Why Expository Preaching?

Here are some good reasons for the model of preaching that we follow at EFCMM.

Alistair Begg:

Why should expository preaching be recovered and faithfully practiced?

• It gives glory to God alone. Since expository preaching begins with the text of Scripture, it’s starts with God and is in itestlf an act of worship.
• It makes the preacher study God’s Word. The first heart God’s Word needs to reach is the preacher.
• It helps the congregation. It enables the congregation to learn the Bible.
• It demands treatment of the entire Bible. It prevents the preacher from avoiding difficult passages or from dwelling on only his favorite texts.
• It provides a balanced diet. Exposition affirms the priority and sufficiency of a text. We serve our people best when we make clear that we are committed to teaching the Bible by teaching the Bible.
• It eliminates Saturday night fever. It liberates the preacher from last minute preparation and it doesn’t leave the congregation wondering what the preacher will talk about on Sunday.

Justice Not Overcome, But Satisfied

Kevin DeYoung:

Though few would put it this way, it’s easy for Christians to think the cross is where love overcame holiness. Or to put it more prosaically: God saved us because he loves us so much he decided to look past our sins. God is love and he loves to forgive our sins.

But that’s not exactly how justification works. We are not justified because God’s mercy triumphed over God’s justice. We are justified because in divine mercy, God sent his Son to the cross to satisfy divine justice. Mercy triumphs over judgment, but it does not remove the need for justice. We were saved not by the removal of justice, but by the satisfaction of it.

The resurrection, then, is the loud declaration that there is nothing left to pay (cf. Rom. 4:25).

*****

The resurrection is not a sentimental story about never giving up, or the possibility of good coming from evil. It is not first of all a story about how suffering can be sanctified, or a story of how Jesus suffered for all of humanity so we can suffer with the rest of humanity. The resurrection is the loud declaration that Jesus is enough–enough to atone for your sins, enough to reconcile you to God, enough to present you holy in God’s presence, enough to free you from the curse of the law, enough to promise you there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Something objectively happened on the cross, and that objective work was broadcast to the whole world by an empty tomb. The good news is not a generic message of love for everyone or hope for all. The gospel is the theological interpretation of historical fact. You might put the good news like this: Faith will be counted to us as righteousness when we believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Rom. 4:24-25).

How to Pray for Revival

Ray Ortlund on How to Pray for Revival:

Revival is a gift from heaven. We don’t work it up. God sends it down.

When Jonathan Edwards described the awakening in his church, he had to use words like “surprising,” “extraordinary” and “astonishing.” The Bible says of the early church that “awe came upon every soul” (Acts 2:43). We can’t program that into our worship: 10:45 am – Awe comes upon every soul.

Since revival is of God, we should pray for it. But how? The Bible teaches us how to pray; Isaiah 63:15-64:12 is a biblical prayer for revival.

He then briefly develops these points:

Longing for the Love of God

Lamenting Our Own Hardness

Longing for the Presence of God

Lamenting Our Own Sinfulness

Longing for the Touch of God

Final Appeal

Go here for the whole thing.

1 in 4 Children in US Raised by a Single Parent

News Item: 1 in 4 Children in US Raised by a Single Parent

While this AP article notes the shift in sensibilities (not using the word "morality") when it comes to couples staying married for life, it focuses more on the need for better pay for single moms and improved government childcare rather than what should be done to keep families together.

It is also sad to see how this affects rising poverty rates.

Teach your children God's design for families, pray for a world in need of Christ, and reach out to your neighbor who may be struggling to get by.

Jesus Lives

"Jesus Lives" from the album Risen by Sovereign Grace Music:

Free download of the song here.

Raised for Our Justification

Romans 4:20-25

²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” ²³ But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, ²⁵ who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Adrian Warnock:

The link between Jesus’ resurrection and our justification seems to have many facets:

1. Raised to Give Us a Future Resurrection: Because of Jesus’ resurrection, one day our physical bodies will also return to life.
2. Raised to Prompt Faith in Us: It is the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, following his sin-defeating death, that will inspire us to believe in, trust, obey, and worship this man who lived two thousand years ago in a small country in the Middle East. Justification is “by grace . . . through faith” (Ephesians 2:8), and our faith itself requires the resurrection of Jesus. Unless Jesus had defeated death, we could never have the faith in him that is necessary for our justification. Jesus’ resurrection is in this sense the source of the faith that is the grounds of our justification: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
3. Raised for His Own Justification: It may sound strange to talk about Jesus’ need for justification. But justification is a declaration, a vindication. The resurrection of Jesus has evidencing power. Jesus is declared to still be righteous by his resurrection, just as he was declared to have become sin by his death. God’s wrath has been satisfied.
4. Justified So We Can be Justified: Despite our usual understanding that the cross alone is responsible for our forgiveness, Paul is elsewhere very clear. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). We share in the justification of Jesus. Because of his right standing with God, his people are made righteous too.
5. Raised So He Can Apply Justification to Us: Faith is putting our trust in the person Jesus and in the fact that he died and rose again for us. How does Jesus apply salvation to us? Jesus himself saves us in the present. Edwards comments on Romans 4:25, “That is, delivered for our offenses, and raised again that he might see to the application of his sufferings to our justification, and that he might plead them for our justifying.” Jesus is before the throne of God pleading for us, no doubt on the grounds of his death and resurrection. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).

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Evidence for the Resurrection

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From This Fountain and No Other

John Calvin:

We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is “of him.” If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth…If we see redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.

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For Me, For Us, For God

Trevin Wax, in Counterfeit Gospels:

Having grown up in evangelical churches all my life, I had always taken for granted the truth that Christ died for me. That truth was emphasized again and again, and it had gripped my heart long ago. What was becoming more glorious to me was the truth that Christ died for us. I was beginning to see in Scripture how Christ's death purchased his church as a bride. Furthermore, this action for us was ultimately for God and his glory ….

I'm afraid we often take the glorious for me and separate it from the for us and the for God. We shrink the gospel down until it is a message about the individual standing before God that no longer contains the gospel community at the heart of God's plan. Instead, we need to see the for me wrapped up in the for us, which is wrapped up in the for God. It all goes back to God and his glory being made manifest through the church that he has bought with the blood of his Son.

Emphasize the for me to the exclusion of everything else, and you wind up with an individualistic message about personal salvation; the church becomes an optional side effect of the gospel message. Emphasize the for us and for God aspects of the message and you never bring the good news down to the personal level; you don't challenge someone to trust in Christ …. Once you grasp all three aspects, your personal salvation story is given eternal significance because it is caught up in the great, unfolding drama dreamed up in the heart of our good and loving Creator.

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Substitution and Satisfaction

I think we saw this foreshadowed very clearly from the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22.

John Stott:

We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ which does not have at its centre the principle of ‘satisfaction through substitution’, indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution.

The cross was not:

a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one which tricked and trapped him;

nor an exact equivalent, a quid pro quo to satisfy a code of honour or technical point of law;

nor a compulsory submission by God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape;

nor a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father;

nor a procurement of salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant Father;

nor an action of the Father which bypassed Christ as Mediator.

Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character.

The theological words ‘satisfaction’ and ‘substitution’ need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstance be given up. The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.

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Mercifully Forsaken

Mark Galli:

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" —Mark 15:33-34, ESV

Here Jesus speaks a word we could have spoken. Not always, not everywhere. But there are times when this word has become our word, words he may have taken right out of our mouths: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Sometimes this word remains unspoken, but the sentiment is a steady reality. There is no great anguish. There are no tears. There is just the daily, ongoing experience of God's absence. We don't feel God's presence in prayer or worship, but we still go through the motions. We read the Bible faithfully, but gain no flashes of inspiration. This reality has become such a part of our lives we don't panic. We recognize that extraordinary spiritual experiences are few and far between and that we live in vast stretches of between. We wouldn't quite say we're forsaken, but neither would we say God is a living reality. But at the end of another dreary day of divine absence, when we turn out the bed lamp and lie still in the dark, waiting for sleep to overtake us, we wonder, Why don't I experience God more?

Click here to read the rest. It's solid stuff.

The Other Pole

John 3:14-15

¹⁴ And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Russell Moore:

In my nightly Bible readings with my family, I read a selected narrative in the canon, but every night my children beg me to read “the one about the snake.” For some reason they love to hear about Moses combating the fiery serpents in the wilderness with the bronze serpent on the poleand about the afflicted finding healing when they look at the emblem of the very curse that’s killing them. My little boys don’t simply have a morbid fascination with venomous snakes among the wandering Israelites. In fact, they are never satisfied to end the story there.

They wait in silence until we turn to what they call “the other pole,” the picture of the cross of Christ. That’s when I tell them how mysteriously this seemingly helpless, executed man confronted the snake of Eden right there on “the other pole” and finally did what God had promised since the beginning of history. He crushed its head. He went out beyond the gates of Jerusalem to “where the wild things are”—and he conquered wildness forever. They seem to sleep better hearing that.

And so do I.

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The Insomnia of Jesus

This is the night that Jesus stayed awake praying in the Garden of Gethsemane while his disciples couldn't keep their eyes open. Come to think of it, he had been sleeping in the bottom of the boat during a storm while they were scared stiff.

Russell Moore thinks this is why:

Danger doesn’t keep Jesus awake; the judgment of God does.

The disciples are just the opposite, and I fear I am too. They are worried about relatively meaningless things, things that need only to be given over to the attention to Jesus. But they are oblivious to the cross that overhangs the cursed world around them, and within them.

I lose sleep quite often over the things Jesus tells me I should not worry about: my life, my possessions, my future. Such is not of the Spirit. Why is it easier for me to worry about next week’s schedule, and to lose sleep over that, than over those around me who could be moments away from judgment? Why am I more concerned about the way my peers judge my actions than about the Judgment Seat of Christ?

I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

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He Took It Lovingly

J. I. Packer:

Rabbi Duncan was a great old Reformed teacher in New College, Edinburgh, a hundred and more years ago. In one of his famous excursions in his classes, where he would move off from the Hebrew he was supposed to be teaching to theological reflections on this or that, he threw out the following question: “Do you know what Calvary was? What? What? What? Do you know what Calvary was?” Then, having waited a little and having walked up and down in front of them in silence, he looked at them again and said, “I’ll tell you what Calvary was. It was damnation, and he took it lovingly.” The students in his class reported that there were tears on his face as he said this. And well there might be. “Damnation, and he took it lovingly.”

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Pray for Believers in China

Al Mohler on recent persecution of Christians in China:

This is a truly alarming development, but it is actually in keeping with the periodic repression of Christians that has been demanded by the Chinese Communist Party. The church has maintained a steadfastly nonpolitical stance, but the Chinese government clearly sees this church — and the thousands like it — as a threat.

As the paper reports, China has been cracking down on dissent in recent months. Churches in Guangzhou have had their facilities taken away. The advocacy group China Aid claims that at least 3,343 Chinese house church members were detained or beaten in 2010. Some experts estimate that two-thirds of China’s Christians worship in house churches.

I encourage you to read the whole thing through the link.

Discontentment Starts with Lies

Stephen Altrogge:

Hebrews 3:13 says, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin is an expert in propaganda. It skillfully crafts lies and half-truths. Our hearts are trying to deceive us into believing lies. Discontentment starts when we believe sinful lies—lies about God, lies about ourselves, lies about the world, and lies about others. If we’re going to defeat the sin of discontentment, we need to be able to spot its lies. We need to be able to recognize propaganda.

For starters, the following are some of the most common lies:

1. God is withholding from me. If we don’t have something we desire, it’s not because God is withholding good from us. God didn’t spare his Son one stroke of misery. He won’t withhold any good thing from us.
2. God owes me. The discontented man complains because he isn’t getting what God “owes” him. The contented man is astonished that God would bless him for doing his duty.
3. If I get it, I’ll be happy. We won’t be fully satisfied when we get what we want. Because God loves us and wants us to find our satisfaction in him, he won’t allow us to be satisfied. To believe that we’ll finally be happy when we get what we want is a lie.
4. I know what’s best for me. God is the one who restores our soul. Sometimes he restores us by giving us what we desire, and sometimes he restores us by withholding it. In either case we can be assured that God knows the best path for us and that he’ll lead us on that path.

How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism

Lee Strobel writes in the Wall Street Journal on How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism. This would be a good piece to pass on to a skeptic.

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Not the Same Crowd

Kevin DeYoung:

Just to be clear: the crowd on Palm Sunday welcoming Jesus with shouts of “Hosanna!” is by and large not the same crowd on Good Friday that demands his death with shouts of “Crucify!”

This is a popular point preachers like to make, and I’ve probably made it myself: “Look at the fickle crowd. They sing songs to him on Sunday and five days later on Friday they want to kill him. How quickly we all turn away.” But read all four gospel accounts carefully (and check some good commentaries). The excited throng on Palm Sunday was filled with Galilean pilgrims and the larger group of disciples, not the Jerusalem crowd in general (see Luke 19:37; Mark 15:40-41).

R.T. France summarizes:

There is no warrant here for the preacher’s favourite comment on the fickleness of a crowd which could shout ‘Hosanna’ one day and ‘Crucify him’ a few days later. They are not the same crowd. The Galilean pilgrims shouted ‘Hosanna’ as they approached the city, the Jerusalem crowd shouted, ‘Crucify him.’

Have a blessed Holy Week that sticks closely to all sorts of glorious texts.

Do You Have the Spirit of God in You?

Charles Spurgeon:

Do you have the Spirit of God in you? You have some religion, most of you. But what kind is it? Is it a home-made article? Did you make yourself what you are? If so, you are a lost man up to this moment. If you have gone no further than you have walked yourself, you are not on the road to heaven yet, you have got your face turned the wrong way. But if you have received something which neither flesh nor blood could reveal to you, if you have been led to do the very thing which you once hated and to love that which you once despised and to despise what your heart and your pride were once set on, then, if this is the Spirit’s work, rejoice, for where he has begun the good work he will carry it on.

And you may know whether it is the Spirit’s work by this. Have you been led to Christ, and away from self? Have you been led away from all feelings, from all doings, from all willings, from all prayings, as the ground of your trust and your hope, and have you been brought nakedly to rely upon the finished work of Christ? If so, this is more than human nature ever taught any man. This is a height to which human nature never climbed. The Spirit of God has done that, and he will never leave what he has once begun. . . .

But if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not his. May the Spirit lead you to your room now to weep, now to repent, and now to look to Christ, and may you now have a divine life implanted which neither time nor eternity shall be able to destroy.

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Engaging with the Holy Spirit

From an interview with Graham Cole, author of Engaging with the Holy Spirit:

Several times in Scripture we’re told of negative actions directed against the Holy Spirit. Stephen said the Israelites were resisting the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51), and Paul warned the Church not to grieve or quench the Spirit (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). What does those actions entail?

To resist the Spirit is to set oneself against the Word of God whether heard or read. In Acts 7 it is a sin of the outsider. Those who heard Stephen were furious at what he said and gnashed their teeth against him. What a contrast with the crowd at Pentecost in Acts 2. When they heard Peter they were cut to the heart and asked Peter, “What shall we do?”

To grieve the Spirit quite simply in the argument of Ephesians 4 is to act like a pagan. The Spirit’s sorrow at this is real. The living God is no frozen absolute but is perfectly personal. Persons grieve when appropriate. Such grief is a sign of divine perfection and not divine weakness.

To quench the Spirit is a sin of the insider. It is to despise the word of God. Disregarding how that Word is engaging our conscience is an example of such quenching. As Calvin has taught us, the Lord relates to us by his Word and Spirit. How do we hear that Word today? We hear when the Scriptures are read publicly in the church, faithfully expounded from the pulpit, and privately read in our homes. To be biblically illiterate or unexposed to faithful Bible preaching and teaching is a tragedy for God’s people.

Whose Side Are You On, Anyway?

Mark Dever:

The difference between a Christian and non-Christian: When a non-Christian is convicted of sin, he sides with his sin. When a Christian is convicted of sin, he sides with God, against himself.

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Ministry in a War Zone

It's no fun to look at these pictures from the drug war in Mexico, but it exemplifies this world in need of Christ.

Christianity Today has a brief piece on a pastor (not the one pictured here) who was kidnapped and is being held for ransom.

Don't just be thankful you live in a safe place. Pray for those in the most dangerous ones.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Evangelism: Miraculous and Practical

Randy Newman:

As you consider how to share the gospel with your family and friends, first review how Scripture describes God’s work in salvation as a miracle.

• He ‘makes alive’ what was once ‘dead’ (Eph. 2:1–5)
• He delivered us from the domain of darkness (Col. 1:13)
• He explained that with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26)

Once we realize that evangelism occurs in the realm of the miraculous, we can start praying more faithfully, trusting more wholeheartedly, and proclaiming more gently. When we relinquish trust in our ability to persuade and latch onto God’s power to save, we find hope beyond explanation.

Going forward, here are a few very practical steps you can take:

1. Develop a system for prayer for your family. Perhaps you can set aside a section in a prayer journal. Or maybe you can insert photos of your family members in a place where you look for prayer prompters.
2. Begin your prayers for your family with thanksgiving. This may be more difficult for some people than others. Regardless of your family’s well-being, thank God for the family you have and all the accompanying benefits you can identify. Thank God for his love for each family member and all the gifts he’s given them.
3. You may need to include prayers of confession as well—confession of your lack of love for your family, your idolatry of control in trying to change them, your reliance on your ability to convict them of their sin instead of trusting the Holy Spirit to do that, your coldheartedness, haughtiness, and self-righteousness, etc. Ask the Holy Spirit to shine his light of truth on your darkness of sin.
4. If you haven’t already done so, “come out of the closet” as a Christian to your family. Pray for gentle words and a gracious demeanor mixed with bold confidence. Decide who would be the safest person to tell first. (I do not advise a group announcement at a holiday dinner table!) Aim for your announcementto be informational rather than evangelistic. You can trust God to open evangelistic doors later. For now, it’s time to couch things in sentences like this: “Mom, there’s something I think you should know about me. I’ve come to the place where I’ve decided to embrace Christianity as my faith.” Or, “Dad, I’ve become a Christian and it’s beginning tohave some good effects in my life. It’s all rather new, but I thought I’d tell you early on, just so you’d know what’s going on.”

Worship and Counseling, Part 2

This is the continuation of the video posted yesterday.

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Talking to Yourself

Here is a classic quotation from Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”

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Worship and Counseling, Part 1

Here's a conversation between a worship leader, Bob Kauflin, and a biblical counselor, David Powlison. It's a great way to think about the goals of both public worship and private counseling. They have more in common than you might think.

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Guilt

Sinclair Ferguson:

No therapist, no psychiatrist can relieve you of guilt. He or she may help you to resolve feelings of false guilt that can arise for a variety of reasons. Prescription drugs may provide certain kinds of ease. But no therapy, no course of drugs, can deliver you from real guilt. Why? Because being guilty is not a medical condition or a chemical disorder. It is a spiritual reality. It concerns your standing before God. The psychiatrist cannot forgive you; the therapist cannot absolve you; the counselor cannot pardon you.

But the message of the gospel is this: God can forgive you, and He is willing to do so.

First, however, you need to be brought to the place where you say, “I am guilty.”

Is your response one of self-justification, even of anger? “How dare anybody say to me, ‘You are guilty’!”

Does that apply even if the one saying so is God?

Until we acknowledge our sin and guilt, we will never come to discover that it can be forgiven. But when we do, actual forgiveness begins to give rise to an awareness of forgiveness psychologically, spiritually, mentally, inwardly. With that comes an increasing sense that the bondage of guilt has been broken. At last, we are set free. Wonder of wonders, we discover that at the very heart of the gospel is this fact: God has taken our guilt upon Himself in His Son Jesus Christ.

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It Doesn't Always Feel Good

C. S. Lewis:

It is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. But trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to him as long as he leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgment, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwittingly) to begin practicing it here on earth. It is good of him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.

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How to Criticize Your Pastor

Just in case you would ever need this, ahem, this is C. J. Mahaney on How to Criticize Your Pastor (and Honor God). You can read the whole piece through the link, but here's the conclusion:

So what constitutes a successful meeting? First of all, it was successful if you cared enough to approach your pastor and have this conversation with him. And it was successful if your pastor took the time to listen to you and to consider your observations. Do not expect or require that he immediately agrees with all your comments or that he immediately responds to them. Allow him the time necessary to pray, reflect on your correction, and talk with his wife and his friends about it.

But if you find yourself offended if your pastor doesn’t immediately respond or if he disagrees with you, then it could be that your own heart has been revealed, and maybe your motives weren’t as pure as you might have thought. You then have an opportunity to humble yourself before God and to entrust your pastor to God.

So meet personally with your pastor, humbly offer him your observations, but do not require an immediate response from him. As long as you have communicated your correction clearly and in love, you have served your pastor and honored God in the process.

I am grateful for those who have come to me with issues, rather than harboring bitterness or just leaving for another church.

Much Happier

Matthew Henry:

He is much happier that is always content, though he has ever so little, than he that is always coveting, though he has ever so much.

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Biblical Counseling in Miniature

Ed Welch:

Know the other person well enough to be able to pray for him or her.

That’s biblical counseling in miniature. Be personal. Study and know the person. Then, together, consider how the promises and wisdom of God, especially as they meet their zenith in Jesus Christ, overtake, compel and lead us in how to live and pray. And prayer, by the way, is a tangible expression of rising hope. Hope is what most of us dream about when we are stuck in our troubles.

There are details that lie behind these general guidelines. There are plenty of how-to’s in biblical counseling. But they all serve to place wisdom in its apt setting – the knowledge of God and love.

Working Together in the Church

We have a congregational meeting this coming Sunday evening. Since there's nothing we're voting on, it's a good time to pass along this story.

In 1836 Judge William Gould led a movement at First Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia, to buy their first organ. It was a break with tradition. In a congregational meeting, one member rose and demanded chapter and verse where the Bible authorizes “the worship of God with machinery.” But the members voted for the organ, and Judge Gould was appointed to raise the money.

Soon after the Judge ran into Robert Campbell, a member who had opposed the organ. Mr. Campbell asked the Judge why he had not asked him for a donation. Gould replied, “I knew you did not wish to have the organ.” “That makes no difference,” said Campbell. “When the majority of the members of the church have decided the matter, it is my duty to put aside personal feeling and assist as well as I may.”

Narrated in David B. Calhoun, Cloud of Witnesses

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The Oldest Manuscript Fragment of the New Testament

This is a short video on the oldest manuscript we have of the New Testament. It's just a fragment, but of course there are later copies that are complete. It's fascinating what these scholars do.

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Avoid an Avoidance Ethic

John Piper, from Don't Waste Your Life:

People who are content with the avoidance ethic generally ask the wrong question about behavior. They ask, What's wrong with it? What's wrong with this movie? Or this music? Or this game? Or these companions? Or this way of relaxing? Or this investment? Or this restaurant? Or shopping at this store? What's wrong with going to the cabin every weekend? Or having a cabin? This kind of question will rarely yield a lifestyle that commends Christ as all-satisfying and makes people glad in God. It simply results in a list of don'ts. It feeds the avoidance ethic.

The better questions to ask about possible behaviors is: How will this help me treasure Christ more? How will it help me show that I do treasure Christ? How will it help me know Christ or display Christ? The Bible says, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). So the question is mainly positive, not negative. How can I portray God as glorious in this action? How can I enjoy making much of him in this behavior?

Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud--just lots of hard work during the day and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend--woven around the church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.

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Big Enough

Kevin DeYoung:

I beg of you, don’t go after the next generation with mere moralism, either on the right (don’t have sex, go to church, share your faith, stay off drugs) or on the left (recycle, dig a well, feed the homeless, buy a wristband). The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us. So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us.

Some of us, it seems, are almost scared to tell people about God. Perhaps because we don’t truly know him. Maybe because we prefer living in triviality. Or maybe because we don’t consider knowing God to be very helpful in real life. I have to fight against this unbelief in my own life. If only I would trust God that God is enough to win the hearts and minds of the next generation. It’s his work much more than it is mine or yours. So make him front and center. Don’t preach your doubts as mystery. And don’t reduce God to your own level. If ever people were starving for a God the size of God, surely it is now.

Give them a God who is holy, independent, and unlike us, a God who is good, just, full of wrath and full of mercy. Give them a God who is sovereign, powerful, tender, and true. Give them a God with edges. Give them an undiluted God who makes them feel cherished and safe, and small and uncomfortable too. Give them a God who works all things after the counsel of his will and for the glory of his name. Give them a God whose love is lavish and free. Give them a God worthy of wonder and fear, a God big enough for all our faith, hope, and love.

Listening to Preaching as a Spiritual Discipline

Craig Brian Larson on listening to preaching as a spiritual discipline:

Preaching brings us before God's Word in the presence of the Holy Spirit, who indwells the gathered church.

Good preaching rescues us from our self-deceptions and blind spots, for left to ourselves, we tend to ignore the very things in God's Word that we most need to see. Preaching is done in community, covering texts and topics outside of our control.

Good preaching brings us into the place of corporate obedience rather than merely individual obedience. This is a uniquely corporate discipline that the church does together as a community, building up individuals and the community at the same time.

Good preaching contributes to spiritual humility by disciplining us to sit under the teaching, correction, and exhortation of another person. This strikes right to the heart of individualism, which is such a plague on the church.

Good preaching gives a place for a spiritually qualified person to protect believers from dangerous error. To use the biblical metaphor: Christians are sheep; false teachers are wolves; preachers are guardian shepherds. A preacher is a person called and gifted by God with spiritual authority for the care of souls in the context of God's church.

Good preaching does what most Christians are not gifted, trained, or time-endowed to do: interpret a text in context, distill the theological claims that are universally true, and apply those truths in a particular time and place to particular people in a particular church—all this with the help of resources informed by 2,000 years of the church's study that average Christians do not own.

Listening to preaching has a much lower threshold. While many spiritual disciplines sound like exercises for the spiritually elite, young and old, educated and uneducated, disciplined and undisciplined can at least listen to a sermon.

Worth Believing

J. Gresham Machen:

The New Testament without the miracles would be far easier to believe. But the trouble is, would it be worth believing?

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An Easy-Going God

John Stott:

The kind of God that appeals to most people today would be easy-going in his tolerance of our offenses. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating. He would have no violent reactions. Unhappily, even in the church we seemed to have lost the vision of the majesty of God. There is much shallowness and levity among us. Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." In public worship our habit is to slouch or squat; we do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God. It is more characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears. We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away. We need to hear again the Apostle Peter's sobering words, "Since you call on a father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives. . in reverent fear." (1 Peter 1:17) In other words, if we dare to call our judge our Father, we must beware of presuming on him. It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won only after we have first cried, "Woe is me for I am lost." In Dale's words, "It is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God."

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Light After Darkness

Yesterday, I preached a sermon at a memorial service from this passage...

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

...and quoted this hymn text at the end. I thought you might like reading it again.

Light after darkness, gain after loss,
Strength after weakness, crown after cross;
Sweet after bitter, hope after fears,
Home after wandering, praise after tears.

Sheaves after sowing, sun after rain,
Sight after mystery, peace after pain;
Joy after sorrow, calm after blast,
Rest after weariness, sweet rest at last.

Near after distant, gleam after gloom,
Love after loneliness, life after tomb;
After long agony, rapture of bliss,
Right was the pathway, leading to this.

Preaching to Two Kinds of Hearts

John Newton:

My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart, and to heal the broken one.

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The Old Testament Points Us to Christ

This is good to remember as we are going through Genesis together.

Burk Parsons:

On nearly every page of the New Testament, God sovereignly reminds us that everything He has done, is doing, and will do is in accordance with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The common refrain of the New Testament, “according to the Scriptures,” is by no means to be taken lightly but is to drive us over and over again to behold the faithfulness of God, the trustworthiness of His revelation, and the beautiful harmony of the testaments as God shows forth His sovereignly woven scarlet thread of redemption from creation to glorification, all according to the covenant of redemption of our triune God. In each of the three portions of the Old Testament — the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings — the Lord majestically sets forth that which Jesus Himself set forth when He was with the two men on the road to Emmaus interpreting to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Jesus is hiding under every stone in the Old Testament, nor does it mean that we need to overturn every stone in our pursuit to find Him at the cost of sound exegesis. Nevertheless, it does mean that every stone points to Christ and beckons us to examine the manifold ways in which Christ is in the foreground and background of the landscape of every stone in all the Scriptures, by God’s sovereign orchestration and for our redemption in Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.