Last Sunday Len Finn continued in our sermon series on Ephesians – Joined Together. You can listen to his sermon – ‘Alive Together’ here. Here are 12 truths to commit to memory from ‘Alive Together’.
1. “But God” are the two greatest words in Scripture.
2. Your altar-call moment was not when you were saved – it was just the moment you woke up to the truth of your salvation. God chose you before the foundation of the world.
3. A citizen of the household of God is simply and only one who has bet all the blue chips on the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
4. The image of the church is a bunch of people across the world, and across time and space, who’s only hope is in Jesus Christ. Their hope is not in their nation. Their hope is not in their family; in what they do or don’t do, or in what others think of them – just Jesus; His blood, His peace.
5. When God makes you alive, he makes you a part of the church. He makes you alive with others and for others. You can’t be a Christian, someone who loves Jesus, who isn’t ‘into’ church.
6. Being a Christian means being with other people, living with them, sharing their hurts and pains, putting up with them even when it feels a bit like hell. Not just tolerating them, but learning to love them, to mourn with them, and to rejoice with them.
7. If you’re a Christian, your real home in this world is the church, because the community of the church is the closest thing to heaven on earth – cloudy at times, but an image of heaven nonetheless.
8. Worship isn’t just about drawing you closer to God; it is about drawing all of us closer to God as the people of God, as the household of God.
9. Worship and all the life of the church isn’t just a foretaste of heaven – it is training for it.
10. Being alone is about being dead – being alone is hell. Being alive means being together, and being together is what heaven is all about.
11. When you feel cut off, dead to others, alone, you can’t make yourself come alive, because you don’t have that kind of power. Instead go back to those two glorious words in scripture – ‘But God’. You were dead, but God made you alive. You were cut off and alone, but God drew you close and brought you together.
