What Do You Believe: Now, Tell Me, Why
Sunday January 29, 2006
Pastor Mathew “Duke” Clements
Christian Community Fellowship
1st Corinthians 1:10 - 17
For those who receive my sermon notes, yesterday you received an email detailing a tragic tale of some very
misguided folks that believe they are doing the will of God by protesting against our government during funerals
of fallen soldiers. They also take it upon themselves (using Calvinism as a crutch) to proclaim to homosexuals
that, “God hates them”. (Pleas note: God hates the sin; the sinner he does not)
There are many teachings, but one Christ!
All of the theories postured by scholars past and present will have people quoting and more often than not misquoting scripture.
- We need to know what the Bible states so we can know what we believe
- If you think it is the job of the pastor to give you your theology, then you (Armenians) will fall away from God, or for the Calvinists, you’ll be ineffective in your walk.
Both of these prevalent Christian theories have merit in the research that brought them about, but I fear detracts us from the mission of the church and therefore has given our common enemy a place to put us in bondage.
- As we have argued for over 400 +/- years, people have gone to hell.
- If Calvin was right its end would be that preaching/outreach was with out merit but instead a complete time of telling sinners they were headed to hell. (see the Westboro Baptist Church)
- If Armenian doctrine was 100% correct then we could lose our salvation. (ah, the great debate, once saved…)
Bottom line points for this discussion:
- You have been saved by grace through Faith in Christ’s atonement on the cross if and only if you believe upon Him. (Ephesians 2:8-10) (John 3:16-18)
- We must 2 Timothy 2:14-26
- seek unity in the body,
- continue to walk through our sanctification,
- Grow Up – Paul says to put away childish things; how many of us hold on to these.
- study for ourselves (know what and why you believe) so that we may give an answer, and get beyond our ‘ourselves’
All of this spoken today, scriptures used point to my ideas therefore, don’t just take my word on it, but you are responsible now to go search the scripture and seek God’s word.
As a side note: some of my research for today came from:
wikipedia.org see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology
on this site, you can look up several doctrines and history.