Here is the sermon skeleton from my message this past Sunday.

Title: “Be Careful with God’s Name”

Text: Exodus 20:7

Series: The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)

Theme: Honoring the name of God

Point: Our lips and lives must reflect the unique honor God’s holy name deserves.

Outline:

I. The prohibition against misusing God’s name

While this commandment does forbid blasphemy, profanity, and perjury; there are other ways we can be guilty of taking God’s name in vain:

A. Irreverence

B. False teaching

C. The presumption of direct revelation

D. Promise-breaking (I never got to this point in the actual presentation of the message.)

II. The penalty for misusing God’s name

Here are three ways we can honor the name of God:

A. Honor God’s name by confessing Jesus Christ to be the Savior and Lord of your life.

B. Honor God’s name by living your life in a manner that is consistent with your profession of faith.

C. Honor God’s name by speaking well of it whenever you get a chance.

John Piper is the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and the featured speaker of Desiring God Ministries. Piper’s message can be summarized in one simple but profound statement: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied with him.” Recently Piper has proven his personal sincerity about this statement, as he has been recently diagnosed with prostrate cancer. Dr. Piper had a successful surgery this week. To God be the glory! And he was released from the hospital this past Wedneday. Please continue to pray for him. Recently, in one of his regular newletter articles to his congregation, Piper wrote a very God-centered perspective on cancer. He called it, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer.” Read it and share it with somebody else.

This week, I finished reading a book entitled, “Love Worthy Finding.” It is the story of the personal life and preaching philosophy of Adrian Rogers. It was written by his childhood sweetheart and wife of fifty-four years, Joyce Rogers. Dr. Rogers was the pastor of the historic Bellevule Baptist Church of Memphis, Tennessee. He served there for thirty-two years, until his retirement in the March, 2005. He was the featured speaker of Love Worth Finding Ministries. And was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention three times during its conservative resurgence in the 1980′s and 90′s. Dr. Rogers died on November 15, 2005, from pneumonia after suffering with cancer. But before his death, he and his wife outlined the details of his life that would be chronicled in this book. Likewise, several years ago, Dennis Brunet did a dissertation on the Dr. Roger’ philosophy of ministry. And the notes from his interviews with Dr. Rogers comprise the second part of this book, in which Dr. Rogers talks about expository preaching, pastoral ministry, church growth, and other topics.

Dr. Adrian Rogers loved Jesus Christ. He loved the word of God. And he loved the church of Jesus Christ. These holy passions created a man who was totally sold-out to God. Over the years, Dr. Rogers’ preaching and writing has been a great blessing to my life. And the example of his life and ministry have also been a source of great encouragement to me. Dr. Rogers developed a great church through the faithful preaching of the word of God, something that many people say cannot be done anymore. And his preaching was always clear and compelling. He had a great way of making difficult concepts easy to understand. He was simple, without being simplistic. And his voice, style, and language were all tools in the hands of the Lord to use in effective communication of the Gospel. But Rogers did not rely on preaching alone in his work. He knew that a great church cannot be built without faithful preaching. But it also cannot be built on preaching alone. And God used him to develop a ministry infrastructure at Bellevue Church that facilitated the proclamation of the word. From the development of church facilities, to the organizations of ministry programs, to media outreach through radio, TV, and the internet, to strategic and aggressive world missions support, to the conviction-based denominational work (SBC); Dr. Adrian Rogers was a model of what a man of God ought to be. If you want to read the inspiring story of one of the modern heroes of the faith, pick up “Love Worth Finding.” I dare you to read it and not be inspired to embrace and promote the love of God.

We are in the middle of revival services at Mt. Sinai. Our guest speaker is Dr. R.A. Williams, Jr, who is the pastor of the McCoy Memorial M.B.C. here in Los Angeles and president of WHW Ministries. Dr. Williams is one of the men God used to introduce me to expository preaching. And the Lord has used him to encourage and enrich my life and ministry in many ways. This is the third or fourth time Dr. Williams has preached a meeting for us. And I am honored to have him minister the word to our congregation this week. Last night, Dr. Williams did the first part of a message on reconciliation, out of the Epistle of Colossians. It was a great explanation of the message of salvation. And one person responded to the message. Please pray for the remaining two nights of this meeting. Ask God to strengthen and guide our preacher, save the lost, and build up the body of believers at MSMBC. May the Lord send true revival and reformation to and among us!

I am feeling much better today. I even put on a short sleeved shirt today, in order to enjoy some of the wonderful weather we are having here in Los Angeles this week. Yesterday, I mostly rested. This is usually the most effective remedy when my body gets sick. And it seems to have worked again. And it happened in good timing, I might add. I have quite a busy weekend ahead of me. Today, I have a couple of writing assignments to finish and some pastoral care updates to make. I also have to finish my preparation for my sermon and Sunday School lesson. I also have a leadership meeting Sunday afternoon after church to prepare for. Likewise, I am scheduled to preach this evening at the Redeemer Baptist Church here in LA, for the pastoral anniversary celebration of Pastor Curtis Monroe. I don’t know Pastor Monroe too well, but he is family. My nephew Louis and his daughter shereece have been married for several years now. Interestingly, my nephew’s last name is also Monroe. Divine providence must have a sense of humor. I am determined to get as much of my work done today as possible, so I won’t have much to do tomorrow. Saturday is my birthday. I will be 33 years-old, God willing. Praise the Lord for his steadfast love, his sustaining grace, and his sparing mercy!

Today, February 10, is my mother’s – Ellen Louise Charles – birthday. My birthday is tomorrow. And as I understand it, I would have shared my mother’s birthday if I would have arrived three hours earlier. My mother lives in Oklahoma City, where she is caring for my ailing grandmother. And I love her very much. She has sacrificed much in order to facilitate God’s plan for my life. And I appreciate it more than she will ever know. Happy birthday mom!

Here is the sermon skeleton from my midweek sermon last night on Psalm 119:

Title: “Up from the Dust”

Text: Psalm 119:25-32

Theme: God’s word encourages the depressed soul

Point: The person who is devoted to the word of God may be down, but their not out.

Outline:

I. The prayer of a soul that is depressed (119:25-28)

A. God’s word revives (v. 25)

B. God’s word enlightens (v. 26-27)

C. God’s word strengthens (v. 28)

II. The prayer of a soul that is determined (119:29-32)

A. The desires of the determined soul (119:29)

B. The decisions of a determined soul (119:30-32)

1. Choose God’s word (v. 30)

2. Cling to God’s word (v. 31)

3. Run after God’s word (v. 32)

I am sick. I didn’t have much energy Thursday afternoon. And Friday morning, I was in bad shape by the time I made it to the office; cough, congestion, the works. I rested as much as I could Friday evening. But I had to get up quite early to finish preparations to teach the “How to Study the Bible” seminar we held at MSMBC Saturday. Not feeling well, I taught for four hours on the principles and practice of personal Bible study. Truly, the Lord’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. I tried to rest as much as I could Saturday evening. But I wasn’t able to rest well. At about 12:30, I just gave up trying to sleep. And I ended up staying up all night with the two messages I had to present Sunday Morning.

In my Sunday School class, I taught on “Overcoming Envy.” Even though I have only been back at the class a few weeks, I really does feel like we haven’t missed a beat in our studies together. I am enjoying learning together with the small-group that I teach. On first Sundays, we share the Lord’s Table at MSMBC. It is always a special time for me. Yesterday was no exception. But I really didn’t feel up to preaching. I felt fine during Sunday School. But my class meets down the street from our main facility. And as soon as I got outside, I started feeling pretty bad. I am not sure why I didn’t consider sitting the service out, but I didn’t. Not once. When that thought came to my mind, I sent for my wife and asked her if it was okay for me to take some medicine before I went into service. I felt better, but any medicine I take makes me drowsy. So when I entered the service, my sinuses were feeling better, but I was getting more tired as the minutes past. It was really hard to concentrate. I began my series on the Ten Commandments with a message entitled, “No Competition,” from Exodus 20:1-3. I was not at my best. And there were definitely some parts that I did not communicate as clearly as I would have liked. But overall, I think I was able to make most of the major points of the message.

You can hear the audio of the sermon on the SERMONS section of our church website. Likewise, George has uploaded my first three messages from Psalm 119 onto the site, as well.

Pray that I get some rest this week and feel better soon.

Oh, yeah. You don’t have to ask me what I thought of the Superbowl. I didn’t get to see any of it. My wife made an appointment for the family that I had agreed to. I thought it was going to be just a few minutes. It ended up taking all afternoon. But that’s cool. My wife sacrifices a lot for me. I cannot begin to add it up. So this was a rather small thing to have to give up for her. Me and the kids did something to make her happy. And that made me happy. Just in case it took longer than we thought, my wife TiVo taped the game for me, and told me not to talk to anyone. But after our appointment, as we were sitting a dinner, the couple at the next table asked the score of the game. And the waiter shouted it out loud for everyone to hear! So at least I know what the score was.

I have just finished teaching our first Christian Life Development Seminars of the year. This is a quarterly series that I will be teaching to explain our doctrinal convictions and philosophy of ministry to our congregation over the three year period. It’s our goal to cover the major areas of doctrine and special areas of ministry emphasis for our church members. Because I am most often teaching and preaching a series, there are a lot of important subjects that don’t come up for quite some time in our church. Hopefully, this seminar series will be one way for us to supplement that. Today’s seminar was on “How to Study the Bible.” Personal Bible study is the first thing for the disciple and everything for the minister. So I taught on basic principles of inductive Bible study. I hope that it will lay the groundwork for our future sessions. And I pray that those who attended will find their time in the word to be more fruitful.

If God allows, I will begin a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)tomorrow in the corporate worship service at MSMBC. Here are some of the the resources I am using in my studies. Some of these works are newer; others I have had for some time. My reference to these books should not be taken to mean that I agree with every statement in them. But I have found them to be helpful in my studies. Here they are, listed in no particular order:

1. Disciplines of Grace – R. Kent Hughes (Crossway)

2. Pathway to Freedom – Alistair Begg (Moody)

3. The Ten Commandments: A Manual for the Christian Life – J. Douma (P&R Publishers)

4. The Ten Commandmens – Arthur W. Pink (Baker)

5. John Calvin’s Sermons on the Ten Commandments – Edited & Translated by Benjamin W. Farley (Baker)

6. The Truth about God – Stanley M. Hauerwas & William H. Willimon (Abingdon)

7. Whatever Happened to the Ten Commandments – Ernest C. Reisinger (Banner of Truth)

8. Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory – Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)

9. Basic Bible Sermons on the Ten Commandments – Jerry Vines (Broadman)

10. The Ten Commandments: Playing by the Rules – Stuart Briscoe (Shaw)

11. Laws of the Heart – Bill Hybles (Victor)

12. Why the Ten Commandments Matter – D. James Kennedy, with David Hazard (Warner Faith)

13. Growing in Christ – J.I. Packer (Crossway)

14. The Ten Commandments – Thomas Watson (Banner of Truth)

15. The Law of Perfect Freedom – Michael S. Horton (Moody)

I have also found the sermons of Ligon Duncan and Ray Pritchard helpful. I found them on their prespective websites.