Church Blog

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! Yesterday was an exciting day with all that was happening! We shared the Lord’s Supper together. We sang about our wonderful, merciful Savior. We witnessed the beginning of a new congregation of Christ’s followers in our midst. And we learned from Genesis 9 that God graciously entrusts mankind with caring for the earth and those people made in God’s image. We thought about the value of each person. Each person is worth more than all the stuff in the world. We learned that we are to value each human being the way God values them. Christians need to be the first to say, “We will not be part of the culture of disrespect that we find all around us. We will not denigrate or defame others because they disagree with us. We will respect and cherish the image of God we see in every person.”

We are excited for the beginning of worship services for Emmanuel Church. It was exciting to see so many new people in the building and hear the worship of God’s people and the preaching of the gospel in Spanish. If you know someone whose primary language is in Spanish, invite them to Emmanuel’s Worship at 9:30 AM here at the EMBC building.

We will be adjusting the beginning of our worship time starting next Sunday, March 27. East Madison will begin worship at 10:45 AM instead of 10:30 AM.  This will give the two congregations time to fellowship for a few minutes and get to know each other. Next week, Jose Marco will also be preaching during East Madison’s worship time.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! Yesterday, it was wonderful to celebrate our oneness in Christ and worship the true and living God together. In our worship, we looked at Genesis 7 and 8 how God cared for Noah and his family during and after the flood. We learned about God’s care for all who trust Him. We discovered God brings us through the storms of life. We learned that God cares for us in and after the storms of life.  And we saw how God’s people respond to God’s love and care by worshipping Him and surrendering our lives continually to Him. During life’s most violent storms, God always provides and cares for those who trust Him. Trust Him in your storms today.

We will observe the Lord’s Supper during our worship gathering next Sunday at 10:30 AM.

Our Hispanic mission, Emmanuel Church, will begin having worship services next Sunday, March 20 during our Bible Study time at 9:30 AM. Some of the children of those adults attending will join our Sunday School classes during this time. Pray for Jose and Mary Lou Marco as they take the next step in reaching Hispanics for Christ in our community. We are so excited to be part of this gospel outreach!

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! Yesterday as we worshipped, we looked from Genesis 6 at the catastrophic judgment God brought on the world through The Flood. God revealed through Genesis 6 that He would not tolerate evil forever. Though the Lord is more than patient with sinful human beings, the Lord’s patience is limited. God will not continue forever to be merciful to sinners who will not turn from self-centeredness and evil. The Scripture says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on Him while He is near.”  All of us, for the first time or for the hundredth time, need to turn to Him and call on Him today! We also saw that the wickedness of men grieves the heart of a holy and loving God. God takes no pleasure in the destruction of sinful men but seeks for them to turn to Him and live. And just as God grieves over the evil of human beings, His children should also grieve over the ruin and death that sin causes among us and to those all around us. We also finally saw that just as God was merciful to Noah and his family, the Lord looks for those to whom He can be merciful. God is just and His justice will compel Him to destroy evil. But we see even in this, Almighty God as ultimate judge is merciful to those who will trust Him.

I want to thank all of you who give so much of yourselves in serving the Lord at East Madison. We have so many who volunteer and work behind the scenes to help us be able to be on mission with God. I consider it a privilege to work beside all of you.

Next Sunday, March 13, Daylight Savings time begins. Do not forget to move your clocks ahead one hour on Saturday before you go to bed.

Our Hispanic mission, Emmanuel Church, will begin having worship services on Sunday, March 20 during our Bible Study time at 9:30 AM. Some of the children of those adults attending will join our Sunday School classes during this time. Pray for Jose and Mary Lou Marco as they take the next step in reaching Hispanics for Christ in our community. We are so excited to be part of this gospel outreach!

This song has been an encouragement to me lately and I would like to share it with you. It was written by Bob Kauflin and Keaton Bunting, and is called, “My Soul Will Wait.”  It can be found here: https://youtu.be/e4brmgdJvBc. I hope it encourages you as much as it has me.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! It was wonderful to worship our great God and be with His children yesterday. We learned from Genesis five, looking at Adam and his descendants through Seth, about sin’s penalty and God’s gift. We learned fallen mankind still bears the image of God, even though that image has been marred by sin. We learned fallen mankind finds hope in the birth of each new generation. We saw fallen mankind is reminded of the curse and penalty of sin, which is death. We discovered those with faith look forward to freedom from the curse and penalty of sin. And we saw that fallen mankind sees glimpses of life without death. We see in Enoch a glimpse of what it will be like in the last generation of Christians alive when Christ returns. That generation will not see death but will be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 reminds us: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵²in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”  Death will not have the last word. Life in Jesus will have the last word. Death will be swallowed up in victory. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! It was wonderful to worship with all of you yesterday. We learned from Genesis 4 about Cain’s murder of Abel and the downward spiral of sin. Cain’s faithless sacrifice was not accepted by God, while Abel’s was accepted. God in His love came to Cain and warned him about the danger he was in because of his anger over this. However, Cain’s continued to allow his anger at God and Abel to fester, which led to his murder of Abel. Then, when God again graciously comes to Cain for Cain to confess his evil deed, Cain refuses to confess and shows no remorse over the murder of his brother Abel. That is the way of sin. Sin starts small and grows. Sin is progressive. Sin will enslave. And the ultimate end of sin is death. We see sin’s downward spiral in this event. The sins of one generation can lead to greater rebellion, greater sin of the next generation, especially if those sins are not confessed. Sin springs out of faithlessness, out of not believing God’s Word. We think we know better than God, so we ignore what His Word tells us and warns us about. Faithlessness leads to broken relationships between both God and each other.However, we also learned that sin does not have the last word. Jesus paid the penalty for our sins so in Him we are made right with God. Never forget evil will be destroyed. The world will not destroy itself by nuclear war, through climate change, or any other means. Jesus, the seed of the woman, fulfilled the promise to crush the head of Satan when He came the first time to die in our place and rise again. Jesus is coming again to completely destroy evil, restore creation, and rule and reign in righteousness forever and ever and ever. The faithlessness of men will not negate the promises and faithfulness of God.

 Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! It was great to worship with all of you yesterday. As we took the Lord’s Supper together, we remembered that Jesus’ death and resurrection have made all who believe God’s children and one with each other. We remembered Jesus’ shed blood made the forgiveness of our sin possible. From Genesis 3 yesterday we looked at the entry of sin into God’s good creation. Sin brought judgment, death, and chaos to all of creation. However, we saw God immediately began to pursue fallen men and women to redeem and restore them and creation  to Himself. When Adam and Eve sinned, they tried to cover their guilt and shame by sewing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, their guilt. But it did not work. However, God took animals, slaughtered them, and made coverings for the man and the woman. This is a picture that I think points to Christ and His being slaughtered in our place. All we can try to do to cover our guilt and sin will not work. All the fig leaves we can sew together, all the moral living and benevolence and religious rituals we do to try to cover our sin will never cover our sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Blood was shed to provided skins to temporarily cover Adam and Eve. Ultimately, God provides the permanent covering for our sin when Jesus shed His blood in our place to take away our guilt. The innocent One, Jesus, became sin, the sin offering, for us because only what He does covers our sin. We see in all this God loving, caring, and pursuing sinful mankind. God pursues us so that we can have paradise restored and once again walk with God. God pursues sinful men and women and provides the way for us to be restored to Himself and each other.

I want to thank our faithful Bible study teachers and small group leaders for all they do to help us grow in understanding and living for God’s glory. Thank you, Jason, David, Deanna, Grace and Annette for their leadership.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! It was great to worship with all of you yesterday. It is always wonderful to gather with the family of God. We looked closely at Genesis 2 and God’s special creation of man and woman. We saw God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into man the breath of life. God placed man in a beautiful setting with purposeful existence and provided abundantly for man. God gave man the freedom to love Him and enjoy Him or reject Him. God specifically created the woman for man to be his spouse, companion, and helper. God wanted to show mankind they need other people, so mankind might live in families and in community. God created us to live in relationship and submission to Him. We are not to live bowing to the false god of absolute personal autonomy. Personal autonomy as an idol makes a person the very center of their universe and no outside force can tell that person who they are and how they are supposed to live. This idol denies that there is God in heaven who created us and defines us and who knows what is best for us. This idol denies God as the center of the universe and makes a person the center of his or her universe. The view that you have absolute personal autonomy is in direct conflict with the truth of the Word of God that God made you for Himself to live in relationship to Him and for His glory. God made you to know, love and live for Him and bring Him glory. If you refuse to live for God and outside of Him and apart from Him, you miss what life is truly meant to be. If you make yourself the center of your universe, you miss knowing the true and living God who is truly the center of the universe. You live in a delusional and unreal world. God created mankind to live in relationship with Him as His submissive servants and created us to live in community with each other.

We will be observing the Lord’s Supper next Sunday, February 13, during our morning worship. If you are worshipping with us on livestream, I encourage you to get some crackers and juice and participate with us in the taking of the Supper. You are always welcome to come by the church building during the week and pick up the prepackaged elements for the Supper so you can have them on Sunday.

We are considering updating the windows in the church building and are looking for estimates from responsible companies. If you have a recommendation, could you email that recommendation to me. Also, if you have a company we should avoid, please let us know that.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters,

Happy Monday to all! Yesterday we worshiped the One “who with a word created sun and moon and seas and sand.” We considered from Genesis 1 God the Creator. We learned God alone created and rules all there is. We learned God is separate and above His creation. Almighty God made the universe and all that is in it for Himself and His glory. We learned from Genesis 1 that we are not to worship the creation but the Creator alone. The universe is ordered according to God’s plans and purposes. We saw that God created men, women, boys, and girls in His image, and we are to see the image of God in every man, woman, boy and girl. We are to respect that image in every person and never denigrate it in any person. God’s highest creation, mankind, must learn that operating according to God’s plans and purposes will lead to human and creation flourishing and anything that deviates from His plans and purposes will lead to human and creation’s destruction. God charged us with caring for His creation and never abusing it. God charged mankind with populating the earth with offspring. We saw that God pronounced His creation “very good.” However, we also recognize that sin entered the world through mankind’s wrong choice and sin marred creation. Sin has distorted the image of God in each of us and has separated us from fellowship with God. God the Father had to send God the Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for our sin so the image of God could be more fully restored in us and our fellowship with God renewed. A Savior had to save us from sin and begin to restore that image in us so creation could and will be ultimately restored.

We are considering updating the windows in the church building and are looking for estimates from responsible companies. If you have a recommendation, could you email that recommendation to me.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! Yesterday as we worshipped, we remembered our great, eternal God who alone will reign forever. This great and only God calls us to be in relationship with Him. We learned from John 21 how Jesus also redeems us for Himself to be on mission with Him. God does not save us just so we can simply know, love, and enjoy Him. God saves us so through us other might also know, love, and enjoy God. We are called to be on mission with Jesus. As God has blessed us, we are to be a blessing to others. We are to be rivers, not reservoirs. We are to seek to be directed by Jesus so our lives will be fruitful. While we are on mission with Jesus, we enjoy a special sense of His presence. We also learned that we can be on mission with Jesus even though we all miserably fail Him from time to time. Those failures can teach us to depend on His Holy Spirit and not ourselves. Failures teaches us to be empowered and led by His Holy Spirit. And we are not to compare ourselves to others but seek to stay focused on the specific mission that God has called us to conduct. Jesus calls us to be on mission with Him by following Him wherever He leads us.

We have received from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dane county 250 N95 masks. They will be at the building for anyone who would like to pick up some of these masks.

 Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters,  

Happy Monday to all and Happy Martin Luther King Day! Dr. King helped us to understand the truth of God’s word that believers must continually seek to eradicate racism and prejudice in our own hearts and lives and seek to lessen it in the culture around us. God is no respecter of persons, and every human being from conception is created in the image of God. Anything that dehumanizes people and treats others who are different with anything less than justice and respect is an attitude that dishonors God.

Yesterday we looked from John 20 at how Thomas went from doubt to certain faith. We learned that it is not wrong to doubt. It is only wrong to not work through your doubts to certain and sure faith in Jesus. Do not stay in doubt. Do not isolate yourself from other believers when you doubt. Do not be afraid to be honest about your doubts and share them with those who can help. Thomas battled through His doubts and came to a confident faith in Jesus. A strong tradition reports that Thomas took the gospel to India and established churches there. Ultimately that tradition tells us that Thomas was martyred as he testified to Jesus’ resurrection. Thomas doubted, but he battled through those doubts to faith firm enough to lay down His life for His resurrected Savior. This is what we are to do. We are to battle through our doubts to bear witness that Jesus lives. Jesus calls us to battle through our doubts to sure confidence in Him.

Remember to keep praying continually for each other. 

Love being your pastor,

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church