Franklin Vineyard Church

What It Means to Be a Person of Faith

Matthew 1:1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah... We're finishing up our study in Jesus' family history by looking at Rahab! Rahab is such an interesting character study because she was an outsider (as a Gentile) but helped to bring the Hebrews into the Promised Land. For those familiar with the story, it's an incredible account of how God uses unexpected people to bring about His plans and His promises. Rahab is a relatively minor character but is used in a major way, and she is spoken of just three times in the New Testament: here in Matthew, Hebrews, and later in James. Her faith worked in a way that saw God's promises in action, and she partnered with the Lord in a special and powerful way. Much like Mary, the mother of Jesus and another powerful woman of faith, who said in the Gospel of Luke, "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be with me just as you have said."  There's a partnership available by saying yes to the plans of God, and we're going to talk about being a people that say yes to the works of God.

How to Navigate the Changing of Seasons

Matthew 1:1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham... We are returning back to Matthew chapter one for just another deep dive into the lineage of Jesus. Matthew is the very first New Testament book after the whole Old Testament, and it was intentionally placed because of Matthew's emphasis on Old Testament promises. For those familiar with the story, and Matthew's original audience would have been very familiar with the story because of their Jewish background, God's promises and provision goes all the way back to the beginning with Abraham. In Genesis 12, God establishes His covenant, His never-ending promise, that Abraham would be a father to many nations and that from his heritage all people would be blessed. This covenant comes to a climax in the person of Jesus Christ! All throughout the Old Testament, there's this waiting and longing and hoping that God would do what He promised to do, and He does but not fully. All these other ways that God fulfills His promises are pretty much appetizers for the main course that is Jesus Christ, God Himself! So we're going to spend some time looking at the story of Abraham and how God is faithful to His people!

Key Tactics to Spiritual Warfare

Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  Moving along in our verse-by-verse study in the incredible Gospel of Matthew, we are now in chapter 4! This chapter marks the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, and before anything happens, we see this clash of powers between Jesus and Satan. It's a powerful message that we see here: Satan twists the Scriptures, but Jesus disarms him with the right application. Many people have misused and abused the Scriptures for their own benefit and gain, but Jesus shows how it ought to be used: not for our own glory but for God alone! Abraham Lincoln once famously said during the Civil War that we are both using the same Bible, and we can easily see this in how Satan tries to manipulate the word and the Word. As we mentioned in our Ephesians study, the only offensive weapon in the Armor of God is the sword of the Spirit which is the Bible, and this sword isn't some long sword that we typically see. The one being described in Ephesians is more like hand-to-hand combat, and that's exactly what's happening here with Jesus. He rightly uses Scripture to thwart the enemy's plans. Greater is He that is in us than the one that's in the world!

The Work of Advancing the Kingdom of God

Matthew 3:1-2 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  We are now in chapter 3, looking at how John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus. It's a very familiar passage where John baptized Jesus, and the Holy Spirit like a dove descended upon Jesus! What a beautiful picture of the Father's love for His Son: This is My Son, in Whom I am well pleased. This was the very first time that people truly saw the fullness of who Jesus was. As God's beloved Son, Jesus was the anointed one to proclaim and demonstrate the Kingdom of God, and this act prepared the way for Jesus' public ministry. Just as John prepared the way, this act prepared the way for Jesus to begin His Kingdom ministry. We're going to look at what it means that John the Baptist prepared the way and what repentance is. And we'll also spend some time looking at what it means to be a beloved Child of God through Jesus Christ.

Understanding the Kingdom of God

Matthew 3:1-2 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  We are now entering the main content of the Gospel of Matthew: the Kingdom of God. As John the Baptist prepares the way for the Messiah, he proclaims, "Repent for the Kingdom of heaven has come near!" Quite literally, John is telling the people to change how they think about the rule and reign of God and begin to get ready for how Jesus is going to reveal the ways of the Kingdom.  As Isaiah reminds us, "His ways are not our ways." There is a holiness, a set-apartness, to the Kingdom of God, and the plight of humanity has always tried to put God in a box, to domesticate Him and make Him easier to understand. But we need to repent, change our thinking, to allow God to be God and to show us the real rule and reign of King Jesus.