Church Of The Atonement

Church of the Atonement is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

Church of the Atonement is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

Church of the Atonement is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

Guest speaker Phil Sabella shares the ongoing concerns and work of International Christian Concerns

Church of the Atonement is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

Attached is my sermon for tomorrow. It’s the first sermon I have ever preached on preaching! Because I have not preached the last two weeks, I have had ample time to reflect, study and pray about the message. Of course what happens when I have extra time is that I find so much rich truth that I have enough material for two sermons at least. I don’t regard time constraints on preaching as a bad thing – at least not very often. There’s the scaffolding of learning that a preacher builds to get to the message of the sermon, and there’s the message itself. A time limit tends to drive me to remove the scaffolding and leave only the message standing. At least that’s the way I think about it. But I have to be careful not to look back at what I’ve removed, or I’ll start second guessing myself! Thanks to computers however -- Did I actually just write that!? -- I save my earlier work so theoretically, I can recall it, though I never do. Th

Church of the Atonement is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

Numbers 22:20,35;23:3,11-12,16,25-26;24:12-24

The topic is prayer. The theme is the uniqueness of Christian prayer, which it to say Christian prayer is spending time with God. This makes Christian prayer so different from prayer as it is practiced or recited by others. It is good to refresh ours understanding of prayer, because false ideas about prayer will lead us to conclude that prayer is boring and will justify the excuses we make for not praying. There is no hidden agenda with this sermon. I hope the immediate impact of the message is to lead many more of you to sign up and come to the Prayer Vigil. God has things to teach you about himself as you spend time with him, and that will change the way you see prayer, because it changes the way you see him. Scripture says draw near to the Lord and he will draw near to you. The idea is thrilling. We come to the Lord saying, “I want to know you” or “I want to know you better.” He is right there, saying, “Good. Did you know….?”

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I have attached tomorrow’s sermon on the first verses of I Thessalonians 5. I entitled it, “The Christian’s Destiny,” which is fine as long as you know that by “Christian,” I really am talking about you. Not some great saint of old, but you, today! May the Lord help us take this to heart and thereby shape our hearts to live with hope, faith, and love that is worthy of the hope we truly have! Sincerely, Pastor Young

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I do look forward to worshipping with you tomorrow morning. The Lord is good! He provides us with his holy Word to steady us and help us grow through all kinds of trials and hard things. One of those is grief at the loss of a loved one. This is what Paul was addressing in the later part of I Thessalonians 4 (vss. 13-18). This is the classic rapture passage in dispensational theology. It is the view that Jesus will partially return to earth before he returns in full. He will do this to rapture his church out of the world just before the final tribulation of the Book of Revelation occurs, or perhaps midway through the tribulation. The focus of Paul’s words clearly was not on the rapture of the living saints at some point before his return. Rather the focus is on this, that those who have died in Christ will rise first when Jesus does come. The dispensational interpretation misses Paul’s point entirely and the significance of key term