The sermon explores the concept of salvation as depicted through biblical stories, particularly focusing on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This narrative emphasises faith, judgement, and God's grace. Abraham's intercessory prayer for Lot is used as an example of how faith and prayer play crucial roles in salvation of others. The sermon warns against complacency and the dangers of ignoring God's call, using Lot's wife as a poignant reminder of the consequences of looking back. It encourages the audience to embrace a full commitment to faith, akin to Abraham, and to be mindful of the generational impact of their spiritual lives. The key point is that salvation is not automatic but requires a responsive heart to God's grace and a willingness to separate from the world's values in the outworking of sanctification.
Matthew 5:48 spells out Jesus' intention of his raising the standard of the Beatitudes in order to have us aim at the "teleios ", the final result of our sanctification. It is that we arrive at the perfection of the Father. This is God's aim in having you become a Christian in the first place. And what we were learning in the morning service as well as tonight in the 5'00 o'clock Service. Particularly Jesus is lifting our eyesight to aim at the standard for God to be happy with you to be in his Kingdom!" Paul's personal journey on this purpose is a good example for us in Romans, chapters 6 through to 8.
"He claimed to be the good shepherd. He claimed to be the one that spoke from God. He did it with authority as we've been learning in the morning surfaces. And, looking at the Beatitudes there, and Jesus, this one, was somehow not accepted by the Jewish leaders, and they couldn't grasp the fact that when they challenged Him. Tell us plainly tell us plainly whether you are the Christ or not and his answer was basically don't my works display when you see the Father's works turning up through me, when you see I'm doing the works of my Father, doesn't it show you who I am. My identity with the father. By identity I mean that the Father's the Father, and He's the Son."
"I want to talk about the fact of being convinced and of coming to a place of real conviction and of assurity in what you're on about, and how that can be ours as well."
"In our church we have been talking about in the morning services the old covenant led by Moses the law and the new covenant Led by Jesus and the biblical statement. That's The law came by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ This morning particularly we are looking at the word grace and the fact that grace is when God pours out His love love and does something for you totally undeserved. That's his grace."
"Now in those letters across from chapter 2 in 1 Corinthians through to around chapter 10, he keeps addressing something that was very important for in his mind that the Corinthian church should understand, and that was that there are limits to our liberties. It's not just the fact, as Greek culture proposed, that a man or a human being could be unrestrained. There's nothing outside of a himself or herself. That needs to be taken to limit what their freedom is. And although that was a culture back in ancient land, and although much of our education has sprung up from the influence of Greek training, nonetheless, that's never really died out in popular understandings that man is the measure of all things. It doesn't mean man and not woman. It means humans. Humans within themselves can do anything."
"Tonight, I'm actually doing a repeat of something across the different decades I've always tried to include in. And it is an example from the Book of Acts as to how you can counsel somebody, how you can lead a person to Christ, how you can be involved in evangelism."
"It really raises a question about the longevity of people who are Christians and serving the Lord as to how long they last the distance before something gets them. And it raises the question about can someone who once was blessed of God be a Christian? And can someone who once was blessed of God end up being under his severe curse of some sort?"
"In our church, we've been learning about the Old Covenant and the move into the New Covenant. And so, history has been divided as far as God's promises, and particularly the covenants that he made with his people, Israel. And both the Old Covenant, through Moses, and then eventually Jesus, through Jesus, the New Covenant was made. But both of those covenants were made with Israel, God's people. Where do we come in as those who are in the church? We come in because in the making of the New Covenant, it was made available on a different basis than that which followed the Old Covenant's reliance on the Mosaic Law. But rather, the New Covenant entrance point was in your attitude to Christ. And Jesus, and belief in him, and trust in him for the forgiveness of sins, was the entrance door. The entrance door into the New Covenant God gave to Israel. And by everybody being invited to come in who were prepared to believe in Jesus, it formed a new body, not just people who were Jews, but a new body, both Jews and non-Jews, anybody, in fact, who was prepared to put their faith in Christ. That's the New Covenant."
"We didn't really have the opportunity to go very far down the road of tracking the meaning of the word sanctification. And in our salvation that God gives us is first of all how we get in the door right at the beginning. And sometimes that's called our justification. When God treats you, he puts you in the status of being justified even though you're a sinner. But because Christ has died for you and Christ has provided his righteousness to be ours."