Bible Study Blog for Saturday July 24, 2010
1 Chronicles 28-29; John 9:24-41
Sometimes you wonder if it’s WORTH it.
People aren’t naturally interested in the message of Jesus Christ.
And intellectual arguments for creation or the existence of God usually fall on deaf ears.
But this former Braille student stumped a room of religious Ph.D.’s with an argument they couldn’t answer:
The irrefutable evidence of a changed life.
Pharisees: “We know this man is a sinner.”
Healed Guy: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
Game over.
They tried to twist the story – and when they couldn’t, they threw him out of the synagogue. But the fact remained.
This guy’s life had been undeniably altered by Jesus Christ.
If you’ve met Him, your life has been undeniably altered by Jesus Christ, too. And when the subject comes up – your best answer probably won’t be from science or philosophy. Just offer what the religious Ph.D.’s still can’t answer:
The irrefutable evidence of a changed life.
Have a wonderful Saturday – see you tomorrow at Bayside!
Tags: Bayside Church Woodland, Bayside Woodland, Bible Study, Chronicles, John
The changed life, indeed. If we’re (the “regal we” for BW) going to reach the whole community with the Gospel we’re going to need to have that evidence at work in us. The burden isn’t ours (except to pray for it diligently,) but is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is an urgent matter of prayer for us at BW because, as I’ve heard in more than one sermon recently, “we can’t export what we don’t own,”
We aren’t going to be able to explain God in terms that will satisfy the empiricist any better than the best minds these days can satisfactorily explain the cosmos except they plug in unknown factors (e.g. “dark matter” and “dark energy”) to complete the arguments why galaxies and the rest of the universe don’t behave according to the mathematical models generally accepted by the scientific community.
The Christian explains the changed life by citing the Holy Spirit, which stands as a satisfactory explanation without the need to cite some “dark” universal force. There is nothing dark about the Holy Spirit which by definition is life and light.