Florin Ianovici – Lucrarea Duhului Sfint – O chemare pentru Bisericile Penticostale

Un mesaj important. Citeva puncte de notat:

• O incursiune pe urmele lui Isus Hristos, ca sa vedem ce ne-ar invata Isus si Duhul Sfint
• Despre respingerea Penticostalismului in zilele noastre si a lucrarii Duhului Sfint care ne-a incredintat-o Dumnezeu noua.
• Despre graba noastra care ne face sa pacatuim, desi ar trebui sa stim ca noi suntem fiinte vesnice

Aici puteti sa cititi Doctrina Duhului Sfint-

• PAGINA de PREDICI Video – Florin Ianovici
• Wayne Grudem –  Lucrarea Duhului Sfint (1)
• Wayne Grudem –  Lucrarea Duhului Sfint (2)
• Wayne Grudem –  Lucrarea Duhului Sfint (3)

Related articles in English

• Wayne Grudem and Ian Hamilton: The state of prophecy today (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• Pentecost (2) How many gifts are there? (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)
• Pentecost (4) Discovering and seeking spiritual gifts (rodiagnusdei.wordpress.com)

R C Sproul – Christ Crucified

When the Gospel is presented boldly and without compromise it will always encounter opposition. In this series of lectures from Ligonier Ministries’ 2000 National Conference, „Upsetting the World,” Sinclair Ferguson, Al Martin, R. Albert Mohler Jr., John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Douglas Wilson explain how to face a world that is hostile to the Gospel. Reminding us that the Gospel is offensive to depraved humanity, the speakers emphasize the need for world missions, the reality of suffering, and our heavenly reward. Uploaded by LigonierMinistries on Jun 1, 2011

Paul’s third letter to the church of Corinth chapter 1:17-25

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

¹⁸ For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Then, in chapter 2, Paul says, „And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ² For I decided to know nothing among you exceptJesus Christ and him crucified.” And he who has ears to her, the word of God, let them hear it.

In the year 212 B.C., a very strange book was published, and it’s author was even more strange than the book he published. Because, in this book,  which the author dedicated to the king  of the city of Syracuse, in the southern coast of Sicily, in this book, the author sought to calculate how many grains of sand it would take to fill the entire universe. Can you imagine a work more bizarre than that? This is one of the last things this man did before he died. Recently, I’ve been preaching through the book of Acts, and I mentioned to our congregation, that when Paul came to Athens, and saw a city completely given to idolatry, and he began to proclaim Christ to the philosophers gathered at the Areopagus, the Bible says that they looked at the apostle and said, „What will this babbler say?” And it’s a strange translation, because the word that is translated babbler, literally means seed picker. A seed picker was somebody who went around the streets, scooping up seeds from the ground, eeking out a subsistence from them, much like a modern street person does by sifting through garbage cans. Well, if there ever was a seed picker, it was this man who tried to count the number of seeds that would fill this universe.

The name of the book was called ‘The Sand Reckoner’. The author died when his city came under siege by a Roman general, whose nickname was the sword of Rome- Marcus Claudius Marcellus. And, when he brought his troops, and his Roman navy  to move against the citadels of Syracuse, he was utterly astonished at the resistance that he met there during the siege. And he had to work feverishly to keep his troops from giving in to utter discouragement, because to their astonishment, they encountered  war machines that they had never seen before, that were far more sophisticated than any machines that the Romans had invented up to that point. One of those war machines was the catapult. But, another one that was even more astonishing, was that as the Romans’ ships approached, the cliffs outside of Syracuse, the sailors looked up into the sky and they saw these huge jaws descending from the sky. And the jaws came down and gripped one of the Roman ships and then hoisted it 100 feet into the air, the jaws were released and the ship and its crew fell to the rocks and were smashed to smithereens. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing, until the jaws moved to the next ship. And the sailors under Marcus CLaudius Marcellus were terrified. Well, finally, the Romans were victorious. And the command of the general was that the engineer that had developed these new weapons for the Sicilians was to be unharmed. But, that mandate was ignored by one of the rank and file soldiers, who was so annoyed by this man’s ingenuity, that he approached him as he was doing mathematical equations in the sand and killed him on the spot. And thus, Archimedes met his death. Archimedes is famous, for after discovering the laws of buoyancy in his bathtub, ran into the streets crying out „Eureka. I have found it”. And even his book the Sand Reckoner, which seems so absurd to us today, estimated the number of grains of sand that would fill the universe, matched almost exactly the estimates compilated  by 20th century physicists, only a few years ago. I think it’s safe to say that Archimedes was one of the most brilliant men, not only in the ancient world, but who has ever walked on this planet. And, I think you’ll remember the words that he spoke to the king of Syracuse on one occasion, when the king was amazed at all of these machines that Archimedes had designed. Archimedes said to him: Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I can move the whole world.

A little over 200 years after Archimedes made that statement, a lever was found that was long enough to move the world. It was a tree, about 10 feet high and the place that it was placed was Calvary, because the cross was the lever that turned the world upside down. It was the cross that revealed the power, the power of God Himself to right a topsy turvy world. And it was the message of that cross that changed the world forever. The cross, according to what the apostle teaches us here in 1 Corinthians had a visible and invisible significance.(14:00)

Related articles

• R C Sproul – Thinking Deeply in the Ocean of Revelation: The Bible and the Life of the Mind Desiring God 2010 National Conference
• Dr. R.C. Sproul – The Birth via Ligonier Ministries
• R.C.Sproul – The Virgin Birth. How important is it?
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R C Sproul – The Doctrine of Justification (Sola fide)

Paul discovering Justification by Faith-Image via Wikipedia

The Importance of Justification Sola fide (by faith alone) is important not merely because the church stands or falls on it. It is important because on it we stand or fall. The place where and the time when we will either stand or fall is at the judgment seat of God.

The doctrine of justification has to do with our status before the just judgment of God. That every person will ultimately be called into account before God is central to the teaching of Jesus. He warns that the secret things of our lives will be made manifest before the Father and that every idle word we have spoken will be brought into judgment. The whole world – every man, woman, and child – will come before the final divine tribunal. We will all come to that place, at that time, as either unjustified or justified sinners. Paul at Mars Hill warned: „Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men every where to repent, `because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.'” (Acts 17:30-31 NKJV)

This judgment will be a righteous judgment by a righteous God. Those who will be judged are unrighteous people. The universality of sin is clearly affirmed by Paul:

„For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all (italics mine) under sin. As it is written: „There is none righteous, no, not one….” Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:9-10, 19-20 NKJV)

Herein is our dilemma. There will be a judgment. It will be a righteous judgment. As fallen, we are not righteous.

The ominous warning of the apostle is that „no flesh will be justified in His sight.” Fortunately this is not the whole sentence. It is not an absolute denial of justification. If there will be no justification in his sight, then all disputes about the way of justification would be vain disputes, much ado about nothing. If there is no justification, then there is no gospel – no good news, only bad news.

But this is not the entire statement. Paul does not say there will be no justification. What he does say is that no flesh will be justified in God’s sight by the deeds of the law.

Paul does not exclude justification altogether. He does exclude it by virtue of our doing deeds of the law. Justification on the ground of our works is eliminated as an option. Christians were once debtors who could not pay their debts to God. The law of God requires perfection. It is a requirement sinners do not and cannot meet. Because of the universal reality of sin, Paul comes to his „therefore.” Our sin leads to the necessary inference contained in the conclusion that by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in God’s sight.

The verdict of the law on sinners was known in the Old Testament. Psalm 130 asks a question that is clearly rhetorical: „If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (130:3 NKJV)

The answer to the psalmist’s question is abundantly clear Who could stand? No one. Certainly not I. Certainly not you. If we are judged by the law in terms of our own righteousness, we will not stand; we are certainly fallen. If Luther rested on his own righteousness before the diet of heaven, he would have to declare: „Here I fall! I can do no other, God help me.”

Not only would Luther fall. The whole church – nay, the whole world – would fall.

Paul does not leave us falling without hope before the righteous law of God. He continues his teaching of the doctrine of justification with a single word that screams relief to guilty sinners: „But…” There is, to our everlasting benefit, a „however” to his declaration. This little however introduces a high and mighty exception to the dreadful conclusion that by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in God’s sight. Though justification is categorically denied by one means, it is now categorically affirmed by another means. That no flesh will be justified is not the final word. There is another word, which is the gospel itself:

„But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:21-26 NKJV)

Here Paul declares a way of justification different from justification by deeds of the law. It is not a novelty, proclaimed for the first time in the New Testament. This way of justification is witnessed to by the Prophets and by the law itself. It is justification through faith in Jesus Christ. This justification is not given to everyone. It is provided to all and on all, who believe. It is based on the righteousness of God that is provided to and on the believer. It is given both freely and graciously by God through the redeeming work of Christ. This manner of justification demonstrates God himself to be both just and the justifier.

Again,the dilemma faced by the sinner summoned to the judgment seat of God is this: The sinner must appear before a divine Judge who is perfectly just. Yet the sinner is unjust. How can he possibly be unjust and justified? The answer to this question touches the eye of the Reformation tornado. For God to justify the impious (iustificatio impii) and himself remain just in the process, the sinner must somehow become actually just by a righteousness supplied him by another.

R.C. Sproul is now the distinguished visiting professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Knox Theological Seminary. R.C. Sproul is also chairman of the board at Ligonier Ministries.