Our Great God

"When men talk of a little hell, it is because they think they have only a little sin, and believe in a little Saviour; it is all little together. But when you get a great sense of sin, you want a great Saviour, and fell that, if you do not have Him, you will fall into a great destruction, and suffer a great punishment at the hands of the great God."

C.H. Spurgeon

Flipboard For The iPad

(HT Vitamin Z)

Where Is Forgiveness To Be Found?

“Where must a man go for pardon? Where is forgiveness to be found? There is a way both sure and plain and that way is simply to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. It is to cast your soul, with all its sins, unreservedly on Christ, – to cease completely from any dependence on your own works or doings, either in whole or in part – and to rest on no other work but Christ’s work, no other merit but Christ’s merit, as your ground of hope. Take this course and you are a pardoned soul.”

J.C. Ryle - Old Paths, “Forgiveness”, 185, 186.

The Biggest Problem In The Universe

The Passing Over of Sins from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

They Have Become Sources Of Spiritual Strength

"Initially, this involved my realizing that my continuing disability was the chief means by which God kept blessing me and keeping me near to himself. As my accident has had more negative consequences—weakening hands from damaging my ulnar nerves when, losing my balance, I fall on my elbows; coming under permanent risk of stroke from dissecting my left-internal carotid while trying to keep in shape; and so on—I have found that, rather than these things becoming occasions for doubting God’s goodness to me, they have become sources of spiritual strength by helping me to see where I cannot place my heart.

In other words, I have come to realize that God is protecting me from idolatrous self-sufficiency by taking various goods away from me so that I am not tempted to rest satisfied in them. Each morning as I get up, my disability prompts me to trust God rather than to rely on my own strength. And so, in this second stage of my coming to understand how God works in and through our difficulties, I came to realize that some things that are really evil. . . are also really good and that, as such, these evils are actually ordained by God."

Mark Talbot, “True Freedom: The Liberty that Scripture Portrays as Worth Having,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, p. 88.

(HT The Works of God)

Robert Plant & Band of Joy - The Only Sound That Matters

Redeemed & Adopted

"God redeemed us in his Son so that he might love us and delight in us even as he loves and delights in his eternal Son. Adoption is God’s act of making room within his triune love for prodigals who are without hope, and providing them with homes in this world and the world to come."

Dan Cruver, Reclaiming Adoption (Cruciform Press, 2011), 14

The Greater Wealth

If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? Luke 16:11

“The ‘true riches’ obviously have nothing to do with money. To have spiritual power to overcome the awfulness of the post-Christian world — that is true riches. The church is constantly saying, ‘Where’s our power? Where’s our power?’ Jesus’ statement here gives us at least part of the answer. We must use money with a view to what counts in eternity. If a child cannot take his father’s money, go to the store, purchase what is requested and return home with the change, it does not make sense for the father to increase his allowance. So since . . . the money we handle is not our own, if we do not bring it under the lordship of Christ, we will not be given the greater wealth of spiritual power.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, “Ash heap lives,” in No Little People (Downers Grove, 1974), page 266.

(HT Ray Ortlund)

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

"If people believe in God at all today, the overwhelming majority hold that this God – however he, she, or it may be understood – is a loving being. But that is what makes the task of the Christian witness so daunting. For this widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology. The result is that when informed Christians talk about the love of God, they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture.

I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God – to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity. The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.

If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion, we may strengthen the hands of Arminians, semi-Pelagians, Pelagians, and those more interested in God’s inner emotional life than in his justice and glory, but the cost will be massive."

D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000), 9-11, 22.

(HT The Upper Register)

Spending Quantity Time With Your Kids

(HT Vitamin Z)

Turn Off The Television

"It astonishes me how many Christians watch the same banal, empty, silly, trivial, titillating, suggestive, immodest TV shows that most unbelievers watch – and then wonder why their spiritual lives are weak and their worship experience is shallow with no intensity. If you really want to hear the Word of God the way He means to be heard in truth and joy and power, turn off the television on Saturday night and read something true and great and beautiful and pure and honorable and excellent and worthy of praise (see Philippians 4:8). Then watch your heart unshrivel and begin to hunger for the Word of God."

John Piper

Joy In Suffering

Shepherd's Notes:

"The gospel was the lens through which Paul could look at terrible loss and suffering and say that it is GAIN! Because in the gospel we learn how bad off we really are (everyone of us justly deserves eternal torment in hell), but we also learn what Christ has done for us on the cross.

The issue that is always before you in the midst of suffering is, where is your treasure? You can try to store up your treasures in your finances, you can try to store up your treasures in your family, you can try to store up your treasures in your 401k, but it is only when your greatest treasure in life is the precious Lord Jesus Christ that you can with Paul suffer the loss of all things and still cry out GAIN!!! All I have is Christ and all I need is Christ!"

Read the entire article here.

Gospel

True & Better

The Bible Deals With Hard Issues

John Piper:

"One of the reasons I believe the Bible and love the Bible is because it deals with the hardest issues in life. It doesn’t sweep painful things under the rug—or complex things or confusing things or provoking things or shocking things or controversial things. In fact, Jesus sometimes went out of his way to create controversy with the Pharisees so that more truth about himself and about unbelief would come out, so that we could be warned by examples of hardness and wooed by images of his glory."

Read the entire sermon here.

(HT The Works of God)

Substitution

The concept of substitution may be said . . . to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

John Stott - The Cross of Christ p,160

Baptism

"Every baptism recorded in the Bible was the baptism of a person who had professed faith in Christ. Nowhere in Scripture is there any instance of an infant being baptized. The “household baptisms” (Ac. 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16) are exceptions to this only if one assumes that the “household” included infants. But, in fact, Luke steers us away from this assumption, for example in the case of the Philippian jailer (Ac. 16:32) by saying that Paul first “spoke the word of the Lord…to all who were in his (the jailor’s) house,” and then baptized them. This looks like Luke’s way of showing that a person needs to hear and believe “the word of the Lord” in order to be baptized… I also noticed – as every Baptist schoolboy knows – that the order of Peter’s command was, “Repent and be baptized” (Ac. 2:38). I saw no reason to reverse the order."

John Piper - Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 2002, p. 130.

Hell: We Can't Afford To Get It Wrong

(HT Randy Alcorn)

Elyse Fitzpatrick - Gospel Centered Parenting

Blowin' In The Wind

Life Is Hard

Joni Eareckson Tada:

"Dear friend, we are destined for trials. In other words, life is supposed to be difficult, God wired it that way. Looking back, I don't think that's something the visitor to our Family Retreat believed. But he's not alone -- it's amazing how many people believe that life should be easy. They groan, feeling as though their difficulties are a unique kind of affliction that should not be. They focus so much on the problems and so little on the Lord, that they feel that affliction has somehow been especially visited upon them. But here's the thing...

Life is a series of problems to be solved. And, yes, solving problems is a painful process, but it is this whole process that gives our life meaning. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Those things that hurt, instruct." Isn't that the truth! And the psalmist said long before Benjamin Franklin in Psalm 119 that, "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees." So today, friend, if you're thinking that your life is just one battle after the next, take the advice of an apostle: be strengthened, be encouraged in your faith. Don't be unsettled by your trials, because you know quite well you are destined for them and for good reason. Trials are not for our pleasure; they are for our profit. Once you and I can embrace this truth, we transcend it. Once we know that life is to be truly difficult then life is difficult no longer. God has not redeemed you and me to make us happy, or healthy, or free of trouble. God has redeemed you and me to become more like Jesus Christ... and this is why He destined trials for you, my friend."

Read (or listen) to the entire article here.

You Are Not Your Own

Do you not know that . . . you are not your own? —1 Corinthians 6:19

There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of His saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for Himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for ourselves. We are called into intimacy with the gospel, and things happen that appear to have nothing to do with us. But God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way. If you refuse, you will be of no value to God in His redemptive work in the world, but will be a hindrance and a stumbling block.

The first thing God does is get us grounded on strong reality and truth. He does this until our cares for ourselves individually have been brought into submission to His way for the purpose of His redemption. Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?

Oswald Chambers

The Valley Song

God Is A Refuge For Us

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.

Psalm 62:5-8 (ESV)

When We Are Weak

I know, we may say, that Christ is kindest in his love when we are at our weakest; and that if Christ had not been to the fore, in our sad days, the waters had gone over our soul.

Samuel Rutherford - The Loveliness of Christ (The Banner Of Truth Trust) p.12

The Gift Of Suffering

Shepherd's Notes:

"Philippians 1:29 says, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” Now, you have to admit that even in English that’s a pretty hard verse to take. I mean how do you reconcile Paul’s words that “it has been granted to you to suffer” with the reality of the darkness and the despair of suffering in this fallen world? But when you dive into the Greek text underneath it, it becomes even more difficult.

Paul uses the word exaristhe, which means “gift of grace” to describe two significant realities, 1) That salvation is entirely a gift of grace, 2) that suffering is in the same way a gift of grace. It’s as if Paul is saying that the same grace which brought about salvation also brings about suffering. They are both equally gifts of grace and if we are to “walk in a manner worthy of the gospel” as he says in verse 27, then we must embrace them both as gifts from God.

So, the question is “How on earth do you get to a point where you can actually look upon suffering as a gift of grace?” I believe that there are two complimentary truths that help us to understand what Paul is driving at here. The first is that when we suffer for the sake of the gospel, we are actually suffering in the place of Christ."

Read the entire article here.

Global Missions

(HT Vitamin Z)

Nine Implications Of Christian Hedonism

1. God himself, most fully revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, is the supreme value in the universe.

2. Joyfully treasuring Jesus above all things in life and death displays his worth and glory.

3. Since God is the most glorious of all beings, and since that glory shines most brightly in us when we are most satisfied in him, therefore it is our duty to pursue the greatest and longest happiness in God every hour of the day and forever.

4. When we say you should pursue your joy in God all the time, no exceptions, we do not make a god out of joy. We say that you have already made a god out of whatever you find most pleasure in.

5. The aim of corporate worship is to awaken and express together our joyful admiration of all the wonders and works of God.

6. The word of God and preaching exist to reveal God to us for the sake of our joy in him.

7. The aim of all discipling and all Christian relationships is to help each other maintain our joy in God above all things.

8. Seeking your greatest and longest joy in God severs the root of sin.

9. The pursuit of joy in God is essential not only because God is glorified by it, but because people are loved by it. Pursuing your joy in God is essential to your loving people.

John Piper

Regeneration

"And if God does require the sinner – dead in sin – that he should take the first step, then He requireth just that which renders salvation as impossible under the gospel as ever it was under the law, seeing man is as unable to believe as he is to obey, and is just as much without power to come to Christ as he is without power to go to heaven without Christ. The power must be given to him of the Spirit. He lieth dead in sin: the Spirit must quicken him. He is bound hand and foot, fettered by transgression; the Spirit must cut his bonds, and then he will leap to liberty. God must come and dash the iron bars out of their sockets, and then he can escape afterwards, but unless the first thing be done for him, he must perish as surely under the gospel as he would have done under the law."

C.H. Spurgeon

Keeping The Gospel Central

F-18 Breaking Sound Barrier

Kick The TV Habit

Erik Raymond shares his experience of shutting off the TV here.

Mr. Money Mustache shares how much time and money you will save by cutting Cable TV here.

Souls Go Weak And Come Away Strengthened

"Christ cured many who were blind by disease or accident; here he cured one born blind. Thus he showed his power to help in the most desperate cases, and the work of his grace upon the souls of sinners, which gives sight to those blind by nature. This poor man could not see Christ, but Christ saw him. And if we know or apprehend anything of Christ, it is because we were first known of him. Christ says of uncommon calamities, that they are not always to be looked on as special punishments of sin; sometimes they are for the glory of God, and to manifest his works. Our life is our day, in which it concerns us to do the work of the day. We must be busy, and not waste day-time; it will be time to rest when our day is done, for it is but a day. The approach of death should quicken us to improve all our opportunities of doing and getting good. What good we have an opportunity to do, we should do quickly. And he that will never do a good work till there is nothing to be objected against, will leave many a good work for ever undone, ( Ecclesiastes 11:4 ) . Christ magnified his power, in making a blind man to see, doing that which one would think more likely to make a seeing man blind. Human reason cannot judge of the Lord's methods; he uses means and instruments that men despise. Those that would be healed by Christ must be ruled by him. He came back from the pool wondering and wondered at; he came seeing. This represents the benefits in attending on ordinances of Christ's appointment; souls go weak, and come away strengthened; go doubting, and come away satisfied; go mourning, and come away rejoicing; go blind, and come away seeing."

Matthew Henry - Concise Commentary on John 9:1-7

(HT Over The Rainbow)

Desensitized

"Statistics show that the average child living at home in America watches at least twenty-eight hours of television each week. (For some kids, the total is much higher.) Programming that targets young people is often the very worst at deliberately glamorizing sin. By the time most young people graduate from high school, they have been overexposed to the grossest kinds of evil through “entertainment” media in mind-numbing ways – so that nothing seems particularly appalling anymore. After all, drug use, immorality, violence, and profanity are standard fare on television. When a whole generation has been raised on a steady diet of that stuff, it’s no wonder that sin no longer seems exceedingly sinful to them."

John MacArthur - The Fulfilled Family, 2005, p. 89.

Turned The World Upside Down

“It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book, conventionally known as the Acts of the Apostles, without being profoundly stirred and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ. The young Church, like all young creatures, is appealing in its simplicty and singleheartedness. Here we are seeing the Church in its first youth, valiant and unspoiled — a body of ordinary men and women joined in an unconquerable fellowship never before seen on this earth.

Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigrorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity or muscle-bound by over-organisation. These men did not make ‘acts of faith,’ they believed, they did not ‘say their prayers,’ they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.

No one can read this book without being convinced that there is Someone here at work besides mere human beings. Perhaps because in their very simplicity, perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be to die, the Spirit of God found what surely He must always be seeking – a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that He can work in them and through them with the minimum of let or hindrance. Consequently it is a matter of sober historical fact that never before has any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these men ‘have turned the world upside down’ (Acts 17:6).”

J. B. Phillips - Preface to The Young Church in Action (New York, 1955), page vii.

(HT Ray Ortlund)

Is Grape Juice for Communion a Sin?

Desire For God

"God was so precious to my soul that the world with all its enjoyments appeared vile. I had no more value for the favor of men than for pebbles."

David Brainerd

Trust God In Our Suffering

I think it can. If the suffering is done in faith – that is, throughout the suffering we place our trust in God – then I think we are participating in the sense that we are willing to suffer and to trust God in the midst of suffering, even as Jesus trusted the Father. . .

"In regard to the man born blind (John 9), the question was asked of Jesus, “Who’s sin was it, this man’s or his parents’, that he was afflicted with blindness?” Jesus said it was neither. In other words, the question was a false dilemma. And those who asked it were trying to reduce to two options something that had more than two. There was another option. Jesus said, “It wasn’t because of his sin or his parents’ sin. This person was born blind so that the power of God and the grace of God may be made manifest.” That person was suffering not from persecution. His suffering was used by God to bring honor and glory to Christ.

I mention this instance because it is a clear biblical case in which suffering has theological value – not merit, but value – insofar that it is useful to the purposes of God. Christ himself tells us that we are going to have afflictions and suffering in this world. He certainly indicates that we are going to suffer persecution, and he gives a particular blessing to that in the Sermon on the Mount, saying that the reward will be great. He also indicates that there will be other kinds of suffering that come our way and that we are suffering in him and with him."

R.C. Sproul - Now, That’s a Good Question, pp. 473-475

(HT The Works of God)

Will You Rejoice In That Hour?

The degrees of suffering and the forms of affliction will differ for every one of us. But one thing we will all have in common till Jesus comes: we will all die. We will come to that awesome moment of reckoning. If you have time, you will see your whole life played before you as you ponder if it has been well-spent. You will tremble at the unspeakable reality that in just moments you will face God. And the destiny of your soul will be irrevocable.

Will you rejoice in that hour? You will if you entrust your soul to a faithful Creator. He created your soul for his glory. He is faithful to that glory and to all who love it and live for it. Now is the time to show where your treasure is—in heaven or on earth. Now is the time to shine with the glory of God. Trust him. And keep on rejoicing.

John Piper

No Cross, No Crown

"We must not conceal from ourselves that true Christianity brings with it a daily cross in this life, while it offers us a crown of glory in the life to come. The flesh must be daily crucified. The devil must be daily resisted. The world must be daily overcome. There is a warfare to be waged, and a battle to be fought. All this is the inseparable accompaniment of true religion. Heaven is not to be won without it. Never was there a truer word than the old saying, “No cross, no crown!” If we never found this out by experience, our souls are in a poor condition."

J.C. Ryle

Kenny Wayne Shepherd "Voodoo Child" Live

(HT Scatterings)

The New Middle Road

Interview With Tim Chester: Eating With A Mission

Tim Chester:

1. What does food have to do with grace, church, and mission?

Everything! Just think about how often food figures in the Bible story or how much of church life involves meals. I don’t think this is incidental. Food expresses our dependence on God and on other people. Meals embody friendship and welcome. So food is a powerful way of doing mission and community. The Son of Man, Jesus says in Luke 7, came eating and drinking – this was the way Jesus did mission.

2. What do you mean when you say the way Jesus did meals was “radically subversive?”

Meals in Jesus’ day were highly stratified. Roman meals expressed the social order Jewish meals were similar (think of the jockeying for position in Luke 14) with the added twist that Levitical food laws made it all but impossible for Jews to eat with Gentiles. So meals expressed who were the insiders and who were the outsiders. Jesus turns all of this upside down or, perhaps I should say, inside out! Outsiders become insiders around the table with Jesus.


Read the entire interview here.

Friendship

"Today friendship has fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulnerable friendship is not. This is a great tragedy for self, family, and the Church, because it is in relationships that we develop into what God wants us to be. Friendships are there to be made if we value them as we ought – and if we practice some simple disciplines of friendship."

Kent Hughes - Disciplines of a Godly Man, p. 64.

You Shall Sing A Song Of Deliverance

"God is wonderful in His design and excellent in His working. Believer, God overrules all things for your good. The needs-be for all that you have suffered, has been most accurately determined by God. Your course is all mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him. There will be no occurrences which He did not foresee, and for which, therefore, He has not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance. Your life has been arranged on the best possible principles, so that if you had been gifted with unerring wisdom, you would have arranged a life for yourselves exactly similar to the one through which you have passed. Let us trust God where we cannot trace Him."

C.H. Spurgeon

"A Good Time Was Had By All"

"We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven: a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see young people enjoying themselves” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all.”

C.S. Lewis