The Only Eternal Institution

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Sunday was challenging as I had to do my job and be faithful to our church while going through a challenging week in our extended family with Jill’s dad’s failing health. We’ve had a hard week. We’re grateful for the love of our church and the understanding of our people. I’m thankful for Stan praying for me. But I must admit, the most personal prayer that morning was from my oldest daughter, Hannah, who, just before I got up to preach, walked over to me and said, “Dad, I want to pray for you.” And then she poured her heart out to our God for me. I was in tears. So when I took the pulpit, I was still in awe and amazement and a bit weepy. I’m grateful for what God is doing in our church and humbled at what He’s doing in my family (they’re awesome).

Common Grace and Evangelism

I gave an example of sharing the gospel with a barista after noticing God’s common grace at work in her. I found this method of sharing the gospel impactful and useful through the years. I think it’s helpful because it takes the intensity level down several notches, and it’s very personal. It’s called personal evangelism for a reason. The best Bible evangelism methods I have read about and seen through experience are deeply caring, personal, and relatable.

I learned this idea from the book Practicing Affirmation by Sam Crabtree. In that book, Sam writes about the importance of seeing God’s handiwork in people’s lives and gives some amazing evangelistic moments at intense venues like abortion protests.

Institutions That God Protects

We saw Sunday in the Abraham and Abimelech story, how God protected Abraham and Sarah’s marriage. This made me think about the ‘institutions’ that God has set up and how He protects them.

There are only two of these institutions in the Bible: marriage and the church.

God said Marriage was the only institution that was a portrait of Jesus’ relationship with His church (Ephesians 5:22-33). Marriage was given to us in the Garden of Eden and is an artifact of paradise. God is committed to marriage because marriage is a foundational institution for all societies everywhere. Throughout history, societies that value marriage and hold it in high esteem thrive, and those that don’t don’t.

The Church is the only eternal institution in the Bible. The Church started before time began (Ephesians 1:3-6). The Church is the only institution that Jesus said He would build, and the gates of hell would not overcome it (Matthew 16:18). The Church was given by God to make disciples of all nations for the good of all nations.

I wrestled with questions: do I value the institutions that God has set up, like God? Do I protect my marriage? Do I protect the church? Do I honor my marriage? Do I honor the church?

The Covenant of Grace

One thing we cannot miss in the Abimelech story is the protection of the covenant of grace through God bringing about Isaac through Abraham and Sarah. This is one of those 100,000-foot flyover things we must remember when reading our Bibles.

Throughout the Bible, the people of God do some stupid stuff. But God continues to protect His covenant of grace and makes sure that it is brought to completion. From beginning to end, the Bible lays out this story for us.

What we cannot do is mistake God’s protection of the covenant of grace with what we think were promises God made to ‘us.’ This is where I believe many Christians get disillusioned. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in my blog at this link: https://clfroseburg.com/the-im-possible/. We must recognize that God is deeply committed to His covenant of grace, and most of the promises in the Bible are connected to that covenant.

License to sin?

Even though God works with, in, and through Abraham’s sin, we must be careful in understanding this. Again, this story is about God’s protection and faithfulness to His covenant of grace, and human sin will not stop Him from moving forward. This story is not in the Bible to give us a license to sin.

As we will see this week, Abraham sets his heart to obey the Lord. We can all relate to Abraham in this. At times, we have our stuff together; at times, we don’t. Sometimes we walk by the Spirit, and sometimes we don’t. When we don’t, it’s not like we want to do those things or are pleased with our actions. If we were to interview Abraham now, I’m sure he’d probably send us a face-bomb emoji. The moral of this story is that God will protect His covenant, even if He has to protect it from us.

If a person takes this as a license to sin, they need to examine if they understand the grace of God and make sure they’re a true believer in Jesus.

Making Poor Yet Culturally Accepted Decisions

Oh boy, we do this so often. We need to evaluate lots of areas on this one. Let me just run down a list of ideas off the top of my head in bullet points where we make poor yet culturally accepted decisions:

Debt
Discipline and training of our children
Sports, arts, and extra-curricular activities
Dress and modesty
Dating
Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage
Entertainment choices
How we spend our Sundays

Like I said, these are just off the top of my head. You can add to this, and you can see my stage of life with this list:).

Looking Ahead

This Sunday, we will look at Genesis 21:1-15 and see God fulfill His promise. This week, we will see God’s faithfulness and His compassion and wisdom in interesting ways.

From the Cheap Seats

The Mike MacDonald hire for the Seahawks was a good one. His first hire, Leslie Frazier, reveals how much humility Coach MacDonald has.
Man City has KDB back and Erling Harland back. I hope it’s time to start rolling.
I don’t know how much longer Poch has with Chelsea. I like him as a manager and a guy. But Chelsea is a train wreck. Sorry, Chris G.
If you’re interested in the JFK assassination like I am, you might enjoy the podcast “Who Killed JFK?” I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s a mind-numbing, enjoyable listen.

To watch or listen to the sermon described in this post, please click here.

Have a great week! Christ is King!

In Christ,

Dave York