COMMITTED to train men and women
to have minds for the Lord Jesus,
hearts for the truth, and
hands that are skilled to the task.
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"R.C. Sproul" Tagged Sermons

PRIORITIES THAT GLORIFY JESUS

C.S. Lewis under the title: A GRIEF OBSERVED makes this comment after grieving the death of his wife, Joy:
“What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?”
R.C. Sproul comments about this verse:
“I will never obey the truth of God apart from the power, grace, and assistance of the Spirit. We are living in strange times in terms of how the church functions. We have been caught up with a fierce desire to find a way to relate to a culture that has been immunized to Christianity. We try to find new methods to reach the lost. The motivation is righteous, because we should have compassion for the lost. The danger comes when we ask the lost how they want to come into the kingdom of God, how they want to worship God, and how they want to hear God’s Word, and then tailor our method to their tastes and preferences. THAT IS FATAL. Sooner or later the church must come back to confidence in God’s way of doing God’s work, because the Bible does give us A BLUEPRINT FOR EVANGELISM.
…It is accomplished by the method of proclaiming the Word of God, which, as Peter says here, changes lives and purifies souls through the power of the Holy Spirit.
…We must never negotiate those fundamental, biblical methods of worship, preaching, evangelism, and spiritual growth.”

Equipped and Trained

Everything pertaining to life and godliness, all the power we need to live a life that glorifies God has been given to us. All the power we need to overcome the corruption of this world, to overcome the deceptive power of self-help, to overcome the destructive power of false religion, has been supplied by our Lord.
As a soldier of Christ, we don’t have the luxury to fall asleep on our job. The battle is raging and is intense. Everything we need to win the battles has been supplied to us. Now it is our job to get properly equipped.
Moses saw for a few seconds the back of God and immediately Moses’ face began to reflect the divine glory that just walked by him. In other words, God’s glory was bounding off the skin of Moses. However, each passing day this glory on Moses’ face started to fade, because it was only a reflected glory.
Not so on the mount of transfiguration. JESUS CHRIST NEVER REFLECTED GOD’S GLORY, BUT AS JOHN WROTE LATER: WE BEHELD HIS GLORY, THE GLORY AS OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN OF THE FATHER, FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH.
This is what Peter is pointing out in his second Epistle, they have seen His glory and heard the voice of God audibly.In other words, they did not tell people about legends and myths or what others were saying about Jesus. PETER, JAMES and JOHN witnessed the glory of God Almighty in JESUS CHRIST.
Today, too many Christians lack of sense of the greatness and awesomeness of God Almighty, which I believe is directly linked to the church’s ignorance of the Old Testament.
We cannot really understand the New Testament apart from the Old Testament. Peter says that we must obey the prophetic word and regard it as a LIGHT THAT SHINES IN A DARK PLACE, UNTIL THE DAY DAWNS AND THE MORNING STAR RISES IN YOUR HEARTS.
At the Diet of Worms, when Luther was called to recant, he said: “Unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, I will not recant, because my conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other; God help me.”

What’s Your Plan?

Most people will go through life without having ever taken the time to really forge a PLAN FOR THEIR LIFE. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? Some say, well, I don’t plan anything because GOD IS IN CHARGE OF MY LIFE.
If Jesus would have lived on this earth with such an attitude, you and I would spend eternity in everlasting hell fire.
I am so thankful that God the Father has a plan for His entire creation, and especially for me personally.
To find the Biblical answer to what God’s plan is for you and me, we need to turn to John 1:1-14.
Let’s look at the Christian landscape of today, we see similar patterns.
People today can get very excited about Jesus if they see
• That he can benefit them
• That everything will be going great if they “accept Him”
• That He can fix them and solve their problems
What will happen, what will be their plan when Jesus DOES NOT HEAL THEM, DOES NOT GIVE THEM THE BENEFITS THEY DEMAND, DOES NOT FIX THEIR PROBLEMS AND DOES NOT HEAL THEIR MARRIAGE?
The statement: HE WHO HAS SEEN ME HAS SEEN THE FATHER… forms the foundation of all Christian talk about God. It is the incarnation that makes this possible. Excitement about Christmas and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, does not mean that we UNDERSTAND WHO GOD IS.
Listen, God’s supreme revelation of Himself is the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh and speaking to us at our level of UNDERSTANDING.