Pastoral Messages - Flag Branch MBC

Apr '22

Winning And Losing Fine Points

Posted on Apr 4, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Apr '22

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “Winning And Losing”.

It is difficult to deny our feelings, be disinterested, neutral or indifferent when something we care about is on the line. A prime example is the outcome of a contest involving a sports team or individual.

No matter how much we may want to hide or deny it, if we care about the team or individual, we hope that they will win. But and if the other side wins, that is not a reason to begin to dislike, or even hate, them. They don’t become our enemy because we lost and they won. But this is how people and powers are seeking to make people feel toward one another.

They are taking what use to be and still should be friendly competition and hyping it into a type of war between enemies. Instead of seeing those we are in competition with as our brothers and sisters we have many common interests with whom we should love, they want us to only see them as rivals that must be defeated at all cost.

People are placing so much emphasis on winning that it has overshadowed the reason for playing the game or being in competition. Games and competition that is entered into voluntary should be about the enhancement of those involved. Fierce competition should make both teams better at what they do.

UNC and Duke played each other for the right to play for a national championship. Regardless of who wins, they made and make each other better and have many things in common. Each team would represent the other and as such should wish for and hope for their success as they play for the championship.

Vigorous debate over issues should help people to see the issue from multiple advantage points and help to make informed decisions. But regardless of who wins or loses, such competition should begin with love and respect and should end that way.

The bible tells us that no one can love God and not love their brother or fellow human being. If we say we love God and dislike or hate our brother we are lying. This is why those of us who call ourselves Christians must never allow our differences with our brother and sisters we share our community, towns, cities, states, nation and world with to cause us to not love them and care about what happens to them.

We must never allow ourselves to view them simply as rivals, or worst enemies, in a struggle for ideas and ways of living our lives. Indeed, if we care about the church of Jesus Christ, it is impossible to ignore and be indifferent about what shall become of it. We care about whether it succeeds or fails, wins or loses. Nor can we ignore and be indifferent about the plight of the world’s people who Christ gave His life and died for so that we and they might have eternal life.

Yes, we may disagree with others on a range of issues and occasionally lose at the ballot box and elsewhere from time to time. But this does not make them our enemies nor should we not wish for and pray for their welfare.

Not only because wanting to see others fail is not in keeping with the attitude God’s children should have toward others, but much of their success is tied in and hinges on our success and vice versa. Do we wish that they should want us to fail when we win?

Christians must help all of us to see, though we don’t see eye to eye on everything, there is a way we can all live together in harmony and peace however elusive it may be. This is what loving our brothers and sisters who don’t look like us, think like us, worship like us, vote like us, play like us, work like us and don’t do so many other things like us is all about.

God calls on us to win them over to His side so that they too will be saved with love even when we sometime lose the temporal battles. For the ultimate prize is eternal life and anything else that is won or lost along the way was all just part of the journey.

Pastor Jordan

God’s Great Masterpiece Fine Points

Posted on Mar 28, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “God’s Great Masterpiece”.

A masterpiece can be defined as is a work done with extraordinary skill and is of such quality and other attributes that it makes it usually special and unique that endures and transcends generations. The word is applied to certain artistic works especially by that of a select group of artists.

While we classify some of their work as masterpieces, creation itself can be called a masterpiece of God. It is a masterpiece on a cosmic scale, a work only someone like God can do. Just as humans can create great works with their hands, so God has created a great work with his hands.

Just as we have taken paint and brush and applied it to a canvas to create great works of art and have taken ideas from our minds and made them reality, so has God taken the material that forms our universe and created it and mankind as part of it. Our universe is like God’s painting or masterpiece.

God has taken what He has endowed us with the ability to do but has done it on a universal scale that forms the reality in which we live and breathe. This concept is difficult for many to grasp and understand. David attempted to canonize it in the 19^th Psalm.

A masterpiece complete with a universe that may not ever be fully explored and sentient self-aware beings capable of exploring it. Beings made in the image and likeness of the master painter or creator.

But as difficult as it may be to recognize and understand creation as a masterpiece of God, even more wonderful is for certain of those within the masterpiece to leave it and join the Master who created it and them. This is the good news of salvation.

That those who are part of the painting are granted the ability and power to leave the canvas and join the Creator. This offer is made possible by the forgiving blood of Jesus to all who love and fear God, the Master behind the masterpiece.

We are gods in as much as we can imitate the works of Him who made us. And given enough time, in another millennium, humanity will be able make their own incomprehensible masterpieces to us today.

If we find ways to stop killing each other and learn to live with differences and share this great masterpiece of a world God has put us in, then the unimaginable will be realized. And if humanity will or can achieve the unimaginable, just try to image the awesome power of the one who set humanity within His masterpiece of a universe and world.

And truly from our perspective, the world and universe we find ourselves within is the highest form of master craftmanship, for the Master who created it, it might be considered a light or small thing. In other words, this great masterpiece may only represent the smallest fraction of what God is capable of doing.

There is so much we don’t know about God, but He has revealed much to us through the prophets, through Christ and through the world He has made. For those who believe and want to leave the canvas, He has promised we can. To all the rest, their fate lies in the fate of the canvas which the bible says will be burned and all in and on it and something new shall take its place.

Pastor Jordan

From Misery To Majesty Fine Points

Posted on Mar 21, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “From Misery To Majesty”.

Creatures subject to vanity. This is what Paul said humanity is. A vain creature or creation is one with no meaningful purpose or reason for its existence.

Because of corruption of any kind and in all of its forms, people can develop and exercise a sense of futility. They cease to see any point in life beyond pursuing and enabling their immediate interest and passion.

They fail to see or expect anything more than this. It is God who has subjected creation to this corruption but not without hope. As a result of corruption people suffer.

Suffering causes pain and misery. But the misery of this present world isn’t worthy to be compared to the glory or majesty to come when God sets creation free from the present bondage of corruption. At this time, God’s true children will also be revealed.

God’s children will not give in to the idolatrous practices and pressures of people without hope. But instead, they are holding on to hope that creation will be redeemed and them along with it.

Jesus also came into this corrupt and vain world and suffered just as the rest of humanity. But he came with a message of hope and he remained faithful and hopeful that His suffering will culminate in glory and majesty. For the joy that was set before him He endured all the suffering He encountered.

Like Jesus, believers in their redemption must be willing to endure the suffering and misery of their time and world. Following their suffering and misery, their hope and faith is also glory and majesty.

Herein the true children of God, who are already known to God, will be made known or manifest to all when God’s redemptive plan and creative purpose is fulfilled. It will be a moment of truth when the hearts and intent of everyone will be displayed for all to see.

Those who waited and believed in God and those who abandoned or dismissed hope to pursue idolatry or vain passions. At that time, we will be able to hear God say “behold, I make all things new”.

Without the redemption of creation, we and it shall remain miserable. All of our pursuits and endeavors will amount to vain labor without meaning and purpose regardless of what we build, do, say, create or become. Because if the creation itself is vain, then the works within it must of necessity also be vain. These works the bible calls idolatry.

Pastor Jordan

Being Noticed Being Chosen Fine Points

Posted on Mar 14, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “Being Noticed, Being Chosen”.

The Book of Ruth tells the story of a small Jewish family consisting of a mother, father and two sons living in Israel after the time of Joshua but before the first king of Israel in a period of time called the Judges. This family left Israel to escape famine to the neighboring country of Moab. While there, the two sons met and married Moabite women. All the men died leaving the women alone and childless.

After the mother, Naomi, heard there was food once again in Israel, she decided to return and did her best to dissuade her daughter-in-laws from going to Israel with her. While one remained in Moab, the other, Ruth forsook all her ties to her native land, family and heritage to accept a new way of life, people and God to be by Naomi’s side until death.

To find food, Ruth asked Naomi for permission to glean the fields and Naomi agreed. While gleaning, she was noticed by the prominent Jewish owner of the field name Boaz who showed her kindness and attention and knew of her relationship with and sacrifice for Naomi.

After noticing her, Boaz chose Ruth among all the women in Israel he could have chosen and married her. They became the great grandparents of King David his throne of which Jesus now sits.

Salvation works in a similar matter. God notices something about His people and children, shows them kindness and grace and chooses them from among all the children of men.

Today, people are becoming more paganistic as they attempt to “bum-rush” heaven with every person who dies. For lots of people, heaven has become the place of all dead because that is where they want their dead to be.

The bible doesn’t teach this universalism. It teaches that heaven is the domain of God and it is God, not us, who decides who, if any, are admitted into heaven. It is God who first notices and then chooses who will become an heir to His kingdom and admitted into heaven.

God has demonstrated throughout the bible that it is He who chooses His children and people and we do not choose God. Among all the people whom God notices or sees, only a few of them are chosen. The question for us is why are the few chosen but most are not.

We can see and even understand some of the reasons why Boaz may have noticed Ruth finding grace in his eyes that led to him choosing her to be his wife. What is God noticing about His people and children that leads Him to choose them and not others. What does God notice about me and you that may lead Him to choose us? Another way of asking the question is what does God notice about us that may cause Him not to choose us.

In an effort to qualify more and more people for heaven, people are attempting to make God in our image by permitting whatever we deem non-disqualifying behavior, situations and conditions into heaven’s entrance. In other words, we are setting the rules and conditions for heaven admittance instead of the God of the bible who is also the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

The next time we hear someone say or are tempted ourselves to say where a person who died is or are doing, be it an unborn person, a child, the oldest, kindliest grandmother or grandfather and everyone in between, just remember the fate of the dead is the choice of God.

Not the God we make and define so we can put whoever we choose into heaven, but the Holy One who is described in the bible who notices everything we do and say and chooses a few among humanity to share the blessings of heaven with according to His will and criteria He has established which we can’t change or alter though we are trying.

Pastor Jordan

Watching And Waiting Fine Points

Posted on Mar 7, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “Watching And Waiting”.

Someone made a comment on the amount of profanity this one individual used and the general use of profanity among other people and asked me what I thought about it. From a biblical and spiritual perspective, the causal use of profanity displays a lack of fear and/or respect for God.

The repeated or casual use of profanity is just one of many snares Jesus warned His disciples about in response to their question about the end of the age and His return. Profanity may not seem like a big deal or issue to the many who use it and therein is the snare.

A snare is a type of unseen or covered trap that is sprung on those who are unsuspecting of its presence. The many things we are doing like our use of profane language that doesn’t appear to us to be a problem are symptomatic of the lack of true worship of God and a snare.

It is not seen as problematic for a variety of reasons but the bottom line is what God wants doesn’t really matter to us. We have made the choice to live as we choose and accept the consequences if there are any.

Our willingness to accept the consequences shows our lack of understanding of the severity of them, our lack of belief there will be any and our belief whatever we did or are doing by choosing to live as we please is worth the consequences of doing it.

All of these things make us susceptible to the many snares that expose our lack of worship in spirit and truth. Without this type of true worship, there is no salvation for us.

Jesus warned His disciples and us today not to allow ourselves to get carried away and ensnared as others. But instead, He told them and us to be watchful and continue to always pray that we will be able to escape these snares that shall come upon the whole earth as we wait patiently upon His return. A return that those being caught in the snares increasingly doubt will happen and a return not that very long away.

For our lives are relatively short, in fact, they are extremely short. Comparatively speaking our life span is like asking someone to wait a minute. How many times in our life have we waited a minute or more for something we want or need?

God is only telling us to do what He is commanding for a minute. Because a minute is all the time He needs to expose whether we are ready for the next phase of life which is eternity with Him.

If we won’t worship Him in spirit and truth for a minute, we surely won’t do it for an eternity. But if we can hold out and watch for a minute, God knows something about us that tells Him all He needs to know for our readiness for His eternal kingdom.

Therefore, let us watch so we can see and observe the things going on and be careful to avoid the hidden snares. Let us pray for strength and guidance along the way so we won’t fall into temptation.

Let us not participate in the binge drinking of worldliness and ungodliness we see unfolding all around us the dull our sense to the righteousness and holiness of God. And finally, let us wait on His promised return to gather us all who believe unto Himself that will be here in less than an eternal minute.

Pastor Jordan

The Life Of God Fine Points

Posted on Feb 28, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “The Life Of God”.

A purposeful and meaningful life is the difference in the life of God and no God. If God doesn’t exist and therefore has nothing to do with our presence here on this planet and in this world, what does that mean for humanity.

It means every measure of morality, goodness, success, character or quality used to evaluate human beings are arbitrary and simply ideas or thoughts people have. They are real only to the extent of existence in the mind of people.

In reality outside our minds, they don’t exist. The only way they can exist outside of our minds is for them to be imposed upon everyone from the outside by someone who has the power and authority to impose them.

Power meaning the right to enforce some consequence for how they are observed. Authority meaning a claim on exercising the power. The bible teaches us that God has both the authority and power to measure and evaluate the people He created and made.

Most, if not all things made, are designed to function and be used in a predetermined way. It doesn’t mean is it always used in that manner and other uses may be found and applied for it, but its function and use were predetermined.

Common sense informs us that God did not go to all the lengths we observe in the world and the universe to create it and us without a purpose and function that was predetermined. If we discover and follow that predetermined function, it will lead to the result for which we were created.

The bible teaches us we are and were created to live with God. If we ignore that function or if no function exists, we live our lives as Paul describes in the vanity or futility of our minds. In other words, we make up things to live by, pursue, and engage in based upon our efforts to fulfill our sensuous and lustful passions.

People without the life of God live this way and Paul insists in the Lord that believers not live like that. People who live like this, ruled and govern by passion, have eliminated or as Paul says alienate or deny themselves from the life of God or the life God wants them to have.

The life of God is the fulfillment of the purpose for which everything we observe including ourselves was made. This is why God has given us commands and laws to live by because without them we behave godless like beings without a clue to their purpose making up things according to our flesh to motivate, guide and direct us.

The life we are now experiencing is the first stage of a greater plan God has for us. But to get to the next stage of His plan, we must get through this stage of spiritual development. We are in the infancy stage where God has given us simple rules and commands to follow.

There are certain attributes and characteristics infants and then toddlers must pass through and master before entering the next stage of human growth. They don’t get to make the decisions to get to the next stage, but parents make the decisions for them. The same is true with us and God.

To get to the next stage of the life of God, God has made some decisions for us that are designed to get us to the next stage. If we follow them, we will continue to live with God and enter the next stage or phase of life. If we don’t follow them, we have cut ourselves off from the only source of life available to us and we shall be deprived of life with God or life of any kind.

All because we thought we knew better than God what we should do with our lives and that what we are doing with them would be and is better in some way than the life of God He has predetermined and designed for us. This is akin to an infant or toddler making choices about their lives they are incapable of making which will lead them all to death.

Pastor Jordan

People At Ease Fine Points

Posted on Feb 21, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “People At Ease”.

A child born today and a child born just 200 years earlier and every year before that were born into two completely different worlds. In fact, the life of most people had improved relatively little over centuries of human existence. There have been marginal improvements in the quality of life for sure, but all minor in comparison to what has taken place over the last two to three hundred years.

Life for the child born in 1722 or even 1822 was anything but easy unless they were born to rich or wealthy or royal parents. In which case, whatever could be done to make their life easier was provided for them. But the life of most people was arduous, laborious, difficult, meager and a struggle to secure the bear minimums of life.

Because of the conditions, the gospel had a special appeal to people who lived on the margins of life which was nearly everyone. Only the people with the means to make their lives easier were inclined to want to stay in this world and not long for something better. Maybe this is why Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

The problem today is that we are all rich. Richness not measured in the about of money one has, though it does count, but in the overall quality of life compared to all people born at least two or three hundred years before now. Compared to them, we are living lives of ease.

Because we are so at ease, we have become like the rich before who longed to stay in this world because they found it pleasurable and easy to live in. An easy life makes us oblivious to the dangers of our own mortality. It gives us a false sense of our own independence and reliance on our self to meet our needs. An easy life can cause us to forget that we don’t live by bread alone.

We are living so easy now compared to pass generations of humanity, that our main objective in life has become how to make our lives even easier and more enjoyable. In doing so, we have managed to move God completely out of or to the absolute margins of our daily lives so as to have no real influence on how we live.

Instead of longing for a better place and life like those before us, we have decided to settle on the one we are making for ourselves here and now. Two to three hundred years from today, life will be unimaginably easier for those living then than it is for us today. They will be even richer than us than we are to those who lived two to three hundred years before us.

But one thing for them will not have changed, just has it has not changed for us nor for all who lived before us. And that is we must answer to the God who made us and give an account of the life we have been given and lived.

We may have forgotten about God, but be assured He has not forgotten about us. We may have dismissed and forgotten about His commands, but they haven’t gone away and we will be held accountable for keeping them no matter how easy human life becomes.

Christians today should be even more thankful than all people and all the Christians before them to God for being alive at this time to be a part of this easy life. We can and should help lead humanity into thanking and obeying God for the blessing of life we now enjoy.

If we are successful, I believe God will continue to bless us with even better days ahead for ourselves and future generations. But if we continue on our present course of selfish self-seeking pleasure and indulgence, arrogance and indifference, then I believe the world is on a collision course with disaster the likes of which will be unfathomable and unimaginable.

Pastor Jordan

Objects Of Our Worship Fine Points

Posted on Feb 14, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “Objects Of Our Worship”.

Athens was a major metropolitan city during the time of Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys that he visited. It was not a city of destination, but while there, he was moved to do some theological teaching.

He noticed that the city was given over completely to idolatry. Idolatry as defined as the worshipful devotion to anything or anyone besides the only true and living God. There was even one altar dedicated to what they labeled “the unknown God”. Paul took that occasion to teach them about the true nature of God and worship of God.

One of the points Paul makes is that God cannot be worshipped with things or through things made with the hands of man. Nor can God be contained within anything made by man. Expressions of divine worship can take many shapes and forms but the expressions themselves is not worship.

For example, when asked to worship God with or through our giving, the act of giving is not worship. It is the spirit in which it is done that determines if God is or was worshipped expressed through the act of giving. Jesus made this clear when He used the example of spiritual worship when He compared the large sums some were giving and the tiny amount a widow gave.

Our actions, regardless of what they are as an expression of worship, mean nothing and are hollow as far as true worship is concerned if true belief, reverence and intent is not there within our heart. This is why Athens was described as idolatrous and why we are idolatrous today.

We refuse to worship God in spirit and truth, so we devise and seek out other people, places, things and ideas to worship. We do this because we are creatures of worship. If we don’t worship God, we will find something or someone to worship.

We seek and need devotion and we look for something or someone to give devotion. Our eager and passionate devotion amounts to worship. It gives us our greatest amount of joy and pleasure. It becomes that which we are most proud of, adore and cherish.

A good indicator of what we worship is where we invest our time, money, energy and resources. There are many qualifications and indicators for objects of worship that I cannot and will not try to identify. Just rest assured of one thing. We are all worshippers.

Something matters to us to which we are eagerly and passionately devoted. Our cities and towns and states and nation is filled with modern day Athenians. If we are not worshipping God in spirit and in truth, then we like them are worshipping something or someone else and that makes us an idol worshipper.

Idols are anything we worship that is not God. Idols don’t give life, sustain life or extend life except in some superficial way if at all. They exist only because we had a hand in creating them whether they be persons, places, things or ideas.

The first two commands God gave to Moses to give to Israel and us were about proper and true worship. The first was no other gods and the second no idols or something made to venerate or heap devotion. These commands were not given because God needs or desires our worship for His benefit. But because we need God and the worship of idols is empty and vain and is a pathway to evil.

God is the only One deserving of and worthy of our worship. We He returns, let us not be found as idolaters, but as true worshippers of the only true and living God.

Pastor Jordan

Behind Death’s Door Fine Points

Posted on Feb 7, 2022 in Pastoral Messages |

Greetings Flag Branch members and friends and thanks for taking the time to join me, Pastor Jordan, for some Fine Points from Sunday’s service and message “Behind Death’s Door”.

Death is like a door we all must open and go through but none of know what we shall find on the other side of the door. And because of this, there are basically three ways of preparing for what awaits us behind death’s door.

One way of preparation is not to prepare or even think about death. Following this approach, people decide that death is something they don’t want to contemplate. They recognize death as an event that will happen nothing more or nothing less.

They make no meaningful preparation for what awaits beyond the door. They acknowledge something could be there or nothing could be there. But either way, they have decided to do nothing.

Another approach is to decided there is nothing behind death’s door. This approach looks at death as the end of all things. There is no transformation, no consciousness, no light, no sound, no anything. All one is and was cease to exist.

As far as the one who died is concerned, death leads to and is the beginning of nothing. There is nothing to do because nothing can be done. One will simply cease to be.

The third and last approach is to prepare for something beyond death’s door. Just what that is depends on who you ask. Most answers will be rooted and grounded in a religion that has grappled with this question and reached some conclusions about it.

Christianity is one such religion. Christianity believes that God has made provision for man to overcome death through the work of Jesus Christ. For those who believe and make preparation, death’s door leads to an unparalleled paradise and new beginning of life unlike anything we can think or imagine.

These are the choices available to humanity concerning what’s behind death’s door. To do nothing, to believe there is nothing or to believe in a religion like Christianity and prepare for what’s behind the door.

Pastor Jordan