"There is nothing more tragic or short-sighted or lacking in insight than the assumption, made by so many, that the Church herself is all right and all she has to do is to evangelize the world outside." -D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Awake oh postmodernist from your anti-historical sleep and Christ will shine on you.

So during WWII Lloyd-Jones had many foreigners there ffor the war. and so westminster had tons of visitors. when preaching on Christian fellowship about 20 years later, because by that time the congregation had no idea of this unique fellowship with all the foreigners he preached:

"There were troops, you remember, in this country; they came from Canada, from America, from Holland, from Norway-they came from almost every part of the world Here they were for a while in London and they would come to the service and at the end of the service they would come to see me. I had never seen them before but I knew them and they knew me. We had never spoken before but you recognize a brother, you know at once, you belong together immediately. It does no matter what the colour is, you are speaking the same language, you are bretheren!"

Let us love and live like this.

Some help in evangelism

Check out this link to this podcast by Piper. I did not know about it until I was shown it by Johnny and Angie Hansen. I have found it really useful. Enjoy this one, and consider how to engage your non believing friends.

Grace of Uncommited Homicide (1 Samuel 24)

Remember, about being disciplined, it is a work of grace. A work of God doing what we cannot do, the only thing we can, ‘do’ is just submit to His reality pervading our lives in a totally absolute sense. I realized today while reading 1 Sam 24 that David, in not murdering the Lords anointed, Saul, was submitting to a higher authority, and showing grace. He had realized that God had his plan, to anoint Saul as king, no matter the pains, murders, genocide that would occur because of it, God would get the glory. Even to the extent of great personal pain he would do anything so as not to directly oppose the Lords anointed. This is a hard thing because leaders in churches today are such like Saul. And yet if Christ is on the throne then we are to submit to him, and thus recognize, and respect where God has placed them. We don’t blindly do what they say, but we do no slander, or murder them, their witness, or their ministries in anyway. It is God who brings the fruit, who separates the wheat from the chaff, and who burns with unquenchable fire. Not us. We are held responsible for all we do before God.
One thing is that David, as a type of Christ gave grace to the totally undeserving Saul, he did not kill him, take advantage of him in weakness, he left him because he was Gods to deal with. So does not Christ deal so kindly with us that when we sin, when we are crusading upon our lives hoping to establish the flag of our own rights, the things we think we deserve, taking no prisoners, saying, ‘They deserved that!’ or ‘Im totally right, they are wrong’ or even, ‘I just feel I had to react that way.’ The clutch is that often we do this in the name of Christ, using scripture to justify ourselves. Christ could come in wrath, proving himself to be just and totally damning all our actions, because none are good. Even in our greatest moments it is only the Holy Spirit working out Christs love in us. None of the good things we do we can credit to ourselves because they are all fruits of faith in Christ, him working through us despite our sin (Gal 2:20). Christ however leads us kindly in this life, so slowly teaching us his will. We act, He gives mercy that we might praise him for his grace to continually be faithful to his own word about his love(Ps 103:17), and then to show his worth in our lives by then repenting and choosing to be drawn to his will rather than our own lusts(Phil 3:7,8; 1 Pet 4:1,2). So then as David showed grace to Saul not giving him his just due, and then preached the truth to Saul as a very accurate foreshadowing the ‘grace and truth’ that came through Christ. God preached to us through Christ both in example, and in word. As David showed his men in example to love your enemies, and in word to preach the value of trusting god above all else.

"Consider the nature of your calling, my brothers. The preacher brings to a fallen humanity the testimony of God centered on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, a work that by nature shatters all human self-sufficiency. To employ methods, in turn, that reflect the wizardry of men is to eviscerate the gospel of its own content. If God has supremely disclosed Himself in the cross, and if following Jesus Christ means dying daily, then to adopt a style of ministry that is triumphalistic, designed to impress, and calculated to win acclaim is a serious contradiction of the gospel; perhaps, even, anti-Christian." -Arturo Azurdia III, The Spurgeon Fellowship, Winter

Out of Control Grace

"Salvation is a blessing peculiar to the righteous. The ungodly do not, as a rule, believe that they have any need of salvation: therefore they do not desire it, or seek after it. The righteous know that they are born in a fallen state; they acknowledge that they have destroyed themselves by personal sin; and they are conscious of a thousand dangers which surround them. Hence they need salvation, and seek it, and find it. It is to them that salvation has come to make them righteous, for until they are saved they are unrighteous, even as others; but now that salvation has come to their house, they bring forth the fruits of righteousness to the glory of God their Saviour." -Charles Spurgeon

I have been thinking about 'Sovereign Grace' a lot lately. Have you realized that Grace is out of control? That it is free, and because it is free, you cant control it? How many times do we try to control our own salvation by defining the parameters by which it comes to us. Free and Sovereign means that you dont define how much you read your bible, you dont decide how many times you witness, or who or how you witness. Because its free, and not merited, God can ask anything of us. If we earned it by what we did(merited)then we could lever God into doing what we want. But because its free, we dont define the parameters, he does, and he says,

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. " -1 Peter 2:9,10

The entire idea behind the divine conjunction, but, is that you did not do it. God in his power did it. He accomplished your salvation. You were dead, and he made you alive, "raised us up with him" (Eph 2:6), You were weak, and he was strong, "while we were still weak Christ died" (Rom 5:6), and when you were ungodly (stop thinking you are a good person, or that anyone else is) he died for you, "Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom 5:6).

Praise God that his grace is out of control. Out of our control.

Learn from the Fathers

Why we need to study the Bible.

How to Outline a Book in the Bible

Justin Taylor, of the blog, Between Two Worlds, Put this link to how to outline a book in the bible. Super helpful. I have fumbled myself into all these things through failures, and here he saves all that effort and just helps us figure it out. Start and outline today! Doing this has been some of the richest gleanings I have ever had from reading the Bible.

Check out the ESV Study Bible as well.

"When our hearts throb with our own self-absorption, of course we are unable to be passionately committed to the person of Christ. It is essential that the cross and our memory of its power daily act as lance that pierces our hearts, allowing the self-centeredness of our sin to be drained. Only then can the cross change us and allow godliness and passion for Christ to grow within our hearts. Just like those early believers, once we have experienced it’s ongoing power in our own lives, we will never be able to forget it!" -Rich Gregory, from The Pulpit Magazine, September 10th, 2008

Quotes on Theology of Missions

Read this selection of quotes from a missions class at R.T.S. with Thabiti Anyabwile, its really great.

The Shack

If your not aware of "The Shack" its a new christian fiction about the modalism (oops i mean the trinity but not really).Seriously lets read something thats biblical....watch this:

Unstoppable Hope

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" -Romans 8:18

People under the shadow of incorruptible hope are those who are defined as unstoppable. Like a mighty behemoth they roll always increasing in momentum tearing through all obstacles that encumber their pilgrimage. With the mighty fortress of a heart, mind, ambitions, and then actions girded with the hope that the redemption of all things is near(Luke 21:28). And this hope, this hope of glory that we have been given the radical imputation of Christ righteousness, merited to our account freely, as a gift is the strength to endure this falable, fickle generation(Matt 24:12-14) and to preach with unbounded grace to all the greatest joy of all, to worship the one true God who brings unity into diversity. Let us unswervingly hold to our confession, the hope of Christ. And let despair die beneath the foot of the cross so as to have same fate as those whose walk ends with the guillotine.

Do we not gaze upon such hope that fueled the life of Christ and how he always hoped in the sufficiency of Scripture to deliver him from this world(Matt 4:10). And then Paul, herald of the eternal gospel and his unstoppable pilgrimage, sparked by the ethanol hope of Christ, "And thus I make it my ambition to preach Christ we he has not been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, as it is written, 'Those who have never been told of him will see(hope), and those who have never heard of him will believe(hope)'"(Romans 15:20,21). And last but not least the martyrs in the first three centuries of the church scream of radical purity, radical generosity, and radical hope as they laid next to decaying plague victims, abandoned by all who knew them for fear of rot forming within their own bones. They were to become victims themselves by the ethanol of hope steeled into their muscles by the gospel. But as the least of these are those saddled with disease, so many shall become first in the kingdom of heaven due to the galvanization of the gospel in the hearts of our forefathers in the faith. Forever immune to the rust of this world. Galvanize us oh great father by your love, "and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5).

Have ye any hope to speak of today? Are the cares of this world binding themselves to you like leaches upon a cow in a rice field? Then come, awake, find hope, strength and fortitude back at the simple message of the gospel, "Rise your sins are forgiven." Let us hold fast unswervingly to this hope of the gospel and the unstoppable force that it is.Christus Victus

Oh, Sleeper (Album Review)

Oh, Sleeper

(The following is a CD review of Oh Sleeper, if you don’t like metalcore, feel free not to read.)

So I was talking to a friend at work and I realized that when I said, ‘I like metal’ and so did he, we were really talking about two different types of music. When he meant Pantera, I was talking about As I Lay Dying. This intense realization required me to sharpen the sword that I call my music expertise (right….) into the genre of what we call metalcore.

Embrace…Oh Sleeper. The first few seconds start slow and have you thinking, ‘What is this, I thought it was a metalcore album?” Then within the blinking of an eyelid harp like accurate and just as delicately sounding slice through what you thought was your brain and now realized was an overpowered emotional outburst like that of a car whose red line was hit 5 minutes ago, and your still driving. Fortunately for the car of “When I Am God” for Oh, Sleeper, it never overheats, but only grows in speed and thuds. You will be singing along within the first of the anthems that rip through your brain. They precisely put in the right place all of the breakdowns helping you to want for more. The vocals are very well placed and as far as hardcore goes, understandable which is nice. Break out the liner notes (do you young ones even know what that is?) and start following along for it is definitely worth it. The arrows of this armored march definitely blot out the sun.

The one thing that makes this album, and most other Christian hardcore (and by most I mean all, not unlike when Calvinist talk about their definition of the word ‘world’) is that they are constantly on the search to create something interesting, something unique. And on the line of the anti-historical cocaine that they inherited from the postmodern world, they sniff up only shadows of a false interpretation of biblical reality. They create a world very cleverly masked by amazing music that makes no accurate reference to the bible. They are fighting a bible that has more to do with Frank Perreti’s books about ‘so called spiritual reality’ that does not exist in the bible. They make great allusions, but to what? Have they no understanding of the historical context of the word bishop? Well, like most other Christian Hardcore/Metalcore bands their music is radically progressive and thoroughly entertaining, but about as empty of actual Christian witness as a shadow is the substance of a real person. Great music, but try again on your theology. Perhaps this is a little harsh of a criticism, but I say like Carl Trueman that the world needs a cold hearted cynical historian to look down the annals of history and critique things in the light of the continual vomit of history repeating itself.

However I would say this: that they gave the album a great shot. It does lift up the soul in a kind of honestly that has not been engrained in since the old days. Not a total loss, but what isn’t nowadays. If you buy it for metalcore, your stoked, but don’t try to get any good reasoning out of it.

Did I buy the album? Yes. Did I like it? Yes, will I recommend it? Yes. Will I pray for their theology to be biblical? Yes.

Oh abundant mercy I cry to you,
Oh gracious king make my heart anew,
Steadfast the shade for sorrow for sin,
Light dawns for all he claims as kin.

Dreadful phantoms swirl around,
Deep in my mind they are found,
Changing creations true culture,
To the parasite kingdoms opposite order.

Yet in simple submission, alas oh surrender,
Thy kingdom come is sins own murder,
Sins severed nerve never knows such a defeat,
Then at the cross where Gods covenant is complete.

Oh rain down precious unmerited favor,
Let us rest unfailingly in its sweet savor,
Darkest horrid winters cold night,
Ended forever by Christs second flight.

Praise be to the God who reigns,
High from heaven, even through our pains,
The heavenly orchestra brings praise,
To the God of the cross, the Ancient of days.