The Doctrines of Grace: Total Depravity
Imagine with me two different religions, but both are called Christianity. One flows from man’s reason, not that Spirit illuminated Bible taught reason but reason driven by man’s sinful self-confident ability to rationalise everything out to the nth degree. The other religion is based upon God’s revelation recognising that our sinful minds need to be taught truth because it is our natural tendency to suppress it. At the centre of the first religion is man, we will call this anthropocentric religion. At the centre of the second religion is God, this we call theocentric religion. In the middle of...
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Romans 11:34-36: Soli Deo Gloria!
Outline From Him Through Him To Him Introduction I come to this text with a deep sense of my inadequacy at trying to explain the immense profundity of the portion before us. In many ways that is the point of the text. This particular portion is especially important to me and it is the text used as the subtitle on our church website, ‘For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.’ I can think of no better way to respond to the gospel we have just spent 11 chapters...
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Romans 11:16-24: Haughty-cultural Christianity
Outline Arrogant branches Humble branches Introduction Christians often act like children. I don’t mean in the good and childlike-faith way Jesus encouraged in the gospels but in the sinful and immature way of the playground. Think back to your youth and the laws of the jungle that we lived by. There were the cliques, the in crowd and then those who were out. We remember being on the outside of some group we desired to be a part of and remembered the mortifying humiliation of not being included because we took our sense of value and identity not from...
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Romans 11:11-15: God’s Mysterious Ways
Outline Salvation in justice Sovereignty over sin Introduction God works in mysterious ways, or God’s ways are not our ways are familiar statements that help us to remember that there are mysteries bigger than our ability to understand. This section of Romans 9-11 is full of the complexities of these mysteries, God’s distinguishing love, God’s unconditional election, God’s sovereignty over unbelief in the hardening of unbelievers. Well today we continue to be faced with profound mysteries. We have two mysteries facing us from these verses; that God brings salvation from justice, and that is sovereign over and uses sin...
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Romans 11:7-10: Sovereign Hardening
Outline An explanation of the hardening A description of the hardened Introduction No sober-minded Christian would deny that God is sovereign. Every Christian would affirm that God is sovereign, all powerful and actively in control in the world today. But there are three areas where there are differences of opinion between believers. Christians differ over what extent God controls nature; the extent of God’s control over evil, and the extent of God’s control in salvation and damnation. The verses we are presently studying are driving us into the heart of the differences about who is in control when it...
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Romans 11:2-4: Learning with Elijah
Outline Elijah’s context Elijah’s contest Elijah’s complaint Introduction Believing that the grace of God abounds to the chief of sinners is a view we all hold in theory but soon lose hold of when it is tested. Technically we can all confess that God is a God of grace and that there is no sin bigger than the effectiveness of Christ’s atoning death. However, how many times have we thought to ourselves, ‘I have done it this time, God won’t take me back.’ I wanted to show you how bad you are at believing God’s grace for yourselves as...
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Colossians 1:28: Healthy Churches Have Gospel-Grounded Identity: Part Two
Outline Faith Sanctification Church Glorification Introduction Healthy Churches have a Gospel-grounded identity. What we are hoping to show today is that in order for a church to be healthy, it must be grounded in the gospel, and in particular to see its identity grounded in the gospel. To try and get at this topic I would like us to read Colossians 1:28-29 together, ‘Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.’
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Colossians 1:28: Healthy Churches Have Gospel-Grounded Identity: Part One
Outline Introduction Election Justification Adoption Introduction Healthy Churches have a Gospel-grounded identity. What we are hoping to show today is that in order for a church to be healthy, it must be grounded in the gospel, and in particular to see its identity grounded in the gospel. To try and get at this topic I would like us to read Colossians 1:28-29 together, ‘Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.’
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Covenant Grace Baptist Church: What’s in a name?
Outline Covenant Grace Introduction These are the words of Juliet to Romeo in Shakespeare’s famous play: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The original play was about two lovers from warring families, the Montagues and the Capulets, the point of the line is to show how names are irrelevant when the substance remains the same. If that is the case why did we change the name from Marchwiel Reformed Baptist Church to Covenant Grace Baptist Church? Let’s make a few things clear. We are not renaming ourselves...
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Romans 10:14: What about the unevangelised? Part Two
Introduction: Today if you ask someone, ‘What is your biggest problem with Christianity?’ The answer that often comes is, ‘Christianity is too exclusive.’ In other words, we are seen to be dogmatic, intolerant, arrogant and oppressive for trying to get everyone to believe as we do. In our age of secular materialism and humanism Christianity with its insistence upon truth and the exclusive need for salvation in Christ is at best and annoyance to be ignored and marginalised, at worst a poisonous enemy to be crushed. Timothy Keller in his book ‘The Reason for God’ outlines three reactions that...
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