Luke 10:17-24: Reasons for Rejoicing
The Christian life can be depressing at times. Ecclesiastes 1:18 gives us a reason why, ‘ For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.’ The more truth you have, the more you realize how bad things are, and that can be depressing. We can get depressed because of the internal love that we still have for sin and the way we continue to sin. We get depressed because we see so much suffering so much of it self-inflicted as people live without God. We are sad because the God we love is not...
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Luke 8:26-39: Power to Deliver
We are all familiar with the concept of power, we just have to think of the country of China and we have an immediate picture of power, it has economic power, military might, it represents one 7th of the world’s population. We can think of past powers like the USSR; Hitler; Napoleon; the USA at the height of its powers, but power to do what? Power without goodness is perceived to be a threat. Christ has power and authority, Christ as the vice-regent of God has ascended to the right hand of God and been given all power and...
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Luke 4:31-37: The Authority of Jesus
A biblical counsellor tells of a couple he was counselling: ‘Cynthia, a woman I counselled, once cast a demon from her toaster when it failed to work! More seriously, she and her husband Andrew had a remarkable—and remarkably destructive—way of arguing with each other. For the first five minutes they warmed up with the normal person-to-person bickering. But at a certain point, when the fighting turned nasty, they shifted gears and wheeled in heavier artillery. They would bind, rebuke, and attempt to cast out demons of anger, pride, and self-righteousness from each other. In Cynthia’s words, ‘I saw the...
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The Perspectives on Spiritual Warfare
Outline Fanaticism Materialism Introduction C. S. Lewis once wrote: ‘There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.’ We begin our new series on Spiritual Warfare by looking at the spectrum of views, it is my hope today that you will situate your present position on this spectrum and will move...
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Revelation 9:1-12: The 5th Trumpet
Outline The nature of the locusts The torment of the locusts Introduction Do you believe in demons? If you say yes, then you will be laughed at in our modern secular society. What the bible describes as demons are thought today to be the outdated prescientific imaginings fabricated by our fear of the unknown. The idea is that what we now know is bacteria, germs, mental illness, genetic defects, etc., were once credited to be the work of demons. The idea is that the poor benighted people didn’t know any better and personalised nature. This is not the view...
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