God tells Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3:6); Jesus quotes this verse against the Sadducees to prove the Resurrection: “He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27).
How does this prove the Resurrection? Because this phrase is spoken by the Great I AM (Ex. 3:14), who is life; when this God of life and existence enters into a covenant of faithfulness with a person or people (Father Abraham and his many sons…), they will by definition be a people who are alive. He is God of the living. Obviously, this demonstrates, as Jesus shows, the Resurrection.
But I also think it implies regenerate church membership, or the doctrine that the church is made up of only those who are truly born again. Baptists not only believe this, they practice it (at least in theory). They admit to church membership only those who have been born again, converted, regenerated, given new life. Those who have been given new life by God then follow Jesus in baptism. They are baptized because they are alive. Baptism draws a picture of dying with Christ to sin and self (going under the water) and being raised with Christ to a new life of authentic worship (coming up out of the water). Baptism shouts in a picture: “He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living!”
So, in a way, Moses, when he believed in “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” proved that he was a Baptist.
I preached yesterday on Mark 12:13-27, where we examined the “Why?” of life. “Why do we exist?” “Why did God create us as a species, as a church, and as individuals?”
Our answer: for authentic worship.
In Mark 12:13-27, we identified two elements of authentic worship:
1. Giving to God what is rightfully his, by faith in Jesus
2. Knowing God’s Word and God’s Power
We ended with giving four options for a person, church, or community:
1. Absence of Knowledge or Power = Spiritual deception/death
2. Knowledge – Power = Dead Orthodoxy
3. Power – Knowledge = Fanatacism
4. Knowledge + Power = Revival
We then defined revival:
“A great swell of authentic worship of God through Christ in a person, church, or community.”
We ended with a prayer that we might see revival breakout on all three levels:
1. “In my heart”
2. “In our church”
3. “In our community”
Join me in praying that the living God be pleased to send us revival as we magnify Jesus and his Gospel in word and deed!
A Harvard study recently came out, saying that regular, predictable time off increases productivity. Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal writes:
“It was 4 p.m. on a recent Friday—a time of the week when I usually relax and leave the rest of my to-do list to finish over the weekend. But as this recent weekend approached, I kept pushing myself, heart pumping, to get to the bottom of my list of planned tasks for the week.
After years of working on and off throughout most weekends, I was trying a new approach by taking off at least one entire day every weekend this month, away from reporting, writing and all other work. Early on, I hated it. As simple as it seemed, sticking to a time-off plan stressed me out at first. What I didn’t see right away was that my little test was forcing me to improve the way I work.
Amid layoffs and burgeoning workloads, it seems, working any time, all the time, has become a habit. A survey of 605 U.S. workers last spring by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 70% of employees work beyond scheduled time and on weekends; more than half blame ’self-imposed pressure.’ Now, new research suggests some have reached the point where a paradoxical truth applies: To get more done, we need to stop working so much.“
From the WSJ, via Lifehacker.
We framed our membership class at Pembroke Road around the three-fold value of Gospel, Community, and Mission.
Below is an outline of our first session, which is an overview of the class in general and the Gospel itself in particular. Let me know what you think.
The Big Picture
Question: Why does PRBC exist?
Answer: PRBC exists (a) for the glory of God and (b) for the good of our community and world.
Question: What does a church that exists for the glory of God and the good of its community look like?
Answer: We believe that such a church will exhibit the following three core values: Gospel, Community, and Mission.
a. Gospel: The Gospel is the foundational belief of Christianity. Without Christ crucified for our sins, we might have a religious organization or a social club, but we do not have a right relationship with God.
b. Community: We believe that the Gospel changes people and enables them to live together in a way that would be impossible without Christ. In short, the Gospel creates the church, a Christian community or family, where sin is not hidden but forgiven and where we all stand as equally undeserving sinners underneath the shadow of the Cross.
c. Mission: The Gospel also demands that we live as missionaries in a lost and dying world. That means that if we belong to Christ we are missionaries whether we are in Miramar or in Mumbai. Our goal is proclaim Christ crucified to all people.
The Membership Essentials class is structured around these three core values.
Gospel
Week 1: The Gospel
Week 2: Our Statement of Faith (spokes off the “hub” of the Gospel)
Community
Week 3: Church History (how did PRBC get here?)
Week 4: Being a Part of the Family (expectations of PRBC members)
Mission
Week 5: Biblical Foundations for Mission
Week 6: Practical Outworkings of Mission
The Gospel
The Gospel is a story, a grand story with God’s almighty fingerprints all over it. It is the ultimate drama of history. It is a majestic and true tale of Creation, Rebellion, Redemption and a New Creation.
This fabric of this story is woven into the Bible from the first chapter to the last:
Creation → Rebellion → Redemption → New Creation
(Gen. 1) (Gen. 3) (Gen. 3:15) (Rev. 21:1)
The “Creation-Rebellion-Redemption-New Creation” timeline is the big picture of what the Bible is about and what God is up to in saving people for his glory and their good. It is a birds-eye view of things.
On an individual level, the Gospel can be laid out like this:
God → Man → Christ → Response
This summary shows each person’s responsibility toward the Gospel message. It summarizes the key points of the good news:
1. God is the perfect, holy, loving, and righteous Creator of the world.
2. Man was created good, in God’s image, but rebelled against God’s commands and desired to rule his own life and the world apart from God. Man is now soaked-through with sin, being a sinner at heart.
3. Christ, both fully God and fully man, was sent by God at the appointed time to live a perfect life and die a sacrificial death in the place of rebellious sinners.
4. Response is required from sinners toward this wonderful news that Christ lived and died for sinners. Repentance and belief brings salvation, but rejection brings destruction.
The whole Bible is about Jesus Christ and the Gospel (Luke 24:45-47), and some sections are especially helpful in understanding what Jesus accomplished. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, the Apostle Paul explains a number of things about the Gospel. Here we see that the Gospel is:
1. A Message (15:1-2)
a. Preached (15:1)
b. Received; Held; Saving (15:1)
2. A Message “Of First Importance” (15:3)
3. The Content of the Message (15:3-8)
a. Christ died (15:3) (see 1 Cor. 2:1)
b. for our sins (15:3) (see 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 3:18)
c. according to the Scriptures (15:3) (see Is. 53; Dan. 9:26; Zech. 13:7)
d. he was buried (15:4)
e. he was raised (15:4) (see the Gospels; Hosea 6:2)
f. he appeared to: Cephas (Peter), the twelve (15:5), five hundred (15:6), James and the apostles (15:7), Paul (15:8)
Also, some other important verses explaining aspects of the Gospel are: Isaiah 53:6, Galatians 2:20, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:24 (and many more!).
As we think about the Gospel it is important to explain how it relates to religious or spiritual “good works”. Other faiths and religions (and even some streams of Christianity) teach that “I am accepted by God because I obey him”. The true Christian Gospel, however, teaches that “I obey God because I am accepted by him on the basis of Christ’s life and death alone.”
This means that no “good thing” we have done or could do is good enough. We can’t pray enough, we can’t give enough money, we can’t come to church enough times, we can’t study the Bible enough to make ourselves right before God. The Bible says that “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Is. 64:6). This means that our “best” isn’t nearly good enough for God.
We need the righteousness of another. We need the righteousness of Jesus, the perfect Son of God, to be “credited” to our account. A great exchange took place on the Cross when Jesus died. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Do you see the trade? God gave all of our sin to Christ and he gave all of Christ’s perfect, holy, obedient, righteous life to us!
At PRBC, we desire to live in the shade of the Gospel tree. We want to increasingly view the Gospel as not simply the “ABCs” of our faith, but as the
“A to Z” of everything we think, say, and do as Christ’s followers (see Galatians 3:1).
The Gospel has huge implications for our lives as Christians and, specifically, as members of PRBC. Some these are:
• It should not surprise us when people fail (Christ would not have had to die if they didn’t!)
• We ourselves should be open about our failures and not pretend we are “perfect Christians”
• We should have a culture of grace, being patient and forgiving with other
• We should see the solution to problems in our church as “more Jesus” and not “more rules”
• Repentance and Gospel renewal should be our pattern of life
• We should have a burning desire to share this good news with others