Revelation Part 3

Part three of a sermon series on the encounter between Peter and Cornelius and a continuation of our study through the book of Acts.

Sermon 31Oct2010 mp3
Sermon 31Oct2010 Word
Sermon 31Oct2010 pdf

Why God Created Man

Concerning the reason that God created man, here is an interesting thought.

Sin did not come into existence because of the rebellion of man, but because of the rebellion of Lucifer against God. It did not begin in time, but in eternity.

The plan of Redemption was founded before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1.18-20). It was determined before man was ever created that Christ would die and shed His blood for reconciliation.

We tend to believe that this plan of reconciliation is only about the relationship between God and man, but Scripture seems to indicate that the reconciliation was about much more than that.

Eph. 1:9-10 (God made) known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Col. 1:20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

In other words, the death of Christ not only re-established God's sovereign reign in the earth but also in all of eternity. The plan of redemption was about so much more than just making a way for men to be forgiven.

It restored the balance of the Universe set in disarray by the rebellion of Lucifer.

This creation is the method by which the Son became flesh so that He could die for the purpose of reconciliation. God, in His infinite wisdom, knew that this was the only method by which such a reconciliation and restoration of balance could be secured for eternity.

Yet God has not left man out of this equation. He goes on to say that He created men for the purpose of "bringing many sons to glory" (Heb. 2.10). Why would He do that?

Eph. 2:5-7 Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

To whom will God show us? That is a mystery, but maybe it is safe to assume that He would show us to Satan and his followers just before sealing them in hell for eternity, just to prove that He is, in fact, the God of mercy, grace, and love.

Why did God create man? It was for oh so much more than fellowship. By way of the creation of the earth and of man, God instituted His plan of redemption which made way for the Son of God to become flesh and who, by His death and resurrection reconciled, not just the world, but all of eternity to the Father.

Accuracy in Belief

Though I have been a Christian for twelve years, I was raised in church all of my life. Even before I confessed Jesus as Lord of my life I knew the answers to many of the basic questions of Christianity. I even had firm beliefs about some controversial issues, mostly based on what I was taught by my elders and with little reliance on personal study of the Bible.

Since I was saved in 1998, I have endeavored to understand what I believe – or what I ought to believe – by studying the Scriptures first, then reaching a point of belief. It is interesting the things that I have taken for granted for much of my life that are not completely accurate.

For example…

I was taught – and have actually taught others – that God not only forgives our sins; He also forgets them. This was based on an interpretation of particular scripture references (such as Psalm 103:12, Isaiah 43:25, Jeremiah 31:34, Jeremiah 50:20, Micah 7:19, Hebrews 8:12, and Hebrews 10:17). However, these references do not say that God will forget our sins, but that He will "remember them no more." (Let your mouse hover over each reference to read them.)

The word that is translated as "remember" in verses like Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17 is used over twenty times in the New Testament (KJV). In almost every case, it is translated as remember, but in other places it is translated as "being mindful" (2 Tim. 1:4, 2 Peter 3.2) and "make mention" (Heb. 11.22). Strong's Concordance defines the word as "to be recalled or to return to one's mind."

The point is that God does not forget our sins. He makes a willful decision to never call them to mind again. Under the Old Testament economy, the sins of the people were recalled on an annual basis so that the priest could make atonement for them (Heb. 10:3, Ex. 30:10). Under grace, once our sins have been forgiven – cleansed by the blood of the Lamb – God will never again call them to memory.

One way to understand this is to look at places where God said He would remember, such as Gen. 9:14-15, Lev. 26:42, and Ezekiel 16.60. God said, "I will remember my covenant with you." Certainly God had not forgotten the covenant and then searched His memory to see if possibly He could recall it. His intent was to say that He would always keep the covenant that He made with His people in the forefront of His mind. So to "remember not" would not mean to forget, but to intentionally allow our sins to pass out of His elective memory as they are forgiven.

There are a couple of other points that are important here. First, God is omniscient, meaning that He knows all things past, present, and future. There is no knowledge that He does not have – even of our past sins. Secondly, we are not able to forget our sins, so that if God did forget them, then we would have knowledge that God does not have and that is impossible.

This is not a "deal breaker." In other words, if we say that God forgets our sins or that He remembers them no more, the effect is the same. Our sins, once forgiven, will never again enter the conscious memory of God. That is grace.

It is simply a reminder that we need to be careful when interpreting the Bible and not take for granted things we were taught for truth without a thorough search of what "thus saith the Lord."

 

Radical Changes

I am sorry that the links no longer work for the Radical files. I had gotten permission by phone to share the information with church groups and even to upload the files to my blog. Today, I received an email changing that status, so to stay honest, I had to take the files down. We are still able to use them in small groups at DaySpring, but not to share them elsewhere. Oh well...

Radical Lessons

We are still studying David Platt's book Radical in our small groups, both in home and on Wednesday nights. I had a request for the learning guides that I created to go along with each lesson. I have only created guides for lessons 1-5. These lessons are in a zip file that you can download by clicking on this link. I will post the new lessons as they are created.

Sermon 24Oct2010

Once again we had technical difficulties with recording the sermon this past week, so only printed copies are available. This sermon is part 2 of a study of the encounter between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10.
Sermon24Oct2010Word
Sermon24Oct2010 pdf

Several Updates

There are several items to share with everyone this week.
First, here is a slideshow of pictures from Mobile Church 2010 - Orchard Hill. There were graciously provided by Jerriann P. If you would like a copy of a certain picture, click on it during the slideshow. Or you can view the entire set of photos here and select the ones you wish to print.



Next is the sermon from this past Sunday. We are continuing our study through the book of Acts. This sermon begins our look at the encounter between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10-11.

Sermon 17Oct2010 mp3
Sermon 17Oct2010 MS Word
Sermon 17Oct2010 pdf

Finally, I learned something today about blogger. If you would like to comment on any of the blog entries, you can do so. You have to click on the title of the blog. That will take you to another page with only that entry. Then you can comment at the bottom of the blog. So let me hear from you!

Update

God is good – all the time. Lately, He has really blessed our church.

Last weekend (Oct. 2-3), we hosted our third Mobile Church event in Orchard Hill, GA. While the first two events (August 2009, June 2010) were lots of fun and very rewarding, we did not see anyone attend as a direct result of our outreach efforts.

However, this weekend, we had as many as 25-30 guests come to worship with us on Sunday morning! What a great day! Praise God for bringing those guests. We had even more who came to eat lunch with us. It was a lot of effort, but everyone who helped was greatly rewarded for their efforts.

This past weekend, we had baptism – admittedly, the first in quite a while. The whole worship service this past weekend was exciting because everyone’s heart was filled with the joy of seeing Christ at work in people’s lives.

If you are interested in the sermons from these past two weeks, you may read or download them here.

Mobile Church, MSWord                Mobile Church, PDF

Sermon10Oct2010, MSWord          Sermon10Oct2010, PDF

On Wednesday nights, one of our small groups is a study of cults and other religions. We are in the fourth week of the study. We are not only studying the history and beliefs of other cults and religions, but how we can witness to them as we encounter them in our lives. If you are interested in reading about other cults or religions, here is an article with some links that you can visit to learn online.

Finally, our study of Radical by David Platt continues in homes and at church. This week we postponed the study because so many people are gone for Fall Break and other reasons. Here is the study guide for Chapter 4. This study guide was made from a small group lesson guide produced by and purchased from lifebiblestudies.com.If you are interested in one of the studies you might have missed, you can download them here.

     Radical Chapter 1 Study Guide

     Radical Chapter 2 Study Guide

     Radical Chapter 3 Study Guide

Two Cents Worth

For the last month or so, the "mytwocents" section of the Griffin Daily News has been regularly salted by those who are really angry with pastors they accuse of being "Calvinists." All in all, reading the things they have written has brought moments of laughter as well as amazement at the degree of anger they have expressed.

Yet, I have serious doubts that any of these who are so adamantly set against the teaching of election have ever read even one single article or book written by John Calvin himself. If they had, they would have run across several statements that Calvin made such as this: "No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief." If you would like to read what John Calvin believed in his own words, I recommend his Institutes of the Christian Religion. I will warn you that it is a lengthy read.

I am one of those whose character has been demeaned and critiqued with a great deal of savagery. Of course, I am humbled to be classed along with such distinguished theologians/preachers as John Calvin, the Puritans, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and John MacArthur. But I have to say, some of the remarks made by these contributors border on profanity. Some of the terms these writers have used to refer to me and other pastors who teach the doctrine of election include...
     slinky cat burglar
     common thief
     deceitful
     dishonest
     cultist
     sneaky
     slimy
     hijacker
     arrogant
     wolf in sheep's clothing
     cold
     calculating
     immature
     ungracious
     hard-hearted
     without a conscience
     without a sense of right and wrong
     without intestinal fortitude
     coward
     faithless
     money hungry
It may just be me, but those do not sound like the endearing terms that one would expect when one Christian addresses another Christian. Oh yeah, I forgot. We are the devil.
One of the things I have been accused of is lying to the Pastor Search Team about my beliefs in election. I tried to defend myself, but I could not convince my accusers that I had been honest with the search team. So....
Here is the excerpt from what I gave the Pastor Search Team when we first started meeting concerned with a question related to Calvinism:

Question:What are your views of the Calvinistic Theology?
My answer:
Theology is the study or knowledge (-logy) of God (theo). I believe John Calvin had it right about God. God is the absolute Sovereign of the Universe. He created it and us by the simple expression of His thoughts, and by Him all things consist. He is self-determining. He does not choose to do what is right, but what He chooses to do is right. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and eternal. He is purposeful. The fact that there is a Universe with static laws is evidence that there is design and purpose in the Creation.
His purpose for Creation was so that He would receive glory. This Universe is the factory in which He is creating for himself sons – heirs to His kingdom – who will worship Him forever. The process He chose to use included the Fall of man and man’s ultimate redemption through Christ Jesus. The plan of salvation is totally His and was determined before the foundation of the world. Those who call Him Father were chosen by Him before the foundation of the world. So that salvation is His responsibility – one hundred percent. We do not seek Him – He seeks us and calls us and saves us by His own volition and by His own absolute sovereignty.
At the same time, God, in His infinite wisdom, knew that the only true worship was that which came from a willingly humbled heart. Love that is forced or coerced is not love. He therefore created man with the capacity to decide. Man chose wrongly – selfishly – and, as a result, inherits the capacity to die – something that is not natural, but is the result of disobedience and judgment. The result is that every man who is approached by the Spirit of God must ultimately decide what he will do with the Lordship of Christ. To reject Him is to choose an eternity separated from the presence of God and the heavenly hosts. So that salvation is his (man’s) responsibility – one hundred percent. Man does not seek God because there is no natural facility within him to prompt him to seek that which is infinite.
While it may seem thus, there is no contradiction in these parallel thoughts. We would love to be able to reconcile these two concepts that seem to be in opposition, but we cannot because we are finite – limited by time, space, and matter. To reconcile these two concepts would require knowledge that God did not see fit to reveal to us. It is a knowledge of eternity that, if we possessed it, would truly make us like God. It is a piece of the puzzle that God chose to keep from us until all is revealed at the last day.

If you would like to read the whole questionnaire, you can download it here.
Pastoral Candidate Questionnaire