Sermon Central
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A Fresh (New) Church
Contributed by Pastor Randall Timblin on Nov 17, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: With the current generation and its notion to question everything including the existence of God, we need to FRESHEN up our Bible Knowledge for the LORD told us that it would be profitable for teaching and defending
Many nowadays would tell you that CHURCHES are a thing of the past; and that they are OBSOLETE; that they have outlived their purpose. Let us read from Hebrews before we go any further.
A REFRESHED CHURCH has a REFRESHED PERSPECTIVE. What do I mean by that? Some of the traditional things done in the first half of the twentieth century no longer appeal to the current generation.
I heard Dr. Jeremiah speak a month or so ago about how it makes little or no sense talking to teens and millennials about Jesus when they can’t even come to terms with God.
They ask questions like “if your God is a loving God, why does He let bad things happen to good people” and “if he is a loving God, why is He sending people to Hell?’
We have to have answers for them. Let us take the last one first. God is NOT a LOVING GOD. GOD is LOVE. There is a difference. It means that He does not possess love as we do but instead he is the very definition of love.
Since people in that age group tend to think of themselves much smarter than we older folks who couldn't have possibly lived through the same teen or millennial period where we, like them now, questioned everything, thinking that we knew more than our parents or the older generation specifically.
There is a saying, “the older I get, the smarter my parents seem to be!”
Ask the person asking the question if he or she has heard of the law of non-contradiction. If they haven’t, have them look it up on their i Phone or PC at home or school. It is a natural law that states something cannot be both true and false at the same time. Could their car be out of gas and full of gas simultaneously?
So, if God is love, he cannot be at the same time UNLOVING. John, who walked with God personified in Jesus Christ had first-hand knowledge of His Great Love. So, let us all agree that we must ask the question in another way that does NOT start with a contradiction.
Why would God, who is Love, send someone to hell. Another false premise surfaces and that is the pretense that God SENDS anyone, anywhere. God, because He is love, warns His creation that if they remain sinners that they deserve the ultimate penalty of Hell.
If we, in our great knowledge and wisdom, condemn God for condemning someone to Hell, are we not declaring that we are a higher authority than He?
We must read Romans 1
Sinners and unbelievers challenge God and feel they can escape punishment but have they not had fair warning. They refuse to admit that in everything they see, the hand of God is responsible for its creation. They would far rather believe that they are descendants of apes.
Perhaps, after you discuss the human eye, you might have them address that with an ape at the zoo.
Where was this individual when God created the universe with one Word? Pose a question to this young person.
How would you design the human eye? Where would you start? What materials would you use? How would you make it so that the eye would transfer light to some material in the back of the eye socket and then in turn convert the light to electrical impulses, then delivering those to the brain. And how would you establish the program to convert those thousands of pulses into the ice cream cone you just ate?
Explain to them that there has never been one man, who ever lived, save one, that understood how the human eye works—and He was its designer.
Let us pretend for a moment that this person did not intend to say that he or she was more intelligent than the Creator of the Universe and examine the word “send.” If the young person was warned of a large hole that had opened at the end of their street and were told by the police, “do not get near the hole, for it is extremely dangerous, would they disobey?”
And, if they did, and fell, and lost their life, who would be at fault? Would it be God because He allowed the hole to form?
Or could it possibly be the responsibility of he, or she, who recklessly disobeyed the policemen because he, or she knew better, never studying holes in college and having no degree in any subject even close to understand the force required to re-institute the cave-in that was only being held in place by the friction coefficient of the dirt, and yes, what mass would be required to start an avalanche in the substrate?
