Beholding God in the Work of Salvation – DVD 5
The Adult Sunday School is in a new series that is based on DVD’s and the name of the series will be at the head of every lesson. It is not easy to transcribe an entire lesson from the lecture on DVD, but I’ll attempt to take notes and let you know the primary topics and main points in every message. From there, you will have to fill in the blanks.
It will generally take two weeks to cover each DVD since there is the message, which is about 45 minutes, and there is a practical application, which will be covered the following week. I will make notes of some of the more memorial quotes and if this sounds interesting to you, you might do some research and find the series online. The primary instructor is John Snyder.
Email intro: When and how does the remarkable become mundane and ordinary? This question appears to be at the root of the lesson this week and last week. Think about that for just a moment. Has the work of God become ordinary in your life? One thing that never becomes ordinary around our house is Thanksgiving. There have been times when the planning begins months in advance. We usually know around the end of September or early October who will host. Some members in our family begin to diet two months in advance because they don’t want to have to worry about dieting during that holiday. And there are favorites that we try to be sure are there – like sweet potatoes, ambrosia salad, turkey and sometimes even ham. There is nothing ordinary about our Thanksgiving Day meal. I believe that is because my wife refuses to permit it to get mundane. Ho-hum. We should approach our worship of God in a similar fashion. We should refuse to permit our relationship with God to be boring or mind numbing. We should continue to seek to find the wonder of all He does in us and around us. It doesn’t happen naturally. Naturally we are all drawn to a routine. But then the Christian life isn’t supposed to be the same old, same old. the Christian life is not the natural life. We are new creatures, are we not?
Week Five – Beholding God in the Work of Salvation
Week one begins with a biography about George Whitefield. Some of the high and low points of his life and a little about what drove him. B. early 1700’s, during his years of college he was drawn to a group of believers by the kindness of Charles Wesley. Ordained in 1736, he took a church in Massachusetts in 1746. He visited the US some 7 times until he moved here, each trip taking 6 – 8 weeks to make the journey. During the travel, he read the Puritan authors in depth. Often he would preach 20 times a week and was known to have preached before 20,000 people at one event. Some quotes that were given include:
- “Lord, if I am not a believer, or if not a real one, for Jesus Christ’s sake, show me what Christianity is, that I may not be damned at last.”
- “Works, works. Can a man get to heaven by works? I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope made of sand.”
Whitefield believed that God’s glory is revealed in the salvation of sinners. He knew that the hardest thing to be saved from is not our badness but our goodness. Self-righteousness is the most poisonous of sins. “It is the work of God that makes a man or a woman to be a mirror of God’s greatness.”
The Lesson: Beholding God in the Work of Salvation
Snyder began by asking the group to remember three connected truths.
- What a person believes about God effects what a person believes about themselves.
- What a person believes about themselves effects what they believe about sin.
- What a person believes about God, self and sin effects what they believe about salvation.
One evidence of our low evaluation or esteem about God is our perspective about the gospel. There are times when it appears as though we are bored or not too impressed with the gospel. Watch our reaction to a child who informs us that they have accepted the Lord compared to a child that tells us that they have qualified for team USA in some sport. He mentions his reaction to the invitation to the gospel service in England, when the service was really about all that we have in Christ. The gospel service was a series about all that God does for a sinner and all that God does in a sinner to bring them to redemption.
Our low view of God is no where more obvious than our re-action to someone coming to Christ. Again he stated the following truths, and then elaborated on them.
- All that God does must reflect who He is – all His actions are consistent with His character. The examples He uses is to imagine if we could have been there in history during some of the more remarkable moments, such as the creation of all creation, or the judgment of Christ on the Cross, or the any other time when God’s glory was in action.
- God’s work in the sinner – to bring them to salvation – is the greatest display of God’s glory and charter. This is a clear view into God’s heart since He supplies everything for the sinner to some. Remember that we were dead in our sins – unresponsive. We were unable to respond, that is what dead is. Our part is like that of a person being rescued after a heart attack, they do nothing but provide the heartbeat after they have been revived. But even the heartbeat is determined by God.
A poor view of God destroys our view of the gospel. We have to labor hard to keep our view of God consistent with a Biblical view of God. One indication is that we often use one word for salvation. Someone has been saved. But God uses many words (1) atonement; (2) propitiation; (3) faith; (4) repentance; (5) union with Christ; (6) justification; (7) sanctification; (8) adoption; (10) glorification. (Snyder used a few more)
It is something to reflect that God knows His magnitude. He knows who He is and the significance of who He is. We tend to measure the gospel and God by our own experience. We need to stop thinking that we can grasp God’s significance through our own understanding and lives. When we rethink the gospel, it shines a light on the loveliness of God.
1 Cor 1:23-24 – but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
- The Wisdom of God – it is remarkable to think that God knows everything without the effort. He doesn’t have to remember something and He doesn’t have to come to a conclusion about something. He knows it. Psalms 147:5 – Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.
- The Power of God – Snyder quotes Stephen Charnock “The power of God is that ability and strength whereby He can bring to pass whatsoever He pleases. He cannot be limited in regard to action.” Psalms 89: 6-8 – For who in the skies is comparable to the Lord? Who among the [e]sons of the mighty is like the Lord, A God greatly feared in the council of the holy ones, And awesome above all those who are around Him? O Lord God of hosts, who is like You, O mighty Lord? Your faithfulness also surrounds You.
He goes on to give several examples of how helpless we are – we are 100% dependent on the work of Christ because we were dead in our sins.
Beware of the truth in 2 Tim 3:5 – there will (has) come a time when there will be those who confess to know Christ and although they are “holding to a form of godliness, . . . they have denied its power.” Anyone who claims to know Christ but there is no evidence of this in His power working in their lives most likely is not a believer.
What if the only thing you saw of God was the work of God in the life of a believer? What would you believe about God?