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Table of Contents |
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Editor's Note
Bible Readings for This Sunday
Sermons for This Sunday
Malankara World Pentecost Supplement
You are the Light of the World
The Church Triumphant
About Malankara World |
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Editor's Note: |
This is a special edition of
Malankara World Journal to celebrate the Pentecost Feast, also known as the Birthday of the church. We have
created a special supplement within Malankara World to cover the concepts more fully.
It provides you an in-depth study of the various
aspects of Pentecost, arrival of the Holy Spirit, etc.
You can access the MW Special on Pentecost here:
http://www.MalankaraWorld.com/Library/Pentecost/Default.htm
Let me highlight a few features.
One of the difficult to
understand teachings of Jesus is the concept of the
"unpardonable sin." Jesus said, everything you do can be
forgiven; but the blasphemy against the holy spirit will
not be forgiven. We have several articles that explains the
sins against the holy spirit. Hopefully, this will put
some fresh perspective on this.
Sometimes, it is a good idea to
look "outside the box." We look at Pentecost always as
what happened 50 days after the first Easter Sunday. How
about bringing it into the present day?
David Lose's article, Preaching
a Present-Tense Pentecost does exactly that.
You will agree that it sure is fascinating!
Fr. Saji K. Mathew challenges us to apply the Pentecost and
Holy Spirit in the present day church in his article,
What is the relevance of Pentecost in our Church?
He says that Love and cooperation are the two lessons we
learn from Pentecost that can be applied to our church.
Think about that! Love and cooperation instead of
fights!
Another interesting article that is well worth
contemplating is
Pentecost Paradoxes. This may change your whole
concept of Holy Spirit. Is Holy Spirit makes life easy for
us or tough for us? The answer may surprise you!
Pentecost is the Birthday of our
Church. Greg Laurie's article about expectations from our
church is also timely. He reminds us that imperfect
people like us constitute the membership of the church
and so we cannot expect perfection in any church. Keep
that in mind when you go to any church.
Thank you for your continued
support. Enjoy MW Journal. |
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This Sunday in Church |
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Bible Readings for This Sunday |
Pentecost (Fiftieth day after Easter)
- Evening
- Morning
- Before Holy Qurbana
- Numbers 11: 16 - 35
- I Samuel 10:9-15
- II Kings 2:14 -17 , 12: 1-27
- Ezekiel 11: 17-20, 36: 25 - 27
- Isaiah 42: 1- 27
- Holy Qurbana
- Acts 2: 1-13
- Galatians 5 : 16 - 26
- St. John 15: 1 - 14
- Service of the First kneeling
- Genesis 11: 1-9
- II Kings 2 ; 14 - 17
- Acts 19:1-7
- I Corinthians 14: 20-25
- St. John 14: 1-17
- Service of the Second Kneeling
- Ezekiel 37: 1 - 14
- Joel 2:25-32
- Acts 10: 34 - 48
- I Corinthians 12: 12 - 27
- St. John 14: 25 - 31
- Service of the Third Kneeling
- Judges 13 : 24- 14: 7
- Ezekiel 47: 1-12
- Isaiah 47: 1- 1
- Acts 2: 1-21
- I Corinthians 14: 20 - 33
- St. John 16: 1 - 15
Lectionary
of the Syrian Orthodox Church
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Sermons for This Sunday |
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We have greatly expanded our Sermon Resources.
The sermon collection now includes general and classical sermons. This will give a broader appeal to the Gospel Reading for the week. We
also added bible commentaries for the bible reading to facilitate study and
meditation. Please check it out. |
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Sermons
and Bible Commentaries for the
Pentecost Sunday
More
Sermons |
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Malankara World Pentecost Supplement |
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This
Sunday being Pentecost, a very important Feast Day for our church.
we have expanded coverage of Holy Spirit and Holy Trinity. We felt a
better way of accommodating this is in the form of a supplement in
Malankara World. Here is the Link:
http://www.MalankaraWorld.com/Library/Pentecost/Default.htm
We have articles on Holy Spirit - what it
is, Gifts of Holy Spirit, Sins against Holy Spirit, Questions and
Answers commonly asked about Holy Spirit, Reflections by Church
Fathers on Holy Spirit, Prayers and Meditations to Holy Spirit, Sermons
and Bible Studies, etc. etc. More will be added to this supplement
in the near future. We welcome your articles for
inclusion in this supplement. We want to make this an important
resource for those trying to understand the concept of Holy Spirit
and the triune god. |
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You are the Light of the World |
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The teaching for today comes from the Sermon of the Mount. Jesus was
living in the small town of Capernaum, right on the lake shore of the Lake of
Galilee. The large hills seemed to grow right out from the lake shore, rising up
from the lake, and halfway up the hills above Lake Galilee is where Jesus
preached his Sermon on the Mount. Situated there is now a chapel called “The
Chapel of the Beatitudes.” There from that chapel, high on the hill, you look
out across the Lake of Galilee and it is incredibly beautiful. That is where
Jesus taught the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount.
Up on that mountain, with his disciples, Jesus was thought of as the new
teacher, the new Moses. As Moses went up to Mount Sinai, he gave the Ten
Commandments to the Jewish religion; so Jesus, the New Moses, went up the
mountain and he gave Christians a new set of commandments, a new code for
living, a new sense of right and wrong. Jesus gave us a new guideline for life.
The Ten Commandments were no longer adequate. There is much more to the
Christian life than trying to obey the Ten Commandments. On the mountain above
Capernaum that day, Jesus was the New Moses and this was the New Mountain and
these were his New Commandments.
Jesus said to his disciples: “You. You. You.” In the Greek language, the
emphasis is on you. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot
be hid. A lamp that is lit in a house is not put under a bushel. Rather, you put
a lamp onto a lamp stand so that it will light the whole house.” Then Jesus
said, “Let your light so shine, so that all people will see your good works,
your works of love, and give glory to God who is in heaven.”
Shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let is shine.
The text for today and the whole Sermon on the Mount is about
our relationship
to the world around us. Last Sunday, we focused on the commandment that
Christians are to be the salt of the earth. The world is going through moral
decay and disintegration. The world is forever stinking morally, and you
Christians are to be the salt of the earth. You are to be the moral preservative
of moral values.
But that is not enough. Jesus continued. You are not only to be salt but you are
to be a light to the world. It is not enough to preserve the moral fabric of
society. More is needed. You are to be the light that shines on the world. We
need to preserve the moral values of God but we need to expand the kingdom of
God and Christ to all people, and being the light of Christ is part of that
expansion. The world needs more than salt; the world also needs the light of
Christ.
Read
the full article |
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The Church Triumphant
by Greg Laurie |
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“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me.
Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I
have overcome the world.”—John 16:33
Sometimes people get upset with the church. They may have been mistreated, or
perhaps someone representing the church didn’t do a good job of that. Or maybe
they did a horrible thing in the name of the church, and there is no excuse for
that.
Then again, it may be the people who are supposedly bitter at the church feel
that way because they have lived in disobedience. They did something wrong, and
then they faced the repercussions of that in the church. Maybe they were told
not to live that way any longer. And so they became angry at the church.
The church has its strengths, and the church has its weaknesses. But no matter
what, Jesus Christ established it, and we are part of it. We need to love the
church, support the church, and be a functioning part of the church.
And if you are looking for a hypocrite-free church, your
search is over, because no such church exists. So stop looking. Every church has
hypocrites, because every church is made up of human beings just like you and me
who fall short. We all have our shortcomings. We all have our flaws. But Jesus
established the church, and He said, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and
all the powers of hell will not conquer it” (Matthew 16:18).
We live in a culture where the church is under attack. Our
values are mocked and laughed at. Our belief about the family, about what
matters in life, is being challenged by an increasingly secular culture. And
sometimes we wonder, Is evil going to prevail? But Jesus said of the church,
“All the powers of hell will not conquer it.” Read the last page of the Bible,
and you will see that the church wins in the end.
Summary sentence: The church is made of flawed people like you and me, yet Jesus
has promised that the powers of hell cannot conquer it.
Copyright © 2011 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved. |
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About Malankara World |
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Malankara World has well over 2700 articles and hundreds of
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