He had a dream....

The deservedly famous speech from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An admonition to preachers

“In the name of God, brethren, labor to awaken your own hearts, before you go to the pulpit, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners.  Remember they must be awakened or damned, and . . . a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken drowsy sinners.  Though you give the holy things of God the highest praise in words, yet, if you do it coldly, you will seem by your manner to unsay what you said in the matter. . . . Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened, either here or in hell.  Look around upon them with the eye of faith, and with compassion, and think in what a state of joy or torment they must all be for ever; and then, methinks, it will make you earnest, and melt your heart to a sense of their condition.”

Richard Baxter, quoted in J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Wheaton, 1990), 279.

HT: Dane Ortlund.

Do you dread a false Deity?

Samuel Bourn:

"All true fear of the Supreme Being can only spring from a right knowledge of him. And it consists, first and fundamentally, in conceiving and believing him to be what he is, most powerful indeed, but at the same time, most wise, just, and benevolent. . . .

"The character and title most certainly ascribed by our Savior and his Apostles to the Supreme being is The Father: the appellation [or name] by which we are taught to address him, [is] Our Father in heaven. . . . But if we impute to him qualities inconsistent with the parental character, and represent him to ourselves, as seeking and delighting, not in the happiness, but the misery and ruin of his creatures; we dethrone as it were, the Father, and set up in his stead a tyrant. . . .

"And the dread of such a false deity is widely different from the fear of God . . . producing timidity, distrust, dejection, horror and despair and leading to all the . . . corrupt methods, by which, men, deceiving themselves, may hope to appease his wrath and gain his favor."

"On Religious Fear," Discourses on Various Subjects of Natural Religion and the Christian Revelation, vol. 2 (London: R. Griffiths, 1760), 356–57, quoted in Lou Priolo, Fear: Breaking Its Grip, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2009), 8–9.

HT: Desiring God Ministries (Jonathan Parnell)

"Unselfishing" Ourselves for the Sake of Others

“Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake but for the sake of others.  And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us but specifically to self-sacrifice, not to unselfing ourselves but to unselfishing ourselves.  Self-denial for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish.   It concentrates our whole attention on self—self-knowledge, self-control—and can therefore eventuate in nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness.  At best it succeeds only in subjecting the outer self to the inner self or the lower self to the higher self, and only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self and excluding its grosser and more outward elements.  Self-denial, then, drives to the cloister, narrows and contracts the soul, murders within us all innocent desires, dries up all the springs of sympathy, and nurses and coddles our self-importance until we grow so great in our own esteem as to be careless of the trials and sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of our fellow-men.  Self-denial, thus understood, will make us cold, hard, unsympathetic—proud, arrogant, self-esteeming—fanatical, overbearing, cruel.  It may make monks and Stoics, it cannot make Christians.”

-- B. B. Warfield, “Imitating the Incarnation,” in The Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids, 1970), page 574.

HT: David Powlison. (HT: Ray Ortlund, Jr.)

The Cosmic Canvas

I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega. ~ Clyde Kilby

What is friendship?

What is friendship? The Bible, and particularly the book of Proverbs, spends much time describing and defining it. One of the prime qualities of a friend is constancy. Friends “love at all times” and especially during “adversity” (Proverbs 17:17). The counterfeit is a “fair-weather friend” who comes over when you are successful but goes away if prosperity, status, or influence wanes (Proverbs 14:20; 19:4,6,7). True friends stick closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). They are always there for you. Another of the essential characteristics of friendship is transparency and candor. Real friends encourage and affectionately affirm one another (Proverbs 27:9; cf. 1 Samuel 23:16–18), yet real friends also offer bracing critiques: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:5–6). Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you. Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints. “As iron sharpens iron, so friend sharpens friend” (Proverbs 27:17). There are two features of real friendship—constancy and transparency. Real friends always let you in, and they never let you down.

-- Tim Keller, "The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God" (p. 104). Penguin Group.

A powerful address from Charles Spurgeon

"First Things First"

"AN ADDRESS BY C. H. SPURGEON,
DELIVERED AT THE MONTHLY MEETING OF THE LONDON BANKS’ PRAYER UNION,
HELD AT THE EGYPTIAN HALL, MANSION HOUSE, LONDON,
ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1885,
THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD MAYOR, M.P., IN THE CHAIR"

Challenging passages from the Book of Hebrews

Commentator Peter O'Brien gives helpful teaching in this interview about warning passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

"Why go I mourning?"

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I will say to God my Rock,
'Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? '
Psalm 42:9

Canst thou answer this, believer? Canst thou find any reason why thou art so often mourning instead of rejoicing?  ["Why so downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?" v.11]    Why yield to gloomy anticipations? Who told thee that the night would never end in day? Who told thee that the sea of circumstances would ebb out till there should be nothing left but long leagues of the mud of horrible poverty? Who told thee that the winter of thy discontent would proceed from frost to frost, from snow, and ice, and hail, to deeper snow, and yet more heavy tempest of despair? Knowest thou not that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, that spring and summer succeed winter?

Hope thou then! Hope thou ever! For God fails thee not. Dost thou not know that thy God loves thee in the midst of all this? Mountains, when in darkness hidden, are as real as in day, and God's love is as true to thee now as it was in thy brightest moments...Thou shalt yet climb Jacob's ladder with the angels, and behold Him who sits at the top of it--thy covenant God. Thou shalt yet, amidst the splendours of eternity, forget the trials of time, or only remember them to bless the God who led thee through them, and wrought thy lasting good by them.

Come, sing in the midst of tribulation. Rejoice even while passing through the furnace. Make the wilderness to blossom like the rose! Cause the desert to ring with thine exulting joys, for these light afflictions will soon be over, and then "for ever with the Lord," thy bliss shall never wane.

Faint not nor fear,
His arms are near,
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
Only believe and thou shalt see,
That Christ is all in all to thee.

"...to live is Christ..."

"The believer did not always live to Christ. He began to do so when God the Holy Spirit convinced him of sin, and when by grace he was brought to see the dying Saviour making a propitiation for his guilt. From the moment of the new and celestial birth the man begins to live to Christ. Jesus is to believers the one pearl of great price, for whom we are willing to part with all that we have. He has so completely won our love, that it beats alone for Him; to His glory we would live, and in defence of His gospel we would die; He is the pattern of our life, and the model after which we would sculpture our character.

"Paul's words mean more than most men think; they imply that the aim and end of his life was Christ—nay, his life itself was Jesus. In the words of an ancient saint, he did eat, and drink, and sleep eternal life. Jesus was his very breath, the soul of his soul, the heart of his heart, the life of his life.

"Can you say, as a professing Christian, that you live up to this idea? Can you honestly say that for you to live is Christ? Your business—are you doing it for Christ? Is it not done for self-aggrandizement and for family advantage? Do you ask, "Is that a mean reason?" For the Christian it is. He professes to live for Christ; how can he live for another object without committing a spiritual adultery?

"Many there are who carry out this principle in some measure; but who is there that dare say that he hath lived wholly for Christ as the apostle did? Yet, this alone is the true life of a Christian—its source, its sustenance, its fashion, its end, all gathered up in one word—Christ Jesus. Lord, accept me; I here present myself, praying to live only in Thee and to Thee. Let me be as the bullock which stands between the plough and the altar, to work or to be sacrificed; and let my motto be, "Ready for either."

Let your light shine....

Good practical exhortation from John MacArthur...

The Gospel and Its Effects

"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace."

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 40). Penguin Group.

Bible Reading plans for 2012

Justin Taylor provides a helpful list of options.

In Christ Alone

"In Christ alone God’s rich provision of salvation for sinners is treasured up: by Christ alone God’s abundant mercies come down from heaven to earth.Christ’s blood alone can cleanse us; Christ’s righteousness alone can cleanse us; Christ’s merit alone can give us a title to heaven. Jews and Gentiles, learned and unlearned, kings and poor men — all alike must either be saved by the Lord Jesus, or lost forever."

— J. C. Ryle

A great goal for the New Year

“It ought to be the primary goal of every Christian to put aside confidence in works and grow stronger in the belief that we are saved by faith alone.  Through this faith the Christian should increase in knowledge not of works but of Christ Jesus and the benefits of his death and resurrection.”

Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Christian (Minneapolis, 2008), page 55.