In Parts I – III, we reviewed the Biblical background that established the connection between human birth, sin, and the need to be born again. The discussion then laid the foundation for examining the scientific and genetic principles involved in human birth. We now continue this discussion as we move into Part IV.
The Delivery System
In Jesus’ great priestly prayer as recorded in John 17, He prays for His disciples and says in verse 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message…” The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans amplifies Jesus’ implied delivery system of God’s plan of salvation by stating in verses 12-15: “12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Based on the last half of verse 15, one of my former pastors declared his feet more beautiful than other people’s! Oh, well…)
Just as the human egg may have literally millions of sperm directed toward it before conception, the unconverted human spiritual heart still in need of being born again may hear anywhere from a few words to millions of words or messages before reaching real receptivity. And just as the sperm must survive a highly hostile environment to reach the tube and search for the egg, so the message of salvation must survive an increasingly hostile environment in today’s society and culture in order to penetrate the human mind sufficiently for God’s truth to sink in clearly and with conviction. The hostile distractions to God’s Word in today’s environment are virtually countless. The more we remove God from every area of public life, the easier it is to remove Him from our private life. The more we try to isolate Him to church only, the more we succumb to “out of sight, out of mind”. God’s instruction to “18Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (from Deuteronomy 11) is largely ignored today, even in any symbolic application. Practically every medium of modern communication is saturated with exhortations toward self-gratification rather than Gospel seeds that would lead to spiritual birth and growth.
Just as there is a limited window of opportunity for the egg and the sperm to successfully join to create a new life, so experience shows us there is a limited window of opportunity for the Holy Spirit to actively penetrate the human soul and mind with the convicting power of God’s word enough to cause a new spiritual life to be created. Literally millions of words that would direct our attention to our need to be “born again” may be flowing toward us but end up being drowned out by the hostile environment of the competing words and images drawing us toward every conceivable form of self-gratification and away from God. When one thinks of all the radio stations, TV stations (including cable and satellite channels), newspapers and seemingly countless print and web media, and all the public meetings and private conversations that occur in our world today, our minds then begin to be boggled to imagine the small percentage of all that stream of communication which is designed to actually draw us to understand and act on our need to be “born again”.
Please don’t misunderstand me here; there is much legitimate communication occurring related to our work and our world, but I suspect we all permit excessive amounts of the “hostile” communication to enter our lives and this would be especially true of those not yet “born again”. The “messengers” God has sent, who struggle mightily to overcome the “hostile environment” and deliver that message of salvation, are in such a competitive environment for peoples attention that their communication skills and methods must always be up-to-date. While the message of salvation doesn’t change, stale words, skills and methods (just like stale sperm) will not reach the intended destination.
In the next Part, we will continue developing the relationship between the human “delivery system” and the spiritual “delivery system”, along with some exciting expansions of concepts we may now take for granted.
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Chapter 15 - Bible Reading
Chapter 15 referenced 7 scripture passages to heighten our understanding of the imperative of reading and knowing the Bible:
John 8:31-32
Hebrews 4:12-13
1 Peter 1:13-25
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
John 5:31-47
2 Peter 1:3-21
2 Timothy 3:10-17
The hymn for Chapter 15 was "Lamp of Our Feet” by Bernard D. Barton. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)
The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of William Johnston, Edward J. Farrell, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, Frederick Buechner, Ira Progoff, Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, George Cornell, and “A Compend of Wesley’s Theology” edited by Robert W. Burtner and Robert E. Chiles. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)
Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:
· “…the force and power in the word of God is so great that it remains the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her children, the food of the soul, the pure and perennial source of spiritual life.”
· “It is Scripture, the Word of God that is the reality-depth of our prayer, for ‘we speak to Him when we pray: we hear Him when we read the divine sayings.’ …What would happen to us if we would more deeply believe the truth – God speaks! God speaks to me! …God is speaking directly to me in Scripture.”
· “Maintain at all costs a daily time of Scripture reading and prayer.”
· “What I began to see was that the Bible is not essentially, as I had always more or less supposed, a book of ethical principles, of moral exhortations, of cautionary tales about exemplary people, of uplifting thoughts… I saw it instead as a great, tattered compendium of writings, the underlying and unifying purpose of all of which is to show how God works through the Jacobs and Jabboks of history to make himself known to the world and to draw the world back to himself. …Until you can read the story of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, as your own story, you have not really understood it.”
· “…God’s word whether written or spoken may be compared to a mirror. Spiritually, the eyes of your soul are your reason, your consciousness is your spiritual face. …if you have a dirty spot on your physical face your eyes cannot see that spot … without a mirror … ; so it is spiritually … that without reading or hearing God’s word it is not possible for a soul blinded by habitual sin to see the foul spot upon his consciousness.”
· “The Bible has to be plundered and searched for what has to do with one’s promise.”
· “…this word which sets us at once to work and obedience, is the rock on which to build our house.”
· “The Bible is the record of those divine breakthroughs into human history. ‘God’s search for man,’ it is described, rather than being our search for God. …Unlike most religious literature, it is not chiefly a collection of noble sayings, but a drumroll of events, people, struggles, great and terrible, of frailty, doubts and heroism, of the ultimate might of right. …It is ‘salvation history,’…a vivid…account of God’s persistent, unrelenting quest for us and our stumbling, often faithless response.”
· “I want to know one thing – the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way… . He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! …here is knowledge enough for me.”
· “We are to hear. All of us. That is what the whole Bible is calling out. ‘Hear, O Israel!’ But hear what? …The Bible is hundreds upon hundreds of voices all calling at once out of the past and clamoring for our attention… . And somewhere in the midst of them all one particular voice speaks out that is unlike any other voice… . Come, the voice says. Unto me. All ye. Every last one.”
What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 15 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site.
John
John 8:31-32
Hebrews 4:12-13
1 Peter 1:13-25
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
John 5:31-47
2 Peter 1:3-21
2 Timothy 3:10-17
The hymn for Chapter 15 was "Lamp of Our Feet” by Bernard D. Barton. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)
The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of William Johnston, Edward J. Farrell, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, Frederick Buechner, Ira Progoff, Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, George Cornell, and “A Compend of Wesley’s Theology” edited by Robert W. Burtner and Robert E. Chiles. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)
Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:
· “…the force and power in the word of God is so great that it remains the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her children, the food of the soul, the pure and perennial source of spiritual life.”
· “It is Scripture, the Word of God that is the reality-depth of our prayer, for ‘we speak to Him when we pray: we hear Him when we read the divine sayings.’ …What would happen to us if we would more deeply believe the truth – God speaks! God speaks to me! …God is speaking directly to me in Scripture.”
· “Maintain at all costs a daily time of Scripture reading and prayer.”
· “What I began to see was that the Bible is not essentially, as I had always more or less supposed, a book of ethical principles, of moral exhortations, of cautionary tales about exemplary people, of uplifting thoughts… I saw it instead as a great, tattered compendium of writings, the underlying and unifying purpose of all of which is to show how God works through the Jacobs and Jabboks of history to make himself known to the world and to draw the world back to himself. …Until you can read the story of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, as your own story, you have not really understood it.”
· “…God’s word whether written or spoken may be compared to a mirror. Spiritually, the eyes of your soul are your reason, your consciousness is your spiritual face. …if you have a dirty spot on your physical face your eyes cannot see that spot … without a mirror … ; so it is spiritually … that without reading or hearing God’s word it is not possible for a soul blinded by habitual sin to see the foul spot upon his consciousness.”
· “The Bible has to be plundered and searched for what has to do with one’s promise.”
· “…this word which sets us at once to work and obedience, is the rock on which to build our house.”
· “The Bible is the record of those divine breakthroughs into human history. ‘God’s search for man,’ it is described, rather than being our search for God. …Unlike most religious literature, it is not chiefly a collection of noble sayings, but a drumroll of events, people, struggles, great and terrible, of frailty, doubts and heroism, of the ultimate might of right. …It is ‘salvation history,’…a vivid…account of God’s persistent, unrelenting quest for us and our stumbling, often faithless response.”
· “I want to know one thing – the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way… . He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! …here is knowledge enough for me.”
· “We are to hear. All of us. That is what the whole Bible is calling out. ‘Hear, O Israel!’ But hear what? …The Bible is hundreds upon hundreds of voices all calling at once out of the past and clamoring for our attention… . And somewhere in the midst of them all one particular voice speaks out that is unlike any other voice… . Come, the voice says. Unto me. All ye. Every last one.”
What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 15 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site.
John
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)