By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: Matthew 24:3-8,29-32,42-44  How certain are you that the sky is blue? How certain are you that two plus two equals four? How certain are you that the sun will rise tomorrow? How certain are you that you will be working the same job five years from now?  In our lives we deal with things and situations where we have varying

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: John 15:26-27; 16:7-15  Do you like having an advantage when engaged in competition? Let me take an example from the madness that is basketball in March. We can be sure each coaching staff has dissected every cut of film concerning their opponent in order to gain an advantage for their players on the court. Each team wants to win. In

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: John 20:3-9,19-23,27-29  Happy Resurrection Day! Doesn’t it feel good to say those words of truth and reality? That the stone was rolled away, not so Jesus could escape, but that we should be let in to see the empty tomb. A crucified Jesus. An empty tomb. A risen Savior. Hallelujah! Let us reason together over these events. The fear, pain,

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: John 19:8-11,16b-18,28-30  Our calendars tell us that next week is Easter Sunday. We have explored the grand subject of the nature of God. Here we are again exploring a grand subject, the death and resurrection of Jesus. This knowledge is seminal and critical to our faith.  While we assert that forgiveness is now possible because of Jesus dying a substitutionary

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: Isaiah 59:1-13  Isaiah 59:1-5: Having begun with the nature of God and then having moved to the existence and purpose of man, this next essential follows suit. What went wrong? How did man, created by God with a purpose and a divine stewardship, find himself wrecked, ruined, and ravaged by sin? The question is both haunting and daunting. Haunting because

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: Genesis 1:1-5,26-31  We are journeying through a study on the essentials of Christianity. We began last week where all things begin, with God. The logical follow up to this revelation is the existence of humanity. How did we arrive on this earth? Where did this earth come from? What does it mean to be human? Do we have a divine

By Michael Julian Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church, Kenton Focal Passage: John 14:8-11, 16-20, 23-26 What grander subject could we seek to explore and extract truth from other than the subject of the nature of God? And while the intricacies of Father, Son, and Spirit have baffled theologians for centuries, understand that God reveals Himself in knowable fashion. So, let us turn to the words of Jesus in John 14 to

By Eric Taylor Pastor, Cedar Hill Baptist Church, Cedar Hill Focal Passage: John 15:1-8  As we come to our final lesson in this quarter, we are reminded of Henry Blackaby’s challenge to “Find where God is working and join Him in it” (Experiencing God). R. Kent Hughes wrote about our text, “The inward test is far more telling than the number of souls saved, people influenced, money collected, etc. It

By Eric Taylor Pastor, Cedar Hill Baptist Church, Cedar Hill Focal Passage: 1 Corinthians 12:12-24 Many years ago, there was a mass-marketing push to get people to drink more milk. Part of the push contained an ad campaign with the catchy phrase, “Milk, it does a body good.” The obvious connotation was that drinking milk is good for the health of one’s body. Of course, a popular metaphor in the

By Eric Taylor Pastor, Cedar Hill Baptist Church, Cedar Hill Focal Passage: Daniel 9:1-7; 17-19  By the time one arrives at Daniel 9, the prophet is most likely in his mid-eighties. He is studying the words of Jeremiah, and is moved to prayer for the people of God. And what follows is one of the greatest prayers in the Bible, as Daniel enters a period of “prayer and supplications” which