I’ve loved the focus on Scripture on the Rezolution Conference Promo Slides. Thought I’d load all of them up into one place.
Will you be at the conference? I’m looking forward to catching up.
Category Archives: Sermons and talks
Acts 17:11, “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily {to see} whether these things were so.”
How to handle departure from the truth in church denominations
As you may have heard David Carmichael will be addressing the Grace Ministers Conference in January. Maybe you will not be able to attend that conference but there might be another opportunity to hear this gifted expositor on his South African tour. Covenant Fellowship (corner Raath and Cutten streets, Horison, Roodepoort) would like to invite Baptists and Presbyterians to get together on Monday, 14th of January, 2013 at 12:00am to hear David deliver a paper entitled ‘How to handle departure from the Truth in church denominations’, detailing his experiences in the Church of Scotland around current issues including the homosexuality debate. Lunch will be provided and there will be no charge.
Please RSVP to Neal Beatson (nrbeatson@gmail.com, 011 672 3043) before the 10th January.
David Carmichael
David Carmichael has exercised a faithful parish ministry in Abbeygreen since 1982. He faithfully explains the truth of the Bible weekly to that congregation in a clear and relevant way. In addition, he is in increasing demand as a national and international conference speaker and is a much respected Christian leader in Scotland. Recent conference work has taken him to Europe, the USA and South Africa. He is Chairman of the missionary society UFM Worldwide (Scotland), Chairman of the largest Reformed minsters fraternal in Scotland and Chairman of the Scottish Reformed Conference.
The King’s Calling – Session 5
The Gospel is so simple isn’t it? “Christ died, Christ rose, repent for the forgiveness of sins.” Now what? Believe! and after that, tell! This is not a message that one can keep to oneself.
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Below is the slide deck from Session 5 for the BYSA Summer Camp.
The Graphical Gospel – Session 4
Over the years I’ve found this graphical representation of the Gospel really helpful. I’ve done it 100s of times with a pen and a piece of paper however on the recent Baptist Youth Summer Camp I needed to include it into a presentation. I thought I’d write down the sequence and explanation.
The first slide is a line (continuous for those that care). It is my experience that most folk think of morality as a relative quality, rather than good or evil we believe we hang somewhere in the balance.
To kick off a conversation it’s useful to throw a few very well know faces at a teenage audience. There are three “good” people that I find are always tagged as “very good” by South African teenagers: Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. These are great examples because they press home the exclusivity of the Gospel later on (“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”) Ask any kid where on the line Nelson Mandela should sit. Guaranteed they’ll shout “good”.
Once you’ve got a baseline for “good” have some fun with bad. I’ve asked 100s of kids where they’d put Lady Gaga, without exception all have said “bad”, most have said “very, very, very bad” bordering on pure evil :). Other great examples are Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.
Now it’s time to get relative. On the camp I used the examples of the Camp Director, Ulrich Fobian, our MC, Mark Paul, and one of the worship team, Cjay Jansen. Here’s the point: everyone puts themselves on a ladder comparing themselves to the people around them. We compare ourselves to our family, our friends, our pastors, our youth leaders… everyone. Where would you peg yourself? It’s like we’re trying to climb a ladder, hoping that if we get close enough to “good” God’ll look down, notice us and say “That one is good enough, I’ll choose them for My heaven.”
But that takes sovereignty away from God and gives it to ourselves, it makes salvation a work that we do, a goodness found in ourselves, a righteousness of our own making.
This game we play of relative goodness leads only to death and destruction.
You see God is holy. The angels declare of Him, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
What does that word mean? Quick analogy, put water and cooking oil into a jar, mix them around a bit, wait 10 minutes, what happens? The water and the oil separate. The word holy describes God’s complete separation from sin. Jesus said, when the rich young ruler came a questioned Him, that “only God is good.” We work on these relative horizontal scales of goodness and badness, comparing ourselves to everyone around us, but God works on absolute scales, good or bad.
Which brings us to sin. Sin isn’t a mistake, an oops, a little problem – it is a debt we owe God we can’t pay, it is a crime committed that demands a sentence, it is a rebellion against God which separates us from Him. And God is clear, “The wages of sin is death.” It doesn’t matter what you do to make yourself look good on the outside God looks at you on the inside and sees your true state, your sin, your separation from Him, and God hates sin, He is holy, and is separate from it. The games we play, hoping to look “gooder” than the guy standing next to us, make us look despicable in the sight of God, in fact “our good deeds are like filthy rags” before Him.
That’s really bad news. And truthfully no one will ever understand the Good News until they understand who they are before Him.
The right response to our sinful state is the question “How then can I be saved?”
So here’s the Gospel, Jesus died for you. He paid the price, took the punishment, reconciled you to God. The Bible says “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” AMAZING! Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was a substitute. But not only that, Jesus rose from the grave. God accepted His payment. When Jesus said, “It is finished” it really was. His Resurrection means that God’s wrath is appeased.
The gates of heaven are open wide. Praise the Lord! But if the Gospel presentation stops there it’s short.
Jesus commission His apostles, and us, to proclaim that salvation is available to all by repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repenting means turning from our sins and turning to Christ. Forgoing everything else, our goods works, our social standing, any other mechanism of approaching God. Rather than trust in our own work we’re to trust in Christ’s work upon the cross. We rely upon Him and His righteousness alone. If “you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And that’s it.
This is a base, a mechanism, a springboard. There are so many other words that can be added in order to convey the truths of the Gospel, however it is distilled to “Christ died, Christ rose, repent for the forgiveness of sins.”
Helpful? Concerns? Questions?
The Gospel Worth Dying For – Session 4
So Paul found himself in jail for proclaiming the Gospel. Two years later he gets hauled before the Roman Governor and Herod Agrippa. What’s he going to say? Is he going to try and save his skin? Sell out the Gospel? Acts 26 picks up the story:
26 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You have permission to speak for yourself.”
So Paul motioned with his hand and began his defense
19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20 First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds. 21 That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. 22 But I have had God’s help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23 that the Christ[b] would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”
28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”
29 Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”
Below is the slide deck from Session 4 for the BYSA Summer Camp.
The Gospel The Disciples Died For – Session 3
This is the video we missed on camp.
In Acts 2 the church was birthed. After that the believers in Jerusalem experienced amazing growth; but then in Acts 5 the situation changed, persecution came and the question in the reader’s mind is, “Will the Gospel message, so clearly defined and so clearly expressed in Luke 24 and Acts 2 change?”
17 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. 18 They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. 19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people the full message of this new life.”
21 At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.
29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men! 30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. 32 We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”
Below is the slide deck from Session 3 for the BYSA Summer Camp.
