Bethel Baptist Church

  Scripture Reading: Revelation 1:5,6 What glories are contained in the description of the people of God, to whom the book of Revelation is expressly written.  In Revelation 1:5,6, we have a declaration of what Jesus has done for those who belong to Him … and some results of what He has done. John reminds believers that Christ "loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood."  Because of His...

Scripture Reading: Revelation 1:1-8 From the first line in the book of Revelation, John exalts Christ.  Then, in the first chapter, he describes Christ in majestic terms. Christ is the "faithful witness" … the "firstborn from the dead" … the "ruler of the kings on earth" (Rev 1:5).  Christ loves us and has freed us from our sins and made us a kingdom of priests.  This prompts John's heart and pen...

Scripture Reading: Revelation 1:1-8 This marvelous book, with which the New Testament (and the Bible) ends, is what its name implies.  It is the revealing, uncovering, displaying of the person of Jesus Christ, in all His glory.  Though some of the details in Revelation, presented in the form of symbolism, are not always well-defined, the overall message of the book is clear.  This book is the prop...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 23:1-7 What people say while they are dying is very significant.  They don't talk about the weather or the stock market or the game on television.  They talk about eternal matters. David, "the sweet psalmist of Israel," wrote a song just before he died.  The book of Psalms contains 73 Psalms bearing David's name, but this song is found only in the book of 2 Samuel.  The...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 24 - (1 Chronicles 21) We know David for his great victories and songs . . . and for his great sins.  One rather obscure passage about one of David's sins is 2 Samuel 24 (repeated in 1 Chr 21).  David wanted to number his army, but not for the usual reason, which was to fight a war.  It seems that David simply wanted to see how many men he had for personal delight (2 Sa...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 22 (Psalm 18) Someone once said, "There are two main things we need to learn . . . how to live and how to die."  Having conquered the fear of death, in Christ, sometimes it is life which defeats us . . . namely the multiplied sorrows, sicknesses, emotional turmoil, losses, anxieties we all experience. David knew the strains of life intimately.  In his song in 2 Samuel 2...

Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 29:10-20 Near the end of his reign, King David desired to build a temple for the Lord.  For 400 years, since the exodus from Egypt, the central place of worship in Israel had been the tabernacle.  The tabernacle was a tent which the Jews carried through the wilderness.  Now David wanted to build a permanent structure as the main place of worship for Israel. His desi...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 18 When David gave way to his lust for Bathsheba and his pride to cover his act through murder, there were some things he had not considered, namely the long term consequences of sin.  Sinning against the living God is a more serious matter than we usually think it is and the dark effects of sin are both sure and destructive.  David's sin had terrible effects that he ha...

Scripture Reading: Psalm 3 (2 Samuel 13-16) Sometimes we can read the stories behind our hymns, like the loss of Horatio Spafford's four daughters before he wrote "It Is Well With My Soul."   The stories enrich our understanding of these songs.  One of the things that makes Psalm 3 interesting is the superscription before verse 1, which tells us the background behind the Psalm.  It reads "A Psalm...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 12:26-31 With the daily reports of warfare in almost every corner of the world, we may not expect or desire to come to the Bible and read about wars.  But the stories of Old Testament Israel are filled with accounts of the fierce fighting between the Israelites and their enemies.  This is especially true of the reign of King David, who was described as a "man of war" (1...

Scripture Reading: Romans 3:9-20 This paragraph in Romans forms the climax of the argument of the first major section of the book.  The thrust of the first section of Romans is that the entire human race stands guilty before a holy God.  The pagan man is guilty (Rom 1:18-32); the moral man is guilty (Rom 2:1-16); the Jewish man is guilty (Rom 2:17-29).  What we have in Romans 3:10-20 is a string o...

Scripture Reading: John 11:17-44 One of the most memorable of Jesus' miracles is His raising Lazarus from the dead.  And the story includes one of Jesus' most magnificent declarations … "I am the resurrection and the life" (Jn 11:25).  Certainly, this display of authority and power is meant to be an encouragement to believers, reminding them of their own resurrection one day.  In addition to the i...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 12:13-21 In 2 Samuel 12:13, David heard the words he longed to hear more than any other words ... "The LORD has taken away your sin; you shall not die."  This statement is a display of the indescribable mercy of God.  But the next verse is a display of the holiness of God.  In order to demonstrate that sin carries consequences and that God is a God of justice, David hea...

Scripture Reading: Psalm 32 It is not a pleasant task to look at ourselves as we really are.  It is so difficult to do it honestly that, in fact, we usually do not do it at all, except when we are forced to.  Our natural tendency is to deny anything within ourselves that is uncomplimentary. But confession of the darkness of our hearts is absolutely necessary.  It is not only necessary for emotiona...

Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 11, 12 The story of David's adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah cries out to us with great warning.  If David, the man after God's own heart (1 Sam 13:14), could get to the place in his life that he was capable of such blatant and rebellious sinning, then none of us is immune to the lure of lust and hatred.  We tend to think that we will never be...

  Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 7:18-29  (also 1 Chr 17:16-27) David's response to God's promise to make a name and a house for David is very instructive to us.  David knew God had promised that an everlasting king and kingdom would come from David's descendants (2 Sam 7:19) and his reaction to this promise is worth our consideration. The first lesson for us is that David knew the ultimate reason th...

Scripture Reading: Matthew 12:14-21 It is easy for individual churches to become so absorbed in their own local programs that the idea of missions plays a secondary, and not very important, role.  After all, the programs of any church (Sunday School, children's groups, youth work, music, women's and men's groups, building maintenance) take a great deal of effort on the part of many people if they...

Scripture Reading: Daniel 4 King Nebuchadnezzar was the sovereign king who conquered the remaining kingdom of Israel in 605 B.C. (some 120 years after the northern 10 tribes had already been conquered by Assyria). Tempted to boast in his own strength and military conquests, Nebuchadnezzar had grown arrogant. God sends him a dream with urgent significance for his life, but the king (with all the wi...

Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 13  (also 2 Samuel 6:1-11) One of the first things David did after he became king (following the death of Saul) was to move the Ark of the Covenant from the little village of Kiriath-Jearim to Jerusalem.  The ark of God was the most sacred item in all Israel, representing the very presence of an almighty and holy God.  It was a box, approximately 4 feet long, 2 feet...

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 30:1-8 Everyone draws strength from somewhere outside themselves.  The poet was right when he said, "No man is an island."  Situations confront us every day that demand a wisdom and strength beyond the resources of our own mind and heart.  Some people turn to horoscopes for help … or psychics.  Others read the usually-shallow and always-oversimplified advice in self-hel...

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 29 One unlikely, but effective, strategy David used when running from Saul was to live in a Philistine city.  David fled to Gath and lived there, serving the king of Gath, Achish, for 16 months (1 Sam 27:6).  He even fought battles for Achish (1 Sam 27:8-12) against the Amalekites. When it came time to fight the Israelites, the Philistine commanders were suspicious of D...

Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 21:18-27 Following David's sin of proudly taking an unnecessary census in Israel (1 Chr 21:1-17), God sent a pestilence on the land in judgment.  When David repented of his sin, he desired to offer God a sacrifice of contrition.  When King David came to the appointed place, the owner of the land, Ornan, offered to give it to him.  But David made a telling declaratio...

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 11:17-35 Selfishness was rotting the church at Corinth. Like the Greek mythological character Narcissus who loved his own reflection so much that he died while glaring at it, narcissism plagued the Corinthian church. They used Spirit-enabled gifts to feed their own ego rather than build up one another or glorify God. They prided themselves for their tolerance and i...

Scripture Reading: Matthew 28:16-20 How big is your view of God? Then, how does your view of God color or affect your life? Too often, our theology is divorced from our lifestyle. If your theology doesn't change your life, how much do you really believe it? In one of Jesus's last discussions with his disciples, Jesus gives one of the clearest statements about himself, claiming all authority in hea...

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 24:1-7 In 1 Samuel 24 (as well as 1 Sam 26) we have an amazing story of mercy and restraint and faith.  As he ran for his very life from a murderous King Saul, David encountered two occasions in which he could have taken the life of his jealous pursuer.  David's men even encouraged him to kill Saul, but in a display of faith in God and respect for His established author...