Biblical Spirituality From St. Patrick (part 1)

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Biblical Spirituality From The Early Church (part 2)

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So Sunday school will for the next three weeks. We'll be taking a break from the financial study pastor
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Steve is away So I'll do a two -parter on Biblical spirituality of early
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Christians and I'll explain what that is in a minute and next week you'll be having a Sunday school on prayer
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Today's material is going to be rather Challenging to keep up, especially if you just woke up, so I'll give you a little bit of Placeholders, so, you know where we are going and then we'll kind of dive in and hopefully we we will learn some
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Truths that are helpful in your own spiritual walk with the Lord The in in broad layout we're going to be looking at Spirituality, what does spirituality mean?
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We'll spend a few minutes talking about that and Like John Piper does we're going to be looking at some key individuals in the early church and The purpose for doing that is so we can look back at these
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Saints the way they lived for Christ some ways in which they exemplified this deep spirituality that we need to Also emulate and so we will look at a few characters
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And then the way we're going to do that is walking through History as we look at the lives and circumstance life and circumstances of these individuals
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So it's going to be a little bit of mix -and -match. So you'll have to bear with me Hopefully as we look at these people we will see how they sought to follow
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Christ and how we can follow Christ today also Before we get into our material
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I maybe this is probably the only big question I'm going to ask today Can someone tell me what is?
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Spirituality What do you think spirituality is Excellent.
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So if one way of looking at it is in contrast to matter and materials, we're looking at the spiritual more fundamental aspect of all of our life, especially in the world we live in today everybody is just looks at the externals the things the stuff you
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Can have and spirituality says no, that's not necessarily true. There is something more important man has a soul
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It's not just his body. Excellent. That's one Definition of spirituality anything else that comes to mind
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Yes, Amelia, can you say that again?
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what you believe what you think about what you believe and how you live it out and that is there is going to be an
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Important element of spirituality that we're going to see today Especially for us as Christians.
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Maybe if I say it as Christian spirituality a biblical spirituality it talks about We all have certain beliefs of the world about the
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Bible which we know is true We all think certain things about the Bible what it
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How Christians ought to live in light of what God has done for us and then spirituality takes that To the ground and says, you know, this is how we actually live it.
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So that's another good way of looking at spirituality as Steven That is also a very it's actually very interesting that these two came together
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There is a sense in which the people culture today says just enjoy, you know tomorrow we die there's no goal of looking beyond the present in them in a more materialistic sense and The Christian viewpoint is always eternal.
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It is never just temporal in the here and now it is You look for the things that God has revealed to you and what
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God has promised to you and in light of eternity You live your present. So there is that sense of Hope and the future that draws the
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Christian on these are all very good elements of spirituality Anyone else want to take a poke?
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Yes Excellent meditating on the
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Word of God meditating on scriptures. I think Barbara is the one who's kind of come Narrowing it down to brass tacks here
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So, how do you actually do this spirituality and one of the key elements?
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We'll see the central elements to living a spiritual life is To be in the word to commune with Lord and with God in the word and to spend that time
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Of intimate relationship with God and we're going to see those elements all kind of work themselves out as we look at the lives of these
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Saints, so I think we have a rough idea of what? Spirituality could mean
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I have a few bad definitions here But since we've you guys have got done a great job I don't think
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I will just keep that whole thing up and not corrupt your minds with what is not true
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So as long as you have these definitions, you're good I'll just give one good definition from a guy who was meditating on Romans 12 1 & 2, you know how you want to not be conformed to this world
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But be transformed by the renewing of your mind and he gives this definition, which I think is pretty helpful
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He says an act of worship in response to God's mercy and grace which involves the intentional
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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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I It's it's a handful. So if you want I can give it to you later But the idea is that you know, this is all gospel centered
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God has done something for us We respond to him in worship and that should change your character and it should change change the way you live
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So when you very often when you talk about spirituality It's very
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Personal in some ways very subjective, you know, who knows how many time who's spending that much time in the world?
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Who is meditating on God's Word that much but there is a outward transformation that happens when you have this communion with the
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Lord and those things are very obvious for us to see and so a person who spends a lot of time in the word his life her life is
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Different and you can say oh, you know like Moses coming out of the presence of the Lord. There is that Something that is shining about there when you want to know what it is and you learn that there is
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God is working in this person's life because they are spending time with him or her
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God is spending time with him or her now Let me just use two quick passages and then we will get into our history
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So if someone one of you can turn to Galatians chapter 5 and I have a few verses
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I want to read from there and the other person who wants to read if you can turn to Colossians chapter 1
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Verse 21 You have the Galatians who has Colossians I'd like that passage first collect
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Colossians 121. So if you can read from I Apologize, it's not 21.
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It's 24. So if you can read from 24 to 29, that'll just give the context of what? What we're going to be looking at Colossians 124 to the end of chapter 1 this section
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I think Exemplifies the ministry of the people that we're going to look at today. This is the same characteristic this
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Pauline Fervor and passion for God and for the Saints that these men we are going to see what what is it that they're doing for?
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The church, what is it that God has called them out to do and how they want to bring the gospel to those who haven't heard
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It and to minister to them and very quickly in Galatians 5 if you do not mind, can you read verse 22?
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23 and 24. I'm sorry go all the way from 22 to 25 Thank you
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So we're going to be seeing both of these the inner and the outer Ministries of these people and in 1st
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Corinthians 10 11 1 we say we say Paul saying be imitators of me Just as I also imitate
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Christ and in 1st Corinthians 10 the series we've been going through We've seen how we are to watch out for the example of the
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Israelites so that we do not Follow after them do the same kind of since they did but Paul is going to give an example of how we are to imitate them him and we're going to see some examples now of men in the early church that are
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Exemplary in that sense. They're not perfect. They have their own flaws We'll see some of them too, but there are certain aspects of the way they followed
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Christ. That is That should motivate us to follow Christ more faithfully When you go to the early church the period that most people are familiar with is the patristics the
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Latin Church You have the Greek and the Roman churches and you have some great giants there like Augustine and Athanasius and men like that So some of them you may be familiar with but one group of people that I wasn't
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I wasn't as familiar with was the Celtic Church, do we have any Irish people here?
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What okay a few half -and -half? All right. There is one really strong the Andrew was there in the youth group
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So I kind of gave a little bit of this in the youth group a little while back But we're gonna dig deeper into these
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Irish Spirituality if you will it's not really any unique spirituality for the
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Irish It is that that they got something from the Bible and they just with their typical Irish forward, you know lived it out
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Completely and I think we can learn how we can do that in our own New England way today so the men
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I have in mind are Patrick Which most of you I hope know and we will see a few things in addition to what most of us know about Patrick We'll look at two men called
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Columba and Columba nurse very obscure men But Giants and their walk with the Lord and the way they influenced it influenced
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The church the early church and then we have two other men cut bird and bead which we may not get to today
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We will hopefully get to next time So I want to begin with Patrick Patrick is the one like I said,
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I think most of us are familiar with I'm not going to spend time on Patrick's legends
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We will just spend time on what we do know about Patrick and what are some things that we can get edified out of The context of Patrick for us may seem a little odd We may think that we cannot relate to Patrick as much, you know, fourth century fifth century in Britain Really, you know
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Not as modern as we are What what is the ministry of a
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Christian in in fifth century Britain and Ireland have to do with 21st century
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Americans You'd be very surprised to understand what was going on in Britain at that time
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Rome was the major like America was Rome was the Empire that was in control
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Rome had sent its soldiers over to Britain, so there was
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Roman influence in Britain at this time and The the British people were looking up to these
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Roman conquerors if you will, but they were at the government they were establishing the southern part of of the islands and they
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Wanted to emulate these Roman Cultures and customs so Latin was getting taught people understood what was going on.
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They they obviously got the gospel through these British people coming over now
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You had either the soldiers who came who were Christians that gave the gospel to the
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British people Or there could have been merchants. There could have been we don't exactly know who initially brought the gospel over to the islands, but By the time
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Patrick is born you have Christianity established. You have the church and its Structures set up so you have the
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Roman government just as you would see it in Rome establishing the official way of business and you also have the church set up under that and the way in which they were struck they were
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Operating was also pretty structured. This is pretty early already by the by the by the 5th century this was this was established now
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What the people at that time didn't know was Rome was going to fall This was a big
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Empire There was a lot of problems that was going on in it and you're going to see the collapse of the
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Roman Empire And it is in this key transitional period that Patrick was going to have to do his ministry
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So that's just a big background and with that let's now get on into into into Patrick himself
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So Patrick we think was probably part of the upper class because he actually knew some
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Latin He knew some stuff that the cultured people would know He wasn't very good at it and we will see why he wasn't as good as some of his contemporaries.
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But when he Got on the scene you already have some big people in the early church
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Anybody here know who Pelagius was? Who was Pelagius?
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That's right. If you think Arminian ism is difficult. You have to go to Pelagian ism he went all the way back and he was so popular that he came to Rome and he
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Disputed with Augustine and that's what causes Augustine to give us a clear example of the sovereignty of God in Salvation and the depravity of man
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Pelagius had no understanding of this but Pelagius was actually a monk from Britain by 400
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He died I think in 400 and by that time he had already Studied and he had a huge influence
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These were smart thinkers already from Britain that were coming back into Rome and trying to influence and Pelagius obviously for the negative
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But there were other men like Faustus and Ninian who were also were really scholarly, but were also more biblical
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Now Patrick he was born into a family that was pretty rich His dad it says was a deacon he had a villa and he was something called a decurion he was an official in the town and What that his responsibility was to take taxes for the town provide entertainment for the town if he didn't get enough taxes
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He had to pay out of his own money to take care of the upkeep of the town It was not really a very it was an honorable job, but it was pretty difficult you know people were spending their money out and The Romans had a favorable view of the church.
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So what they ended up doing was they said if you are like a deacon or someone serving in the church, you don't have to pay taxes and obviously people who are wealthy like this also wanted that position so that you know, they don't have to give up all their money and And the
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Rome Rome quickly caught on they said, okay You know if you do these types of things if you want to really be in the church
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You need to show that you are spiritual. So you need to give up two -thirds of your money to family or others
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So that shows that you really want to do this. You're not just doing it to get a tax break But Patrick's dad it appears was a
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Deacon in the church, which would give him this exempt status, but he also had plenty of servants and he had a pretty wealthy
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Lifestyle as as a Decurian and the implication seems to be one of the guy says
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Patrick's family was Worldly in spirit, but Christian in name. So his dad was a deacon in the church serving in the church
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He probably got teachings of the church because he was part of it But in the lifestyle they were just basically affluent people who just cared about finding ways to keep their money and enjoying
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Their Apple and what is it eating that Apple? How does it go?
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Yes, thank you very much. So he had it both ways. So that's the lifestyle into which Patrick was born
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He didn't think twice about the problems of this kind of a lifestyle But when he was 16 years old as many of you would have heard he gets
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Kidnapped he was probably living on the western side of Britain closer to Ireland For some of you you may be like me and not really good with I Think this will be too hard if you want you can take a look at the map later
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So I had to go and look at the maps to figure out my knowledge of geography in Britain wasn't that good?
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But the western side of Britain closer to Ireland. So you had the people raiding from Ireland Irish People would come raid the coast grab some slaves for themselves and take them back and when
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Patrick was 16 He gets kidnapped So very traumatic son of a pretty wealthy kid living over here and all of a sudden taken to a place where he has to work as a
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Tender of sheep and he does this for six years Obviously when he gets there, he has no idea how long he's going to be there
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But while he is there he experiences conversion so he has some really Strong he has two books that he's written.
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I would highly encourage you to find and read them Confessions of Augustine both of them are free online and a letter to Karadikas and both of those books are very small but powerful
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You'd think that when you read books like these so old archaic It's actually a lot easier to read than some of your medieval books that we have which are pretty helpful.
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Also some of them and he Gets taken out and when he gets out here are some of the things that his confession of his conversion
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Says there in Ireland the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief That I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the
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Lord My God who had regard for my abjection and mercy on my youth and ignorance
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The idea he conveys here is you know 16 years He was given everything that the church should have already provided for him
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He should have been thankful for what God had provided and submitted to God But instead he was just living a double life and now that he has taken out tone away from his family placed in a place of complete
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Suffering if you will he has no contact to this families He doesn't know how long he is going to stay here and at that point
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God's mercy comes upon him and he he seeks God with all of his heart and with all of his might and His experience there seems very unique.
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I'm going to read another small passage here. He says When this this fervor of the
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Lord came upon him when he got saved This is how he communed with God the spirituality that we talked about after I came to Ireland Every day
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I had to tend sheep and many times a day I prayed The idea there is he was just pretty much continually in prayer.
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He would just finish praying He would do something and he'd go back to pray and prayer was what just characterized his life
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Life of being a shepherd and he says the love of God and his fear
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Came upon me more and more and my faith was strengthened You know He already had the teachings and here now he comes
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Into a situation where God just brings the gospel to bear upon him His life is now open to God and the reason he just loves
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God is because God's love and his fear this dual sense of God's Favor upon him and the grand holiness of God both come upon him and he is just growing in this faith that he has
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Toward God. He says my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and almost as many in the night and this even when
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I was staying in the woods and on the mountains and I used to get up for prayer before daylight through snow through frost through rain and I felt no harm and there was no sloth in me and And Just so you don't think he is boasting of himself as I now see because the spirit within me was then fervent
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He you will see a very grace oriented understanding by Patrick Here is this guy who wakes up early in the morning late at night
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He is continually praying in in in all these adverse conditions had no sense of sloth because he could see that it was
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God who was Enabling him to pray and to and to follow after God with all his heart.
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Let me just stop you for a minute This is the way I'm going to apply this to ourselves as we go along when we think of prayer
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Let me maybe put a question that may be easier what as I just gave you a few things on prayer next week You'll hear more exposition on prayer
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But what are some things that struck you as odd things that you say? You know,
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I never thought of prayer that way is that really biblical or wow That's I know is biblical and I don't think
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I do that Bruce we don't know for sure, but it's most likely his own because he was although he had the
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Environment in which he could have learned many of these prayers because he does have the Nicene Creed already
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Familiar in Ireland we will see in a minute Trinitarian teaching from the from Rome had already come here and they had all accepted it
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These were not audience or you know heretics in that way Yes, they had the
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Latin Bible. So the Jerome's Vulgate was already available to them So that's what
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Patrick will actually learn when he comes back and studies to go back again Yeah, so but most likely these were just because he was not a studied guy at 16
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He was just you know, a child of the church, but he was not really Christian and he wasn't really studying things.
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So it's most likely just genuine inner prayers that he was just praying as he Good good question.
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What else on prayer comes to mind as you hear about Patrick's prayers. Oh, this is the first time
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Yeah, yeah, very true.
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And I think just following up on what Bruce said there is a distinction between saying prayers I'm in trouble.
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So let me just say Hail Mary's a million times and somehow God will help me. That's not the point here this is a genuine communion and what
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We heard was that the early church when you think of Paul and Ananias these people were just Communing with God and that's what prayer is, you know
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You're speaking with God and there was that intimacy and so these were genuine prayers anything else on prayer
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I Just want to just point out the fervency of prayer here It's all of the Lord, you know
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If no non -christian can generate this on our own and say, you know, I'm just gonna Pray and God will somehow hear me it is the
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Spirit of God within him that gives him this passion for God and that he wants to spend this time with God and What's unique about Patrick is it's not just at his conversion time.
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You will see that his love for God just keeps growing with his years and his
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Spirituality would just keep growing with as time passes. We'll see more about prayer in as time goes on but what happens is six years he is here and Six years the
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Lord almost like Moses for 40 years in the you know When he's away just prepares him equips him and he is now
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Fervent but there is an opportunity for him to escape and he escapes from The western side of Ireland gets runs across Ireland gets into captivity again
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Boards a ship gets into Britain comes back home six years later. He is free and Comes home and when he comes home
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He obviously is a Christian so he wants to study and be involved with the church So he studies to be a deacon and this is the time when he's established in the teachings of the church
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He studies the Bible. He's a strong biblical student and you'll see that in the writings that he has
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When he prays when he writes the Bible just kind of flows out. It's very different than most of the writings we see today
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It's just Bible in context. That's basically what he's doing. He's he studies and he's just fed on the word and And he wants to serve here, but something unique happens to him during this period
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He has a he feels he has a vision. He's sleeping in a dream He sees just like Paul has this Macedonian call
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Come and give us the gospel. He feels that the Irish are calling him to come and give him the gospel
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He's been there six years. He's gotten saved while he was there He knows the state of the his
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Lords and the people of that land pagans in idolatry and here he is enjoying the richness of God and this man comes and wants him to go to serve as a missionary and He is he is struggling with this call.
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He he says, you know, should I go should I not go in the beginning and His main reason to not go is the holiness of God He says who
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I can't go and do this type of work Who am I to do this type of things this God that we serve is is beyond my feeble ability
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So he's he's torn in the beginning and to help his Indecision the people in the church at that time say, you know, why would you want to go to pagans?
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you know, enjoy God's goodness over here and obviously with all its comforts and its Safety because you could die if you go back to the
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Irish people you're a runaway slave after all And you know, you shouldn't go and in fact, they were strongly urging him not to go at that period in time there was really no missions that was going from Britain to Ireland a
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Hundred years two hundred hundred to two hundred years later. You will have the Roman Church sending missionaries But Patrick is the one big guy.
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He's almost an exception in the church to say Lord has placed upon me. I'm actually going to read you something.
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Let me say say this This is what he quotes. He leaves for Ireland never to return back to Britain and he says even
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Okay, so he's saying if I wanted to go back to Britain even if I wish to leave and go to Britain and how could
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I have and how I would have loved to go to my country and my parents and Also to Gaul in order to visit the brethren and see the face of my saints in the
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Lord God knows it that I much desired it to go from Ireland to Britain But I am bound by the spirit who gives evidence against me if I do this telling me that I shall be guilty and I'm afraid of losing the labor which
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I have begun Nay, not I but Christ the Lord who bade me come here and stay with them for the rest of my life if the
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Lord will he his his sense of God's calling upon him for this particular ministry was so powerful that it didn't matter what everybody else was saying
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He knew he had to go here and minister to these pagans and he would spend there his entire life
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Although he loved his family and everyone else he would never go back again and for him personally it would have been sinful it would be
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Against his conscience and against the Lord to have gone back again without finishing and fulfilling his ministry here
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That was the sense of his passion for for these missions that God had placed upon him And once he knew that for sure for certain he never looked back in his entire ministry.
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He was just there It was gonna press on for the ministry that God had placed him He had a deep certainty of God's will in his life
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Let me stop here for the second break for today. So we saw about prayer. Let's talk about God's will in our lives we have some
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Brothers in the church who Emphasize this Charismatic side of things, you know,
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God has called me to do this and Nine times out of ten it is a subjective
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Sense that comes Ephemerally and then after a point it dies away and then you talk to the same person a few years later
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They'd be like what call I had no idea what you're talking about But at that moment it is so fiery and it would be like, you know
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I am absolutely certain this is what God calls me to do and on the and for us as biblical
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Christians We know that the means by which we discern God's will is always
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The Bible if someone comes and tells me God told tells me to do this and it is not there in the Bible You and I can very clearly say well, it doesn't matter how strongly you feel about that If it is not biblical, you cannot be following God.
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You're either following your own Wishes or you're following the promptings of the enemy But that's said so just to set those two sides
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Mark those boundaries out. Let's talk about ourselves in our own walk. What kind of Commitment to the call of God in your life
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Do you have and I'm not necessarily well Maybe there is someone here who wants to go out and be a missionary and and I and you have that call of God in Your lives and you're contemplating it and I would urge you to pray and we would pray for you
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Come and talk to the elders. We'd love for you to go out as missionaries And I but I do not want to somehow say that you know missionaries are higher class citizens and the rest
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Every single one of you here who is a Christian has a specific calling in the specific place that God has called you to go but The question is not about what call you have but about being committed to that particular call that God has called you to and living
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It with a decisiveness and a passion like how Patrick lived his life.
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You haven't gotten there I don't think we're gonna get past Patrick today So let's still talk about this because I think this is important.
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Absolutely It's not wrong at all. I think it's good for everybody to just hear what Pam just said
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You know sometimes when like the statement I said, I think that's what you were responding to so I said When you look for God's will in your life, it has to match up with the scriptures
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What I do not mean is you need to open the Bible and God has to say you need to go and be a missionary
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That would be pretty cool that'll make my job a lot easier But I'm discerning God's will because it doesn't say Pradeep go be a missionary in this in this
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Bible, right? What the Bible does say is what are things that God honors or values in the life of Christians, so if I say
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I'm going to go and be a Bartender for the glory of God and you know, and I can come very easily and say, okay
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There is something about being drunk and other things that you need to watch it for But I just came out of my head, but you know what?
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I mean, you know, there are certain things that are the Biblical Bible Accordance of and says, you know, here are not things that honor
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God But there are a lot of things that honor God in the Bible But the point that Pam was trying to make is the subjective call on individuals.
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I think Spurgeon says this For pastors, he says, you know
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If you do not have that Call the personal call of God upon your life to be a minister of God You have no business in the ministry
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You don't just say I studied this and I think I can figure out what the Bible says and I can do this work
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And let me go be a minister You need to be absolutely certain that God has placed a call upon your life subjectively to know that this is my ministry
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This is what God has called me to do Is that it does everybody just one day wake up pray and then say yes,
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I have this call No, the Lord prepares each individual along the path that we walk down and there is a time when the church confirms the gifts that God has placed in your life and over a period of time like Hudson Taylor there are people that had this specific calls to different places that God had placed upon their hearts and God uses those
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The inner convictions of your heart when it is aligned with the Bible. It shouldn't conflict to the
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Bible That's basically what I was talking about, but that's very true. So each of you you know, I know like you for example have a passion for evangelism and It's it is a calling and the way in which you commit your life to Dedicating your resources your time and your energies.
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It's not just a certain part of your life It pervades the way in which you you live and that's a great example
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I think it's not wrong to call out some of our the gifts that we have in the body that God has blessed us with so we can
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Learn from them and we should also look at those gifts that God has placed in our lives that we will be faithful With using those gifts of that same commitment
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That God has called us to so let me just take maybe one or two and then we'll move on Anything else on the will of God in your life that yes
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Excellent point and I think that gives a good example of the Bible. Whoa, is that a sign from the Lord or something? I'll refrain from comments
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But that's a classic example of biblical in a biblically informed call
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So, you know as a mother you are looking at what are the priorities that God has called you to?
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Thank you. And You are looking at what at this point in time God would what would honor
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God the most and you as your mind? And that's hold the whole point of Romans 12 1 & 2 is this to be transformed by the renewing of your mind is as you
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Study the word in your circumstance you look for God's guidance and you say, you know This is the priority that God would have me do and I will do it with great joy
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It doesn't matter if the world wants me to do X Y & Z I know that at this point in time God wants me to do this and I will do this as With as much excellence as I can and that would be just as honoring as Patrick Dropping everything and getting off to Ireland excellent example.
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Thank you Amen and I think that's
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Patrick's comment to when he says he's bound by the Spirit he was a slave in Ireland and he is now a slave of Christ and He will go wherever God sends him because he know
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God sustained him six years before and God will sustain him wherever he goes Yeah, yeah, that's very true, you know, especially
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You know what? We'll probably just stop with this For the sake of time we'll continue Patrick next time
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But I think this is helpful because it's not about Patrick that we have our lesson here. It's about spirituality
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How do we walk in light of examples like these men? When you read about Patrick or the older Saints The problem is this you will very rarely see something negative about what
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Patrick did or many of the great giants did Unless it's like Patrick himself.
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He will write something about his his flaws of Augustine would say, you know This is who I was but most other people writing about Patrick or Augustine would just talk about their excellencies.
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Not really about their You know, yeah, he went to this town and he tried to evangelize and he did this
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Horrible thing that dishonored God and then later he repented very rarely Will you see that because historians like to just give the best face of all these
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Saints, you know Whereas the Bible is very different when you if you want like realistic stuff people who
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Put their foot in their mouth or people who had a big falling out I'm talking about Peter.
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I'm talking about Paul and Barnabas. You can see that in the Bible. No Christian is infallible in his calling in the way he goes but every
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Christian ought to be humble and Looking for God's guidance as you walk through it great examples and and and I think it's always good to temper our views when we look at these
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Giants is These men were not perfect either. We're just looking at those areas where they were So much more stronger than we are and we want to emulate them and follow
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Christ just as they did then Let me see if I can just maybe do one more point before we close Yes, actually
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Patrick here had a sense. What was it that propelled him to go from Britain to Ireland in the
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Roman Empire of that time Let me tell you what yeah, this is his his own quotations
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He says indeed we are witnesses that the gospel has been preached unto those parts beyond which there lives nobody
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At that time Ireland was the end of the world you go further you fall off the earth Yeah, there was just the
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Atlantic Ocean that nobody had crossed it from Rome before so these four for him
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This was the pretty much the end of the world to which the gospel has to preached and the kingdom of God is coming down And he's like I'll go there
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God is coming back soon And I'll go to the end of the world and do the ministry that needs to be done He writes after he has done this but that was the sense in which his calling was he was like, you know
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I'm here to finish the ministry and in one sense I mean That was a sense of Paul as he was getting them word out in the first century
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This is that was a sense of Patrick as he's sending this out in the fifth century and that should be the sense Christians today in the way we do our evangelism as well.
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It's not necessarily the extent of where we go, but in the sense of this Ultimacy the finality the completion of the work that God has called us to do
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So wherever we God has placed us So if you're a missionary you will probably go to some tribe that nobody has reached or you may go to a country
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Which is an under you might lose your life But if you are a missionary at home, you will give your gospel to your family
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You'll give your gospel to the people that are around you with a sense of that Christ is coming back very soon.
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And these people near to here need to hear the gospel and There was another element to Patrick too, which was as I said, the
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Rome Rome was crumbling What had happened was the Germans had crossed over into Rome Rome was taken down and all the
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Edifices that were built up in Britain were collapsing So this was you know there was this
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Rome that everybody looked up to and now all the structures the Roman soldiers are gone the Stuff that they had left is starting to decay and in a couple of centuries
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The education that they brought in will also start to die out in medieval Europe and what is so amazing is the ministry that Patrick here sets up.
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He's gonna go give the gospel to the Irish the Irish are going to start studying and understanding the word
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They'll be educated as well. And then the next missionary we will see Columba will not
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Columba Columbo bring it to Scotland But Columbanus will bring it back to Europe when Europe has decayed and died and gone these missionaries that went and now planted the gospel are now going to be seeing the fruit of that ministry coming back to their own land and Giving the gospel in a place which is pretty much dead and decayed and not just the gospel.
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It'll also bring back Life to this through the gospel, it'll bring many other benefits as well
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Alright, let me stop here any questions thoughts. I know we kind of went on many paths
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Any thoughts yeah, the
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Roman Catholic Church, the question was when did Roman Catholic Church usurp Patrick The Roman Catholic Church was insidious it started very early
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So even in the 200 380 in the Roman world it was already influencing
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So some of their influence is already there in Britain when this was happening, but it wasn't
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Organized it's only after the 400 to 600 that this becomes really strong in the Catholic Church.
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What happens is the Roman Empire dies down and the church pretty much becomes the you know, instead of church under the
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State it becomes church state church over the state. In fact, some of the Emperors are so weak they are not able to hold up against these barbarians and Popes would go and talk to the
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Invaders, you know, that was how the power structure changed and they established their whole thing and and it develops over time for the
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Catholic Church for the Irish Church, I Don't see anything in Patrick personally
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There may be some elements of like the monastic tendencies and things that will come up But by the time we come to Columba, which is another hundred years from Patrick you already see the monastic way of life pretty strongly established so that element of it is there the bishops and the
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Abbots the way in which they set up all that is pretty much there in a hundred years from now and they have a lot
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Of Catholic tendencies and you already will start to see Which is primary is a justification or sanctification and those are the
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Catholic? Errors that we need to really carefully watch out for it is always the gospel that saves us and our works come out as a
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Result of that in Patrick you see that very clearly He got saved God is in him and he is now doing this out of a gratitude heart of gratitude
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And then in some of the language of the later people It's harder to discern where that line is you know are they doing it in order to please
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God and gain some benefit from him or are they doing it because they love God and it is just a
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Offering of worship the service that they do it's it's gradual, but it's some of the seeds are already there any other thoughts
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All right, why don't why don't we pray? We'll finish in two weeks a loving and gracious father.
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We thank you Lord for this morning Lord We are thankful for these saints of old who?
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Whom you saved whom you equipped and whom you called to serve you with all their heart soul mind and strength
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Lord this morning. We ask you to give us that same sense of fervor
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Lord we are many times slothful in our own walk before you
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We have knowledge of you and yet we do not live that with the fervency that We ought to and Lord this morning.
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We confess of our sin We thank you for those areas where you have strengthened us and where you have enabled us to follow you and for those other areas where we in our own sin have
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Held to ourselves Lord We pray that your spirit would convict us and we eagerly desire to give up those
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Fortresses of our own and to follow you where you would lead us Whether it is right within our homes or out to the end of the earth in Christ name we pray