North Park Baptist Church of Bridgeport CT

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Be the Church: What Is the Church?

September 22, 2024

Be the Church

Matthew 16:18, 1 John 3:1, 1 Corinthians 12:27, Acts 2:41, Matthew 28:19-29

Mark Smith

Be the Church: What Is the Church?

Date Preached: September 22, 2024

Series: Be the Church

Speaker: Mark Smith

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In this first message in the series "Be the Church" we discover four New Testament facts about what the church is.

Be the Church: What Is the Church?

The God Who Reveals the Future

August 25, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 9:20-27

Mark Smith

The God Who Reveals the Future

Date Preached: August 25, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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In response to Daniel's prayer for himself, his people, Jerusalem, and the Temple, God sends the angel Gabriel to reveal His coming plans for His people, the city, and the Temple. He reveals that God has a timeline of seventy weeks to accomplish His work on earth.

What are these seventy weeks? Are they literal or figurative? Are they normal seven day weeks or something else? When do they start? When do they end? What is going to happen during these 70 weeks? These are questions that must come to our minds as we read this passage.

While some of these can be readily answered, we'll discover some are a bit trickier. Yet despite the challenges, the message comes though clearly. God is going to carry out his plan to end sin, provide atonement for sin, and bring in everlasting righteousness. He knows, reveals, and controls the future. Christians can have confidence in the future.

The God Who Reveals the Future

The God Who Is Ready to Forgive

August 18, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 9:1-19

Mark Smith

The God Who Is Ready to Forgive

Date Preached: August 18, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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As the time approached that Jeremiah's prophecy that the Jews would be allowed to return to Jerusalem would be fulfilled, Daniel devoted himself to prayer. It is interesting to see what he prayed for: not the physical needs of the exiles, but the spiritual needs of the nation.

This is one of the longest recorded prayers in the Bible and is a model of what God told his people to do in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14. Daniel knew that God was a God ready to forgive, if...

Perhaps you need God's forgiveness. If you do (and who doesn't), Daniel's prayer has a lot to teach you.

The God Who Is Ready to Forgive

The God Who Controls the Clock

August 11, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 8

Mark Smith

The God Who Controls the Clock

Date Preached: August 11, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Daniel 8, Daniel's second vision, brings us back into the Hebrew portion of Daniel. Whereas the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 2, and the first vision of Daniel in chapter 7 dealt with four nations who would be involved in the affairs of Israel, Daniel's second vision deals with just two, and one of them is hardly mentioned.

The focus is on a king who will arise out of the kingdom of Greece who will oppress God's people as no one before him, but will be destroyed. Theologically, the most interesting part of this vision has to do with time. In it we learn that God controls the clock. He sets the exact time event will occur. The application to our lives is direct and simple.

The God Who Controls the Clock

The God Who Directs the Future

August 4, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 7

Mark Smith

The God Who Directs the Future

Date Preached: August 4, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Many people view history as a series of more or less random events. Nations rise and fall, people rise to prominence and then disappear, and so on, but basically nothing much changes. The cycle repeats itself. Christians on the other hand see God directing history to the conclusion he's chosen for it.

This is the perspective that we discover in the visions that God gave to Daniel. In chapter seven, we read of the first of three visions of the future God gave to Daniel. While there is much that can be confusing in the chapter, the message is clear: God is in control of history.

If that's a message you need to hear or re-hear, this message is for you.

The God Who Directs the Future

The God Who Can Shut Lion’s Mouths

July 21, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 6

Mark Smith

The God Who Can Shut Lion’s Mouths

Date Preached: July 21, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Daniel again distinguishes himself, this time with the new king, the king of the Medes, Darius. For this he earns powerful enemies who plot to bring him down. Finding no fault in his administration they turn to use his commitment to God against him. The result it a night with lions, but ultimately, deliverance and continued success. His enemies face the fate they plotted for him, and Darius is convinced that Daniel's God is a God to be reckoned with.

The God Who Can Shut Lion’s Mouths

The God Who Brings Down Nations

July 14, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 5

Mark Smith

The God Who Brings Down Nations

Date Preached: July 14, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Once again God deals with an arrogant king and in the process brings down an empire, replacing it with another. Belshazzar, co-regent with his father, is the arrogant king who blasphemes God by using vessels from his Temple to drink to the gods of gold, silver, wood, and stone. Handwriting appears on the wall, and the king learns from Daniel that he's been numbered, weighed, and found wanting. That night he dies as the Medes and Persians invade Babylon and end the empire.

Belshazzar failed to learn from Nebuchadnezzar and the humiliation God brought on him for his pride. God shows again that he is in control and even controls the rise and fall of nations.

The God Who Brings Down Nations

The God Who Humbles the Proud

July 7, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 4

Mark Smith

The God Who Humbles the Proud

Date Preached: July 7, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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If you've heard of Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein, Sam Bankman-Fried, or R Kelly you know of at least one former high-flyer who was caught in wrong-doing, humiliated, and lost everything. We'll learn that King Nebuchadnezzar suffered a similar fate at the hand of God.

In Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar gives a first-hand account of how God destroyed his pride, and how he learned to acknowledge the God of Daniel as the one true sovereign.

Pride is a dangerous thing, as we know. It destroys. But, as we'll see, humbleness exalts, It's a lesson many of us haven't fully learned. We do need to learn to humble ourselves.

The God Who Humbles the Proud

The God of Fiery Furnaces

June 30, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 3

Mark Smith

The God of Fiery Furnaces

Date Preached: June 30, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Are you a soft sofa Christian or a fiery furnace Christian? In this message we meet three fiery furnace Jewish young men who refused to sit on the soft sofa of compromise in order to remain faithful to their God. In the process these three young Jewish men destroyed a powerful king's new religion. and were prospered for their faith and faithfulness.

They did not bow and as a result showed a pagan nation who the One True God really is. When the world pressures us to bow, will we? Are we soft sofa or fiery furnace believers?

The God of Fiery Furnaces

The God Who Reveals Mysteries

June 23, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 2

Mark Smith

The God Who Reveals Mysteries

Date Preached: June 23, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Daniel was elevated to the court of King Nebuchadnezzar while still a young man. One day someone came to execute him and all the wise men of the land. Why? Because the king had a bad night.

As we'll see, Daniel's faith in God saved not only his life and the lives of many others, but showed Nebuchadnezzar who the true sovereign was, he is Daniel's God, the God who reveals mysteries.

This God is still sovereign, and that has application not only for believers, but for everyone on the earth, even those who think they are as important as Nebuchadnezzar did.

The God Who Reveals Mysteries

How to Succeed As a Husband

June 16, 2024

Ephesians 5:25-33

Mark Smith

How to Succeed As a Husband

Date Preached: June 16, 2024

Speaker: Mark Smith

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God has a plan for family success. It begins with understanding the basic responsibilities he's given to wives, husbands, children, and fathers. In this message we'll look at the responsibilities of the husband, taken from Ephesians 5:25-33.

How to Succeed As a Husband

Daniel Stands Firm

June 9, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 1

Mark Smith

Daniel Stands Firm

Date Preached: June 9, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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The pressure to conform must have been incredible. Most other young men like him gave in. Not Daniel, and not his three friends.

Taken to Babylon as a young teenager, Daniel was expected to no longer be a Jew, but to become a Babylonian. His mind would be reprogrammed, his Jewish name replace with a pagan Babylonian name, and his strict Jewish diet discarded for the unclean food of a pagan king.

Daniel drew the line with the food. He would not defile himself with it. That would mean death, unless somehow he was able to get his Babylonian overseers to allow him to substitute vegetables and water for the king's rich food and wine.

We'll see how Daniel's firm stand turned out and whether there is a lesson for any of us as we face pressures to conform today.

Daniel Stands Firm

Daniel’s Times

June 2, 2024

The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Daniel 1:1-7

Mark Smith

Daniel’s Times

Date Preached: June 2, 2024

Series: The Book of Daniel: God Is in Control

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Before we study the Book of Daniel we need to understand the times Daniel lived in. Without this background information the major message of the book will not come through as clearly as it did to Daniel's first readers.

In this message we'll look at the time in Israel's history that Daniel lived, the international conflicts that involved Daniel's nation, the questions all pious Jews must have had about what was happening to Israel, and the challenges a Daniel, as a teenager, faced when he had to live in a radically different world than the one he'd grown up in.

Daniel’s Times

The Cross of Christ

May 26, 2024

1 Corinthians 1:17-25

Mark Smith

The Cross of Christ

Date Preached: May 26, 2024

Speaker: Mark Smith

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The central person of the Bible is Jesus Christ. The central events in Jesus' life are his death on the cross, his burial, and his resurrection.

The last week of Jesus' life (which includes these three events) takes up 40% of the Gospel of Matthew, 60% of the Gospel of Mark, 33% of the Gospel of Luke, and 50% of the Gospel of John. It isn't the life of Jesus nor his teachings, but his cross which is the central message of the New Testament. You cannot correctly understand Christianity without understanding the cross. We'll let the Apostle Paul help us understand why the cross is central in this message.

The Cross of Christ

A Happy Ending – Ruth and Naomi Are Redeemed

May 19, 2024

Handfuls on Purpose - God's Gracious Provision for Ruth (and for us)

Ruth 4

Mark Smith

A Happy Ending – Ruth and Naomi Are Redeemed

Date Preached: May 19, 2024

Series: Handfuls on Purpose - God's Gracious Provision for Ruth (and for us)

Speaker: Mark Smith

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No one looking in, as we did, on the early story of Naomi and Ruth, would have anticipated a happy ending. We probably would have expected them to struggle to get by until one or both of them died. They had suffered great loss and along with it hope for a better future.

Yet, as we'll see today, not only did their story end with unexpected joy and comfort, but God used their experiences to keep what would become a critical family line alive. We'll see that we have been blessed, as Ruth and Naomi were, but what God di for both of them.

A Happy Ending – Ruth and Naomi Are Redeemed

Ruth Takes a Big Risk

May 12, 2024

Handfuls on Purpose - God's Gracious Provision for Ruth (and for us)

Ruth 3

Mark Smith

Ruth Takes a Big Risk

Date Preached: May 12, 2024

Series: Handfuls on Purpose - God's Gracious Provision for Ruth (and for us)

Speaker: Mark Smith

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Do you consider yourself a risk-taker? Many of us don't. This applies to relationships as well as choosing to skydive out of an airplane. We don't like to stick our neck out in a relationship. We don't want to take the chance we might be rejected, made fun of, or avoided.

Yet it is risk - potentially very serious risk - in a relationship that we encounter in this week's passage. Ruth is counseled by her mother-in-law to take a big risk in order to provide long-term security for her. What did Naomi suggest? Will Ruth take the risk? How will it turn out?

If God speaks to us, will we risk a relationship to obey? What is God trying to teach us through a lowly peasant woman named Ruth?

Ruth Takes a Big Risk

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