By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, February 14th, 2013:
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Broadcast Notes:
Broadcast Notes:
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‘No other Jesus, No other Gospel, No other Spirit’
Welcome to
Good News in the Morning a program of words and music bringing a Christian
message of hope and courage to those who are looking for an intelligent,
meaningful and spirited approach to faith and life.
This program
is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries, Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm Rev. Brian Wilkie
and I'm happy to be addressing you again today. Before we begin this morning I'd like to draw your attention to the upcoming
event for Good News Christian Ministries: join us for a special evening of the
spoken word and music on May 5 at 7 PM at Bethany Baptist Church. You'll find
Bethany Baptist Church at 382 Centerpoint Drive Ottawa. Special music will be
provided by the singing group Destiny and members of our preaching team will
speak. You can join us afterwards for refreshments. I also want to remind
you again that our website has a series of new devotions written by our
founding preacher the Rev. Dr. Alan Churchill.
As we consider
God's Word today the theme I want to speak on is No Other Jesus, No Other Gospel, No Other Spirit. And so
I'll be reflecting on these words of the apostle Paul, who wrote them in his secondletter to the Corinthians from Chapter11 verses 1 to 6. In this particular passage Paul has been
defending his ministry to the Corinthians because he's found some of the people
to be talking against him and trying to trying to accept other approaches to
the Scriptures. Here's what Paul has to say, "I hope you will put up with
a little of my foolishness but you are already doing that. I am jealous for you
with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I
might present you as a pure virgin to him but I'm afraid that just as Eve was
deceived by the serpent's cunning your minds may somehow be led astray from
your sincere and pure devotion of Christ. For if someone comes to you and
preaches a Jesus other than the one that we preached, or if you receive a
different spirit from the one you received, or different gospel from the one
you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. But I do not think that I'm at
in the least inferior to these 'super' apostles. I may not be a trained speaker
but I do have knowledge. We've made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
This is Paul's response to other teachers teaching other messages and his
warning to the Corinthians.
As we think
about this and the message that has been
given to us in Jesus and by Jesus, about Jesus and for Jesus, here's a song that sums up so much of what we
have gained, pure and unadulterated through God, a song which says, "This
is Love" sung by Glad.
Sometimes we
feel like we are in a whole new era; that the world is getting confusing and
strange. We hear a whole bunch of voices speaking about different opinions of Jesus,
different ideas of the Gospel and different manifestations or doctrines about
the Spirit of God. It's a confusing time to be sure. We are deluged by
information coming from the news and from television shows; opinions expressed
on the Internet, in our churches, in our homes and even on the radio. We hear
so many different opinions and sometimes we do have trouble making sense out of
it.
It might be encouraging to realize that that's exactly the situation that Paul is addressing when he speaks to the Corinthians. You see, the Corinthians were not getting television reports or Internet bulletins but they were getting other people who were coming in trying to present a different gospel, a different Jesus and present a different spirit than what Paul had given and presented to them. It was confusing for them, I'm sure, to have people come from Jerusalem wherein it all happened, and give contradictory interpretations of the events. People who told them that even though Paul said that they didn't need to become Jewish in all their practices, that they really needed to take on some of the most burdensome parts of Hebrew practice. They were sometimes feeling that these preachers were superior to Paul because isn't God a holy God? Isn't God a demanding God? And, isn't the person who makes the heaviest demands the most truthful speaker?
Sometimes we can think that way. Sometimes we can think that if it isn't hard it can't be from God. But Paul was giving a pure and undiluted gospel with the right measure of sternness and the right measure of grace and liberty. He told them over and over again that it was by grace that they were saved. It was God's goodness working in them and bringing about a faith, a trust in God, rather than a faith and a trust in their own behavior. Paul also instructed them on how to live in the love of God rather than living in the selfishness and sin of their previous life; but then these other teachers came along and offered different versions of events.
It might be encouraging to realize that that's exactly the situation that Paul is addressing when he speaks to the Corinthians. You see, the Corinthians were not getting television reports or Internet bulletins but they were getting other people who were coming in trying to present a different gospel, a different Jesus and present a different spirit than what Paul had given and presented to them. It was confusing for them, I'm sure, to have people come from Jerusalem wherein it all happened, and give contradictory interpretations of the events. People who told them that even though Paul said that they didn't need to become Jewish in all their practices, that they really needed to take on some of the most burdensome parts of Hebrew practice. They were sometimes feeling that these preachers were superior to Paul because isn't God a holy God? Isn't God a demanding God? And, isn't the person who makes the heaviest demands the most truthful speaker?
Sometimes we can think that way. Sometimes we can think that if it isn't hard it can't be from God. But Paul was giving a pure and undiluted gospel with the right measure of sternness and the right measure of grace and liberty. He told them over and over again that it was by grace that they were saved. It was God's goodness working in them and bringing about a faith, a trust in God, rather than a faith and a trust in their own behavior. Paul also instructed them on how to live in the love of God rather than living in the selfishness and sin of their previous life; but then these other teachers came along and offered different versions of events.
Life can be
confusing and once again I'm encouraged by the fact that the Corinthians
clearly listened to Paul's message: they preserved his letter because they
recognized it as at the honest truth coming from God himself as they read
Paul's rebuke and correction, and they received it and this community that passed
on the gospel to us was the community that remembered what Paul had spoken as
the revelation of God.
It's just good
to know that the word of God does persevere in the midst of confusing times.
It's good to know the word of God continued and it will continue to the next
generation. It will continue in our lives as we continue to devote ourselves to
God.
Though Paul
spoke about how ready the Corinthians were to tolerate these other viewpoints,
it's understandable that they were: we all want to learn and we don't want to
close our ears to a message before we've really had a chance to evaluate it.
Paul cautions them that they might be they might be allowing people who have
proven themselves to be false to continue to bear their influence on them. If
one subjects oneself to a liar and continually hears the repetition of that lie
it's not long before that lie becomes acceptable.
I don't think
Paul is telling people not to entertain any other speakers. There were other
true apostles that would come along and you can hardly know a true apostle from
the false one until you've heard them out, but there comes a point where we
have to decide whether the message we're hearing is consistent with what Jesus
Christ himself taught.
There comes the time when we have to say,
"I'm going to devote myself to the truth and not entertain myself with
fiction!" So we today have the same problem the Corinthians did. Paul
offers us the same solution: to look very closely at the qualifications of the
gospel and the messengers of the gospel. Throughout the letter to the
Corinthians Paul does what he calls 'boasting' but he's actually kind of
working backwards. He talks not about how powerful and strong he is but how weak
he is and how in his weakness God has done great things. He doesn't talk about
how successful he's been with the gospel but he talks about how much he
suffered for the gospel. He doesn't talk about the things that the world values
- eloquent speech and powerful illustrations - he talks about the power of the
Holy Spirit working in signs and wonders in his own life.
I found that
as I read this letter to the Corinthians so encouraging that Paul was able to
write to the Corinthians and say, "You saw how the marks of the apostle
were in my life - that there were signs and wonders and miracles in your
midst." It would be very hard for Paul to write that to the Corinthians
and very unlikely for the Corinthians to hold onto that letter if that claim of
Paul's was false.
At another
place, Paul says it's good to note that the messages of the cross is a true
message but it doesn't sound like wisdom it sounds like foolishness. The message
of salvation through grace doesn't sound like what we expected but it is the
truth of God.
Knowing the
weakness of our own wisdom God accompanied the wisdom of his word with the
demonstration of his power in the life of Jesus Christ and in the works of
those who carried his message into the world. Even today we still see evidence
of God healing people in prayer and God working marvellously in the world to
confirm the message as it goes out into the world. It's not just a question of
intellectual and academic debate. It's a question of drawing near to God. That
is our task as we consider our duty to hold on to the one gospel and the one
Lord in the one Spirit.
Before we
continue let's listen to a song that teaches us the message of the gospel in an
old hymn, There Is a Green Hill which is from an album called A
Celebration of Hymns.
When Paul
spoke of the unity of the gospel, the singularity of the gospel, he spoke about
it in three aspects. He said that people are coming to the Corinthians that are
preaching a different Jesus than the one that Paul preached. Now I wish I'd found
for this program a song that was recorded probably 40 years ago now by Larry
Norman called The Outlaw, for he begins verse by verse talking about
different people's perspectives on Jesus beginning with:
"Some say he was
an outlaw that he roamed across the land
with a band of
unschooled ruffians and a few old fisherman.
No one knew just
where he came from or exactly what he'd done
but they said he must
be something bad that kept them on the run."
So there's one
perspective on Jesus. The song goes on to talk about other people looking at
his miracles and seeing him as a magician is one verse has:
"Some say a
politician who spoke of being free;
he was followed by
the masses on the shores of Galilee;
he spoke out against
corruption and he bowed to no decree
and they feared his strength and power so they
nailed him to a tree."
Larry Norman
concludes the song after taking look at all these other perspectives on Jesus
and he says:
"Some say he was
the son of God a man above all men
that he came to be a
servant and to save the world from sin
and that's who I
believe it is because that is who I believe"
Larry Norman
says so much of what I want to say in this message that there are many
perspectives on Jesus, especially in the modern world as people often deny the
existence of any god and just want to reduce Jesus to a human revolutionary or
a human moral teacher or even perhaps some kind of outlaw. But Jesus was the
son of God. Jesus claims to be the son of God and Jesus demonstrated that he
was the son of God in all that he did. He says in effect "If you don't believe me
because the words I speak which are the words that come from my Father take a
look at the works that I do." Jesus is testified about not just in
his wisdom but in the power of the Father working through him.
We need to
understand that this is the Jesus that came from heaven and was born for our
sakes: Jesus who is fully God and fully man; Jesus who is Savior not just
helper, although he is a helper, he's a savior. Not just giving us advice but
lifting us up out of our sin, not just teaching is a new way to live but giving
us a new life. This is the Jesus that Paul preached. This is the Jesus that
Matthew Mark Luke and John testified to in their accounts of the life of Jesus
this is the Jesus who still lives today and is with us always.
There is only
one Jesus and we can find this one Jesus in the words of Scripture's because
God has arranged that the testimony about him should be sufficient. That we
should find the one who spoke the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, the
teachings that are found in all four of the Gospels and the various teachings
are found only in one or two of them. The teachings that are echoed in the
teachings of Paul and the writings of Peter and James and John and Luke, these
are the true testimony to Jesus Christ.
Even though
sometimes this Jesus might not be the one we wanted him to be, he might say
things that we wished he didn't say, give commands that we hoped he would loose
instead of tighten, or in fact give freedoms that we hoped he would restrict.
This is the Jesus that is Lord Jesus, to whom we must say yes.
Likewise there
is only one gospel. It is the gospel of salvation by faith, a salvation in
which the grace of God gives people trust in Jesus and it's through that trust
in Jesus that they can be confident of eternal life. Some people wanted the
Corinthians to put their trust in the works they did: in the rituals of
Judaism, or in the good works of generosity and so on.
We're called
to generosity, we're called to the good works that God has prepared for us, but
Paul and Jesus tell us that it's by the righteousness that he gives that we are
saved. If you've been worried that you haven't been good enough or you've been
worried that your faith isn't strong enough Jesus didn't commend people on the
strength of their faith when they came to him for healing, he commended them on
the fact that their faith brought them to Jesus.
When the
crippled man was brought to him by the force of his friends, he was a paralytic
and hadn't moved an inch himself but when Jesus saw the faith of his friends he
said to him, "Your sins are forgiven." Why was that faith sufficient?
It was a faith that came to Jesus Christ. Faith in the book of Hebrews is said
to be quite a small thing. Jesus himself described that faith like a mustard
seed was was good enough. The author of the book of Hebrews says that if we
have faith it means that we believe that God exists and that we he rewards
those who seek him. Faith that is strong enough simply to turn to God and ask
is the faith that Jesus requires of us and the faith that Jesus gives to us.
That faith
will grow into obedience, joy and into love. It will grow and drive out all sin
and uncleanliness, but it's that tiny faith which is the gospel, not a gospel
of works.
Likewise the
Holy Spirit is one Spirit, the Holy One. Scripture speaks of different spirits
in the world and the spirit of a man but God tells us to turn to him for the
Holy Spirit to receive power from on high in order to live as he would have us
live and do the works that he would have us do. There is one gospel and God
calls us to follow it.
Would you pray with me?
Almighty God
thank you for the one gospel, for one way, one perfect way by which all might
be saved. Help us to turn to you and to trust in the word you've given and the
spirit that you offer to us. Fill us, Lord, and lead us, Lord, in your one
gospel. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
Thank you listeners for your encouragement, prayer and financial support. You keep us on the air week by week. If you can, please make out a check payable to Good News Christian Ministries and send it to Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. We will send you a receipt at income tax time.
Also tell
others about this program and don't forget to visit our website. You will find
several of our programs available on podcasts. As I said earlier look on our
website for a new series devotions written by our founding preacher Rev. Dr.
Alan Churchill and don't forget about the special
evening of the spoken word of an music on May 5 at 7 PM at Bethany Baptist
Church at 382 Centerpoint Drive in Ottawa. Special music will be provided
by the singing group Destiny and members of our preaching team will be
speaking. And please join us for refreshments afterwards as well.
Be sure to
worship in a church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out with
compassion, integrity and resolve.
Just as last
week I want to conclude a program with a song by that is very special to me
it's the song sung by Stephen Cowley recorded just last year. This was a song
that he was singing back when I was first discovering the joy of Jesus Christ
and Stephen had a tremendous impact on bringing me to salvation in Him. And
this is a song that he sang about the stubbornness that we sometimes have about
not wanting to accept the revelation that God gives in Jesus. This song is
called We would not Believe from Stephen's album Dross to Gold.
May you know
Jesus Christ personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep within
your heart and may heavenly Father surround you with his constant and abiding
and accompanying love.
- Rev. Brian Wilkie
http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/12493/good_news_048_apr14.mp3
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