Manna on the Mountain

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 3:1-4 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Where Is This Coming He Promised?" The crowd around the cross scoffed and mocked our Lord, and said, “Let him save himself, he saved others.” Here is an interesting observation about life. When people do not understand, or are not in control, or are fearful, they often resort to scoffing, mocking, and making fun of the...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:8-9 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Abounding in These Things." Peter shows us that we must supplement our faith with the Christian virtues because when we possess these things, they can keep us from being spiritually "off," or lacking spiritual growth.  We learn four specific reasons that we need to possess the Christian virtues we've stu...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:5-7 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Adding to our Faith—Christian Virtues (3)." Faith can become so used up, challenged, confronted, overworked, etc., that if not supplemented can lead to atrophy. This is a muscular metaphor. Actually, in the next verse or two, Peter will use an ocular metaphor! Some have seen a progression of these last three virtues, w...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:6 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Adding to our Faith—Christian Virtues (2)." Peter builds on his theme of supplementing our faith by adding the virtues of self-control and patience. Self-control is a fruit of the spirit and Christians do well to apply self-control in the areas of sexual appetites, food, emotion, and our language.  The virtue of patience...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:5 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Supplementing Our Faith."  Peter writes about how important it is to build up our faith by supplementing it with virtue and knowledge. Since God has used His divine power to give us the gift of life and godliness and rescued us from the corruption of the fallen world, we need to work to maintain our spiritual health. We...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:4 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Absolutely Terrific Promises!" God’s divine power has granted to us precious and very great promises.  1.God’s promise of love 2.God’s promise of presence. I will be with you always and never forsake you.  3.God’s promise of fellowship with others. 4.Covenant with the earth—rainbow, no more universal flood 5.Covenant wit...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:3 is the text for this sermon entitled, "His Divine Power Has Granted to Us." God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.  Peter's purpose is to stimulate wholesome thinking—this is crucial to a healthy spiritual life as represented by “deep knowledge”.   This single verse informs us of seven things: 1) God has divin...

Send us Fan Mail James 5:7-11 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Patient Endurance in Suffering." The book of James tells us how important it is to possess the virtue of patient endurance when we are going through suffering.  We learn five Bible truths about endurance: (1) This patient endurance helps us wait for the Lord’s coming (2) This patient endurance helps us in our relationsh...

Send us Fan Mail James 5:1-6 is the text for this sermon entitled, "Injustice and the Ears of the Almighty."  James teaches that God cares about how we get our money/wealth/riches and what we do with it. This almost always involves other people, so there is a strong religious center to the entire topic of business dealings. God cares when people are victimized and treated unjustly so tha...

Send us Fan Mail 2 Peter 1:1-2 is the text for this sermon entitled "A Like Precious Faith."  This like precious faith will have three overarching themes that will be developed in various ways throughout Peter’s letter.   (1) Reminder of the content of our faith.   (2) Ethics—how we live out faith in view of the end times.   (3) Heresy—contending for the faith (similar to Jude) and watch...

Send us Fan Mail James 4:11-12 is the Bible text for this sermon entitled, "Who Are You To Judge Your Neighbor?" Judging is the basis of slander, as we see in Proverbs 10:18, “Whoever conceals hatred with lying lips and spreads slander is a fool.” Note what James wrote earlier in 2:8, "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doi...

Send us Fan Mail James 4:1-3 is the text for this sermon entitled, Why Do Some of Our Prayers Go Unanswered? We need to have a vibrant prayer life that is correctly focused on serving God and others, instead of being viewed as an online wish list where we can order what we want, and angelic Amazon service delivers to our front door whatever we want. A.Motives in our prayer life are crucial. Selfis...

Send us Fan Mail James 3:13-18 is the text for this sermon entitled Two Kinds of Wisdom.  It is a huge step in the life of wisdom and spiritual growth to own up (don’t deny the truth) that we are harboring a bad thought toward another person, and planning on doing something against them. James uses three words to describe this kind of “wisdom”—earthly, unspiritual, demonic. The opposite is true of...

Send us Fan Mail James 5:13-20 is the text for this sermon entitled, "The Prayer of Faith."  This is the final lesson in our series on the book of James. Here, Curtis urged us to pray all the time, no matter the circumstances. James asks four questions, and the answer to each is, "The prayer of faith." He asks, "Is any among you in trouble? Is any among you happy? Is any a...

Send us Fan Mail James 2:14-26 is the text for this lesson entitled, "Living Faith".  In this passage, James contrasts a living, useful faith with a dead, useless faith. Living faith responds to the needs of others and is not satisfied with well-meaning words that are not followed up with commitment to be involved.  So, our faith is not something we just have or hold. Instead, we embrace...

Send us Fan Mail James 3:1-12 is the text for this 12th lesson in the James series, entitled "Can the Tongue Be Tamed?" This is probably one of the most important lesson ever on Christian living!  We can extend James’ definition of true, useful, and valuable religion to this: "True religion watches its tongue to bless others and praise God.” This lesson recognizes the power of the s...

Send us Fan Mail James 2:8-13 is the text for this sermon entitled "Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment."  James tells us that God's royal law provides for mercy over judgment.  There is a difference between doing right things and being a right person, one who cares for the priorities of the kingdom. Jesus faced religious leaders who did not have mercy. It is quite extraordinary, and almos...

Send us Fan Mail James 2:1-7 is the text for this sermon entitled "Favoritism Forbidden."  This passage urges us to  realize  how important it is as we live out our daily Christian life not being guilty of favoritism. From the time we become Christians, we lose our lens of discrimination: Galatians 3:28 teaches “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no...

Send us Fan Mail Text of the lesson is James 4:13-17 for the sermon entitled, "A New Year's Message." Because this sermon fell on New Year's Day 2023, Curtis skipped forward in James to chapter 4 verses 13-17. We remember to temper our prayers with humility and ask for God's will to be applied in greater measure than our own limited, human viewpoint. Only in this way will...

Send us Fan Mail James 1:26-27 was the text for this lesson entitled, "What Is Real Religion?" Curtis spoke on this topic to remind us all that real religion takes into account our “word-life” and our reaching out to the less fortunate, as well as keeping ourselves unspotted from the world.  We must guard against merely "appearing" to be religious, because that makes us more us...

Send us Fan Mail Text: John 20:11-12, Jesus Lives!  Curtis explored the tender history of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in the garden of the cemetery  where Jesus' body had been laid. But the body wasn't there, and the emotional impacts went from despair and discouragement to exaltation and rejoicing. 

Send us Fan Mail Text: James 5:12 In his letter to Christians, James reminded believers that their way of life should be based on true honesty where a simple 'Yes' or 'No' means just that. As God's people we do not need to and should not call upon any basis for swearing to back up our communications.

Send us Fan Mail Texts: Matthew 28:5-7; Mark 16:6; Luke 24:6. He has been raised and is living still! The proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus is central to our faith. This lesson looks at the 6 basic proclamations in which the resurrection of Jesus functions as the foundation of our faith. Because Jesus really was raised from the dead by God, human history has forever been changed. Fundament...

Send us Fan Mail Text: Hebrews 5:1-10. One of the roles Jesus held in his Earthly Life is described in this text as being a priest "after the order of Melchizedek." God had called this man, Melchizedek, to be a High Priest long before God's written laws established that a High Priest must not only be from the tribe of Levi, but must be specifically in the lineage of Aaron, brother o...

Send us Fan Mail Text: Hebrews 5:11-14.  Don't Be Sluggish!  The purpose of this lesson is to be reminded that when enough time passes, we should be mature enough in our faith to teach the word. The word used in Hebrews is translated here as "sluggish" and was used to talk about the numb limbs of a sick lion. If we are spiritually sick because we've neglected opportunities to g...