not put it down. The next evening I accepted Christ on my own in between a couple of noisy greasy machines. When I speak of Paul's past, present, and future of course what I am talking about is his personal testimony. It is perhaps the most famous Christian testimony there is and Paul uses it on several occasions in his letters in order to get across the particular lesson he wanted his readers to learn. So this morning as we look at Paul's past, present, and future let's learn from his testimony in order that we may gain some insight in using our own. READ: Galatians 1:11-24 There are those in our world today that think ...

The scolding! - Galatians 1:6-10 By Pastor Lee Hemen June 5, 2016 What would you do if a family member or friend was about to join a cult that would cause them and their family a lot of distress? Sometimes there is nothing one can do because most folks are often unwilling to admit they are wrong and especially about what they believe about God or their spirituality. I have learned in the 30 plus years of pastoring that you can often have the answers, know all the counter arguments, and even understand how to witness to someone involved in a heretical situation but it often does little to sway them unless you are willing to go the extra mile and be there each time they need to be confronted or have their questions answered. Sometimes what works best is a direct confrontation, maybe even a personal scolding. Paul was deeply concerned for what the church at Galatia had fallen into. After accepting the good news of Jesus as Messiah, they had readily forsaken the truth and supplanted ...

The greeting! - Galatians 1:1-5 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 29, 2016 Depending upon the reason for the message we may use the salutation of "Dear", "Sir or Madam", "To Whom It May Concern", "Folks", or the name of the person or persons we are addressing. Sadly, many greetings have gone out of vogue do to instant messaging or texting and email. And it is important to note that many young people do not understand the importance of a formal or business style of greeting when putting together correspondence for a job or college application. This is because our world has become way too lax in how it addresses others or the politeness, articulation, and education of what these kinds of greetings infer. Galatians, though one of Paul’s shorter letters is highly respected as one of his greatest and most influential. Since both Romans and Galatians teach the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide), it has been seen as a shorter version of Ro...

The judgment of God! - Joel 3:1-3, 6-8, 9-13, 14-17, 20-21 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 22, 2016 None of us likes to be judged by anyone, and especially by God. In fact there is a societal heresy that thinks that God should never judge anyone. I oversee a blog that I have edited for over a decade now. It deals with my own comments on society, politics, theology, and I upload my sermons to it as well. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had folks argue that I could not counter their arguments because as a believer I could not judge them lest I be judged! This is utter hogwash. Jesus' command to not judge others dealt with a hypocritical judgment without first taking care of one's own problem in the same sin arena. We can in fact "judge" others by their words, actions, and deeds. And certainly God will indeed judge all people everywhere when he returns. Joel had been up until now trying to get his people to repent and return to God. Now he focuses on all nat...

Return to the Lord! - Joel 2 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 15, 2016 Coming home is often never easy, especially after you have left and wanted to make it on your own and then you have to return and make amends. A good example of this is the story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus related to his followers as found in Luke's Gospel. Yet each of us could probably recount tales from our own lives at how we ran away when we were young or left home as young adults only to return and have to make some kind of amends or correction with those we returned to. The Prophet Joel related to the Israelites that they had to return to the Lord whom they had forsaken. Whenever the Israelite people faced trials or threats the priests were to call the people out in order to gather them for whatever purpose was needed. Sometimes it was for battle, sometimes for a public announcement, and sometimes it was for spiritual purposes. Here, I believe it was for the later. The Israelites needed to return to the L...

Weep over your sin! - Joel 1 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 8, 2016 My mother was a small bundle of fire that one did not cross. She is the one who made us march out into the yard and cut a switch off the lilac bush for our own whoopin'. If you do not know what a "whoopin'" is then you do not understand punishment. Her philosophy that is sadly lacking in our day and age was the punishment should fit the crime. We were never sent to our room, given a time out, or restricted from watching TV. Our punishments were dealt with immediately and a spanking consisted of only a couple of swats. In fact, we were expected to take our punishment and not "carry on" about it. Mom would remind us to stop our crying or she would "give us something to cry about". She knew we had to weep over the wrong we had committed or we would not quit doing it. Being remorseful was part of what was expected. One had to weep over their sin. We live in a day and age where far too m...

Forgiveness! - John 21:15-25 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 1, 2016 My father asked us what we should tell our mother when had not come home right away when she called. I grew up in a day and age when mothers would stand outside of their front doors and holler down the street for their children to "come home, it's dinner!" The only phones we had were the rotary dial kind and most children actually played outside and walked home by themselves! We both automatically responded, "Sorry." My Dad remarked, "Being sorry is not good enough, you need to apologize to your mother." Saying your "sorry" is totally different than being remorseful or repentant. The first is more of a response in order to deflect any consequences for our wrong doing or ungodly behavior, while repentance comes from being inwardly broken and open confession. Forgiveness cannot happen without repentance. Impulsive Peter had vehemently said he would never deny Jesus and of course...