I am very excited to be walking through the Gospel of Mark as a community in this new year. I, as I said during my sermon on Sunday, always enjoy walking through the Gospels. This study of Mark will be a fun and challenging journey. I hope to be able to use this blog as a spot for further notes and thoughts.
“Sermon from May 11, 2014: Jesus, The Son of God”
by Dennis Gulley
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I am on day five of my trip to teach in Ethiopia and I am reminded again that:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12
I am reminded of the spiritual darkness that presides here in Ethiopia. I am sure it exists as much in North America, but it is much easier to see here. The people address it and know that it exists, they have just simply learned to deal with it and live alongside it.
I have had a chance to make some great connections for our desired partnership in Ethiopia, I have gained much knowledge, much insight, but I have also learned the difficulty in seeing the corruption that is prevalent in the “church” here. There is much talk and seeming signs of growth yet there is darkness in much of this, and one must be very careful to see the truth of what is behind much of the growth and energy. It is not always positive or Godly.
The good in these struggles for me is that it makes the grace of God through Jesus Christ that much more important. We must maintain a strong faith in the sanctifying work of the cross.
I pray for my true brothers and sisters in Christ here in Ethiopia and I pray that those leading the Church astray would be exposed by the light of the gospel.
This last weekend I had the privilege to share at our Alberta Baptist Association annual meetings about what God is doing through us at LFC. As I had short notice about my sharing I did a quick mental survey and heart check about what God has been doing. I was overwhelmed by all the good things that we are seeing as God is blessing our desire to follow him.
As I pondered the great things that God is doing, the image of freedom came to mind. I have been apart of the Church my whole life, that is a half of a century for those who are counting, and I have never felt more free than I do now.
I shared with my brothers and sisters that we have consistently sent the message of freedom to our people in three very specific ways and they are:
In the next number of blog posts I want to take some time to unpack these three freedoms as a reminder of the joy we have in serving the Lord and living as his ambassadors here on earth.
Cheers,
Pastor Dennis
In preparation for Easter this year I have been doing a lot of reading and studying about the incarnation of Christ and specifically about his resurrection. This is such a profound and foundational teaching for the Church, I thought I would post a good article I read on this topic.
Here is an extended quote from an article Tim Keller wrote titled “A Case for the Resurrection” in the magazine Relevant. It was subtitled: “Author and pastor Tim Keller on why Christ’s Resurrection is more than just a story.”
The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first
disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us
today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The
Greeks did not believe in resurrection; in the Greek worldview, the
afterlife was liberation of the soul from the body. For them,
resurrection would never be part of life after death. As for the Jews,
some of them believed in a future general resurrection when the entire
world would be renewed, but they had no concept of an individual rising
from the dead. The people of Jesus’ day were not predisposed to
believe in resurrection any more than we are.Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was
highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number of works listing
arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most telling
went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written accounts
of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all
know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For
them, that was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know,
women were marginalized, and the testimony of women was never given
much credence.Do you see what that means? If Mark and the Christians were making up
these stories to get their movement off the ground, they would never
have written women into the story as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’
empty tomb. The only possible reason for the presence of women in these
accounts is that they really were present and reported what they saw.
The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty and an angel declares
that Jesus is risen.
Please check out the Relevant website to read more.
In Him,
Pastor Dennis
In this message I take a look at two very important questions in each of our lives. Who is Jesus and how do I respond to him?