Sermon: God Draws Near
Out of Exile
English - March 29, 2020 18:43 - 25 MBChristianity Religion & Spirituality old testament hebrew bible ancient near east Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This is the audio (38:34, 25.0 MB) of a sermon preached at our Lithuania home church, Klaipėda Free Christian Church, on March 29. The sermon is titled, “God Draws Near,” and the main texts are Numbers 5:1-4 and 9:1-14. Continue reading →
This is the audio (38:34, 25.0 MB) of a sermon preached at our Lithuania home church, Klaipėda Free Christian Church, on March 29. The sermon is titled, “God Draws Near,” and the main texts are Numbers 5:1-4 and 9:1-14.
This sermon was preached under exceptional circumstances due to COVID-19 restrictions: a service live-streamed from a nearly-empty sanctuary to our congregation over Facebook. You can watch the service here on Facebook. I was honored to be able to address our local body under these circumstances, and I hope that I was able to lend some encouragement. Attentive followers of this blog will perhaps see some insights drawn from the paper I gave at the November 2019 conference, “Chronicles and the Priestly Literature” in Lausanne, which will soon be published in an edited volume.
Here is an excerpt:
Jesus is the human face of God, God in the flesh. He celebrated at birthdays and weddings. He cried at funerals, even for his friend Lazarus when he knew that he would soon raise Lazarus from the dead. He had compassion on people, he touched and healed them. He chose to suffer the limitations of being human in our world, and he even went to a painful death on the cross—in order that we could be reconciled to Him, so that we can draw near to Him.
He has made a way for us, just as he made a way for those sad mourners to rejoice at the Passover a month later, just as he accepted the offerings of those who repented and turned to him in the days of Hezekiah. So, let us continue to draw near to him, every day in prayer and reading of Scripture, every week as we worship him together as a local body—even though we are physically separated from one another.
Enjoy hearing the sermon in both English and Lithuanian (back-and-forth)!
[Audio and text: ©2020 by Benjamin D. Giffone. Reproduction and distribution are permitted, providing that the author is properly credited and that no fee is charged.]