Introduction: This morning we are beginning a refresher course on membership or being part of the church. So today I would like to begin and give us seven reasons why membership is biblical. I used to be one who believed that membership of the local church was an unbiblical innovation that true biblical Christians should cast off, just as they have cast off many man made practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Today I stand before convinced of the opposite position. We live in a day and age that has seen the death of many important and biblical teachings. This has happened for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are in an age that has been deeply impacted by individualism. This has impacted our understanding of our relationship with the church to such an extent that you will find Christians who believe that they don’t need the church, or preachers, or baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, or church discipline, or membership, or many of the other things that relate to being part of the church. They think that because they have the Holy Spirit and a bible that is all they need. They couldn’t be more wrong. Unfortunately they have emphasised being a part of the invisible church at the expense of being part of the visible church. Secondly, another reason why church related issues have suffered in our modern age is on account of an attempt to unify various denominations in certain endeavours like missions, evangelism, worship events, etc. And as soon as you seek unity with people from varying denominations what do you have to sacrifice in order to do evangelism together? Things like baptism, views on church government, membership, etc. are the first to be chucked. Thirdly, as Christians we have grown very shallow in our approach...

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Introduction: We have been looking at the traditional arguments for God such the moral argument, the ontological, the cosmological, and the teleological argument for God. However, we have not been using them in the traditional way. The traditional way built upon Catholic or Arminian notions of man’s depravity makes it appear as if man’s mind is neutral before obvious facts, and that man can reason himself into believing in God. We have disagreed with this from the start. We have insisted that man’s sin makes him unable to be neutral or willing to believe what is present to be known from general revelation. However, we have also insisted that we need the Spirit and the Word to have true knowledge of God. Here is a thought for you to help drill this home. Was Adam dependent upon his sinless mind and general revelation for his knowledge of God or was he, even though sinless dependent upon special revelation? We insist that he was. This helps us to see that even if man were sinless he would still not be competent to make judgements about God’s existence or being, but being a creature is and always has been dependent upon God’s revelation for knowledge of Him.

Introduction: You have heard the saying, ‘I can’t see the forest for the trees.’ Some of you may feel this way as we come to the end of the book of Romans, it is the longest of all Paul’s letters, and the most theological. If I had to ask you to give me a quick rundown of Romans could you do it? Are you familiar with its content and the development of its argument or is it a maze? Romans is a long development of the theological twists and turns of the gospel of God. So it is my job today to take you to 30 000 feet and give you the top view that you can see the forest again.  

Special thanks to Russell Cannons from Shore Baptist in Auckland, for sharing God’s Word with us this Easter.

Special thanks to Russell Cannons from Shore Baptist in Auckland, for sharing God’s Word with us this Easter.

Special thanks to Russell Cannons from Shore Baptist in Auckland, for sharing God’s Word with us this Easter.

Introduction: Today we want to move on from traditional arguments for God, the ontological, the cosmological and the teleological to some new arguments advanced for the existence of God. Today we want to look at what is known as the transcendental argument for God. This is an argument implemented by Cornelius Van Til, perfected by Greg Bahnsen and is now widely used by Presuppositionalists, this is a particular brand of Reformed apologists. The transcendental argument as a type of argument was first used and named by Immanuel Kant. He proposed the transcendental argument to demonstrate contrary to the scepticism of David Hume that things are known by sense alone, and contrary to Liebniz that things are known by reason alone, that things are known by a combination of sense and categories the mind brings to anything we are encountering. In other words, when we know anything we know it by what our senses experience, but also by previous innate categories the mind brings that helps us make sense of the data, like space and causality. These presuppositions in combination with what our sense experience enable us to know things. This transcendental way of knowing became a staple of Van Til’s apologetic method. Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987 was a Reformed Theologian who taught at Princeton and then at Westminster in America. And because of His Reformed theology was critical of traditional arguments for God. You see most traditional arguments for God can be put in the rational or empirical category. In other words, they rest on man’s ability to reason from what man is able to identify as foundational truth; or its rests on man’s ability to scrutinise the universe and reason his way to God. Both rationalism and empiricism as epistemological starting points for Apologetics contradict what the Bible teaches...

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Introduction: What distracts you in worship? Is it the heat? Maybe it is the sounds of people cutting their grass. Maybe you are distracted by the sounds the kids make, misspelt words on the slides, or maybe it is something at work or at home that enters your thoughts and derails you. As we come to the end of Romans we come to the doxology. But Paul is like us he gets distracted. He begins in the traditional way, ‘Now to Him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel….’ And then Paul loses it, the gospel is so distracting Paul goes on a tangent, and then brings it back, ‘to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.’ Paul gets distracted by the gospel and into deeper worship, if only we would get distracted like him! Today we come to the end of our exposition of the text of Romans, I will do one more summary sermon to pull it all together. We began this series in Romans in early February 2012, that is just over 7 years. We have walked with Paul through 16 chapters of gospel grace, how would you end a letter after this, what notes of worship would you hit, what are the specific things that you would want to praise God for after such a reflection on the gospel? Paul’s doxology focuses our worship on three things, the power of God, the gospel of God and the wisdom of God. Our section begins in v21 and includes the final greetings 21-23, ‘Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets...

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Introduction: This is perhaps the oldest and most popular argument for God, it is the argument from design. The Greek word telos which means ‘end’ is used because if we are able to discern design because something is purposed for a particular end, this betrays an intelligent purposer, namely God.

Introduction: If you had to boil down God, the Bible and the gospel down into one word, what word would it be? I think Paul would say that ‘grace’ sums it all up. Grace was the central theme for Paul in all his letters.  He bracketed his letters with grace.