Jeremiah 31:1-6; John 3:16-18; Romans 5:6-8 (and a bunch of other verses).
For some reason, the idea that God loves us unconditionally is difficult for some people to affirm. If you google this idea, you will meet with posts that disagree with the concept, usually because they think to love unconditionally means to excuse sin and allow it to go unpunished. (If you are interested in reading a misconstrued article that completely misses the point, which is not helpful for everyone, check this out.)
Herein lies one of my reasons for this sermon: to explore what it means for God to love us unconditionally and then to understand what it means for us to love in the same way.
A. W. Tozer (a Bible teacher of the past century) says in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, that the most important thing about us is what enters our minds when we think about God. Wow. To think of him rightly, then, is to shape us in a positive way and to think of him wrongly, leads us astray.
So is it correct to think if God as loving us unconditionally? Yes, if we understand what that means. Listen in to the sermon and check out this post. (link to the related topics at the bottom of the page for more good reading).
To say that God's love is unconditional is not to say he tolerates sin and will wink at sin's consequences. Rather, to believe God loves us unconditionally means that He loves us first and that his love for us continues, even after we fail him and that, even when he is rightfully angry with us, he still loves us, and even when we reject him and continue on a path of destruction, he still loves us and desires our return to him, and that even as we are dying and obviously headed for Hell (if we have persisted in our rejection of God) he loves us and grieves over us, and that even while people writhe in the pain of eternal punishment forever and ever, God still loves them.
Why does God love like this? Well, because he is God and because he created us. He is our Father and as such desires to live in a relationship with us. He is the ultimate loving father who never gives up.
You might want to meditate on this song and on the image of the loving father, waiting for his erring son to return home in Luke 15:11-20.
Thanks for digging deeper.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Baptized Into Jesus
John 15:1-17
1 Corinthians 12:13 and Galatians 3:26-28
Baptism has a jaded history. During certain eras of the Christian Church, passionate defenders of various aspects of baptism engaged in hot debates about water baptism's form and meaning. Church split over the issues and whole movements began. The Church of the Brethren was birthed in the waters of baptism as our forbears broke with the tradition of their church and violated the law of the land, by entering the water of baptism as adults and administering baptism to each other. Through this act brought them persecution, they preserved.
So baptism is important. But how important? In other sermons over the years I have worked at the relationship of water baptism to salvation. (Water baptism does not save us, but constitutes an act of obedience to the teachings of Jesus and thus is important in our journey. Every act of obedience opens us up to more fully experiences with our risen Lord.) I have also preached about the method of baptism. (Biblically speaking, all we can say is that it involves water and is applied to people who have made a decision to follow Jesus. There are good reasons why we use the mode of trine immersion, but it is not the only mode nor is it biblically mandated.)
In this sermon I desire to look more closely at the spiritual dimension of baptism--what it means to be baptized into Jesus.
The key verse is 1 Cor 12:13 and though I do not say much about it in the sermon, the big debate over the years with this verse is with the meaning of Baptized by one Spirit. Is Spirit baptism something separate from water baptism and something different from conversion. Classic Pentecostal teaching saw the Baptism of the Spirit as an experience one received subsequent to salvation which opened a person up to the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the distribution of his gifts in one's life. In this theology, speaking in tongues was the sign that you had experienced this blessing.
In more recent years, the Pentecostal movement has come closer to the more central evangelical idea that Spirit Baptism, especially as it is expressed in 1 Cor 12:13 is more likely one way of understanding what happens to us when we get saved. At conversion the Holy Spirit places us in Christ. Now for sure, as we live out our faith in Christ, there will be subsequent experiences with the Holy Spirit and we will grow into an ever deepening experience with him and his gifts and may be given the gift of tongues. However, the sign of being spirit filled is not to be seen in the participation in any particular gift, but in the fruit of character development (Galatians 5:22ff).
So much for that. The sermon opens up for us questions about what it means to be in Christ. I suggest that we should view our baptism as a mark that we carry throughout life that identifies us as belonging to Jesus. The problem is that our baptism sort of wears off--that is, after we dry off from being baptized we no longer look any different.The only way we can appear different is in the manner of our living.
We might ask ourselves--how can people tell that I have been baptized? Good thoughts to ponder.
Thanks for digging deeper.
1 Corinthians 12:13 and Galatians 3:26-28
Baptism has a jaded history. During certain eras of the Christian Church, passionate defenders of various aspects of baptism engaged in hot debates about water baptism's form and meaning. Church split over the issues and whole movements began. The Church of the Brethren was birthed in the waters of baptism as our forbears broke with the tradition of their church and violated the law of the land, by entering the water of baptism as adults and administering baptism to each other. Through this act brought them persecution, they preserved.
So baptism is important. But how important? In other sermons over the years I have worked at the relationship of water baptism to salvation. (Water baptism does not save us, but constitutes an act of obedience to the teachings of Jesus and thus is important in our journey. Every act of obedience opens us up to more fully experiences with our risen Lord.) I have also preached about the method of baptism. (Biblically speaking, all we can say is that it involves water and is applied to people who have made a decision to follow Jesus. There are good reasons why we use the mode of trine immersion, but it is not the only mode nor is it biblically mandated.)
In this sermon I desire to look more closely at the spiritual dimension of baptism--what it means to be baptized into Jesus.
The key verse is 1 Cor 12:13 and though I do not say much about it in the sermon, the big debate over the years with this verse is with the meaning of Baptized by one Spirit. Is Spirit baptism something separate from water baptism and something different from conversion. Classic Pentecostal teaching saw the Baptism of the Spirit as an experience one received subsequent to salvation which opened a person up to the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the distribution of his gifts in one's life. In this theology, speaking in tongues was the sign that you had experienced this blessing.
In more recent years, the Pentecostal movement has come closer to the more central evangelical idea that Spirit Baptism, especially as it is expressed in 1 Cor 12:13 is more likely one way of understanding what happens to us when we get saved. At conversion the Holy Spirit places us in Christ. Now for sure, as we live out our faith in Christ, there will be subsequent experiences with the Holy Spirit and we will grow into an ever deepening experience with him and his gifts and may be given the gift of tongues. However, the sign of being spirit filled is not to be seen in the participation in any particular gift, but in the fruit of character development (Galatians 5:22ff).
So much for that. The sermon opens up for us questions about what it means to be in Christ. I suggest that we should view our baptism as a mark that we carry throughout life that identifies us as belonging to Jesus. The problem is that our baptism sort of wears off--that is, after we dry off from being baptized we no longer look any different.The only way we can appear different is in the manner of our living.
We might ask ourselves--how can people tell that I have been baptized? Good thoughts to ponder.
Thanks for digging deeper.
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