Calvary Bible Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan

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Southern California is known for its sunny summer days, but my best memories growing up in Los Angeles are of its warm summer nights. It’s seldom humid there, so once the sun goes down the air cools to the perfect comfort level. The summer of 1989 stands out because that was the year my best friend had just gotten his driver’s license, opening all kinds of opportunities for us, good and bad. (Read More)

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From our earliest days, we are inclined to believe that if we just get everything we want we’ll be happy. Toddlers will beg, scream, hit, kick, and even hold their breath in their pursuit of happiness. I wish I could say that we all grow out of that, but I’m not sure that we do. We just learn to settle for partial happiness, because we don’t have the money or power to get everything we want. (Read More)

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Have you ever noticed that Father’s Day doesn’t get nearly as much publicity as Mother’s Day? Why is that? Are mothers more important? Moms certainly do work hard. Perhaps one reason is that without the reminders from all the advertisements, most men would probably forget Mother’s Day.  Women are well prepared for Father’s Day, but men have to rush out Saturday night and try to find a last minute gift. I speak from personal experience. A lot of us guys just aren’t the best when it comes to planning. (Read More)

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When I was growing up, my parents had a grandfather clock that stood just to your left as you came in the front door. You could hear the deep tick-tock of its pendulum from every corner of the house. Inscribed above the dial was a Latin phrase: Tempus Fugit. Time Flies. That expression didn’t mean much to me. Time couldn’t move fast enough back then, but now my perspective is different. (Read More)

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My family and I just returned from a trip out west. Originally our plan was to meet up with our families somewhere in the middle of the country, but for a number of reasons it became clear that this plan wasn’t going to work out. So we started checking out different modes of travel for getting to both Southern California and Oregon. The most affordable approach for our family of five was to travel by train. When we made that decision, I don’t think we realized what we were getting ourselves into. (Read More)

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On one occasion some people brought their children to Jesus. They wanted him to lay his hands on them and pray for them. Apparently, the disciples didn’t think this was a good use of Jesus’ time, so they began to rebuke the people. Jesus intervened, however, and made this statement: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt 19:14).

What is it about children that Jesus likes so much? (Read More)

39:58 minutes (6.86 MB)

Have you ever met anyone famous?  Did they measure up to your impression of them?

I don’t know what it is about us as people, but we love to make people into heroes.  We idolize them, setting them on a pedestal apart from mere mortals. We love hearing details about their lives. And we act as if we know them personally, but the truth is that they seldom measure up to the idyllic picture we have in our minds. Reality can be disillusioning. (Read More)

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How many of you watched the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics Friday night?  What an amazing spectacle! There’s sure to be incredible stories that come out of this competition. It amazes me to think of all the effort and training that the athletes, many in their teens, have put into preparing for this event. (Read More)

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Since I was very young, I have always had an interest in all the news about space exploration. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they build and control the space probes, is located in my home town. The parents of some of my school friends worked there, so they would bring pictures of the planets and the stars to our school.  They even had occasional Open Houses at the lab. (Read More)

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One of the first times I heard the gospel was in seventh grade. A friend invited me to a church outreach event that included a trip to Disneyland. I don’t remember much about what I heard that weekend. What I remember was arriving at Disneyland, and realizing that I had lost my wallet. This was the first time I had done anything like this without my parents, so I was pretty nervous. When my wallet was missing, I panicked. I called my parents and asked them to make the hour drive to pick me up early. (Read More)

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This morning our study of Philippians brings us to a passage of Scripture that I probably turn to more than any other. Not only do I turn to it for my own edification, but I find it to be one of the most practical and helpful passages to share with people in a variety of different circumstances. If we truly live out these words, our lives will be transformed. The lessons of these verses contain the basic solution to nearly every pastoral counseling scenario I have encountered in twelve years of ministry. (Read More)

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Have you ever heard the expression, “It’s the thought that counts”? That’s the kind of thing we say to our kids when some distant relative sends them a gift that they have no interest in—clothes they’ll never wear because they’re the wrong size or an outdated style or some obnoxious color—toys that are far too young for them. It’s the thought that counts. Then again, there are times when you’re discouraged that the thought behind even the simplest gift can be a huge encouragement. (Read More)

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Money is an integral part of life. Not a day goes by that we don’t use or at least think about it, particularly in the face of rising prices. Do you have financial concerns this morning?

You may be thinking, “Yes, thank you, but I came to church this morning to put those thoughts aside. I want to lift my thoughts to heavenly things.” That’s certainly a worthwhile goal, but I have news for you. Jesus himself spoke often about money. (Read More)

41:09 minutes (7.07 MB)

I’ve titled this morning’s message, “Investing.” Typically, when we think of investing, we think of Wall Street. This has been a roller-coaster week in the financial world with major drops over fears of a crash and major intervention by the U.S. government. I don’t know if all of that means anything to you. Honestly, I struggle to understand what it means myself. (Read More)

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October 29, 1929 is known in history as Black Tuesday. It was the day that the stock market crashed. Some investors were so devastated by their financial losses leading up to the crash that they committed suicide—eleven men on October 24 alone. The crash coincided with a number of other tragic events. In 1926 the Gulf States had been struck by a category 4 hurricane that all but destroyed Miami. In the 1930s the Midwest entered a time of drought that led to incredible dust storms known as the Dust Bowl.  (Read More)

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With money being tight, all of us are looking for good bargains. When we hear the word “bargain,” most of us probably think of finding a good sale price. We are used to walking into a store, seeing a price, and simply deciding whether or not to pay it. The only time we really engage in active bargaining may be at a garage sale or when we go to purchase a car. In many other parts of the world that kind of active bargaining is a part of normal everyday life. (Read More)

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Each day as we watch the news we hear some new piece of bad financial news. We wait and watch and wonder what it will all mean for us in coming months. As you hear about all of this, do you ever wonder why God would allow the entire world to go into financially hard times? Is this even a fair question to ask?  Does God have direct control over the economy?  Yes and no. (Read More)

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In all the political hype leading up to the presidential election, we are hearing quite a bit about taxes. If you listen carefully to all the rhetoric, you’ll find that the candidates’ views on taxes are flow out of some very different ways of thinking about work. The Republicans seem to think of work primarily as a way of earning money. The more responsibility and burden involved in the job, the more you should earn. The Democrats seem to think of work as a way of providing for society. (Read More)

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What’s the hardest job that you’ve ever had? The hardest job I ever had was one year during seminary when I got hired on at one of the big home improvement stores. It was November and the store was getting ready for Christmas. They were hiring extra people to sell Christmas trees. You know that wonderful smell of fresh pine, it gets old very quickly.
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With all of the election news over the past few weeks, other news stories have been passed over. There was one story from the country of Argentina in South America that caught my attention. This financial crisis we’ve seen unfolding this fall is affecting countries worldwide including Argentina. As the country struggles to generate money, its president has proposed a solution—the government is preparing to nationalize $30 billion from private pension funds.
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One of the fascinating things to watch when any President is elected is whether or not he actually follows through on his campaign promises regarding taxes.  Someone has said, “America is the land of opportunity. Everybody can become a taxpayer.” It’s true.  We have laws and organizations to combat illegal immigration. At the same time, the IRS assigns tax ID numbers to illegal immigrants so that they can have income tax deducted. Banks are even helping illegal immigrants purchase homes, so they get to pay property taxes too.
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Is anyone planning any air travel over the holiday season? I came across an article a while back about new security technology being tested in some airports. You know how they have the metal detectors and pull people out of line to pat them down. Has that ever happened to you? Instead of patting people down, some airports are testing full body scanners that actually see through your clothing. The article I read called it a virtual strip search. It reminds me of the old X-ray glasses that they sell along with other gags at magic shops. (Read More)

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People have always been fascinated by stories of a superior race of beings that watch over us yet remain for the most part invisible to us. The Ancient Greeks called them gods and built elaborate temples to worship them. Native Americans and other tribal groups around the world have called them spirits and sought to appease them through various rituals. Some who claim to be atheistic have called them extraterrestrials and have sought to establish contact with them through space exploration. Many people, however, refer to such beings as angels. (Read More)

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When was the last time you wrote someone a letter?  Not just a card, but an actual letter of some length?
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In 1 Timothy 2:4, the Apostle Paul tells us that God our Savior “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Suppose God chose you to be His communication consultant. What kind of plan would you design for Him to announce the gospel? Suppose He offered to send one of His angels to speak to anyone in the world. Whom would you choose to receive that revelation from God?
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If you stood your Bible up on a table and let it flop open, where would it open to? It will either open to the page you last looked at, or to a page that you turn to time and time again.
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After the Bible, one of the most helpful books I’ve found to help people build a strong marriage is Emmerson Eggerichs’s book titled Love and Respect. The book explores how couples can apply Ephesians 5:33 in their marriage. That verse says, “Each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.” Eggerichs tries to show men how to unconditionally love their wives and wives how to unconditionally respect their husbands.
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Let me ask you a question. Why are you here this morning? If we had time to all share our reasons, we would probably hear a variety of answers. Maybe someone made you come. Maybe you have come because it’s what you always do. Maybe you’ve come because you want to worship God or because you want to learn more about the Bible. Maybe you’ve come to see people you care about. Maybe you’ve just come out of curiosity. Church means different things to different people.
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Many churches across the country are celebrating today as Sanctity of Life Sunday – a day to address the devaluing of human life that we see in our culture, particularly in the practice of abortion.
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In Acts 1:8, Jesus Christ set the direction for his followers. He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” Jesus designed the Christian church to be a focused missionary movement that would permeate the entire world.
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Sprinkled throughout history are rare events that fundamentally change the way we think and live. They often seem insignificant at the time. People dismiss them as fads. Only in hindsight do we see how powerful these events are.
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This year is the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Calvary Bible Church. In as sense though, our church is even older than that, because Kalamazoo Bible Church was founded all the way back in 1906. When we merged together in 2006, the history of both churches became one.
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Every Tuesday and Thursday I spend most of my day over at our Drake Campus. This gives me the opportunity to stay in touch with our staff there. It’s also a good place for me to meet with anyone who needs biblical advice and counsel. Of course, that means that I have to make the trek back and forth across Kalamazoo straight through the heart of downtown.
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Have you ever had one of those moments when you get the sense that God is trying to get your attention? Sometimes it’s through some difficulty you’ve encountered—an accident, a sickness, or a lost job. Sometimes it’s when some great blessing occurs in your life—maybe a wedding, or the birth of a child or grandchild. Sometimes it’s when someone you know experiences one of these major life events. How did you respond?
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As a native of California, I watched with great interest the news reports coming out of California on Thursday as the state’s Supreme Court considered challenges to Proposition 8—the same sex marriage ban that was passed in the by the state’s voters back in November. The headline on the L.A. Times website read, “Prop. 8 hearing results in a clash of faiths.” The lead line in the article said, “Anyone who needs proof that there must be more than one God need only to have visited the San Francisco Civic Center plaza this morning.” That was a very perceptive comment. (Read More)

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Have you ever had an experience that heightened your sense of reverence for God?
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Just three weeks from today is Easter Sunday, the day when we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection. As you know, many people in our society still feel compelled to attend a church service on that day. It is a perfect opportunity for all of us to invite people we know to join us. In fact, we will have two worship services that morning at 9 and 10:30.
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You don’t have to be too perceptive to notice that without expending a lot of effort, things tend to fall apart over time. It’s true of our cars. Tires, belts, and hoses all wear out. Gaskets begin to leak. It’s true of our houses. Paint gets faded. Carpet wears out. Appliances stop working. It’s true of our bodies. It’s true of relationships, and it’s also true of churches.
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There is a Hebrew proverb that says, “Wealth adds many friends, but a poor man is separated from his friend” (Prov 19:4). Another says, “All the brothers of a poor man hate him; How much more do his friends abandon him! He pursues them with words, but they are gone” (Prov 19:7).

It’s so true, isn’t it? We love success. We idolize winners—the fastest, the richest, the strongest, the most talented, most beautiful, and most brilliant. Whose lives are followed in the news? Who ends up on the cover of magazines? (Read More)

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This week I took some vacation time to go with my family to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. One of the things I like at the museum is their local artifacts. They have a whole assortment of antique gadgets that people here in the area have donated. Of course, most of us today have no idea what a lot of these gadgets do.
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I was looking at some family pictures taken somewhere around five years ago, and I was reminded that at the time we received some very disconcerting news about our daughter. One of the doctors who attends our church was working in the nursery and noticed some signs that she might have some health problem. She wasn’t gaining weight the way that she should have. She was beginning to look malnourished. Even though we were feeding her well, she just wasn’t growing the way that she was supposed to. This was a scary time for us. We met with various pediatric specialists. (Read More)

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I have struggled with deciding what I should preach today being that it’s Mother’s Day. The natural choice seems to be to preach a message specifically to moms about what it means to be a mother. On the other hand, I am more inclined to want to give moms a break. In most cases, their families are the ones who need the message, not the moms.
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I was thinking the other day about how much the Internet has changed the way we live. Our recent family vacation was almost entirely planned on the internet. We found and reserved hotels. We mapped out our trip. We purchased different items for our trip. We even printed out a listing of all the McDonald’s along our route that had playgrounds for our kids. After we got back, of course, we posted pictures of our trip online for our friends and family.
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With tomorrow being Memorial Day, we want to recognize any of you who have served in the Armed Forces. Would you please stand? We give thanks to God for all of you and for those who have given their lives to keep all of us safe. The ability to worship without fear of persecution is a great blessing that we shouldn’t take lightly.
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This is such a great time of year as the school year winds down. Graduations are taking place, of course so too are finals and report cards.  It would be interesting if we could develop a report card to grade churches. Most of us probably think about grading the church like we would a business or a sports team. As a customer, you look at a business and ask how good is the quality and the service for the price. It’s even easier to grade a sports team. You just look at how many wins they have. But the church isn’t so easy.
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At 29,029 feet above sea level, the summit of Mount Everest sitting on the border between China and Nepal is the highest point on earth. To date less than 3,000 people are known to have reached that summit. Those who attempt the climb face several barriers. The air is so thin at that altitude that most people have to carry oxygen tanks. The weather is icy with extremely low wind chill. Most climbers sustain some degree of frostbite. Even if you were willing to face those obstacles, there is the barrier of time. Several weeks are required to adjust to the altitude. Then there is the cost. (Read More)

42:35 minutes (9.75 MB)Solomon Northrup was born a free man. He was a responsible citizen with a wife and three children-two girls (ages 10 and 8) and a boy (age 5). He lived with his family in Saratoga Springs, New York, doing manual labor at times and whenever he could getting jobs playing violin. In 1841 he got a job playing music for a traveling circus act.

One night while the group was in Washington D.C., someone apparently drugged him and he passed out. He says, “…when consciousness returned I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains. (Read More)

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Have you ever thought about the theology of clothing? I'm not talking about Christian T-shirts. I'm talking about any clothing. Expensive or cheap, clean or dirty, formal or casual, trendy or outdated, modest or immodest--there is a basic theological point communicated by all clothes.
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You don't have to read very far in the Bible to encounter the emotion of anger. It first shows up in Genesis 4 in the life of the first naturally born human being. His name was Cain. In Genesis 4:3-7, the Scripture tells us,

3So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground.

 4Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; (Read More)

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In showing his followers how to pray, Jesus gave us what we call "The Lord's Prayer." As we begin this morning, let's read it together. 

Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name. 
Your kingdom come
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen (Read More)

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On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, en route to New York on her maiden voyage. In that day she was the largest and most luxurious passenger ship in the world. She was equipped with so many safety features that she was thought to be unsinkable, yet we all know what happened. Late in the night on April 14th, the ship's first officer gave the order to turn the ship to avoid hitting a large iceberg. But when you see an iceberg floating in the ocean, you're only seeing 10 percent of it. The other 90 percent lays under the surface of the water. (Read More)

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It's amazing that we're already half way through the month of August. This is the time of year when football begins to get into full swing. Colleges and high schools, even junior football leagues are all getting rolling. (Read More)

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When I was growing up, my family lived just over a mile away from my grandparents. Though we lived in a suburb just north of Los Angeles, my grandfather was a farmer at heart. He had grown up in Arkansas and loved to grow tomatoes, squash, melons, and even corn in his little backyard. His world revolved around a greasy old work bench in his garage where he was constantly tinkering. On most summer afternoons, if you walked into his garage you would hear the radio tuned-in to a baseball game. He rooted for the Dodgers, but had an amazing ability to recall baseball trivia for almost any team. (Read More)

42:39 minutes (19.52 MB)One of my favorite Bible stories is found in 1 Kings 18. It's the story of the prophet Elijah and his showdown with the prophets of the false god Baal. Elijah proposed a simple contest to show prove whether Baal or Yahweh was the true God. They would set up two altars with oxen slaughtered and prepared as a burnt offering. Then they would each pray to their god and ask him to send fire down to consume their offering.  (Read More)

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About two years ago our family decided to get a dog. I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was for us. Our children had been terrified of dogs. Whenever we would be walking somewhere and someone would come up with a dog, our kids would scream and run away. We would try to tell them not to be afraid, but that didn't help. It didn't matter what kind of dog it was or how big it was. It didn't matter if the dog was barking or totally calm. The kids were just terrified of dogs. Whenever we would go to the park, they would even worry that dogs would be there. (Read More)

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