Author: jgreene

Last night, Wednesday August 27th, the YouthRoom was very intense.  The youth are settling down now that school has started back.  There are some serious things going on in the lives of our youth. And therefore hearing from God’s Word is exactly what we all were needing last night.

We looked at Mark 1:4-15.  I spent a little bit of time explaining that true saving faith is a two-sided coin. John the Baptist, Jesus, and all preachers in the Bible preach that one is saved by believing and repenting.  Just like a penny has Abraham Lincoln on one side and the Lincoln monument on the other,  true faith has faith & repentance.  If a penny only has one of those sides, something is wrong & its not a real penny.  If someone has only faith, or only repentance, without the other, something is wrong & its not a real faith.

Verses 9 & 10 say that Jesus was baptized and that “he came up out of the water”.  I took just a few minutes to explain baptism.  Baptism is a transliteration.  It wasnt translated into english. The reason being is that it means immersion.  Essential to being baptized is going completely under the water.  The water must cover all of you.

Well, John said he baptized with water, and that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit.  We spent a lot of time discussing this and trying to sort out the different types of baptism.

I reminded the Youth of John 16:7 where Jesus tells the disciples that it is to their advantage that He go away.  After dying for our sins and coming back to life, he left earth and ascended to heaven.  After that, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to come and live inside His people.  This happens at the moment someone gets saved.  Whenever someone truly embraces the 2-sided coin of faith and repentance, God makes them new and fills them with His spirit (that is salvation and that is Spirit baptism).  After someone has been saved, they are then to be baptized in water as an outward sign of what has happened in their lives.  Just as Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, so they have died to self and sin, been buried, and risen again to newness of life in Jesus empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit didn’t come to live in people until Pentecost in Acts 2.  So there were some people who actually got water baptized before they had the Spirit.  They believed, John the Baptist baptized them, but they need the Spirit.  Once Christ left, He sent it to them.

I asked the youth frankly, did they have either of those baptisms.

One youth raised his hand and told us he wanted to repent and be saved and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Three more raised their hands and told us they want to be baptized.

Praise the Lord!

Even at 28 years old, I think it is so much fun to try and throw and catch food in your mouth.  We did this last night for the first 10 minutes in the YouthRoom.  It was awesome.  Its interesting how some people can be so good at it and others be so bad.  I had a big bag of skittles and I was just tossing them to all the youth.  Perhaps the most hilarious moment in all of it was Val trying to catch a skittle. I think I cracked her tooth!  It was a pretty good toss and she made a good attempt, but it was maybe an inch off and hit her tooth. Everyone could hear the clanging cracking sound.  We all busted out laughing.

We began a new series last night in Youth.  We are continuing with the K2G theme.  As has been our approach for years, we are teaching through the Bible.  We have been waiting for summer to end and school to begin back so that we could begin this new series.  In support of the K2G, I have found that the Youth most benefit from us teaching through the Bible expositionally. Each and every week from now until we are finished, I will be walking us through the gospel of Mark.

So last night, I did a little intro. to the book.  Mark is the first and shortest gospel written of the four.  Mark’s goal clearly was not to give the most thorough account but to simply produce an account of Jesus.  It is brief, to the point, and often fast paced.  And while it is shorter than the other gospels, it gives the most attention to Jesus’ last days and the cross.

Last night, Wednesday, August 20th, we looked at Mark 1:1-8 concerning John the Baptist.  John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning one who would come and prepare the way for Jesus.  John came preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins.  But we focused on another challenging statement from John the Baptist.

In verse 7, he says “after me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”  What a perspective!  Nowadays, we wouldn’t dare be so foolish or weak to tie someone else’s shoes.  Yet, John says he’s not worthy to.  That is the proper attitude, approach, perspective that we should have toward Jesus.

I asked the youth ‘what position do you have toward Christ?’  I challenged them to have the same attitude and approach to Christ as we see in John the Baptist.  As he says elsewhere “He must increase, but I must decrease.” -John 3:30

Please forgive me for not posting our Bible study from last week. 

Needless to say, it was a tough week.  Pastor Josh’s wife Alison’s sister, Carla died unexpectedly.  I was in the middle of teaching the youth last wednesday night when I recieved the saddening text message from Pastor. 

I continued teaching. I didn’t tell the youth until after church.  Carla was very young and this comes as an absolute shock to everyone.  James 4:14 obviously comes to mind “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”  And then also Psalm 116:15 “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Our deepest concerns go out to Pastor and Alison and their family.  We will continue to pray for them.

I don’t want to say much else. But I did teach last wednesday.  I taught a very serious eye-opening message from Luke 16:19-31 which is the rich man and Lazarus.  I taught on the fact that Hell is real and it is not just a place for bad people.  It is awful.  This passage luminates for us the reality of death and hell and the urgent need to be right with God.

Along with the sudden death of a young mother, I hope and pray that this passage will cause all of us to run to Christ and escape Hell.