Calvary Pentecostal's podcast

There’s one guy who is so preeminently an example of a life of faith that three religions look to him as the paragon of faith. That guy’s name is Abraham.  Here’s the story of Abraham’s life: God said, “Get out!” Abraham said, “Where?” God said, “I’ll tell you later. Just go.” The Lord said, “I will give you this land.” Abraham said, “When?” God said, “I’ll tell you later. Just wander around in te...

Abraham had greatness in the face of a completely uncertain future. He had no idea what was coming, and yet he lived a life of greatness. How can we?  The writer of Hebrews is writing to a group of Christians whose lives were going very badly. And in chapter 11, he says to them, “You don’t understand. The great men and women of God have never had designer lives. Yet they lived great lives.” And Ab...

Enoch is a very mysterious Old Testament figure. God took him right to heaven without him tasting death—because he walked with God. What’s so special about walking with God? In the garden of Eden, in the beginning of time, God took long walks with us every evening. And yet the minute human beings disobeyed God, they couldn’t stand intimacy with infinity anymore. Humans no longer walk with God. But...

Many of us are wondering how we’re even going to face Monday, but the men and women in Hebrews 11 didn’t just know how to face life—they were enabled to even go against the whole world. And the thing that enabled them was they were commended by God. Abel got the commendation from God—he was shown God accepted him as absolutely righteous, and as a result, he became one of these great hearts who can...

Christian faith is more than thinking, because the Christian message, the gospel, is much more than an idea. It is not just an idea; it’s a power.  The gospel bears fruit in you. It’s a living thing. But how does faith move from being an idea to being a power? You stop just believing in God and you start believing God. Noah shows us the way.  Hebrews 11 shows us that Noah does three things that br...

The Bible tells us faith begins with thinking. The Bible says faith requires and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost.  Nowadays, we’re told by our culture from the time we’re very little that the big questions—what is real, what is right and wrong, and what we should be living for—are questions for the philosophers....

What is faith? What is it made of? How do you know if you have it? How do you lose it? How do you get it back? Hebrews 11 deals with all of these things through specific personal case studies of men and women who wrestled with issues of faith. I would suggest that it’s the easiest to understand the parts of faith as three layers, one of which comes first, then the others resting upon it. But the r...

One mark of a supernaturally changed heart is a changed attitude and view of races and cultures.  In social relations, grace-changed Christians use their power to serve, not exploit. We’re going to look at this by looking at a dispute that happened in the church of Rome, and by comparing it to another dispute. These passages show us 1) the problems that culture poses, 2) the solutions, true and fa...

Some people say there’s a cultural crisis of integrity.  For example, Volkswagen was revealed to have deliberately used software designed to lie about emissions. It was a failure of integrity from one of the biggest corporations in the world. And some of you may be yawning, thinking that’s just the way things are. But the Bible says a supernaturally changed heart rejoices with the truth. Let’s tal...

When the Greeks and Romans met the early Christians, one of the first things that surprised them was how Christians handled suffering.  Christianity brought into the world a view and a way of handling suffering that the world had never seen. It was one of the evidences of a supernaturally changed heart. And in Romans 8, a passage that looks at all the benefits of salvation, we learn a lot about su...

What are the characteristics of a supernaturally changed heart? You can be very moral and active in church and still be an incredibly impatient, bitter person. So we’re looking at what Paul says are the marks of a supernaturally changed heart. And for this, Romans 12 is an explosive passage.  Let’s look at what this passage says about 1) patience and graciousness in life in general, and 2) love an...

Most of us know how to restrain a life. We start to get in trouble, so we change. But when the consequences go away, we snap back the way we were.  Human nature without supernatural intervention is like a rubber ball that’s squished, but when the pressure is off, it snaps right back. The rubber ball was constrained. It wasn’t actually changed or reshaped. 1 Corinthians 13 is about how you actually...

There is nothing that beggars your own sense of wisdom than to study what the Bible says about divine wisdom. Ephesians 5 tells us a lot about wisdom. And it shows us that biblical wisdom puts God in the center in a way that develops three aspects of wisdom. We see in these verses 1) why we need to walk in wisdom, and 2) what it means to walk in wisdom. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Kell...

Ephesians 5 talks about light and wisdom. Paul says that because you once were darkness and now are light, you should now expose works of darkness and experience the fruit of light. Then in verse 15, Paul says that we are to walk as wise and not as fools, for the days are evil. What Paul is saying is that walking in wisdom is the way in which you expose the deeds of the darkness. In these verses,...

The essence of Christianity is arguing with yourself. What makes you an effective Christian is that you’re continually arguing with yourself, and you’re winning the argument. Because of what Christ did, God can restore the world and restore everything if we come to him through Christ. And in Ephesians 5, Paul uses the imagery of darkness and light to argue with us about how we need to be living: “...

Christianity is never a mechanical thing. And the church is not a morality agency—it’s a regenerating agency. The real goal of the do’s and the don’ts in the Christian life is always character—growing into God’s holy people. The church does bring about moral behavior but, in a sense, as a byproduct. Because what the church is after is to turn people into saints, to create a kind of person. In Ephe...

Whenever God turns to you, if you believe in him, all he sees when he looks at you is complete beauty and sweetness. Jesus Christ offered himself up and fulfilled all of the obligations we owe God, so he has completely satisfied God. God sees nothing and senses nothing but sweetness when he regards you. But you still live in a world twisted and broken by sin. And you have to deal with the realitie...

If you look at the particulars Christian teachings, the particulars don’t look that different from many other ethical systems. The difference is that Christianity is never interested in moral behavior simply as moral behavior. In every instance, putting on the new self means to remember your identity. Being a Christian is ultimately about being melted with spiritual understandings of who you are n...

Christianity has an amazing approach to lying and to anger that almost nobody else has. For truth-telling, it says truth must always be told with love. And for anger, it says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Paul doesn’t say, “Well if you get angry, it might be okay.” He says, “Be angry. Do it.” Very often it is wrong not to be angry. But then he turns around and says, “and sin not.” It must mean two...

A good test shows you what you really are, what’s really in you. If you’re in denial, the tests are devastating. If you’re dropping the ball, the tests are traps. Jesus says the only way you’re going to come through the tests of life is if you seek God. How are you doing right now? Are you going through and failing the little tests, and are you setting yourself up for failure of some big test in t...

In this passage, we finally get to a particular kind of prayer in which people are very interested: to the place where Jesus says prayer is a way to change our circumstances.  Prayer makes a difference. You can come to God and say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But notice this happens in the very middle of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s surrounded by all sorts of other concepts. And you can’t under...

I’ll say it consciously: this is our worst nightmare. More than anyone else in history, modern people believe we ought to have a good life and we ought to have some control over our lives. But Jesus says when you connect with God, you must pray, “Thy will be done.”  This means the purpose of prayer is not that we would bend God’s will to meet ours, but that we melt and soften our will into God’s....

What does it mean to hallow? It’s a word virtually never used anymore in everyday English, but we don’t quite have an equivalent.  To hallow something means to treat it as sacred and ultimate. It means to make something your ultimate concern, to make it the most important thing, to make it the most crucial thing, to make it the supreme beauty, the supreme aim of your life. Jesus says this comes fi...

Jesus doesn’t just point the way to God—rather, he is the way to God because he’s risen. And that means that for Christians, prayer is a unique, radically different process than it is for other religions and philosophies.  Prayer is a rather universal thing, and there are many ways to pray. But Jesus says there are really two different bases on which you can approach God. He’s not talking about wh...

The Psalms is the divinely inspired prayer book, but when you open this prayer book, the first page is not a prayer. It’s a meditation on meditation. Meditation is not the same as studying the Bible. In studying the Bible you’re just learning information. Meditation takes what you’ve learned and does something with it. And according to the Psalms, meditation is actually the key to prayer.  Psalm 1...