Recent NOBTS chapel services have featured a guest message from Rex Horne, as well as the continuation of the Characteristics of God series with messages from Richard Gambill and President Jamie Dew.
Horne speaks out of John 9
Rex Horne, executive director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, addressed the chapel audience on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
He began with a word of gratitude for the ministry of NOBTS.
“For decades and decades now, my life and ministry has been impacted by New Orleans Seminary and by those who attended here in all kinds of different ways,” Horne said.
“I’m grateful to be here. I owe a debt to this place, and I pray that the Lord will bless you in this new academic year. It’s a joy for me to be here.”
Reading out of John 9, Horne spoke about the story of the man born blind.
He explained the one thing in life that’s truly important to know is that you’ve had an encounter with Jesus just as the blind man did.
“You’re learning many things,” Horne said. “There’s a lot that you’re being exposed to. But at the end of the day, there’s not many things we really have to know. But there’s one thing and one person that we need to know. And we need to share him with others.
“He’ll take care of the needs. He’ll lead us to those that are blind. He’ll lead folks to salvation. He’ll lead us to the mission field. He’ll lead us to wherever we need to go. Our job is to know one thing: that we’ve have had an encounter with Jesus as real as the blind man.”
Horne’s message can be viewed here.
Gambill speaks on God’s righteousness
Richard Gambill, associate vice president for auxiliary services and operations, continued this semester’s Characteristics of God series on Thursday, Sept. 5, with a message about the righteousness of God.
Speaking out of Philippians 3, he explained how God’s righteousness is perfect and sufficient as opposed to man’s insufficient attempts at righteousness.
“We need God’s perfect righteousness,” Horne said.
“Any standard of righteousness that we can possibly keep falls way short of the standard we need to meet to stand before a Holy God. We need the perfect righteousness of God. Salvation is only obtained by those who gain the perfect righteousness of God from God through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Gambill, who also serves as assistant professor of expository preaching, said we need to be careful not to make up our own standard of righteousness.
“We need to beware of self-righteousness. We need to beware of trying to build up our own standard of righteousness. A standard of righteousness where we can get the applause of man. Ultimately such righteousness is worthless. Any righteousness outside of Christ is absolutely worthless.”
Gambill closed with a challenge to the audience.
“As you go out to the Church, let me sound this warning: You have to teach morality, but do not ever divorce morality from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You can lead people into a false gospel of thinking ‘well I’m checking the boxes, I’m good.’ And lead them away from faith in Jesus. May we never be guilty of that.”
Gambill’s message can be viewed here.
Dew preaches on God’s compassion
NOBTS President Jamie Dew carried on the Characteristics of God series on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
References John 11 and Psalm 145: 8-9, Dew spoke about how surprising the compassion of God is in comparison to his greatness.
“The Lord is, quite frankly, not what I would have expected Him to be,” Dew said.
“He’s just not what we would have expected a God like this to be. A God so great, a God so mighty, a God that holds all of this power, a God that is knowledgeable, a God that is majestic above all things; to think this God would be compassionate towards little specs of dust like you and me.
“You would expect this God perhaps to be indifferent to us. You would expect us to be in hot pursuit of Him, but instead we find the opposite to be. We see that God Himself has pursued us in Jesus Christ His son, and that we as human beings are often indifferent. To think that our God, as great and mighty as He is, is a God that nevertheless is full of compassion, is quite literally an astounding thing to behold.”
Dew went on to explain three things about the compassion of God.
He elaborated on his third point to explain that God specifically shows His love for humanity through the bodily resurrection of the dead.
“The great hope of Christianity is not just that we’re going to die one day and our bodies will stay down here and our souls will be up there in the presence of Jesus,” Dew said.
“We find in Christianity that God has gone through tremendous amounts of work and trouble to create this physical world and create image-bearers that are embodied like you and me. And He’s going to go through it all one more time to raise the dead. The Bible tells us that Christ Himself is in fact that resurrection of the dead. Christ is coming back one day and the dead in Christ shall be raised because our God is compassionate, kind and good.”
Dew’s message can be viewed here.
NOBTS chapel is held every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. CST. It can be watched live on YouTube and Facebook. A full schedule of the semester’s chapel speakers is available here.
