The Bible says we are aliens, exiles, strangers, sojourners in this world. We do not belong here. We belong with Him. Once He determines our purpose for being on this earth is accomplished, it is His prerogative to bring us to our true home.

But this soul vacuum which can only by filled by God, is very real and very dangerous because it must be filled. It knows no neutral. Jesus spoke to this once when He said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

One of the reasons we believe David was called a man after God’s own heart is because he so passionately sought after God even though he had all the responsibilities of presiding as King over a kingdom. “Oh God, You are my God, I shall seek You early; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,…” was his increasing passion - Psalm 63:1

You know no one I know, perhaps no one alive in the United States today has ever experienced a full on widespread Revival. The last one was in 1904, 1905.

When becoming righteous in your thoughts and words and actions becomes your passion, you not only will begin to experience that righteousness, but you will receive the satisfaction that comes from being found pleasing to God and being able to be used in His hands.

"....passivity often results from unconfessed and buried sin, which was true of the older ten brothers in their dealings with Joseph some years previous."

Often as God seeks to establish His people and His kingdom on the earth, He chooses to use the natural God given bond of family. Or to put it another way, Family relationships are worth fighting for because God has often accomplished great things through them in human history.

Last Sunday (4/3/22) I preached a sermon entitled, “Learning from God’s Dealings with Abraham and Sarah” from a review of Gen. 12-20 & a...

And may I say that in God’s mind, I believe before He created anything, He deemed that the more diverse the married couple, or family or extended family or city or nation or church – the more diverse the better because again only He amidst such diversity can bring about unity or oneness, and He delights in doing so.

"....Cain’s way was sadly the way of so many today. The heart of secularism, which is the popular religion of the masses today is that of self sufficiency, self righteousness and self obsession. And Cain is really the father of this godless and destructive religion."

Some social scientists such as David Blankenhorn, who wrote the classic, “Fatherless America” believe fatherlessness is the greatest defining factor of the unraveling of our society. And in many ways I would agree with him. But our God as Psalm 68:5 says is a “Father of the fatherless.” And He over the years became my mother’s Father.

What we do know about these signs is they will be way beyond anything we have seen or known before, and will thus cause great dismay and perplexity among all the nations. And strong, tough, self made men will faint from fear as a result.

Jesus rarely ever speaks of end times events without speaking of the kind of godly character and responses necessary to rightly handle such information. The enemy of our souls would have us be mesmerized with the details of the events, ignoring the ethical responses that must accompany the information.

The theme or message of the kingdom of God was constantly on Jesus’s lips and out of the 55 times the word “kingdom” shows up for instance in the book of Matthew alone, only 4 of those times referred to the future or its culmination in heaven. Jesus’s instruction was heavily focused on the now, because it is your now that determines your future in Jesus’s kingdom!

We have an amazing owner! He literally owns everything in the Universe. He distributes everything in the Universe. He is totally hands on. Never selfish, greedy, stingy, distracted, arrogant, unjust, negligent, or partial. Why wouldn’t we want to work for Him? Why wouldn’t we want to entrust everything to Him, and seek to steward His stuff well?

Hypocrisy sucks the life out of the church; it eats away at its authority and it is a huge stumbling block to its children. And thus few things like hypocrisy can cause our Lord and Savior to raise the alarm to His disciples.

He is still very much after that bride who will be the sole possession and glory of His Son. Scripture is very clear that Jesus didn’t just die so that our sins could be forgiven; but that He also died so that our wandering, distractable, divided hearts could be healed.

Jesus’s destiny and ultimate purpose was all wrapped up in this city. Our eternal destiny is centered in what happened in that city. And Luke wants us to know that as the time for this fateful but glorious day approached, Jesus determined, literally “set His face” to go there one last time and fulfill the Father’s will.

I want to say this morning that Jesus’s kingdom will never be established, nor His church built and expanded like He wants it built and expanded until women play their rightful role. But the kind of women Jesus is looking for, and the only kind of women Jesus can build with are women who – like the woman described in the latter part of chapter seven - love Him much - because they have been forgiven much

Pride blinds us from knowing and seeing God as He is. Pride blinds us from seeing the stench and seriousness of our sins as they are. And pride causes us to scorn and detest others whose sin may be more obvious than ours, but certainly is no worse.