Church Unity and the Trinity

This is for a retreat this weekend where I’ll be teaching on the topic of the Trinity and Christian life!

Purpose: In this lesson we will explore John 17:20-23 and see how the Trinity helps with Christian unity so that we would be united as a church spiritually.

• Point 1: The result of Christian Unity
• Point 2: Mirroring the Trinity for our Unity
• Point 3: Means of Unity

Passage: “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” (John 17:20-23)

• The context here is Jesus’ prayer to God the Father the night He is going to die.
• Here Jesus’ prayer is for the believers of all time and not just His immediate disciples on that night.

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Quick Thought: The Bible Doesn’t Promote Consent?

Someone online asked for help for dealing with this statement: “The Bible doesn’t promote consent because marriages were arranged, sometimes against the woman’s will.”

Here’s my quick thoughts.

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Review: Crossroads in Jerusalem

For this week’s “Wee-kids” Wednesdays here’s a review of a children’s book that I got from the publisher but I don’t see it on sale yet; so I linked to the author’s other similar work here and here.

Elizabeth Raum.  Crossroads in Jerusalem. Greenville, SC: BJU Press, November 14th 2019. 150? pp.

5 out of 5

Do you like the old “Choose Your own adventure?”  And do you want to read a Christian and biblical one?  If so this title is one that you should conside!  In this work the author takes us to the time of Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem.  The author is able to blend in biblical events and teachings with respectful and reverential imagination involving you as a character among the people.  She is able to write in such a way as to let you the reader choose your journey. Every choice you make changes the story. After a journey end you can go back to the crossroads and pick a different unread path.

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Mid-January 2020 Presuppositional Apologetics’ Links

Here are the links related to Presuppositional apologetics gathered between January 8th-14th, 2020.

1.) Eli Ayala Interview: Conversation on Today’s Presuppositional Apologetics

2.) Bible Contradiction? Should we believe everything?

3.) Reforming Apologetics (Transcendental Arguments)

4.) Want to see what we’re reading? Check us out on Goodreads!

5.) A sufferer-centered theodicy

6.) Apologetics Sermon Illustration #53: Spin the Bottle for Multiple Choice Homework and Atheism’s Destruction of Knowledge

 

Missed the last round up?  Check out the re-blogged post from a friend OR a repost here

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Old Testament terms for Sins Part 1

 

Purpose: In this session we will look at three Old Testament words used to describe sin so that we understand more biblically what sin is and see sin the way God sees it.

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Apologetics Sermon Illustration #53: Spin the Bottle for Multiple Choice Homework and Atheism’s Destruction of Knowledge

GO TO PART 52

Point: Cornelius Often many anti-theists and proponents of non-Christian religions that reject the sovereignty of God would believe that chance is ultimate.  Cornelius Van Til the father of Presuppositional apologetics believes a chance universe is self-defeating of knowledge in which chance makes everything unintelligible as he stated in this excerpt

So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man’s methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate. On his assumption his own rationality is a product of chance. On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance. The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance. So then the Christian apologist, whose position requires him to hold that Christian theism is really true and as such must be taken as the presupposition which alone makes the acquisition of knowledge in any field intelligible, must join his “friend” in his hopeless gyrations so as to point out to him that his efforts are always in vain. (Source: Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (P&R, 1972), p. 102.)

Van Til’s own illustration in the famous quote was the following:

Suppose we think of a man made of water in an infinitely extended and bottomless ocean of water. Desiring to get out of water, he makes a ladder of water. He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then attempts to climb out of the water. (Source)

But I think the following illustration below would be a helpful supplement to explain why a chance ultimate universe makes knowledge irrational and unintelligible.

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Review: Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts

Philip Graham Ryken. Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts.  Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, April 2nd 2006. 64 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Want to read a book that lays the foundation for a Christian view of art?  This is a book worth reading concerning this topic.  It is written by Philip Graham Ryken.  Ryken is the president of Wheaton College which has been compared to as the Evangelical Harvard.  In under a hundred pages Ryken establishes a Christian worldview of art.  I read this aloud with my wife as part of our night’s devotional read and we both enjoyed it.  In addition I enjoyed it enough that half way through the book I had to order it online as a gift for an artist in our church.

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