Red Village Church Podcast

Red Village Church

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where a wooden cross and an empty tomb mean everything

2d ago

Moses Confronts Pharaoh – Exodus 7: 1-13

Audio Transcript All right, well, beautiful singing. Thank you, Adam and man for leaning to song. So if I've not met you, my name is Aaron and I'm the preaching pastor here and glad that you're with us today. And so as you heard, we have special visitors with us. So Robert and Lindsay and their family. So Robert was a church planning resident with us. Him and I actually were like good buddies all the way back to seminary. So they were here for four years and now we're starting a church in rural Tennessee. The place place called Cowan. And so they'll be sharing a little bit more about their ministry and a youth mission trip that we took this summer after church at Potluck. We'd love you to join, but it's not just them that are here. So Kelsey and Sarah are here as well. And so they're a part of Red Village for a long time. Sarah's actually part of our staff helping out with our kids ministry. And they're known for a lot of things, but especially the vbs. And so we were a little worried this summer how we're going to do VBS without Sarah and Kelson, but we pulled it off somehow and. But we're glad that they're with us with us today as well. So if you have a Bible with you, if you'd open up to the book of Exodus, their texture studies and come From Exodus chapter 7, verses 1 through 13, if you have a Bible, or if you don't have a Bible with you, there are pew Bibles scattered throughout and it's on page 28 if you want to turn there. And so we do a style of preaching here called expository preaching. And so what I'm going to do, I'm going to read the text, going to pray, ask the Lord's blessing on time, and then we're going to work right back through the text. And I'm going to do my best is to try to explain the text to you in ways that hopefully apply to your life. And so Exodus 7, verses 1 through 13. And I'll be reading out of the ESV, so please to hear the words of our God. Moses wrote this. And the Lord said to Moses, see, I've made you like God to Pharaoh. And your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak that all that I command you. And your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I'll harden Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I'll lay my hand in Egypt and bring my host, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out my people of Israel from among them. Moses and Aaron did so. They did just as the Lord commanded them. Now, Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh saw says to you, prove yourself by working a miracle. Then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff, cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down the staff before Pharaoh and his servants and became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned his wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff and they became serpents. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Still, Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. So that's God's word for us this morning. Could you please pray with me? Lord, it's good to be here. And Lord, there's many reasons why we can and should be here this morning. But the main reason why we're here is we want to hear from you, from your word. So we pray that through the power of your holy spirit, you indeed would speak through your word, that you would touch our hearts in ways that you would grow our hearts to be more like Jesus. And you grow our hearts to put our faith in him in deeper ways than when we first walked in. I pray this all in Jesus name. Amen. So for some, as you remember, as we start out this summer series through the beginning portion of the life of Moses that's found in the book of Exodus, we actually started with the end of Moses life, where I gave you a sermon found in Deuteronomy 34, which detailed the last days of Moses life, where Moses died with God's people who have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years because of their sin, where they were on the verge of entering into the promised land, where Moses had been leading them for the entire 40 years. And just before that passage, it shares those details of Moses end of his Life in Deuteronomy 29. So a few chapters prior, we read one of Moses final acts as the leader of God's people, where Moses basically sits God's people down and recounted to them some of the past 40 years, starting with them being set free from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, which part of our text today is part of that freeing? And as Moses counted the past 40 years, where God was good to them, where they were faithful and fail, or a sinful and failed God, Moses then led God's people to renew the covenant, the law that God made with them first at Mount Sinai, recorded in Exodus 24, which is a covenant that the previous generation actually first made, but woefully failed to keep. And in 29, as a covenant, chapter 29, as a covenant renewed, Moses shared some great wisdom with God's people in verse 29, which is a passage that really is a piece of wisdom, that one that I've actually thought about often in my life. So just hear what this says. It's Deuteronomy 29. 29. It says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do. All the words of this law, and this wisdom from Moses is one, I think meant to help to keep our trust in the Lord by being. Trusting him as his faithful people to his good plan, which is a plan that's actually a secret to him in terms of, like, how this plan will be played out, or like, why he is doing the things he is doing as he's working out his plan. And because this is a secret plan, one that we do not fully know, or maybe even more so fully understand when it's happening, it can be hard for us to trust in him sometimes from our very limited perspective, things just don't always make sense with the plan. For Moses, this is where wisdom is found. Trusting in God, trusting His plan, trusting to the very things that belong only to the Lord, but also in that plan. While we're trusting in the secret things of the Lord, the things that God does give to us, that he does reveal to us, that have been made known to us, like things like his commands, like wisdom that we can acquire. So these things in life like, that belong to us, like we should walk in them. So in short, we are to trust God, especially when things don't make sense and he's working out the plan that don't make sense, we're to trust in him while still being faithful to God. And the things that we know that he would have us to do. So that's the wisdom from Moses that he was leaving God's people. As I mentioned, I've actually thought about this passage pretty Often in my own life. Because in my own life, I'm sure many of you here, we know this reality of that the secret things that belong to the Lord, some of those things are really hard for us to understand. And it makes it hard for us actually to live out our faith with things that we do know in ways that honor Him. And that's why I share this with you, because I've wondered how this passage we're about to work through Today in Exodus 7 was perhaps, maybe in part on Moses mind, as he years later wrote Deuteronomy 29:29. We're in our text today. Moses is like trying to be faithful to the very things God gave him to do. Things that were in line with God's promises. Yet in the secret plan of God, things are not like turning out in ways that Moses perhaps thought they would, at least not right away. We're in the moment as these things are not adding up. It had to be hard for Moses to trust the Lord. And by the way, it's not just our passage today where this is true for Moses. If you read through the entire book of Exodus, I guess this is actually true for a lot of Moses life. Like he's trying to be faithful to the things that belong to him that God would have him to do, while trying to trust in this plan that only God knows that wasn't really making sense. He's trying to trust indeed, even though it didn't make sense to him, these things would come to fruition, even though in the moment they were not working out the way he hoped. So now before we get into our text, just a reminder where we left off in our study. So we actually started off in Exodus 2. This is a few weeks back where God's people, the Hebrew people, were in the bondage of slavery in Egypt. And in Exodus 1 and 2, as you may remember, the Pharaoh of Egypt was like on a murderous rampage as he directed like all the baby boys of the Hebrew children to be murdered, which led Moses mother to do that which she knew to do, where she tried to be faithful with that which belonged to her. So she put Moses in a basket and floated him down the Nile, not knowing what would happen from there. Yet in the secret plan of God, according to his providential hand, the basket where Moses laid floated right into the hands of the daughter of Pharaoh, who took Moses up and actually raised Moses to be her own as a prince of Egypt. Then for 40 years of living as a prince, somehow became known to Moses that not only was he actually A Hebrew. But he had this burden to help free God's people who were slaves in Egypt. However, with this knowledge that was given to Moses, instead of being faithful to trust in God, it appeared that Moses like, started to trust in himself. And so he tried to take matters into his own hand. And he murdered an Egyptian, burying him in the sand. Which led for Moses to like, flee Egypt, where he would go on his own per
Jul 12

He Came for the Sick – Matthew 9: 1-13

The post He Came for the Sick – Matthew 9: 1-13 appeared first on Red Village Church.
Jul 5

God Promises Deliverance – Exodus 6: 1-30

Audio Transcript Elders here and I get the privilege of preaching for you guys this morning. So quick announcement before we get too far. It is a holiday weekend, so we don't have our full kids ministry as usual. So we have, we'll get all the kids in here today. So we got snacks and activities over there kind of where you walk in and then if, if, you know, I got four boys, we only got two here today. So I get it. If they get a little antsy and we need some more room to run, you can go through this back door here, you know, kind of turn back around this way. But we have a meeting room down there where I think the service is projected and just, just some space for the kids to move and you can still follow along with the service. So, yeah, like I said, my name is Rob Fisher, one of the elders here, privileged to. Privilege to preach for you guys today. And so every summer we try to give Aaron, our main teaching pastor, the at least eight weeks off or so out of the pulpit. We think it's important for a couple reasons we want, you know, the Bible says that elders should be, should be able to teach. So we try to get all the elders in here and we also elevate. We elevate preaching, not the preacher. You know, we think it's important not to. We love Aaron. We love the faithful week. He does faithful work. He does week in, week out. But we think it's important to, to be developing other voices and not just be only receiving the word from, from one guy. Now I will say Aaron is preaching his campground this weekend. So they've done a lot of faithful ministry there and we're excited they can do that. So just an overview today we're continuing our series through the book of Exodus. So we're in Exodus chapter 6 today. So we'll start out by reading the text. We'll pray together. Then we're going to work through the text together really line by line. And Lord willing, after we're done working through it, we'll put some main points to it and some themes and we'll see how God is going to use the life and the story of Moses to inform us how we should live in the here and now. Right? So again, we're in Exodus chapter 6 today. We can go ahead and turn there. Continue, continue to the book of Exodus. We're doing this summer. We're going to follow the life of Moses. God has been calling him to be a, to be a part of delivering the Israelites out of Egypt. And we're going to we're going to pick up here in chapter six. So this is the word of the Lord. But the Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand, he will send them out. With a strong hand, he will drive them out of his land. God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians sold as slaves. And I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord. And I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. With great acts of judgment, I will take you to be my people. And I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you for possession. I am the Lord. Moses. Thus. Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel. They did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. So the Lord said to Moses, go in. Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the people of Israel go out of his land. Moses said to the Lord, behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh, king of Egypt. To bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. Now these are the heads of their fathers houses. The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel. Hanak, Palu, Hezron and Carmi. These are the clans of Reuben. The sons of Simeon, Jamil, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohor and Sha'. Ul. The sons of the Canaanite woman. These are the clans of Simeon. These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generation. Gershon, Kohath and Merari. The years of the life of Levi being 137 years. The sons of Gershon, Libni and Shimei. By their clans, the sons of Kohath, Amram, Ishar, Hebron and Uziel. The years of the life of Kohath being 133 years. The sons of Merari, Mahil and Mushi. These are the clans of the Levites according to their generations. Amram took as his wife Jochebed, his father's sister, and she bore him Aaron and Moses. The years of the life of Amram being 137 years. The sons of Izar, Korah, Nepheg and Zikri. Don't know about that one. Sons of Uzziel, Mishael, Elsaphan and Sitri. Aaron took as his wife El Shaba, the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon. And she bore him Nadab, Abuhu, Eleazar and Ithamar. The sons of Korah, Asir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These are the clans of the Korahites. Eleazar, Aaron's son, took as his wife one of the daughters of Phutiel, and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the fathers, houses of the Levites by their cleans. And these are the Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their host. It was they who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt. This Moses and this Aaron. And on this day, when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you. But Moses said to the Lord, behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me? Let's pray. Lord, you're grateful for your word. Grateful that we get to learn from it and study it. We're grateful that your word, it studies and examines us as we study and examine it. Grateful for the life of Moses and the story of Moses. We pray that we would be faithful learners of it. We're grateful that you've sustained this church. And we ask that you would. I ask that you would help me speak your truth. Clearly. We don't come here just out of. Simply out of practice. We want it to be beneficial for the building up of your church, beneficial for the equipping of your saints. And. Yeah, we just pray that it's for your glory and for the. For the good of. For the good of those who know you. And it would be a means of evangelism for those who don't. So it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. So Exodus 6 is just a. It's just one chapter in the larger Moses narrative, right? So before we can focus on the, on the details of this passage, we have to remember where it sits within the larger story. So if we come to chapter six, without considering the setting of Moses life and his calling and the recent events, we're going to miss a lot of the weight of what God says here. So the Bible, right, is first and foremost a book about God and God's work to bring redemption, restoration to a fallen and rebellious and sinful people. And in this section of Exodus, though, God is in the process of bringing his people out of slavery in Egypt, and he's using Moses as his church chosen instrument. And because of that, we get this kind of like mini biography of Moses. So chapter six should be read as a chapter within a larger story. It is an isolated scene, but we can't. We can't really understand that isolated scene without the broader context, right? So before we work through chapter six, we need to. Just briefly, I want to look back briefly at Moses life and just see what's brought him to this moment. So, so Moses was an Israelite boy. He was born into an Israelite family while the Israelite nation is enslaved in Egypt, right? And when he was born, there's an Egyptian decree that says, you know, all the Israelite boys need to be killed. The Israelite nation is becoming too strong. Moses, however, was miraculously saved by his mother. He's eventually adopted by the Egyptian royal family, and he grows up in the Egyptian royal household. He's 40 years old. He's an adult. And Moses, he's somehow knowing that he's actually an Israelite, and he's seeing the slavery and the oppression of the Israelites, his true people. He stops an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite by murdering the Egyptian, right? And the day after his murder, Moses realizes he's like, I am in trouble. So he flees, he settles in a foreign land. He lives out. And he lives out 40 years, the next 40 years, right, as a shepherd in Midian. So he has a Midian wife, he has a Midian family, he has an occupation, and he's made a life for himself in this. This foreign land. Now, while Moses is being a shepherd, he has an encounter with God. God charges him to be the means by which God takes the nation of Israel out of Egypt. And in that encounter, Moses raises a lot of objections about his own shortcomings for the tasks. We're going to get into more. We're going to get into more of those shortcomings as we continue. But just know that Moses had a lot of questions and concerns about the task that God is giving him. And in response to Moses concerns and questions, God gives Moses powerful signs and miracles to demonstrate his power. And God also gives Moses the help of his brother Aaron to act as Moses spokesman, since Moses is always expressing his concern over his inability to speak well. Right? So that initial exchange between God and Moses is like all of chapter three and half of chapter four. Then at the end of chapter four and through most of chapter five, Moses then is acting on God's command to go back to the peop
Jun 28

Making Bricks Without Straw – Exodus 5: 1-23

Audio Transcript Everyone, it is so good to be with you all. My name is Zeke Wetstein, and I've been here at Red Village for going on about seven years now. So my wife and I, we weren't married then, but started coming to Red Village in our first years of college at uw. And now Cassie, who's over there, and I are both on staff with InterVarsity at UW Madison, and we work with college students to help them to encounter Jesus and to learn what it means to follow Jesus with their whole lives in college and for the rest of their lives. So we help lots of Bible studies, lots of evangelism to take place on campus, but, like, right now, we're in the thick of summer, so all the college students are home. It's kind of hard to believe that we're already almost through with June. So happy late Father's Day to all the fathers in the room. I actually got to celebrate my first Father's Day last week, so baby Howie is over there now. I have celebrated Father's Day for my father before, don't worry, but it's my first time as a father. It's a joy to get to preach to you all this week and bring you the word. But first, I have a story for you. The Qing Dynasty ruled China beginning in the 1600s. And although it was still an empire by the 1800s, it was a shadow of what it once was. With the massive population growth, increased government corruption, famine, poverty, and many other woes, the once shining empire was beginning to crack. The west helped to further break down that empire. Western Europe wanted tea, silk and porcelain, but China yet had no need for any Western goods. So Britain found themselves pouring silver into China to get the things that they desired, but with nothing being bought from them in return. And any economist you could probably ask will about this too, could tell you that this economic plan is not going to work long term. So the British solution was to grow opium in British controlled India, smuggle it into China, and then have a naturally recurring demand through the opioid addiction that would ensue among the Chinese population. Now the British had a reliable means of regaining their silver in trade. The British would smuggle in opium, get paid, and then use that money to buy tea and silk and porcelain, the things that they wanted. China, however, saw the way that this influx of opium was socially destructive, draining the economy and corrupting their population. However, the Qing Dynasty tried to put a stop to the opium being brought in by the British. The British responded in full force, bringing in their navy to force the Qing Dynasty to sign a treaty putting the British in control of trade and of Hong Kong. Hudson Taylor was born in England in 1832, and although born into a Christian family, it is only when he turned 17 that he came back to faith and decided to follow Jesus with his life. He also felt God's call to go to China as a missionary. However, he wanted not only to bring the Gospel to the people of China, but to serve them as well. So he spent the next few years training to be a doctor. And so it was in 1853 that Hudson Taylor journeyed into China, and we must remember his context. He traveled to a country that received him as a foreigner, someone who was part of this opium crisis, part of the wars brought against them, part of the forced trade deals. He came into China being seen as a Westerner who had only selfish intentions and desired nothing good for China or for her people. He was also walking into a missionary culture that showed very little interest, care, or respect for Chinese culture. But this is how he engaged. For the first six years in China, he, like all the rest of the missionaries, dressed like Western Europeans and stayed only in the coastal cities. It was during this time that he fell into extreme loneliness and hardship. Hudson Taylor continued to use his skills as a doctor to help the people of China, but found his witness to be not bearing much fruit and felt totally isolated by the language and cultural barriers. In his deep loneliness, lack of missional fruit, and social ostracization by the Chinese people, he began to reflect on how he and the other missionaries had been engaging, or rather not engaging, with Chinese culture, and how the inland parts of China, which contained the majority of the population, were almost totally unreached by the Gospel. As he continued to struggle, he also became sick and eventually had to travel back to England in 1859, in the midst of the Second Opium War that was wreaking havoc on China. So we're going to leave our our story of Hudson Taylor and the Qing Dynasty here. For the moment, we're leaving him. He's a passionate follower of God who saw a people in need who were being oppressed by his own people. But his efforts to help them resulted in little fruit and in him being beaten down and worn out. So over the course of this summer, we have been studying the life of Moses. A few weeks ago, Aaron opened our series by showing us the end of Moses life. Aaron helped us to see who Moses would become. Moses as the leader of all of the people of Israel, leading them out of Egypt through the wilderness, helping to deliver God's law to them and bring them to the promised land. Wes then brought us the story of Moses birth. So we backed it up to the beginning. He helped to preach the story of God's hand in Moses early life. How God used faithful women to save Moses and bring him up in Pharaoh's own household. Will then gave us a double header. Preaching on Moses fleeing and then encountering God with the burning bush. So for those of you who are very familiar with the Prince of Egypt, this is all taking place after Moses races through the streets of Egypt on a chariot. As a teenager we didn't cover that passage in our sermon series. So Will helped us to see how Moses murdered an Egyptian in an effort to try and help his people, the Hebrews and then in fear ran away into the wilderness. God then met him through the burning bush, revealed himself to Moses and told Moses that he was chosen by God to be sent to to free the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. Then two weeks ago we had Rob Fisher Premium Mitch is kind of like Rob Fisher, but with more stories and less ads. And he preached on God's equipping of Moses. He helped us to see every time Moses was nervous or anxious or had a reason he couldn't go, wasn't the guy God helped to prepare him and send him. Then the passage right before this one, which we didn't actually get to cover last week. So chapter four 18 through 31 is all about Moses return and this commissioning by God on Moses. So as we're leading into our passage today, what's going on is God is sending Moses back into Egypt. God is sending Moses to be the person to free his people from slavery and to bring them into the promised land. Right before our passage, Moses speaks to the elders of the people of Israel and shares the words and the signs that God gave to him to prove to his people that I am is bringing his people out of Egypt. And the people, the elders of Israel became excited and were on board with this escape plan. Very excited for what God is going to bring through Moses. So our full ark as we're leading into our passage, Moses birth and redemption. Then we see his fall and his fleeing from Egypt. We see his appointing by God, his equipping by God and then finally his commissioning as he is sent back into Egypt. Alright, so our passage for today is Exodus chapter 5. We'll be going through the entire chapter. You can follow along with me in your Bibles. Exodus 5:1 23. Afterward, Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. But Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go. Then they said, the God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. But the king of Egypt said to them, moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens. And Pharaoh said, behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens. The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as in the past. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past, you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, let us go and offer sacrifices to our God. Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words. So the taskmasters and the foreman of the people went out and said to the people, thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least. So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. The taskmasters were urgent, saying, complete your work, your daily task each day as when there was straw. And the foreman of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, why have you not done all your task of making bricks today and yesterday as in the past? Then the four men of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, make bricks. And behold, your servants are beaten. But the fault is in your own people. But. But he said, you are idle. You are idle. That is why you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks. The foreman of the people of Israel saw that
Jun 21

Jesus Heals a Man with a Demon – Luke 8: 26-39

Audio Transcript All right, well, beautiful singing and happy Father's Day to the fathers here. And it's a very important job that you have. And I hope that it's something that you're really striving to do faithfully and to really serve your children well in many ways, but particularly by pointing them to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so if you have a Bible with you, if you turn on to the Gospel of Luke, there texture studies will be Luke 8, 26, 39. If not mentioned. My name is Aaron. I'm the preaching pastor here. And we're really glad that you're with us today. So Luke 8, verses 26 to 39. And if you don't have a Bible with you, that's on the pew Bible, it's on page 500. There we go, page 505. And if you're visiting. So we do a style of preaching called expository preaching. So I'm going to read us the text and I'm going to pray and then we're going to walk ourselves right back through the text. So if you open your Bible, please keep your Bible open. Okay, so Luke 8, 2639, please hear the words of our God. That's what Luke wrote. Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite of Galilee. When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, what have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most High God, I beg you, do not torment me. For he commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles. But he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert. Jesus then asked him, what is your name? And he said, legion, for many demons have entered him. And they begged him to not command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered. The pigs and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told the city and the country. Then people went out to see what had happened. And they came to Jesus, found the man from whom the demons had Gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed in his right mind. And they were afraid. And those had seen it told them how the demon possessed the man had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the garrisons asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, return to your home. Declare how much God has done for you. He went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him. Okay, so that's God's word for us this morning. Would you please pray with me? Lord, I pray that you would bless this time. Please help me to be a good communicator of your word. Please help me to not stumble. Please keep me from error. Help me to speak truth. Lord, please be with the congregation. Please give them ears to hear what you're saying to us through your spirit, through the power of your word. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Okay, so if you've been here at Red Village for some time, you know that we're in the midst of a long sermon series to the Gospel of Luke, which is a series that we hit the brakes on a few weeks back for us to look at a portion of the life of Moses found in the book of Exodus, where we have been looking at Moses life from his birth to the start of his ministry, a ministry of leading God's people out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt to take them on a journey to the promised land. You should remember that from birth to the start of this ministry actually covered like 80 years of Moses life. Now today as we gather together, we're actually hitting the brakes on that sermon series on Moses, mainly because Ben, who is scheduled to preach today from the end of Exodus 4, which is a kind of a wild passage, got sick at the end of the week, so unable to talk, therefore unable to preach. So we're hitting the brakes on that series of Moses to reengage in the Gospel of Luke, to go back where we left off in our study there before. Lord willing, we will once again hit the brakes on Luke next week to re engage in Exodus. We were planning to be for the next few weeks after that before, yes, we hit the brakes on Exodus, the life of Moses, to reengage the end of summer back in Luke. That's where we're going today. So because it's been a little bit since we've been in Luke, I thought Today might be a good for us to maybe spend a little bit of time reminding us where we've been in this study, particularly maybe some of the strong information of the Gospel of Luke. So the Gospel of Luke is one of four accounts that have in Scripture of the life, death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's Matthew, Mark and John being the other accounts. This account to be referred to as Luke is because it's written by a man named Luke, who we see in other parts of scripture was a doctor as well as a missionary and it seems likely he was a Gentile, which refers to someone who is not Jewish. Where it seems likely that Luke came to faith through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Sometime around the details of Acts 16, which you may remember Acts is also written by Luke. So it says part two, Acts is part two of a two volume work. So Gospel of Luke 18. In Acts there are two books of two volumes of this basically same work which we see in beginning of Luke was written first to a man named Theophilus, who Luke addressed in chapter one as like most excellent Theophilus. Now we don't know anything about this man, but because of his name, Theophilus was most likely a Gentile as well. And because he referred to as most excellent Theophilus seems likely he was a man of importance, of influence, maybe some type of political or military leader. And as Luke wrote to Theophilus, the contents of the book where we can seem to conclude is that Theophilus either was like strongly considering the Christian faith, strongly considering putting his trust in Jesus, or that perhaps maybe he was like brand new to the faith and now Luke is trying to like disciple him in the faith through this book. Furthermore, for the sake of review, as Luke wrote this book or this letter to Theophilus, he did so with the desire to give an orderly account of things that took place concerning the life, the ministry, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which Luke did by interviewing eyewitnesses, those who were like physically present when the Lord Jesus walked the earth in his incarnation. It seems likely probably would interview other Gospel writers, particularly Matthew and Mark. It seems likely that Luke also would have interviewed like disciples who were there for the public ministry of Jesus, including our text today. To me it seems likely that Luke even interviewed Jesus's mother Mary, among others, who Luke interviewed who were present during the life of Christ, maybe even the man in our text today who's on the receiving end of incredible life changing work of Jesus. Perhaps Luke like interviewed him to get this story and there's obviously a lot more I could say here, but before we dive back in, just let me remind us where we were when we stopped our study, when we hit the brakes. So if you may remember, this is several weeks back, but we were in chapter eight and we walked through a story where Jesus got into a boat with his disciples and they were set to cross the Sea of Galilee, seemingly headed to where our text tells takes place today. But as you may remember, as he started to cross the sea, a huge storm basically came out of nowhere, a storm while Jesus was actually asleep in the boat. And at first, disciples tried to like get through the storm on their own strength, their own wisdom, their own experience, their own power. However, in time, they realized there's really nothing they could do to save themselves from the storm. They were helpless, they were hopeless. They needed Jesus to save them, which is really the truth for all of us in every situation that we're in, particularly when it comes to our own sin. We can't save ourselves. Only Jesus can save Pastors last time the disciples finally realized, accepted their helpless, hopeless state. They turn to Jesus, they woke him up, whereas he got up, calm the storm and saved him simply by the power of His Word, which caused the disciples to marvel at Jesus, to have like great fear and awe as they began to worship him and the power that he alone holds. As mentioned today, we're going to pick up where we left off, where Jesus and disciples are still in the boat, still headed to the other side of the lake, where once again our text today we can see the power of Jesus Christ on display. Power that once again will cause others to marvel at him and worship him, which I hope is true for all of us here this morning. Okay, so if that was an intro, please look back with me at the text starting in verse 26. And so he's going to walk right back through. So we see that after Jesus calmed the storm, so he and his disciples were still in the boat, setting sail for the country of the Gerasenes, which is the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee. As mentioned, this seemed to be like the intended destination when they got in the boat. In the previous text, our passage today, as the ship landed on the shore, we see that Jesus got up out of the boat and Luke tells us that he stepped out of the boat onto the land, which for us, at least for me, you know, Luke including this detail of Jesus, like getting out of the boat and as it hit shore, stepping on the land, to me this almost feels like, almost like a

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Sooo excited!

11/23/2011

21nichole

I was so happy to find Red Village on iTunes! I was just in Madison visiting a dear friend and we visited her church. I was so challenged by the message and wanted to share it. Now I can!

where a wooden cross and an empty tomb mean everything

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Red Village Church
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2011 - 2026
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