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Archives for October 2009

by on 10.11.09

10.11.09 gbcvic sermons

I Saw the Lord [Guest Speakers]
Tom Nieman

Isa 6

Our speaker for Thanksgiving Day (Monday, Oct 11) is pastor Tom Nieman, retired pastor of Galilee Baptist Church in Kent, WA. He preached two messages for us this morning as well.

Pastor Nieman’s first message comes to us from Isaiah 6, a passage in which we find Isaiah’s motivation for enduring in the ministry in the midst of a people whose hearts were far from God. Isaiah’s day was not unlike our day. Our motivation needs to come from the same kind of vision of God that Isaiah had. Our God is over all, evil shall not triumph in this world.

The Glory of the Son [Guest Speakers]
Tom Nieman

Jn 17

Pastor Nieman’s second message presents our Lord, having just washed his disciples feet, kneeling at His Father’s feet, praying for the restoration of his glory and the positioning of His disciples in Him – glorified by our position and exalted together in Him by His love. We are finding Pastor Nieman to be ‘the preacher of glory’, a theme that clearly has stirred his heart.

The Pastor’s Goal [1 Timothy]

1 Tim 1.5

Paul’s first instruction to the pastor is to command men not to teach false doctrine or foolish doctrine. If a pastor faithfully fulfills this instruction, he is often seen as negative, unloving, unpastoral. Yet it is this very command that has as its goal the production of mature Christian love out of the direct fruits of correcting error – a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith.

~~~

Tomorrow promises to be a great day at our church – we expect several visitors. Pray that the service may go well and the Lord will work in hearts!

We’ll post tomorrow’s message sometime late in the day.

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Filed Under: Sermon Summaries
by on 10.9.09

cost of independence

Writing in support of the Southern Baptist news service, Baptist Press, Philip Robertson highlights the cost of independence to the Independent Baptist churches (largely fundamentalists).

It is a plan that unifies. With regard to missions, the old adage is true, "We can do more together than we can do individually." While I have many independent Baptist friends, I am not an independent Baptist, because I believe in the Cooperative Program. After all, what is it that sets the Southern Baptist Convention apart from other denominations who are doctrinally and theologically like-minded? The Cooperative Program unites us around a specific plan to fulfill the Great Commission. Churches in other denominations share a common cause, but they don’t necessarily share a common plan. Our commitment to the Word of God and the plan of Cooperative Program missions really is the glue that uniquely binds our convention together.

The contrast between the strengths of the SBC Cooperative Program and the weaknesses of our independent churches, mission boards and missionaries and our faith missions deputation practices highlights one of the most important costs of the fundamentalist flight from the denominations some years ago.

The fundamentalist position at the time was that independence for the sake of preserving purity of the faith was worth the cost of losing the power of cooperative efforts like the CP. As a missionary, I have often wished for a more efficient means of raising support and maintaining a mission ministry. But if it were in the SBC CP, for example, I would also be linked in with the likes of Rick Warren and others whose theological/ecclesiastical positions I would find more than distasteful.

There is a cost to independence, but in my mind, the cost is well worth it, if independent churches can maintain orthodoxy.

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Filed Under: Missions, Pastoral Theology
by on 10.7.09

matthew henry on God’s delight

Matthew Henry’s final sentence on Ps 81.16:

He delights in our serving him, not because he is the better for it, but because we shall be.

Huh… so he doesn’t delight in himself for his own glory? Who’d a thunk it?

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Filed Under: Matthew Henry, Quotables
by on 10.7.09

on movement

Dave Doran gives us some thoughts on movements in general and the fundamentalist movement in particular.

In general, I think he is right. For a movement to exist, you have to be moving somewhere.

Given this understanding of movement, it is also correct to say that there is no longer a new-evangelical movement. But it isn’t correct to say there are no new-evangelicals or no new-evangelicalism. The philosophy is alive and well and expressed by many evangelicals repeatedly. It won’t do to say that new-evangelicalism is dead simply because the movement has ceased.

Among fundamentalists, there does seem to be a movement to push fundamentalism into some kind of alliance with evangelicals. We have been calling this movement the ‘young fundamentalists’. Some of us have been resisting this movement. Speaking for myself, my resistance to this movement is largely due to the fact that I don’t think the YFs truly understand either fundamentalism or evangelicalism and the entrenched divisions between them.

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Filed Under: Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, New Evangelicalism
by on 10.5.09

equal interpreters in every church?

Who argues for this? In Kevin Bauder’s most recent article, he makes statements like this one (from near the beginning).

In the wake of Common Sense Realism and Populism, however, some evangelicals, including some Fundamentalists, have become confused about the meaning of these doctrines. They have distorted Sola Scriptura to mean Nuda Scriptura. They have replaced the perspicuity of the Scriptures with the perspicacity of every interpreter.

And these two statements come from near the end:

In some circles, one finds a naïve belief that a solitary individual, given no prior instruction, can simply sit down with a Bible and discover the entire Christian faith.

…

Nor can we afford to assume that by just starting from scratch we can avoid all the mistakes of the past.

I wonder who Bauder is talking about? Who argues that Christians in some Fundamentalist churches have no need of training, of understanding, of learning, of listening to well-trained pastors, or that none of this is necessary, all of Scripture is equally easy to understand by any Christian?

I don’t know anybody who argues for what Bauder is arguing against, even in the most anti-intellectual circles of Fundamentalism. Even there, training is thought necessary and not all are thought to have equal understanding. It is true that there are some circles that are more anti-intellectual than others, and that there are some schools that aren’t as good as others, and thus pastors/church leaders who are not as well prepared as they should be.

But who argues that “we don’t need no stinkin’ interpretation” or interpreters? It is a mystery to me.

Perhaps it is yon scarecrow against whom the professor raises his argument.

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Filed Under: Fundamentalism, Issues
by on 10.5.09

Vandalism Photos

I thought some of our friends outside Victoria might like to see some pictures of the damage done by vandalism to our church property last Friday evening, Oct 2.

This photo is the worst of the damage – our  completely destroyed storage shed:

GBC_5

More photos are posted here, at our church site.

The damage could have been much worse. We thank the Lord for His protection in this incident. No one was hurt and really, the damage was very minor.

And in the meantime, we had great services this weekend with significant spiritual victories happening in lives. That is the main thing in all of these distresses. And Thanksgiving is next Monday! So Praise the Lord!

Filed Under: Our Ministry
by on 10.4.09

10.4.09 gbcvic sermons

So Abraham Believed … So What? [Romans]

Rm 4

Our message today summarizes the arguments of Romans 4. We have been in this chapter almost 4 whole months, analyzing the argument in detail. But we don’t want to give the impression that Christianity is just a matter of having the right doctrine. Right doctrine is the foundation of right living. Abraham’s faith was the foundation for his spiritual life, just as our faith is for our lives as well.

Christ’s Teaching Concerning Sin (5) [Basic Theology]

We conclude our summary of Christ’s teaching concerning sin with this lesson. In it we see some of the consequences of sin, teaching concerning the forgiveness of sin, and a section called ‘the eschatology of sin’.

Perfect in Conduct and Person [Leviticus, Communion]

Lev 21

Our chapter this month provides some more specific rules concerning priestly qualification and conduct. The regulations imply the weakness of the Aaronic priesthood and call for the coming perfect priesthood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

~~~

We had an incident of vandalism at our church on Friday evening. Someone stole an excavator a contractor was parking on our property (temporarily). He used it to destroy our storage shed and dig huge holes in our back yard. Then he destroyed the fence between our property and the neighbouring school, finally halting when he broke part of the hydraulics by tangling himself up in some aluminum soccer goals. We are thankful that no serious damage occurred to our main building. The incident certainly illustrates the needy hearts that surround us every day.

In church, I had the joy of talking to a young lady who seems to have been born again recently. She was raised in a Catholic home, but the Lord has opened her eyes to the truth of the gospel and she has accepted the Lord as her only Saviour.

We also were visited by a man who has turned his back on the bike gangs and wants to follow the Lord. What a blessing to see him opening up to a couple of our men. He is taking steps to learn how to follow the Lord. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve him in teaching the Scriptures and extending the right hand of fellowship.

A great day in the Lord’s house, I’d say, in spite of the challenges the vandalism presents.

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Filed Under: Sermon Summaries
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