Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 14, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Church

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June 14, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Church · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to see you here.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: So much fun to get together and especially in light of the last few months.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Praising the Lord for statistics.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday in Kansas, uh the numbers keep dropping.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: We had fewer new cases than we've had, except for one day, and that was on a Sunday.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh in three months, 32.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So let's uh pray those numbers keep dropping down to zero, or well, they'll probably never drop to zero.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: So but um we're in the second week of restart.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago, uh we had restart your engines just basically, you know, be willing to get back out of the house.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: God's calling us not to quarantine the rest of our lives this morning.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: A specific question, why get together?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Pretty basic question, but it's a question that uh I mean there are a bunch of good reasons not to get.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: There have always been good reasons not to get together for church.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially when I remember when I was going to a Christian college.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh not very many of us went to church.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: There are all kinds of reasons.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Always there are reasons for not going to church.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: For one thing, you can hear better sermons online, you know, plug in Tony Evans or whatever else.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: So you get intellectually challenged, or you don't, you know, you're intellectually unchallenged, and you're even bored at times, uh, you know, in my sermons, I can tell, because some of you lay out prone, you know.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: If you just stay seated, you know, wear a mask, slide the mask up over your eyes, that'd be fine.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: But and and you can hear better music online.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest, you can hear if you if you like worship music, you can hear amazing, you can hear the original performers of the songs online.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: And now you add to the reasons for not going to church the fact that there is some risk, however low, in going to church and gathering together.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And it makes this really a good question.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: And my purpose this morning is uh not to drag everyone out of their homes, you know, to come to church.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: In fact, let me give a disclaimer that nothing I'm going to say this morning, and this is especially for those of you watching online or listening, nothing I'm going to say this morning is trying to talk you out of your home to get you into this building.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: My purpose, uh, especially for those of you who are who are uh have higher morbidity, high risk rate, or whatever.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you do stay at home.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: But it I think it's important to remind ourselves of the wonder and the glory and the import and the significance in God's mind, in heaven's mind, of what we're doing this morning.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Those of you who are here, of getting together bodily with each other.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to talk to you about.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And I I will I'll talk about risk this morning.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: But again, disclaimer: this is not telling you I want you to take risks and endanger your life, but it is to say that risk was part of the standard operating procedure and has been part of the standard operating procedure, and still is the standard operating procedure for one out of nine Christians today in the world.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Risk is a part of the standard operating procedure of meeting together as Christians.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: But I want to address the risk and say that sometimes I suppose it's important to focus on the risk.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Swindah, uh most of you probably have heard of him, good guy.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And anyway, he had uh he has a younger couple who are friends who had a preschool child, and they're really into ecology, they're really into nature, and they were driving.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: He was telling the story that they were driving up on the East Coast, and they were not far from the Atlantic Ocean, and this young couple came across a sign that said, Naturist camp, three miles with an arrow pointed toward the beach.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Thinking, not understanding that what naturist means is that there's really nothing between your body and nature, uh, they turned up the road thinking they might meet some fellow nature lovers there at the beach that they could talk to about that.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: So there they are in the front seat of the car, and they're uh preschooler in the back, and all of a sudden, two miles up the road, they look off in the distance, and here come three bikers who are entirely nude.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: And realizing their mistake, all of a sudden, to their embarrassment, the the dad jams on the brake, starts trying to do a U-turn on this narrow road, and the mom turns around and she tries to engage uh their little boy in conversation to distract him, none of which works.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And uh the boy's staring intently as the car gets turned around, and then both parents are happily amazed when they hear their boy burst forth and say, Look, mom and dad, none of them are wearing helmets.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a really good thing to focus, admire that focus, to focus on risks.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: But in focusing on risk, of course, that little boy had missed, fortunately, the bigger picture.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I want to share with you uh perhaps, shall we say, the bigger picture of getting together the picture that is bigger than risks.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: And I want to give you this, a topical sermon has three points.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I'll go over, I'll touch on three or four major passages in Scripture.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And the first point I want to make is amazingly and uniquely in all of the world, among all the world religions, our God is a getting together God.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Our God is a getting together God.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: He shows that first of all at the very beginning in creation in the Garden of Eden, where we have this unique verse, right after Adam and Eve sinned, remember, we read in Genesis 3.8, then Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God, hid among the trees, and the Lord cries out, Where are you?
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Wow, I I've been uh so I've just been struck more than anything else I'm gonna say this morning by when I was when I've been considering the last 10 days or so, this topic of why the Lord would care so much about us getting together.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: This was the picture that came to mind.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I thought of myself as Adam or as Eve in the garden created, and I look up, and there is, wow, there is the omnipotent God of the universe.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And I discover that he's created me, and he's the one who's created everything I see, and he is he is so unbelievably beyond anything I can imagine, and I am amazed that he wants to talk to me.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: I have you ever been around Jimmy Meet, some of you have met the president of the United States sometime in your life.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have uh mentioned to me uh I had a daughter, my daughter, when she was in St.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Andrews, somehow uh got to uh uh you know greet the people, the golfers who are coming for the British Open, the Open.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And so she she she knew nothing about golf, and she contacted me later.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of Tiger Woods and you know and so forth?
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And so she didn't understand, but if it had been me, I would have been tongue-tied.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And some of you have been around celebrities, maybe, or you've you've you've shaken hands with Taylor, well, you can't shake hands anymore, but you've said hi to Taylor Swift or Brad Pitt or you know, something like that.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And if you take that, you know, the amazing feeling you get by being around a celebrity, I know it's all psychological, and then you multiply that, and you think of being able, I mean, Lord God comes down from heaven.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: No other religion like this.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: In Islam, yeah, God's merciful and stuff.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Are you crazy?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: The idea that that God, Allah, would ever come down and talk to you, that is so alien to the to the religion of Islam.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: It's not part of Hinduism, it's not part of any other religion.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Every other religion is us searching for God, and Christianity is the only one where God actually searches for man and comes down and he walks in the garden.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: In the cool of the day, the expression here in Hebrews is as though this happened regularly.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: This was God's pattern that he would come down when it was most convenient, literally in the wind of the day, probably later in the afternoon, you know, when the breeze finally starts to blow.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: It's convenient, it feels good to them.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: He could have walked down there anytime.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to walk with them, and he wants to talk with them, he wants to get together with them, he wants to hang with them, and you're going, what are you doing?
9:37
SPEAKER_00: You've got the other two members of the Trinity.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: This is certainly proud of the Lord Jesus Christ, second member of the Trinity, whenever you read about a physical body being involved.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: I take this literally.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: This is a physical body.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: God comes down, Lord Jesus.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: For eternity, he's been hanging with his best buds, the Holy Spirit, God the Father.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: He's got all of these brilliant angels who are a lot smarter than Adam and Eve, and yet every day he's coming down to walk and talk with Adam and Eve.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: You can see why I was gobsmacked.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: I hope you can about this.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And of course, they hid from the Lord God because they're feeling guilty.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: They're going, we have a good thing going, but man, we've really blown it.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: He told us not to do this, and we succored and we fell.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, What a question.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: This is the first question in the Bible, where are you?
10:23
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the first question in the New Testament is the wise men saying, Where is he who's born king of the Jews?
10:31
SPEAKER_00: This is a situation where, you know, where are you?
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And we get together with each other because God's a getting together God, and he wants to know where you are.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: One of the things about coming to church, getting together with each other, is if you hear God asking you this question, where are you right now?
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will answer honestly, I'm stuck.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Or I don't know where I am, but I know I'm not exactly where I want to be.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: And you come and you experience, you know, the glory, really, is what it is, God would say.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: And the joy and the wonder of worshiping the God of the universe, and then listening to his voice and the word of God and encouraging each other.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, you're hearing, where are you?
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you talk with someone else about that, and they invite you into their small group, and you find out where you are, and you get realigned and you get unstuck.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I could take all day on my thoughts on how amazing this is that that that God would come down and walk and even ask, Where are you?
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
11:47
SPEAKER_00: So uh uh I I don't know what it looked like.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: It was an old, old, old, old drawing.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: So here's God, and he's walking with them.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's what it was, but of course, then it all broke down because of their sin and they left the garden, but it's gonna happen again.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: We read at the end of time in the New Jerusalem that he'll be glad to talk with us.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Just go, says Isaiah.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Just go to Jerusalem.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: He'll meet with you.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: He's got time.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: But he's a getting together God at the creation, we find out later in the Old Testament.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: He delivers them from Egypt, and you think that's fine.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: He'll take them into the promised land, but then he says, you know what?
12:28
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to travel with you.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to come with you.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: I'll live among the people of Israel.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: I'll be their God, and so he comes down.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Here, build the tabernacle this way with the holy place and the holy of holies, and then I'll come down.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: I'll come down there.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, you know, when God said, My presence shall go with you, and literally the presence in Hebrew is panim.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: That means face, physical.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll be there.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: See, my face will be with you, and I'll give you rest.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says to him, if your face doesn't go with us, don't even bring us up from here, because we've got to have you.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: We've got to have you with us.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: But God's a getting together God, and he says, I will.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And then we find he's a getting together God, of course, at the first coming.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: We had creation, now incarnation, the word became flesh and lived here on earth among us, and we celebrate the wonder of this at Christmas.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: You know that he would come down, and not even as a grown person, but as a baby, so he could fully identify with us because he wanted to get together with us and he wanted to live with us.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And then he wanted to die for us, John 1.14.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And so you read these stories that for three years he just hung with, he traveled with, he slept with, he ate with his disciples and his followers.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Clearly a getting together God.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: And finally, he's going to prove that he's a getting together God at his second coming, the recreation.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: It may happen soon.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Look, the home of God, this is in the book of Revelation.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And when he comes down, New Jerusalem comes down to earth.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Look, the home of God is now among his people.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: He'll live with them.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: God himself will be with them.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: It repeats it several times in Revelation 21.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Like, can you believe this?
14:20
SPEAKER_00: That our God, who is whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways, who in some ways is more alien to us than the movie Alien.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's just this, except he says, you know what?
14:33
SPEAKER_00: I created you in my image, and so I'm not weird.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're not going to be terrified of the way I look when you see me.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Fear not.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
14:45
SPEAKER_00: At his second coming.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: So God is a getting together God, and that's one reason why it's a wonder and an importance that you and I get together.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: It's not nothing, it's not something that just doesn't matter because you can hear better sermons and music online.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: It does matter.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: All right?
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, God made us getting together beings.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: That's just how he made it.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: He made us by nature getting together beings, because he gave us bodies.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: We're body, we're soul, we're spirit, whatever we are, we're a lot of things.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: We're immaterial part, but he gave us a physical part so we are present in a place at all times.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: You are here, you're not at home.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: You are here, you're not, you know, in Hungary or wherever else.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: You are you are in this place at this moment, and God, and God does that so that we can get together with other bodies that are present in a place.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 2.7 is the creation verse.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God formed a man's body from the dust of the ground, breathed into it the breath of life.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: We are animated bodies.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you're aware that down through history, the Platonists, the Greeks, and a lot of good Christian people, even, have so separated our spiritual part from our physical part, and because of the sin that infects our physical part, they have dreamed of flying away.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll fly away, I'll get rid of this horrible body and be a spirit, because my spirit, Jeromans 7, really wants what God wants, and yet it's really not true.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, I was just thinking about being present and being here.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, are you present and are you here?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: We say, yeah, I'm here.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And and I I remember I remember the shock.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: So I was invited by um uh I was invited by a man in a church who's uh Jim Ryan, who and he was a congressman, to come up and pray in Washington, D.C.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I was excited about that.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: I thought, wow, what an honor.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: And you know, worked hard in the prayer, you know, fly up there and he greets me and so forth.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: So I had no idea it was coming.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And so I walk into the chamber, House of Representatives pray.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's and I look and I go, where are all the people?
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And because there was only like three people in the whole place, and I'm I'm pretty well aware there's like I think a couple of hundred of those guys supposed to be there, you know.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: So, oh well he says the actual meeting doesn't start for half an hour, then we have the prayer half an hour earlier, so we get done with all of those things early and so forth.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, okay, but if they're not here, if their bodies are not here, what's the significance of giving a prayer?
17:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, I didn't say that, but he says, now it'll be in the congressional record.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, great, thousands of people look up the congressional record like I do, just to read the prayers.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, you know, you get the you know, all I'm saying here is not that that was nothing, and not that I still don't appreciate Jim and N.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Ryan for that, and I got to meet a bunch of congressmen and stuff.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: But but if you're not here, you know, I mean, Woody Allen was right, 80% of success is just showing up in life, putting your body in that place.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, why do random thoughts hit me just while I'm preaching?
18:27
SPEAKER_00: So there is a funny line in a movie, I think it's called The Madness of King George, where they stick in his mouth the line.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm here, but I'm not all there.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: So that really has nothing to do with anything, but um, but it's true.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: You could be here, but not all there, but at least you're here.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: That's my point.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Your body is here, and if you're not here, it really does matter because God has made us with bodies that are meant to occupy a space in the universe, that space next to someone else's space so that we get together physically.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: That's just a really important thing for him.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And when you start denigrating the value of your body, okay, you're not going the direction that the Bible goes, because remember when Jesus died for you, he clearly says he died for your body as well as your spirit.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: He saves your body and redeems your body as well as your spirit because you are a body, you are a body with life in it.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: I hate my body.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I've always hated my body.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me too.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: So, especially more and more.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: But but keep keep with me here for just a second.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: He died for your body, and guess what?
19:38
SPEAKER_00: That is the one thing he wants.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you read, this is the most famous spiritual life verse in the world.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: This is the verse that has sent literally thousands upon thousands of Christians into the ministry or to be missionaries or to serve God the rest of their lives or change their lives, Romans 12, 1 and 2.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: So, dear Christian friends, this is an L NLC, I plead with you to give your bodies to God.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Or in a version some of you know better like I do.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: And when you read that for the first time, it comes across a little strange in your ears.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: You expect him to ask for your spirit, you expect God to ask for your heart, right?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And he does, and you expect him to ask for, you know, your personality, but the one thing, this is the key spiritual life verse in the book of Romans, folks, and the one thing he asks of you more than anything else is, wow, it's your body.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And you ask, why is that that God would ask for my body more than anything else?
20:50
SPEAKER_00: And the answer, it seems to me, at least in part, is that by is that if you are going to do the will of God, it is with your body that you are going to do it.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: It is with these hands that you are going to touch or drive your car where God wants you to drive, touch what God wants you to touch.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: It's with these feet that you are going to go where God wants you to go.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: It's with these ears that you listen to what God wants you to listen to.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: It is with these eyes that you look at those things that God wants you to look at.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: It is with your body that you serve God, or you will not be serving him at all.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that strikes me is that God asks first and foremost for your body, this thing that is present in a place, right, and that can get together with other bodies.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: The other reason is that when he asks for your body, he's asking for it all.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: He's asking for it all.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Because when you go Get a person's body, you get all of them.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: God is now taking that religious game we play where we say, I'll give God some of my time.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: I'll give him 10 to 12 on Sunday morning, or I'll give him small group time during the week.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: But the rest of the week is mine, and this is why you have friends who you talk to and they're so spiritual during that time period with you, and then you find out that they've been living crazy lives for the other 146 day hours of the week.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: But you see, God takes that game that we like to play, that game that segments our lives into dirt different periods of time and says, and he throws that game on the floor and he stamps on the board and he says, No, I want your body, which means that's 160 hours, 88 hours a week.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: I want you for all your life, all your life.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And you see, that's why this verse has transformed the lives of me and so many hundreds of thousands of other Christians, because you realize he's asking for all of you from your head to your toe.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: And just to pick one example, uh a doctor, a young medical student named Walter Wilson in Kansas City, Kansas, in the early 1900s, about 1925, was expecting a fine career.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: He was sharp, he was popular, and he went to church one Sunday night, and he heard a famous person named James Gray, happened to be the president of Moody Bible Institute, preach on this first.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And Walter Wilson was so struck by this, he went back to his apartment.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: He's talking with his roommate about this, and they both realized God was asking for all of them.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: And his prayer, as Walter wrote it down later, was right now, God, I give you this body of mine from my head to my feet.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: I give it to you.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: I give you my hands, my limbs, my eyes and lips, my brain, all that I am within and without, I hand over to you.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: You may send this body to Africa or lay it on a bed with cancer.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: It's your body from this moment on.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: He went on and became not only a well-known doctor, he became the most famous Christian doctor in the world.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: He established Calvary Bible College, Calvary Baptist Church downtown.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: And when the Barclay family, whose grandchildren are still here at TBC, said they wanted to start a Topeka Bible Church in 1939.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Walter Wilson came down from Kansas City and helped establish the church that you're part of right now.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Because this verse about his body had captured him, and he realized God had made him a bodily creature, and he should give his body, as Romans 12, 2 said, he should present his body to God every minute of every day.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: So God made us getting together beings.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Now notice this carries into the future, though many of us have failed to realize it.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is significant because uh of Americans who believe in a resurrection of the dead, two-thirds believe they will not have bodies after the resurrection.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: This is Randy Elkorn in his book.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Kevin points this out, but this is self-contradictory and non-physical resurrections like a sunless sunrise.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: No such thing.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: By its very nature, the word resurrection means bodily resurrection.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, if Christ wasn't raised, then you won't be physically raised.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And if that's true, we don't even have a religion.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: We are, he says, living a futile, or in one translation, a miserable faith.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: You're still in your sins.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: We are to be pitied more than all men.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Now that's significant.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: You're going to take the body you have into death.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: It will be transformed, right?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: But will still be, the Bible tells us, recognizable, even though then it's imperishable and it's beautiful, right?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I love uh, yeah, let me give an example from a movie in 1990, a movie called Ghost Molly, and uh what's his name?
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Where um uh yeah, thank you.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: So they're in love and so forth, and she's you know making something in pottery and so forth.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is horribly in the first minutes of the movie, he gets murdered.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: He gets murdered, and um nice thing about that movie is that the guy who murders him it clearly goes down to hell immediately, and you're going, wow, that's pretty rare.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, uh um actually it happens a little later in the movie.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: He gets anyway, so so anyway, so uh so he hangs around for a while, invisibly, he's a ghost, and so forth.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And finally he finds a way to make himself known to Demi Moore, to Molly, sorry, by pushing a penny up a door and by other things, and she senses that he's really there, and she loves that and so forth, but it makes her cry even more because sensing his presence isn't enough.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of that movie, somehow he is able in a moment to appear again physically, and that is the climax of the movie.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: It's the fulfillment of all her hopes and dreams.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: He's able to say goodbye, he's able to kiss her and so forth.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: And I thought of that movie because that's the way the Apostle Paul feels in 2 Corinthians 5 when he says, uh when I die temporarily, I'm gonna be a disembodied spirit until I get my new body.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And he says, that makes me shudder.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: He hates that idea, he says.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I do not want to be outside of a tent.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Give me a tent, and God says, I'll give you a tent.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: That tent will be recognizable.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: A lot of arguments, by the way, about what we're gonna look like, right?
28:09
SPEAKER_00: In the next Augustine said, we'll all be like 28 years old, or you know what, though, when we really looked good.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: I didn't look good at 28.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping it's more like three years old or something.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: So um, but you know, there's a lot, you know, I don't, I think we're all gonna look beautiful.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're gonna look like suntanned Adonises or whatever it is, but um but a lot of discussion about C.S.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Lewis in his books when he pictured people like in Great Divorce, he said, he said, you know what, never thought for a minute about how old they were.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: It's just that you that was the person you knew at their best.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Randy Elkorn, what is he anyway, different people have it different ways.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what we'll look like, but one thing's for sure from the Bible, we'll be recognizable, we will live forever, we'll be healthy, we'll be beautiful, and we will be bodily creatures in a certain place.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll be able to transport ourselves across the solar system or pass through walls like Jesus did.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we will, I don't know.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: But we'll be actual bodies, and getting together will still be part of who we are, because we'll have bodies that have tears wiped away and we'll have eyes.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
29:26
SPEAKER_00: God made you and me getting together, getting together beings.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And Johnny Erickson Todd is so right, I think, when she says, Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: My paralysis makes what I am to be all the more grand when you contrast atrophied useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced that if there are mirrors in heaven, the image I'll see will be unmistakably Johnny.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Johnny, although a much better, brighter Johnny.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: It's Johnny Erickson Tada.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And somehow that's important, I think, to us getting together even today.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: That God made us bodily creatures.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: So he's a getting together God, unlike any other religion that we know.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: He's a getting together God.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, he made us getting together beings.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: So he wants us to get together.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: And the final point is a little longer.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in unsafe times, getting together and encouraging others to get together is more important than ever.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: I want to say this about risk.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it carefully.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: There's never been a time since the beginning of the church when it has not been risky for a large percentage of Christians in the world to get together.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when I have gone over to Muslim countries and to other countries, but mainly Muslim countries, when I have gone in, I have known they were watching me, and I have known that the fact that I was meeting with an underground church was putting every person there at risk.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And if they had said to me, we don't want to take risks, we don't want to endanger each other, we won't meet, I would have been fine with that.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: But they gladly and enthusiastically would say, no, we want to take that risk.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: And in the first days of the Christian church, as you well know, as historian Stephen Neal says, every single Christian was well aware that eventually they might have to testify to their faith and then lose their life.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: Lose their life.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Today, one out of nine Christians in the world is in danger if they get together.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: 260 million Christians live as persecuted people.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: Persecution has always been part of the standard operating procedure of the church.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And it was, of course, especially so in the first century.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: And so those Christians who were suffering and persecuted and in unsafe environments passed around a book.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Nobody yet is sure who wrote this book.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: The book is called Hebrews.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: It was addressed especially to those people most at risk who were Jewish converts to Jesus Christ.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: And that book addresses their suffering and their endurance and so forth, and then comes to a climax in chapter 10, verse 25, when the writer says, let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Let's not give up meeting together.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: In unsafe times, getting together is important.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on to his real point.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, But let us encourage one another.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: That's why we get together, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: It's for our sake, but even more, it's for the sake of others.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you study that passage really quickly, a summary of this wonderful passage, it's called the lettuce passage because there are three pieces of lettuce here.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Lettuce do three things.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: In unsafe times, what do you do?
33:05
SPEAKER_00: What you do with God, he says, let us draw near.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: You need to get closer than ever to God in unsafe times, right?
33:13
SPEAKER_00: In insecure times, run to God, get closer to Him than ever.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says in verses 19 to 22.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to God's word, he says, let's hold fast, let's grip, like a vice grip, let's grip.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: He says, the promises of God.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: For God, for the hope that He's given us and hope in the New Testament is not dreaming of possibilities, right?
33:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not dreaming of possibilities, it's being convinced of promises, of assurances.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: It's as sure as uh so I love to take the grandsons fishing, and my one of my grandsons uh said uh this summer, I'd promised him, I told him I was gonna take him fishing the next day.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: And before he left for home, he he says, Papa, thanks for taking this, taking me fishing tomorrow.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: I thought, I haven't taken you fishing yet, but that's what that's what God's promises are in the Bible.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: That's what hope is.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: They're so certain because God is faithful that you grip them.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And he went to sleep that night and woke up at four in the morning, was so excited, okay?
34:12
SPEAKER_00: Because you're so excited about the promises that we have eternal salvation, that it just dwarfs everything else.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Right?
34:20
SPEAKER_00: And can I say this?
34:25
SPEAKER_00: Christians have had the greatest risk of all removed of eternal death.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: And because we've had the greatest risk of all, the eternal risk removed, we can handle better than anyone else temporal risks.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Right?
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Because we know death is simply a doorway into paradise.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: But the eternal risk is removed.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: For I'm persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, principalities, powers, things, present things to come, nor height, nor death, anything else can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: For there's no condemnation left for a Christian, and a Christian knowing that there is no eternal threat can fear not when he faces temporal threats.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And temporal threats have always been standard operating procedure in the Christian church, as they are even today.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: But what do we do?
35:23
SPEAKER_00: We draw closer to God and we grip the promises of God, and then this is for today.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: You and God's people that stir up each other to love and good works, encouraging each other to get together, he says.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Not abandoning the getting together, but encouraging each other to get together and all the more as you see the day approaching.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: Again, if you're watching this from home, I'm not putting a guilt trip.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I do not want you to leave your home and come if there's any danger.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: But I want to create before you this excitement, this joy, this greatness of the importance of getting together with God's people in the past, in the present, and in the future, because God's a getting together God, right?
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And he's made us getting together people and in unsafe times.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: What is there more important in unsafe times than encouraging others to get together?
36:20
SPEAKER_00: See us, Lewis, is like most young singles when he wasn't all that young.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: He was 33 when he came to Christ, but he was a single male, and he said, he writes, I thought that I could do it on my own by retiring to my rooms and reading theology.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't go to the churches.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: And then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: I realized that those hymns, which were just sixth-rate music, don't get offended, he said it, were nevertheless being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic boots in the opposite pew.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you realize that you aren't even fit to clean those boots.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: It gets you out of your solitary conceit.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And C.S.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Lewis in his 40s became a huge fan of getting together.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I wanted to say this morning.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: We get together because God uniquely is a getting together God.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, he made us getting together kind of people by giving us bodies.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: And third, in unsafe times, he tells us specifically that especially in unsafe times, it's even more important for us to get together and encourage others to get together because it's not about us, it's about them.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: So I pull up to on the way to church this morning, I pull up to Huntoon and Fairland, and a car, the car right in front of me had stalled, apparently.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: So it turns out, as we looked at Roy's name, as we looked under his hood, that his alternator, his alternator, some of you guys will understand this, it actually burned all the way through.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: But the interesting thing is, even though the alternator, anyway, whatever it is, alternates between the battery engine, you can still run the engine if you charge the battery.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And so these got a workout this morning.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: And I was happy that they were.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: Trying to be, anyway, even in a day of risk and in these unsafe times.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: Help us not just to think of others or think of ourselves, but think of others, and then to remember that you've removed all of the greatest risks, and all we have to deal with are the minor risks.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.