For the men among us, Trevor has his own site (and blog!) going for the church Men’s Ministry. All four Messages from the recent Men’s Conference are there for you to download. Check it out here: http://mensministry.ccphilly.org/
Tomorrow Night Trevor and the Men’s Ministry is sponsoring a night of Eagles football with an evangelistic message by former Eagles’ linebacker and current CCA football coach Mike Reichenbach. Doors open at 8 PM.
Yes, their season seems hopeless. All the more reason to join some brothers and invite out unbelieving friends to hear the gospel.
Also, a local paper did write-up on Mike the other day, and it’s a great read if you want to see a strong testimony and a good example of using your gifts for the Lord. You can read the article here.
I read this article when I was preparing for last night’s study. You might hear some echoes of things we discussed last night if you read it. Great stuff. Click the title to download the pdf. (It’ll also live over on the resources page.)
The Message…is Fellowship. by T. Austin-Sparks
Here’s the notes from last night’s study on fellowship in 1 John. We focused especially on the first 7 verses of the first chapter.
First, we notice in 1:1-4 that fellowship with other believers and with God is the Goal of the gospel proclamation. It is why John and his apostle friends were preaching. John says here that in Christ God revealed eternal life, and this is what we needed to connect with God.
1. What fellowship is:
Two Definitions:
- “…common participation in the grace of God, the salvation of Christ and the indwelling Spirit which is the spiritual birthright of all believers. It is out common possession of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which makes us One.” (Stott).
- “the experience of a common yet transcendent bond and especially the bond of trust in the crucified and resurrected Christ…which grows out of and ought to translate into a certain buoyant affection for others and praise for the Lord because of the community participation in forgiveness of sins, transformed lives, and ennobling labor to bring about kingdom ends.” (Yarbrough)
First, John means fellowship with God: Reconnection to our Creator (restored relationship) and life. This is one of the Bible’s main concepts. you could say the whole Bible is about fellowship: the fellowship of God in HImself (in the Trinity) creating humans in His image with the intent to enjoy fellowship, only to see that ruined by sin and the relationship broken in Genesis 3. This leads to “exile” out from the garden of Eden as a picture of the separation sin creates between God and Man. The rest of the Bible, then, is about God working to reconnect with humanity after we sinned ourselves into separation. We lost fellowship, but in the Bible we see how God restores it. So, this is one of the meanings of heaven, all of us, together reestored to eternal fellowship with God. The bible is about how God brings us into a state where we can be fully connected to Him, with nothing separating.
Second, John means fellowship with others who are “born of God” into His family. Fellowship with others means membership in a new family and community.
So we see that “fellowship” is one of God’s Big Goals: Us with God, together. For some illustrations of this, see John 14:1-3, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, and Revelation 7:9-17, 21:3-4.
2. What John says about it:
- It starts with being born into the family. (2:29-3:1)
It is a relationship of a child to a father. Now Once you are born again through faith in Christ, you now relate to God as a “born one” to a father. (see these verses where John talks about being “born of God”: 3:9, 4:7, 5:1,4,18)
And now too, you relate to others as brothers and sisters. - “Walking in darkness” indicates a lack of fellowship (1:5-7) and on the other hand, “walking in the light” ensures fellowship. In other words, to have fellowship with God, we must agree with God. That is our whole being must be in a state of agreement with God. See Amos 3:3 for an explanation.
We can claim fellowship and not actually have it. (1:6) Sin breaks fellowship with God and others. - Lack of love indicates lack of fellowship (2:9-11, 4:7) Lovelessness also breaks fellowship with God and others.
- Loving the world breaks fellowship with God. (2:15-17)
- Fellowship leads to leads to complete joy (1:4). This is a central truth of what makes the Gospel good news and Heaven a pplace we want to go. See Psalm 16:11.
3. What We Should Think and Do:
- We must know and think about what fellowship is, where it comes from, and where were all headed.
– If you’re one with God, you are now one with others. - We must find our connections to other Christians based on the things we really have in common. Not what we usually need to enjoy relationships with others, like common age, race, interests, social class, etc… Even unbelievers can find connection based on these things. See 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 and Ephesians 4:1-6. We have one God, one faith, one future, one mission, one message, one body, one family… If we can only enjoy ourselves with other Christians who are just like us, we need to grow in this area.
- We must learn to find the joy and strength that comes from being a living part of this fellowship.
– First, with God. Do you draw joy and strength from your union with Him?
– Second, with others. Do you draw joy and strength from your union with them? - We should actively arrange our lives so that we enjoy this fellowship with God and others.
– Do you prioritize blessing, receiving from, and working alongside of other believers?
I’ve been thinking lately that there’s no reason I shouldn’t be quick to invite people out to join us on Monday nights. If they’re the right age, why not? So I did a little redesign of the business cards and they’ll be out for you to take tonight. The website and email information are now correct and working, and they make more sense to hand to somebody that doesn’t know us, or even anything about the Lord at all. Take as many as you want and hand them out freely.
See you tonight!
The image of Jesus as a kind of green hippie revolutionary is so commonplace in our day that often it is not even questioned. This was brought home to me again with our recent trips down to Occupy Philly, where several times I heard someone remark that Jesus would have been joining the protests. Sometimes I agreed that, yes, He would have been down there, but even as a I said it I knew in my heart that I meant something different than the protesters meant. He would have been down there as a physician, for sure (as in Mark 2:17), but would he have been chilling in a tent talking revolution?
Last night I read something in a commentary on Mark that seemed to shed some light on the whole idea. It seems that in the ancient world there was a wandering preacher movement known as Cynicism. The Cynics (you can wikipedia them here) preached that:
- The goal of life is happiness, which is to live in agreement with Nature.
- Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude.
- Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of “Arete.”
- The road to arete is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature.
- Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? Isn’t this what so many people around us believe? I can say it is the dominant philosophy down at Occupy. And, even as you’ll see in the wikipedia article, some people try to say Jesus was a Cynic. But this opinion ignores the basic facts about who Jesus was. In the passage below, James Edwards makes some great observations about how Jesus relates to all this. He’s commenting on Mark 6:8-9, where Jesus sends out His disciples to preach and tells them to take only a few things.
It is fashionable in some circles today to portray the early Jesus movement according to the model of Cynical philosophers and preachers who wandered the ancient world ([one scholar] sees Jesus and His followers as “hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies.”)…The resultant picture of Jesus is that of a countercultural peripatetic [someone who walks around] who flaunts societal norms and encourages others to do so as well.
The correspondence of Jesus and His followers to wandering radical philosophers is a modern fantasy, however. There is, for instance, no evidence for the presence of Cynics in Galilee in Jesus’ day. This fact alone goes a long way toward refuting the Cynic hypothesis. But there is further conclusive evidence against it. More than one scholar has unmasked the ideological agendum of those who ply the Jewish-Cynic argument. [Here the author footnotes this quote: “Is not the aim of this entire venture to make sure that there was ‘nothing unique’ about Jesus, that he was ‘not a beginning’ of anything, and that his identity was ‘internal’ to the culture?”] A closer examination of Cynic dress, practices, and ideals reveals the correspondence between Cynicism and Jesus to be superficial, at best. The standard apparel of Cynic philosophers was a cloak, knapsack, or travel bag, and staff, but no shoes. The instructions to the Twelve, on the contrary, require staff, belt, sandals, and one tunic, but no travel bag. The differences in items are important, and not only because the recognizable Cynic travel bag is omitted. The four items required of the Twelve are, in fact, identical to the belongings that God instructs the Israelites to take on their flight from Egypt: cloak, belt, sandals, and staff in hand (Exodus 12:11). The parallel in dress, in other words, is identical to Exodus but only loosely similar to Cynic dress. These four items of clothing recall the haste and expectation of the Exodus. They suggest that the mission of the Twelve announces something as foundational and revelatory as the Exodus from Egypt, and that the disciples must be as free from encumbrances as were the Israelites, to serve God in a new venture.
The purpose of the wandering Cynic preachers were foreign to Jesus not only in dress but also in teaching and instructions. Cynicism was essentially an attack on civilization. The cynic preacher made himself uncouth and unkempt to protest the privilege and refinements of the patrician class, in particular [that is, the 1%!]. Above all, Cynicism sought emancipation from all forms of authority, and submission to nothing but the “royalty” of one’s own conscience. For Cynics, itinerancy and lack of attachments were ends in themselves. This is quite different from the program of Jesus and His disciples. The mission of the Twelve is not a crusade against civilization, nor is it free from authority. The mission of the Twelve is not a carefree nonattachment but fraught with danger, as we shall see in the subsequent story (vv. 14-19). It is a participation in a new authority conferred by Jesus. Its minimal baggage is not itself a virtue but a means for greater service and dependence on God, and its purpose is not protest but rather proclamation of God’s coming rule.
(James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, pp. 179-180)
Last night at communion Pastor Joe mentioned this, so I thought I’d post it. It’s pretty amazing to think of a sitting president publishing this…
The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
Here’s the notes from last night’s study on eternal life in 1 John.
1. What God Revealed to us when Jesus Came was Eternal life (1:1-2) “That which was from the beginning” (v.1) is “the word of life” (v.1) …that is – the “life which was with the father” was “manifested” in a way that could be seen, heard, and touched. See John 1:4
– It came in a man, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
– He was fully human and lived in our history.
– So, it is something God has always, and something we do not have. He had to reveal it to us.
In other words, we didn’t have it in ourselves. It lives in God, God revealed it in Christ to people who were dead. So, apart from Christ we are dead. No “divine spark.”
2. This life is not only to be seen, it is also “a promise to us” (2:25).
The life which God showed us in Jesus—the life of God—is also for us.
3. This life is for us to “have.” (5:11-12) It is a life to be in us, experienced.
To be “Born of God” is to experience a new life inside:
- It is the same life which in “in Christ.” (Jn 1:4, 4:13-14, 5:26, 6:51, 7:37-38, 10:10)
- It is resurrection life, life that defeats the world and sin and death. it overcomes (5:14)
- It is divine life – growing, moving, spontaneous, reproducing
- it emits faith (5:1), obedience (2:29), love (3:14, 4:7)
Four Questions:
1. Is my hope fully on God’s only source of eternal life?
Am I born? Love, Obedience, Faith, Victory
2. Am I experiencing this new life active in me? (am I bearing fruit?)
Is my Christianity in essence an experience and an outflow of life?
Life is: spontaneous, growing, moving, reproducing, victorious? Is your love, faith, obedience?
3. Do I depend on Jesus daily for my life? (am I: eating? (Jn 6) abiding? (Jn 15))
4. Is my life today shaped by the promise that I will live forever?
Or does it look like I only have this life to live?
And here’s the verses that were up on Powerpoint:
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 1:4
“Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:13-14
“For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.” John 5:26
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” John 6:51
If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:37-38
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10
Last night I said I’d put up this quote that was blessing me when thinking about the study on eternal life. It’s from T. Austin-Sparks, from a book called “The Battle for Life” which you can download and read, for free, here. Sparks was a British preacher in the middle of the last century. The link to all of his writings is over at the resources page. Here’s the passage:
[After tracing the idea of eternal life through the scriptures, and all the way through the life and death of Jesus, He goes on to speak about the church in the book of Acts and beyond…]
The same thing is carried on into the Church. It is not long before Stephen is stoned, and James is killed. Peter is taken with the same object, but marvellously delivered because God had yet something to do through him. Paul was in deaths oft, despairing sometimes of life. It is a battle with the power of death. There are the sweeping persecutions in which literally tens of thousands of Christians are called upon to lay down their lives for the testimony, and “count not their lives dear unto the death”. It goes on still. We are in that succession, not all of us perhaps of outward persecution, but do we not know something of the pressing of that spirit of death? We do!
All this is very true. It is the controversy of Zion. It is the battle for the life of the Lord’s people. May the Lord bring home to our hearts the nature of the conflict in which we are found! We have perhaps painted a dark picture, have brought the gloomy aspect into view, and have been rather strong and severe, but if you are not able at the moment through your own experience to enter into what we are saying, you may come to do so if you are going on with the Lord. In some real way you will enter into this controversy of Zion. I am anxious that we should see this more clearly, and recognise it in a more definite way. We can never adequately seek the Lord in relation to it and come into line with His intention to overcome it, be to Him the instrument against it which He requires and desires that we should be, until we are fully alive to what the issue is. I wonder if the Lord’s people are at times really alive to the issue, and whether their prayers are always a true index of their apprehension of this thing! I believe that if you and I were adequately impressed, and fully alive to the tremendous issue, we could never pray mere prayers. We could never allow words to run out of our mouths, which is what we call praying. We should be down on our faces in a tremendous conflict on God’s side against the evil menace that is seeking to devour the life of God’s people; but we shall never pray like that unless we are really alive to what the issue is.
While we may know it in a doctrinal way, it is necessary for us to wake up to what is happening and to what this means. The explanation of many a heaviness and of many a difficult experience is not simply that we have had a meal that does not agree with us, or that we are none too well and therefore not able to pray as we would wish. No, it is not just some physical malady from which we are suffering. This is not something which can be explained along any ordinary line of nature. Behind these things there so often lies another power. We may feel ill in body for no justifiable reason, from the natural standpoint. Our very energies and vitalities, physical and mental, may be sapped, and we say that we are tired, but there is something extra to that. The enemy delights in our accounting for these things on human grounds, when we ought to be waking up to the fact that there is a much bigger issue at stake. Let us ask: what is its tendency, and what is its effect? Is it to destroy our prayer life? Does it work in the direction of bringing us into a state of weakness and uselessness to God? If so, are we going to accept that? That is the question. There is a good deal that seems to be perfectly natural which should not be accepted by the Lord’s people, and we need to test everything, try it out, and see whether, after all, the whole thing is natural, or whether there is not something hidden. Do not look for a devil with horns and a tail and a pitchfork! He hides himself. He covers his tracks. He comes in such an intangible way that you are often inclined to explain the whole trouble as quite a natural thing, when it is all covering up something else, and its effect is simply to put you out of spiritual action. We have to wake up to what is the issue for the Lord’s people today, and it is no less an issue than that of life and death.
Do you recognise what is actually happening? The enemy does not mind how many so-called churches there are, how much preaching there is, or how much religious worship. I do not know that he minds very much how much orthodoxy there is, or how much of what we would call sound doctrine. What he is against is life. In multitudes of places, so far as the preaching is concerned, and so far as the things said are concerned, no fault can be found, but there is no sense of any vitalizing. There is no energizing, no impact, and no moving of the people to register the testimony of the risen Lord against the forces of evil. The enemy is getting them all quietly, nicely, snugly into spiritual death.
Oh, may the Lord move us to a new position in relation to this tremendous issue, the issue of life and death. The Lord bring it home to our hearts!
This Friday night, the day after Thanksgiving, we’ll open the doors here and get together in the Auditorium (where we usually meet on Monday nights). We’ll start around 7 pm and we’ll have some light food, beverages and all the table games (think ping-pong tournament). If you’re back from college or just have the night off, come be with us!