The words we have used so far are ABIDE, AMAZED & ACCEPTED. Today we add the words "Our Affection & God’s Affection Approval". The goal of this message is to teach the second part of the Gospel Prayer, which affirms that Christ is life’s greatest treasure, and in Him, we have all we need: “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” No longer do we need to crave the approval of others, because in Him we have the absolute approval of the only One whose opinion really matters. No longer do we need earthly riches, for we have a treasure of unspeakable worth. In Christ, we can give away all we have because in Christ we have all that we need.
The verse in I Corinthians 13:13, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love.” We here a lot about faith and love, but not as much about hope. Gets overlooked a little bit, so let’s take a deeper look tonight at hope, what it is and what it means for believers. Biblical hope is not a wish but an absolute future reality guaranteed by the Lord. This hope cannot be experience by unbelievers. This hope is a like a light blazing in a dark room. It immediately will illuminate one’s outlook, uplifts the soul, and produces joy in our hearts even in the worst of circumstances and in the midst of our dark, sin stained and death-filled world.
As we continue through the Gospel Revolution, we are on this journey – taking one step at the time – discovering that how live out the Gospel depends on how we view the Gospel. It really boils down to the difference between religion and a relationship and this becomes even clear today as we talk about the Power to Change. The words we have used so far are ABIDE & AMAZED. Our call as believers is so crystal clear yet because we are wired to do before we become, we jump into doing religious stuff for Jesus hoping to earn our acceptance when the call from Jesus is simply to Abide.
When is the last time you and I stood in amazement at God or something that the He has done? When is the last time we stood amazed in His presence for who He is? Too often familiarity (not intimacy) can cause us to yawn at God! This can be a danger for those who have been a believer for a long time or if we think religion – what we do for the Lord matters the most!
Does it really matter what we believe? We hear many people today say, as long as you believe something and you are sincere, then that is enough. Is that true? No way. A sincere Dr who means well could give a patient the wrong medicine and it makes them violently ill. It doesn’t measure up to the truth. It takes much more than sincerity to make something true. It makes a difference what we believe both now and in the life to come!! Here John is warning his dear children about the conflict that was happening. The Last Hour/last times or the last day as it is talked about in the Old Testament, we are living in right now, we have always lived in it. The last hour begin when Jesus Christ came to this earth and it will end when He returns to claim His bride, the church. It is not an amount of time, but a kind of time. And it only grows in intensity as we rocket forward towards the end of the age, the last hour/last times when Jesus will return. There were false teachers in John’s day, but not only is the number of false teachers greater, but we are closer than ever before to that coming last hour. It adds a great sense of intensity and urgency.
Christian growth doesn’t come by adding things into our lives, but by growing in our awareness of what God has already given to us. We don’t grow in Christ by growing beyond the gospel, but by growing deeper into it!
We start a new section today of Acts and we have focused on the early days of the Church and the launch of the Church, and the mission control and their leaving earth and now this morning we turn our attention to how the Lord works through specific individuals in the life of the Church and how they displayed incredible courage as they relied on the Holy Spirit to embolden them. We think about the incredible courage of those men who went into space and getting into a ship that was attached to a rocket! They went places that people had never been before and no sure they would survive and there were people who died in the space days. We see some connections to help us think about these men of courage starting with Peter and John today.
God has already set into motion his kingdom, and that kingdom begin with the death and resurrection of the Messiah and now looking forward to that time of incredible refreshing, where we will be in the presence of the Lord, truly, face to face. The 2nd coming of Christ and the setting up of His kingdom on this earth.
Because God loves perfectly (taught throughout the Word of God) He also hates perfectly. He loves all that righteous, holy, and in line with His will and glorious purpose. Which means simultaneously hates whatever threatens or opposes those things. As a result, God expects and demands of His children to love what He loves and hate what He hates.
Have you ever taken the time to sit and watch the end credits of a movie? We rarely do but if we would we would find the list of hundreds of people who helped to write, produce, and make the movie. Most of the time we only know the actors or actresses names who star in the movie but without all these people, this movie wouldn’t have been made, especially these animated films. We only see these people mentioned at Awards shows and some of them are given credit. Remember back to 2 weeks ago, we saw a crippled guy healed and everyone was amazed and filled with wonder including of course the guy. We pick it back up and we find the man clinging to Peter and John and now a huge crowd has gathered once again and Peter and John have the opportunity to finally take a little credit, I mean after all they were the ones who healed the guy right? They are the ones who said, rise up and pulled the man up. They were heroes almost superstars. Yet we find that these men don’t take that route, they take a far different one that many then and even now choose to take, even in Christendom today.