Regeneration

August 28, 2006

Joe,

Glad that the Lord ministered to you through the Word yesterday. It is truly astounding to preach a message and then talk to people afterwards to hear what God was doing in people’s lives through the exposition of His word. Some testimonies just about brought tears to my eyes. It is just amazing to me that God uses someone as foolish as me (a sick dude, as I said yesterday morning!) to speak His truth into the lives of others. But as the Scripture says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). He uses fools like us to magnify His greatness, not ours.

Speaking of 2 Corinthians 4, that is a part of my sermon yesterday that I hope was both understood and cherished:

“4In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.“

It is impossible to overcome the fear of man — or any other crippling sin — without having this experience of seeing the light of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. As I think I said in the first service yesterday, we do not believe in order to get born again, but we get born again by the sovereign work of the Spirit opening our eyes to divine glory, and that experience of being born again enables us to believe.

This understanding of salvation seems to be sorely lacking in the Church today, and the failure of pastors to embrace it is the cause of almost all the pragmatic approaches to do ministry that results in so many false professions of faith and churches that are spiritually dead, though they may be growing in number. We have made it easy to “get saved”, yet how saved is a person if they have never seen glory in the face of Jesus Christ in a way that makes them want to leave everything in order to have Him as the supreme treasure of our lives? The answer is, they’re not saved. But we have put so much emphasis on the commitment of the will that flows from this sight of glory, that it seems like many churches have lost the very essence of salvation.

I know it was only one part of my sermon yesterday, but I hope people got that, and that it leads to the praise of God’s grace for opening our eyes to see His beauty for what it really is. If not for that decisive work, none of us would come to Him in a genuine, saving way.

Ever seeking to see more clearly,

Larry

Posted by Larry | Filed Under Random Musings, Scripture Meditation 

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