Trinity and Humanity

Part 1a: 29 min

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Part 1b: 27 min

“https://trinityandhumanity.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/2018-01-14-god-sustains-us-through-adversity-ezra-4-5-6-part1b-guest-vinson-tah.mp3”

Full Message:

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Main Passages: Ezra 4:1-7;  Ezra 5:1-5; Ezra 6:13-22 

“The exiles had returned to their homeland, but this was only the beginning of the rebuilding process. As they obeyed God in restoring the temple, they faced opposition and adversity. By choosing to listen to God’s Word and not the opposition, they were able to complete the work God called them to and celebrate His work through them. As God’s people today, we are called to remain faithful to the task God has laid before us and to trust Him to transform hearts and lives, no matter what adversity we encounter.” – the Gospel Project

Theological Theme:

God – Father, Son and Spirit will sustain His people through adversity and is able to change the attitude of His opponents so His will can be accomplished.

Christ Connection:

Just as God’s people faced opposition as they sought to worship God with their obedience, Jesus faced temptation and opposition as He obeyed His Father in all things. Through Jesus’ endurance in ministry, we are empowered to obey God no matter what circumstances or trials we face.

Missional Application:

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, calls us to participate with him in obedience to his Father, despite the words of our opponents, and to trust Him to change the hearts and minds of those who oppose our faith.

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”- C. S. Lewis

“To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, we shall not go astray.”― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship