Laborers' Conference April 26 28, 2024 Reformata Baptist Church Knoxville, Tn

Ascension, the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom Mandate

Jesus' work in Ascension provided the ability for his people to now be empowered by the Holy Spirit to obey where they could not before. Now he sends his people out to fulfill that creation or kingdom mandate to fill the earth by God's means and by God's power.

One of the harsh realities of God's sovereignty. We've been talking about sovereignty and God's Christ authority all day. One of the harsh realities of Christ's authority is that it means he has sovereignty over the bad stuff as well.

Now when things get hard, when things are difficult, that God is still sovereign.

I can't tell you enough about it for you can go and be saved by it, you can be carried by it, you can be in love with it and you can read it every day of your life and I promise you'll never exalt it.

The Fall, Sin, and God's Sovereign Judgment

The King of Glory give a command to a man about what not to do and he dropped the ball, go fix it. And because of that sin entered into the world and death reigned because of that. And God being uniquely qualified and justified and rightly condemning all of creation to hell because of his own reasons and his alone he decided to love us.

He came, not an emissary, God came. We should take down preconceived notions. Maybe some things that we thought before we should unthink. Perhaps some things that we know that we should have been trusting in and believing in, we take and put in the forefront.

Marriage, Family, and the Image of Christ

And sometimes that's going to mean that we just need to quit acting like cowards. And he hates the family. The institution of family that God created, that God installed to be the foreshadowing of salvation and the reconciling of lost people to his son.

The foreshadowing that the enemy you best believe hates that and wants to do everything that he can in our modern age to destroy that. For you to be image bearers of Christ. You as husbands and wives are to be image bearers of the gospel, the story of reconciling and being one.

You being two have now become one flesh. The church is supposed to be one with Christ. I am his and he is mine.

Spiritual Authority, Church Order, and Human Weakness

Spiritual power is not the same kind of power like Caesar. The Paul understands these concepts very clearly that a church without order is a church not from God. And in fact, if the church is left to our own nature, the church would have consumed itself.

We are prone to error. We are prone to sin.

Christ-Centered Preaching on Psalm 110

With that being said, preaching on Psalm 110, I have done to the best of my ability today not to preach this text with an angle or a bent toward any eschatological point of view. Pre-meal, post-meal, or all-meal.

My aim and my goal today was to present to you a purely Christocentric point of view on Psalm 110. Because it is Christ who is to be worshipped. It is Christ who is to be magnified. It is Christ who is to be lifted up.

It is Christ that you must look to today to be saved from your sins.