01.16.08
January 2008
January 27, 2008 - Dr. Richard Harrell
January 20, 2008 - You Can’t Stop the Work of God - Dr. Richard Harrell
January 13, 2008 - Dr. Richard Harrell
January 6, 2008 - How To Get Ready For Great Things - Dr. Richard Harrell
01.13.08
Through Healing the Man with the Withered Hand (Matt. 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11)
Christ’s Authority over the Sabbath (continued)
Through Healing the Man with the Withered Hand (Matt. 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11)
The third confrontation over the Sabbath took place in the synagogue. Looking at the scene we have a recipe for a fight. The first punch was thrown when the Pharisees challenge Jesus with the question Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? What was the true issue? To enter the controversy they were having on what medication was allowable on the Sabbath.
To illustrate, here are some of the issues (read the 2 final paragraphs on page 167).
The answer came from Jesus by referring to their own practices. If the life on one of their animals were in jeopardy, they would work to keep it. The conclusion is that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. So Jesus deflected their punch, and they ended up punching at the air.
However, Jesus wasn’t finished. Christ seeing a man with a withered hand commands him to ’stretch out your hand’.
Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. Jesus refused to play by the Pharisees’ rules. After pronouncing that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath (12:12), Jesus did exactly that. He told the man to stretch out his hand. In response to Jesus’ command and with all eyes focused on him, the man stretched his hand out in front of him. The moment he did so, it was restored, as sound as the other. “Restored” means that it became like it had been before. As with the leper (8:3) and the paralytic (9:6-7), Jesus gave this man his life back. The man could work again, and he no longer had to face the embarrassment of his deformity.
No particular action of Jesus is recorded; he told the man to move, and with that movement, healing arrived. Jesus did nothing that could be called “work,” but the Pharisees would not be swayed from their purpose. Jesus had embarrassed them. He had overruled their authority (Luke 6:11) and had exposed their evil attitudes in front of the entire crowd in the synagogue, showing that the Pharisees were more loyal to their religious system than to God. That was enough to cause them to get on with their mission of destruction (see 12:14).
(from The Life Application Commentary Series copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 by the Livingstone Corporation. Produced with permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.)
How did the Pharisees respond? In a couple of ways.
- They were furious with Christ (Luke 6:11). They had been publicly humiliated, He had arguments that were too good and had shown how shaky their entire tradition was (this wasn’t the first time He had done this with His arguments).
- They began to plot His death (Matt 12:14). You reject our traditions, you need to die.
- They entered into an alliance with the Herodians (their enemies) and looked for their support in attempts to kill Jesus (Mark 3:6). They were determined to carry out their plan for His death.
This controversy marked an important development – the opposition of the Pharisees was no longer veiled, it was now open.
And us? How do we respond when Jesus exposes our issues, faults, problems? Do we want to choke Him? Or do we fall down – broken and contrite – looking for forgiveness? How should we respond and what can we do to get to that point?
01.05.08
Thank You Harrell’s!
Please share your encouragements in writing to Dr. Richard and Terry by commenting below. You may wish to share about how God has changed your life through their ministry, through their friendship or a funny story about their time here at Seaford. These written notes will serve as reminder to them of our love and appreciation for them. Their 15 years here at Seaford have been fruitful for this body of believers, the community, and for the kingdom work. (Please note - all comments will be approved by the moderator before they appear in this post, we appreciate your patience in this matter.)
Richard is from Pearisburg, Va. He has an A.Div. degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; a B.A. from Campbell University; an M.A. from Wake Forest University; a Th.M. and a D.Min. from Covington Theological Seminary; and is currently working on a Ph.D. from Trinity Theological Seminary. He was the Senior Pastor of Seaford Baptist from December 1992 through January 2008. He has taught for Boyce Bible School of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and has written two articles for the Leadership magazine of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has served on various committees of the local association and the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.
Terry is from Norfolk, Va. She attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary for two years and then transferred to Campbell University and graduated with a B.S. Degree in Religion and Social Ministries. She also has a M.A. Ed degree from Wake Forest University with a concentration in Counseling and is currently working on her Doctor of Ministry in Christian Counseling at American Christian College and Seminaries. She is a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors. She was on staff at Seaford Baptist Church from August 1998 through January 2008. Before coming to Seaford she worked extensively in prevention programming and coordination of services for children and families on the county and state level.
01.01.08
How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
Happy New Year!
Can you keep your New Year’s resolutions this year? Have you tried in past years? How did you do? Most of us give up before January ends. It’s surprisingly difficult to make a decision about our personal habits and stick with it, isn’t it? Can we actually improve ourselves?
The answer is no, we can’t. That may come as a surprise to some readers of a church blog, for you may think that Christianity is about improving ourselves: learning to do the right things, being more loving and kind, obeying the Ten Commandments, and so on. It’s not so, actually. People who have followed Christ for any length of time commonly say, “Living the Christian life isn’t hard, it’s impossible!”
More specifically, it’s impossible to improve ourselves on the inside, where it counts. We may be able to set some goals and reach them. We may be able to adjust some behavior, or change some habits. But these changes are on the surface; they don’t get to the heart. And because they’re on the surface, often they are fragile. They break easily. We fail to keep up with our goals and standards. That applies to New Year’s resolutions, certainly, and for that reason some Christian leaders recommend against making them. It even applies to the one standard that is unquestionably, consistently a good one, the Law of God. It even applies to the best of us. The New Testament leader and writer Paul said,
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing…. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members [parts of my body, see more here] another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
This is from the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans (ESV). Even his perfect agreement with the law of God, and his intense desire to follow it, was not enough. It only showed what a failure he was.
This sounds terribly familiar to me–it’s a picture of my own experience at many times. How about you? Have you been made as painfully aware that you can’t live up to whatever standard you have thought was good and right? What then? Are we hopeless? Is there nothing we can do?
Paul goes on to say yes, there is hope! In the next chapter he writes,
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Romans is a closely reasoned and complex letter, and his point may not be immediately clear, especially since I’m not quoting the whole. I’ll pick out just three main points here that I think will help explain it.
First, we can have freedom from this terrible cycle of sin (our failures) and death (the inevitable result of the cycle). That’s great news! But we do not free ourselves. We are freed by what God has done. He sent his own Son “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.” It’s his doing.
Second, this freedom is founded on Jesus Christ. He “has set you free in Christ Jesus.” Paul writes elsewhere in Romans (and it’s found throughout the New Testament) that we start by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, trusting him to free us from our sin. There’s a great explanation of this here. Here’s the mistake many make: they think they must get their lives straight in order to begin to follow Jesus Christ. No, he accepts us as we are, and he will do the work to free us from our failures.
Third, to experience this freedom day by day, we “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” The Spirit here is not some vague ethereal religious sense, but the Holy Spirit, who is God Himself dwelling with those who have placed their faith in Christ. Again I’m going to rely on another resource to explain how we can experience this daily walk with the Holy Spirit.
What is life like when we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Paul wrote about this in another letter, too. In Galatians 5 he emphasized freedom again. It’s not a matter of gritting our teeth and going by willpower, but of simple following:
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
And the result is something that grows out of us naturally, like fruit. I don’t know what your New Year’s resolutions might be, but if you were to resolve to be more like this, and if it were really to happen, wouldn’t it be great? God says it’s not a matter of resolving but of walking in the Spirit:
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
We can experience success; we can know freedom from failure and guilt! But we cannot do it on our own resources. Jesus Christ is the foundation for all we do that is right (pleasing to God). The Holy Spirit is God’s provision for our experiencing this. Let your New Year’s resolution be to explore and learn all that this relationship with God through the Holy Spirit can mean. Let the Word of God guide your other decisions. Any other resolutions will take care of themselves from there.
Technorati Tags: Christian Growth, Holy Spirit, New Year’s Resolutions
