Rally Cry!

Introduction: And a brief prayer, an old Anglican prayer:

‘Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen’.

I want to speak to you about the things we should be fighting for!

1. Families
2. Truth and Honesty
3. Positive Change
4. Transformative Love
5. Unlimited Grace

Application: Maybe it would be a good idea for you to write down a few things you believe are worth fighting for.

Transition: Coming from the position as a Pastor, I think there are several things that we should/need to be fighting for.

That said, I also believe the only way to affect positive / transformative outcomes is to do it together.

It’s my opinion that it’s time to rally!

To ‘rally around’ is an idiom: to join together to support (something or someone) in a difficult time or situation!

Application: In baseball for instance, when a team is losing there is a tradition that many teams will employ…it’s called the ‘rally hat.’ Everyone in the dugout cooperates to show unity and determination.

We use the term, ‘rallying the troops!’

General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordering the Normandie Invasion, June 6, 1944,

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the eliminations of Nazi tyranny over oppressed people of Europe, and the security for ourselves in a free world.”

We Need to Rally around several things!

Transition: As a pastor and pastor of Christian Life Church, I am passionate about many things but there are 4 specific ones I want to bring to your attention.

Application: Once again, I am pulling out the ‘Danger, danger, Mr. Robinson’ card.

The role of prophets and the prophetic is to speak, address, warn, challenge and hopefully provide options & opportunities to genuinely affect change.

Question: Whether I am speaking prophetically to you today you will have to judge / determine, but I believe that I am!

Application: I would say to us that unless the saints gather, rally and pursue certain things, the church will continue to weaken until it’s virtually obsolete in cultural, political, and spiritual significance.

Transition: Because it’s Communion Sunday, let me start with the need to Rally around in Defense of the Cross!

1. Rally in Defense of the Cross.

Application: The message of the cross and it’s power and necessity continues to diminish (in America and elsewhere) constantly!

‘All Roads Lead to Rome’ = The Road to Rome gets broader and broader and times moves on!

Acceptable ‘Spirituality’ is subjective to so many!

1 Corinthians 1:18, ‘For the message of the cross is foolishnessto those who are perishing,but to us who are being savedit is the power of God. (NIV)

Acts 4:12, ‘There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.’ (NLT)

Question: What do we know about the cross?

1. Rejected by Other Religions
   
   
2. Islam rejects the notion of a sin-bearing Savior. According to the Qur’an, each one shall reap the fruit of their own deeds. And therefore, there is no place, there is no need, for the cross. And indeed, to the Muslim mind, it is unthinkable that a major prophet of God should come to such an ignominious end.
3. Hinduism, while accepting the historicity of the death of Christ, rejects its saving significance.
4. And humanism, in all of its forms in contemporary selfism, rejects the notion of the cross entirely.

Quote: In an earlier era, a rather arrogant professor from Oxford University remarked that Christianity is the worst of all religions—he’d said, because it rests “on the allied doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement, which,” he said, “are intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous.”[3] So the cross is rejected by other religions.

• The cross is marginalized by liberal scholarship. In liberal thinking throughout, certainly, the last 150 years, the essence of Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is an exemplar. He’s an ethicist.

Question: What does the Cross really teach?

1. First of all, because the message of the cross establishes the gravity of the human condition. The message of the cross establishes the gravity of sin, says that the story of humanity is the story of man’s rebellion and man’s alienation and man’s brokenness.
   1. And the death of Jesus and the picture that is then given to us in the Bible causes us to ponder and then to proclaim that it took the death of God’s perfect Son to deal with my sinful life, with my alienation, and with my brokenness, and with my rebellion.

And the average millennial out in Texas tonight has no answer for that question either. They’ve no answer for the question. They have been raised believing that they exist as a result of time plus matter plus chance. They are a collection of molecules held in suspension. There is no ultimate destiny towards which they are moving; therefore, there is no arc that they’re able to navigate through their lives, and they are at sea. And if the message that is then offered to them is a kind of watery substitute for the message of the cross, then we ought not be surprised that they just walk away from it. Because what we have to face up to is the fact of our rebellion against God: that no part of our lives is left intact—our emotions, our affections, our minds, our wills. The anti-God bias which is part and parcel of our human existence comes in at the level of our understanding and our intellect. And there is no intellectual road to God.

To read addition on this full statement given by Alister Begg go to:

https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/sermon/power-and-message-cross/

Conclusion: We need to rally around the Defense of the Cross and its Purpose and Power.

• We need to stop saying to others that ‘spirutality’ is good and ok even if it doesn’t’ fit the cross as its foundation.)
• We need to explain to our children that the world around them which rejects the cross is in grave danger of eternal damnation.

Luke 16:19-31 – Parable of Abraham’s Bosom