Dewey Bertolini's Podcast

In this PODCAST, you will learn one singularly simple concept which, if you take it to heart, will change your life forever. It is my sense that in contemporary Christian culture in America, we have lost sight of the elegant simplicity spoken of in the New Testament. And consequently, we have lost so much of God’s blessing in the process. So here’s to simplicity, with the hope that your life overflows with God’s bountiful blessing as we together apply this principle to our lives. Please note that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING. And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE “Share” the link to this lesson with all of your friends. God bless!

I'll just say this: If you were ever going to listen to one Jesus in HD PODCAST, please, please, please listen to this one. Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it might take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. If it is a blessing to you, please "Share" the link to the podcast with all of your friends. HAPPY LISTENING!!!

What a glorious night we had at the Safe Haven. We included several of our precious children and young people in a Living Nativity, during which I gave five separate snapshots of Christmas. Think of this PODCAST as five for the price of one. Rather than painting a panoramic portrait, as I try my best to do every week, we instead looked at five different photographs, viewing Christmas from five difference angles. In short, we isolate five aspects of the Christmas story that you might not have considered before. I think you will find this podcast to be a blessing. If you do, PLEASE share the link to this podcast with your friends, with my compliments and my sincere thanks. Please note that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it might take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Coming at just the right time, this PODCAST will, if we take Jesus’ words to heart, transform our lives in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. I offer it to you as a gift of love from my heart to yours.  PLEASE remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING. And if it is a blessing in your life, PLEASE share this podcast with your friends.

In this week’s PODCAST, I am going to take a great big risk and tell you a personal story. A story that I have on rare occasions shared with individuals. But this will be the first time I’ve ever told this story in a public setting. I tell this story for a number of reasons.  First, of course, because it goes right to the heart of this podcast’s passage. It illustrates precisely the issue to which Jesus was referring here in Matthew 5:33-37, a subject of monumental importance as far as Jesus’ teaching was concerned. Second, because it gives to you a bit of personal context, a piece of the portrait of my life within which my teaching takes place. Third, because if the old adage is true -- Like pastor, like people -- or as the OT puts it, “Like people, like priest” (Hosea 4:9), then this explains why there has evolved a pandemic of phoniness in our churches. Fourth, because this became a defining moment in my life and ministry. It cemented for me an approach to ministry, an approach to life, for which, ove

The topic of this PODCAST is one of those subjects that touches us all, deeply and profoundly. The ripples of any divorce, every divorce spread their concentric circles far and wide. Which compels us to take a sober look at exactly what Jesus DID SAY HERE in Matthew 5:31-32, as well as -- and perhaps especially -- what Jesus DID NOT SAY HERE. Because once again, this is one of those passages which, when lifted out of its context -- both Scriptural and Cultural -- is so often and so tragically made to say something other than what Jesus intended for it to say. Heaping truck loads of unnecessary grief and guilt upon poor precious people who are just trying by God’s grace to rebuild their broken lives. Trust me! Over the years, having dealt up close and personal with many, many people, I have heard some of the most atrocious applications of this passage. This to the point where emotionally and spiritually fragile individuals, whose lives have just been rocked by their own tragic divorces, now have whatever fr

Well, here we are once again...  Faced with yet another passage (if you can believe it) too often ripped out of its context, twisted into a pretzel, and made to say something other than what Jesus intended it to say. There is an issue addressed in this passage, and in this PODCAST -- a monumentally important issue -- so important that we must understand what this passage means. The fact of the matter is that this issue -- what this passage DOES actually mean -- is so absolutely important that Jesus said something in this passage that He never said anywhere else.  Jesus actually said that we must even stop worshipping God and first fix this issue -- whatever this issue is (I’ll tell you in a moment) -- before we can resume our worship. So the issue, addressed in this passage, must indeed be a vitally important issue, yes? Yes! Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it might take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. God bless YOU as you listen!

I am SO excited about this PODCAST. Excited because so much is about to become so clear as we look at this together. If you took the entire Sermon on the Mount, and boiled it all down to one singular soundbite, the over-arching theme, its one takeaway… It would be Matthew 5:20, “But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” OK. But... What in the world did Jesus mean by that? We are about to find out. And I promise you this. When we do find out, we will be so incredibly encouraged. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!

This is going to be fun, and oh-so-instructive. This is the kind of a lesson I LOVE to teach. Did you realize that in Matthew 5:18, Jesus made one of the single most dramatic, declarative statements He would ever make? In one sweeping sentence that we explained at length last week, Jesus affirmed the Bible -- every book, chapter, verse, word, letter -- as absolute truth. Through the process of Revelation, whereby God revealed Truth to His writers, and the process of Inspiration, whereby God guided His writers to write down that Truth w/o error, we now hold in our hands a precious book that 2 Timothy 3:16 (CEV) rightly calls “God’s Word.” Revelation. Inspiration. In this PODCAST, we consider together a matter of Interpretation. How to understand the Bible... properly. #WhatDoesItMean???  Because the sad fact is this: By stringing a few unrelated verses together, people can literally make the Bible say anything they want it to say. Anything! And they do. We.Do.Not. We have far too much respect for the B

The scene could not have been more chaotic. Crowds clamoring for Jesus’ blood. The blood-thirsty mobs hurling their false accusations at Jesus as they tried to convince the Romans that this man needed to die. The Roman soldiers salivating at the prospect of torturing yet another helpless victim. And through it all, once the mayhem ended, once the maelstrom calmed down, the echoes of one question continued to reverberate against the city’s walls and over her cobblestone streets. You can read this singularly significant question in John’s account of Jesus’ execution. Pilate, the Roman governor who held Jesus’ fate in his blood-stained hands, looked Jesus right in the eye and inquired of Him a three-word question that, in a haunting sort of way, continues to resound in our day. Jesus had just said to Pilate, “What I say is true.” Pilate then sneered and cynically asked Jesus, “What is truth?” In this PODCAST, we will discover the answer together. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take

I’m telling you… If anyone knew how to make someone feel affirmed, feel that they have value, that they have purpose, that they are significant, it was Jesus. This little PODCAST is going to be fun and oh so inspiring! We began last week’s discussion with these words: “I cannot think of a more beautiful tribute to committed Christ-followers than Jesus’ words here in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘You are the salt of the earth.’” Ditto for this week, referring to Jesus’ brilliant and blazing affirmation of every single one of us, including YOU: “You are the light of the world.” I honestly do not know what kind of a day you had today… But no matter what kind of a day it was, when you wrap your mind and heart around these words, “You are the light of the world,” Jesus will absolutely make your day, your week, your month, your life. YOU are the light of the world. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. God bless you, and HAPPY LISTENING!!

“You are the salt of the earth.” Trust me when I tell you that those 7 simple words were in reality the loftiest compliment, the highest praise, that Jesus could have conferred upon us, His people. I promise you that you will be both encouraged and challenged as you listen to this week’s Safe Haven PODCAST. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING, and may God richly bless you as you do.

Is it really true?  That the gateway to God’s blessing in my life opens wide when people say hateful, hurtful, spiteful, or malicious things about me? Or when they treat me in a hateful, hurtful, spiteful, or malicious way? Simply because I desire to live a righteous life, rather than an unrighteous one? In this PODCAST, you are about to learn how blessedly true that really is. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it might take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!

Get ready to be encouraged. Super-encouraged, truth be known. I say this because THE THING that everybody wants (and I say “everybody” without any fear of contradiction, without any worry of exaggeration)… THE THING that everybody wants is readily available, and ours for the asking. It’s just that so many people have no idea what it is they really want. But trust me, we all want this… You could call it the “Search for the Holy Grail.” The Holy Grail: defined in two ways by our friends at the Webster Dictionary website:  1. In its formal usage: The cup/chalice from which Jesus supposedly drank in the Upper Room during the Last Supper, sought after (some would say) protected throughout the Middle Ages by the Knights Templar. Which is NOT the Holy Grail to which I refer. 2. Informal usage: Something that we all very much want, but that is very hard to receive or to achieve. Which is indeed the Holy Grail to which I do refer. However, I would dispute the part about “very hard” to receive or to achieve. 

Leave it to Jesus to offer a blessing that includes the word “meek,” the word which the noted Bible scholar William Barclay called “the most untranslatable word in the New Testament.” Dr. Barclay was right. As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, I know of no other statement made by Jesus that has been so universally mistranslated, misinterpreted, or misapplied. Except that Jesus did not come up with this... Believe it or not, Matthew 5:5 is a quote taken verbatim from the Old Testament, specifically the book of Psalms, even more specifically Psalm 37, and even more particularly Psalm 37:11. Consequently, it is only in the understanding of that singularly significant psalm that we can correctly understand and apply Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” to our lives. Let me assure you that the words of this beatitude were and are revolutionary. We are talking about a world view here, one that is not natural. No one by nature has a single strand of meekness woven into his

Jesus pronounced this amazing blessing on His people: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” An amazing blessing to be sure. But is it an empty one? Who of us is actually “pure in heart”? Did not Jeremiah pronounce our hearts “desperately wicked”? Yes, I’m afraid he did. And who of us can actually see God? Did not God tell Moses that “no one can see Me and live”? Yes, I’m afraid He did. So what gives with this blessing, and its corresponding promise? Oh, my friends. As you listen to this PODCAST, you are about to see some things that you have perhaps never seen before. If it is a blessing to you, PLEASE share it with your loved ones and friends. Please note that depending upon you web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!

Did you know that there are nine different Greek words used in the New Testament to refer to grief, sorrow, sadness, mourning? Nine! As you are about to discover in this PODCAST, there needs to be a variety of words because sadness is such a large part of our daily lives. If you think about it, the whole of human history is a solemn story largely written with the ink our tears.  Sorrow, sadness, grief, and mourning are often the threads of which the human tapestry is woven. Yes, it’s OK to mourn, to feel sorrow, to know sadness, to experience grief. On multiple levels, with multiple levels of intensity. The biblical writers understood this, legitimized this (if I may use that word), so that we need not feel guilty, ashamed, or somehow unspiritual or spiritually inferior when we do. Sorrow and sadness are legitimate human emotions.   In fact, there are times in each of our lives when it would be inappropriate not to feel sorrowful or sad, or to mourn. Indeed, there is a wealth of insight, a richness to th

It is mentioned 611 times in the Bible; 147 times in the book of Psalms -- the prayers, the heartfelt pleas of God’s people as they (we) reach out to Him. It is the universal cry of the human heart. Down through the millennia of human history, our most precious literature is replete with references to this elusive quality. Yet, in our culture, in our day, I hardly ever hear it mentioned anymore. It has indeed become a casualty of a culture in collapse. In its place, we are witnessing a coarsening of our conversation. Hate-speech fills our airwaves. Violence fills our streets. And an increasing sense of isolation floods our souls. In this PODCAST, as we continue with our rich and rewarding study of Jesus in High Definition, we will rediscover together this missing facet of a dynamic faith. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!

Have you ever sat back in wonder while beholding a masterpiece?  In this PODCAST, you are about to do just that. Not my sermon. No, no, no, no, no. We’re talking here about Jesus’ signature sermon. A masterpiece: You could call it His pièce de résistance, magnum opus, tour de force. (You pick the synonym.) Jesus’ message on the mountaintop exceeds all of those lofty designations. A masterpiece: An artistic wonder the sheer power of which compels us to look or listen in amazement while we behold its beauty.  It is no wonder that as Jesus concluded His inspired and inspiring masterpiece, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching” (Matthew 7:28).  They had never heard anything like this before.  And neither have we. Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!

This week, my dear bride and I are ministering at a place near and dear to our hearts -- Hume Lake Christian Camp. But fear not, my friends. I have not left you in the lurch. In this Bonus PODCAST, you will hear a message that I spoke at Hume some two years ago, one that contains my favorite and most personally meaningful biblical principle.  Jesus used a metaphor familiar to His original audience -- yet a metaphor not so familiar to us -- to convey one singularly significant thought. What His listeners heard Him say that day -- and what you will hear Him say to you today, especially after understanding this most meaningful metaphor -- is this: “I will take care of you NO MATTER WHAT!” Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!