Resurrection and Life

This Sunday at ElmCreek Community Church we will be looking at John 5:25-29.  In this passage Jesus explains that life is found in Him alone, for He is God and Judge of everyone.  But this life is not just something that all believers can look forward to.  It is life that can be experienced now.  And once this life is experienced there is no denying its reality for the believer.

Kent Hughes tells the following story:

“Years ago the great G. Campbell Morgan was preaching in Tennessee.  During the sermon he stated, ‘By no means can every Christian remember the time when he was born again.’  At the end of the sermon someone challenged his statement.  Morgan turned to him and asked the man, ‘Are you alive?’  The man said, ‘Why of course I am!’  Morgan said, ‘Do you remember when you were born?’  The man said, ‘No, but I know I am living.’  Morgan replied, ‘Exactly.  Some Christians may not remember the moment of their new birth.  But they are spiritually alive and know it and that is what counts.’  You can know you have eternal life.  When the dead hear the voice of Christ, they enter into that relationship of life.” 

Join us this week at ElmCreek Community Church as together we give worship and praise to Jesus, the giver of life.

Striving to know Christ and make Him known,

Mark

J.C. Ryle: The Simplicity of the Remedy for a Thirsty Soul

There is a spiritual thirst within every human being, no matter what time in the history of the world.  It is true today and it was true in the time of J.C. Ryle.  But there is only way to remedy this thirst as the battle between our desire to earn the favor of God and to approach Him as an empty vessel rages.  The words of J.C. Ryle below explain this battle well and cut directly to the heart of our own sin.

"How simple this remedy for thirst appears!  But oh, how hard it is to persuade some people to receive it!  Tell them to do some great thing, to mortify their bodies, to go on pilgrimage, to give all their goods to feed the poor and so to merit salvation, and they will try to do as they are bid.  Tell them to throw overboard all idea of merit, working or doing, and to come to Christ as empty sinners, with nothing in their hands and, like Naaman, they are ready to turn away in disdain (2 Kings 5:12).  Human nature is always the same in every age.  There are still some people just like the Jews, and some like the Greeks.  To the Jews, Christ crucified is still a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.  Their succession, at any rate, has never ceased!  Never did our Lord say a truer word than that which He spoke to the proud scribes in the Sanhedrin, 'You will not come unto Me that you might have life' (John 5:40).

"But, simple as this remedy for thirst appears, it is the only cure for man's spiritual disease, and the only bridge from earth to heaven.  Kings and their subjects, preachers and hearers, masters and servants, high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, all must alike drink of the water of life, and drink in the same way.  For eighteen centuries men have labored to find some other medicine for weary consciences, but they have labored in vain.  Thousands, after blistering their hands, and growing gray in hewing out 'broken cisterns which can hold no water' (Jer. 2:13), have been obliged to come back at last to the old Fountain, and have confessed in their latest moments that here, in Christ alone, is true peace."

J.C. Ryle: If We Are Thirsty We Must Actually Come to Christ

 

What foolishness there is in dying of thirst while standing before a lake of fresh, clean water.  The same can be said for the spiritually lost.  Their souls thirst for something more and they will continue to thirst until they actually come to Christ and drink.  Read these words from J.C. Ryle.

"He that thirsts and wants relief from Christ must actually come to Him.  It is not enough to wish and talk and mean and intend and resolve and hope.  Hell, that dreadful reality, is truly said to be paved with good intentions.  Thousands are yearly lost in this fashion, and perish miserably just outside the harbor.  Meaning and intending they live; meaning and intending they die.  Oh, no!  We must 'arise and come'!  If the prodigal son had been content with saying, 'How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!  I hope some day to return home,' he might have remained forever among the swine.  It was when he arose and came to his father that his father ran to meet him, and said, 'Bring forth the best robe and put it on him . . . Let us eat and be merry' (Luke 15:20-23).  Like him, we must not only 'come to ourselves' and think, but we must actually come to the High Priest, to Christ.  We must come to the Physician" (Holiness, J.C. Ryle).

J.C. Ryle: The Remedy for Thirsty Men

"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

(John 7:37-38)

"'If any man thirst,' says our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, 'let him come to me, and drink.'

"For what is the sum and substance of these simple words?  It is this.  Christ is that Fountain of living water which God has graciously provided for thirsting souls.  From Him, as out of the rock smitten by Moses, there flows an abundant stream for all who travel through the wilderness of this world.  In Him, as our Redeemer and Substitute, crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification, there is an endless supply of all that men can need: pardon, absolution, mercy, grace, peace, rest, relief, comfort, and hope.

"This rich provision Christ has bought for us at the price of His own precious blood.  To open this wondrous fountain He suffered for sin, the just of the unjust, and bore our sins in His own body on the tree.  He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (1 Peter 2:24; 3:18; 2 Cor. 5:21).  And now He is sealed and appointed to be the Reliever of all who are laboring and heavy laden, and the Giver of living water to all who thirst.  It is His office to receive sinners.  It is His pleasure to given them pardon, life, and peace.  And the words of the text are a proclamation He makes to all mankind, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.'"  (Holiness, J.C. Ryle)

J.C. Ryle: Spiritual Thirst (Part 1 of 2)

"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." (John 7:37-38)

"Bodily thirst is notoriously the most painful sensation to which the frame of mortal man is liable.  Read the story of the miserable sufferer in the black hole at Calcutta.  Ask anyone who has traveled over desert plains under a tropical sun.  Hear what any old soldier will tell you is the chief want of the wounded on a battlefield.  Remember what the crews of ships lost in mid-ocean, tossed for days in boats without water, go through.  Mark the dreadful words of the rich man in the parable, 'Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame' (Luke 16:24).  The testimony is unvarying.  There is nothing so terrible and hard to bear as thirst.

"But if bodily thirst is so painful, how much more painful is thirst of soul?  Physical suffering is not the worst part of eternal punishment.  It is a light thing, even in this world, compared to the suffering of the  mind and inward man.  To see the value of our souls and find out they are in danger of eternal ruin; to feel the burden of unforgiven sin and not to know where to turn for relief; to have a conscience sick and ill at ease and to be ignorant of the remedy; to discover that we are dying, dying daily, and yet unprepared to meet God; to have some clear view of our own guilt and wickedness, and yet to be in utter darkness about absolution; this is the highest degree of pain - the pain which drinks up soul and spirit and pierces joints and marrow!  And this no doubt is the thirst of which our Lord is speaking.  It is a thirst after pardon, forgiveness, absolution and peace with God.  It is the craving of a really awakened conscience, wanting satisfaction and not knowing where to find it, walking through dry places, and unable to get rest.

"And surely it is not too much to say that all of us ought to know something of this thirst, if not as much as Augustin, Luther, Bunyan or Whitefield.  Living as we do in a dying world; knowing, as must do, if we will confess it, that there is a world beyond the grace, and that after death comes the judgment; feeling, as we must do in our better moments, what poor, weak, unstable, defective creatures we all are, and how unfit to meet God; conscious as we must be in our inmost heart of hearts, that on our use of time depends our place in eternity, we ought to feel and to realize something like 'thirst,' for a sense of peace with the living God.  But alas, nothing proves so conclusively the fallen nature of man as the general, common want of spiritual appetite!  For money, for power, for pleasure, for rank, for honor, for distinction - for all these the vast majority are now intensely thirsting.  To lead forlorn hopes, to dig for gold, to storm a breach, to try to hew a way through thick-ribbed ice to the North Pole, for all these objects there is no lack of adventurers and volunteers.  Fierce and unceasing is the competition for these corruptible crowns!  But few indeed, by comparison, are those who thirst after eternal life.  No wonder that the natural man is called in Scripture 'dead,' and 'sleeping,' and 'blind,' and 'deaf.'  No wonder that he is said to need a second birth and a new creation.  There is no surer symptom of mortification in the body than the loss of all feeling.  There is no more painful sign of an unhealthy state of soul that an utter absence of spiritual thirst.  Woe to that man of whom the Savior can say, 'You know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked' (Rev. 3:17)."  (Holiness, J.C. Ryle)

Church Values: Spiritual Transformation

In 1984 and 1985 the toy of the year was Voltron and it was desired by every little boy I knew, including myself.  On Christmas Eve I opened a present and there it was before me.  The greatest toy ever created.  How could a toy that transformed five different cats into one giant robot not be the greatest?  As the years went by I began to collect new toys aptly named Transformers.  What do these toys do?  They transform from one thing into something completely different.

Over the past two weeks we have wrestled with and explored what God’s Word has to say about two of our values as a church: Honoring God and Reaching the Lost.  This week we will look at what God has to say about spiritual transformation.  And as the words describe, how is the disciple of Jesus Christ changed from one form into another form?  How does the Word of God describe this transformation?  What is it importance of knowing what this transformation looks like?  How does this transformation happen?  These are the questions that we will wrestle with this week.

Join us at First Baptist as we strive to understand God’s call for us to be spiritually transformed as His disciples and what this means for us as a whole as God’s people in this place.

J.C. Ryle: The Overcoming Christian

"I fear much for many professing Christians.  I see no sign of fighting in them, much less of victory.  They never strike one stroke on the side of Christ.  They are at peace with His enemies.  They have no quarrel with sin.  I warn you, this is not Christianity.  This is not the way to heaven.

"I often fear much for those who hear the gospel regularly.  I fear, lest you become so familiar with the sound of its doctrines, that insensibly you become dead to its power.  I fear, lest your religion should sink down into a little vague talk about your own weakness and corruption, and a few sentimental expressions about Christ, while real practical fighting on Christ's side is altogether neglected.  Oh, beware of this state of mind. 'Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.'  No victory - no crown!  Fight and overcome! (James 1:22)

"Cheer up, dear brothers and sisters.  Take comfort, I entreat you.  Look at the bright side of your position.  Be encouraged to fight on.  The time is short.  The Lord is at hand.  The night is far spent.  Millions as weak as you have fought the same fight.  Not one of all those millions has been finally led captive by Satan.  Mighty are your enemies, but the Captain of your salvation is mightier still.  His arm, His grace and His Spirit shall hold you up.  Cheer up.  Be not cast down.

"What though you lose a battle or two?  You shall not lose all.  What though you faint sometimes?  You shall not be quite cast down.  What though you fall seven times?  You shall not be destroyed.  Watch against sin, and sin shall not have dominion over you.  Resist the devil, and he shall flee from you.  Come out boldly from the world, and the world shall be obliged to let you go.  You shall find yourselves in the end more than conquerors; you shall 'overcome.'"

Whitewashed Tombs

Paint can do something amazing.  It can transform an item which shows years of wear and tear into something that appears new and clean.  Over the past few years the fence in the back yard had begun to show its years of standing out in the elements.  It could very easily have been painted over and made to look new, but a coat of paint would not change the fact that dry rot had set in and many of the boards and posts were broken.  No amount of paint would fix what was broken.

In Acts 23, Paul confronts the leaders of the Jewish council who desired to see him die.  After the High Priest orders Paul to be struck on the mouth for the things he was saying, Paul says directly to the High Priest, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!”  There is deep meaning within these words that not only conjures up the words of Christ but also the prophet Ezekiel.  There is no amount of “paint” that could be used to hide the defects in the hearts of the council.

What do Ezekiel and Jesus teach us about being whitewashed tombs?  How can we evaluate our own hearts in an honest way to see what “paint,” if any, we are using to cover up our true spiritual condition?  Are we wearing a mask which looks good on the outside but only covers the darkness and hypocrisy within?

May God use this passage to speak to us this week and may we be prayerfully prepared to heed the work of the Spirit of God within our own hearts.

The Power of the Holy Spirit

There once was a man who for the entirety of his life was unbelieving in the work of God.  In dealing with an addiction to alcohol and a failed marriage he had lost all hope.  But there was one constant in his life: his mother’s prayers.  She prayed for years, even decades, for her son to see the truth of the Gospel message and believe.  One day, in his back yard, God grabbed a hold of his heart and in that moment the Holy Spirit transformed him.  He became a son of God.

 

A young boy at the age of five heard and understood the Gospel message at an afterschool Bible club in a small town.  There was no sudden, intense change in his life.  Only a persistent striving for obedience as he grew older and began to know God more deeply.  When he entered high school, God grabbed his heart in a mighty way and called him into fulltime ministry.  Today he is a preacher, teacher, theologian, and shepherd of a congregation in a small town very similar to the one he lived in when the Holy Spirit transformed him.

 

Our passage this week is Acts 19:1-20 where through Paul the Holy Spirit does amazing things.  Twelve men are won over to Christ, demons show respect for the power of the Holy Spirit and for His vessel, Paul, and those who joined in occult worship rid themselves of their former lives to fully follow Christ.  The work of the Holy Spirit is evident and alive through the ministry of Paul.

 

Can the same be said for us?  As disciples of Christ, how much do we see the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us?  Do we recognize and give credit to the Holy Spirit when He moves?  Are we daily be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit?

 

The two stories above are examples in the way the Holy Spirit grabs ahold of lives and changes people forever.  But one is no less dramatic and powerful than the other.  Any time the Spirit works there is mighty power in play.  And he works in the lives of people every day.  May we prayerfully be prepared for the Spirit to move in our own lives as we read the Word of God in Acts this week.