Biblical Spirituality From The Early Church (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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A loving and gracious father, we thank you, Lord, for your son, Jesus Christ, and the scriptures through which we know him.

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And Lord, in this morning, as we look at your scriptures and Christians who have lived out their life in accordance with the scriptures, we pray that you would strengthen us by your

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Holy Spirit. You would convict us, you would motivate us, and you would make us walk more faithfully as we follow after Christ.

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In Christ's name we pray, amen. I hope you all had a happy St.

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Patrick's Day. For those of you who are here on the first part, you know why

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I'm saying that. How many of you here were actually there two weeks ago? Okay, not too many of you.

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So we'll briefly cover what we did last time so that way you have a continuity so you know where we are going.

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The title for today's Sunday School is actually called Biblical Spirituality from the

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Early Church. And how many of you were here from the first service? All right, so you know what we think about spirituality.

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In general, I won't give it away for the rest of you, so I won't speak too much to it. But the goal of this

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Sunday School, these three weeks that we have, is to look at how a

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Christian's life, his spiritual life should look like when you actually walk according to the scriptures.

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And we'll look at one definition of spirituality that may probably be helpful for us to do that. And the way we are gonna do this is look at historic events in the life of the

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Irish church. So we're gonna look a little bit at Patrick. We did look at Patrick last time. We'll look at a little more this time and a few other men as much as time permits.

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And look at what are some of the ways in which these men followed the scriptures. Maybe in ways that are similar to the way we do today, so that it's an encouragement to our own walk in the

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Lord. And maybe certain ways in which they followed the scriptures and that we don't today.

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And we ought to remember to follow the scriptures in the way they did. And then there are also areas in which they did not, or they followed in the sense that Pastor Mike used of spirituality, which is not in conformance to the scriptures.

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And we wanna avoid those things. Last time when I spoke about St. Patrick, I spoke about Patrick and someone came and asked me, is this the same as St.

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Patrick? Or actually a couple of you asked. And it was so different than the image that most of us have about St.

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Patrick, that it's very confusing. These seem like radically different people. So before we get started today, what are some of the things that you know, or you've heard about St.

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Patrick that is very famous in this part of the world? Threw out the snakes out of Ireland.

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Legend, not true. What else? No, no, no, that's good. Because those are the things we know.

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And we'll just look at what we can confirm historically to be true. Ezra? You're getting tired of me.

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Ha. Ha. Great point. All right, as we saw last time, he's a

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Briton who moved to Ireland and he was not Irish. Excellent. He lived all his life in Ireland, practically, though.

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There was someone else? Any other legends, stories?

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Yes? Right. The shamrock?

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Yeah, so again, another famous legend that he used the three -leaf clover to explain the

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Trinity. What is true is he spoke about the Trinity a lot. Whether that was true or not, we cannot confirm.

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And might as well give that away. I had this later on. When most of us go to do evangelism, how many of us would be thinking of speaking of the

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Trinity in our evangelism? I've gone to evangelism a lot of times. I can probably count with my fingers the number of times

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I explicitly began with the Trinity in mind when I gave the gospel. And it was pretty encouraging to see.

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We'll read some of those, what he wrote later. So there's a lot of legend. And in fact, what happens is

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Patrick lived in the late 4th century and early 5th century.

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And for the next couple of centuries, there's not a lot going on with Patrick, but then stuff gets added to his legendary life.

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And then what we have today and the way people celebrate him is a little different than what

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Patrick himself would have approved of. So the way we're gonna do this is we're gonna look at Patrick's life and we're gonna examine certain spiritual elements in his life.

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And then we're gonna question and say, are these good models for us to walk? And before we get into all that, we'll just remind ourselves on spirituality.

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We have some bad definitions of spirituality. You heard some of them already in the first service.

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I have a lot more here, but I'm not gonna waste my time on that. Instead, I'm gonna look at a better way for us to look at biblical spirituality.

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This is something that I found online. Actually, can someone from the first time around give a better definition of biblical spirituality here?

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If you remember what we talked about? Yes, Raja.

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Meditating on the word of God. These are some elements of how you live out your spiritual life.

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And meditation is a key element of that. Let me just give you this definition, if you will.

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This is something that's based on Romans 12, one to two. And this person defines it like this.

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He says, it is an act of worship in response to God's mercy and grace, which involves two things.

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One, the intentional transformation of the character to be like Christ, and the intentional transformation of the actions to conform to God's will.

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The intentional transformation of character and intentional transformation of actions. And both of these are not the cart before the horse.

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We don't do this in order to be accepted by God, but we are all justified by God's free mercy and grace, and we respond in worship as our lives are being changed.

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So that's the whole goal of what we are looking at here. We looked at two passages, which we'll come back to at the end of our time here.

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One was Galatians five, looking at the fruit of the spirit, how this transformation must result in certain fruit.

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We also looked at Colossians one, 24 to 29, which again, we'll come back at the end.

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I do not want to bring that up right now because we need to stick to time and two services.

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So back to Patrick. So Patrick, if you remember, was actually born in an upper middle -class type society in Britain.

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Britain at this time was already Christian. So you probably had soldiers from Rome or merchants from Rome who had brought

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Christianity. You have some famous Britons who were Christians or call themselves

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Christians at least. The most famous of them was not famous, but notorious, if you remember who he was,

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Pelagius. Pelagius comes and speaks with Augustine and he was quote unquote

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Christian, although he was Pelagian. But you could see that Christianity had already come and also been corrupted and to come back to the mainland by the fourth century.

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But Christianity was pretty established there in Britain. And we also saw that at this period in time,

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Rome was on its decline. Rome had come, established all the Britons who were nobles, wanted to be like Britons, they were wearing the togas, they were thinking, okay, this is the new modernity and we need to adapt to it.

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But Rome was actually crumbling and all the Romans would leave soon and the edifices would remain, but very soon those are gonna go away also.

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And you will see the crumbling of civilization if you will. And Patrick is in that very crucial transition period.

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So you have this great life in civilization and then now you're gonna see the end of all things.

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And actually, Patrick has that sense of the eschaton in his mind when he's actually going and doing his work.

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Because if you can think of the British Isles, they are pretty much the end when it comes to the known world at that period.

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So when Patrick would go to Ireland, there is really no land beyond, he has reached the end of the earth.

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And so the gospel that must reach the end of the earth, he believes he has taken it to the very ends.

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And even as the civilization is crumbling down, he just sees, okay, this is the end. And I am here as a harbinger of good news.

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And I'm gonna do that and give my life completely for the gospel. We saw also how

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Patrick's family background was. As you heard this morning, some of us are born in Christian homes.

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Patrick most likely was. His dad was a deacon. He was also a high official in the Roman world.

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And just putting those two together, it seems like it was not particularly a

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Christian family that was committed wholeheartedly to the Lord. Just because of the way in which the system was set up, we saw that it's more like they were

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Christians in name, but they were just having the good life as well. And that's the family that he comes out of. And he's about 16 years old when he gets kidnapped.

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He goes into Ireland. And in Ireland for about six years, he is a slave looking after sheep.

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And when he is there, he looks back at the gospel that he has heard. He looks back at the church that he belonged to.

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And he repents of his sin and he comes to know the Lord. And in that context, we saw his prayer.

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And we spent some time on prayer and what prayer for the Christian today should look like. And the fervency with which

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Patrick would pray at this conversion, and that would characterize his entire life of ministry as a

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Christian. And then we saw how he was not as educated as some of the other people.

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Because if he was back home, he would have learned Latin much more fluently. His access to the scriptures, the

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Latin translations of them and of the other early church fathers would have been a lot better.

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But he says, I am unlearned, unscholarly when it comes to these matters. But one thing he does have, and that is the scriptures.

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And he is pretty faithful to what he knows. All this is quickly review.

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I'm just going through and we'll stop in a minute. Yeah, we saw also the commitment that he had to the call that God had placed upon him.

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He calls himself bound by the spirit. He goes to Ireland and then he gets rescued.

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Well, he escapes. And six years later, he finds himself back in Britain. And here he is now educated in the scriptures.

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That's the time when he's now saved. He says, I want to be a deacon in the church. And he is on his track to being that.

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He's learning and he's growing. And he has this dream that someone from Ireland is basically calling him back.

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And these people are without the gospel and they need him. He's seen their plights. He knows they don't have the gospel.

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And his heart is moved. He is compelled, inwardly compelled.

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He just says that there is a need and I need to go there. And it is not just a human need.

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He just felt that the spirit of God had placed this burden upon him and for him not to go and for him to go and return back home, both of them would be sin for him to disobey

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God. He had to go there and faithfully serve God in the place where God had placed him. And he says this,

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I'll just quote a few lines. I came to the people of Ireland to preach the gospel, to suffer insult from unbelievers, bearing the reproach of my going abroad.

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He was reproached in Britain for going there and many persecution, even unto bonds and to give my free birth for the benefit of others.

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And should I be worthy, I am prepared to give even my life without hesitation and most gladly for his name.

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And it is there that I wish to spend it until I die, if God would grant it to me. That was a commitment that Patrick had because God had saved him,

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God had placed upon him this high calling of giving the gospel and he was not gonna turn aside from it and he exemplified it in his life.

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All right, so I think with that, we are caught up. We are back on the new material.

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So his ministry in Ireland was extremely successful.

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So he begins this work where no man really has gone forth and the reports of what

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Patrick is doing comes back to Britain, people are hearing about it and they actually are talking about Patrick.

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And sadly, we will, actually, maybe this would be a good context to talk about this.

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They did not want him to go. The mindset that the

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Britons had when Patrick went to Ireland was similar to what William Carey faced when he was coming to India.

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So like, if God wants to save the people there, he will do it. Why would you risk your life among all these pagans and die?

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You know, there's plenty of Christians here just enjoy God's worship here. There was no mindset at that point for missions for to go out to this world.

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And Patrick was so convinced. There were two stages to this.

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The first stage was, am I worthy to go out and proclaim the gospel? But when he knew that God had called him to do it, he just said,

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I don't care what anybody else says and I'm just gonna go out. And now he goes there and he does a ministry year after year, faithfully, we'll see some of those elements.

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And then what you see is the people are actually criticizing and critiquing him for what he is doing.

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And the critique that he receives is, oh, he's just gone there to make money, you know?

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And I mean, he's become popular now. When he went there, he was in fear of his death. That's the reason why he is gone.

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He's just making for financial gain. And Patrick's confession, he kind of lays out some of those charges to rest.

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And the picture that you get when you look at Patrick is almost like St. Paul. You know, Paul, when he goes out into all these lands, he gets all these criticisms from all these people.

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And in a similar Paulist way, he just writes back and says, by the way, when I served, people would graciously wanna bring gifts to me because they get saved.

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They just wanna do something good to the man of God. And I would deliberately refuse those gifts because I did not want them to think that, you know, in some way they are buying these things off of God.

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And I did not wanna be tainted with any such ill repute and let any man who can bring a charge against me do so, very similar to Paul.

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That's the way he lived his ministry. Very good example, post apostles for ministry and the way it should be done.

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So let's maybe just stop here a minute and then the next time, next section we'll be looking at the type of conversions that came in Ireland and why

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Irish people are thankful to Patrick. But in terms of our own calling, every single one of us here knows that we must give the gospel.

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We must live our lives in a way that proclaims the good news. What would be some of the hindrances that we would face today that would prevent one of you from going out into the mission field?

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What would be some of the reasons in the culture? Very good.

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Family, yes. Finances.

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I don't have the means to, I may not have the means to, I don't have the means to get there and I don't know how

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I'll support myself there. Right. Means at the current state.

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Yes. Creature comforts. And that was the main issue with the Britons was you are just safe and comfortable.

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Why risk it all? Stephen? Right, right.

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And just, so when you think of especially the comforts, those of you guys who went to Mozambique, you remember that the way in which they live is radically different.

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And to even picture ourselves to say, okay, I can do this for a week or two weeks, but can

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I do this the rest of my life, would be a pretty challenging, daunting question to many of us.

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Yes. So the shame that comes from the proclamation to us.

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Right. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges because, and that is true even in the evangelism that we just do locally because people don't like the gospel.

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And when we go out there, this is not like a trip where everybody's welcoming you. We always have this idea with Patrick goes to Island and everybody was just, come on over.

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We have not heard the good news. Oh, great. Thank you. That's obviously not what happened.

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At the end of his ministry, when people got saved, they were all grateful. But in the beginning, we will see in a minute, that they want them dead.

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I'm going to use that in a minute. Yes. Yeah. And I think there is this external element to going out and being a missionary.

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And part of that would be this, the expectation that somebody's supporting you. I got to show them something.

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And there is this outward side of safety and comfort. And then there is this inward side of, what really do

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I trust? Do I trust God? Do I trust in the power of the gospel?

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Or am I just too comfortable in the way and place where God has so graciously placed me that I'll just coast and finish and get over to the other line.

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We could be spending a lot of time on this. I just leave that with you. When we think of spirituality, biblical spirituality, a worship that is in response to God's grace and mercy, we ought to examine ourselves more closely on those things which we've kind of settled.

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Oh, God hasn't called me as a missionary. To examine and see what were the motives that God has placed me here or wherever you are.

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And we covered this the first time. Not everybody is called to be a missionary to Ireland or to Mozambique or wherever else.

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Every single one of us must be faithful in the context where we are and we need to be able to look back at it in the context of the grace that has been so freely given to us.

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Are we responding with that same love that we claim we have with our words in our actions too?

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So with that, let's now look at Patrick's ministry. So when Patrick went there, he had pretty strong opposition.

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The people there were pretty pagan. There was no Christianity. They had their own worships of Druids and all the other stuff that was there.

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And his opposition, he says in his confession, daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity.

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It was like a daily occurrence to him. It was not like, okay, I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna get into trouble. This was constantly every side pressed upon him.

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And he deliberately goes here. And you had to remember, he was a slave here. He's run away and he's going back.

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I'd like to think about what the slave owner thought of Patrick when he came back. And there were two distinct occasions when he was captive and he mentions it.

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One, he was a captive for two months and another for a fortnight. And he was in peril of death 12 times during his ministry at the time when he wrote the confessions.

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So he was about to die and God preserved him. So that's the context into which he went into.

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And then he says in response, I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God almighty who rules everywhere, including

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Ireland, the specific place where he is. And as a prophet says, cast your thought upon God and he shall sustain thee.

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And you will see this as you read confessions. It's just the scriptures just bubbling out. You can't go through a paragraph or two before you just see the scriptures just coming out, out of this man.

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That time he spent in Britain was steeped in the scriptures and it was that confidence that God has given him the assurances in the scriptures that propels him to get out into this place and do what

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God has called him to do. And when he was there, there were thousands, this is later in his ministry, thousands that were converted through his ministry to Jesus Christ.

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And they included sons and daughters of Irish kings. And he mentioned one of these daughters who when she got saved, her dad didn't want her to get saved.

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And there was physical and life -threatening circumstances that come out of this.

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But the extent of Patrick's ministry comes through this. He was not doing the cheap gospel.

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Okay, just do this and you can get into heaven. These people who got saved were willing to endure the same kind of persecution.

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And this woman was ready to give her life if needed in order to remain a Christian rather than obey her dad, the king.

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And that was the gospel, that was a power of the gospel that was accomplished through his ministry.

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And once again, he is no people pleaser. When he looks at their worship, he calls them the worship of idols and filthy things.

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When he looks at Celtic paganism at the time when he enters there, it wasn't like, I'm just gonna make some adjustments so the people can somehow absorb the gospel along with what they have.

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He has his view of the idols and the false worship was as detestable to him as it was to God.

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And he presented it in the same way. This is abomination to God and you ought not to worship these, but rather you ought to worship the

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God of heaven and earth. When he ran through all these problems, sometimes we think of missionary as, okay,

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I got saved, I gotta take the Bible to these people. I'm just gonna go preach and then lose my head and my job is done,

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I'm translated to heaven. You know, that was not the mindset of Patrick or any of the other men that we will spend some time on.

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These men were wise, like Paul. You know, Paul would go and strategically influence the different churches.

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He would go to the synagogues. He was not afraid of losing his life, but he would not just go there and say, oh, I don't wanna lose my life.

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Just kill me and I'll be a martyr. That was not his goal and that was the same idea for Patrick too. He was very wise in not quoting disaster, but he was not ashamed of it either.

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All right, maybe let's stop here for a minute. So, and maybe not necessarily from the context of missions, but both evangelism and missions.

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When we speak to unbelievers, whether it is in our work, our neighborhoods, or when you go out in evangelism,

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I heard that we had a good evangelism this weekend at the nursing home. It was, anyone from here, there?

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Yeah, and so, and oh, by the way, let me just stop here. So if you want for opportunities to go to evangelism and you'd like to join your brothers and sisters, there's plenty of occasion here.

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Talk to one of us. There's a home, nursing home Oakdale. There is the downtown evangelism that'll start pretty soon.

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There's plenty of places where you can join us and go, but what I'm talking about is just your personal evangelism or some of your missionaries, the stuff that you've done before.

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What are some of the challenges when you meet a unbeliever steeped in his own traditions, in his own falsehood?

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And what are some of the ways in which you would seek to be faithful like Paul, like Patrick, in proclaiming the gospel?

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That was a very long question. I'm not good with questions, but yes, yeah, right.

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And help them to see, at least from an intellectual, normal sense.

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They cannot see spiritually yet, but to be able to see the futility of what they believe. Any, yeah.

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That, what Pam just said was Psalm 51 says, I will teach sinners your ways. And one thing

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I really like is about the gospel. Sometimes, and you should, every one of you, if you had 30 seconds with the dying man, you should be able to give the gospel.

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There is a creator who is holy. There is man part of creation, which has fallen and depraved. There is a holy

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God who sent away for an impossible bridge, sinful man and a holy

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God. You have Jesus Christ who comes and dies as your substitutionary atonement. He was raised from the dead as the acceptable, thank you, means of access to God.

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And you must repent and believe. 30 seconds, you can give the gospel. But the gospel is so broad and wide.

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It attaches every single element of our life. You can't touch any area. I mean, Ezra and I, we were talking about toxicology.

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There must be something about the gospel there. Pick any subject in the universe, pick any life circumstance of an individual, and the gospel has a direct bearing upon it.

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And we need to be able to present the gospel in those particular circumstances too. This last few weeks,

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I've been speaking with Muslims, and it's been pretty challenging. Like if you want to find some people who have very strong presuppositions, you can find people like that who don't want to hear what you have to say.

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But it does not mean that you cannot proclaim the gospel to them. And it doesn't have to be, I've just given you the gospel, you're not listening, goodbye.

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There are ways to be able to speak with people who are closed in their minds and continue to be persistent in love.

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And once again, the gospel is offensive. We don't necessarily have to be.

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We need to be gentle and kind and patient with people who are just like us. Before we got saved, we were just as closed and arrogant about the gospel.

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And that's the state in which they are. In fact, Patrick, we sometimes forget this because he's so steeped in the love of God that we forget the love that he had for the people.

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It was the love for those people who cried in his vision, in his dream, that drew him out and that sustains him enough that he doesn't actually go back to his loved ones back in Britain because of his love for these people.

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And that's the love of God and love for the lost are very strong elements in Patrick's ministry.

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And actually, when we think of that woman who got saved, it is almost like, maybe not as quite drastic as Saudi Arabia, but it's more like, you know, you're in a daughter of Armageddon or something like that, you know, like one of the big political leaders in a pretty forceful land.

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Irish blood was not, you know, mild and gentle. They knew how to deal with people they didn't like.

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All right, so that's, I think it's, again, just gives us a pause to say, you know, where I am, will

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I be faithful to my God? Will my love for God and love for those who are around me propel me to speak highly of Jesus Christ, to help this person, basically, who is running headlong into hell with his little idols that he thinks will somehow keep him safe and be able to be faithful to him.

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And one thing in the Irish church, at least in the first few centuries, is this zeal that Patrick had for the lost would just, it was like stamped upon all these other men.

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We're gonna see Columba, Columbanus. These men were like, this is what God has called me to. Patrick's thinking is like this.

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God saved me. I belong to him, and I'm just gonna do what he wants.

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I don't have a life. We just talked about comforts. We think about the people who might hold us back.

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He just said, my life belongs to God, and I'm just giving it back to him. I'm glad that I can do it, because I don't think

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I'm worthy enough to do it, but that he has called me, I will just go out and do it full blast.

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And that was the mindset that Patrick had. And his ministry set such a precedent that the men who came after him, that was even questioned.

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I mean, for us, we have to think about it. For them, the default was, I need to go and do great things for God, like William Carey.

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And that zeal will continue. But in addition to the missionary zeal, this Trinitarian teaching of Patrick was pretty strong.

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As we saw last time, the Latin church by the fourth century has already established a theological understanding of the scriptures.

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We have God the Father, Jesus Christ, who is God, and Holy Spirit, who is God. By the fourth century, we have the theological framework for understanding this.

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And that teaching has already come to Britain. So it's not like Patrick has to go back again and develop all these things.

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He knows this, but he's very well steeped and understands the scriptures. And his confessions begins with something like this.

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I'm not gonna read the whole thing. He says, there is no other God, nor ever was, nor will be, than God the Father, unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning.

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You can already see his theology. God is eternal, and he's the one who creates. He's the cause and the sustenance of everything else.

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As we have been taught, and his Son, Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always been with the

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Father, spiritually and ineffably begotten by the Father before the beginning of the world, before all beginning.

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And by him are all things visible and invisible. And then right at the end, he says, he has poured upon you abundantly the

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Holy Spirit, the gift, the pledge of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey sons of God and join heirs with Christ.

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And him do we confess and adore, one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name. And when he talks about the

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Father, when he talks about the Son, when he talks about the Holy Spirit, there is a deep, and he was not an academician.

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He was not a scholar, even in some ways like Augustine. Augustine was a deeply spiritual man, but he was in the church context rather than the missions context.

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And you normally don't associate missionaries with people who had that deep theological understanding and the work that flows out of it.

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And that was the kind of man that Patrick was. And he constantly talks about the work of the Holy Spirit. He is there,

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I think, in one of his captivities, and he's praying for this ministry that needs to happen.

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And just like Romans 8, he's like, the Spirit of God prays with me and groans when

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I just don't even know what to say. He lived out what he actually taught the people as well.

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There are two books which are authentic Patrick. So one is Confessions of St. Patrick, very similar to how

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Augustine did his confessions, which is what most of my content is from. And he wrote another letter to the soldiers of Coroticus.

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And these soldiers, they claimed to be Christians, but they had come and taken captive some of the

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Christians that the Lord had converted through his ministry. And he writes to them and say, first of all, just let them go.

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But if you wouldn't, you're the ones who are really the captive of the devil, and you don't claim yourself to be a

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Christian when you do something like this. And I mean, he was bold, unashamed of talking about how a

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Christian life must reflect the truth of what it believes. There is another book which is not his,

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The Breastplate of Patrick, which probably contains some of the stuff that he taught, but it has a lot of other stuff.

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It's not his. And there again, you see the Trinitarian teaching that comes through. But the bottom line is he was a biblically centered person.

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When we think of spirituality, like Rhonda just said, fundamentally, everything has to come from there.

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This man loved God as he understood him through the scriptures. He had a deep relationship with him.

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And he would, when he goes there, he was like Paul. He would go to different places.

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The Lord would convert people through him, and he would establish elders so that they can actually govern themselves as he goes and witnesses to more people in the island.

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And he established them with teaching.

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So one of the legacies of Ireland would be in the Dark Ages, when civilization, as they knew it in Rome, would collapse, the barbarians would invade and take over, and culture would pretty much die out.

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Here in Ireland, you have the scriptures and learning take root again. And in a century from now, you will see how they are pretty much the bastions.

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I do not know at his period. Later, they did. Even later, it was not widespread like here.

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There were more people who were able to read. I doubt at that time they did, because I don't, from my understanding,

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Patrick knew the scriptures, and he equipped those who were leading to be able to teach. But I think it's a century or two later.

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Does anybody else know? Yes. That is true, too.

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Yes, so it's not as easy as today. But by the time we come to Columba and Columbanus, you have scriptoriums where people are actually copying the scripture with calligraphy and everything.

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So there's more work being done. But Irish, when Patrick's time, it's just like in the

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New Testament church. You learn, memorize, you have one, and you would go.

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Yeah, thanks. All right, I think for today, we'll stop with Patrick, and then we'll pick up with the other guys next time.

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But as we look back at spirituality of Patrick, we think of his prayer. It was not just his prayer as he was going out into missions.

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He continually prayed for the people who got saved, and that they would remain faithful, and they would follow after Christ.

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So as a leader, he was just, his ministry was bathed in prayer. And I think it's just his life, the conversion to the gospel, and then just saying, you know,

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I just need to give this out to others. I cannot hold this to myself. And the way it exemplifies itself as missions is a remarkable testimony of the intimate life that he had with God.

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This was not just something I wanna do. In fact, every single, almost every single time that I can remember, when he talks about what mighty things

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God did, he would always talk about God's working in and through him. It's almost like reading

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Paul, when Paul says, you know, can somebody tell me what

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Paul said? He did so many things, I can't remember one right now. For me to live is

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Christ and die is gain. Yeah, so when we see

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Paul boast, if you will, you know, from a human sense, you know, you are my offspring, or, you know, he never says, you know, it's my work that accomplished it.

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It is God's grace that was exceptional in my life. I don't know why, but he gave it to me.

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And through that, it has happened. And that is the spirituality of Patrick. It is just an overflowing of what

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God has done. Excellent.

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Last time I had this question, I wasn't as prepared for it. So what happens is this, and are you talking about the reformation in mind in particular?

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Yeah, so what we can remember particularly is the 15th century, 16th century, when, you know, the grace is lost so completely that God has raised

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Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and remind people it's all of grace. And then again, you know, the slide goes on, you know, 19th century, we have all these liberal guys who have no clue who

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God is or grace. But same thing in the New Testament church, you have the grace that is given, you know, in Paul, in the apostles as the

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Bible is written. Within a century or two, you already see the stuff start to decline. The early church fathers already have trouble keeping the preeminence of grace over everything else that comes.

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So suddenly you see people saying, work, do hard, you know, God has done all these things you must.

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And there is a little bit of a confusion. What comes first? Is God saving you and you're responding to him with gratitude and affection?

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Or are you doing these things so you can get into heaven and burst its gate? So that tendency to slide happens.

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Already, like we have Pelagius by the fourth century, who is no great, he has grace, but his grace is, everybody has grace, just work hard and you'll get there.

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So Pelagius was a Briton who was reversed. But when Patrick starts this again, you know, back in Ireland, you don't see any of that works righteousness at all in his work.

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Let me make sure that I'm saying this right. Patrick is not Jesus. The way I'm saying it, sometimes you may mistake that he never sinned.

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He has his own errors too. I just didn't find the need to point them out because they're not relevant in our context.

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But many of the things he did were exceptionally good and biblical. And what we will see in Irish spirituality is

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Patrick establishes this high standard, but very soon, the very next guy we're gonna look at is gonna have some problem with grace and works, and then it would just kind of go its way down till grace is lost and works wins.

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Sadly, I think, you know, God has to anew remind people to go back to the scriptures and grace being preeminent.

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It's Jesus Christ, it's not Patrick. If I try to follow Patrick, I'll just do the things he did, but forget the

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Jesus who empowered him and the God who he loved that made him do what he did. Good question.

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So, but in Patrick, you don't see too much, as much problems as you see in the later Irish saints.

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So with that, let's stop. Any questions on what we talked? I didn't get a chance to apply them as thoroughly.

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Any comments on how you believe our Christian walk today should reflect

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Patrick, or more accurately, Jesus Christ whom Patrick emulated?

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All right, I know we are supposed to be very strict, so I have only one minute left. I don't want to start anything new. Pray, thank you.

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I can follow Patrick in that way. Let's pray. A loving and gracious father, we thank you for your son,

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Jesus Christ, and for your Holy Spirit, whom you have so lavishly given to us and to the saints in the early church and church through history.

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We thank you for the life of Patrick, a saint like all of us who are called in Jesus Christ, and yet a man who uniquely followed you in his time and in his place.

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And Lord, we pray, even as we remember men like him and Paul, that we would remember in you the grace that you have poured out on us, each of us as individuals here this morning.

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Lord, give us your spirit to convict us of complacency, help us, oh

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Lord, not to live our lives here as if like the rest of the world.

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Help us, Lord, to look at you every morning and say, we love you and we want to live with this new heart, with this new life, and with your power in a world that is dark and dying, that your name, oh

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Lord, will be exemplified. We pray that your name would be glorified in Worcester and West Boylston and the counties around here by your power that works so effectively in us.

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And Lord, for those areas that we've protected and cordoned ourselves off as our own, we just pray that you would grant us repentance and,

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Lord, faith to trust in you and to walk where we haven't walked before for the honor of your precious name.