As we open to John 10 this morning, we look at the very foundation of Christianity.
Whose birth do we celebrate as God with us, Immanuel? Jesus Christ the Lord.
Who lived the only perfect human life ever lived? Jesus Christ the Lord.
Who dies a substitutionary, atoning death on the Cross of Calvary? Jesus Christ the Lord.
We are to go through life as the Great Commission says, leading people to follow Who? Jesus Christ the Lord.
In Romans 15, Paul who had never been to Rome was writing to the church there and commending them on their living out the truth of Christ. He describes many elements of their lives that were what he noted as good, healthy, and part of a normal life of one supernaturally saved.
Mature, normal, healthy believers display compassion for believers who differ with their convictions (Romans 15:1-3).
Discipleship is Explaining What God Has Said
Discipleship is all about explaining what God’s Word says about God’s desires for our lives as believers. Every generation needs those who will explain God’s Word to the next generation. Not just the facts, but also the application. As the Great Commission puts it: “teaching them to observe all things”.
We are looking one-by-one at the Spiritual Living Lessons that new believers need to have personally taught to them by older believers.
Saved: We have seen salvation as portrayed across the pages of Acts by those early Apostles & disciples.
Scripture-Fed: Then we examined the Scriptures and the link between salvation through the Word and spiritual nurture by daily feeding upon the Word.
How Can We Avoid Grieving the Holy Spirit?
We can choose to keep God’s commandments and to lead a disciplined life. There are so many verses, let me just show you a couple. Turn to Romans 8—this is probably the best part of the Bible to mine out truth about the Holy Spirit. And this is what I want on your heart as we commune at the Lord’s Supper this morning. When we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit it immediately impacts the key areas of our Spiritual life. Romans 8:2 says this: When we sin, we must confess the sin immediately and repent of it, changing our minds and our behavior to conform to God’s statutes.
We are studying what it means to walk through life in step with the Spirit of God. There is nothing complicated about life as a believer, it is just staying under the direction & control of the Spirit. When we do so we can live the most amazing life possible, the life God desires us to live. This morning as we look at Mary there is one truth we need to notice:
The only trustworthy, reliable, authoritative explanation of God is right here in our hands: it is God’s Word the Bible.
The Bible is the only real key to unlock truth about God, thus it is: the only sure doorway into His salvation, the only official map that leads to God, the only trustworthy reference book that defines and reveals God, the only verified classification guide to explain what God does, and the only navigational chart that leads us to the True & Living God.
Have you ever wondered how people in the Bible shared the Gospel, and did evangelism way back then? Last week we looked at our Discipline of Discipleship and saw that we have the very same Gospel, the very same Mission, and the very same power source of the Spirit of God. This week we need to go onward to examine exactly how they communicated that Gospel.
1. Each scene in Acts seems more amazing as we walk through these salvation messages. But of all the presentation of the Gospel, this is by all measures the best, most important, and the deepest impact. Paul shares the story of how Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus. In Acts 9, the details are sparse, but here the fullest and clearest account comes to us.
As we come to the Discipline of Disciple-Making, we come to our very own personal Job Description, left by Christ as the reason He saved us and left us here to serve Him through life. A question that should frame each day of our lives is: “Am I Doing What Christ Left Me to Do?”
God has always desired to be glorified by reaching this world with His message of love, His forgiveness of sin, and His offer of reconciliation leading to eternal life. God is not willing that any should perish, so He has always desired that the world to hear His message and repent, so that they may be saved. Because:
GOD IS A SAVIOR
Today, if asked, most of us would describe ourselves as “Christians”, some maybe as “Born-again”, others that we are “Saved”. Those are all good, valid, and proper terms; but, what is amazing is how far we have moved from what the New Testament called those who were saints and headed to Heaven.
If you just read and note the descriptions as you proceed through the books of the New Testament, you would assemble a list of the:
NEW TESTAMENT NAMES OF CHRISTIANS
Jesus constantly discipled His disciples; and Palm Sunday was no exception.
Welcome to our ongoing study of Biblical exercises for spiritual health & fitness in 2014. Paul told Timothy, and all the generations of believers to come, stay close to Christ: command and teach the church to be all Christ taught us to be. That is what we have before us in the New Testament. We are to command in the sense that “God says this”, and we are to follow up with teaching them “how to” observe what Christ wants from us who please Him by our lives.
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