Vintage Church

Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears (Crossway).

CHAPTER ONE
WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN LIFE?

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Colossians 2:6

Jesus. If one word were to be chosen as the most important word in the history of the world, it would be the name Jesus.

God preached the first gospel to our parents, Adam and Eve, shortly following their sin in Genesis 3; he promised that Jesus would come. From that day onward, God inspired his prophets to reveal in great detail the events surrounding the coming of Jesus.¹Consequently, for roughly a few thousand years God's people longed for Jesus' arrival.

Jesus came into history in the most humble manner. He was born roughly two thousand years ago in a barn to a poor, young virgin woman named Mary. Although he was God, Jesus' first earthly throne was the feeding trough of an animal, which was used for his crib.

Jesus' unparalleled humility is one of his most shocking attributes.² Our culture believes that pride is our greatest friend although it is the reason why Satan himself was kicked out of heaven. Pride covets the success of others and is about self--my glory, my arrogance, and my independence. Our culture, tragically, considers pride a virtue rather than a vice. Conversely, Jesus came in great humility and lived his life in great humility. Before repeatedly and emphatically declaring himself to be God,³ Jesus spent the first roughly thirty years of his life in relative obscurity in a humble town with humble parents working a humble job as a carpenter.

Make Advent More than "The Christmas Season"

Many of us make the four
weeks leading up to Christmas
into something it's not.

For the longest time, I thought "Advent" was just a fancy word for "the Christmas season," a holier, maybe more spiritual-sounding word for an otherwise hectic and overly-commercialized holiday stretch between Thanksgiving and Dec. 25. What I've discovered in the past few years of observing Advent is it's not just a different word; it's an entirely different approach.

Let me explain. Advent as a season is meant to make the journey toward Christmas full of meaning; it's meant to put us in touch with our deepest longings and greatest hopes; it's meant to teach us to bring all our desires together on one object: Christ. While "Christmas" as a season (properly) begins on Dec. 25 and goes 12 days (yes, there's a song about that!) until Jan. 6, Advent is all about the build-up to it. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and takes us right up to the glorious celebration of the incarnation.

The Ministry of Communion

By Jon Walker 

It is the command of Jesus that none should come to the altar with a heart that is unreconciled to his brother. If this command of Jesus applies to every service of worship, indeed, to every prayer we utter, then it most certainly applies to reception of the Lord’s Supper. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Perfect Love desires communion, the sharing of life together, so it cannot be expressed from a distance. God came in human form to make His love visible. God so loved the world that He came up-close in Christ. 1 John 1:1-3 (MSG)

The Big Idea: Communion is about the sharing of life. It is about knowing others and being known by others, about caring and being cared for on a deep and personal level. And, when we take Communion (the Lord’s Supper) together, we should reflect the life we share with one another because the Life of Christ is active in our hearts.

— — — —

We cannot love like Jesus loves us unless we enter each other’s lives in an intimate and personal way. And so Jesus expects us to come up-close to each other. At the Last Supper, he spoke of the deep communion we should have with him and with one another. This is when he tells us, “I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me” (John 15:6 TEV).

The Lamb Who Is The Lion

y C. P. Hia

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Read: Revelation 5:1-12

At the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . [and] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. —Philippians 2:10-11

Bible in a Year:
Psalms 61-63

In Revelation 5, the apostle John portrays Jesus, the Lion of Judah (v.5), as a wounded Lamb (v.6). Referring to this word picture, preacher Charles Spurgeon asked, “Why should our exalted Lord appear in His wounds in glory?” His reply: “The wounds of Jesus are His glory.”

Typically, the symbol of a lamb does not represent power and victory. Most people prefer symbols of strength that invite admiration. Yet God chose to be incarnated as a baby born into a poor carpenter’s home. He lived as an itinerant preacher and died “as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7) on a Roman cross. 

BREAD OF HEAVEN

John 6:34, "Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread."

JOHN 6:31-35

It is probable that these Jews were expecting Jesus to rain down manna on them the way God did before in the wilderness. After all, anyone who could feed five thousand men with one small lunch should be able to produce manna. They were still thinking of physical food.

The word "manna" means literally "what is it?" The children of Israel said, "It is manna: for they wist (or knew) not what it was." (Ex. 16:15) Manna was a nutritious food which appeared on the ground every morning shortly after the children of Israel left Egypt and began their 40-year wandering in the wilderness. Moses called it "bread which the Lord hath given you to eat."

The Lord, in speaking to Moses, called it "bread from heaven." It was small and round, like coriander seed, and was white in color or yellowish, like bdellium. The people, after gathering it, ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar, baked it in pans and made cakes of it. It tasted like wafers made with honey or fresh oil. It was gathered every morning and had to be used up that day or it would stink and have worms. An exception was on the sixth day. It could be gathered for the Sabbath and wouldn't spoil (Ex. 16:22-26).

MAKING FAITH WORK

Luke 8:46, "And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me."

LUKE 8:43-48

Is it possible that Jesus, who was God manifest in the flesh, and therefore all-knowing, did not actually know who touched Him? Yes! Although Jesus' spiritual man was divine, He took upon Himself a physical body with its limitations. Jesus drew on His divine ability through the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and so can we (Jn. 14:12; 1 Cor. 12:7). Before His resurrection, He operated as a man (sinless) by receiving from His Father through faith. 

Luke 8:47 says that the woman "saw that she was not hid." It is evident that Jesus received a word of knowledge from the Holy Spirit and had singled out this woman. However, this was after He felt the power of God flow out of Him and heal her. The woman was healed before He discerned her by the law of faith.

The law of electricity has been here on earth since creation. Man has observed it in such things as lightning and static electricity, but it was not until someone believed that there were laws that governed the activity of electricity that progress began to be made in putting it to use. 

Likewise, you don't deny the existence of faith, but it is only when you begin to understand that there are laws that govern faith, and begin to learn what those laws are, that faith will begin to work for you.

www.awmi.net.

Nothing to Prove

Pastor Colin Smith 

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:24-25

Why did God save you? What did God have in mind when He sent His Son into the world? Is it that you should sin less? It's more than that. Is it that you should serve more? It's more than that. Is it that you should get out of hell and into heaven? Then why would God want you in heaven?

I think we get a clue to the answer when Paul says:"For I am convinced that... neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord"(Romans 8:38-39).

God's rescue is more than justification and more than sanctification. It involves adoption, in which God makes us His own children. God's rescue ends with God's people rejoicing in God's love forever.That's what we're saved for!