This Saturday just gone past (15th October), young adults from across South Wales and the West of England gathered at the Christchurch Centre, in Newport for a day devoted to worshipping Jesus and freshly considering what’s important for their lives.
A huge thanks to some of our worship team (Jadie Stiven, Andy Maybury, Artur Lieder, Tim & Kate Hacker, Tom Haigh) who also came across and did a stellar job leading us in worship during one of the sessions! (You can see them in action in this photo to the right!)
The simple aim for the Priority Conference was to consider the stuff that really matters; the gospel, the church, and the mission and reflect what difference these should make in our lives. Nathan Smith from Grace Church Bristol, Gareth Lloyd from Sovereign Grace Church, Merthyr and Lewis Roderick from Christchurch Newport showed us what these priorities look like for a Christian.
Session 1 – The Priority of The Gospel (Ephesians 4:1) – by Gareth Lloyd
Gareth Lloyd takes us to Ephesians 4 and shows us the only true response to the gospel of Grace is grace saturated living. But so often our instinct is anything, everything but.
Session 2 – The Priority of The Church (Ephesians 2:11-19) – by Lewis Roderick
In a culture the exalts the individual the triune God calls the christian to community, Lewis Roderick takes us to Ephesians 2 and shows us the priority of the church.
Session 3 – The Priority of Mission (Acts 1:1-14) – by Nathan Smith
Nathan Smith gives us an overview of the book of Acts and shows us the heart, extent and power of the mission Christ calls us to.
Sunday’s sermon was the second part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.
It was preached by Peter Bowley and was entitled: “Gospel Enemy#1 – Self-Righteousness“ from Luke 18:9-14. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
During the message Peter shared some applications questions, taken from the Bridges/Bevington book, to help us identify self-righteousness in our own lives:
1. Do you tend to live by dos and don’ts?
2. Is it difficult for you to respect those whose standards aren’t as high as yours?
3. Do you assume that practicing the spiritual disciplines should result in God’s blessing?
4. Do you feel better than most people?
5. Has it been a long time since you identified a sin and repented of it?
6. Do you resent it when others point out your ‘spiritual blind spots’?
7. Do you readily recognise the sins of others but not your own?
8. Do you have the sense that God owes you a good life?
9. Do you get angry when difficulties and suffering come into your life?
10. Do you seldom think of the cross?
Sunday’s sermon was the second part in our “Bookends of the Christian Life” series, inspired by the book of the same title by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.
It was preached by Peter Bowley and was entitled: “Gospel Enemy#1 – Self-Righteousness “ from Luke 18:9-14. You can listen to or download the audio file from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
Here’s the quotes Peter used, including the “application prayer” from J.D Greear. The applications questions he supplied, taken from the Bridges/Bevington book, to help us identify self-righteousness in our own lives, will follow in a separate post later.
John Piper:
“All the gospels want us to know from the very beginning how the story ends. It ends with Jesus dying as a Lamb for the forgiveness of sins and rising again as Lord of the universe. That is the way to understand every paragraph in the Gospels. Jesus commandments are not mere snippets of wisdom for how to raise your family, or how to prosper in business, or how to feel good about yourself. They are descriptions of how new human beings live who have been born again by God’s Spirit, and have seen the glory of his Son, Jesus Christ, and have recognised the desperate condition of sin they are in, and have ceased to trust in anything about themselves at all for acceptance to God, and have turned wholly to Jesus and all that God has done for us in him, and all God is for us in him. If the Gospels have not had that effect on you yet, you will probably misuse all the commandments of Jesus.”
John Owen:
“When we have our quiet times for the day, or when we have given a tithe, we are confident of God’s love toward us. But when our days become crowded and personal devotions end up neglected, we start to avoid God, sensing that we are under his wrath and anger. We imagine that God is waiting for us to get ourselves together before we again enter his presence. Such thinking betrays our failure to grasp the security of our union with Christ and the depth of God’s love and consequently disrupts our communion with him. Making God’s love contingent on our action is a sad but common misunderstanding in the church. Remember a believer’s union is never in jeopardy. The wrath of God against the the sin of saints was completely exhausted on the cross.”
J. D. Greear:
“About four years ago, I wrote a prayer for our church to help to this end. We often talk about “preaching the gospel to ourselves daily,” but how can you do that? This four-part prayer confronts us with the reality of God’s gift-righteousness and love:1. “In Christ, there is nothing I could do that would make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less.”
- Pray about this “gift righteousness” of the gospel (2 Cor. 5:21) and go to war against the incipient works-righteousness hardwired into our hearts.
2. “Your presence and approval are all I need today for everlasting joy.”
- Pray about this value of God’s presence in our lives. It’s one thing to know that Jesus is your possession; it’s another for that approval to have such weightiness in our hearts that our captivity to other idols is snapped.
3. “As you have been to me, so I will be to others.”
- Pray about and consider the extravagant generosity of God toward us. His generosity toward us leads us to radical generosity toward others.
4. “As I pray, I’ll measure your compassion by the cross and your power by the resurrection.”
- Pray that God would help you view the world through the lens of the gospel. Seeing the compassion and power of God revealed in the gospel produces bold, audacious faith in our hearts.
Join us as we continue our “Christ in the Old Testament” series with a four week study in the Book of Ruth:
Get the audio from our entire “Christ in the Old Testament” series here.
A few folks have sought me out to request a copy of the quotes I shared during Sunday’s sermon entitled, “The Father’s Grace, The Father’s Glory” from Ephesians 1:3-6.
So I thought I’d go ahead and post them here.
I hope they serve you as you reflect on the marvel that is God’s sovereign, electing, saving grace!
C.H. Spurgeon:
“When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when I first received those truths of God’s sovereign grace in my own soul – when they were, as John Bunyan said, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man – that I had made progress in scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, the clue to the truth of God. One week night, when I was in the house of God, I was not much thinking about the preacher’s sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment – I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what lead me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that he was the Author of my faith, and so the doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, ‘I ascribe me change wholly to God.’”
C.H Spurgeon:
“I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.”
J.I. Packer:
“The biblical doctrine of election is that before creation God selected out of the human race, foreseen as fallen, those whom he would redeem, bring to faith, justify, and glorify in and through Jesus Christ… This divine choice is an expression of free and sovereign grace, for it is unconstrained and unconditional, not merited by anything in those who are its subjects. God owes sinners no mercy of any kind, only condemnation; so it is a wonder, and matter for endless praise, that he should choose to save any of us; and doubly so when his choice involved the giving of his own son to suffer as sin-bearer for the elect.”
Mark Webb:
“After giving a brief survey of these doctrines of sovereign grace, I asked for questions from the class. One lady, in particular, was quite troubled. She said, ‘This is the most awful thing I’ve ever heard! You make it sound as if God is intentionally turning away men and women who would be saved, receiving only the elect.’ I answered her in this vein: ‘You misunderstand the situation. You’re visualizing that God is standing at the door of heaven, and men are thronging to get in the door, and God is saying to various ones, ‘Yes, you may come, but not you, and you, but not you, etc.’ The situation is hardly this. Rather, God stands at the door of heaven with His arms outstretched, inviting all to come. Yet all men without exception are running in the opposite direction towards hell as hard as they can go. So God, in election, graciously reaches out and stops this one, and that one, and this one over here, and that one over there, and effectually draws them to Himself by changing their hearts, making them willing to come. Election keeps no one out of heaven who would otherwise have been there, but it keeps a whole multitude of sinners out of hell who otherwise would have been there. Were it not for election, heaven would be an empty place, and hell would be bursting at the seams. That kind of response, grounded as I believe that it is in Scriptural truth, does put a different complexion on things, doesn’t it? If you perish in hell, blame yourself, as it is entirely your fault. But if you should make it to heaven, credit God, for that is entirely His work! To Him alone belong all praise and glory, for salvation is all of grace, from start to finish.”
Mark Webb:
“God intentionally designed salvation so that no man could boast of it. He didn’t merely arranged it so that boasting would be discouraged or kept to a minimum – he planned it so that boasting would be absolutely excluded. Election does precisely that.”
It was great to be together again yesterday morning, gathered as God’s people, united in Christ to celebrate the incredible grace that we’ve received through the gospel.
Yesterday’s sermon from Ephesians 1:3-14, entitled: “The Father’s Grace, the Father’s Glory” is available to listen to or download from here, or via our iTunes podcast feed.
The “Take-It-Home” Sheet for this sermon is available here.
And finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for — the launch of our Ephesians Memory Verse Songs Project. This week’s song – “Before the Foundations of the World (Eph 1:3-6)” is available now!
(To download this song to your computer… For Mac Users, ctrl + Click and download linked file. For PC users, right click the link and “Save As” the file.)
This week’s bulletin is available to download from here.
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