John Markum

Category: Sermon

Sermon Recap: The Last Amen, week 1

Posted on by johnmarkum

In our newest teaching series The Last Amen, we focused on understanding the end times through the lens of Biblical prophecy. Here were the main points of the message in case you missed them:

  1. The arc of human history has always ever been about Jesus.
  2. The only thing matching Jesus’ immense love is His absolute magnificence.
  3. Jesus is returning soon.

Colossians 1:13-17 reveals that all things were created by, through, and for Jesus, emphasizing His central role in all things. Revelation 5:11-14 vividly portrays Jesus’ magnificence, where every creature worships Him, highlighting His sovereignty and majesty. The series also stresses the imminent return of Jesus, supported by scriptures like Matthew 24:30, Acts 1:11, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. The New Testament speaks several times about the return of Christ to gather His church – from Christ Himself, to the recordings of Acts, Paul, and John – the second coming of Jesus is a Biblical inevitability. This urgency calls all of us as believers to live faithfully, share the Gospel, and reflect our faith in our daily actions.

And while “no man knows the day or the hour of the return of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:36), we have been given signs of the times to be watchful and faithful for the return of our Lord. Many Christians and preachers tend to focus on an end times teaching that is fear-driven, rather than Christ-driven. But Jesus is the “Author and Perfector [completer] of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. So as we kick off this series, we must remain grounded on Christ as our foundation – not the fears of what will happen in the future.

Practical steps in our message this week include staying diligent in one’s walk with God, sharing the hope of Christ, and living with purpose. Next week, I will guide us deeper into the mysteries of the end times, and the circumstances that the Bible teaches will inaugurate the beginning of the end times. So join us next Sunday, 10am at Life Valley Community Church, San Jose.

If you want to listen to the whole service from Sunday, including our worship time, catch our YouTube channel here. For more about Life Valley Church, check out our website.

Looking to go deeper? Check out the 5-day devotional made from this sermon here.

Ministry Resources: Bible Study Tools

Posted on by johnmarkum

Every pastor, preacher, or student of Scripture needs reliable resources to study the Bible. There are literally hundreds or thousands of resources out there, but I wanted to share some of my favorite Bible study tools. Most of these are free, and the the ones that cost a bit are totally worth it…

  1. biblehub.com
    Bible Hub looks like a website built in the early 1990’s, with lackluster user interface and a very monochromatic design. Despite this, it is heavily packed and hyperlinked between Strong’s Concordance reference numbers, original languages, commentaries, and other translations for easy comparison between translator word choices and reasoning. Great for verse-by-verse, and word-by-word study. Totally free…
  2. biblegateway.com
    I don’t know why I still use this site! But for whatever reason, it is still my default place to look up passages and copy/paste them into my sermon notes. It is super simple to use and has access to nearly every Bible version/translation ever published. It also contains original translation notes hyperlinked within the passages. This is only useful for me on desktop, for mobile I go with The Bible App, completely! I love their reading plans, and community connections. You can follow my church in the app here. Also, totally free, but with an occasionally annoying ad bar at the sides.
  3. blueletterbible.com
    This has all the tools as Bible Hub, but with better data searching. It is not as user friendly as Bible Hub however, so I usually only get into BLB when I’m absolutely lost in the hunt to understand specific words and their usage. Seminary professors actually got me into using this tool. This site is also free, but requests for donations to support their server costs.
  4. Logos Bible software.
    This one cost something, and it is not necessarily cheap. But you do get what you pay for with this. With literal thousands of searchable cross-referenced Bible study and theology tools, it is the apex Bible study resource, perfect for anyone writing and preaching sermons on a consistent basis. It would make a great year-end/Christmas gift for a senior pastor! This price does range, depending on what features and tools you want access to, but you can also scan the ISBN code of physical books you already own, and add them straight into your Logos library! There’s also hundreds of maps, graphs, diagrams, and more to use, such that you’ll likely never use all that Logos has to offer. You can even build sermons directly in Logos where you’re doing your studying, making this a true “All-in-One” Bible Study resource.

If you’re a regular Bible student, preacher, etc. what other tools do you recommend? Comment below. ALSO! If you sign up for my email list here, I’ll send you a free Yearly Sermon Planning spreadsheet. Throughout the year I’ll also send out other free resources, like sermon series ideas I’ve used, new posts to the blog, and materials I make like the Markum Bible Study series I’ve written so far.

Blessings,
Pastor John

Year of the Bible

Posted on by johnmarkum

This past Sunday at Life Valley Community Church, I shared a vision of what 2024 will look like for our church – preaching, small groups, and more. I’m calling this our “Year of the Bible”, and here’s how it’s a going to look for us…

Our preaching calendar across the year will walk through the entire story of Scripture, in 52 Sundays, from Genesis to Revelation. Now it’s not realistic to do justice to every single book, chapter, and verse of Scripture in just 52 weekly sermons, even if I covered an entire book every week. So the preaching calendar I have planned out isn’t attempting to do that. Instead, we’ll focus on the overarching “meta-narrative” of Scripture, with the goal of helping our people deeply grasp the overall layout, themes, and purpose of the Bible as one cohesive story. Of course, I will take special dedication in specific points to appreciate the deeper nuances of specific books and segments of the Bible. For example, we’re starting the year with a full 5 week series in Genesis, but we’ll also cover all of the Old Testament History of Israel in a 5 week series as well.

To fill in many of the gaps I couldn’t possibly preach over in a single year, we’ll also be leading our church through a One Year Bible Reading Plan, beginning January 1, 2024. If you want to join us and follow along, follow our church on the YouVersion Bible app. I love this plan because of how it systematically walks through Scripture, while breaking up Psalms and the Gospels across the year.

But we don’t want to just read the Word, we want it to take root in our hearts. So we’re also preparing a Scripture memory list, and challenging one another to learn dozens of verses to memory over the new year.

Additionally, we’re going to lead our small groups to dig deeper into the Word, especially in studies that we’ll touch on in the preaching, but not have the time to dig into more of the details for. It’s my hope to continue creating more Bible studies to engage our church – and other ministries – deeper into the Scripture.

The heart behind this is to sincerely know the “Word of Truth”. I have committed my life to learning, studying, and teaching the Bible. And it continues to open up to me in new, powerful ways. And this is what has compelled me to lead our church in this direction. Of course, we always teach and preach the Bible, but I want the Word of God to mean more to us than a long menu of seemingly disjointed stories and instructions. It is truly much more than that. And the magnificence and beauty of the Bible continues to blow my mind, even after 20 years of pastoral ministry.

I can’t wait to unpack the entire story of the Bible in a meaningful way this next year! You can catch our services and sermons here on Youtube.

Blessings,
Pastor John

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