Episode 57 is Part 2 of our exploration of the sermon “Christ Is All In All” by the 17th century British minister Jeremiah Burroughs.
Link to an electronic version of this sermon can be found here at the Theology Network website.
The episode for Part 1 can be found here.
Link to a great sermon by Joe Rigney which dovetails with Burroughs’ comments about a Christian being in the best position to truly enjoy the material gifts which God gives us can be found here.
Player and Download Links below:
Episode 56 is Part 1 of a review of the sermon “Christ Is All In All” by the 17th century British minister Jeremiah Burroughs.
An electronic version of the sermon can be found here at the website of Theology Network from the United Kingdom. (I highly recommend this site. A great source of texts, articles and audio files on a variety of well thought-out, Christ-centered topics.)
Links to Player and Downloads are below
Today is the church feast day of the Ascension.
It in, we remember the end of the Lord Jesus’ work on Earth in the 1st century and His triumphant return to Heaven as the King of Glory foretold in Psalm 24. Though this celebration has suffered some neglect over the years, there are a number of people who are trying to bring awareness of this feast back to the church, despite there being no cultural celebration to go along with it such as Christmas and Easter.
Here is a link to a great sermon on the Ascension.
Here is the link to my webpage for the podcast episode which I did on the Ascension.
Happy Ascension Day 2014!!!
In Episode 55, we will be exploring A. W. Tozer’s classic devotional book on the attributes of God “The Knowledge of the Holy.”
A link to a pdf version of “Knowledge of the Holy” can be found here
A link to a hardcopy of the book at Christian Book Distributors can be found here
A link to Tozer’s sermon given in Pittsburgh in 1956 in which he asked prayer of his hearers for the time to write this book can be found here. His request starts about the 14m 44s mark.
A link to the lesson on “Do It Yourself Theology” by Michael Reeves of Theology Network in the United Kingdom can be found here
Imagine a courtroom scenario in which you are on trial. Your defense attorney has been making wonderful points in your defense. At one point, the prosecutor gets up and starts making one accusation after another against you. You then stand up, look at the judge and point to the prosecuting attorney and say: “Your Honor, the prosecutor has just made several excellent points. I couldn’t agree more.”
You have to imagine such a scenario since no one would do something like that in a real-life courtroom situation. However, I think that we might do this in a spiritual sense. About 400 years ago, the English minister Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) preached a series of sermons on the Old Testament book The Song of Songs. In Sermon 4 of that series (entitled “Bowels Opened“, the 17th century way of saying “The Affections Presented“), Sibbes stated that we often do for Satan what is mentioned in the imaginary courtroom scenario given above. Sibbes said:
… we must not bear false witness, as not against others, much less against ourselves. Many help Satan, the accuser, and plead his cause against the Spirit, their comforter, in refusing to see what God seeth in them. We must make conscience of this, to know the good as well as the evil, though it be never so little.
Satan (the name means “accuser”) will often remind a Christian of his or her past sins. Sibbes observed, quite correctly I think, that in a false and misdirected sense of humility, a Christian forgets what it means to be “in Christ.” They will overlook the good which God has already worked in them and focus on what they did in the past or their ongoing struggle with sin. It’s about the same thing as saying to Satan when he accuses you: “Hey, you’ve got a good point.”
A Christian must remember that being “in Christ” means that when God looks upon you, He doesn’t see your sin but sees the perfection of Christ. When a follower of Christ focuses on what is still evil within them and forgets about the good which God has already begun to work in them, Sibbes says that you’re actually pleading Satan’s cause against the Spirit of God.
Don’t forget the good work God is already doing you. If you do, for the sake of some seeming sense of humility, expect the Judge and the Defense Attorney in the trial to challenge you and ask you plainly: “Whose side are you on?”