Something to think about.

To forgive is to set the prisoner free and then discover the prisoner was you.

Pastor's Corner

for Sunday May 2nd
If Jesus is not God He is not our Savior!
Our second question to ask when reading a book to discern good teaching from bad is to ask, what do they do with Jesus? Is He God? Is He God in the flesh, resurrected from the dead? Is He the wrath-absorbing Son of God? Or is He a just great moral teacher; a great ethicist; someone we should follow and emulate? Because if you leave off that He is God, you’ve left Christianity. Now, why do I say you’ve left Christianity? If Jesus is not God He cannot be our savior. Our salvation rest on two pillars and if either one or both of these pillars is removed then we are still in our sins and separated from God; we are still under His just and holy wrath that must be poured out on all sin. The first pillar is that sin must be punished. God Himself has established that the “wages of sin is death”. If God was to “blow-off” our wickedness He would violate His own holiness and righteousness. Therefore, Jesus, who is also God, put on a human body so that He could stand in your place and be punished for your sin. If Jesus is just a great moral teacher but is not God then he too is a sinner and needs a savior. Only as God in the flesh can He stand in our place as the sinless God/man and bear the wrath of God against my sins. The second pillar of our salvation is that to live in the presence of God we must be 100% righteous. Our sins are taken away in Jesus death but that doesn’t make us righteous. Jesus took on flesh so that He could live life as a man and perfectly obey God, as you and I should have done but didn’t, and then gives that perfect obedience to all who put their faith in Him. So, Jesus bears the punishment for our sin (pillar one) and gives us His perfect righteousness (pillar two) and here’s where His being God is essential, since Jesus is the infinite God He can save an infinite number of people. If Jesus is not God He can save nobody! Who Jesus is has eternal implications, so listen carefully when someone is telling you who Jesus is.
Pastor Don.

Somethnig to Think About

There is more grace in God's heart than there is sin in your past. (Erwin Lutzer)

Pastor's Corner

for Sunday April 25th
If you have questions there is a book that will answer that question for you. If you don’t want to buy a book, just “Google” the question and there will be more information than you can handle. What we’ve got to figure out is who can be trusted to give us the correct answer. If I Google “God” and all this stuff comes up about God, who can be trusted to give me the truth about God - who He is and how I am to connect with Him. Last week I said I would suggest five questions that we need to ask when reading or watching someone on TV tell us how to get close to God. Here’s the first question: what do they do with the bible? Do they turn to the bible to tell us about God or do they tell us their thoughts on God? When you hear, “Well I think God is like...” you are getting conjecture, and conjecture is fun. You sit quietly and let your thoughts ramble back and forth and you come up with some pretty cool ideas on what you think God is like. But that’s all it is - your thoughts-conjecture-it’s not truth. There is only one place to go for information on God and that’s what God Himself has revealed about Himself in the bible. Don’t follow someone’s “thoughts” about God, have them show you from the bible what God Himself has revealed about Himself. Have the bible tell you what God likes and what He doesn’t like; what makes Him happy and what makes Him angry. But you see that’s where things get sticky. The bible teaches us stuff about God that we don’t like and so we prefer to go with someone’s opinions about God because they usually come up with a very passive, weak God. A God who is not offended at sin; a God who turns a blind eye to the wickedness of men; a God who saves everybody and punishes nobody. So here are my options: I can believe in the God of my conjecture or I can believe in the God of the bible. Guess which one is the real God. So if you’re reading a book that’s small on the bible and big on conjecture - read another book.
Pastor Don.

Something to think about.

"Today's difficult tasks are many times easy tasks that should have been
done yesterday!"

Pastor's Corner

for Sunday 18th March
Blind Guides.
In our journey through Luke on Sunday mornings we came across this statement by Jesus, “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit (or ditch)?” What does Jesus mean? Who are the blind guides today and how can we recognize them? There is a flood of information out there - books, TV evangelists; TV shows; movies - all giving us information on how we should live the Christian life. Some of it is good, a lot of it bad and much of it a mixture of good and bad. So how do we navigate our way through this plethora of advice and information? To avoid following a blind guide you must be able to see; you must be able to discern between the right way and the wrong way. I’m not going to tell you what to read or watch or listen to but I would like to offer some questions to ask when processing all this information. I’ll give you the questions then I will take each question - one every week - and expand on it. I’m convinced that if you apply these question when reading a book, watching an evangelist on TV you will be able to discern the good from the bad and thus be able to keep the good and throw away the bad. The questions are:
Question one: What do they do with the scriptures?
Question two: What do they do with Jesus?
Question three: Do they add anything to the cross of Jesus?
Question four: What do they say about man?
Question five: What do they say and do with sin?
As we unpack these five questions I think you’ll see how they will help you avoid “falling into the ditch”.
Pastor Don.