Podcasts about cross conference

In this special episode, we present a breakout session from the Cross Conference 25 featuring Dr. Jeremy Pierre, who shares invaluable insights on dating and marriage. Titled "What Should I Look for in a Wife?" Dr. Pierre discusses what qualities to look for in a potential spouse, emphasizing the importance of aligning one's desires with biblical wisdom. He explores the concept of true beauty versus societal standards, offering practical tips for both men and women navigating the dating landscape.For more information on CrossCon, visit: https://www.crosscon.com/

Não foi desta vez — mais uma vez. LOUD e paiN Gaming foram eliminadas no primeiro final de semana de playoffs da Cross Conference da LTA. Porém, não só os times brasileiros, mas todos os times da Conferência Sul foram eliminados. Será que os gringos estão realmente em um outro nível? O que está faltando para os times daqui? E quais foram as repercussões das derrotas?

On this episode, Joe Lowery previews every single MLS game coming up this weekend! From the key tactics to the key players, there was plenty of ground to cover.If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating and subscribe to Backheeled.com for more American soccer coverage! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Normally these types of weeks are reserved for the first half of the season, but we have ourselves a major tomfoolery week ahead. With several cross-conference matchups and even more games tilted by injuries, a lot of these games are going to skew in weird directions. There are a lot of upsets we like (more than usual) and we of course broke down all the attack spots we identified. Listen to find out which dogs we're picking and who our sneaky RB of the week is! Recorded on 12-1-23 at 9PM EST

Breaking down the first month of the college basketball season. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blazereviewinc/support

Ian Forrey is a young adult whose life has recently been radically changed. In Ian's words, he really had no opinion about the gospel. It wasn't until he got involved in Young Adult Ministries, witnessed the faith of others, and heard David Platt speak at Cross-Conference that he allowed the truth of the gospel to change his heart and his life. Ian is now passionate about reading Scripture and growing as a disciple of Jesus, and he is here today to share about the ways that following Jesus has transformed his life. Do you want to publicly celebrate the work that God is doing in your life? Submit your story at calvarychurch.org/shareastory

Like ships passing in the night the boys missed the GD 5 Preview, but they're back now to run through all the thrills and spills of a bumper weekend of Cross-Conference action in the Southern Region.

It's been a minute, but some of the Southern boys finally managed to get together and catch up on the recent Cross-Conference action, as well as taking a look ahead to this weekend's slate of games as the BAFA season enters the back stretch.

In this episode of Missions Talk, Ryan and Mack interview Matt Schmucker and Shawn LaCount, the organizers of the Cross Conference.

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Just in the nick of time! The Southern Show boys are back on the airwaves previewing a jam-packed Week 4 Cross-Conference affair in Division 1 whilst the Premiership takes a break. Jay also poses a 'Flagosophical Question' so put your responses in the comments section!

BAFA DIV 1: MIDLANDS – EPISODE 2 “Cross-Conference, Cross-Conference, Cross-Conference GAMEDAY!” We look back at Gameday 2 and ahead to Gameday 3 with our guest host, from the Salford Scorpions, Ali Owens! “I'm gonna have to give the win to Cowen and I'm going to say…it won't be close!” Which fixture is Ali talking about here? Find out as we predict the scores, and you can too with our Cross-Conference Accumulator! CLICK THE LINK: https://forms.gle/HdhCP81r5287AEXcA Get yourself in the mystery prize pool by getting the most fixtures right! Our Game Predictions: Kirk | James |Ali 1. Titans/Phantoms: P | T | P 2. Neptunes/Buccs: N | N | N 3. Scorpions/Bears: S | S | S 4. HBadgers/Serpents: S | S | S 5. Neptunes/Vikings: N | N | N 6. Panthers/Scorpions: P | P | S 7. Phantoms/Serpents: P | P | P 8. Cougars/Titans: C | C | C 9. Bears/Vikings: B | V | B 10. Buccs/Panthers: P | P | P 11. HBadgers/Titans: T | T | T 12. Neptunes/Scorpions: - | N | S 13. Cougars/Serpents: C | C | C 14. Vikings/Panthers: P | P | P 15. Buccs/Bears: Be | Be | Bu (- Tie)

Luke "Warm" Champion completes the crew as our South East Premiership correspondent as the boys return to take a look at the upcoming games - Game Day 1 in the Premiership and the first Cross-Conference games at Division 1's Game Day 2!

Born and raised just a few miles from CHBC, Isaac Adams has lived in Northeast Washington D.C. most of his life, and has benefited greatly from CHBC members whom he met at an early age. Isaac attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied Journalism and Religious Studies. In college, Isaac came to know the Lord through the ministry of friends and his local church. In 2012, after his time at UNC, Isaac served with the IMB in Brazil, and then returned to CHBC in 2013 to participate in the pastoral internship program. After that, he served the efforts of Together for the Gospel, CROSS Conference, and The Front Porch and gained his Master of Divinity from Southern Seminary. He is the happy husband of Megan, father of Avett, and enjoys writing poetry and watching Tar Heel Basketball.

Recent political events and rallies have Christians asking: what is nationalism? Is it the same as patriotism? These questions are vitally important to the missionary. Can a missionary truly love his home country that he's leaving—and if so, how? What does Scripture say about love of country—or countries, for that matter? And what about globalism? Scott and Alex wrestle with these big questions on this week's episode. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Recent political events and rallies have Christians asking: what is nationalism? Is it the same as patriotism? These questions are vitally important to the missionary. Can a missionary truly love his home country that he's leaving—and if so, how? What does Scripture say about love of country—or countries, for that matter? And what about globalism? Scott and Alex wrestle with these big questions on this week's episode. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Only a big view of God can sustain the people of God on a big mission. Yet have missionaries gotten their very doctrine of God himself wrong? This week, Dr. James Dolezal highlights the doctrines of divine simplicity, immutability, and aseity—aspects of theology proper often lost on modern evangelicalism—and why they matter for reaching pagans, Muslims, secularists, and others. James E. Dolezal is associate professor of theology in the School of Divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. He is the author of God Without Parts (Pickwick, 2011) and All That Is in God (Reformation Heritage, 2017). Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Only a big view of God can sustain the people of God on a big mission. Yet have missionaries gotten their very doctrine of God himself wrong? This week, Dr. James Dolezal highlights the doctrines of divine simplicity, immutability, and aseity—aspects of theology proper often lost on modern evangelicalism—and why they matter for reaching pagans, Muslims, secularists, and others. James E. Dolezal is associate professor of theology in the School of Divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. He is the author of God Without Parts (Pickwick, 2011) and All That Is in God (Reformation Heritage, 2017). Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

We've all sat through missionary presentations in church that were… less than dynamic. But we've also seen the dangers of sensationalized stories from across the world that proved untrue and led donors astray. How can missionaries become compelling storytellers, sharing what God is doing worldwide without fudging the truth? This week Scott and Alex talk about how to write compelling missionary updates, newsletter, and presentations with integrity. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

We've all sat through missionary presentations in church that were… less than dynamic. But we've also seen the dangers of sensationalized stories from across the world that proved untrue and led donors astray. How can missionaries become compelling storytellers, sharing what God is doing worldwide without fudging the truth? This week Scott and Alex talk about how to write compelling missionary updates, newsletter, and presentations with integrity. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

The story of American missionary Renee Bach made waves last year when she was implicated in the deaths of more than 100 Ugandan children. But does her complex situation serve as a mirror for us—and for modern evangelical missions in general? This week, Scott and Alex address whether or not Western missions is dominated by the “white savior” mindset and how pastors can send and train better to prevent stories like this from happening. Read Darren Carlson's article, “The White Savior Complex in Missions?” on The Gospel Coalition. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

The story of American missionary Renee Bach made waves last year when she was implicated in the deaths of more than 100 Ugandan children. But does her complex situation serve as a mirror for us—and for modern evangelical missions in general? This week, Scott and Alex address whether or not Western missions is dominated by the “white savior” mindset and how pastors can send and train better to prevent stories like this from happening. Read Darren Carlson's article, “The White Savior Complex in Missions?” on The Gospel Coalition. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Is baptism the most neglected part of the Great Commission? In this conversation, Paul Davis of ABWE shares why cross-cultural workers are tempted to neglect this ordinance among the least-reached—and how steeping ourselves in Scripture's teaching on baptism can solve the problem. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Is baptism the most neglected part of the Great Commission? In this conversation, Paul Davis of ABWE shares why cross-cultural workers are tempted to neglect this ordinance among the least-reached—and how steeping ourselves in Scripture's teaching on baptism can solve the problem. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Listen as Dan talks to one of our supported workers Mack Stiles about missions. Mack will be one of the speakers at this year's Cross Conference (https://crossforthenations.org/). Mack was scheduled to come to speak to us at Hinson this summer but the pandemic prevented that. So listen to what Mack has to say to us about God's work in the Middle East!

The world has changed dramatically. Have we witnessed the demise of the short-term missions trip? Jason Phillips doesn't think so. This week, he explains why—and how pastors and missions trip leaders can do a better job of maximizing the long-term impact of short-term trips. Jason Phillips was recently appointed to ABWE as executive director for a new short-term missions program. He has more than 30 years of experience in senior corporate and ministry roles in a variety of organizations from start-ups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Jason has served in multiple pastoral roles, and he co-founded and directed Hope2Live Ministries, a ministry that worked primarily in Sierra Leone. He earned a BBA in finance from Georgia State University, a Master of Divinity in theology from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry in disciple-making from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jason and his wife, Jeannie, have been partners in ministry throughout their twenty-five years of marriage, and they have two children in college who love the Lord. You can email Jason here. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

The world has changed dramatically. Have we witnessed the demise of the short-term missions trip? Jason Phillips doesn't think so. This week, he explains why—and how pastors and missions trip leaders can do a better job of maximizing the long-term impact of short-term trips. Jason Phillips was recently appointed to ABWE as executive director for a new short-term missions program. He has more than 30 years of experience in senior corporate and ministry roles in a variety of organizations from start-ups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Jason has served in multiple pastoral roles, and he co-founded and directed Hope2Live Ministries, a ministry that worked primarily in Sierra Leone. He earned a BBA in finance from Georgia State University, a Master of Divinity in theology from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry in disciple-making from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jason and his wife, Jeannie, have been partners in ministry throughout their twenty-five years of marriage, and they have two children in college who love the Lord. You can email Jason here. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

In 2019, Paul Washer delivered a stirring message at the G3 Conference defining a biblical missionary. His challenge begs the question: must missionaries meet the standard set by 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9? Are all missionaries elder-qualified lead church-planters, or is there room for a diversity of roles on missionary teams? Scott and Alex explore this intricate topic with their Bibles open in this episode. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

In 2019, Paul Washer delivered a stirring message at the G3 Conference defining a biblical missionary. His challenge begs the question: must missionaries meet the standard set by 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9? Are all missionaries elder-qualified lead church-planters, or is there room for a diversity of roles on missionary teams? Scott and Alex explore this intricate topic with their Bibles open in this episode. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Scripture calls Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Lamb slain for sinners. These glorious names run directly counter to the sensibilities of those belonging religions including Islam and Hinduism. Should Bible translators soften these words and concepts to contextualize God's word? The framers of the recently-published Arlington Statement on Bible Translation say no. This week, Scott and Alex welcome back Pierre Houssney and Seth Vitrano-Wilson to discuss the growing threats in Bible translation. Pierre Houssney is MENA Regional Director for Horizons International. Pierre lives in Beirut, Lebanon, with his wife, Gigi, and their two children, where he leads a team of nationals and missionaries who run a center for evangelism and discipleship among Muslims. Seth Vitrano-Wilson was raised in the Mormon church, but God brought him to repentance and faith in Christ while he was living in Argentina. He has served cross-culturally in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for over 10 years, and holds an M.A. in Linguistics from Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Hear our previous episode with Pierre here. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Scripture calls Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Lamb slain for sinners. These glorious names run directly counter to the sensibilities of those belonging religions including Islam and Hinduism. Should Bible translators soften these words and concepts to contextualize God's word? The framers of the recently-published Arlington Statement on Bible Translation say no. This week, Scott and Alex welcome back Pierre Houssney and Seth Vitrano-Wilson to discuss the growing threats in Bible translation. Pierre Houssney is MENA Regional Director for Horizons International. Pierre lives in Beirut, Lebanon, with his wife, Gigi, and their two children, where he leads a team of nationals and missionaries who run a center for evangelism and discipleship among Muslims. Seth Vitrano-Wilson was raised in the Mormon church, but God brought him to repentance and faith in Christ while he was living in Argentina. He has served cross-culturally in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for over 10 years, and holds an M.A. in Linguistics from Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Hear our previous episode with Pierre here. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email us. The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE International and the Global Gospel Fund. This episode is also sponsored by Radius International, CROSS Conference, Fusion, and Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. Abuse Prevention National Conference 2021 attendees: use promo code ABWE21 to receive 20% off your registration.

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

Fr. Karl Millis

The Instability of the Sandcastle Turning your Bibles to First Corinthians Chapter 3, we're continuing our study in this incredible book. This morning I was thinking about a slight moment of discouragement that happened to me when I was a missionary in Japan. My wife and I served with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist in Japan, 1993-95, and I had a little moment, a tinge of disappointment that occurred the day after I had built a marvelous sand castle with my two older kids, Nathaniel and Jenny along one of the causeways there in Japan. We had spent a lot of time on that sand castle, and it was the best I had ever made, maybe still to this day, the best I had ever made, though there's no evidence of it because that next day, all that was left was a raised mound on the beach. Now you are thinking, "Why were you disappointed? What did you expect? When you build a sand castle it has to be built out of wet sand, where do you think it got its moisture from? From the oncoming tide. What do you think was going to happen to all of your labors, to all your meticulous care? It was going to get washed out to sea," and so it did. Christy and I had another moment, a similar moment of disappointment when we found out a number of years after we had returned to the US, that the house that we had been in for those two years had been razed. It was gone. And that was sad for us because we spent some really special times with our growing kids in that house. It was just another opportunity for us to remember the truth, that the Bible teaches, that's testified to again and again, all flesh is grass and all their glory is like the flower of the fields. It says this in Isaiah 40, it says it also in Psalm 103. "As for man, he is like a grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field…" And then the breath of God blows on it, and it withers. And it says right in Psalm 103, "its place remembers it no more." So if we went back to Tokoshima, if we went to Yoshi Homa Bogi, to that address and walked there. There is no one, I'm convinced there is no one there that would remember us or know anything about us at all, as though we had never been. Because of Christ’s Resurrection, Our Labor is not in Vain But we are told in the Bible that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our labor in the Lord is not in vain. We actually can labor on some things that will survive the transition from the first creation to the second creation from the old creation, to the new... We can actually build something that will last for all eternity, and that should be incredibly encouraging to you this morning. Now we're right in the middle of 1 Corinthians 3 and we've been talking about living lives that will survive the scrutiny that's going to come on judgment day. How all of our works are going to be assembled and we're going to give an account for them all the things we've done, while in the body, whether good or bad, we're going to give an account. And it seems that 1 Corinthians 3, breaks them into two categories. Our works could be as gold, silver, costly stones in the category of those things that will survive the fire of judgment day. And then you've got wood, hay, and straw, in those things that are in the category of those that will not survive judgment day. Now there may be differentiations between them, there's some gold actions and silver actions and costly stone actions, and it's good to have some sense of differing levels of glory that there will be in heaven but still that we would labor on those things that will be eternally consequential. I. Be Holy, for You Are God’s Temple And so Paul's been using an analogy here, we've been in the midst of an analogy. He first started, as you remember in 1 Corinthian 3 with an agricultural analogy, that we are God's field and that Paul planted the seed Apollos watered, but God made it grow and then he shifted. He said you are God's field, God's building. And so in Verse 16, he calls on us to be holy because we are God's temple. Verse 16, "do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" Now, we would not know that, except that we are instructed by the Word of God, faith is the eyesight of the soul, by which we can see invisible spiritual realities and this world's history is centered around a massive building project that's going on all over the world, a spiritual building project, a spiritual structure that is rising day by day through evangelism and missions, and through the work of discipleship, the work of pastoring, the work of parenting, the work of Christian friends influencing one another. There is this glorious temple rising and getting more and more glorious, by the day, and we're called on to be holy for you are God's temple. Now, the context of this assertion, Paul, as we were reminded, is writing to the Corinthian church that he helped plant, it was a talented church with many spiritual gifts. But they were also a dysfunctional church, through their own sinfulness. And one of the issues is that they were bickering among themselves, as we remember, they were factions. There were divisions within the Corinthian church. Back in 1:12, he lays out like this. "One of you says 'I follow Paul'; another. 'I follow Apollos'; another 'I follow Cephas.'" This prideful bickering was destroying the church. It also displayed terrible worldliness, and spiritual immaturity. If you look at the beginning of this chapter, 3:2-4, Paul says he couldn't address them as spiritual but as worldly. He said "I gave you milk, not meat for you're not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly for since there is this kind of jealousy and quarreling among you, or are you not worldly?" You're acting like you're unconverted people. So that's at the beginning of the chapter, this division. Paul then puts all these leaders into perspective, "what after all is Apollos? What is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe, as a Lord assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." So we are as nothing. Their focus on human leaders was worldly it was immature and it was destroying the unity of the church, and so Paul wants to establish as clearly as possible, the doctrine of Christ church and of the essential unity that we have with one another in Christ. And the role that each skillful leader plays in building the church. You Are God’s Temple And so he makes this assertion, verse 16, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you." Now, this is an amazing statement to make to a bunch of recent converts from paganism. These were gentiles, these were Greeks, these Corinthians. They would have been excluded from the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, they would not have been allowed to enter. As a matter of fact, the Jews of Jerusalem, started a riot one day when they saw Paul with a Greek and assumed that Paul had brought the Greek into the temple. His name was Trophimus and they had wrongly assumed that Paul had brought him in there, which Paul didn't do, but they started a riot over it. Because there were clear laws against gentiles coming into the Temple of God, the Old Covenant was set against it, and the Romans who ruled Palestine, who politically ruled Jerusalem, upheld this Jewish distinction with their law, so that even a Roman soldier went into the temple area, he would be liable to punishment, even to execution. But in the new covenant, we're told in Ephesians chapter 2 that Jesus Christ, by his death on the cross, has abolished the dividing wall of hostility that separated Jews and Gentiles. He's taking it away in his flesh, his blood shed has removed that barrier, the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility that was set up through the law of Moses. And in that same chapter, Ephesians 2, Paul makes it clear that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are together part of a spiritual temple that is rising up to the glory of God. Ephesians 2, 21-22, it says, "In him, [Christ] the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit." Now, we would not know that except by faith, except because we are told these. You can't see this building, this massive structure that rise except by faith. Now, the fact that we are God's temple is true of each one of us individually. Paul will make this clear later in this same book, in 1 Corinthians 6. You can turn over and look if you'd like. Chapter 6, verses 18-20, there, he talks about sexual immorality and he says there, "Flee from sexual immorality," and then he says "he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own, you are bought at a price, therefore glorify God with your body." So there, he's saying each Christian individually is a temple of the Holy Spirit, we have the indwelling Spirit in us and as matter of fact Romans 8 says, if you don't have the indwelling Spirit, you're not a Christian. So if you are born again, you have the Spirit living inside you individually. But the image here in chapter three, if you go back to chapter three at the end of what we're looking at today, is a collective image, it's a corporate image. We are together the temple of the Holy Spirit and therefore their disunity one with another, their factions and divisions, was rending that unity badly. And so he says in verse 16, "Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you." The indwelling Spirit is the essence of this temple image. It's what makes the temple, more than just a dead structure. Living Temple vs Empty Cathedral I like to go to cathedrals when I'm in Europe. I don't know why I have a thing for them. And some of you have been to the chapel on Duke's campus as well. It's built in that same kind of cathedral style of Europe, but I've been in all of these structures and many of these cathedrals and massive church buildings are made of stone. They have stone floors and they have stone walls and they echo with your footsteps and they feel a little bit like tombs. And in many of those places they are spiritually dead, they're spiritually tombs, because the Gospel hasn't been preached there in centuries. And as a matter of fact, many of them are literally tombs because some lords and ladies have their crypts there. But what is it that makes this structure is something that is not a tomb? It is the indwelling Spirit, it is the presence of the Holy Spirit in this temple that makes it alive. Crackling with energy, powerful, vibrant, in every generation. It's the presence of the Spirit, it's always been so. When the tabernacle was made, you remember when Moses finished the construction of the tent, the movable tent, out in the desert, the glory cloud, the Shekinah glory, the dwelling glory of God came and filled it, so that they could not enter. Same thing happened when Solomon built his temple, same thing happen, the miraculous glory cloud appeared and filled that temple and no one could enter it. And so Paul's just taken that image in saying, the Spirit of God is dwelling in you. Jesus' death prepared the way, that we're not talking geographical here, we're not talking about a location, a place where you can go, where you make a physical pilgrimage three times a year. As you remember, he said to the Samaritan woman, you know how the Jews and the Samaritans, were bickering over the proper place of the temple where they would go. "We believe it's on this mountain, you Jews believe it's on that mountain... " and Jesus set her straight about the future. He told that Samaritan woman, some things he wasn't telling anyone else. He was so beautifully clear with her, they had a marvelous conversation, but it all came down to worship and he said to her, in John Chapter 4, 23-24, "Time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." So the point is not the location the time will come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father, it's not about location, it's about the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God coming and filling us so that we offer to him, true spiritual worship. So the New Covenant temple focuses then on the work of the Holy Spirit uniting different people from different backgrounds every tribe, and language, and people in nation, people from all over the world being called out, being rescued out of Satan's dark kingdom and we are told by Peter with the same kind of temple image that we are living stones built into a spiritual house, to offer spiritual sacrifices. And so, I look on us as quarried out of Satan's dark kingdom, we've been quarried out by some ninja commandos that have gone over Satan's dark wall, they've gone over the wall and they've gotten some living stones out. They've been rescued by the power of God, and this structure is rising. And all of us are living stones and we're set in these spiritual walls. You can't see it with your eyes, but this is what's going on in the world. This is the work. God’s Temple is Sacred Now we are one, we are united, we are a spiritual temple made one by the spirit. But their sins, their prideful bickering and their sexual immorality and their pagan idolatry, were rending the unity of the church, ripping it apart, and so he says in verse 17, God's temple is sacred and you are that temple. God's temple is sacred, it's holy, it's set apart unto God for his special use. That's what holy means, that we belong to God, we are his. And so we are holy. And so he calls on us to be holy because we are God's temple. The essence of holiness in this sense, is purity from evil. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all, 1 John 15. And so it should be for us. Be holy, because, I, the Lord, your God, am holy, as we heard last week from Bryan Young, beautiful. So Paul's going to deal with all the aspects of their unholiness. He's going to go right down Main Street and deal with all of them and call them out on it, he's going to address their terrible worldliness in chapter four, the desire they have to be rich and powerful and popular there in Corinth, he'll deal with that in chapter four. In chapter five, he's going to deal with one of their own members who's committing egregious sexual immorality with his father's wife. And he's going to say, You need to put that man out. It's church discipline. Chapter 6, he's going to deal with sexual purity, the practice that some of them had of claiming to be Christians, but visiting the temple prostitutes, and carrying on with the temple prostitutes. The very passage, I just read to you a moment ago. And he's going to address marital problems that they were having in chapter seven, he's going to address meat sacrifice to idols and their paganism and their idolatry in chapters eight through 10. He's going to address the fact that some of them are getting drunk at the Lord's Supper. And some of them were, were struck dead because of it. So he's going to address all of their sinfulness, but he's calling on them here because they are God's temple to be holy. Now here, specifically, he's finishing the issue of their bickering, their prideful factions and divisions, among themselves. Because God's temple is sacred and because you are that temple, you must be holy in all you do. II. Be Warned, for God is Zealous for His Temple So part two, be warned because God is zealous for his temple. Look at verse 16-17, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you. If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is sacred and you are that temple." So here, this is a clear warning that God is serious about his temple, he's zealous for his temple. And they should not underestimate the zeal that God has for the purity and the protection of his temple. Now what does he mean when he says that, "If anyone destroys God's temple God will destroy him"? Well, at one level, it would just be anybody that uses their earthly power and position to hinder the work of Christ and to assault or attack in some way, Christians. So here we come face-to-face with the issue of the persecuted church. The fact that this invisible structure is rising all over the world but in most, in many parts of the world, it is openly attacked, or assaulted; it is a warfare that has to go on to build this church. So you get the picture in the Old Testament, you remember of Nehemiah building the wall with a sword and a trowel. A sword in one hand and the trowel in the other, because they had enemies that were seeking to stop the work, well make that all spiritual now. It's a spiritual work, so it has spiritual enemies, servants of Satan that use their positions to stop or to hinder the work of Christ in the world. It's going on all over the world. And so, we have communist governments or Muslim countries, where you have imams or clerics, Islamic clerics, that use their position to stop the work of Christ and the spread of the Gospel. Every year, Open Doors, ministry called Open Doors publishes something called the World Watch List, which compiles facts and trends concerning the persecution of Christian worldwide. Over 200 million of our brothers and sisters in the world experience according to them, Open Doors, very high levels of persecution in their lives, 200 million Christians worldwide. North Korea remains for the 14th consecutive year the most dangerous place on earth to be a Christian. And we're very well aware of the way that that government has been hostile and aggressive in seeking to eradicate Christianity. Most of the nations in the top 50 list are Islamic, 35 out of 50 are dominated by Islam, Islam extremism remains the dominant global driver of persecution responsible for initiating oppression and conflict in 35 out of those 50 nations. However, that's not the only force, we also have ethnic nationalism rising, especially in India. Open Doors noted that India rose to its highest rank ever in terms of persecution, number 15, amid the continued rise of Hindu nationalism. An average of 40 incidents were reported per month, a little over one-a-day, including pastors being beaten, churches burned, Christians harassed. Of the 64 million Christians in India, approximately 39 million experience direct daily persecution for their faith. The most violent in terms of attacks and deaths was Pakistan, which rose to number four on the list for a level of violence exceeding even Northern Nigeria. So what I'm saying is, all over the world, it is extremely dangerous to be a Christian, and people are using their power and their influence to try to stop the building of Christ Church. And so, this is a clear warning from God, if anyone attacks God's church, God will attack him. If anyone seeks to destroy God's church, God will destroy him, that's what he's saying. He's not going to sit idly by. Now, we just finished over the last couple of years, a verse by verse unfolding of the Book of Revelation. And if you look at the Book of Revelation, so much of the judgment that comes from heaven to Earth is done specifically because of how the people on Earth treated God's people. Because they were persecuting them savagely. For example, the angel pouring out the bowls of judgment, the third angel... Revelation 16:4-6, "The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers, and springs of water and they became blood. And then I heard the angel in charge of the water say, 'You are just in these judgments, you are and you were the holy one, because you have so judged. For they shed the blood of your saints, the prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.'" In other words, the fact that they're physically unable to drink the fresh water anymore, because it was blood, makes perfect sense to the angel, because of how they were persecuting God's people. Now, I find it fascinating. Think about... Look at verse 17 again, "If anyone destroys God's church, God will destroy him." I want you to think about that verse and compare it to this one, Acts 8:3, "But Saul began to destroy the church." Ponder that with me. Dragging off men and women, throwing them in prison. So the very one who wrote 1 Corinthians 3:17, "If anyone destroys God's church, God will destroy him" and I used to be someone who destroyed God's church. And when Jesus stopped Saul of Tarsus, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples on the road to Damascus, he could have killed him in his tracks that day. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you Lord? I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. And now, you are a dead man, depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Could he have said that? Yes. Would Saul have deserved it? Yes. Is that what Jesus did? No. Instead, he said, "Now get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do." You'll stop destroying my church, you'll start building it. And frankly, in the end, those are the two options, you're either going to destroy or you're going to build. "Whoever does not gather with me," Jesus said, "Scatters." Whoever does not scatter, gathers. It's just one or the other. And so, we are called into the service of God. Isn't it amazing the grace that God showed to Saul of Tarsus, and that he did not destroy him? And so, we hope that some North Korean and some Chinese and some Islamic persecutors and some Indian nationalist persecutors will like Saul of Tarsus crossover from death to life and become builders of the church and what an incredible testimony that will be. But this is a warning to those that are seeking to destroy the church. He's going to in the end destroy both soul and body in hell, if they don't repent. Destroy Could Mean Defile Now, this statement here, also could be translated slightly differently, because the word "destroy" could mean defile. And so, this may talk about sexual immorality and pollution of the church as well. False teachers in Corinth and their doctrine leading to immorality. The defilement here seems to be related to impurity and the fact that they were polluting the church. And so, he is going to be very clear about sexual immorality in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, and he's going to call on the church to be pure and to be holy, because God is pure and holy. III. Be Wise, for God Says the World is Foolish Thirdly, be wise for God says the world is foolish. From verses 18-20, he says, "Do not deceive yourselves, if any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age. He should become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written, 'he catches the wise in their craftiness.' And again, 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.'" So he begins this section, by saying, "Do not deceive yourself," it is very easy to lie to yourself about your true spiritual condition. And usually when Paul says this, "Do you not deceive yourself," or "do not be deceived." He says this frequently, it usually has to do is some worldly way of thinking that's gotten into the Christian mindset and is making them polluted in the way that they're living their lives. So he says in chapter 6:9, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived... " And then he lists a bunch of sexual sinners and other types of sinners who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Don't be deceived about this. Or he says the same thing in Galatians 6:7, generally about the kind of life you're living. "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." If you reap to the flesh, from the flesh you're going to reap destruction, if you sow to the flesh, from the flesh you'll reap destruction. If sow to the Spirit, from the Spirit you'll reap eternal life. So don't be deceived about how you're living. So, what he says here is, don't be deceived about your worldly pagan mentality, your pagan mindset. He's warning them against their worldly man-centered thinking that was dominating their dispute. "I follow Paul… I follow Apollos… I follow Cephas…" Even worse is their pagan thinking about Jesus. "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing." And so, the Corinthians were seeking to be seen as wise as their unconverted pagan neighbors. We're going to talk more about this in the next chapter, but they wanted to be thought well of by the unconverted surrounding them in their lives. Oh, this is a great danger for us Americans too, that we would be well-esteemed in the Twitterverse. Does that exist? The Twitterverse? To be well thought of by all those weird people that say really mean things. And we want to be well thought of by all our unconverted co-workers and unconverted neighbors and unconverted family members, even. Unconverted professors and fellow students, we want to be thought well of by the pagan world around us. So don't be deceived about all this. If you want to really be wise, you need to be thought of as a fool by them. You need to be thought of as wasting your life and living foolishly. The way they look at it, you need to cross over. And so, don't be a fool, an eternal fool. Be a fool for Christ, burn the bridge, burn the bridge, fly your flag, be a Christian and don't worry what they think about you. Become an intellectual outcast, so that you will be seen of as wise in God's sight and then vindicated on Judgment Day, when the Gospel is vindicated as the only wisdom there ever was. God Will Hunt Down the Worldly Wise and Catch Them For God will effectively hunt down the worldly wise and he's going to catch them. Look at Verse 19, "he catches the wise in their craftiness." Paul calls quotes Job here. To the end that God is actively working in this world to expose the worldly wise as fools. He catches the wise in their craftiness. He's a hunter. God's a hunter, and he lays traps for the pagans and their atheistic ways. he lays traps for them so that they can be exposed as fools. Like you remember when a Haman built the gallows for Mordecai, and then, he and his sons ended up hanging on it. Or you think about the Roman emperors that used to burn Christians to light their dinner parties and then within two centuries, the Gospel of Jesus Christ had spiritually conquered the Roman Empire. The vindication that comes from it. When the Chinese Communist Party under MoU sought to aggressively stop the spread of the Gospel in China, and they used means that actually fostered the spread of the Gospel throughout China. That's God laughing in a Psalm two-way. You try to fight and you watch what I will do. He catches the wise in their craftiness. To the pure, God shows himself pure. But to the crooked he shows himself astute. That means trickier than they are. God plays chess at a deeper level than any of us can possibly imagine. And so, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And the Lord has searched the mind of the wise and he knows that their thoughts are futile. So, be truly wise and stop trying to impress your pagan neighbors. Stop trying to imitate your pagan neighbors and become a fool for Christ sake, that's what he's saying. IV. Be God-Centered, for God Owns You And then he says, "Be centered, God-centered for God owns you." Look at Verses 21-23. "So then, no more boasting about men. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present or the future, all are yours and you are of Christ and Christ is of God." So now, Paul comes full circle and finishes this topic of "I follow Paul… I follow Apollos… I follow Cephas…" We've been dealing with it for three chapters, and this is the end now, Chapter 4, it'll go on to other things. So he's finishing now their factions and their divisions. So in saying, "I follow Paul" versus, "I follow Apollos," they were being man-centered. They were boasting in human wisdom, human eloquence, human power. Even worse, they didn't understand their true spiritual situation. Paul and Apollos, and Peter, and in fact all Godly teachers are all part of the same body sent by the same Lord to achieve the same end, namely their perfection in Christ. They are all coming from the same source and teaching by the same Spirit. The Corinthians were actually constricting or limiting their blessings. Because this is how it works, the rival factions were saying, "I follow Paul and not Apollos." "Oh yeah? Well, I follow Apollos and not Paul." "Oh yeah? Well, I don't follow either of your heroes, I follow Peter, the first Apostle." And not any of those. So you're saying, "What's the end not?" Stop doing that. Say, "I follow Paul as he follows Christ, and I follow Apollos too, as he follows Christ, and I follow Cephas, also as he follows Christ. I get them all. I get Paul and I get Apollos and I get Cephas, all of them belong to me," that's what he's saying. Different teachers are different pipelines of grace, different conduits of grace. And if they are teaching the truth, they are here for your benefit, they're not in controversy with each other, they're not fighting each other, they're here to help you. And so, I'm not in competition with any other pastor. I'm not in competition with any of you guys listening to podcasts of other preachers. There are definitely more gifted preachers and teachers than me. Drink it in! I would only ask that you be a Berean and take everything they say back to the Word and see if it's so. But if it's so, then drink. Follow Paul and Apollos and Cephas, follow them all. And so, we can go through and say, all of these come from God. Augustine is here for your service in so far as he's teaching the Word. And John Calvin is here to serve you in so far as he's teaching the Word. And John Wesley is here to help you grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, in so far as he's teaching the word. And so, you actually can drink from both John Calvin and John Wesley. Some of you are like, "No, not possible, can't be done." I know exactly why you're saying that. It is true on Soteriology they disagree, but on many aspects of the Christian life, they're in perfect agreement. And one of them is right and one of them is wrong, and I have a sense of which of the two it is, but we can talk about that afterwards. But we take everything back to the Word of God and we drink wherever we can from these conduits of blessing. Don't limit it. And not only that, everything in this world that seems even those things that seem to be against you are here to help you. Look what he says in Verse 22, "Whether the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours." The world may seem to be against your salvation, but it actually is God's servant in that sense, to finish your salvation. Because God is sovereign over it. And life, life is orchestrated by God, the circumstances of your life are actually set up providentially to help finish your salvation. They are God's servants to serve you. Even death, the final enemy is going to serve you by ushering you out of this world of pain and suffering and temptation into a perfect world of righteousness. Death will be your final friend in that sense, not your final enemy. Death is yours in Christ. And time itself, the present and the future, and frankly Paul didn't say it, but I'll add the past, I love church history. And so, we can lean on whatever God did in the past, what he's doing now in the present, and even the future. All of these things are yours. They all belong to you, because they are serving your soul. Now, there's a beautiful parallel text of this in Romans 8. Don't turn there, just listen. In Romans 8 he says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those whom God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. And what shall we say then in response of this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him graciously what, give us all things." All of the things that you need for your soul are yours, they're all ready to serve you, all things are yours. In the ends there in Romans 8 saying, "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." So, those things are not going to separate you. Paul here in 1 Corinthians 3, goes even further. Not only are they not going to separate you, they're actually going to work together to finish your salvation under the sovereign hand of God. So, all things are yours. So, it's not I belong to Paul, it's Paul belongs to me. It's not I belong to Apollos, it's Apollos belongs to me, to serve my salvation, right? So he says all that. But he says, "You're not done, you're not done thinking." That's true. All of those things are yours, but you belong to Christ. You are Christ's, you are his possession, he owns you, he shed his blood for you, and you are his possession. You are bought with a price, and then in the end, Christ is God's, all things come back up to God, the Father who gave them all. So stop boasting about men. V. Applications Alarm to the Unconverted Applications. Well, first, just a simple alarm to the unconverted. I just want to wake you up. It's a New Year. God graciously let you live into the year 2019. You should not presume that you'll live another day, or another year, but God has graciously allowed you to live. Do not be deceived, if you're unconverted, if you're not yet a Christian, do not be deceived about the world's apparent dominant wisdom and prosperity and success, don't be deceived. It's an illusion. It's an illusion. The powerful and the influential people of this world, and the brilliant people of this world, and the wealthy people this world, all of them will fade away like the wild flower. They are as nothing. If they don't know Christ, if they are not saved by faith in Christ, they will pass away like nothing. This text calls on you to become a fool for Christ. Turn your back on all that, turn your back on all the worldly goals and ambitions you've had and cross over through faith in Christ. You've heard the Gospel this morning, you've heard how God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, who died an atoning death on the cross for sinners like you and me, and all you need to do is trust in him and all your sins will be forgiven. Become a fool for Christ. Christians: Meditate Deeply on the Fact that We are TOGETHER the Temple of the Living God Now, if you're a Christian, meditate deeply on the fact that we are together, the temple of the living God. We're meant to be together, we're meant to be interconnected together with each other by the Spirit. So that means at least Covenant membership in a healthy local church. Be a member of a healthy local church. And then, don't forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Let's meet together... As a matter of fact, let's do this again next week, what do you say? Alright, next week, let's get together again. And let's just keep on doing... Let's make a habit of doing that, and not make a habit of forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, some do. And let's... Within that, let's make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. If you're holding anything against anyone in this body, go work it out. If they've sinned against you, forgive them, bring them to reconcile... If you sin against them, if you know they have something against you, leave your gift in front of the altar and then go be in reconcile to your brother or sister. Make it right, give and receive forgiveness. Think of All the Symbolism of the Temple And then finally, think of the beautiful symbolism of the temple. The temple was built by actual physical materials and the law was that they were hewn, and they were cut and hewn and shaped off site. No sound of tool or chisel or saw was heard on the workplace. What it's saying is, it's constructed not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God. And so, God is in the process of shaping us now and getting us ready for our heavenly dwelling. So keep that in mind, that beautiful image. Secondly, the temple was magnificent in beauty. But not because of its physical stature. No, the glory of God through the Spirit is what makes us beautiful. So it is with the believer's soul, the radiance of God indwelling in you by the Spirit, that's what gives us beauty that attracts Christ to us and attracts us to others. Thirdly, the temple was sacred to God, it was a holy place. So each one of you must be consecrated to personal holiness. I want to, especially, commend... We're not there yet in 1 Corinthians, but sexual purity. Whatever commitments you need to make to sexual purity, make them. If you're defiling the church by sexual immorality, repent. Revelation in chapter 2, Jesus with eyes of blazing fire says to the church of Thyatira, "he is going to punish Jezebel and her followers. Anyone that follows into sexual immorality," he says, "I'll strike her children dead. And then, all churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each person according to what he has done," that's Jesus. So let's be holy because he is holy. Fourthly, the temple was a place of physical sacrifices, animal sacrifices. So now our church is to be a place of spiritual sacrifices. We are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. We are to present all of our resources, our time, our energy, our money to God in service to him. We are to offer our days. We are to give up sacrifices of caring for lost people, through Evangelism and poor people through financial giving. We are to be lifting up spiritual sacrifices daily. The temple was a place of sweet fellowship between God and people, and so must we be. To have fellowship with God through the Spirit, walk with God through the week. Walk with God, have a quiet time. Feed your soul in the Word and then just walk with him through the day. Send up prayers, pray without ceasing. Tell Jesus, you love him at 2:00 in the afternoon and just have fellowship. And then when we come together, have fellowship with other brothers and sisters. Let no member of this church feel isolated or lonely in this world. And then finally, the temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations. We need to be zealous for the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. A number of our people just got back from The CROSS Conference and there's such a focus there, I heard on the local church. And a local church is a sending entity. We need to be better senders than ever before. Send more people, yes, but send better. Let's stay in touch with our missionaries. Let's stay in touch with those that are laboring. Let's pray for unreached people groups. Let's make this a house of prayer for all nations throughout this year. Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for the things that we've learned from 1 Corinthians 3. Thank you for the ways that you've instructed us. And Lord I pray that you would sustain each of us for this New Year. Help us to feed on your word. Help us to not allow pockets of darkness or sin within us. Help us, O Lord, that we would be strengthened through the Spirit to love one another and serve one another, and forgive one another. Father, I pray again for any that walked in here lost, that they would look to Christ now while there's time and find a sweet salvation in him, a savior. Lord, I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

One day soon, people from every nation will bring God praise and glory. But they won’t encounter everlasting hope until God’s people go and send. Piper preached this message on January 4, 2019, at the CROSS Conference in Louisville, where thousands gathered to discern their call to the nations.

One day soon, people from every nation will bring God praise and glory. But they won’t encounter everlasting hope until God’s people go and send. Piper preached this message on January 4, 2019, at the CROSS Conference in Louisville, where thousands gathered to discern their call to the nations.

Dr. Carlton Wynne is the assistant professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, and one of the speakers at the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology, entitled The Glory of the Cross. How does the historical Adam magnify the cross of Christ? Carlton gives us a little glimpse into the glorious topic he'll be addressing at the conference November 9 and 10. Redemptive history is God's theme for our faith, and Carlton comprehensively walks us through the imputation of Adam's sin to all men, and how God deals with this catastrophic event through the person and work of Christ.   Show Notes The Glory of the Cross Romans 6 No Adam, No Gospel: Adam and the History of Redemption by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. 1 Corinthians 15 Genesis 3, 4, and 5   We are giving away a few free registrations for The Glory of the Cross Conference. Register here for the opportunity to attend free of cost!

Pastor Bill and Elisha share their experience and teachings form the CROSS Conference 2016. Hell is real; Time is short; Jesus said, "Go!"

Living in Chains As I was thinking about Isaiah 58, thinking about this sermon, I'm going to be preaching two sermons on this chapter. There's just too much for me to be able to deal with here. But, I meditated and it became clear and clear as there's a phrase "the chains of injustice" and I thought about chains or bonds, or yokes of oppression, and it occurred to me we live in a world of invisible chains. For many, many months we had the privilege of studying in the Book of Ephesians, and how in Ephesians 2, we're told of a dark Satanic kingdom in which we all once lived. And we were held in the bondage, in the invisible chains of sin, and we couldn't see them. Satan has cleverly crafted a vast network of invisible chains that are effective in accomplishing his evil desires. Chains of injustice yokes of oppression, prisons of sin that we cannot see with the natural eye. They have to be spiritually discerned, we have to be able to see through what we can see with our eyes to see the injustice to see the chains, and to see them rightly the way God does. Now The gospel of Jesus Christ shines heavenly light into that, enables us to see with ever-increasing clarity, the more we grow in Christ, these chains. It enables us ourselves through faith in Christ, to rise up out of a prison of sin, rise up out of chains and walk in newness of life, and then we can be filled with joy and we can have purpose, in our lives. But you know, for all of that, I still feel strong chains satanic chains on my heart. Do you not feel it on yours? When we are called on in Verse 10 of this chapter, to spend ourselves on behalf of the poor or needy. I feel a reluctance, in my flesh to do that. I feel it all the time. I feel the same thing when I try to share the Gospel, I feel something holding me back. I want to share my faith. I want to be bold, I want to care about the lost around me, but I hold back, something's holding me back. I must feel there's some kind of invisible bondage or chain around my heart that's keeping me from living the kind of righteous life that God wants me to live. And so this text challenges me, friends, it gets in my grill, it bothers me. The phrase, "Spend yourself on behalf of the needy" bothers me, it challenges me because I know I'm not really doing it, not like I should. In the summer of 1986, I was on my first mission trip and I've told this story before, it has never left me of how for the first time, I saw poverty in another country. And poverty in America, is different than poverty in other countries. It's just not anywhere near as severe. And so now I've seen many, many such scenes but this was my first time. I was riding in an air-conditioned van through the streets of Mombasa, 15 passenger van with other members of my mission team and we were just driving around there and I couldn't believe the scenes that I was seeing. I couldn't believe the degradation of the homes. I couldn't believe the poverty. And Kenya is not really an incredibly poor African nation, but compared to us, it was just, there was just poverty, there. And we were just moving through in a bubble of air conditioned comfort and luxury. And just moving through and just like Julie was sharing her testimony a few minutes ago, I felt like, yeah, I mean there's this comfortable bubble around me, like she was talking about her sheets and all that. Well, that was the air condition van and how the principle of the Gospel, the incarnation principle, is to get out of the van and go be with the suffering people. I feel that there's something inside me that holds me back from doing that. It's a love of self, it's a love of fleshly comfort and ease that keeps me from living an openly righteous life. I think the only remedy must be the ministry of the Word of God, the Power of the Spirit in my life, for me to see the standard and say, "I'm not living up to this, I'm not living the kind of life that I want to live I'm not spending myself, on behalf of the poor and needy. I don't feel like our church is doing everything we could do in this community to do the same." And so what I really want is for you to have an encounter with God through the text here, this timeless text. So that we would understand mercy ministry. We'd understand the kind of life God's calling us to live and that we might be more righteous in His sight. But we have to understand it in the context of the Gospel that God's given us here, in the context of true religion, in the context of justification by faith alone, apart from religiosity. We're not going to be saved by our good works, we're not going to be saved by our ministry to the poor, or needy, that is false doctrine. We are saved by simple faith in Jesus Christ. I. Exposing Hypocrisy and Oppression (vs. 1-5) And so, right away, the prophet Isiah is calling to the people of Israel, because God is commanding him to do so, to expose their religious hypocrisy, and their wickedness, to expose how religious they are, and how displeasing the whole machine is to him. Look at verse 1 and following, it says there, "Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins. For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them." So Isaiah here is exposing their hypocrisy, their religiosity here, the wickedness of the Jewish religionists of his day. He's commanding Isaiah to shout aloud and not hold back, to declare to Israel, their sins. He wants them declared and exposed the ministry of the Word of God. That's all. This is what you're doing. I want to speak these words to you. He's saying this to them. Now they were outwardly, obeying the laws of Moses, they were outwardly keeping the laws of religion. But they were actually rebelling against Him at the same time. Now I'm going to talk more about this next week, I'm going to just move ahead in the message. But in Isaiah 29 Verse 13, He says this, "These people come near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they worship me in vain. Their teachings are just rules taught by men." So their worship, their religion was not pleasing to God. Now, the NIV, I think does a better job than the other translations of giving a sense of how wrong this whole thing is by adding words like, "They seem eager to know my way, they seem like they want me to come." I think actually it's appropriate. That's the feeling here. And yes, it's more like they actually are righteous, they are coming, they are etcetera. But I don't think that's actually what's going on because later in the chapter, He's very negative toward them. So there seems to be a discrepancy between their religion and how they're living and then what's really going on in their hearts. Verse 2 and 3, "For day after day, they seek me out. They seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation, as if they were a nation, that does what is right, and is not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. 'Why have we fasted?' they say, 'and you have not seen it?' Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?'" So they're going through this religious sham, really. This outward machine, they're just in a ritual, a pattern of animal sacrifice, coming to the temple, doing all these things, the Jewish religion of the old covenant, that's what they were doing. But it was just a sham, it was hypocrisy. They'd actually forsaken the commands of their God. Look at Verse 3-5, they're actually fasting, while sinning or sinning while fasting. I don't know which. But both were going on. "'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?' Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?" Well first notice their attitude, "Why have we fasted Oh God and you have not seen it? Why have we done this religion and you've not noticed?" They seem to think that depriving themselves of a little nourishment for 12 hours or something like that, puts God in some kind of debtor's position in reference to them, as if He owed them something. Clearly they have forgotten the exalted Holiness of God that their forefather, Abraham, clearly had in mind as he was interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah, remember that? In Genesis 18, and he approached and he said, "Oh, would you please just hear me though I am dust and ashes." There's that broken humility or even just the previous chapter, Isaiah 57:15 that we looked at last week in depth. God is Not a Vending Machine Isaiah 57:15, "This is what the high and lofty one says, He who lives forever and whose name is Holy, 'I live in a high and holy place but also with him who is humble and contrite in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and revive the heart of the contrite.'" So, they've forgotten all that. That's not how they're coming, they're actually coming somewhat angry at God, they're uppity toward God, they feel like there's some injustice Heaven to Earth here. Also how did they know that God hadn't heard. They said, "Why have we fasted and you've not heard, why have we prayed, you've not answered." So there must be some specific measurable thing they were looking for. I don't know what this could be, but they just know that God's not heard, He has not answered them. So, I imagine in the old covenant era, there probably was some agricultural issue there. There probably was a drought leading to a famine of some sort. God said He would do this kind of thing. Maybe there was some kind of locust infestation or some other thing was going on, but there was something that was causing them trouble and making them come and fast and pray. But the problem had not been solved There was no rain, I think they figured 12 hours of fasting, check. Now, the rain should come, right? As though God is some kind of vending machine. Have you ever done that? Have you ever put coins in a vending machine and not got what you are looking for? I know you, it has happened right here, in this building, and I feel right down there. I feel a sense of injustice. I have put 50 cents in the machine and I should get my Coke out or Diet Coke, that's what I should get, but it has not happened now. There's injustice. I'm owed something here. I get that same feeling here. Do you not get that? This sense, I have put in the time now, on my religion stuff. There should be something coming back, that I could measure. I should know that you heard me. But can I tell you the God of Isaiah 57:15, the God who is high and lofty, whose name is holy, the God who inhabits eternity, will never be any man or woman's debtor ever. He will never owe you anything, never. Romans 11:35, "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay Him. For from him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To Him be the glory forever!" God's never going to owe you anything, ever. And actually God [chuckle] somewhat minimizes their piety her, do you see it? It's like kind of low level, it's like below average. Look at Verse 5, "Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?" Now, if we have sinned, we have done something that violates God's holy law, and God is disciplining us by sending us the equivalent of a drought, and a famine. He does not owe it to us to remove the drought and famine. He's never going to as anything, no matter what we do with fasting and prayer, He'll never be in our debt ever. It's just mercy, and grace. But actually even worse these people are actually adding sin upon sin in their religion. Look what He said about what their days of fasting and prayer were like. "Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please, and exploit all your workers, your fasting ends and quarreling and strife and striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high." So these are issues of social injustice. That's what's going on. God is clearly judging people of power and influence, people who have workers who are serving them. But there are also issues of just pe­rsonal godliness person-to-person. They would get a little hungry I think, and get irritable. I really think that's literally what's happening here. They would fast for a while, they would get irritable and they would start having fights, with each other and it might actually end up in a brawl. Like, "If I can just tell you", says the Lord, "this is not acceptable to me, this is not a fast, this is not piety, it's not godliness, you're actually beating each other up. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high." Now, let me just bring it right here to us 21st century American Evangelical church. This is a clear and present danger for us as well. Every generation is tempted to trust in their own religiosity, their own acts of righteousness to put God in some kind of debtor's position that He should do what you think He should do. Everyone's tempted in that way. We Baptists, we think that because we've been baptized, we've joined a church, we attend pretty faithfully or even just occasionally, but we do attend, that God should be happy to have us. He's lucky to have me. I don't think we'd ever a voice it like that, but it feels that way. Oh, we think that because we bow in prayer for grace before a meal, or we even have a daily quiet time, or because we read through the Bible in a year, or memorize Scripture, or do some other acts of piety, that we have the same kind of attitude. We also might make a few sacrifices in our lives, we might give some money, might write a cheque to something, and we expect God instantly, to answer our prayers. And then we actually like me and the vending machine, I didn't get too angry, but I was irritated. Alright? But there's an irritation toward God. I have prayed and you've not answered my prayer. Beware, beware of this kind of trust in religion, beware of trusting in your habits and patterns and religious machinery, in your church attendance, and putting up with sermons once a week and sacrificing sleeping in on Sunday mornings. Remember the lesson of the Gospel. We have been trained in the Gospel. In the Book of Galatians, we are told that we are justified by faith in Christ Jesus alone, because by the works of the law shall no one be justified. We are not made right with God by our good works, we are made right, we sinners, we broken, unjust, wicked sinners, we are made right with God, simply by faith, in Jesus. Possibly you've come into this church building this morning looking for answers maybe after the election, may be a friend invited you, but you know you're outside of Christ, you're not claiming to be a Christian, you just here today. Can I just tell you the good news, of the gospel is that all of your sins can be forgiven by simple act of faith on your part, turning away from wickedness and sin, saying "I'm a sinner, I know I deserve condemnation, but Jesus died for me, He died on the cross for me, and He rose from the dead, that I might live a new life, I want Jesus." If you can say that to Him in your heart, trusting in Him, alone, then you will be forgiven, all of your sins will be wiped away. You need to know that before we get into the social justice issue that I'm about to talk about, because there's such a temptation for Americans, for people all over the world to feel good because they care for the poor and needy. You can't use your service to the poor and needy to pay for your sins, only by the Gospel. II. The True “Fast”: Generous Justice (vs. 6-12) Now I'm going to talk more about going through the motions in religion next week, but let's just dive in out at 6-12, Verses 6-12. What is the true fast? What is the true religion? God's calling on us to do? Look at Verses 6 and 7, "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke to set the oppressed free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer, with shelter, when you see the naked to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" God is redefining religion here. He's causing them to turn away from their own selfishness to minister to their neighbors to the hurting among their communities in the name of their relationship with God, that's what He's calling that's true fasting, according to me. And He calls it a fast I think because they are learning to deny themselves. The reason I didn't want to get out of the air conditioned van is, because I didn't want to. The reason I don't want to care more for the poor and needy, is because it's costly to me. It affects my lifestyle. So the fast God's calling on us affluent people to make is to deny levels of comfort so we can care for others. That's the fast He's calling on us. It's an energetic thing, it's not bowing your head like a reed and lying on a mat, it's actually very energetic, it's bold and energetic and filled with activity, but it's a fast. And God says He's actually chosen this kind of fast to honor Him. He begins in verse 6 by talking about breaking the chains of oppression, to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. Societal injustice is, as I said at the beginning of the message, difficult to discern. Like the old statement, "Does a fish know it's wet?" Do we unjust people know when we're being unjust? It's hard to know. So, we need to be able to get out of ourselves and say, "I accept the basic premise that I am a sinner, depraved, only saved by grace. Alright, show me my injustice, show me the ways." And not just me, but the ways other citizens here, people in this community are being unjust to their neighbors. Show it to me. Now, these hidden chains slip around people and they guarantee poverty. They guarantee a difficult life. Laborers are working and they're not receiving wages like they should, they're downtrodden, but they can't get a fair hearing from the judge, because the judge won't even entertain their case. Isaiah 1:23, "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves. They all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless, the widow's case doesn't even come before them." So, how is there social injustice in our day? Now, I have thought about this more and more over the last year or two. I preach sermons on racism, I've talked about issues that are really heavy on my heart. I thought about what kinds of institutional injustices are there right here in Durham? Show them to me. What's going on in my heart? How can we get involved in cycles of poverty and ignorance and sin, and see the truth of the gospel break all that apart? To see chains broken apart, to actually see that happen. That's what I want to see happen here in Durham, because we're here. I want the community to be different because first, Durham is a church here, in the name of Jesus. It's what I want to see happen. So I think about the police issues, been thinking about it and it's still on my mind. But I was at Logan Airport about a month ago, and there's an African-American young man there, had a hat on. He's a cool-looking guy and he was humming Jazz music as we're standing there in line, I was like, "I want to talk to this guy." I love sharing the gospel in airplanes and airports. I just love doing it because they're a captive audience, they need to stay near their gate and then when they're sitting next to me, that's even more true. That is so cool. This young guy, he was from New Orleans, turned out he was a believer. He comes from a Baptist background, his parents are involved in church leadership. But he's a jazz pianist. So I was talking about the police issues, the Colin Kaepernick, NFL thing, different things. He said, "Yeah, it bothers me." He said, "But you know what bothers me too, I grew up in the streets in New Orleans. It bothers me to see a black dude kill another black dude 'cause he stepped on his shoes." So I'm just telling you friends, there is injustice everywhere. It's in our hearts. There's no one group that's free from it, so that if that group were in charge, there would be no more injustice. We are all sons and daughters of Adam, and we need to be delivered. I think the greatest injustice in our country right now, I've said it before, I'll say it again, is abortion. I think it's wrong for the strong to not protect the weak. But before that, I think it's wrong for a young man to impregnate a woman and then walk away from his responsibilities, leaving her a very young single mother to fend for herself and her child in a low-paying job, just about guaranteeing a lifetime of poverty. I think that's wrong too. I feel like we could shed some light in that, the light of the gospel. I think we could get some young men early and teach them what it means to honor a woman, and what sexual purity looks like, and what the gospel calls on us to do, and what it looks like to be a husband and a father. And just the church can be the light of the gospel right here in this community. I've got friends that are planting a church in a very underprivileged hard area of Washington DC, and they've partnered with the government school right near their church to try to help it, and it's just a tragic scene. In the last 22 years, that government school has had 24 principals. Just think about that. Nobody wants that job. And the committee, the government committee there, they allot extra money to attract teachers to the school with promises that they'll pay your school loans as a teacher so that you'll even come and work there. They can't hold on to any good teachers. What would it be like to grow up as a child in that community and be educated at that school? What's that like? So that church wants to make a difference in that school and find a way to bring the light of the gospel there. For me, perhaps a leading evangelical thinker on issues of social justice is Tim Keller. He's written a book called Generous Justice. It's available out here in the North Tower Resource Center, you can order it. It's very helpful, very practical. I was thinking about the issue of justice, and I realized it wasn't helpful for me thinking about justice to think first and foremost vertically toward God. That would be a sinner saying to God, "I only want justice from you, give me what I truly deserve." Friends, none of us wants that, you know what I mean? We deserve hell. We deserve condemnation. That's not what the prophets mean by justice, I think. Horizontally we're not in a position of mediating or ministering hell to other people. I really think the best way to look at justice the way that the prophets meant is the second great command, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Whatever God means for you to do in any certain situation you are to do, that is the justice you owe to your neighbor there. But it's even more significant if you are in a position of authority and power and you're dealing with people who are vulnerable, people who need protection. So horizontally, justice for me, doing justice means to care for others, to love them as I love myself, but especially to protect and provide for those most vulnerable in society. There's four people that are mentioned again and again in the Old Testament prophets as vulnerable in society, they are widows, orphans, the aliens, and the poor; those four are the most vulnerable and they need therefore to be protected. So what that means is, for us we have to use whatever power we have, whatever influence we have, whatever positions we have in this community to protect those that are vulnerable, that's what we're called on to do. Those that don't have a voice. Now none of us finds this easy. These issues are complex. I don't know always what it means to loose the chains of injustice. I want to start with this. In 2013 I preached at the Cross Conference and we had a conference slogan that we, we Christians, care about all suffering, but especially eternal suffering. What would it profit someone if they should gain the whole world and lose their soul? So we want to be sure that we're going to break the chains of sin and eternal condemnation through a proclamation of the gospel. But what I believe is that the two are not in contradiction with each other, they actually are in great harmony. As we step out and spend ourselves on behalf of the poor and needy, we're going to find more and more opportunities to share the gospel. More and more opportunities to talk to people about what we really love, what we're living for, why we're doing this. To show generous justice in a lavish sort of way. Tim Keller gives a lot of examples in his book and I'll just pick a couple, one is a woman named Heather who's a highly-educated lawyer who gave up a lucrative position in a corporate law firm to become an assistant DA in New York where so many of the criminals she prosecutes have been exploiting the poor, particularly poor women, so she's able to use her legal acumen to come in there and break that chain of injustice legally. But she did it at sacrifice, she spent herself on behalf of the poor to do that, she could make a lot more money in a corporate law firm. Or another example Keller gives is of a young man he knew in seminary named Mark Gornik who moved with his wife years ago to Sandtown, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland. For decades white people had been fleeing Sandtown, living at other places, he was the first to move back long before there was any gentrification or any appeal, it was just a dangerous place to live. Keller said this about Mark Gornik, Mark Gornik said, he said, "The police all thought I was a drug dealer and the drug dealers all thought I was a police officer. So for a long time I didn't know who was going to shoot me." But now, partnering with other church leaders and other people in the community they planted a church and they have a flourishing ministry with all kinds of creative ways of addressing the needs of the community in the name of Jesus. So Heather and Mark and others like them are willing to spend themselves on behalf of the needy. They lay it out for generous justice, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless. Look at verse 7, "Is it not to share your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked to clothe them and," listen to this, "not to turn away from your own flesh and blood." That turning away, that's the enemy, that's what's going on. Remember the story of the good Samaritan and the road to Jericho and you got the priest and the Levite, we know they're the bad guys in the story. But they cross on the other side, they don't want to get involved, they don't want to look at it, they don't want to get close to this bleeding guy by the side of the road, the priest and the Levite, they're very religious, but they're just on the other side of the road. That's the turning away. Now the true sacrifice, as I've been saying, is verse 10, look at it again. It says, "If you spend yourself in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like noonday." This is the real challenge, isn't it? It's easy to write a check, it's easy to do little things. This text is calling on you to be all-in, to invest yourself in some pattern of ministry. I don't know what it is, because everybody's called in different directions, you're going to be called in different directions than somebody's sitting right next to you in the pew. But you have to do something. There has to be some pattern of sacrifice going on in your life or you're disobeying the spirit of the text. So, I think spend yourself on behalf of the poor looks exactly like Matthew 16:24 and 25, Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must," What? "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will find it for eternity." I think that's what it means to spend yourself. Like, lose yourself to find yourself. Now I think this becomes much more practical, much easier, if you start to get to know people on the fringe personally. If you actually draw close, get out of the air-conditioned van, draw close, there's this gap between us and the poor that affluence has set up. For us to cross that gap and actually make friends and make connections with people who are struggling. John Wesley did this, he went to a debtors' prison. And we don't have them now but there was a debtors' prison, and back in England in those days if you owed X amount, you're thrown in prison until you should repay the debt. Well, do you not see a practical problem there? I mean, they didn't have work release programs for which you got paid a salary back then, you were just in there. So there was no answer there. You might owe a couple of copper coins that were jangling in John Wesley's pocket as he walked in there. That idea hit him, "Wait a minute, I could set you free right now with this money I have in my pocket." Once that thought hit him he said, "I never looked on money the same way again the rest of my life." Because he got close to somebody who was hurting. He looked them in the eyes. William Ruffner, Pastor of Seventh Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, 1853, wrote these words: "To cast a contribution into the box brought to the hand or to attend committee meetings are very trifling exercises of Christian self-denial and devotion. Compared with what is demanded in long, weary walks through the street, the contact with filth and often with rude and repulsive people, the facing of disease and distress, and all manner of heart-rending and heart-frightening scenes. And all the trials of faith, patience and hope, which are incident to the duty we are urging." In other words, he didn't mean this, but get out of the air-conditioned van and go walk the streets. Get to know people and you will be more generous. I think that's what Keller is saying, I think that's what the text is saying, spend yourself means invest, connect, relate. If you say, "Look, I don't want to just give money because they're going to use it for drugs." Well, fine. Then don't just give money, give yourself, give something more, get to know people that you could find yourself partnering with and connecting with and helping. Now, Keller gives a theology that's called the theology of Shalom, a deep, rich, full relationship, and this is what he wrote. It's very powerful for me. I want you to follow this image. "The wedding together of God, humans and all creations in equity, fulfillment, and delight. This is what the Hebrew prophets called Shalom." We just translate it peace, but in the Bible, Shalom means a universal flourishing, a wholeness and delight. It describes a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts are faithfully and fruitfully employed all under the arch of God's love. Now here's an illustration of Shalom. If I threw a thousand different colored threads onto a table they wouldn't become a fabric, they would just be threads laying on top of each other. Threads become a fabric when each one has been woven in and under, around and through every other one. The more interdependent they are, the more beautiful they become; the more interwoven they are, the stronger and warmer they become. God made the world with billions of entities, but He didn't make them to be an aggregation, rather He made them to be in a beautiful, harmonious, knitted, webbed interdependent relationship with each other. So physically when your body's working properly, every part works with all the others, but if you have a cancerous tumor, it means that a part of your body's at odds with all the rest. You experience the unraveling of physical Shalom. Psychologically your inner psyche has various parts: Thoughts, feelings, and reason. When they're all working together, you experience inner Shalom, peace. But when your feelings crave something that troubles your conscience, then there's a dissonance; you experience guilt, which means you experience the unraveling of psychological Shalom. Financially when people, some people have money and resources and advantages, when they then plunge them into the human community, so the parks are great, the schools are great, the houses are great, you have a strong social fabric, you experience social Shalom. But when the wealthy ignore the less fortunate, when they hold on to everything, the social fabric unravels. Now, note in the text that justice is depicted as sharing food with the hungry. This literally means to wait on the hungry, that's literally what it says. Not just giving money so somebody else can serve the food, it's literally to serve the food for yourself. That's what it means to do justice. So it means "taking the threads of your life and weaving them up with the threads of other people's lives." So Keller talks about the educational system in New York and in cities like Washington DC and all that. Children are growing up in communities where given their family circumstances and their school situation, they are functionally illiterate. By the time they're 15, 16, 17 years old, they effectively can't read or write. When you get to that age and you can't read or write you're ruined for the market, you're ruined when it comes to economic and social flourishing, you're locked into poverty probably for the rest of your life, and that's happening to hundreds of thousands of people in New York City right now, says Keller. Why is it happening? Now, here's the thing. The liberal, politically liberal analysis says it's because of unjust social structures. The conservative, the political conservative analysis says it's because of the breakdown of the family, but neither side ever says it's the kids' fault. No one's blaming the 7 and 8-year-olds. Thank God. No one's saying the 7-year-old needs to say, "Hey, I need to move to a better school district." No 7 or 8-year-old's supposed to think, "My parents are guilty of injustice toward me and malpractice." They're not thinking that, they just go where they go and yet, "A child born into my family," says Tim Keller, "has a 300 to 400 times greater chance for economic and social flourishing than the kids in those neighborhoods." That's just one way in which the fabric of this world is tattered and torn and ripped. So the Lord, through this text, is calling on us to spend ourselves on behalf of the poor and needy. And if we do, we are going to have an amazing platform for the gospel. People are going to want to know, "What is it that motivates us? Why are you doing this?" And they're going to ask and we're going to say, "Hey, I want to alleviate this suffering that we're talking right now, but I want to alleviate far greater suffering than that. Can we talk about what Jesus came to do and how He came to save souls, like yours and mine?" It's going to happen, it's going to happen. The Lavish Rewards of Serving the Needy (vs. 8-12) Look at the rewards, and we'll finish with that before we go to Lord's supper. Verses 8 through 10, "Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help. And he will say, 'Here am I.' If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day." I just can't help but read that in light of the gospel. If we do this, we are going to be a light shining radiantly in a very dark place. People are going to say, "Tell me more about that light." Jesus is the light of the world. We're going to have opportunities to do that, and I'm looking forward to that. Look at the rich spiritual prosperity, verse 11 and 12, "The Lord will guide you always. He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land, and He will strengthen your frame, your bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden like a spring whose waters never fail. And your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and raise up the age old foundations and you will be called repairer of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings." III. Applications Application first, come to Christ. I said at the beginning, I say it here at the end. This kind of mercy ministry will never save a single soul, never. You could do a thousand hours of community service and be even more sinful before because you didn't do it in the name of Christ for the glory of God. We can never use our good deeds to pay for sins. Come to Christ, come to Christ, trust in Him. Now, if you already were Christian before you came here, I guess I would start with just understand generous justice. What does it mean for you to live a life of justice? What does that mean to spend yourself on behalf of the needy? Ask yourself this question. This is just a one application question I want to press on you. Ask yourself this question, "How am I spending myself on behalf of the poor?" Just ask that, it's a simple question. "What principle of sacrifice is going on in my life for the poor?" There needs to be some answer. I would say definitely you don't all need to have the same answer, but there needs to be some answer in your life. Now, there are some people in our church that are moving to the community, like Mark Gornik did, and they're going to seek opportunities to do that. I think it would have been good for us to do that before gentrification and property values became $400,000 for this house or that house. But there may be still some bargains to be found or maybe some people are wealthy enough to do it, but there are other parts of our community we can be moving in and influence, but you don't have to move in to do it. There are folks that go out on Wednesdays and interact, as I said, with young African-American kids. Boys from our community, they play sports with them, they do Bible studies with them, and they talk to them about sexual purity, they talk to them about manhood. Praise God! Get involved in that. Our international connections ministry does ESL classes, English as second language classes. It's a tremendous ministry. Nathan Ma is doing ministry with refugees. We're talking right before worship today, he said, "Probably in light of this election it's going to be even harder for refugees in our country. You know what that means? Even greater opportunity for the gospel." Find out from Nathan Ma. If you want to get involved in refugee ministry, that is loosing the change of injustice. Find out ways that you can be involved in that. Find some way to be sacrificially involved. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to close this time in prayer, and then we're going to go to the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is an ordinance that we do regularly. We're excited to do it. We expect, as believers in Christ, we should expect, to have an encounter with the living God through this ordinance. We do not believe that the bread and the juice become the actual literal body and blood of Christ, but we believe that by partaking, by eating and drinking, we are spiritually drawing close to Christ and we're mindful of his death for us, his resurrection. We're mindful of the future when he comes again. We're mindful of our accountability to him. Now, this is for those that have put their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and testified to that by water baptism. If you have not yet done that, then first do that, and then next time we'd love you to partake. But we'd ask you to refrain if you've not yet done that, so close with me now in prayer.

WOTC (Women of the Cross) Conference.Support the show (https://www.freedonationkiosk.com/Kiosks/OnePageGiving.aspx/ccont/Guest)

sermon transcript Series Introduction: The Exciting Road Ahead A Vision of the Resurrected Christ in Revelation 1: What Would He Say About FBC? At the end of his life, the Apostle John was exiled for the ministry of the Word of God, for the testimony of Jesus to the island of Patmos, a small island off the coast of modern day Turkey. All the other 12 had been martyred for their faith as they shared the Gospel, but God had a special purpose for John at the end of his life. And one of those, one of the aspect of that purpose was that he would have a revelation of the resurrected and glorified Jesus Christ. He was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and he had this vision of Christ. Revelation 1 says there, “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven golden lamp stands. And among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white, like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. And in his right hand, he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And then he placed his right hand on me and said, 'Do not be afraid. I am the first, and I am the last. I am the living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the key of death and Hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lamp stands is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And the seven lamp stands are the seven churches.'" So we have a picture of the resurrected Christ in glory, and in it seems priestly garments, moving through these seven golden lamp stands. And we're told there that these seven lamp stands represent the seven churches. And they are lamp stands, I think, because Jesus said to us, “You are the light of the world.” And they are golden, because they are precious and valuable. And he's moving through them, because he has an ongoing ministry to local churches. And in the next two chapters, which we're not going to go through. By the way, we are looking at John 12 today. This is all intro. I haven't forgotten that. But here's the resurrected Christ moving through these seven golden lamp stands. And he has something to say to each of the seven churches. The seven churches were real churches, but they were also symbolic as well. That often happens in scripture. Things that really happened in space and time have an eternal spiritual lesson for us as well. And they were just across a small stretch of water, there in kind of a circular postal route, there in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, these seven churches. And he has these seven statements to make to the seven churches, and they are of a timeless nature. And it's very clear that the Lord wants us to read the other churches' mail. We're supposed to read all of the letters, because at the end of each of these letters, he says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” plural. So we're supposed to read all these seven letters, and at the end of each one, also, it gives a promise to him who overcomes. So we're supposed to read these letters and we're supposed to understand what's happening in each of these seven churches. And we're supposed to be given by the power of the Spirit the ability to overcome for his glory. And so we're supposed to learn from these. And so from... I think from the church at Ephesus, we're supposed to learn the value of doctrinal and life purity, but also the danger of forsaking our first love. From the church at Smyrna, we're supposed to learn the very real possibility of persecution, of being imprisoned and even killed for our testimony to Jesus. And though that may not be happening to us, we're supposed to be aware that it's happening to other brothers and sisters, and pray for them and care about it and be aware that it may happen to us in the future. From the church at the Thyatira, we're supposed to understand the danger of tolerating sin, especially sexual sin. From the church at Sardis, we're supposed to understand the danger that a church that was once alive and vibrant and vital can at some point become dead, living on its past reputation, no longer vibrant and vital for the glory of God. From the church at Philadelphia, supposed to learn the value of seeing open doors of ministry and walking through them while we have the opportunity. And from the church at Laodicea, the dire warning to not become spiritually lukewarm, that the Lord would spit us out of his mouth because we're neither hot nor cold. So seven churches, but it made me wonder, and it's made the elders wonder recently, as we've thought about these things, how would the Lord Jesus evaluate FBC? Evaluating Where We Are and Where We Are Going What would he say about us? What kind of letter would he write to this church? How are we to see ourselves? And as we've seen what we consider to be led by the Spirit, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities for ministry, some dangers that we face, some good things that are happening in our midst, we feel that we would like to urge the church more and more toward faithfulness in evangelism and evangelistic fruitfulness. We would love to see this church have a river of people who are brought to faith in Christ by our witness and then discipled and trained. And we want to see this happen, because we believe that it is the logical and spiritual next step of health in this church's progression or reformation, that we would see more and more individuals brought to faith in Christ. And so we are excited and thrilled not just about the next five weeks, but about what God may have for this church over the coming years, even decades, if he should not return in our lifetime. We want to be positive. We want to be thankful. We want to be helpful. We want to be biblical and prayerful, and we want to be fruitful. Ten Years from Now: A Culture of Evangelism… With Its Evident Fruit And so that's our desire as we begin this little five-week focus, but 10 years from now, brothers and sisters, I would love to see a culture of evangelism thriving here, just a kind of a warm culture of people regularly sharing their faith, regularly taking faith steps, venturing forth in the workplace, in the neighborhood with family members, with parents of fellow team members, with total strangers even. We want to see people here consistently, regularly trained very well in evangelism, so that people know what the Gospel is, and they know what to say in various circumstances. And they're ready, and they are being encouraged by positive examples from other brothers and sisters, regular testimonies of people who are sharing their faith. We long to see people brought to the ordinance of water baptism and be able to hear their stories of how this or that was brought to faith by members of FBC. Honestly, I think I can speak for all the others that we don't care who brings them to faith. Amen? Just like members of a team don't care who sank the winning shot. We just want to see it done, and we are so thrilled when we hear stories of faithfulness as you guys are reaching out with the Gospel. We would long to see this culture of evangelism just flourishing here, and I believe we're going to see it. I believe this is something the Lord is going to work here as we're faithful and as we step out in faith, and as we hear God's word. Recently, a number of us were at a missions conference at Christmas time, the Cross Conference, and a friend of mine, Mack Stiles, who has a flourishing evangelistic ministry in the Persian Gulf with students, Muslim college students, and seeing many come to Christ very rapidly, seeing them built up in their faith in Christ rapidly and seeing them be fruitful to the glory of God. Anyway, he was able to sit four generations spiritually of people right alongside each other. This one led this one to faith, who led this one to faith, who led this one to faith. That's awesome. Wouldn't you love to see that here at FBC? Two Infinite Journeys… We Must Make Balanced Progress Now, that's just a rare providence that that could happen all in one, the context of one local church and that person stays there and they come to faith and are trained so quickly. But wouldn't that be incredible? We yearn to see a culture of evangelism, and so as Ashok was sharing these two infinite journeys, we want to keep them in front of you. The internal journey of sanctification, we must never turn our backs on that. We believe that's a real strength of this church that we love the Word of God. We love doctrine. We want to drink it in. We are happy to get good teaching and good preaching, and we want to grow in grace. And we must embrace that. We want to be holy and like Christ. We also want to be faithful in the external journey, and I think this is a church that's seen numbers of people go out from our midsts to go be set up on the mission field. We want to see that more than ever before. We would like to see lots of folks coming through and being trained here, running with us for a while, but then going out to some unreached people group. The external journey breaks into two kind of sub-sections in my mind. There's missions in which you have people that are being reached that not only have they never heard of Jesus, but people around them have never heard of Jesus, and there's no church there. We just need to see those people brought to faith in Christ, and that's going to take years of language-learning and culture. That's what we call missions. But here at home, there's evangelism, and these are people who are not yet Christians, but they are surrounded by the sounds of the Gospel all the time. They have probably Christian friends and family and relatives, other people that they're aware of the Gospel, but they're not yet brought to faith in Christ. I would contend that because of that, they're hard to reach. But this is the mission field God's given us right here, and I yearn to see us be faithful in evangelism and to grow. And I think that these two journeys are interconnected. They're intertwined. As we are embracing our sanctification and growing in maturity and our love for Jesus, we're going to want to be more and more faithful in evangelism. And as we're actively sharing our faith, we're going to have more and more opportunities to grow in grace and trust God for things. So we look on these two journeys as intertwined. We want to see it happen. My Desire: Hope-Filled Training, Encouragement So for five weeks, I'm going to be preaching sermons, evangelistic sermons. It's the closest you'll ever get me to preaching topically. This is it, guys. So if those of you thought, "Ah, a topical sermon," that's what it is, five weeks of it. But even so, I can't help but be exegetical, so I'm choosing the five best passages. Is that okay? Good compromise. So topics, but still exposition. And this morning, it's John 12. My desire is to be biblical. I want to be practical in the pulpit. I want to talk about practical ways you can grow. I want to be encouraging. My deep desire is to motivate people, whoever you are, wherever you're at in your walk, to take the next steps in evangelism without resorting to guilt manipulation. It's a terrible motivator. It is not helpful. And we'll talk more about that, but I don't desire to make anyone feel guilty. I want to be motivational based on Scripture's motivations, ultimately, the glory of God, as we'll see this morning. Five Weeks in March Also along with this for three weeks, we're going to see discussion on these sermons in the evenings at home fellowship, so all the home fellowships will be focusing on these topics for three weeks. And then the final week, Sunday, we have no home fellowships tonight. On the final evening, Sunday evening, we will have a time of corporate prayer here in this room, in this sanctuary, in the evening, to just plead with God to give us fruit and that we would see people brought to faith in Christ and just a time of prayer for them. So we're looking forward to that. Along with that, I'm teaching a Bible for Life class. And if you're not presently attending a Bible for Life class, I would urge you to think about coming to the one that I'm teaching on evangelism. So we're going to go over some of these same things. We're going to try to be practical. That's Sunday mornings 9:15 AM and beyond. Along with that, Wednesday evenings, I and some others will be teaching on evangelism as well. Now you may be wondering, "How can we do all of this teaching on evangelism and say different things each time?" I'm not promising that. There's going to be some repetition, some overlap. I have only so many ideas on evangelism, but I want to hear from you folks as well. And so those other settings will be more give and take as well, a chance for us to sharpen ourselves in that. So that's what's ahead. All of that kind of a brief sermon series intro. Powerful Lessons on Evangelism from John 12 The Subjects of Evangelism: A Foretaste of a Vast Harvest (vs. 20- 22) Let's dig in now to John chapter 12, and let's see what kind of lessons we can learn from this on the issue of evangelism. And I want to begin just with this amazing encounter that Jesus has in verse 20 and following, 20 through 22, of some Greeks who come up to fill up in Andrew, and they want to see Jesus. And so I'm beginning. The first point I notice here are the subjects of evangelism, this foretaste of a vast harvest. Look again at verse 20 through 22: “Now, there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast, and they came unto Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee with a request. Sir, they said, ‘We would like to see Jesus.’ Philip went to tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.” So these are Greeks. They're pagans. They're non-Jews. We don't even know that they would be at the level of God-fearers, 'cause John doesn't tell us that. They're just Greeks. And maybe they'd heard about Jesus' reputation, his miracles, something like that. And they had a strong interest to meet Jesus. And Jesus would have been very difficult to get to at that point, surrounded constantly by a huge crowd of people, so they went to people who maybe could introduce them to Jesus. They wanted to meet Jesus. And so Philip and Andrew together, they work together to bring these men to Jesus. Now at that time, bringing people to Jesus was physical. You could literally bring them to where Jesus was and they could have a conversation. For us, it's a metaphor for evangelism, for the spiritual work of introducing people to Christ spiritually through the Gospel. And so Philip and Andrew are doing that with these Greeks, and it's amazing how Jesus reacts. We don't get a conversation between Jesus and these Greeks here in the text. I'm sure that he talked to them, but we don't have a record of it here. Instead, Jesus' mind goes immediately to the cross, goes immediately to his imminent death on the cross. Why so? Well, I don't know exactly what was going on in Jesus' mind, but it's not a stretch to think that he realized that these Greeks were just a foretaste of a vast and varied harvest that was going to go among all the tribes and languages and peoples and nations of people interested in coming to Jesus and believing in Jesus and following him. He knew the scriptures better than anyone else alive, anyone who has ever lived, and he knew it said in Isaiah 49:6, that Jesus would be a “…light for the Gentiles, that he may bring God's salvation to the ends of the earth.” Jesus was, Jesus is the light for the Gentiles. He also knew that he would shed his blood. Revelation 5:9 says there, “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” And so he had this, I think, in his mind, because he immediately talks about a kernel of wheat falling into the ground and dying and bringing forth much fruit. So for us, the application - I'm going to just be weaving applications all the way through here - the application is that we should yearn to bring people to Jesus. We should try to live in such a way that people are hungry to meet the savior. They want to know more about the hope that's in us. They're hungry for that, and that these Greeks were just the first fruits of centuries of Gentiles, who would be fascinated in Jesus. Do you yearn for this? Do you yearn to be instrumental in bringing people to Jesus? How much would you love someone to come up and say to you what these Greeks said. "We would love to meet Jesus. Can you tell us how?" Hey, what's wrong with praying to God for that? I don't know that God will grant you that prayer, but why not? You say that, "Pastor, that's where I'm at in evangelism. If someone comes to me and says, 'I would like to meet Jesus,' I'll tell them. But other than that, I don't know." Well, I understand that. I feel like that many days, but why couldn't we ask God for that and see what he does? And it could be that God will give you something that easy, or it could be that God will just make you a little stronger and bolder. But either way, just yearn to be an instrument in bringing people to Jesus as Philip and Andrew were. The Unique and Repeated Pattern of Evangelism: The Death of a Seed (vs. 23-25) Secondly, Jesus then brings us to, what I call, the unique but also repeated pattern of evangelism, the death of a seed. First of all, it's completely unique, utterly unique, but secondly, it's a paradigm or a pattern of example absolutely essential to the spread of the Gospel, through evangelism. So Jesus' mind goes immediately to his death on the cross. Verse 23, “Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.’” Jesus' immediate answer is amazing. Here are these Greeks and he says, "The hour has come." At last, the time has come. Throughout John's Gospel, we have this, "His time had not yet come. The hour has not yet come." But now it's come. The time has come. The hour is at hand. And his mind goes, I think, right to the price he's going to have to pay for Greeks just like this, a price in blood. If they're going to be rescued from hell, if they're going to be brought to heaven, he will have to pay the price. He will have to shed his blood for them. And he doesn't talk about his death directly, but he uses this glory language, “‘The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.’” And so it's very important for us to understand what this means. To glorify God is to put God on display, to make God radiant and obvious to the people, that God's attributes would be put on display for all to see. And so there's so often this display language connected with the Gospel. It says in Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So it's a display of love. Earlier in Romans 3, we have a display of justice. God displayed his justice, because in his forbearance, he left the sins committed in the Old Testament unpunished, so he had to put his justice on display. Those two, love and justice, are just an entry way into seeing all the attributes of God, all of the characteristics of God on display in Christ crucified. They're all there: Power of God, wisdom of God. That's 1 Corinthians 1. The patience of God, the wrath of God. It's all on display. And Jesus said, "The hour has come for that. The time has come for the son of man to be glorified," not just God, but that Jesus's attributes will be put on display. Son of man comes from Daniel chapter 7, where we have the Ancient of Days, Almighty God, and then we have another one, one like a son of man being brought into the presence of the Ancient of Days, “…and he receives sovereign power and honor and glory, and all peoples and nations and people of every language will bow down and worship him, the son of man.” Jesus calls himself the son of man. He is the fulfillment of the Daniel 7 passage. And this is the cost of their salvation and of ours: He must die, he must shed his blood for them to be saved. And this is glory for his own name. And so he says in verse 24, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.’” As usual, as he frequently does, Jesus uses an illustration from nature. Many of his parables are agricultural, and he's choosing out this idea of a seed. Now the seed, he says, has a hard shell on it, a protective coating, but that coating must be cracked, that protective shell must yield, and that seed must fall into the ground, and then the shell cracked and that genetic material inside that God made from the foundation of the world for the wheat plant must be exposed to the nutrients of the soil and the moisture, and up will come the plant. It must die, or else this harvest cannot come, and without it dying, then it will never bear fruit, it will remain a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Now, the NIV says, “…brings forth many seeds.” The Greek word there is just fruit, it's a common word for fruit, but we know that fruit has seeds in it, and the idea here is of a repeated pattern, there's going to be lots of seeds that also must fall into the ground and die. First, let's finish this one assertion, the death of Jesus is utterly unique, never to be repeated, never again will it be repeated. It's completely unique, it is complete and perfect in itself. It says many times in the Book of Hebrews that Jesus died once for all. Amen? So Hebrews 10:10, it says, “By that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” But the application of that redemption will be, it turns out, by the same principle of sacrificial, self-sacrificial dying, that the redemption was bought to begin with. Jesus won the redemption himself by himself, perfect work of redemption. But the application must be in the same way. Therefore, Jesus's death is not only unique, but it's also a paradigm example of how we also must be, if we're going to be evangelistically fruitful. You must be willing to die to yourself. If you refuse to die, you will remain a single seed. That's the idea here. Jesus’ Command to Evangelize: Follow Him in Dying (vs. 26) Thirdly, Jesus gives us a command to evangelize. He commands us to follow him in his death. Look at verses 25 and 26. You see how he extends it, so he's not just talking about himself. “‘The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’” Verse 26, “‘Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant also will be.’” So Jesus extends and clarifies this metaphor. His death is unique, but your death will be like his if you want to be fruitful, and in order to do that, if you refuse to do it, if you refuse to fall into the ground and die, you are loving your life in this world too much. That's the image he's giving you here, you're loving your life. It means to love your life in that sense means to yearn for a life of comfort and ease and prosperity and the respect and love of the world. To love your life means to love your reputation, to love your reputation with people and benefits that come from people's acceptance. Conversely, to use the language that Jesus uses, to hate your life is not an absolute command, it's relative. Similar to when Jesus says, “If anyone does not hate his father or mother, or his wife, or his sons, or daughters, or even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Now, Jesus in other places, commands us to love all of those things, but compared to our love for Jesus, it must be like hatred. I think that's the same thing here. We're supposed to actually love our lives in this world and be thankful for the good things God gives us, but relative to this calling, we are to hate our lives. And if we do not, we will remain a single seed, we will not bear fruit. So Jesus, he is commanding his servants to follow him in the same pattern of dying, there is a command. My servants must follow me, there's a command in there. And so, he commands us to do this. So this is a basic principle. The external journey, the Gospel cannot advance without suffering. It can't advance without suffering, it's impossible. Will not advance without pain and suffering, and Paul knew this better than anyone who's ever lived, other than Jesus. Paul knew it very well, and he said to the Colossians church, which he did not plant, he's writing to somebody else's church plant, but he says in Colossians 1:24-25, “Now brothers, I rejoice in what was suffered for you. So I am excited by the missionaries, the evangelists that brought you the Gospel and paid the price, and actually I fill up in my body, my flesh, what is still lacking in regard to the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church.” In other words, there's something missing with Christ's suffering. Now there's nothing missing on the atonement, it is perfect, but now there must be additional suffering to take the message of the atonement out to those who need to hear it. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about in Colossians 1. And so again and again, the advance of the Gospel has been through suffering, the blood of martyrs has been seed for the church. Our brothers and sisters, they conquered the Roman Empire spiritually by dying, literally dying. Some of them sown in animal skins and set loose in the colosseum and packs of wild dogs ripped their flesh till they died, hard way to die. Others were put up on stakes and burned for Nero's dinner parties and other things like this. This has been going on for 20 centuries, is going on in our day as well in other countries. But there are simpler less spectacular ways of dying that are every bit as essential to Gospel advance, you know what I'm talking about. You know what everyone who has ever screwed up his or her courage at the workplace and walked across the floor to share the Gospel with a co-worker, you know that feels like dying. Doesn't it? It feels like dying. I don't want to die. It hurts, and it's hard, and it's not easy. I remember this guy named Ron, I was trying to lead to faith in Christ, and he was this gruff older guy, he was in his late 50s, and tough to talk to, tough to work with. And the Lord convicted me, I needed to share the Gospel with Ron, I'll never forget that. Why him? Hardest guy I could think of that I regularly interacted with at the workplace, and it was lunchtime, and I was like, I don't want to do it, don't want to do it, don't want to do it, and I just don't want to do it, and I don't want to do it. So I remember going around and I was like in my mind, I was getting sweats and all that sort of thing, and I was like, I tell you what, I'm going to put a fleece down, that's what you do in moments like this, I'm going to put a fleece down. If I go around the corner to Ron's work bench and he's sitting there eating his lunch, then that's a sign you want me to share the Gospel with him. But if he's not there, then I won't. So I come around the corner and there he is eating a sandwich. Thank you, Jesus. So I walked up and I just – you know Paul said, “I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling.” And that was going on. And he was like - I don't know what he was thinking, but I'm sure something like this - "What in the world has gotten into you?" So I just, I did a very poor job. But I basically said, "I'm a Christian." He said, "I know." And I said, "Well, I believe in Jesus." "I know," he said. "Well, I think you need him." And then I walked away. That's it. I don't know if Ron's going to be in heaven or not, but I don't think it'll be because of that witness. But friends, we can do better than that, but that's not my message. It's just felt like dying, it just felt like dying that day, and I didn't want to do it, and I just don't think we can really be fruitful if we're not willing to face that and be willing to step forward. It does hurt. It's not easy, it's difficult. We'll get to more of that, but Jesus is promising sweet fellowship for those who serve him. Do you see this? Verse 26, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there, my servant will be.” Sometimes I feel like there's a distance between me and Christ because I'm not more faithful in this area, that he's out there working and I'm not wanting to go there. But Paul said in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” That's what I want, I want to go, even if the price is suffering, I want to be where he is. And the same thing in Hebrews 13, “Jesus was crucified outside the city gates, let us go to him outside the camp bearing the reproach he bore.” So that's where he is, he's out there, go to him and you'll find sweet fellowship with Jesus. The Stunning Reward for Evangelism: Honor from God (vs. 26) Fourthly, the stunning reward for evangelism, honor from God. Verse 26, “‘My father will honor the one who serves me.’” Boy, this just brings goosebumps to me, it's staggering. Meditate on what's being said here. This is the infinite God of the universe, this is the God before whom the angels hide their faces and they cover their feet. This is the one who dwells in unapproachable light, the one who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and all its people are like insignificant grasshoppers. This amazing infinite God, this eternal omnipotent God will honor you if you serve Jesus. Wow! This is the doctrine of rewards. At the center of reward is this one thing. Look down, same chapter, verse 43, John 12:43. This is what the honor is, it says, “‘They loved praise from men more than...’” Look at that, “‘…praise from God.’” Do you see that? That's it. Now, it's a negative verse, but it tells us what the honor is. The honor is that God will praise you, he'll honor you, and he may even of their indication give you some emblems of that praise, such as crowns, etcetera, the crowns in which we'll glory in the presence of God, but we will cast them down, giving him all honor and praise. But friends, this is better than an Olympic gold medal for half-pipe or free style skiing or ice dancing or curling, friends. Look, I'm not mocking those sports, I'm just saying this is better than any Olympic gold medal from Sochi or any other place, this is an eternal reward from God if you serve Jesus. Now, I don't think this statement is just linked to evangelism only, any way you serve him he'll honor you. But I think the context here is hating your life and dying and bringing forth fruit, so it's home base seems to be evangelism and he'll honor those that step out in faith and trust him. He will praise you. The Troubling Cost of Evangelism: Jesus’ Infinite Suffering (vs. 27) Fifth, the troubling cost of evangelism pictured by Jesus's suffering here, ultimately his infinite suffering. Verse 27, “‘Now my heart is troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it's for this very reason I came to this hour.’” So this is John's glimpse into what's recorded for us in Matthew, Mark and Luke at Gethsemane. Jesus there, as you know, shrinks back from drinking the cup of wrath that God hands them. “‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me, yet not my will but yours be done.’” So Jesus reveals the troubling in his soul over the pain and suffering he would undergo, it is very difficult to suffer, Jesus did not in any way minimize that, but he knew that this was the very reason God had brought him into the world. So also at a much lower level, we evangelists will suffer internal turmoil in our souls. We will be able to say, "Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father, get me out of witnessing?" No, no. No, you orchestrated this whole thing. I am your workmanship. I am created for good works. That's why you left me here. You work the other side of the equation, you've got them ready to hear. I can't say no. I can't. So people are going to attack us verbally, we're going to be at a disadvantage in our careers probably if we're faithful in evangelism. Some neighbors will never wave to us again. I've said before, you're basically going to trade in a mediocre relationship for one good opportunity to share the Gospel, because it wasn't that great anyway, honestly. But don't be afraid to trade it in. Say, "I want to share my faith," and Jesus shows us the way out. Don't shrink back because of your fears. Feel the fear, don't expect to be anesthetized, it's actually how we glorify God. When you feel it, but witness anyway. It's the way we get to glorify him, so don't ask that that go away, just say, "God help me to push through it and be faithful, just as you Lord Jesus pushed through it and you were faithful." The Ultimate Reason for Evangelism: The Glory of God (vs. 28-30) Sixth, the ultimate reason for evangelism must be the glory of God. “‘Now, my heart is troubled and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No. It was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. And then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'’ Now, the crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered, others said an angel had spoken to him, and, Jesus said, ‘This voice was for your benefit, not for mine.’” I love that statement. Alright, well, let's get the benefit from it then, shall we? Let's get the benefit, alright? There are many motives for evangelism. We'll talk more about this in a future sermon, but there are a lot of bad motives for evangelism. The worst in my opinion, one of the worst anyway, is guilt. It's a terrible motivator. It's a bad fuel, it'll make the engine cease after a while. The engine can run for a while on it, but it's going to cease down the road. It's just bad. Friends, I know we've just put a pause on Galatians, but can we not forget the lessons of Galatians? We are justified by faith in Christ alone, not by any works of the law, and that includes our own evangelism. So guilt is a very bad motivator, let's not do it out of guilt or fear that God won't bless us or things like that. Guilt and fear of that sort are not good. How about pride? That's if you're good at it, and you're actually able to lead many to Christ and you start getting puffed up, and along with that comes the whole mega church thing, and there's power and money and all of this river of things that comes based on evangelism. Those are bad motives, fame and all that. There are good motivations, good motivations: Love for people, compassion for others, faith, as we see what's happening, what's going on, where they're all heading, training in habit can be good, it's good to have a habit of doing a good thing, obedience, these are all good motivations, but the best by far is this: The glory of God. You are the light of the world. Put God on display. Put him on display. Make him radiant. Yearn to worship in your witnessing. Say, I serve a great God. Can I tell you about him? I'm at my best in witnessing, I have no fear at all with people when I worship in witnessing. And say, "Let me tell you how great Jesus is. Let me tell you about some of his miracles. Let me tell you about some of his teachings. Let me tell you about the greatest thing he ever did, which is dying and his resurrection." That's great. And then I'm just happy and I'm having a great time even if they're not. [chuckle] I want them to join me in my joy, but that's the best witnessing I ever do, that God would be glorified. This is how Jesus worked through his own anguish. Oh, no, not that I would shrink back. "But Father, glorify your name." Father glorify your name. And by the way, this is pretty cool, I haven't found another example in the Bible of what's going on here. Do you realize what this is? This is the actual transcript of an inter-Trinitarian conversation, it's the only one I can think of in the whole Bible. Some verses have the Father speaking to the Son. In many places we see the Son speaking to the Father. This is the only conversation I have recorded in the Bible. That's pretty awesome, isn't it? It proves the Trinity. Separate persons able to have a conversation. So away with modalism, talk to me about that after the worship, we don't have time. But there is one God in three persons, and they're conversing, and what is the topic? It's the central topic of the universe, the glory of God. And the more you live for the glory of God, the more fruitful you're going to be in evangelism. As John Piper put it in "Let the Nations Be Glad!", let me change it from missions to evangelism. Can I just do that? I don't think John would mind. You can tattle on me and if he gets upset, let me know. But I'm just going to re-read the first paragraph of "Let the Nations Be Glad!" talking about evangelism instead of missions. "Evangelism exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not evangelism, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, evangelism will be no more. But worship will be eternal. God is everything. The glory of God is the best." And this is what God's doing. I love God's answer, doesn't it? "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again." This is what I do, I glorify my name. So if you're weak in evangelism, start with your worship life, fan into flame your sense of the greatness of God in his glory. Have a sense of how great a God he is, get more and more of a vision through faith, through Scripture of the greatness of God and your evangelism will flow from that. The Violence of Evangelism: The Ruler of this World Driven Out (vs. 31) Seventh, the violence of evangelism. The ruler of this world must be driven out. Verse 31, “Now is the time for judgment on this world, and now the prince of this world will be driven out.” Jesus speaks of the judgment of the world. There is a coming wrath, dear friends. There is a coming judgment on this world. That judgment is already and not yet, the time has already come for the judgment on the world, and it will come. There is a coming judgment. There is a wrath that's now and there's a coming wrath. Now, it is because of Satan, that ancient serpent called the devil who lured man into sin in the garden of Eden, that this whole thing even needs to happen. Now, Satan was given authority over the kingdoms of this world. Who gave it to him? I think Adam did. I think Adam surrendered the world to Satan, and now Satan is boasting to Jesus, "The whole world's mine, I can give it to anyone I want to." So that's the ruler of this world, that's Satan. Satan must be driven out, and he is driven out by the power of the Holy Spirit through the word of God, specifically through the Gospel. As we step out in faith, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the power of God, speaking the Gospel, Satan gets driven out, progressively driven out, driven out of people's lives, driven out of families and marriages, driven out of hearts and minds, and ultimately driven out of the whole world when Jesus comes back. So we need to know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, it's not against the people, but against these Satanic force of evil in the heavenly realms, and Satan will not give up his territory easily. One of the letters of the seven churches was to the church at Pergamum. And he says there in Revelation 2:13, “‘I know where you live, where Satan has his throne.’” Well, biblically, Satan has lots of thrones. Could it be that there are some thrones set up here in Durham? Could it be there are some wicked stronghold set up here of strange worldviews and perverse ways of thinking and living that are satanic and must be driven out by the beauty of the Gospel? And we need to know where we live. Now, let me tell you about the suffering that's involved, that's different from Jesus's suffering. Christ suffered from the wrath of God, we suffer from the wrath of Satan. God isn't pouring his wrath out on us, that's not why we're going to suffer. We're going to suffer because Satan will use his people to make our lives miserable as we share the Gospel. That's what's going on. We're not suffering substitutionary deaths under the wrath of God, that's done forever. God's not pouring out his wrath on us, but Satan is giving up his territory very difficultly, and he's going to fight us and God is going to allow us to suffer for a short time. But every time we share the Gospel and someone hears it and believes, we have rescued them from what? “The dominion of darkness and brought them into the kingdom of the beloved Son.” How sweet is that? Colossians 1:13. So let's go for it. The Sovereign Power of Evangelism: Christ Drawing People (vs. 32- 33) Number eight, the sovereign power of evangelism, Christ drawing people to himself. And so we'll end with this, verse 32, “‘But I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself.’” What does he mean by that? Well, I'm going to tread on a few toes here, but it doesn't mean worship. It doesn't mean singing the song, "Lift him up, lift him up, lift the name of Jesus higher." You heard that one? It's a good song, I like it. It's good, it's just positioned on the wrong verse. Okay? "Lift him up, lift him up, lift the name of Jesus higher. Lift him up, raise his banner to the sky. He said, 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' Lift him up. All you people, lift him up." Okay, but read verse 33, please. What is the lifting up Jesus was talking about? His death. He was lifted up from the earth on the cross, once for all. Now, I've already said, worship is a powerful form of evangelism, but that's not what this verse is talking about. What is he saying? If I die, if I shed my blood, and if I ascend and sit at the right hand of God, and if I send forth the Spirit, I will sovereignly draw all people to myself. That's what he's saying. So if he dies on the cross, he will unleash a force in the universe and on earth for the salvation of people from every tribe and language, and people and nation. That's how it happens. By the sovereign grace of God. Jesus said this, "All that the Father gives me will... " What? "Come to me." Not 90% or 80% or 99%. One hundred percent of the elect will come to faith in Jesus. Amen? But he said on the other side, "No one can come to me unless... " What? "The Father who sent me draws them." So Jesus is called irresistible grace, God will, by the Spirit, draw the elect to faith in Christ and they will come. Not 99% of them, all of them. That gives us encouragement, doesn't it? Praise God for that. Summary & Conclusion So let's look at the summary and we'll talk about practical applications next week. The subjects of evangelism, a foretaste of vast harvest, there are Gentiles who have yet to be saved and some Jews too, praise God. Foretaste. Number two, the unique and repeated patterns of evangelism, the death of a seed, be willing to die to yourself. His unique pattern never needs to be repeated again. His unique death, but it is a pattern. Number three, Jesus has given us a command to evangelize. This is a matter of obedience for us, and if we do it, we will be where he is and share fellowship with him. The stunning eternal reward of evangelism is he will honor everyone who serves him. The troubling cost of evangelism, do not expect it to be easy. Jesus's heart was troubled. Our hearts will get troubled. That's how you glorify God by overcoming that. The ultimate reason for evangelism is the glory of God. The violence of evangelism is expect Satan to give up his territory with great difficulty, he's going to be seeking to beat us up. But finally, the sovereign power of evangelism is, Jesus has the power to draw people to himself. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to understand the Gospel, to embrace it. I pray that you would strengthen each one of us. And Father, I pray again, if there are any here that have not yet trusted in Christ, that they would believe and that they would trust and look to Christ crucified and resurrected for their salvation. Help us to be faithful to share with our friends, and neighbors, and co-workers, and even total strangers. In Jesus's name. Amen.

The Santa Clara Broncos - Portland Pilots 2013 rivalry game considered, and thoughts on the playoffs. Featuring a conversation between Cross-Conference hosts Joan and Ruth. Quotes from Portland's Rebekah Kurle, Amanda Frisbie and Erin Dees. 

The Santa Clara Broncos - Portland Pilots 2013 rivalry game considered, and thoughts on the playoffs. Featuring a conversation between Cross-Conference hosts Joan and Ruth. Quotes from Portland's Rebekah Kurle, Amanda Frisbie and Erin Dees. 

Pastor Andy Davis delivers an expository sermon on Galatians 2:1-11, and the importance of guarding the truthfulness of the Gospel. I. Introduction: The Importance of Guarding the Recipe Turn in your Bibles to Galatians 2:1-10. We're looking today at that incredible passage Bill just read for us. When I was a design engineer, I worked for a number of different companies. I worked for a company that made ion implanters, which was used for making semiconductors. I worked for a company that made eye surgical equipment. I worked for a company that made coffee-brewing equipment. So that's a wide range of engineering jobs, but my job as a design engineer was to come up basically with the recipe for a product, whatever it was, a recipe that was tested in the lab and that worked, so that we could then crank out hundreds if not thousands once we got the recipe right. And it struck me as I was thinking about Galatians 2 that that's an apt analogy. Companies all over this country are working on recipes for products, and in mechanical things we don't use that word "recipe" that's more something that's cooked, but I'm sticking with that word here. For automobiles, they're working through the designs, coming up with the plans. For architects, they're working on blueprints and designs for structure and often those designs would be used again and again for the same type of house all over the country. People that work for companies that make confections or cookies or something like that, they literally are working on a recipe and chefs are trying different ingredients and they are trying for the right combination of ingredients to make a cookie or some kind of confection that's just going to melt in your mouth, and be very successful. Once the recipe is right they are going to crank out hundreds of thousands of these things and send them to the ends of the Earth, so they hope anyway. Pharmaceutical companies here in the RTP are coming up with recipes for drugs, addressing various issues like AIDS, or cancer, or MS. Once they get the recipe right, they're going to be cranking out hundreds of thousands of pills. Other companies are trying to maintain existing recipes and protect them from being changed in any way, sometimes through their own foolishness. Think about Coca-Cola, remember when they changed their recipe? You guys remember the 1980s? And they came up with the New Coke and it bombed. Everybody wanted the old Coke back. Remember that whole story? And so for a while they ran them side by side, Coke Classic, remember that? Then the New Coke kind of disappeared, remember that? And Coke Classic ran for a while and then it was just Coca-Cola again. And so they've got that special recipe somewhere in a safe, I don't know where, maybe Atlanta, Georgia, and from now on I think they're going to guard it with their lives and not change anything. And I didn't realize this but 1.7 billion servings of Coca-Cola are served worldwide everyday. Everyday. If only the Gospel could be as widespread as Coca-Cola. It's just incredible. And then in some scary ways, think about what happened in 1982 with Tylenol, how somebody got into some bottles and laced it with cyanide and seven people died, and after that the industry came up with protections, so that you knew that when you broke open that bottle that it was going be protected from a poison having been added, etcetera. These are all examples of perfecting the recipe, getting the recipe right, and protecting that recipe once it's been gotten right, so that what gets cranked out and sent to the ends of the Earth is exactly as it should be, and frankly I think that's what's going on in Galatians 2:1-10. I think the apostle Paul was raised up in a marvelous way by the sovereign hand of God to protect the recipe of human salvation that had come down from heaven to Earth, that had been crafted in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, to protect it from anything being added to it or taken away from it, for anything added to this recipe is poison, and anything taken away from that recipe is absolutely essential to it. God has crafted it as perfect – the Gospel. It is the power of salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and then for the Gentile, for in the gospel righteousness from God is revealed, righteousness, that is from faith to faith, justice is written. The righteous will live by faith. That's the Gospel. And the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "What I received I passed on to you as of first importance. That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures." "I receive this," and we're going find out, and we've already learned, "from Heaven, from God, from Jesus himself," the apostle Paul would say, "and I passed it on to you." II. Paul and the False Brothers: Steadfast Preserving of the Gospel (Verses 1-5) God has raised this man up, apostle Paul, he raised him up to protect the recipe of the Gospel from adulteration, from being poisoned, from being changed. So let's try to understand our context. We're just kind of, to some degree, parachuting right into the midst of a flow, an argument, really a testimony that Paul has given for a point concerning him in the Gospel. Let's understand our context here in Galatians 2:1-10. Soon after the apostle Paul, who was a traveling, church-planting, evangelist and apostle had moved through modern-day Turkey, Asia Minor, Galatia. He planted some churches there through the simple preaching of the Word and through discipleship. He then left the area and other teachers came along and began contradicting or adding to the Gospel message that Paul preached, preaching a different gospel other than the one that he had preached. They were Jews. They were Jewish people who claimed to believe in Jesus, who loved (so they said), Jesus, who loved the work of Christ and the cross (so they said), but added to it the idea that the gentiles had to be circumcised. And they required Gentiles to obey the law of Moses, and said that if they weren't circumcised and if they weren't obedient to the law of Moses, they could not be saved. "God has raised this man up, [the] Apostle Paul ... to protect the recipe of the Gospel from adulteration, from being poisoned, from being changed." These teachers are commonly called Judaizers because they were really trying to make gentiles into Jews. They were establishing this new doctrine, by in some very significant ways, discrediting the apostle Paul. They weren't slamming him, but to some degree, it seems that they were calling him a second-hander, kind of a second-generation guy who came along after the fact and who got his message, like a Johnny-come-lately, got his message from the Jerusalem leaders, apostles of Jerusalem, but got it wrong. He kind of apprenticed under them for a while, hung with them for a while, but now he's out and about and he's off, he's getting it wrong and that we Judaizers, we've got it right. We've got the real gospel and you've got to be circumcised and you've got to obey the Law of Moses. Yes, Jesus is wonderful, he's great, but in addition to that, you need the law of Moses. And so this is a very serious attack on the Gospel. It's an attack on Paul but it's also an attack on the Gospel and so Paul in Galatians 1 and 2 is seeking to defend both his apostleship and his Gospel message. They go together, the man and his message go together. And so from the very beginning, if you look at Galatians 1:1, he says, "Paul an apostle." That means “sent one.” "Paul an apostle sent not from men nor by man but by Jesus Christ and by God the Father who raised him from the dead." So right away he's establishing, "My apostleship was not from human origin. It wasn't from man, it was from God, it was from Jesus." And then he adds, "Also his message was from heaven as well." Same thing. Look at verses 11 and 12, Galatians 1:11-12 he says, "I want you to know, brothers, that the Gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it. Rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." And so he spends the rest of Galatians 1 basically proving his independence from the Church of Jerusalem. He's independent. He's independent from the Jerusalem apostles. He's every bit as authoritative as they are. His calling originates like theirs did from Jesus. He's no second-hander. He's no Johnny-come-lately. And his desire in all this is not to stoke his ego so people will think well of him, it's but so that they will understand his mission and his message are from God and he needs to be listened to. He can't be dismissed. God has opened up a conduit of blessing to the churches through Paul, and if you shut that down you're going be missing significant messages that God has to say through me, he's saying that. III. Paul and the Jerusalem Leaders: Independence, Yet Unity (Verses 2, 6-10) And you've already heard the Gospel from me [Paul] and you're going start questioning, that's the biggest problem of all. You will be receiving a gospel that's no gospel at all. But as the same time as he's seeking to distance himself and show some independence from the Jerusalem apostles he also wants to show unity with them. This is a challenge here. He's saying, "We are together and we are one in this," so that the gospel spreads from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria on a unified, solid basis. It's built firm on a foundation that's not moving, there are no cracks in that foundation. As it says in Ephesians 2 that God's household, 2:19 and following, God's household is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. And in him, the whole building, the church is joined together and rises to become a Holy Temple in the Lord and in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.” Yeah, but if there's cracks in the foundation, if there's a rift between Paul and the Jerusalem apostles that's very, very significant. That's a problem. So that's what Paul is trying to do in Galatians 2:1-10. He is a bit walking a tightrope here, across the Niagara Falls or something like that, with danger all around, and he needs to show independence but also unity at the same time, and that's what he's trying to do here. So the issue here are some false brothers, he said, "that rose up to challenge the doctrine." So who were these false brothers and how did they attack the Gospel? Look at verse 4. It said, "This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves." Now this may seem extremely harsh: They are not true Christians. They are not real brothers in Christ, they are false brothers. In our tolerance-loving age, we need to get a sense of Paul's commitment to the truth here, we really do. And Paul is willing to speak the truth here, he's willing to tell the truth and it really makes sense. Look back at Galatians 1:6-9. There he says, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to [What does he call it?] A different gospel which is really no gospel at all. [You see that?] Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the Gospel of Christ. [But, verse 8] Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. As we have already said, so now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than the one you received, let him be eternally condemned!" Now here's the formula. False gospels produce false brothers. It makes sense, doesn't it? You just see the consistency. He said, "It's a false Gospel, they're the ones propagating it, they must be false brothers." If you're not getting the right Gospel, then you're not a genuine believer in Christ. That's the issue, that's what's at stake here. Now these false brothers however are different than the Jews who are mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 2 who chased Paul from pillar to post, who persecuted him everywhere. They're different. They're Jews, yes, but they're not going say they hate Jesus and think of him as a deceiver of the people. They said they love Jesus. They said they follow Jesus. That they, I don't know what they said, appreciated Jesus' ministry. I don't know, how do you put it? Saying it's not enough but it's still pretty good, but they said they were in favor, or they love the work of Christ. They're false brothers because they outwardly embraced Jesus as the Messiah but inwardly their goal was to transform the gentiles into Jews, that's what they were trying to do. So Paul accuses them there of infiltrating their ranks, coming in and spying out the freedom they have in Jesus, and they want to make them slaves. That's what he's saying, the freedom is from the freedom of the oppression of the law of Moses, of thinking “I've got to meticulously keep every jot and tittle or I'm going to go to Hell, I'm gonna be condemned.” It's blessings and curses and that's a burden, it's crushing. Freedom from the law's ability to condemn us and send us to Hell. Oh, what freedom is that! And there were other freedoms too. Ceremonial laws that had served their purpose, their time was done and circumcision was part of that, the dietary regulations were part of that. They didn't need to be circumcised any more, the time of that was over. Once Jesus was identified to the world as a Jew born under the law, the time for that barrier, that dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentiles was gone. And there was no longer any need for markers of how the Jews were different than gentiles, that time has finished. Now God's working one new man out of the two, Christian. The only thing that matters is not circumcision, it's not un-circumcision, what matters is a new creation, faith in Jesus. He is doing a new work here and you're free now. You're free, free from condemnation, free from the law's regulations that separated you from one another. Perfectly free because God sent his son, Amen? Oh, you just need to revel in that freedom. How sweet is it to be free from condemnation? How sweet is it to know you're forgiven? And so these false brothers have come to come make them slaves again, spy out their freedom, subterfuge, claiming to be something they weren't. Messengers of Satan really, ultimately, endangering the Gospel itself. And they were teaching a compulsion, there was a compulsion here. Not just, "Gentiles, you might want to think about getting circumcised. If I could just give you some advice, circumcision might help you." They're not saying that, are they? No, what are they saying? Look at verse three, "Yet not even Titus who was with me was compelled to be circumcised." There's the compulsion, right? Look down to verse 14, it's not in our text today but just go ahead and look. You're allowed to do that by the way, so just jump ahead. Verse 14 it says, "But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the Gospel I told Cephas, [Peter] in front of everyone, if you, who are a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel gentiles to live like Jews?" Again, compulsion. Okay, what's the compulsion? Well, it's really spelled out for us in Acts 15:1 and 5, all right? Acts 15:1 and 5 tells us the compulsion. Acts 15, “some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers ‘unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.’” That's pretty compelling, isn't it? That's compelling. If you don't receive this religious ritual, you're going to Hell. Wow. And then again Acts 15:5, "Some of the believers came from the party of the Pharisees and stood up and said, 'It is necessary to circumcise them and command them to keep the law of Moses.'" Necessary for what? Well, we already covered that, for salvation and then secondarily, healthy membership in the church. If you're going to be a right member, a member in good standing of this church, oh, gentiles you must become Jews. That's what's going on. So the backdrop of Galatians 2:1-10 is laid out for us plainly in Acts 15, leading to what happened in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council. And so the Jerusalem Council happened when the Jerusalem leaders, the Apostles in Jerusalem, met together with Paul and Barnabas, and I'm sure some others, to decide this issue, to decide this circumcision question. So I think the Jerusalem Council is behind all of this, so we can address this passage now from the beginning. Look at verse 1 and 2, "14 years later, [after my first very brief visit to Jerusalem], 14 years later I went back to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along. I went in response to a revelation and set before them the Gospel that I preach among the gentiles." So he was led by God. Paul wasn't summoned by his overlords, the Jerusalem apostles, you see that? He wasn't. Why did he go to Jerusalem? God told him to go. You see that? "I was led by a revelation." Paul frequently, as an apostle, was led in ways we wouldn't be led. Like remember the vision of the man from Macedonia? Come over and help us, and so he knew that it was time to go over to Europe, heading toward Europe, so he would be frequently guided by visions and revelations and so this was one of them. "Paul, I want you to go to Jerusalem." So he is again distancing himself from the Jerusalem apostles, "They didn't command me to go, I'm not their errand boy. I went because God told me to go. I went in response to a revelation." And so they met together in the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. Why did he go? God told him to go. He wanted Paul to defend the Gospel message that he was preaching among the gentiles. He went to defend the Gospel and to explain it. He brought Barnabas along with him to testify to the truth of his assertions because every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. So he brought Barnabas, too, Barnabas was there on their missionary journey and he could explain it, and he also brought Titus. Now that's interesting. Titus was, at that point, no significant leader in the life of the church, he was just, we could say, a run-of-the-mill gentile convert. But very strategic for Paul to bring him, very strategic. Okay, you think, you Judaizers think Gentiles, in abstraction, gentiles need to be circumcised in order to go to heaven and if they're not circumcised they're going to hell? Tell Titus, tell him. Tell him to his face. I think they were willing to do it. I get the sense there was a struggle there but there's a sense of an object lesson. This is a real man. These are real people that we're dealing with. They're filled with joy that their sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus and now you're bringing them back under the shadow of the law. This is a real individual. Also, going back to my recipe analogy or prototype or something like that, you kinda have, "Let's figure out with Titus 'cause we're about to be replicating this to the ends of the Earth. Let's figure out with this one individual 'cause we're gonna be doing this again and again for centuries." They wouldn't have known that but we know now. Are we doing this? Is this the recipe, Christ plus circumcision is salvation? Let's figure it out now. So, Titus was there as well. Now, he's concerned about the unity of the church. He says, "I went in response to a revelation and set before them the Gospel that I preach among the gentiles but [I did this privately.] I did this privately to those who seem to be leaders for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain." Now, I don't know exactly, strategically why they met alone with Peter, James, and John, but they did, they met alone and they talked about doctrine. They worked it through privately and it was just the wisdom of God to do it that way. But he was afraid, he says, that he had run or was running his race in vain. Now what is he talking about that? Well, his race is his ministry. As he goes from city to city, from town to town, from place to place preaching the Gospel, persecuted, standing up for the Gospel, standing up for the doctrine, that's his race. Acts 20 in verse 24, he says there to the Ephesian elders, he says, "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." So that's his race. He's running that race. That's his external journey. He's running it. But he was afraid that he had run or had run his race in vain. Now, he used this language a lot. He's afraid sometimes with the Thessalonians that because of persecution he had labored in vain there. And it has to do with having your work undone as though Paul had somehow built a sandcastle in Galatia or a bunch of sandcastles in these churches in Galatia and now the incoming tide was going to wash it all away, there'd be nothing left. If they could discredit Paul, if Paul's Gospel could be discredited, it's all undone. It's gone. All those gentiles would go back to worshipping whatever gods and goddesses they worshipped before he came and the whole thing would be in vain. So this is a key moment in redemptive history, guys, do you see that? We're trying to get the Gospel recipe right. It's just beginning to be spread to the gentiles and I would guess the absolute overwhelming majority of you folks are gentiles. You're interested. This is your moment. Paul said, "I did it for you so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you and me." So this is long before you were born, Paul was fighting for you. Praise God for that, amen. He was your champion, he was fighting for you and God raised him up. And I think it's right for you on Thanksgiving, which is coming up soon, thank God for people who died long before you were born who gave you gifts by protecting the Gospel and preaching it clearly and accurately. And so he fought for you and so he presents this Gospel, it says to those who seem to be important." I love that. They seem to be of reputation. We'll get to all that. Peter, James, and John who were reputed to be pillars and they gave to Paul the right hand of fellowship, and what was the outcome? They agreed he was preaching the right Gospel and not even Titus was compelled to be circumcised. This is a key moment and Paul gives you a sense, a glimpse of the fight here. This wasn't a sweet little discussion. "Hey, what do you think?" "I don't know. What do you think?" Circumcision, yes, no. 51% we're in, alright. It wasn't that at all. There were convictions and passions on the part of the Judaizers, they were convinced, they were pointing chapter and verse, they were going to Genesis 17, they were going to other places and they were showing circumcision as a requirement. They're like, "What you do with that?" But notice the fight. It says here, "That these false brothers who'd infiltrated the ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus." Look at verse 5, "We did not give in to them for a moment. We stood firm." This is like, I hate to lower it to sports, but this is like a goal-line stand here. We're not going to yield for a moment or we lose, I can't yield. And so I don't sense it was pleasant, do you? Do you sense this is a pleasant conversation? He's like, "False brothers, you guys are false, you're not even Christians. You don't even seem to understand grace, you don't understand what Jesus did. No, Titus will not be circumcised, over my dead body," that kind of thing. I don't know if all that got said but things like that. We didn't yield for a moment. Why, Paul, why are you fighting? So that the truth of the Gospel, oh Galatians, might remain with you. I wanted you to have the true Gospel, that's why I didn't yield. That recipe, that's poison. Christ plus law equals salvation, that's false. That's worse than cyanide being added to Tylenol. It deals with eternal souls. No, that gospel is not true. And so he fought for the Gospel, he fought against the false teachers and he did what Jude 3 says we must do. "Dear friends, [this is Jude 3] although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation that we share, I felt I had to write and urge you, [listen] to contend, to fight for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." Do you hear those words? We're going to fight for this thing, we're going to fight for the Gospel because it was once for all entrusted to the saints. Don't change it, don't add to it, it's poison. Don't take away from it, whatever you take is essential to it. Everything is perfect, just protect it, it was entrusted to you. And so Paul does that. Now the second aspect of what he's trying to do here is to show his relationship to the Jerusalem apostles and I've already touched on it but he wants to show independence and yet unity with them. He's walking this challenging tightrope, okay? But fundamentally, what Paul's saying is that God, Jesus, called me on the Damascus road to my ministry. It had nothing to do with these men, nothing. They didn't give me my apostleship and they didn't give me my message and they didn't add anything to my message. Neither. He doesn't say this, but neither did they take anything away from it. My message didn't come from those men and my authority didn't come from them. So he uses language that seems to be disrespectful but he's not meaning it. He says, "Those reputed to be pillars," and then he even goes beyond that, saying, "Hey, look, whatever they were doesn't matter to me. Makes no difference to me what James, Peter, and John were." That sounds a little disrespectful, doesn't it? It's like them saying, "Well, it doesn't matter to me what you are Paul, frankly." But that's not what he's doing, it's not like he doesn't have good fellowship. He actually said, "We did have good fellowship, they extended to me the right hand of fellowship. I do respect them, I do honor them, but I didn't get anything from them. They didn't change my message. They didn't give me my apostleship, I got it from Jesus absolutely. So on the one hand, I am independent from these men, the Jerusalem leaders, in my calling as an apostle and my Gospel message, but on the other hand, guess what? We're preaching the same gospel, and guess what? The same God called us to our work and isn't that encouraging? Isn't that awesome to see how God can raise up different laborers to do different works but we're all preaching the same Gospel and we're accountable to the same God?" Now that's what he's saying here. So he gives us in verse 1, “14 years later,” he's saying. "Look, they weren't teaching me anything, I didn't learn anything from them for 14 years, I wasn't even there, and I sure didn't get them on closed circuit TV or on the Web, alright? They weren't given anything to me, it was directly from God. And they seem to be leaders," he's not trying to be disrespectful. "Whatever... " verse 6, "Whatever they were makes no difference to me, God doesn't judge by external appearance." What is he doing there? He's saying, "I'm not accountable to them. I'm not going to stand before them on judgment day," that's what he's saying. Paul had an intense sense of personal accountability to God for his ministry, personal accountability. And so he says in Galatians 1:10, "I am not seeking the approval of men. That's not what I'm in it for. I'm not trying to please men because if I were doing that I would no longer be a servant of Christ." And so he says in Acts 26:19 in his testimony to King Agrippa, he said, "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from Heaven." That's how he sees it. “Jesus appeared to me from heaven. He told me to do something, I didn't disobey him. He told me to do this, it wasn't Peter, James, and John who told me to do this.” And why is that? Why does he have that sense of accountability? 2 Corinthians 5:10, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad." You are, I am, we're all going to be standing before Jesus someday. And so therefore he says in 1 Corinthians 4:1-4, "So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful to the one who gave it." Listen to this, 1 Corinthians 4:3, "I care very little if I'm judged by you or by any human court." Now again, that may seem disrespectful, doesn't it? But it isn't. What he's saying is, I'm not thinking about you in reference to my accountability, in reference to my stewardship. I'm thinking about the one who gave it to me. I care very little if I'm judged by you or by any human court. Can I just pause and say, wouldn't you love to get to that place? What kind of an evangelist would that make you? How bold would you be in standing for Christ if you really lived like that? I care very little if I'm judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself, my conscience is clear but that doesn't make me innocent, it is the Lord who judges me. So that's what he's saying here, he's independent and yet, praise God, praise God, united, united. They determined they had the same recipe. Christ plus nothing, sovereign grace, justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. We're preaching the same Gospel, amen. And it's going to go to the ends of the Earth, we're going to replicate this thing again and again. It's going to make for the Lord a multitude of believers from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation. We have seen this Gospel crank out people, rescuing them from Hell and bringing them to heaven. This Gospel recipe works. It is the power of God for salvation, and praise God they got it right. But it wasn't an accident that they got it right, amen? God sovereignly ordained that they would get it right, but he just used Paul to do it, and Peter and John. And so they gave them the right hand of fellowship and said, "We're preaching the same Gospel." And beyond that he could see, it's like, "I do respect Peter. God raised Peter up and God was at work in Peter's ministry just like in mine." He's not disrespecting Peter. He knows the story, I'm sure he knows it, how in Caesarea Philippi Jesus said, "What do you think about the son of man? Who is he? Some say this, some say... What about you? Who do you say that I am?" "You are the Christ, you are the son of the living God." Peter said that. Do you remember what Jesus said to Peter? "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in Heaven." He had the same revelation of Jesus by the Father. Isn't that awesome? God was at work in Peter's life. And Jesus then said to Peter, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." How could Paul say, "I follow Jesus but I don't care about Peter." He didn't say that at all. He says the same God is at work in Peter's ministry to the Jews as he is in my ministry to the gentiles and we have complete unity together. So where does that leave the Judaizers? On the outside. They're out in the cold, they're false teachers. The Jerusalem apostles and Paul were preaching the exact same message and they gave their right hand of fellowship but they say one more thing, one more thing. Please don't forget the poor as you do this. Look at verse 10. "All they ask was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do." VI. Paul and the Mission: Pure Doctrine and Compassion for the Poor And so there's not a lot here, he just mentions it in passing and so I'm not going to belabor it, but wherever the Gospel's needed most there's also poverty there. We see that again and again. Satan impoverishes people at every level and so when people are held in thrall by Satan they tend to be crushed in every way, and so they're not blessed materially, they're poor. You folks know missiologists have looked at where are the unreached people groups and they say most of them are in North Africa, the Middle East, going across over through Iran and heading toward India, China, Indonesia, what they call the 10/40 window. Latitude 10 to 40, that swath, that's where most of the unreached people groups are. Well, guess what? 82% of the world's three billion poorest people live there too. So if you're going to go minister the Gospel, you're going to be staring into the jaws of poverty. And so remember the poor, Paul, as you preach the gospel, remember the poor and be concerned about them. Okay, so what causes that poverty? Human sin, human sin directly and indirectly. Satan dominates peoples minds and hearts. The earth produces far more food than is needed to feed every one of the seven billion of us. Then why do people starve? Why is there poverty? Well, because of man-made religions, and cold-hearted governments, and vicious gangs, vigilante gangs that are trying to take over countries where there's anarchy, and wild-eyed insurgents, and revolutionaries, and greedy industrialists, and selfish tribal chiefs, and lazy fathers, and drug-addicted mothers, and cycles of social injustice, and all of that, and 100 other sins add up to poverty, add up to poverty. And wherever the Gospel goes, and people repent and genuinely start walking by the spirit, things change radically. So if you're going to go with the Gospel, you're going to go and minister to the poor and needy. V. Application So what application can we take from this? I want to give you three main headings. Delighting in the Gospel, defending the Gospel, and extending the Gospel, those three. Let's start with delighting in the Gospel. This is glorious. It is a joy to preach this gospel. Isn't it marvelous? To proclaim in Jesus the forgiveness of sins to all of you is a great privilege and joy. Do you know that saving love of Christ? Maybe you were invited today by a friend. I hope we're inviting people to church. I can promise you, dear church members, you invite people, they'll hear the Gospel every week, I promise you. I'm making a pledge before you, every week, at some point, I will clearly explain how lost people can be saved. So if you know you're lost, you know you're on the outside, this is for you. I just want to explain it to you, you can't save yourself by works. There's nothing you can do, no present obedience can pay for past disobedience to God's laws, it doesn't work that way. Instead what you need to do is humble yourself before Jesus and say, "You came, you're the Son of God, you died on the cross in my place, I trust in you, save me." Call on the name of the Lord and he will save you. Delight in that. Embrace it by faith. Now if you've done that, you embraced in that years ago, now I'm just asking you to be happy about it. I'm asking you to show your joy everywhere you go. Even in the midst of great sorrow still always rejoicing. Delight in this Gospel. Delight in how much it glorifies God. It's so God-centered, isn't it? Not by works but by God. That's God-honoring, God-glorifying. Delight how it humbles you. You were saved contrary to your works, not by them. Delight in how it meets all of your needs. It secures for you a place in heaven. It gives you something to look forward to that cannot be taken from me, moth and rust cannot destroy, thieves cannot break in and steal, it's waiting for you and nothing can take it from you. All of your best days are in the future, rejoice in that and be happy. Delight that the Father is not angry with you at all. He is reconciled to you. Delight in that. Your sins are forgiven. Delight in the freedom you have in Christ, freedom from the law in its power to condemn but then freedom to keep the law in its power to instruct you what a good life is. Delight in your freedom. "Delight in the freedom you have in Christ, freedom from the law in its power to condemn but then freedom to keep the law in its power to instruct you what a good life is. Delight in your freedom." Secondly, defending the Gospel. This Gospel, this recipe that God crafted or concocted before the foundation of the world is perfect. Let me say it again. The only thing that can be added to it is poison, the only things that can be taken from it are essential to its nature. We accept it as perfect just as it is, just as it is. So therefore, assume that there will be an attack on the Gospel in every generation. Satan relentlessly attacks this message and we must defend it. God raised up Paul to defend it. He has raised up us. It is entrusted once for all to the saints. It is to us to protect, to defend this Gospel message. We must contend for this faith. So let's pray, shall we, that FBC will continue to be faithful in the Gospel, don't assume it. Don't assume that 20 years from now in this building the Gospel will still be preached. We need to defend it, so pray that we would continue. Don't begrudge, let me say this gently but clearly, don't begrudge the strong doctrinal flavor of our church's ministry. Don't begrudge it, rejoice in it. If the church has some failings in fellowship or in friendliness or in outreach or other things, let's fix those according to God's word but let's not give up on precision and care about doctrine. Delight in it. It's good that this church is careful about doctrine, it's a delight. The answer isn't that we become less doctrinally pure, that's not the right answer. And so let me speak to you elders. The elders are specifically called on to be watch guards in this area. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in you. Protect it. And church, pray for the elders to do it. I don't know what direction Satan is going to come at in reference to this Gospel but let's pray that we would be protecting it. And then thirdly, extending the Gospel. We have this perfect recipe but it needs to be out and about. We need to see it making Christians, amen. Let's get out and trade with it like the talents, like the five talents. Let's take it to the ends of the Earth. Let's go and share this. Let's say, assume that you're going to be surrounded, for the most part, at the workplace and whatever with unbelievers because that's probably generally true. And just start praying from it. God give me a chance to invite someone to church. Give me a chance to go deeper. Maybe I'm riding in a car with a coworker, maybe I'm taking a trip with them, we're going on a business trip or something, maybe it's just the two of us after hours in the office. Give me a chance to share the Gospel, I want to talk about it. So let's extend it. And then concerning ministry to the poor, Paul was zealous, he said, "I was eager to do it." Ask God to give you an eagerness to care for the poor and needy. We so easily excuse ourselves from that and say, "Oh, it's because of this or that," and we don't get involved. Educate yourself on poverty worldwide and locally, right here. Let's find out where poverty is right around this church. Now, we need to always give top priority to the ministry of the soul. The Cross Conference that I'm going to be speaking at, at the end of the year, this is their slogan, something like this, "Christians are concerned about all forms of suffering but especially eternal suffering." So that puts it very well. Let's give a top priority to the Gospel but as we minister, we're going to care for the poor and needy. And then finally, please consider, I'm urging you to consider coming to the City Outreach Conference on November 23rd. Matthew Hodges is putting this together, it's going to be fantastic. Dr. Carl Ellis is coming, he is an outstanding thinker and speaker. And the point of the conference is really for us more than anything else, that we would know how better to minister right around here. Did I get that right, brother? Is that about right? Anything else you want to say? Is that alright? But please talk to Matthew. Sacrifice some time that Friday, Saturday, and be part of that. Let me close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the joy of the Gospel. Thank you for the way you raised up Paul, really, as a hero to defend the freedom we gentiles have from the law, the crushing burden of the law. And I thank you for this time we've had to study together, in Jesus' name, amen.

A roundtable discussion on the Great Commission, sending, calling, prayer, patience, and more with the leaders of the Cross Conference.

A roundtable discussion on the Great Commission, sending, calling, prayer, patience, and more with the leaders of the Cross Conference.

A roundtable discussion on the Great Commission, sending, calling, prayer, patience, and more with the leaders of the Cross Conference.

A driving force of our College Ministry is their heart to come alongside students to not only disciple them as they grow in their faith, but to also equip them to be ready to take the Gospel to those who have not yet heard. This summer, the College Ministry is excited to be kicking off a new missions program as a part of the 1:11 Project - “Expedition.” Drew Dabbs and Chris Williams share how students will train and serve locally before being sent overseas to work with some of our mission partners. They also share an update on their recent trip to the Cross Conference, and how the Lord is using what was learned in the lives of the students.