To be at peace within one’s soul comes only through the life found in Christ. Jesus, the Son of God who called Himself the Son of Man, came to restore humanity’s lost representation of God caused by the fall of Adam. True salvation is not achieved through human effort, churchgoing, or rituals, but through receiving Christ Himself, for He alone is the Life. When a person comes to Jesus in faith, sins are forgiven, identity as a child of God is renewed, and the life of God begins to shine through them.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:01] Talking about needing to have things well with your soul, that’s quite old-fashioned style language, although I like the song. But what exactly does it mean for it to be well with your soul? It means that you are in contact with God in a positive way. And the nature of us human beings is that we as an entire race, it’s not just a few people who are the naughty people, but a lot of us are part of a fall, the fall of the human race that happened because of our origin in the storyline of Eden. And what is very interesting about that is because we have in our Gospel of Luke that we’re travelling through at the moment, got some passages that you probably might have noticed I skipped over a bit. One of them is a list of genealogies in chapter 3. Is it chapter 3? I better put these on to see.

[00:01:06] It is, yes, the end of chapter 3 and goes through all about who birthed who. And it’s one of those things that the Christian church at large do not fully find themselves having grasped and understood exactly the choice of how those genealogies, the list of who begat who right down to the latest ones, had been done. Because generally speaking, people teach and it is assumed that the difference between Matthew’s list and Luke’s list is Matthew’s got, I think, Joseph’s theories down to him and Luke is aiming at down to Mary, mother of Jesus. I think that’s generally true, but there are some sophistications of those discussions that I’m not going to get into because they’re so detailed and because we can’t be certain which one’s right.

[00:02:05] But I do want to point out one thing, the finality in Luke’s passage of the genealogies, which is the end of chapter 3. On the screen you see there the final verse. It gets down to Enos, I think that’s Enoch, the son of Seth, the son of Adam. And then of Adam it says the son of God. Now there’s something we’ve not noticed about how the scriptures use the terms son of man and son of God. If I were to do a quiz and ask what term did Jesus take to himself most of the two, son of man or son of God, which would be the one that Jesus said he was most? Let me see your hand if you know. You don’t want me to pick on me, do you? Hey, what, which? Yeah, go ahead, Ed. Big voice. He doesn’t want to be wrong. You were probably going to be right though, you just weren’t sure.

[00:03:10] Because here in this list it’s got Adam, the son of God. So how would you then want to talk about Jesus saying he’s the son of man? Now the truth of the matter is that there’s something about how God made humanity that we might represent him. And in the old culture’s understanding of what you call a person if they are a son of Josiah or a son of Jared or someone like that, we’ve got a very competent son of Jared sitting on the machine back there, putting up the verses. But it’s something in our culture we still do, that we know people and whose sons they are in the background. You know, when I first came to the church, there was someone who was in the church who’d been my principal at one stage at the teacher’s college.

[00:04:04] He’s gone to be with the Lord now, but he was a very man in charge in the Kelvin Grove teacher’s college. And one day he met me in the square walking along and asked me how I was going and I was a bit trembling to let on that, well, I really thought, because he was his principal. But whose son you are is something that is, we’re very quite deeply affected by it, you know, more than we recognise. And it’s very interesting that it refers to Adam, the first of the humans, as the son of God. What was it getting at? It was getting at the fact that what it is to be human is to be made to be a representative of God. And a part of the fall of the human race is we, the entire race, sinned and ceased to be a good representative of God. We’re kicked out of the Garden of Eden by God.

[00:05:08] We ceased to be in the sense of representative, the son of God. Now, when you read the stories of Jesus getting born and the genealogies and whatever, and you read the opening paragraphs and chapters in Matthew, Mark and Luke, these Gospels, especially Matthew, Mark and Luke, John as well. But when you read those opening paragraphs, one of the points that you begin to notice is that they’re identifying Jesus and the chief name all through those Gospels that he gives himself is I’m going to ask another person since Ed wasn’t scared enough to do you want another go? He usually doesn’t know but he’s a bit shy but what is the name that the four Gospels if you want to count the lot have Jesus giving himself? the Son of Man is the answer now what is going on? Adam at the creation story is called the Son of God

[00:06:21] and Jesus who’s come to save us from the fall that Adam and Eve led the whole race into and we’ve all been infected by it and he picks to choose himself Son of Man anybody want to have a guess as to why Jesus called himself Son of Man I mean if Adam could be said to be the Son of God and then Jesus turns up to redeem the whole lot of us and keeps calling himself the Son of Man this and the Son of Man that I actually wrote it down doing my research that 82 times in the Gospels Jesus presents himself as Son of Man what’s it all about? and in Luke’s Gospel the one Gospel we’re doing now it’s 26 times that Jesus presents himself as the Son of Man well the understanding that will help us grasp that is the term Son of has to do with who you are best looking like I didn’t have any trouble of anybody always knowing who was my dad

[00:07:30] he had bright orange hair he was skinny and when he as principal of the college used to do the gardening and he had a wheelbarrow the students used to giggle because carrying a big weight he’d be wobbling and they weren’t sure he wasn’t going to fall over with the wheelbarrow and when I turned up from Adelaide they gave my dad a nickname from one of those TV cowboy stories there was some character called Hoot Gibson and so when I turned up they took a look at me and laughed and said Little Hoot and I was an 18 year old running around and the students said this is Little Hoot they give you a name because of who you represent and who are your progenition if that’s the right word from who have you come out with all of your appearances from and Son of God was who we were meant to be with the meaning of it

[00:08:39] meaning that we’re humans yes but as humans we are the best representation of God we were made to be like him and what sin is that crept in on the whole human race got infected by all of us because we all have a hassle even when we come to Christ and become Christians and if you get asked by your Sunday school teacher have you ever made a decision for Christ you can say like I could say yes when I was nine I did and I could tell the story and often Sunday school teachers it used to be in Baptist circles and I’m assuming that we still are downstairs, I think that we have a strong Sunday school, is that they also would teach that if you know who you are, then you’re a Christian because you’ve come to Christ and you’ve been restored as a true son of God. And I’ve got someone coming to preach tonight

[00:09:38] who’s going to preach the gospel from John’s gospel, which is the best gospel to bring out exactly this point of Jesus evangelising, telling people how they can become sons of God. If you want to prepare for tonight, just see if you can find in the early chapters of John, the verse where Jesus is saying that, you know, if you let it all happen, you’ll become a son of God. Now, sitting here this morning, I shouldn’t say which one’s which, but the angels know, God knows, and probably a good lot of you will know of yourself, whether or not you have come by coming to Christ and you’ve become a son of God, as tonight will be preached on. And I’ve got the bloke who’s coming. His name is Zeke. It’s actually short for Ezekiel, but he doesn’t tell you that. Zeke and Zeke, he’s got another name,

[00:10:41] which will pop into my head in a minute. But he works for a group that I said that I’d never, ever have come to my church. Whoa, it happens to be one of the ministry groups with a big long line history of having been supported by churches everywhere. In fact, it’s probably one of the strongest, most richest groups that can come and ask for your money. And I’ve given him a bit of warning that I’m greeting him for a sermon, not an ask for money. And this fellow, Zeke Whitehead, his name is, he actually works for World Vision. And when they started, they were an evangelistic unit to tell people how to become Christians. But gradually got taken over by more liberal ideas. So being a Christian who’s helping people out, they do it actually very well. I have to say that their chief,

[00:11:41] what they’re looking to look after, is children. And it’s probably one of the best organisations whereby if you do give them money, they’ll be spending it on kiddies all around the world being looked after and wells being dug for their families and things happening. They’re doing a very Christian thing, except for one thing, that they used to be known to have lost the gospel. And what a Christian for them was, was nice people, people giving money, people going to church. And one of the difficulties we have in church life is that people have gotten it in their head, what is a Christian? It’s someone that goes to church. can I tell you going to church is not what makes you a Christian it might be the circumstance that you could get to hear about being a Christian

[00:12:30] but if the word of God falls away from an organisation or if there’s a church or if there’s a denomination that takes on ideas that what it is to be a Christian is not exactly trusting the word of God not exactly coming to Christ and as tonight in the evening service is equally explained that Jesus said how to become a Christian. It’s the reason why I’m inviting you, because he’s an exception to his group, and I’m going to try and help him, because he’ll have a big influence where he is. Well, anyway, what it is to be a Christian, when you listen to the Gospel, it tells you about the person Jesus, and that salvation is all to do with what he is and what he’s done and how he is available to make you a Christian. There’s no being a Christian by doing this or learning that

[00:13:30] or taking on these badges or going to church very religiously. It’s a good thing to do. Please don’t take me the wrong way. I admire the people who come to church twice on Sundays. We’re in a generation where there’s all sorts of social pressure, particularly in young people, not to be so fanatical as to go to church twice. You try out and some of your friends, when they ask you or they hear that you go to church, tell us how often do you go, or once a month, whatever, that’s fine, you’re cool. If you tell them your family goes twice on Sunday, they’ll take a few steps back from you. You’ll pay a price for letting up that information. But I think it’s a good thing in church, and we have people here, I know, who agree with me because I see them do it, where they make it priority of family.

[00:14:30] Interestingly, often the people who are in perhaps a less pressurised religious church and scene and get to become Christians on a more easier, what do you call it when you make a contract, those people don’t last very long. We have in our church this morning someone who had a very, in my opinion, successful time up at Mackay, and he’s sitting over there. That’s Peter. And he was a youth pastor. Was it young adults? A bit of everything. Yeah, a bit of everything. Well, that’s true, yeah. But some of the people in the church, his style wasn’t what they particularly agreed with, but there was a young man, and I had a crusade there that went for, I can’t even remember how long, but on the final Sunday there was this fellow, and he looked a bit old to me, one of our people, Ed. Okay, you’re with me.

[00:15:31] And I’m actually older than him. But anyway, this bloke, when we gave the invitation, because it was a crusade, so we’re inviting people to respond to come down the front and get counselled if they wanted to come to Christ. And this old man ran down the front, and I was a bit surprised. I don’t know whether… I won’t ask you who that was. I shouldn’t do that. But he ran down the front, and when he talked afterwards, he had become a Christian when he was young, or made a step at least. I don’t know the details. But he slipped away from it, and now after a long life of it being spent differently from what it might have been done spending more of a son of yourself than the son of God in the sense of to whom you belong but he said, he wished, he told of how all those years are wasted

[00:16:32] that’s why he came running in the final day to be a Christian is to be a son of God in the sense that you’re like we were before we hit the fall we may still have the pull of the fall happening in us but we have God and we have Jesus and when you take Jesus as your saviour what being a Christian is actually all about is what you and Jesus get up to that’s what a Christian is it’s not what the church is or how many times you go on Sunday though I may have a preference to having two services on Sunday and probably there’s not many churches around these days who do there are not many people in all the churches who say I only need a certain amount, one’s enough for me I want to tell you that if you’re talking about what you have to do that’s quite correct because being a Christian isn’t about doing enough

[00:17:42] being a Christian has all to do with the one person who was the Son of God who came to earth and called himself the Son of Man and the one thing about Jesus as I’ve just said that though the genealogies take it down to how he’s the son, you know, child of Adam or Adam is the child of God and therefore call him Son of God despite that he says I am the Son of Man why did he choose that title? it also comes out when you discover that it wasn’t a case for Jesus like it is for us because if you were to look into my life or if you look into the lives of any of us who are Christians of the place you’d discover that we have some aspects that fly a flag for Jesus but you could probably find our faults as well and if you got us talking and we’re honest we would tell you that we have our own sins that we’ve had to fight

[00:18:47] that’s what it is to be a Christian but we are urged and taught to know that you’re a son of God the fella tonight’s going to talk about that Zeke actually it’s interesting about him because his proper first name is Ezekiel and he never tells you out to go scouting about him on the internet to find out his proper name is Ezekiel perhaps he got teased at school for being Ezekiel and Zeke sounds far more in Anyway, Son of Man is who Jesus took the tag for when he’s the one and only one who could truly say he’s the Son of God. We only get to be sons of God, you’ll hear about this tonight, by coming to Christ and Christ lets you in on his back as it were. In fact, the Gospel is not so much a whole lot of theological things that you can learn from all the Scriptures. Yes, they’re there for us to learn,

[00:19:54] but they are not what makes us sons of God. Do you know what, and this is what had been the burden of my sermons that I hope you’ve caught on to in this tracking through Luke’s Gospel and eventually into Acts. Do you know what, salvation is so wrapped up in Jesus that if you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got life. If you’ve come to Jesus, you’ve come for the life. The Gospel of salvation is that Jesus, his person, is the life. And knowing him and walking with him is how that life works. It’s not just making a decision and signing a card or saying yes. You might get talked into that along the line. It might be good talking, and that happened to me in a Billy Graham crusade, and I’m glad it did. But I had to learn, thankfully for a Sunday school teacher, who kept asking us questions about being Christians

[00:21:00] and pointing out, you’re a Christian if you’ve received Christ. And if you have Christ, you have Christianity. And salvation is really so much wrapped up in Christ. To have Christ is to have life. That’s what I’ve been emphasising in these last early months. The interesting thing is, if Jesus called himself the Son of Man, he wants us to learn something. And what we’re learning is that he’s the only one who came from God to save us. And when we trust in him, we become sons of God. It’s a little bit swap around with names. When you come to Jesus as God, and particularly Son of God, sent by heaven because he is the salvation. Salvation is in him. And when you have him, you’ve got life. And there’s John’s Gospel. I hope I don’t steal the thunder of the bloke tonight. But John’s Gospel, where Jesus says,

[00:22:10] I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. To have Christ is to have life. What the way? How to live. To have Christ is to have that sense of life in you that makes you different than the other people at university or school or the street will eventually see something and recognise it. Even though you might think you fail in being a witness. I had to learn this in teachers’ college. I wasn’t perfect in my life there. But one day on a camp with all the students, something came when they were all discussing. And this bloke who hadn’t really said much to me but he used to watch, he said to the others and to me, he says, Jim, we know that there’s something good about you. If you do the little scare pipe, I’d be at home. And the stories I could tell you

[00:23:12] that are not so necessary to tell, you’d understand how that almost made me very cut and laugh. Jim, we all know there’s something good about you. I know why he said that. Because what he’d seen wasn’t just me. I was immature. I didn’t have a social way of doing things that necessarily got a tick by everybody. But I want to tell you that he saw deeper than that. And what he saw was Christ. He didn’t know what it was but he says there’s something good about you. It’s because I want to tell you that salvation’s all wrapped up in Jesus and when you have Jesus, you’ve got it. And you can’t stop it eventually leaking out. Oh, wow. I’m a little bit stuck here because I forgot I was having Zeke tonight and I’ve got two sermons already and I’ve walked up here not knowing which one I’m going to give.

[00:24:08] I won’t give them both because you’ll be here too long. But let me tell you, let me just elaborate about salvation and the Gospel of Luke. Salvation is the central theme. I put this in the bulletin. It was a good new that you connected up. Salvation is the central theme in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is the promised salvation until in a church people twig that Jesus is the salvation. It’s the salvation the Old Testament pointed to but arrived in the person of Jesus coming to earth and bringing its availability to all people who put their trust in him. I’m thankful for having been converted in Louisville 9. I had later, this is in Adelaide, a Sunday school teacher and he asked all his Sunday school teachers who are young lads, have you found Christ? I never had the need of him asking me but I appreciated him

[00:25:20] putting every boy on the spot, reminding them that what counts is not how much church going you do. It’s not how you’ve kept the rules and in the particular churches I’ve been in, they were not bad churches but there was a good slice of flavour that you’re meant to be a goody, goody boy, you know. Now my parents had a big, big issue because they had two sons who perhaps didn’t represent what the goody, goody boy would be but nonetheless, I had a Sunday school teacher that told me what makes you saved is not you and what you’ve done or you and what you haven’t done, it’s that you’ve got Christ. There’s nothing more important. There may be other little things slightly important but the important thing the whole Bible presents is that salvation is in Jesus and to have Jesus is to have Christ. And so you’ve all heard

[00:26:26] my most favourite illustration which I won’t repeat about the African bloke who came to do the, could be at the college, be at the university in Adelaide but went to the college there where Dad was the principal and I was a boy running around. And this African guy had a favourite question which he asked people that he met. Do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour? And he didn’t reduce what is Christianity but he sharpened the aim of understanding of understanding how totally Christianity is all about is whether you love Jesus. And the way he explained it that if you’ve come to Jesus like he did, long story, won’t tell, then you will love him. I noticed African student going to university, my sister already there, come home to tell the stories. But all the stories of this bloke is everywhere he went.

[00:27:30] He wasn’t someone making him do a theological course. He’s someone that so loved Jesus that he couldn’t shut up about it. He loved Jesus and I heard him ask that question, do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour? I became a little bit afraid that he’d turn the question on to me and ask me. He never did. but the question hit me to not just that I know him which I didn’t know him I was a real Christian I knew Jesus but at that stage I was a bit of a baby it’s learning how to love him that’s a fantastic statement and it highlights why Jesus called himself the son of man because he came to be a representative man who went to the cross for human sins who rose again under the hand of God to represent God’s accepting his sacrifice for all human sins and the one that you’re thinking about of yours that keeps bugging you

[00:28:35] in your memory I want to tell you Jesus died for that sin on the cross and it’s done and buried when Jesus was buried and when God raised Jesus from the dead he raised him as a statement that that sacrifice has been accepted You don’t have to fret about the one failure you had or the dozen failures you’ve still got because Jesus has paid for you salvation so all in Jesus that the only talk that matters is that you recognise and are thankful for what he’s done and you love him with all that you are. There’s a simplicity of that, even though what I’m articulating to you is actually such a deep theological thing that there’s dozens of churches where the ministers have yet to wake up to what I’m saying to you today. Salvation’s all in Jesus. He that has Christ has life.

[00:29:36] He that does not have the Son of God does not have life. If all you’ve got was a religious step, you ain’t got it yet. If all you’ve got is your religious performance, you’re still waiting to find it now. But if you’ve found Jesus, you’ve found what is salvation. This salvation is not just a hope for the future, getting into heaven, which is a part of it, a promise God gives. It’s not just the fact that there’s going to be a second coming and you’ll be included and all the changes that happen then, they’re truly going to happen, but that’s not what the Gospel’s about. The Gospel is about Jesus, that he’s come. This one who truly is the Son of God came to save the ones like Adam who were now sons of men, sinful, but when they were first made, were made to be representatives of God.

[00:30:45] To call yourself the Son of God usually means you’re a true representative. And Jesus took on the term Son of Man in order that people might see that he’s truly representative of humanity. He’s man and all that God intended man to be and he’s also God’s eternal Son. That is the whole Gospel, not the whole, that’s the centre of the Gospel and of salvation about who is Jesus and what he has done. And the more you wake up to that and get your life set it on what he has done for you, the more you know that you too can be a Son of God as will be preached on tonight in the evening service and I keep giving some advertisements so that some of you will come and hear Zeke. He’s a young man and I think he has a ministry and I’m trying to encourage it. So, we’re looking here now. Look at some of the statements about Jesus.

[00:31:51] This one who is in the genealogy as the Son, right, but this one who calls himself in the Gospels 82 times, 82 times as the Son of Man. Let me read to you a couple of spots where Jesus calls himself the Son of Man and one of them is in the book of Revelation in chapter 1. Now, this is not in the early days when he came to do his ministry, when he came to qualify for that, when he got tempted so he would be sinless and qualify to die for our sins. But this is the end of it all and this is John seeing, having a vision of him on the Lord’s Day. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. Pretty good thing to do on Sunday. And I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches back then around the area of what we’d call Asia, partially Asia. There were seven churches

[00:33:03] to Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea. Read the first few chapters of the book of Revelation about those seven churches and how Jesus wants to send a letter to them. Then I, and the I is John, the apostle as an old man, but then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands. They represent the churches where Jesus comes. And in the midst of the lampstands, go up to the next bit, next to the lampstands, thank you, one like the Son of Man. Here is the one, the genealogies, finish with being the Son of God. a man, Adam and here is Jesus coming and says he is the Son of Man but now he is the Son of Man and it says so on this passage but he is called the Son of Man. Clothed with a long robe and a golden sash around his chest.

[00:34:04] The old version says perhaps I had to look that up and said breasts so I have got chest. A sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow, His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace and his voice was like the roar of many waters, like a giant waterfall. Many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars representing the churches. From his mouth came out a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. This is the one who calls himself the Son of Man in this passage. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Not surprising if you really get a vision of Jesus, you don’t sort of walk away saying, You crawl away trembling. I fell at his feet as though dead.

[00:35:02] But he laid his right hand on me saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am the living and the living one. I died and behold I’m alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades. Some of the modern translations interpret death and Hades as life and death as though it’s just about dying but I think death and Hades is more than your physical death and Hades is one of the places you may one day experience permanent death. But Jesus has the keys of those. this is the Son of Man tremble let’s see another passage not one like a prophet John in the final moments of his life on the Isle of Patmos having a spiritual vision but let’s go now to another spot that I want you to look at and so that passage I think is in Luke in chapter 5 okay so this is the last passage I’m going to bring before you

[00:36:14] and then I’ll finish soon on one of those days he that’s Jesus was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who’d come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem or the people here I guess that’s saying and the power of the Lord was with him to heal Jesus heals not only because he was the Son of God and can flick his fingers and heal he did his healing as the Son of Man the term Son of actually means good representative of so for someone to say he’s the Son of Man he’s I’m a good representative of humanity and as a representative of humanity that’s in touch with heaven who also is the Son of God Jesus could heal but he healed because God was with him is what the gospels keep on telling us and the power of the Lord was with him to heal and behold some men were bringing on the bed

[00:37:22] a man who was paralysed and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd they went up under the roof and undid the tiles there and they let him down through the tiles into the midst before Jesus they had a bit of faith to get the person that needed Jesus in front of him, and when he saw their faith, he said, man, your sins have forgiven you. There’s a bit of an implication there not spelled out in this passage, but that our sins can cause us to need healing. And he said, man, your sins have forgiven you. And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, who is this who speaks blasphemies? Because they rightly thought that God alone can forgive sins. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

[00:38:15] And when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them. Why do you question your hearts? Which is it easier to say your sins are forgiven you, or to say rise and walk? But that you may know, but that you may know that God, that the Son of Man has authority on earth. Now look at this. That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. he said to the man who was paralysed I say to you rise pick up your bed and go home and immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he’d been lying on and went home glorifying God and amazement seized them all and they glorified God and were filled with awe saying we have seen extraordinary things today one of the joys of being a Christian that I have had across the years is being involved in efforts different churches have put on

[00:39:14] to have this gospel message bring people to know Jesus and when you see some of the people who get blessed and some of the people who get close to being blessed it amazes you because you’re seeing the salvation is all in Jesus and people getting it and they glorify God who were filled with all and they were filled with all. We have seen extraordinary things today. I’m warning us in our church for the time to come to see extraordinary things on a day when the Spirit really moves. And because of that I have an interest in revivals, not just the fact of there being a group of Christians getting keen and God being with them, that’s normal. We can have that sort of revival any time we satisfy the conditions. But there is in history times when God has stepped in and sometimes when the church was at its weakest.

[00:40:24] And I did my doctorate under a man down in Macquarie University, Stuart Piggin, whose expertise as a historian is in evangelicalism and is in revivals. And he’s a world expert. They fly him into places in England like the big universities to give lectures on this topic. And he was my supervisor for a thesis. And this emphasis was interesting because one of the people I had a dissertation that had six, I won’t go into the details, different people who were touched by God. And one’s name was Jonathan Edwards. And he was the fellow whose ministry sparked what is known as the Great Awakening that spread across America and Christianised it to the extent of why there’s so many Christians over there now. Not that this was back in the 1700s. There’s other things that have happened too.

[00:41:26] But Jonathan Edwards had a grandfather. And the grandfather had been the pastor of the church that now Jonathan Edwards was. The trouble was that Jonathan Edwards and his grandfather on his mother’s side, I might say, had a disagreement. And I did write the man’s name down. But this fellow believed that you could use the grandfather, communion, as a vehicle of turning people into Christians. And that came from a general ethos of understanding the church had taken to them by the Puritans. And they all basically had absorbed without realising what they had absorbed. But it is a type of theology that sees God’s grace coming through the elements. And seeing God touch people so that if you want to get them converted, you do them the church’s ceremonies. It’ll make it happen.

[00:42:29] Now, that’s not entirely wrong, I’ve got to say here. Because we saw that one night in this church. I’ll tell you about it, for those of you who haven’t heard me say it before. But I’d had an opportunity to preach at a Brethren church on the north side. And there was a family there where the dad took along his kids, teenagers. And they, then I left, came back, and the teenagers asked him to come back here just for a service. So the man brought, I’m telling you, at least the daughter I’m about to tell you of with him. They came for an evening service and it was one where we had a communion. Now, the man who’d been the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards and who was the previous pastor that Jonathan Edwards got differing from, his name was Stoddard. And this fellow, Grandfather Stoddard, had taught

[00:43:27] the place of the communion and of baptism is we’re converting agents. That’s an idea that you get people to get the grace of God as it flows down through the communion and the baptisms. So you do the communion and you do the baptisms and that’s what makes people regenerate. but the revival that was sparked by Jonathan Edwards was such a movement of the Spirit that they had to recognise that the Spirit would come on whole churches and the people would cry out and say I know I’m not converted and they would call on to God and they’d get converted and so Jonathan Edwards’ chief thing that caused the great awakening that affected the whole of North America at the time this was the 1700s caused America to be so religious as it now is this movement is something done by the communion and baptism.

[00:44:24] But Stoddard, his grandfather, said no, not quite like that. They’re things that help. I’m not sure who had which position, but they had a disagreement on whether you had to use the communion to get people converted. But Jonathan Edwards picked the side that was more for what was the teaching of the day and they had such a disagreement that there came another incident where Stoddard had a number of young people who were in the church and going on and eventually Jonathan Edwards becomes the pastor. But Jonathan Edwards was more strict as a young man trying to get it all right. and he found out that there was amongst the young men of the church a club where they were reading books that were a bit promiscuous and sensual and he wanted to stop the practice

[00:45:21] so he had a list of the names of the people he thought were doing this, the young men, and he read it out to the church. Stupid thing to do, really. This is Jonathan Edwards, the person who kicked off the Great Awakening, the biggest revival that there is in Western history. It won’t include the East but the Western history. And because he set this up and it was his grandfather who had the other position, there’s this squabble that the church argued about that eventually the people of the church liked to stick with the grandfather’s ideas and they kicked out Jonathan Edwards, a vote of about 20 against 200 or something. He got dismissed from his own church. But his ideas did spread through New England, Massachusetts and New England. If you go back to the United States,

[00:46:15] what you discover is that the happening of the Great Awakening was an amazing effect of Jonathan Edwards’ ministry. But the areas that his church took on from some of his other teaching that you get converted by a good communion and by being baptised, the baptism converts you. That turned out to be something that caused that area to be semi-liberal, even to this day. I can’t say absolutely because there’s so many years have passed and there’s lots of exceptions. I might not be able to prove that if I had an intellectual audience that took me to tasks. But Jonathan Edwards was used of God and then got kicked out by his church, which was a bit silly because the argument was not worth getting someone kicked out on. But they did. And they had some allegiance to the older man, Stoddard.

[00:47:17] Now, what is actually so amazing, so amazing about all of this is that you could be used of God and yet, if you think salvation, if you don’t understand about salvation, it’s all in Jesus. It’s not how we do church and it’s not our denominational having the only truth. I like Baptist beliefs. I think they’re right as best as we can do them. But you can find a very good church that’s not Baptist and have other viewpoints. You can find some churches that have that other idea that Jonathan Edwards did, that the churches, you should have communion and baptism because it may help the people to become regenerate. He was actually arguing that you have to become regenerate to be a real Christian, which was true enough. but the idea that he stopped people taking communion and he stopped them,

[00:48:20] no, you’ve not displayed that you’re regenerate, you can’t come. That’s where he had the argument with his grandfather, the previous pastor. And there are people in this district who have viable churches but they don’t get it right about the sacraments, I don’t think. But God is still blessing them. And we better watch our theological arguments that we don’t turn it into something like Stoddard and Jonathan Edwards did. What a strange thing, the man who’s the most famous at causing the most amount of conversions. Now, I’m not going to finish now, but one event that happened in this church, when I told you I got invited to speak at a brethren church on the north side somewhere and there was a family who decided to bring their young people over to hear me again.

[00:49:11] and the girl of the family was not yet converted, as in regenerate, like Jonathan Edwards would want. But when we had the communion service, and in the communion service what we do do, though we don’t teach communion is what makes you a Christian, we teach what you do because you are a Christian and how you can remember what Jesus did so you could be a Christian, that’s what communion is about. and I explained about his death that the girl got converted and when she went home she said, Dad, she told him that she’d come to Christ in the communion service. She didn’t wait for my sermon later in the communion service and she said, could we have Jim come over and I’ll get baptised in our church which happened about a month later. There is a proper understanding of communion and of baptism. The tank is full

[00:50:12] because there were some folk from another church probably don’t have all the same ideas as we do but wanted to have six or seven of the young people baptised and I understand I wasn’t here for it but it happened yesterday at 10am and I thought we’ll leave the water in there because there may be some of you who want to get baptised but don’t do it because you think that’ll get you in Christ’s salvation. Do it if you’ve already come to his salvation. I like that girl when she heard the talk leading up to the communion she put her trust in Jesus and it happened. She told her dad in the car home I think I’ve got the details right. Then she chose to be baptised not in order to become converted but because that can happen the moment you simply see that Christ is the salvation and he’s calling you to come to him

[00:51:12] and when you come to him you can do it personally you can do it publicly you can do it in tears you can do it as a simple decision home and next to your bed. But when you put your trust in Jesus, he who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me, it’s his call for you to come to Jesus and to have the way of being a Christian, to have the truth about it all, to have the life of Jesus in you, and you know it, and you know it, and you know it, and you don’t have to get upset if you’re not sure. I’m calling on you to come to Jesus and to do it today. And if you want a good time to do it, come tonight and see whether Zeke gives a good message about it from John’s Gospel.