Eric Ludy Sermon Podcast: Church At Ellerslie

This is the first part of a five-part sermon series on Spiritual Gifts. Unfortunately, this topic is barnacled with controversy and many Christians would prefer just to ignore it altogether. However, the Biblical function of the Body of Christ together as one unit is essential to it actually succeeding in its purpose. And for that to happen, this topic can’t be ignored. There is a beautiful corporate coordination and exercise of Spirit-endowed grace that God designed us to walk in as the Church of Jesus Christ. But, first, we need to remove the barnacles from this awkward topic and freshly look at the ingenious plan God has for His people.

This message is all about identity. In today’s world it’s all too easy to passively accept cultural or sinful labels for ourselves and find our identity in those specific propensities. But as Christians, our identity is not meant to be defined by our proclivity, but by our position…in Christ! The “proclivity movement” is creeping into the Body of Christ and many believers are confused about who they really are. But in such a time as this, the Church must return to the Truth as its King, Counselor, and Guide. And only then can it help steer this misguided culture back in the direction of true identity.

The human propensity is to approach matters of the soul in an upside-down and backward fashion. Our instinct is wrong—there is something off in our understanding of spiritual matters. We believe that since it was human mistakes that created our problem, human good works will be our solution. And, in a distorted sense, we are correct. But, it’s not our good works, it is Christ’s good Work alone that solves the human riddle. Because of this upside-down and backward propensity, we often time spend a good deal of our spiritual lives attempting to fix things in our lives with human power that can only be fixed by faith in Jesus Christ. We fight battles in our own strength that can only be won by trusting and waiting on the Lord Jesus for victory. This can all be solved by making sure we enter the Door that Christ unlocked for us, instead of climbing in through the window of works, good deeds, and moral excellence.

Many people view difficulty as the antithesis of pleasure, happiness, and beauty. When in fact it is the catalyst for the most refined and exquisite version of all three. And this is what God explains in His Word. He reveals how He purposely leverages difficulty (trials, tribulations, and sufferings) in the construction of His saints. Just as fire can destroy, it can also warm. So, in like manner, difficulty can injure, but it can also strengthen. When difficulty is leveraged in faith and in agreement with God’s plans and purposes, it always strengthens. And, therefore, the Christian is exhorted by the Apostle James, to consider it pure joy when we face trials or difficulties of any kind. 

God gave us a grip. And with that grip we have to ability to grab ahold of things and not let go. It’s an amazing quality that God vested into His creation, but, when sin entered the picture, it corrupted this gripping ability and turned it into something that can lead to our destruction. For God designed us to use our grip to grab ahold of Life, Truth, Purity, and Love. Long and short, He intended us to grab ahold of Him and never let go. The Gospel introduces us to the power to let go of all counterfeit uses of our human grip and finally place it around the One who actually has Life to offer.

God has supplied us with everything we need to maintain the intellectual and emotional security of our souls. Oftentimes, it’s not knowledge of the Truth that the Christian is missing, but the wherewithal to practically implement that knowledge. This is a message about implementation—specifically in regards to taking every thought captive to the will of Christ Jesus.

There are a lot of things in this world to grab our attention and claim center stage in our thoughts and meditations. A successful Christian life is one that doesn’t allow the world to define the focus of the believer, but energetically and proactively exerts mental focus on things true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. The focal point of a believing soul defines the attitude and outlook of the believer. God has supplied each and every one of us with a superior Focal Point. But we must actively direct our gaze in this God-ordained direction.

When Jesus first declared Himself the Messiah in his hometown, He did so by reading Isaiah chapter 61. And this passage powerfully revealed His mission. It showed, along with many other things, that He had come to bring beauty out of ashes. In history, “Ashy" moments are quite common to the human experience. But the cultivation of triumphant faith in the midst of such ashy moments is quite rare. But, when triumphant faith presents itself in the midst of dark and formidable moments, God’s redemptive glory is revealed at the highest levels. In this message, Eric uses one of his favorite missionary stories about Papua New Guinea to reveal this ancient Truth of Christ’s Kingdom.

A long-distance runner knows the oddly satisfying rush of a second wind. When it appears the athlete’s body can’t continue another step, suddenly and surprisingly, an upsurge of strength courses into the body and rejuvenates the runner. God seems to have built this "second wind” phenomenon into the human body to help explain a spiritual phenomenon that a believer experiences while running the spiritual race. It’s a rejuvenating grace that floods the spiritual man when he needs it most (i.e. while in the prison cell, while being led out to die, when falsely accused, or when under the duress of a crushing responsibility). When the Christian attempts to supply a Biblical name to this “second wind” phenomenon, it’s hard, because it seems to be a mixture of a handful of key ingredients—faith, hope, joy, and patience. And when these four ingredients blend together, it lifts the believing soul up out of the mire and back into a full sprint. The Church of Jesus Christ could really use a fresh impaction

With use, pencils grow dull. And the same is true with Christians. And, in the Christian soul, deliberate attention must be paid to the art of keeping the soul sharp, ready, and able to perform at peak levels. As a result of this “dulling” phenomenon, messages like this can prove significant and important in our spiritual pursuits. They remind us what “sharp” looks like and they steer us in the direction of the “Sharpener.” For Christians to go the distance and truly fulfill the rich purpose, to which they have been called, they must learn to regularly “awaken the Yeti.”

There are many simulation orange drinks out there. These wanna-be orange drinks are a mixture of various chemicals that seek to mimic the God-created sweetness of the orange—and fail miserably. Plain and simple, to make true orange juice, you need oranges. The same is true with making spiritual revival. There are many things that masquerade as “revival" in the Church today like cheap imitation orange drinks, but there is only one genuine kind of revival. And that is revival instigated and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. So, if we as believers are dependent upon God to bring about true revival—what is our role as the Church in seeing authentic revival return?

On September 27, the Christian hero who labored under the code name "Brother Andrew” went home to be with Jesus. In his departure (at the age of 94), we lost a truly remarkable man. This message is a mix between a tribute to the extraordinary man and a spiritual exhortation gleaned from precious words spoken before he passed.

We often divide Christians along the lines of those that feel their way to Truth and those that think their way to Truth. This is an absurd division that has been sponsored by the Devil from the beginning. For actually both methods (thinking and feeling), absent the strength of the other dimension, leads to a deranged form of Christianity. Either to use your head and forsake the heart-dimension of the Christian life, or to use your heart and forsake the clear revealed Truth on the matter, are both foolishness. God designed us with a mind and a heart. And the truest form of Christianity must understand how to wield both in tandem and balanced concert. A form of modern liberalism has crept into the Church of Jesus Christ that has veered from the Truth in an effort to show the heart of Jesus to the ever-growing population of God forsaking oddities sprouting up on the world’s stage. But, the answer for these hurting people is not a flood of sincere emotion. It’s Truth. But this Truth must not be dished out absent

"What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." This is a line commonly repeated in the classic Christian marriage ceremony of today. And it's spoken for good reason. But the number of people that understand “why” it is traditionally spoken or, for that matter, “what it exactly means” are few. It’s a Biblical phrase—in fact, it’s a phrase spoken by Jesus Himself. And its rich meaning has certainly been lost on many young couples getting married today. But, this phrase has usefulness even beyond marriage. It’s also a Biblical Truth that can apply to a myriad of important topics. It would do us good as the Church to revisit this extremely important concept of “God’s sacred joining together.” Because when we understand that God's yokings are sacred and significant, it helps to better train us how honor those yokings and to keep them from being “put asunder.”

The Christian life asks us to give up being a “somebody” and become a "nobody”. As a “somebody” there are certain jobs that we would never choose, want, or desire. However, strangely, as a “nobody” our tastes change, and suddenly we find ourselves craving the jobs that the “somebodies” reject. And these very tasks become the jobs that the “nobodies” all want. This message explores the missionary work of one of Eric’s favorite missionaries to Papua New Guinea (Hint: it’s not Stanley Dale) and demonstrates the true, world-altering power of being one of “Christ’s nobodies”.

The fear of the Lord seems strangely absent from the Church these days. A cavalier, loose, and even sloppy attitude has replaced the reverence and the healthy trembling amongst the saints. Every now and again it is good for those of us that call ourselves believers to visit the idea of God’s Holy Presence in order to freshly sober our meditations and sharpen our worship. Our God is a loving, kind, and gentle God, but He is also Holy, Holy, Holy. And these seemingly contradictory attributes, when taken at face value, actually work to reveal the grandeur of our God in such a beautiful and profound way to our souls.

Who is Jesus? Is He merely a good godly man or is He, in fact, God Almighty? The answer to that weighty question is everything to the life of a believer. Did the life of Jesus begin in the womb of Mary or, as the Scriptures boldly proclaim, is His life from of old and from everlasting? When Jesus asked Peter, “But, who do you say that I am?” It’s critical that each of us run smack into the frankness of that very question and wrestle until we realize His true awesomeness and can answer along with the apostle, “You are the Christ!”

A storm has the potential to go one of two ways. It could bring devastation and destruction or it could bring life-giving moisture. The key to turning the storm—even the most fiendish of storms—is to remember that our Lord is the Superintendent over all storms, and He is very capable of bringing life out of every bit of bluster. This is a message about seeing God take our personal bluster and turn it into a beautiful portrayal of His goodness and grace.

So many of us throw up pathetically bland and prosaic prayers into the heavenlies—prayers that massively underestimate the power and ability of God to save, to act, and to do. God is the God of the Impossible, but we often times mix Him up with ourselves, and presume that He would prefer to work in the realm of the simple, easy, and predictable. But God loves big faith. He loves it when believers actually believe that He will do big things for those that ask big things of Him. Let’s join with Elisha in saying, “I want double!”

This message unpacks the theological mindset that the missionaries of this past century shared that led them to radical givenness and great risk on the mission field. And it’s a mindset that, for the most part, is no longer present in the modern Church. Simply put, the mindset was, “Bring back the King!”