Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our Sunday sermon. You will normally see us posted on Sunday morning or afternoon live and written. I am Rev. Laura A. Neff. This ministry shares the Word of God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. With our ministry members and our Elder Cal Jennings, we strive to ensure that it is God’s will with each sermon or study we bring to you. We wish only that God’s truth will be shared within His words as brought to us by the Spirit as it fills our hearts, minds, and souls to be shared with our hands and voices, but with His words alone.
You will find us in the following location: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Rev. Laura’s other sites: Facebook & Blogspot & Twitter
Prayer List: We have many on our prayer list. Some wish to remain anonymous, and others only wish to have their first names mentioned. Our prayer list grows or changes every week. This is our current list.
- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings and his health issues, which are numerous. He has been having issues with his pain, vision, and memory. Add to the prayers with a continued need for new housing.
- Please pray for calm, peace, and faith for Sister Theresa Bogard who is still going through a lot right now.
- There are several who are suffering cancer and other incurable diseases in the groups we each are part of. May they be healed in Your Holy Name.
- We are ever watchful in regard to the weather, the unrest, and the virus and response to that virus. Let us pray for calm skies and seas, calm voices and spirits, and also healthy outcomes for those who are affected.
- Continue to pray for several of my family members as they go through some dramatic changes in some cases.
- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for all of our outreach ministries with Pastor Stephen Okoth, Pastor Robert Nganwa, Pastor Simon Peter Javaji, Rev. Lisa Tyler, and all the others who have joined us.
- Pray for our nations that the voice of God be heard through the Spirit.
- Pray for our friends and families that their tomorrows bring blessings and pray our own be the same.
- Pray for those suffering as a result of the terrors that have occurred just this past week around this world.
- Pray for our sick and wounded that they may heal.
- Pray that truth is revealed where falsehoods have been shared around this world.
Prayer: Father in heaven, this is our prayer for today. We bring our sick and wounded up in prayer, including Elder Cal Jennings. We continue to pray for answers to mysteries for health issues and money issues with several members and family members. We pray for our poor and desolate, our brothers and sisters who have been brought devastation due to the terrors around this world and all of the natural disasters, storms, and so forth this past week as we do every week. We pray for those members of our outreach ministries that their reach gains momentum and their needs are met. For each of these we pray in Your Holy Name, through our Savior Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Amen and so it shall be.
Opening Song: 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) Matt Redman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E
Sermon: We are now taking our voyage in understanding how goodness can be a disguise for evil and vice versa. One thing we learn early in Scripture is that there are many, many climactic occurrences found. We see, when we pay attention, an infinite number of times for certain subjects to be found. Good and Evil and the relationship between them would be just one of those infinite mentions.
Matthew 5:44-45 KJV – But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the Beloved speak quite a lot in regard to Jesus and His hopes for humanity. Chapter five in Matthew is particularly shares so much during the Sermon on the Mount. In these two verses shared, Jesus reminds His Apostles and Disciples, then and those of us who listen and hear now, that we should love unconditionally, even those who hate us, hurt us, love them despite all of that. When we do, we are behaving as God wishes us to do. We obey His greatest commandment, to LOVE ONE ANOTHER WITHOUT BIAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, WITHOUT FEAR of anything that might happen today or tomorrow.
Matthew 7:11-12 KJV – If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them
that ask him?
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would, that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
We have to think on our feet, think through anything and everything we do and say, as often as possible, or we’re going to fall clear off the path that Jesus created for us to follow all those centuries ago. Even those who are inherently evil know how to be good and do good things. This is the reason we don’t always recognize either one. Like the song says, “don’t hide your light under a bushel”, because even in the worst of times, that light will shine like a beacon in the darkest of days and nights. Goodness can be shrouded by darkness. However, evil cannot be blotted out completely unless we have our faith in God our Father, Jesus Christ our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, our guides toward heaven and eternal life. That bush will end up a burning bush when we realize how much strength good contains, the more we portray, practice, and perfect the good side of our love, our hope will brighten that tiny, flickering, candle in the midst of a complete blanket of evil darkness. We will also find good and bad fruit, as we have spoken of many times. We see that here.
Matthew 7:17-18 KJV – Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
We have spoken of good fruits on the vine in the Gospel of John the Beloved. However, all four gospels share similarities in regard to good and evil fruit. This is why we always work with the gospels in many ways, simply to unearth the good, reveal it, exalt in that wonder in God’s mysterious ways. Let’s remember to reflect on every bit of Scripture, because each word He inspired to be written has a reason to be preached, studied, and acted upon. This next pair of verses would teach us how to discern the difference between good and evil.
Matthew 12:34-35 KJV – O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
Jesus is angry! Outright furious! For a very good reason. One thing that God forbade, far, far back in the history of humanity, was disobedience and a disregard to His commandments and guidance. What was happening inside that temple, and all around outside, was outright blasphemy. Now, what is blasphemy? Here are all the definitions of blasphemy.
1. impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things.
2. Judaism.
A. an act of cursing or reviling God.
- pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) in the original, now forbidden manner instead of using a substitute pronunciation such as Adonai.
3. Theology. the crime of assuming to oneself the rights or qualities of God.
4. irreverent behavior toward anything held sacred, priceless, etc.:
Read these words very carefully. Say them aloud. Blasphemy, an impious utterance or action concerning God or Sacred Things. In Judaism, any act of cursing or reviling God, and even pronouncing God’s name in what is now forbidden to even pronounce, or speak aloud. Adonai, we’ve all heard this name God goes by. Being irreverent in the pronunciation of God’s name, by mispronouncing it or even using it in vain, which is something forbidden through the Ten Commandments, is one sure way to allow the evil to creep into our lives.
Matthew 20:15-16 KJV – Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is
thine eye evil, because I am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called but few
chosen.
The owner of the vineyard kept his word, the first and the last earned equally. This is something some would not understand. In some jobs in this world, no matter how hard we work, or how long we spend working, sometimes we earn just as much as the person who slept through half the workday and did half as much as was possible to manage. God wants us to WORK our faith. He wants us to SHARE our faith. He wants us to LISTEN and HEAR HIM, no matter what other cacophony might be going on around us. God wants us to BELIEVE, to PROVE OUR UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR HIM. Seeing how evil can hide in the guise of good and how good can seem evil to those of us who have not learned enough regarding discernment, takes time, practice, and a willingness to learn. Now that’s something to think about as we pray in the prayer that Jesus taught us saying:
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
(Matthew 6:9-13)
Closing Song: It Is Well With My Soul https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdpN-6Tvo4s&list=PL614A115BF39E5936&index=36
~ Shalom ~
Rev. Laura A. Neff
Elder Calvin Jennings
Covenant of Hope Ministries Main Site: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Scripture Excerpts: The New Open Bible Study Edition: Copyright © 1990: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright © 1982: E. E. Gaddy and Associates, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright ©circa 1890-1910: International Bible Press, The John C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sermon or Study Copyright © 2021 http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Our mission for Covenant of Hope Ministries is not to exploit fear, but to conquer it, and overcome all that is created through fear together as the bringers of the light of Jesus found in the midst of darkness.
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