Tag: C.S. Lewis

Morning Musing: Exodus 34:10-11

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“And the Lord responded, “Look, I am making a covenant. In the presence of all your people I will perform wonders that have never been done in the whole earth or in any nation. All the people you live among will see the Lord’s work, for what I am doing with you is awe-inspiring. Observe what I command you today. I am going to drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hethites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.” (CSB – Read the chapter)‬‬

One of the things that stands out in the Old Testament narrative is all of the ways God reveals Himself to the people of Israel through powerful, miraculous actions that could only have been accomplished by Him. He wanted the people as clear as could be that He was God and about what kind of a God He was. We see so many different examples of these kinds of actions on God’s part, in fact, that it’s easy for us to wonder a bit why He doesn’t still do that kind of thing today so that a skeptical world can have an easier time believing in Him. The truth is that He does. We simply have to learn to see properly. Let’s talk about it.

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More Than We Imagine

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This week brings us to the third part of our series, What We Believe. With the Lifeway and Ligonier Ministry State of Theology survey as our jumping off point, we have been working to clarify some pretty core questions of Christian theology on which professed followers of Jesus in our culture recently reflected some pretty profound confusion. We have so far looked at the doctrines of God and the Holy Spirit. This week we are talking about Jesus. No other person in human history has attracted amount of interesting into the question of who exactly they are as Jesus has. Let’s take a look at the Scriptures together to see what He had to say about Himself and what that means for us.

More Than We Imagine

We’re talking about a survey in this new teaching series, so I thought we’d do a little survey of our own this morning. By a show of hands, who currently has an appliance at home that is still working and which is more than ten years old? How about twenty years? Thirty years? Who has an appliance that is still working that is more than thirty years old? They don’t make them like that anymore, do they? 

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Staying on Track

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So, we know that being useful in our relationship with Jesus requires faith, virtue, and knowledge. But how do we consistently do anything positive with those? We need something else. In this fifth part of our series, Being Useful, we talked about what this next thing is. Thanks for reading.

Staying on Track

When I was growing up, I had the great fortune of going to a church with a whole bunch of godly men to watch as examples of how to do the Christian life well.  It was a gift that has kept on paying dividends in the years since.  There’s a call to our great men in there, but that’s for another sermon.  One of these men was named Martin Coleman.  Martin was an engineer and was one of those guys who could do or build pretty much anything.  My parents and his kids are about the same age and his grandkids are just a little bit younger than me.  We all grew up together as pieces and parts of one big church family.  That’s part of the reason I so love what we have here at First Baptist—which, incidentally, was the name of that church too. 

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Morning Musing: Genesis 3:1a

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“Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman…” (CSB – Read the chapter)

So far in the creation story things have been at least believable. I mean, depending on where you stand on the existence of the supernatural it may sound pretty far-fetched, but if there is a God powerful enough to create the world and everything in it, it’s conceivable at least that He spoke it into existence. We can even get our minds around the more intimate picture of the creation of the man and the woman in chapter 2. This, however, is where things run off the rails.

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How We Know It

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In this second part of our series, Reason to Believe, we take some time to examine the primary source for our knowledge of the truth: The Scriptures.  The Bible is a tough book made even tougher by the things it says.  Yet, making a full and comprehensive case for its reliability and trustworthiness is well beyond the scope of a single sermon.  In what follows we examine the problem together, talk about what we do believe as followers of Jesus, and build a small case for the reliability of the Gospels.  If we can prove those are trustworthy, making the case for the rest of it becomes all the easier.  Keep reading for more and stay tuned for next week as we wrestle with the challenge present by the doctrine of Hell.

 

How We Know It

How many of you spiritual souls would count the Bible as your favorite book?  I have a lot of different favorite books depending on the genre.  For example, my favorite kids’ book (and author) is The BFG by Roald Dhal.  I once considered stealing the library’s copy because I read it so many times.  When it comes to history, Larry Schweikart’s A Patriot’s History of the United States is top of my list.  In the world of fantasy, I greatly enjoyed Robert Jordan’s immense series, The Wheel of Time.  If you want to talk fiction more generally, I would probably rank C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce at least near the top of my list.  I would count each of these books as my favorites because of the impact they had on me when reading them.  I could read them over and over—okay, that’s not entirely true; Schweikart’s history was a pretty intense time commitment, but you know what I mean—and enjoy them every time.  There was no part of them that I didn’t like.  I suspect most folks who can identify one or two books as their favorite would use similar guidelines for their choices. Read the rest…