Outline Law Faith Introduction How does one become a child of God? A most simple but a most important question, and one which has been answered a number of different ways. The Liberal answer to this question is, every human being is a child of God; that man is basically good, and therefore they believed in the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. This is a view of our being children of God without taking into account the problem of sin, and God having to judge us for our sin, and having to provide a Saviour in Christ. Inside the church we do not necessarily have one opinion on the matter, there are those who believe that by virtue of baptising infants one can make a child of God, either through a view of baptismal regeneration which makes one a child of God. Or by seeing baptism conferring a legal sonship similar to how Israelites were made children of Abraham through circumcision. Paul is dealing with this question in his letter to the Galatians. The Galatians were dealing with the problem of the Judaizers. These were Jewish converts to Christianity who believed that faith in Jesus was not enough to be saved, but that one also had to become Jewish. In the OT when someone wanted to become a true worshipper of God, one had to convert to Judaism. One would have to receive circumcision, and submit to the various ceremonial laws of the OT. When Jesus came and died for our sins, and made open a way of salvation for the whole world, this changed, we were to no longer see salvation as becoming part of a particular nation and adopting its culture, but we were given an international way of being the church. We...

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Outline Saul’s sin The unforgivable sin Introduction One of the saddest characters in the bible is King Saul. He seemed so promising and started off well, but then revealed a heart that was not really concerned about God but himself. We are approaching the end of Saul’s life. The end of the book of Samuel is a little like a Quentin Tarrantino movie, it breaks off from one story to follow another, but the sequence of the stories are not chronological. For example, 1 Samuel 29 which records the account of David being rejected by the Philistine army, and then having to rescue his people from the Amalekites is previous to the events of this chapter yet are put after. This structure set up a deliberate contrast for us. The contrast is deliberate to show us the difference between a believer who falters, and yet whom God graciously preserves, and the unbeliever who is hardened and whom God forsakes. In this chapter we will be analysing Saul’s sin, you will remember from 1 Samuel 15 when God commanded Saul to wipe out the Amalekites, that Saul took matters into his own hands and adjusted God’s laws to something a little more reasonable for himself. It was then that Samuel uttered the famous words, ‘Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.’ In this chapter we see that Saul goes all the way into witchcraft itself in his disobedience towards God. We want to look at his life today as a warning not to harden our hearts in disobedience. I want to zero in on a particular type of person. This is someone who goes to church but is...

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Outline The office of teacher The responsibility of teaching Introduction Today whenever there is a contest between truth and action, or truth and emotion, it is always truth that suffers. For this reason we have been seeing churches cast off confessions and uniting with others of contrary beliefs in order to DO charitable activities together. Or when it comes to standing up to things like homosexual marriage many fall before the argument that ‘they love each other.’ God has made provision that this is not the case in His church, He has appointed the gift of teaching to keep the purity of the churches beliefs in order that her practices are holy and honouring to Him. In order that the church might be healthy and grow. That the church might be united in the truth and a witness. Today as we look at the spiritual gifts we continue to look at Romans 12:7 at this vital gift of teaching, ‘if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching.’ Today this gift is much despised, there is an emphasis on prophetic leadership, or transporting worship leading, but it is seen as a spiritually inferior thing to have the gift of teaching. We want to look at two aspects of it, how teaching relates to office, and the universal responsibility to teach.

Outline David deceives himself David deceives Achish Introduction There are various types of disobedience to God. There is the outright disobedience that is unmistakable and any neighbour watching our lives will pick up on it immediately. But most of us are not so brave nor so brazen. Most of us are prone to the compromise, the negotiated sin, a little obedience and religion thrown in and a little sin. This is where David is at in the chapter before us. David has just had another brush with death and another Divine deliverance as he has had opportunity to kill Saul again but has spared him. The feeling I get from this scene is of a tired man, and man who has been under pressure for a long time and now he is looking for some respite. Imagine it, David is fearing for his life, he does not trust Saul will not come back again; he does not feel that he can trust his own countrymen who have betrayed him more than once; he has the burden of having to provide for the 600 men and their families that are with him, and no doubt there would be those who would be blaming David for not immediately making their lives easier by killing Saul. So David gives in. We are observing a feinting fit, a moment of weakness, and it does not come out as blatant sin but something more mixed. David flees again from the promised land to Philistia, to serve a Philistine king. But while having a lack of faith in God he does try and make up for things by fighting against those people that God had originally commanded Israel to eradicate. Pragmatism, this is the shape of a lot of our sin. So as we look at...

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Outline Blind slave Afflicted service Introduction All our pleasures are poisoned with pain and disappointment. This is one of the key lessons of the book of Ecclesiastes. We live in a fallen world, the characteristic phrase in Ecclesiastes for this is life ‘under the sun.’ If you have come here for a pick-me-up this morning you are going to be sorely disappointed. This morning’s message is a reality shot. I have been impressed in my devotional reading of Ecclesiastes of the fallen realities we experience and have a strong desire to bring the common sense of the bible’s wisdom literature to bear. The book of Ecclesiastes speaks about many different issues but I want to focus in on the vanity of riches. Wealth is the common pursuit of the Western person. Money opens doors. Each person in the West is trained to believe that money will buy happiness. We educate our children to get good jobs so that they can earn a good wage and be happy. We take out large student loans to get good qualifications so that we can get a good job and be comfortable. Some of the richest people in our society are the people who loan us money, because everyone wants money. Money is thought to give us status, freedom, happiness, power, influence, and many other things, but the world we live in is fallen, it is under a curse, we cannot place our happiness in the empty promises of wealth, luxury and money. Every now and then there is a tearing away of the façade through a financial crash and countries are destabilized, families are crushed, people are disillusioned and even kill themselves. The 1929 Wall Street Crash is a famous example when people through themselves off skyscrapers because of their huge financial losses....

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Outline David’s daring David’s restraint David’s complaint Introduction Knowing a truth and doing it are two different things. We can say that God answers prayer but not believe it if we are not committed to praying. We can say that God can do the impossible but will we trust Him for it? David has been learning some lessons about God in the last few chapters. A major lesson is one of trusting God. God has made a promise that David will be king, it is David’s part now to patiently wait and trust and be faithful and not sin trying to manufacture the results himself. It will be most important for David to know that he is not a self-made man, but that God has done it. This is a lesson we are all learning every day. It is God who saves, God who provides, God who sustains, God who brings about the results and gives rewards, so that it is God who gets the glory. The lives of all the saints of old are lives of patient waiting. Abraham was given a promise of land but only got a burial site in his lifetime as fulfilment. Isaac and Jacob were given the same promises but only greeted them from afar. We are all waiting for the day when God fulfils all His promises and faithfulness while we wait is our portion. David is betrayed by the Ziphites a second time and Saul is on the hunt again with 3000 men. What does patient waiting look like in David’s situation? Daring, restraint and complaint.

Outline The importance of the word The importance of administration The importance of the needy The importance of character Introduction When I said last week that we were going to do a whole sermon looking at the office of deacon today how many of you were excited to come to and listen? I know of two men who were terrified of this week’s sermon because they would no doubt feel under the spot light. But this look at the gift of the office of serving, deacon, is a most important topic for all of us. It is not only something relevant for those who are deacons, but the whole church. I am tremendously annoyed at those who think that sermons on things like deacons are unimportant, it reveals to me that they have no appreciation for what the bible emphasises but are only interested in their own opinions. We will be spending most of our time today thinking about Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 3, the portions of scripture that speak the most deeply about deacons. Here are the four things I think that every Christian needs to learn from the bible’s teaching about deacons. Firstly, the office of deacon exists to free up the ministry of the word, to count deacons irrelevant is to imply the word is irrelevant. Secondly, the office of deacon shows us that administrative issues like office are important for a healthy church. Thirdly, the office of deacon should impress upon all of us God’s concern to care for the poor and needy in the church. Fourthly, the office of deacon reminds us that godly character is the norm for Christian service. Before we turn to Acts 6 let’s consider Romans 12:7 to see why we are talking about the office of deacon at all....

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Outline Nabal David Abigail Introduction Roger Ellsworth talks about three types of grace. Saving grace is when God takes a sinner out of their sin and brings them to saving faith in Christ. Restoring grace is when God takes a believer who has veered off the path into sin and returns them to obedience. And restraining grace, this is when God keeps a believer from heading into sin. In this chapter we see another example of God’s restraining grace, and how God uses a wise woman to shame proud men. God’s goodness to David comes in the form of a godly woman, Abigail. In a chapter full of pigheaded men her humble wisdom shines through. And so true to Proverbs 11:16, ‘A gracious woman gets honour, and violent men get riches.’ We will look at the three main characters of our chapter, Nabal, David and Abigail.

OUTLINE: The paradigm of servanthood The responsibility of servanthood Introduction We are all servants. This is an insulting statement to our generation that treasures freedom and self-definition above all other things. But this statement is true in two ways. Firstly, we are all creatures made by God to serve His will. He did not make us as equals, but to know the joy and wonder of His goodness in the ways of His commandments. We are only truly free when we are doing what we are made for. In this sense every person is a servant, they are servants ontologically, by nature, and are repressing their true selves until they surrender to God. There will inevitably be a disconnect in their hearts until they find their rest in God. But there is more to this story. Because of sin, we are all born sinners and are enslaved by a sinful nature. There is a brokenness in the human heart that has made addicts out of all of us. We are slaves to our wrong desires and willingly hand ourselves over to service to sin. I remember when God converted me how I agonised over this reality. Have you ever tried to stop thinking sinful thoughts, you can’t! Try and stop thinking your better than everyone else, or how idiotic they are, or your anger, jealousy, lust, bitterness, cynicism, aggression, self-centredness, etc. You are a servant of sin. It is only those who are dead and resurrected with Christ, and who have the Spirit within them who are now able to put sin to death and nurture the fruit of the Spirit. The struggle of the Christian life is to stop being the servant of sin and return to being the servants of God. As we continue looking at the spiritual...

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Outline Were tongues understood? Were tongues a sign?