The sermon of June 30th 2019 is now available on the New Life web-site.
In this sermon, which is based on 2 Kings 5:1-27, I talk about pride and greed.
Click here to listen in your browser, here to download the mp3
Month: June 2019
Mario Murillo: :”Still thinks its a game”
The Democrats have made it plain: free healthcare for illegals paid for by you. They are not hiding anything. They want the right to kill newborns. They will force the church to stop teaching God’s word on sexual immorality. They will remake America. We see their true colors. They couldn’t be any clearer.
What I don’t get, is how the American church can still think this is all a game.
Because of man, and nature—planet Earth is ready to explode—not from global warming but from moral cooling. Matthew 24:12 “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”
Meanwhile, the church—like passengers partying on the deck of the Titanic—pats herself on the back for what she considers her ‘big events.’
Nothing has stopped America’s headlong depravity. Nothing has even slowed it down. We have spent more money, more time, and more talent than ever—yet the church never asks, “Why do we keep doing things that don’t work?” Why can’t we impact culture?”
When the church:
-Feeds a powerless Gospel to a sick nation, a Gospel that does not deliver us from evil, but even worse, makes those who have already been converted still weaker, the church must think it is a game.
-When the church no longer views the works of Satan as the enemy, but believes the worst thing that can happen is to have an unsuccessful life—the church is just playing a game. The only solution is a return to the Bible. The Bible needs to set fire to our sermons.
Sadly, even many of my Spirit-filled acquaintances are also playing games. Facebook is like a Petri dish for Pentecostals. In one compressed medium you witness the banal bacteria that excite Charismatics today.
Read the rest here
Which War Are You Fighting?
I read a lot of political and cultural commentary blogs. As you might imagine there has been a lot written about Israel Folau over the last few weeks.
For somebody who is apathetic about sport generally and Rugby Union in particular, I have written a lot myself about Israel Folau.
It is clear that many of the so-called “quiet Australians” who ignored the self-appointed political and cultural elites last month to vote in a Liberal/ National Party Government, are now ready to revolt against the moral standards the same elites have bullied us into acquiescing to. That much is clear from the huge support for the appeal to fund Folau’s legal fight.
For christians it is time to wake up and start fighting not just the cultural war but the spiritual war that is at the heart of this.
Writing at xyz.net.au David Hilton wrote a sentence that stuck in my mind:
The reason Christians have kept losing the culture war of the last fifty years is because we’ve been fighting a culture war while our enemies have been fighting a spiritual war.
https://www.xyz.net.au/unlike-globohomo-christianity-isnt-a-religion/
He goes on to describe how the progressive left has all the hallmarks of a religion- a moral code, sacred places, deities, proselytism (what we call evangelism), judgement and excommunication. Because it is a religion, not merely a cultural construct, it cannot be fought as a culture war.
This is very much a spiritual war that will define the future of this nation. Will we let satan crush the church or will we crash through the gates of hell?
My fear is that the church will continue in its sleepy way, neglecting the spiritual weapons at its disposal while the enemy continues in its mission to destroy us.
It’s been long said of western churches that the prayer meeting is the least attended activity of the church. I know that’s true of most churches, including my own.
Wake up christians! We need to pray as never before, not just for Israel Folau but for every aspect of our culture. We need to open ourselves to the direction of the Holy Spirit so that we can tale on the forces of darkness and shine the light into the world.
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”. (2 Corinthians 10:4,5)
Reflection on Galatians 5:13-25
Scripture
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead use your freedom to serve one another in love.
Observation
We have been called to freedom, but it is a freedom to do right not freedom to sin. Our flesh fights against the Spirit, so that we are not free in ourselves to carry out our good intentions. But when we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not under any obligation to the Law of Moses or to the desires of the flesh.
The sinful nature manifests itself in all kinds of sexual immorality, idolatry, anger, ambition and such like. The Holy Spirit produces Christ- like actions in us such as love, joy, peace, and so on.
As people living in the power of the Holy Spirit, we should let the Spirit dominate in every part of our lives.
Application
Christ has brought us freedom from every kind of bondage. Now we are called to live lives of freedom. But it is not freedom to sin. That would be just the same kind of “freedom” the world offers.
The Good News is that we do not have to be good enough to prove we are acceptable to God. We are saved by grace because God loves us.
This is not an excuse to sin. We are not saved by good works, we are saved for good works.
The freedom we have in Christ is not freedom to do as we please. It is freedom to do what pleases God. Before Jesus came into my life, I had no alternative to self- centred sin. But in Christ I now have the freedom to do what is right, not by compulsion, but in joyful surrender to the Holy Spirit.
This freedom in the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self- control. What a wonderful gift!
Prayer
Holy Spirit come and direct every part of my life. I surrender all of me to you. Amen.
Rainbow Rabbi and Friends Declare They Have No Faith
The ABC was very excited about “religious leaders” meeting to declare they have no faith in coal. As expected it was the usual suspects of the extreme religious left who actually have very little faith in Jesus, together with a rainbow rabbi and a couple of Imams. Hardly representative of anybody really.
Jo Nova writes:
ManBearPriestMonks are the new climate experts: they declare faith in IPCC instead of God
Religious leaders dump coal, declare “no faith”
There goes my world. Who knew they had faith in coal?
So forget science, climate change is a moral problem. Is climate sensitivity 1 degree or 3? Ask a priest.
A group called Australians Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC) has badgered 150 soft targets in the religious world to sign a grandiose letter making coal into the new Lucifer.
The Guardian
In an open letter headed “no faith in coal”, the leaders say the climate crisis is a profoundly moral problem and Australia’s response will be crucial in addressing it.
Signatories to the letter include bishops, rabbis, theologians, the grand mufti of Australia and the heads of the Uniting Church, the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils, Muslims Australia and the National Council of Churches.
Remember the alarmist maxim: ask a plumber to do the plumbing, a heart expert to do the surgery and when you want to predict the climate, ask an Imam.
Or failing that — ask a school student — which is what the religious leaders have done. Let’s quote their letter:
As you know, thousands of school students have been protesting in our streets about this emergency. They have three demands. We are writing to urge you to agree to them:
- Stopping the proposed Adani coal mine
- Committing to no new coal or gas projects in Australia
- Moving to 100% renewable energy by the year 2030.
Let’s ask innumerate teenage girls to set national energy policy. What could possibly go wrong?
It’s not like they are easily fooled slaves to fashion who make great cheerleaders.
The sound of breaking commandments:
I count five:
- Thou shalt have no other Gods (since when was the IPCC sacred?)
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain (don’t use God for Renewable industry advertising)
- Honour thy father and mother (not the teenage false saints)
- Thou shalt not bear false witness (praise not the scientists who hide declines)
- Thou shalt not steal. (see the Australian Renewable Energy Target — solar panels.)
The BishopRabbi economist says automation is bad for jobs
Solar power apparently makes more jobs:
The Adani mine in Central and North Queensland is an excellent example. People there need new, reliable jobs. Yet serious investment in solar would yield far more jobs than the Adani mine would, as it is less automated. And rejecting new coal will also help to protect jobs that depend on the Great Barrier Reef. There are currently 60,000 people whose livelihood depends on the Reef.
Let’s get rid of washing machines too and then women can be full time housewives again. That’ll create lots of jobs.
Solar power makes jobs in the same way that freight by horse and buggy does: a small high-maintenance unit can’t be used in an efficient way with economies of scales. Those economies being what makes trucks cheaper.
So the nice but weak religious leaders have handed their moral power to children and activists. There’s no reason they shouldn’t speak up on climate change, but if they care about their flock, they might want to research the positions they advocate. That means reading the arguments for and against. Instead they blindly follow a group that treats the IPCC as a God — the ARRCC describes its policy as pretty much everything the IPCC ever said.
Thou shalt not question foreign committees
After donating their brains to the IPCC the ARRCC rationalizes why any outcome at all proves they are right:
How the climate is changing
While the numbers above may seem small, their impact is much greater than just a global warming of temperatures by 1-2 degrees. This is firstly because this amount is just an average – the changes in temperature is unevenly distributed across the globe Some places around the world will experience much greater increases than this and some places will actually experience a DECREASE in temperatures.
This phenomenon of cooling and warming at the same time is partly explained by the effect that warming has on ocean temperatures and currents. As the air and land temperatures warm, so too does the average ocean temperature. The increased air and ocean temperatures causes accelerated melting of the ice in the arctic and Antarctic, resulting in an increase of cold water flowing into the oceans. The colder waters interact with the warmer waters to change the patterns of ocean currents, which sees some of this colder water flowing to places that in past have experienced warm ocean currents. As ocean temperatures mediate coastal land temperatures, the colder waters will cause colder temperatures.
So, religious geniuses, tell us what outcome would prove the theory wrong? If temperatures stayed exactly the same? And what does God/Budda/Mohammed say about scientists who are hiding data, declines, history, adjustments and methods?
Changing air and water temperatures also affects the weather. As ocean currents change this affects the air currents that flow above the oceans, changing cloud formation and wind patterns. The overall effect of these changing air currents is that most places around the world will actually experience much less frequent rain fall. However when rain does occur, it will happen with much greater intensity. This leads to a pattern of both droughts and floods. It also means that sometimes actual rainfall seasons will change, with dry weather during traditional wet seasons, and very wet weather during traditional dry seasons. The main effect though is to make the rainfall very unpredictable based on past experiences. Changing rainfall patterns also have an effect on traditional water catchment areas and existing river systems, which can affect previously reliable sources of fresh water.
Let’s all pay homage to the pagan rites of climate superstition: Droughts, heatwaves, random noise is “proof” of anything you like. They’re not worse than ones we had 1,000 years ago. Floods are not worse either.
A third effect of changing water temperatures and currents is an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as tropical storms.
Except tropical storms are not occurring more frequently, and the worst storms were hundreds of years ago.
ManbearMonkPriest says skeptics are wrong because of a flawed keyword study of pal reviewed abstracts in a biased-funding safe space for b-grade thinkers. That and because name-calling “denier” sounds so scientific.
Sceptical arguments
The above impacts are not just predictions but things that are being observed right now around the world. However there is still a significant and often vocal body of people who are either sceptical of climate change science or outright deniers.
The prominent people amongst this group are rarely climatologists or even scientists at all – they are generally social scientists such as economists, politicians, people connected with big business or social commentators.
Prominent? Tell that to Professor Richard Lindzen.
While there are a few scientists among this group of people, research by Cook et al in 2013 (“Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”) found that 97% of published climatologists believe in the existence of human-induced climate change. That is, 97% of all scientists whose field of expertise is climate, and who have gone through the process of having their research peer-reviewed by other qualified scientists and published in a scholarly journal believe that climate change is happening and that it is directly linked to human activity. There have now been several pieces of research showing that sceptical scientists and think tanks indirectly receive substantial funding from fossil fuel industries.
Yes, and some unnamed research about unnamed people and unlisted sums claims they are paid hacks. These 150 gullible patsies will believe anything. They give religion a bad name.
Unfortunately the science of climate change is most often misrepresented in the media as a ‘debate’ between roughly even numbers of believers and sceptics, giving the impression that the scientific jury is still out. If the portrayal were more accurate, the picture would reflect an almost total consensus on the science, with only the tiniest minority of dissenters.
The media IS misleading. Skeptics outnumber and outrank believers. They won real Nobel Prizes, NASA awards, they walked on the moon they are MIT Professors of Meteorology. Half of meteorologists — fergoodnesssake — are skeptics, and survey after survey shows that two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics.
There is no consensus among scientists, there never was, and it wouldn’t prove anything even if there was.
Reflection on 2 Kings 2:1-14
Scripture
Elisha replied, “Please let me inherit a double portion of your spirit and become your successor.”
Observation
Just before Elijah is about to be taken up to heaven, he goes on a tour of key sites in Israel- Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho and the Jordan River. At each place, Elijah tells Elisha to stay, but he refuses.
Elijah asks Elisha what he can do for him before he is taken up to heaven, so Elisha asks for the double portion of Elijah’s spirit.
Suddenly a chariot of fire appears between the two men, and Elijah is lifted up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elisha picks up Elijah’s cloak and uses it to drive back the waters of the Jordan River in order to cross it.
Application
People often ask for a “double portion” of the Holy Spirit, thinking that it is about getting more of the Holy Spirit in their lives. This overlooks the fact that we already have all of the Holy Spirit, and what is needed is for the Holy Spirit to have more of us.
The language of “double portion” refers to inheritance. The first born son inherited twice as much as other sons in order to carry on the family farm or business.
Elisha is asking to inherit Elijah’s ministry as the leading prophet in Israel. He wants to be the successor to Elijah.
The fact is that Elijah and Elisha had a close relationship. Elijah had been mentoring or discipling Elisha for some time. Elijah was a spiritual father to Elisha.
The closeness of the relationship is seen in the grief Elisha experienced at Elijah’s departure. Elisha was not just in the ministry business, he really loved Elijah.
The first step in receiving the “double portion” is to be a son or daughter to a pastor or other leader, seeking to serve them and love them. When we are willing to invest our lives into their lives, then we have the possibility of inheriting their spiritual gifts and graces.
Prayer
Lord, please help me to love and to serve those over me. Help me to invest my heart and life into their ministry. Amen.
Today’s Sermon
Stop Saying “I Love You”
Today’s Bible Verse
New Life Narrabri 