Bartimaeus Baptist Temple

Thanks to everyone who helped to make the dinner possible and special thinks to the Whitmore’s neighbor Dian, who once again provided creative, sweet, and practical gifts for everyone.  The worship was joyful and the teaching led us to appreciate and believe what Jesus did for us.

This week I’m going to take a detour from the deliverer series I’ve been sharing with you so that I can show you something wonderful that God showed me a few weeks ago.  It involves a tough piece of Old Testament law that’s kind of hard for those of us with disabilities to swallow.

Any man from Aaron the priest’s offspring in whom is a physical defect shall not come near to present offerings made by fire to Yahweh; a physical defect is in him; he shall not come near to present his God’s food. (Leviticus 21:21 Lexham English Bible)

How is one who has a disability to deal with this law?  It’s hard not to take exception to it, and many have.  Even a devout believer may feel hurt by it.  I confess that I have.  Even though I am aware that this was a regulation specifically for the priesthood, meant to emphasize the necessity of perfection we cannot obtain, it stings.  Combine that with a lifetime of always having in the back of my mind that somehow if I could only have enough faith or find some missing piece I could be healed and you have a toxic concoction of perceived inadequacy and failure.

Snippets of scripture taken from their context are usually not properly applied.  This one is no different.  Taken outside of the regulations for the priesthood it seems harsh indeed.  Yet there’s another little bit of text from the New Testament that really spoke to me recently and took out some of the sting of the Levitical stricture.

And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. (Matthew 21:14 NASB)

It’s almost an aside.  Nothing much is made of it.  Jesus just did that sort of thing everywhere He went.  But in the context of the law and who He is, you can find the whole of the Gospel story right there.  Our sins, our defects if you will, keep us from approaching a holy God.  Anything less than perfection dies in the presence of His holiness.  At that time only the high priest could come into the Holy of Holies once a year to offer the blood of the sacrifice.  If he hadn’t done everything just so, if he was impure in any way, he would die.  He had bells on his robe and a rope tied around his ankle so that if he died while in there he could be dragged out without anyone else having to go in.

Now look at this situation again.  Yahweh in the person of Jesus has come out of the Holy of Holies and is with the common people in the temple.  Those who could not be in the presence of Yahweh whether they were of Aaron’s line or not were coming to Him, and He was healing them.  We could not go to Him, but He came to us and removed that which prevented us.  Thus he would do for all of humankind not long after this episode as he died on that cross and rose again in the event we just finished celebrating.

We are all defective, but our perfection comes through Him.  Maybe you have felt unacceptable.  I hope you’ll come and join us this Sunday and let the Healer do His work on you.  I look forward to seeing everyone as we keep celebrating life all year long!

This week Chris will be in the service and he wants speak to us about what God has done for him and he will share with us the song he wrote, “rain on me heaven”.  I hope you will be in service Sunday as we worship God and fellowship with one another.

Please continue to pray for those mentioned in our prayer request last Sunday.  If you are struggling this week , you are not alone.  My encouragement to you is, as we talked about last week, know that Christ is leading you somewhere and he is ready to deliver you out of whatever turmoil you are in.  1 John 3: 1-2 “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is.”  That is my prayer for all of us, that we Will walk in the fact that we are children of God, brothers and sister of Jesus Christ.  We will see you Sunday and invite someone to come with you!!!

We Love you so much,

Pastor David & Pris

This Sunday, I would like to continue exploring the picture of Jesus the savior presented by deliverers in the Old Testament.  Last time we talked about Noah and saw how his obedience saved humanity because he found favor with God.  Now we’ll move on to Joseph, who will show us how God is at work even when evil seems to triumph.  Joseph’s story starts in Genesis 37 and goes through the end of the book.  You may remember that God gave him some big dreams, and when he told his family about them, they weren’t too happy with him.  He was the favorite of his father Jacob, and his brothers were so jealous of him that they sold him to be a slave in Egypt.  His troubles didn’t end there, but in the end he would become a ruler in Egypt and God used him to save life.  This is what he said to his brothers when they came begging mercy from him after Jacob died.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen 50:20.)

Come and join us as we see what else we can learn from the life of Joseph.

This Sunday Linda and I have the honor of sharing with you.  Linda has an important lesson for us all that I hope we will take to heart.  I want to encourage you over the next few months by talking about the people that God used throughout the Old Testament to illustrate what Jesus came to do for us.  None of these people were perfect.  Only Jesus is that good, but God used them anyway and that is what I think He wants us to see.  By looking at their lives and how God used them, we will learn much that can guide and strengthen us in our own journeys.

We’re going to start with Noah.  You’ll find His story in Genesis, Chapters 6-9.  You might want to read the whole passage to get reacquainted with the story, but we could sum it up with verses 5-8 of Chapter 6.  We all learned about the ark in Sunday school, but there’s much more here.  Noah is the first picture of a deliverer who would save humanity.  Let’s take a look at Noah’s life and see what we can learn.

Please come and join us!  The weather reports as of this writing show the rain on the way out by then, so you won’t need your own ark to get here.  See you Sunday!

We have being going over the beatitudes over the last few weeks.  I hope to finish up with them on Sunday but we don’t want to hurry over any of these important ways God wants to bless us.  We need to make these characteristics as part of who we are.  We all need God’s blessing and we all need to be more like Jesus. After we finish this study I hope we will understand what Great thing God has planned for us and what Great things he is offering us.  We will start the service at 2:30 on Sunday as Pris will lead the lesson in Sunday School and we will finish up around 4:00. I hope you will make plans to be with us.

On March the 9Th we will have our service but them we will have the long awaited wedding shower for Arthur and Jana Breedlove after the service.  Arthur is going to cook out and we all need to bring a dish.

On March the 23rd we will be going to visit The Renaissance Church at 1509 H Ave in Plano TX 75074. They are located in the courtyard Theater in Plano.  Pastor Danny Mack will bring the message then we will return back to Bartimaeus for lunch.

I hope you will be making your plans for all of our services.  I urge you to pray for all those listed on our pray list and if you have a need for prayer please call us and let us pray with you.
I heard a very good report from pastor Jay on his dad Jerry.  He has gone through all his chemo treatment and the doctor’s are amazed at how well he is doing.  We are not amazed just amazed at how great our God is.  Keep doing good things for Christ and read the scripture versus in Matt the 5Th chapter vs 1-12 and apply these traits to your life.  Your life will change.  We love and can’t wait to see you on Sunday!

We love you so much!

Pastor David & Pris