2020 Sermons

BIBLICAL SURNAMES

By Walt Giddings

August 30, 2020

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2

1 A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.

2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all Adam; and the living will lay it to his heart.

There is so much doctrine in these two verses we could go anywhere in the books of God’s Library. Shall we narrow the scope and lighten our burden? The title of our Fellowship lesson is “Our Name”.

Proverbs 22:1: A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches and loving favour than silver and gold.

“A good name is better than precious ointment.” Why would a pedagogue, whose history is doing lessons on Bible Biology, lead a lesson on our family name(s)? Biology has a great deal to do with family. It starts with DNA, genes and chromosomes, who gets whose blood on transfusions, right down to what we eat. Family is biological.

Amos 3:2: You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.

The Hebrew word translated “families” is translated elsewhere as “kind” and “kindred”. Even a nation is described as a body of people who all have a common ancestor. Each of us has family. Because of the evils of this life a few of us are a family of one. Yet we have family. Our family name reveals we have family. What is a surname? What is your surname?

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

August 23, 2020

Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 21:1-3:

What is one thing that you know about Manasseh’s father—Hezekiah? Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the LORD God; his son did just the opposite. Hezekiah ruled for 29 years over the kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom was taken captive by Assyria by the end of Hezekiah’s sixth year of reign. The northern kingdom was placed in the land of Assyria where they eventually went on to the lands of the northwest. Why were they captured? Because “…they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed His covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded, and would not hear them, nor do them” (2 Kings 18:12).  But what happened to the southern kingdom?

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

August 9, 2020

Scripture Reading: 2 Timothy 3:4 “Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God”

We are living in a world that is up-side down in its moral activities.  What used to be a sin is now politically correct. The BLM movement is one of the communistic change agents that is trying to transform our nation.

by Jim Jester

August 2, 2020

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 14:33

“For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”

Introduction

When the Covid scare began earlier this year, I thought to myself, “I’m tired of hearing about this; just go away, I never want to hear about it again.” Perhaps you felt the same way, for it signaled in our minds the beginning of what we have known most of our lives: the dreaded New World Order of anti-Christs. This is how they are pulling it off, through a rampant disease (or so it would appear as such). We did not know how they would pull it off: by war, disease, economic collapse, or other emergency. Now it is upon us and it is not going away. Therefore, we must deal with it.

All that is happening in America is part of a well-planned concoction: from the very top of wealthy bureaucrats, to the Deep State attack on president Trump since the election of 2016, to the Impeachment, to Covid, to lockdowns, and to lawlessness in the streets by Communist agitators. All these work together for evil to the benefit of those who hate the Lord. Therefore, Christian people must reject all these things, not just piecemeal, but in total.

by Walter Giddings

July 26, 2020

In 1 John 3:2, why does the composer John, the beloved disciple, say “now”? Was there ever a time, then, when the sons and daughters of Adam were not the sons and daughters of God? Was there a time then, a time past, when we did not have sonship and were not family? The title of this lesson is Now and Then. Why was Now not true then? The long title of this Lesson is "Why Now was not True Then".

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS BACKING DOWN

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

July 19, 2020

Scripture Reading:  Nehemiah 9:26 “Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against Thee, and cast Thy law behind their backs, and slew Thy prophets which testified against them to turn them to Thee, and they wrought great provocations.”

In the above introductory verse, who do the pronouns “they” and “their” and “them” represent and who does “Thee” and “Thy” represent? Who is Nehemiah talking about? You can’t understand what the prophet is saying unless you understand who the pronouns stand in place of in the sentence.

The story of universalism is based on the common ancestry of all people. You have heard these precepts of anti-Christ doctrine constantly: All races are created equal. All races are descended from Noah. All races are descended from Adam and Eve. Every one of earth are brothers to each other.

Where are the verses in the Bible that back these statements up?

by Jim Jester

July 12, 2020

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 32:43

RT's 2018 WW2 Documentary Corrects Distortions of Anglo Media – Michael Bateman, Russia Insider, May 9, 2020

Revisionist debates about WW2 are raging as the old media hegemony disintegrates, and others have a chance to present their side of the story. On the Russian side, you have the argument that it was the Soviets who did the lion's share of the job, and don't get enough credit for it. Ukrainian nationalists argue that they were on the right side in joining Hitler against the evil Bolsheviks. And conservative voices, including in Germany, are arguing that Hitler never wanted war and that the war was forced on him by England and the US, who did want it; and that among other things, the Holocaust never happened.

RT's documentary film division makes a high quality contribution to the debate supporting the Russian view. It contains extensive interviews with German historians confirming much of what the Russians are saying.

IS HOMOSEXUALITY A SIN?

Copied from the sermon notes of Don Elmore

July 5, 2020

Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 14:24

There were several articles in the Cincinnati Enquirer that were disturbing to me since my last sermon. The first one was from the June 27, 2020 Sports page, in an article entitled, “CLUBHOUSE ALLIES; Reds' pitchers use platforms for Black Lives Matter support:

Cincinnati Reds' pitcher Matt Bowman doesn’t have a large social media platform. He has a little more than 2,000 followers on Twitter, with most of his tweets from four or five years ago.

With people protesting around the country for racial equality, Bowman felt it was a moment when he needed to speak out. He was inspired by social media posts from outspoken Black players around the league and wanted to publicly show support for them. He reached out to teammate Jesse Biddle, who had nearly 9,000 followers on Instagram, and a few other players about matching donations to social justice charities, like the NAACP, Equal Justice Initiative and the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with a clean-up fund in Minneapolis…”

The Worst Decision I Ever Made With Respect to Eternity.  How Jesus Got Me Out Of It and What I Learned Along The Way

by Walt Giddings

June 28, 2020

The last time we met on the topic, Foundation. I testified that in my sophomore year in junior college, October 1964, I watched the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy, Frederick March, and Gene Kelly. Because of Inherit the Wind I decided the Bible was a beautiful book of fables, for which I was not responsible, for which I had no accountability.

From the age of nineteen in October 1964 to the age of thirty seven July 1982, I wallowed in doing things every way but God’s way. Isolated at the house I was losing, I decided to read this book I bought a year ago, Miracle on Main Street by Tupper Saussy. On page ten it quotes Deuteronomy 25: 13-15. When I finished, I went back to page ten and read again the Bible verses. I now understood a Scripture from the Bible that had been a closed Book to me. If I had understood that Scripture I would have been a wiser steward of the household dominion. The thought occurred to me, what else is in The Bible?

Psalms 25:8 Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

God was teaching me, a sinner, and I was not worth the powder to blow me to kingdom come! Tis mercy all!

by Jim Jester

June 21, 2020

Scripture Reading: Matthew 24:21

Introduction

This continues from where we left off in Part 5 of our series on WWII, so our verse is the same. Most of us have never experienced such tribulation as we have been studying about; for this we are truly grateful to the Almighty. There may well come a time that such things come to America, and indeed, it appears that things are going in that direction. Yahweh help us as we lean upon Your grace and deliverance.