Sunday, May 31, 2015

Sunday Sermonette


May 31, 2015
Thanks for Everything
“Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20)
Being thankful for everything that happens in his or her life to a Christian believer is listed in this section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as one of the evidences that a Christian is indeed “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).
That is not all. Not only for everything, but in everything, we should give thanks to God. “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
These two commands are easy to obey when the living is easy, as the song says, though we might easily forget to do so. But when the Lord is allowing us to hurt for a while, thanksgiving becomes hard. It is hard while we are experiencing the difficulty and just as hard when it has passed with no relief in sight. The two small prepositions “in” and “for” are different in New Testament Greek as well as in modern English, and God really wants us to learn how to thank Him both during and after the hard experience.
Because He has allowed it for a good purpose! The apostle James urges us to “count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” (that is, “various testings”); “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:3-4). Paul says that we can even “glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:3-5). Patience and real love will come to characterize an habitually thankful Christian. HMM

h/t: HENRY M MORRIS, INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Sunday Sermonette

The poet George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” In the life of every nation, there are “memories” that must be preserved if that nation is to retain an awareness of its unique role among the nations of the world—indeed, among the long list of nations throughout history.
Long ago, God Himself instituted “memorials” so that the key events of history might be remembered. The rainbow was to remind God of His covenant to preserve life on the earth after the awful destruction of the Flood (Genesis 9:8-17). Jacob set up a stone after he had seen the ladder and spoken with the angel of the Lord (Genesis 28:12-22). Joseph insisted that the children of Israel take his bones with them into the land of promise (Genesis 50:25).
In our text, Joshua is told by the Lord to take 12 stones out of Jordan and make a monument to commemorate the beginning fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham centuries earlier. That day, Israel was to enter the “promised land” and start its conquest of Canaan.
The Memorial Day that we celebrate in the United States began with the ending of the Civil War. Since then, our country has added many memorials. Each of them, whether a mere plaque, a lone statue to a notable person, or a vast and sweeping edifice, are all intended to remember some significant event and the people who made history during that time. Typically, we honor the dead who paid the ultimate price that we might live on—and we should. There are others, though, whose sacrifices in time and treasure were enormous. May our thanks this day “remember” all of them.HMMIII

h/t: HENRY M MORRIS lll, INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Sunday Sermonette

May 17, 2015
The Witness of Creation
“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.” (Revelation 3:14)
 
This salutation in the last of the seven church epistles in Revelation contains the last of four occurrences of the distinctive phrase “the beginning of the creation.” The glorified Christ here assumes this as one of His divine names. Even God’s work of creation, long since completed (Genesis 2:1-3), had a beginning, and that beginning was Christ. “In the beginning was the Word . . . and . . . all things were made by him” (John 1:1-3).
 
The first two occurrences of this phrase also come from the lips of Christ. “From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). This assertion by the Creator, Jesus Christ, quoting Genesis 1:27, makes it unambiguously certain that Adam and Eve were created at the beginning of creation, not after the earth had already existed for 4.6 billion years. God also wrote this plainly on the tables of the law (Exodus 20:8-11). Those evangelicals who accept the geological ages evidently reject this clear statement of the creation’s Creator!
 
Then Christ also referred to the end-times in the context of the beginning-times. “In those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be” (Mark 13:19).
 
The phrase is also used in Peter’s very important prophecy concerning the scoffers of the end-times, who will argue (in willful ignorance) that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4), thereby denying that there ever was a real creation or real Creator and thus rejecting Christ Himself. But He is also the “true witness” and the “Amen,” and such denials will only be “unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). HMM

h/t: HENRY M MORRIS, INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Mother's Day, Sunday Sermonette

May 10, 2015
The Faith of Our Mothers
“When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.” (2 Timothy 1:5)
 
The “dearly beloved son” (v. 2) of the apostle Paul was a young disciple whose strong and sincere Christian faith was due, more than anything else, to the lives and teachings of a godly mother and grandmother. As Paul wrote to Timothy in his last letter, “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).
 
Timothy’s mother was a Christian Jew (Acts 16:1), but his father was a Greek who evidently was not a believer. In the ideal Christian home, the father is to assume spiritual leadership (Ephesians 5:22, 25; 6:4), but countless fathers, for some reason, are either unable or unwilling to do this. Many have been the homes where a mother or grandmother, usually by default, has had to assume this all-important responsibility, and the Christian world owes these godly women a great debt of gratitude. The writer himself was raised in such a home, and much of his own concern for the Word of God is due to the concerned dedication of a Christian mother and two Christian grandmothers.
 
It is significant that the fifth of God’s Ten Commandments requires children to honor their parents, and it is the only one of the ten which carries a special promise: “Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3). Every godly parent is worthy of real honor, every day—not just once each year. And when a Christian mother, like Timothy’s mother, must assume all the responsibility for leading her children in the ways of God, she deserves very special praise. HMM

h/t: HENRY M MORRIS, INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Sunday Sermonette

Preciousness

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
The verses leading up to our text explain why we are so special in God’s eyes. We find the key in verse 7, which literally reads, “For you, therefore that believe is the preciousness,” since the Greek word is a noun and not an adjective. But what is this preciousness? The word means honor or honorableness, and in slightly different forms is so translated in 1 Peter 1:7 and 3:7. But whose honor or worthiness is being discussed in this passage?
Peter answers both of these questions in the immediate context. Speaking of the Lord, he calls Him “precious . . . a chief corner stone, elect, precious” (1 Peter 2:4, 6). Christ, in God’s eyes, is precious. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Why is He precious? For His purity, love, desire for God’s will, etc.—all the ways (and more) in which we are not precious.
If we choose to remain in disobedient unbelief (1 Peter 2:7), the stone is made “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word” (v. 8). Christ, God’s beloved Son, and His atoning blood are so precious to God that there is a limit to His patience toward those who reject them. God will not allow His Son to be “disallowed” or disobeyed without penalty. Worthlessness is the state of those who reject, and judgment awaits them.
If we disbelieve, we have no hope, but “he that believeth on him shall not be confounded [literally, ‘shall positively not be disappointed’]” (v. 6). Our faith is well-founded. If we place our trust in Him, His preciousness is transferred to us. When God the Father looks at one who truly believes, He sees not only Christ’s sinlessness, He sees His preciousness. JDM

h/t: J D MORRIS, INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH