Events
Elder Curtis’ YouTube Channel
Curtis has put a lot of time, energy, and love into creating videos that helps others on the road to recovery. Here you will find relatable life experiences in the form of stories, news in the related spaces such as medicine, and much more. We highly recommend you check it out.
Food Pantry
Frannie’s Vegan Cafe, who host’s our ministry, has a freely accessible food pantry and refridgerator. One of our members created a donation request wish list via Amazon.
If you would like to support this initiative please consider making a purchase. All items will be shipped to our sponsoring member and she will then stock the pantry on your behalf. Let’s do good as we are called to do.
Worship Music Playlist
The above YouTube compilation are of songs we have used during church. This will continue to be added to. Enjoy!
Sermon
Let me begin tonight with questions.
How important is a promise? Have you kept a promise to someone or for something? Have you experienced someone breaking a promise? Have you ever broken a promise? How does that feel? Have you ever went back on a promise to God? Has God ever not delivered a promise?
In the Bible, what is another word for promise?
Covenant.
“When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.” -Exodus 31:18
Moses went up to a mountain in the wilderness. After Yahweh had rescued them from generations of slavery in Egypt. Yahweh came to His people in the desert, in the wide expanse of nothingness. In the inbetween, Yahweh brought Moses up to Mount Sinai to commune with him.
Earlier in the Bible, God established a covenant with Noah, his decendents, and every living creature promising never again to destroy the earth by flood, and marked it with a rainbow as a sign of rememberance (Genesis 9:8-17).
God also made a covenant with Abraham. Yahweh promised him land, decendants like the number of stars in the sky, all nations will be blessed through him, and with circumcision given as a sign of rememberance (Genesis 12, 15, 17). He later passed it on to Isaac and then Jacob renewed it.
Finally, we get to Moses. What do you notice is the covenantal theme with these instances we have discussed?
Each time Yahweh made a promise, a binding covenant, He provided an outward sign to be a marker of memorial. How did He do that with Moses?
“Therefore the Israelites shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign forever between me and the Israelites that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ ” –Exodus 31:16-17
There is a specific Sabbath memorializing the giving of the tablets on Mount Sinai. A day Yahweh calls people to action.
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the Israelites, saying: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of complete rest, a holy convocation commemorated with trumpet blasts. You shall not work at your occupations, and you shall present the Lord’s offering by fire.’” -Leviticus 23:23-25
This is a special Sabbath, a Shabbaton. This Sabbath requires a complete rest from ordinary work, a gathering to worship, and a day dedicated to the one true God. By sounding our trumpets with a great shout we are joining a chorus in heaven!
The ancient trumpets were rams horn. They take skill to blow.
Tonight we as a holy convocation, during Yom Teruah or Feast of Trumpets, will make a great blast to remember Yahweh’s promises. We are remembering the covenants in the past, the present, and the future. We are pointing to the Messiah, Yeshua Hamashiach, Jeus the Christ. He is the ultimate promise. Let us honor this High Sabbath.
Amen.
Learning Spot
This segment is to showcase some great academic resources that help you grow in biblical knowledge, currated by Pastor Alex.
Who wrote the Hebrew Bible, when, and why? Why does it contain so many competing perspectives and why do scholars sometimes disagree about what its words originally meant?
In Misquoting Moses, Yale professor Joel Baden and co-host Megan Kraege explore the surprising history, authorship, translation, and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Each week, they bring the questions and evidence scholars have debated for centuries out of the university and into lively, accessible conversations for anyone curious about the Bible.
Currently Reading
What is Pastor Alex paging through at the moment?
Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people’s understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted–from free speech to limited government–to our Protestant roots. Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.