Sermon Central
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The Day The World Changed Series
Contributed by Douglas Dudley on May 17, 2005 (message contributor)
Summary: THE CHURCH OF OUR LORD WAS NEVER AN AFTERTHOUGHT. IT WAS PURPOSED BY GOD BEFORE THE WORLD WAS CREATED. THE CHURCH IS COMPOSED OF GOD’S PEOPLE.
The Church:
The Day The World Changed
Text: Acts, Chapter 2
This morning, I’d like to continue our series on the Lord’s Church. Some think the Church was an institution that kind of showed in history and developed over time in the ways that man decided it should. Nothing could be further from the Truth!
The Church of our Lord was never an afterthought. It was purposed by God before the world was created. God’s people, Paul writes in Ephesians 1:4—
“…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
In Chapter 1, verse 2, as he addresses the chosen of God, Peter says, “…according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.”
Yes, the Lord’s Church was God’s plan to save mankind. It was a Church of Prophecy. King David spoke about the Christ centuries before.
---8---“I have set the LORD continually before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
---9---“Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will dwell securely.
---10---For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol;
Nor will you allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
---11---You will make known to me the path of life;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”
Isaiah prophesied about a day in the future—I believe it is the day the world was changed:
---2---“Now it will come about that in the last days
The mountain of the house of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it.
---3---And many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us concerning His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.”
For the law will go forth from Zion
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
---4---And He will judge between the nations,
And will render decisions for many peoples;
And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
And never again will they learn war.”
Jeremiah prophesied about a new day:
---31---“”Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
---32---not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
---33---“But this is a covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it’ and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
The Prophet Joel prophesied about this day—this day that the world would change:
---28---“It will come about after this that I will pour out
My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your old men will dream dreams,
Your young men will see visions.
---29---“Even on the male and female servants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”
---30---“I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth,
Blood, fire and columns of smoke.
---31---“The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood
Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.
---32---“And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD
Will be delivered;
For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
There will be those who escape,
As the LORD has said,
Even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.”
Well….when would this happen?
Daniel prophesied about the time this would occur. He was talking to the King of Babylon when he told him that his was the first great kingdom, but that another would follow which was inferior to his. This would be the Medo-Persian Empire. Daniel said—after that, a kingdom would rise up and rule over the earth. That kingdom would be Greece.
Then Daniel said the following in Chapter 2, verse 40.
---40---“Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces.”
Following this, Daniel talked about the Divine Kingdom.
---44---“In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will, itself, endure forever.”
