10 Things about God Paul says in Acts 17

O.Mustafin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Creator of the universe.  He is the God who made the world and everything in it

2. Ruler of all creation. He is the Lord of heaven and earth

3. Self-sufficient. He does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything.

4. Life giving. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

5. Creator and Ruler over humankind. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

6.Tob esought by everyone.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

7. Source of life and father of all. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

8. Not representable by an idol or image. Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone - an image made by human design and skill.

9. He commands everyine to repent In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

10. He will judge the whole world. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.

(Proven by the resurrection - He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.)

Banner of Truth Conference 2018 Slot 1

We kicked off this year with what my esteemed father-in-law sometimes calls a golden oldie. This one was on Acts 16:14c The Lord opened her heart.

There were three simple points

1. The condition of this woman

Her heart was closed to the gospel. It is how we all are by nature. She had done many good things but her heart was closed to God.

2. What happened

The Lord opened her heart. He took the first step. Today any emotional response may be confused with this but it is not the real thing. Christ is not a dead Saviour but he goes on working to this day. She was the reason Paul was kept from preaching elsewhere and why he was brought to Philippi.

3. What the result of that is

God took from her the prejudice, the scales of blindness that had been hers. The word came to her not only in word but with power and the Holy Spirit. When her heart was opened she listened to the word. Her eyes were opened to see the beauty of Jesus Christ. She experienced what Thomas Chalmers referred to as "The expulsive power of a new affection".

Two nice quotes

She heard Paul speaking and she thought, “I have never heard anyone speak like this.” She thought to herself, “What an orator he is. He really believes what he says.” She thought, “This is all making sense.” But it was not because of Paul’s eloquence or sincerity that his words were having such a transforming influence in her life. It was all due to the Lord opening her heart. I once spoke to a woman in hospital who had been involved in a minor accident outside Aberystwyth and for fear she might have had concussion they were keeping her in hospital for 24 hours. She was fed up with life, but I spoke to her about the God who is in control of all our circumstances, even the fall of the sparrow. “That God has come to this world in his Son Jesus Christ to save us,” I said. She looked back bleakly to me and she said, “Words, only words.” The gospel came to her, but in word only. When the gospel came to the Thessalonians it did not come in word only, but in power and with the Holy Spirit and with much assurance so that the Thessalonians received the gospel of Paul not as the word of men but as it is in truth the word of God. So it was when Lydia’s heart was opened she was able to respond to Paul’s message.

Douglas MacMillan and his elders were interviewing two teenage boys who had come to profess faith and were applying for church membership. “Tell us what changes have taken place in your life that would lead us to believe you have been converted,” said Douglas. Their spokesman said, “Oh, it was no change in us. The change was in you, about six months ago, when your preaching got interesting.” Of course it was no change in Douglas’ preaching. What had happened was that the Lord had opened their hearts at that time and then the preaching seemed more relevant, and the worship more enjoyable and Sunday was no longer a boring day. So as Paul opened the Scriptures using the sword of the Spirit the same Spirit of Jesus opened Lydia’s heart so that she believed what Paul said to her. She became the first convert of whom we know anything on European soil.

Lord's Day August 2 2015

A new month arrives and so we began with communion. I am away for the next three Sundays so I just wanted to do one offs today so I went for Daniel 6 and Acts 3, wonderful chapters that are full of good teaching. (I'd decided on Daniel 6 before I knew lions were going to be in the news). I was unusually long am - 42 minutes (I haven't preached over 40 minutes since March. I dropped our second reading again so the service wasn't overlong). Lots of good things in both chapters, some of which I hope I brought out (see here). Although some were away there were visitors present so we were a decent size am and pm. There were people missing I had hoped would be there, however, and so that is always disappointing.

Lord's Day September 28 2014

I have been back preaching now for a while. At first I managed to stay ahead in my preparation but time has already caught up with me and I am back to a week by week pattern. It was harvest with us on Sunday morning. We don't decorate the church with vegetables and so on but I do like to preach a harvest type sermon (Acts 14:15-17 this time) and we sing those great harvest hymns. In the evening we came to L of TULIP, Limited Atonement, the most difficult perhaps but clear enough in Scripture. There were some missing morning and evening but one or two visitors including people from Ghana, South Africa, Madagascar and South Korea, which added to our international feel (Nigeria, Romania, the Philippines, etc, already represented). 



Ted Donnelly on Peter

On Monday I was with the twelve who met at the John Owen Centre for the Theological Study Group discussion on Ted Donnelly's book Peter Eye Witness of his Majesty.. Our chairman was Austin Walker from Crawley. Numbers were slightly up on the norm due mainly to the presence of three LTS students, all on their first day of a three week placement. it was good to have them there. The book, which began as a series of messages to ministers and was published by Banner about 12 years ago is a little more popular in style than our usual fare but none the worse for that. ted looks at Peter as Disciple, Preacher and Pastor and makes a number of important and useful points. We all agreed that it was a fine book that could be commended to someone preparing for ministry as a brief guide or someone in the ministry as a brief refresher. Also, it would be useful for someone not in the ministry to read in order to help them understand better the work of the pastor.

The following quotations may help give something of the flavour of the book:

On discipleship and the close connection between strength and weakness: "There is scarcely a gift that the devil cannot pervert" (31)

On preaching Christ doctrinally and the underestimate often made of Peter in this respect: "We expect him to be vigorous and earnest, but not particularly deep. If this has been our view, we are mistaken." (69) "We must preach Christ theologically" (71)

On bold preaching: "It is so very hard to be direct and, at the same time, gentle and loving." (77) "He must hammer home the nails of conviction" (78)

On faithfulness in the ministry: "all Christian service carries an inevitable price-tag" (106)

On the specialised nature of pastoral work: "it is a mistake to hand over a significant part of the work of the training of pastors to men who have never done the work for which they are preparing others" (114)

We prayed for Ted Donnelly at the end, thankful for his book and conscious of how unwell he is at present. We would love to hear him declare such truths once again.

(The current notice on the church website here reads: Pastor Donnelly became ill in November 2010 and had to spend a number of weeks in hospital. He is now able to attend morning worship services but it is anticipated that his recovery will be a slow process. Please continue to remember our pastor, his wife Lorna and their family in your prayers.)

Barsabbas Brothers

I was reading Acts 15 this morning, which mentions Judas Barsabbas. The name rang a bell. Wasn't he mentioned in Acts 1? No, that was Joseph Barsabbas, his brother perhaps. Looking for more info I came across this interesting article here. The whole site is interesting though probably incorrect at several points. What do you think?