Ephesians 4:11-16: Growing the Church with the Word: Part 2
‘Every member ministry.’ Have you ever heard this phrase? This phrase is used to describe a movement in the modern church where every Christian is encouraged to know their gifts and use them in service to God. We welcome such an emphasis as biblical, 1 Cor. 12:7, Eph. 4:16. However, this emphasis has often come at the sacrifice of the formal ministries of the church. If every Christian is a minister then why do we need pastors and preaching? We are in the midst of Eph. 4:11-16 which talks about both leaders and laity, formal gifts and informal gifts,...
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Luke 9:1-9: The Sending of the 12 Apostles
We are about half way through Christ’s 3 ½ year earthly ministry. We are in the final stretch of what is known as Christ’s Galilean ministry before He sets His sights on His cross-work in Jerusalem. 9:51 is a turning point in His ministry, ‘When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.’ We are still in the middle of a key section that is putting on display the identity of Christ. We have seen by His miracles that He is the one with authority over nature, demons, sickness...
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Ephesians 4:11-16: Growing the Church with the Word: Part 1
I have gone through three paradigm shifts with regards to the gifts of the spirit in my Christian walk. Due to being attracted to the activism and life of the Charismatic church in my earlier years I joined the Charismatic Church at the height of the Toronto blessing. The church I joined was a melting pot of various Pentecostal and Charismatic views, there was no monolithic view held by all. In this first stage, this was the naïve stage of a flat approach where I simply expected everything I saw in the book of Acts to be active today...
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Luke 6:12-16: The Twelve Apostles: Part Two
2 Cor. 4:7, ‘But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.’ Paul is talking about the treasure of the knowledge of God in the gospel having been put into the jars of clay of the sinful apostles. He tells us that God delights to use the weak things so that His power is evident. The twelve apostles are a menagerie of jars of clay, each is earthy and ugly, bearing all the imperfections of being made by hand, each item is completely unique from the...
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Luke 6:12-16: The Twelve Apostles
God’s ways are not our ways, and that is especially true when it comes to ministry. God uses all sorts of people that we would not expect. When you choose a president or prime minister you are looking for someone with an impeccable record, not so in the Bible. Where we have a winning formula for a leader, that type A personality that we think is the perfect recipe for success God uses different ingredients. This is very evident as we come to that part of the gospels where Jesus chooses His twelve apostles in Luke 6:12-16. Picture the...
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The Bible: Part 1: Authority
Introduction: We are continuing to put forward positive reasons for faith, and today we start a mini-series looking at the bible as a ground for believing. The 1689 chapter 1 paragraph 5 reads, ‘We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of...
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Romans 15:14-16: Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles
Introduction: You might think now that we have finished the doctrinal part of the letter to the Romans the last chapter and a half are unimportant and will be a let-down. You could not be more wrong. This last section of Romans gives us a tremendous window into the nature of Paul’s ministry helping us to think about our own ministry as a church. As well as a window into the life of the early church. In this closing section of the letter Paul reverts to personal comments as he did in the introduction of this letter. And just...
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Romans 12:6-8: The Gift of Apostle
Outline The office of apostle The significance of apostles Introduction There are many groups that believe that the office and gift of apostle continues today. The Roman Catholic Church believes that an unbroken line of apostolic succession back to the first Pope Peter enables the Pope to be the Pope. The Mormon Church today has living apostles, as well as the New Apostolic Church who believe that salvation depends on receiving their baptism and getting one of their apostles to lay their hands on you. Sadly even among Christians there is a growing belief that the office and function...
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