"You must be born again"

A good post on the new birth from Ray Ortlund.

The Bible's teaching regarding work

Justin Taylor introduces an essay from Gene Veith regarding work and vocation.

What Is the Attraction?

"It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting [i.e., a worship service] where the only attraction is God." -- A.W. Tozer

Best of all....

John Piper:

We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer.

If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like every one else.

So take the things that drive the world and ponder how much better and more abiding God is: take money or sex or power or popularity. Think about these things.

First think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them: money, sex, power, and popularity. If that is what you live for, you won’t get much, and what you get, you lose. But God’s treasure is “abiding.” It lasts. It goes beyond death.

It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).

It’s better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow, an image, of a greater reality—of a relationship and pleasure that will make sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the Almighty God. “Do you not know that we shall judge angels” (1 Corinthians 6:3)?

It’s better than popularity. Fame is a pipe dream if you are only known by human nobodies. But if the greatest beings know you, that is a popularity of another kind. The greatest popularity is to be known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9). And when it comes to angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14)?

And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding. There is no comparison. God wins—every time.

The question is: will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice and love? And suffer?

HT: Justin Taylor

Preaching About Hell

This month's online journal from 9Marks Ministries focuses on the difficult, essential, Scriptural teaching about Hell. Sinclair Ferguson's article, "What Then Shall We Preach on Hell?" is full of Biblical wisdom and pastoral concern.

Abiding in Obedience, in Love

from "A Daily Dose of Spurgeon"

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love. (John 15:10)

These things cannot be parted—abiding in obedience and abiding in the love of Jesus. A life under the rule of Christ can alone prove that we are the objects of our Lord's delight. We must keep our Lord's command if we would bask in His love. If we live in sin we cannot live in the love of Christ. Without the holiness which pleases God we cannot please Jesus. He who cares nothing for holiness knows nothing of the love of Jesus.

Conscious enjoyment of our Lord's love is a delicate thing. It is far more sensitive to sin and holiness than mercury is to cold and heat. When we are tender of heart and careful in thought, lip, and life to honor our Lord Jesus, then we receive tokens of His love without number. If we desire to perpetuate such bliss we must perpetuate holiness. The Lord Jesus will not hide His face from us unless we hide our face from Him. Sin makes the cloud which darkens our Sun: if we will be watchfully obedient and completely consecrated we may walk in the light, as God is in the light, and have as sure an abiding in the love of Jesus as Jesus has in the love of the Father. Here is a sweet promise with a solemn "if," Lord, let me have this "if" in my hand; for as a key it opens this casket.

Spurgeon vs. Hyper-Calvinism

(from Ray Ortlund)

In Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, Iain Murray draws four lessons from that conflict:

1. “Genuine evangelical Christianity is never of an exclusive spirit. Any view of the truth which undermines catholicity has gone astray from Scripture.” Spurgeon regretfully disagreed with hyper-Calvinists who “made faith in election a part of saving faith and thus either denied the Christianity of all professed Christians who did not so believe or at least treated such profession with much suspicion.”

2. Spurgeon “wanted to see both divine sovereignty and human responsibility upheld, but when it came to gospel preaching he believed that there needed to be a greater concentration upon responsibility. The tendency of Hyper-Calvinism was to make sinners want to understand theology before they could believe in Christ.”

3. “This controversy directs us to our need for profound humility before God. It reminds us forcefully of questions about which we can only say, ‘Behold, God is great, and we know him not’ (Job 36:26).” “It is to be feared that sharp contentions between Christians on these issues have too often arisen from a wrong confidence in our powers of reasoning and our assumed ability to draw logical inferences.” Spurgeon saw “how a system which sought to attribute all to the grace of God had itself too much confidence in the powers of reason.”

4. “The final conclusion has to be that when Calvinism ceases to be evangelistic, when it becomes more concerned with theory than with the salvation of men and women, when acceptance of doctrines seems to become more important than acceptance of Christ, then it is a system going to seed and it will invariably lose its attractive power.”

Iain H. Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Edinburgh, 1995), pages 110-122. Italics added.

"A Letter to the Apostle Paul"

Here's a piece of satire that makes some important points....

The kingdom of heaven is at hand....

The coming of the kingdom of God means God’s re-assertion of his rightful reign/rule (the way He wants things to be/Shalom) through His activities of saving and judging…. God saves those who repent and believe, and finally judges those who persist in rebellion and unbelief.

The kingdom of God is “…God’s people in God’s place under God’s blessing and rule (by His Word)” -- cp. Vaughan Roberts, “God’s Big Picture” (IVP)

Matt. 4:17; 5:20; 6:10, 33; 7:21; 10:7; 13:11, 19, 41,43,44; 18:1; 19:23; 24:14; 25:34; 26:29; Jn. 3:3,5; Acts 1:3,6; 8:12; 19:8; 28:31; Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 6:9; 15:50; Eph. 5:5; Col. 1:13-14; 1 Thess.2:12; 2 Tim.4:1, 18; Heb.12:28; 2 Pet. 1:11; Rev. 11:15ff.; 12:10; Rev. 19:6

The Bible Is Not Basically About You...

...the Bible is basically about Him.

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College students and connecting to a church

That's the theme of Kevin DeYoung's "Lost Letter to Wormwood"

'The Gospel Song'

"The Greatest News in All the World"

Regarding Bible Translations...

Justin Taylor provides some helpful teaching from Bible scholar, Daniel Wallace, regarding the King James Version and other Bible translations.

Dying to Self

“Christ says, ‘I don’t want some of your time & money, I want you. I’ve not come to torment your natural self but to kill it.’” -- C.S. Lewis

Worldly perspective

One sign of worldliness is being impressed by the wrong people.