Post by Benjamin on Mar 23, 2014 1:17:13 GMT
As many of you know already, I always take a journal with me to church, and write sermon notes.
Sometimes, those notes will follow along with the thread of the sermon - other times, not so much.
Today was a "not so much" day. Notes are below. The title given, "The Empty City", was the pastor's title, not mine.
----------------------------
Acts 17:16-34: "The Empty City".
I feel so alone in church.
I love the hymns. I love to sing about the greatness of my God - but even there, I am alone, humanly-speaking. When I sing, I feel as though He and I are alone. I see His glory fill the temple, while the angels watch on and marvel at His greatness.
In all else, though, we, as a church, are lost.
We have lost our first love, and with Him, we have robbed ourselves of the power and the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Acts 4:13, having had Peter and John in their presence, the Sanhedrin didn't note the power of their arguments, or their intellectual prowess. Rather, they "took note that these men had been with Jesus".
It was not the power of the intellectual assent to the gospel message that had so changed Peter and John - the power of the gospel lay in the PERSON of the gospel - the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter and John were effective and effectual evangelists not because they had heard, understood, and perfectly articulated the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but because they were "eyewitnesses of His majesty" (2 Peter 1:16). They knew Him; they loved Him, they had a relationship with Him... and the power of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ shone brightly from their testimony as a result.
This is why the gospel focuses so intently on blood - because the good news of the gospel is not in the bare-bones, physical act, nor in the flesh, nor in the mind, but in the very essence of the being of the One who died for me (as Leviticus 17:11 says, "the life of the body is in its blood"). This is the precious blood, the very heart and being of Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross and bled dry for the sake of a multitude.
Jesus said "my sheep hear me, and they know my voice."
You believe in Christ? Good! But "Even the demons believe... and shudder!". This is why "faith without works is dead"; because it is not the intellectual recognition of the death and resurrection of Christ that is transformative, but the formation of a relationship with the God of the Universe; a relationship that is impossible without the blood of that perfect, spotless Lamb of God.
This is why Peter and John were so alarmingly different before the Sanhedrin. It is why Abraham was "justified by faith":
because their faith was not in the object - the man on the cross - but the subject: the precious "Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world.
...and while that difference seems subtle on paper, the outworking of those two perspectives is literally poles apart.
This is why the church today is so ineffectual. We have "lost our first love", "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof", and our lives don't reflect a relationship with the King of all Creation. Laodicea, indeed.
Sometimes, those notes will follow along with the thread of the sermon - other times, not so much.
Today was a "not so much" day. Notes are below. The title given, "The Empty City", was the pastor's title, not mine.
----------------------------
Acts 17:16-34: "The Empty City".
I feel so alone in church.
I love the hymns. I love to sing about the greatness of my God - but even there, I am alone, humanly-speaking. When I sing, I feel as though He and I are alone. I see His glory fill the temple, while the angels watch on and marvel at His greatness.
In all else, though, we, as a church, are lost.
We have lost our first love, and with Him, we have robbed ourselves of the power and the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Acts 4:13, having had Peter and John in their presence, the Sanhedrin didn't note the power of their arguments, or their intellectual prowess. Rather, they "took note that these men had been with Jesus".
It was not the power of the intellectual assent to the gospel message that had so changed Peter and John - the power of the gospel lay in the PERSON of the gospel - the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter and John were effective and effectual evangelists not because they had heard, understood, and perfectly articulated the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but because they were "eyewitnesses of His majesty" (2 Peter 1:16). They knew Him; they loved Him, they had a relationship with Him... and the power of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ shone brightly from their testimony as a result.
This is why the gospel focuses so intently on blood - because the good news of the gospel is not in the bare-bones, physical act, nor in the flesh, nor in the mind, but in the very essence of the being of the One who died for me (as Leviticus 17:11 says, "the life of the body is in its blood"). This is the precious blood, the very heart and being of Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross and bled dry for the sake of a multitude.
Jesus said "my sheep hear me, and they know my voice."
You believe in Christ? Good! But "Even the demons believe... and shudder!". This is why "faith without works is dead"; because it is not the intellectual recognition of the death and resurrection of Christ that is transformative, but the formation of a relationship with the God of the Universe; a relationship that is impossible without the blood of that perfect, spotless Lamb of God.
This is why Peter and John were so alarmingly different before the Sanhedrin. It is why Abraham was "justified by faith":
because their faith was not in the object - the man on the cross - but the subject: the precious "Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world.
...and while that difference seems subtle on paper, the outworking of those two perspectives is literally poles apart.
This is why the church today is so ineffectual. We have "lost our first love", "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof", and our lives don't reflect a relationship with the King of all Creation. Laodicea, indeed.
