On Understanding Trials in the Scope of God's Sovereignty

"The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you can apprehend the sense of them.”
Matthew Henry
via

The sublime lyrics of The Gospel Song

These 24 words contain the beautiful core of the Gospel, the Good News, rarely so concise and lyrical. The true beauty and power, though, is not in the creative word choice, rhyme, and meter, but the Gospel itself, the truths these words adorn. And further still, that such a truth can be so simple:

Holy God in love became
Perfect man to bear my blame
On the cross he took my sin
By his death I live again.

And this song illustrated and commentated:


from 
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Two good quotes on the balance of Church and Mission

If you don't guard the deposit with fences, you won't have anything to take to the nations in 80 years.

-Adoniram Judson, via John Piper's sermon in the series Men of Whom the World are not Worthy

Our church gives 100% of its budget to missions.  That’s because our church is a mission. Staff salaries are mission.  Benevolence (our fund to support those who are in need financially) is about missions.  Paying the rent, again, missions.

-David Dorr, blogpost

Spurgeon on Being "Fashioable"

"The great guide of the world is fashion and it’s god is respectability–two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around on society to know what to do? You watch the general current and then float upon it! You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so! You ask, “Is it fashionable? If it is fashionable, it must be done.” Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools."

via

Man's Inability in Numbers 20:10-12

"Not even Moses, the giver of the law, was able to keep the law."
- Elyse Fitzpatrick, Comforts from the Cross

Fatih and Reason according to Paul Tripp

"Faith is not unreasonable, but it will take you beyond your ability to reason."

-Paul David Tripp, "What To Do When Life Doesn't Make Sense"  FBCTC 2010

We go to church vs. we are the church

Different spin:
"We need to put to rest the mantra: we don’t go to church, we are the church (45, 19). Membership is New Testament language (1 Cor. 12:12-20) and so is the language of coming together as a church (1 Cor. 11:18). Going to church is biblical. Being a member is biblical. Discipline is biblical (1 Cor. 5). Church oversight is biblical (Acts 20:28; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1-7; 5:17). Submitting to your leaders is biblical, and so is making the care of church members a serious priority (Heb. 13:17)."

from review of Missional Renaissance

Quotes from T4G

“Jesus’ evangelism plan is the community of faith living out the gospel.”  ~ Mark Dever
“The church is multi-ethnical, not multi-cultural.” ~ Thabiti Anyabwile
“Sow the gospel … go to sleep … and it will grow [as God desires].” ~ John MacArthur
“[On teaching simply ...] you can feed a child a steak, but if you love him you’ll cut it into little pieces.” ~ Josh Harris
“[I commend to you] a lifelong meditation on the 4 Gospels to more fully see and savor the glories of the Savior and fellowship with him.” ~ John Piper
“The power is not in you, the power is under the hood [in the gospel]!” ~ C.J. Mahaney
“Prepare your people for suffering.” ~ Mahaney with Matt Chandler

copied from Z

And some of my own faves:
"A manifestly unhealthy church will undermine our careful proclamation (of the gospel)."~Mark Dever
"This is only 'Your Best Life Now' if you're an unbeliever." ~ Al Mohler
"Most of you will be ordinary pastors."~ C.J Mahaney

How to summarize T4G?

How do I say it was amazing without meaning other things aren't (because it was easy to feel that way there)?

How do I say the teaching from God's Word was exceptional without meaning God's Word was better there than anywhere else?

How do I say these speakers were great without meaning they were great rather than the God whose Words they spoke?

How do I say the atmosphere and worship was encouraging without meaning it was better than being at church?

How do I say that fellowship with other denominations was indeed a blessing without meaning I like them more?

How do I say I really appreciated Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Reformed, and charismatic Sovereign Gracers without meaning I want to be one of them?

How do I say the free books were a definite highlight without sounding greedy?

I guess that will have to do.

God Singing in Zephaniah 3:17

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love [literally: be silent in his love]
he will exult over you with loud singing. 

When I think of the voice of God singing, I hear the booming of Niagara Falls mingled with the trickle of a mossy mountain stream. I hear the blast of Mt. St. Helens mingled with a kitten's purr. I hear the power of an East Coast hurricane and the barely audible puff of a night snow in the woods. And I hear the unimaginable roar of the sun 865,000 miles thick, one million three hundred thousand times bigger than the earth, and nothing but fire, 1,000,000 degrees centigrade, on the cooler surface of the corona. But I hear this unimaginable roar mingled with the tender, warm crackling of the living room logs on a cozy winter's night.

And when I hear this singing I stand dumbfounded, staggered, speechless that he is singing over me. He is rejoicing over my good with all his heart and with all his soul (cf. Jeremiah 32:41)!

from sermon by John Piper

Sinclair Ferguson- "I've only got two sermons"

"...and they usually appear in the same sermon. I have a sermon on sin and I have a sermon on grace. And as long as I'm your minister, those are the only two sermons you'll hear: Sin and me, grace and Jesus Christ. And I'll preach those sermons in as many different and imaginative ways as I can."

-- quote from Panel Discussion at Next 09 Conference

One of the sweetest Easter illustrations I've heard of recently

"The Grass Crown or Blockade Crown (Latin: corona obsidionalis or corona graminea) was the highest and rarest of all military decorations in the Roman Republic... It was presented only to a general or commander who broke the blockade around a beleaguered Roman army, thus saving a legion or the entire army. The crown was made from plant materials taken from the battlefield, including grasses, flowers, weeds, and various cereals, such as wheat; it was presented to the general by the army he had saved."

According to Pliny:
But as for the crown of grass, it was never conferred except at a crisis of extreme desperation, never voted except by the acclamation of the whole army, and never to any one but to him who had been its preserver. Other crowns were awarded by the generals to the soldiers, this alone by the soldiers, and to the general. This crown is known also as the "obsidional" crown, from the circumstance of a beleaguered army being delivered, and so preserved from fearful disaster. wiki




It's amazing to see the parallels of this in Christ's Crown on Thorns, especially as drawn out in Why a Crown? by Brock and Bodie Thone.

Christ was presented a crown of thorns at His death, at His victory over sin, in which he rescued a besieged army, mankind. He rescued them from an enemy greater than Roman occupation and earned a crown other than the one the crowd wanted to offer Him a few days earlier. While it was presented as a statement of scorn, the killers offering it were unknowingly the rescued allies, offering the crown to their delivering general. The corona obsidionalis was made from thorns, the plants from the field of this battle against God that mankind has been fighting since the fall.

Normal Christian families and....the other people

While musing recently on the demographics of the (universal) church, I was considering how certain Christian life things seem to be more complicated for the Christian population that comes from broken homes or non-Christian homes.

For instance, a man who grew up without a Christian father may experience hesitation from a future spouse and/or father-in-law because he may not understand what it means to be a Christian husband and father. The same for a child of divorced parents, and the same may be true for either example if he were looking to get into ministry.

I realized while musing thus that I have been thinking incorrectly about this Christian population, but not in regards to how we should respond to these brothers and sisters. While those experiences can be disproportionate and unfair, they may not always be wrong. What I thought was wrong was that I viewed these phenomena as a minority, and exception to the rule. What do we do with people who don't grow up in Christian homes and have good Christian instruction?

First, I needed to understand that everybody has a deficient upbringing. No one had a perfect childhood (duh).

Second, I needed to realize that brothers and sisters in Christ that have grown up without Christian parents or with divorced parents, or Christians saved in their 50's that don't have believing children should not be a minority. They are not an anomaly. If we are doing evangelism right, we will be taking the Gospel to to the unsaved at all stages of life and, by God's grace, welcoming new believers from every walk of life.

This, of course, does not discount the necessity and joy of families training up children in righteousness and many generations sharing a spiritual family as well. But, while we want this, we should just as often have a young mother/new believer relearning how to parent, a new believer teen boy learning how to be a man because his dad wasn't, and couples getting happily married even though their parents divorced. This should be happening as often as "normal" Christian families.

Fear when Jesus calmed the storm

The only thing more frightening than being in a small boat in the middle of a big storm is being in a small boat with a man who shouts at big storms and succeeds.

from Kevin DeYoung, who gave a great sermon on this topic at Next 09

Russel Moore on Healthcare, March Madenss, and Christians

If we were half as outraged by our own sin and self-deception as we are by the follies of our political opponents, what would be the result? If we rejoiced as much that our names are written in heaven as we do about such trivialities as basketball brackets, what would be the result?

whole article

Definition of Abortion

...according to a Planned Parenthood pamphlet in 1952.

 via

Truth and Love

Tim Chester:

Love without truth is like doing heart surgery with a wet fish.
But truth without love is like doing heart surgery with a hammer.

  via 

Further, love (grace) without truth is not true love. And Truth without love is not true truth.
(Grace and truth- John 1:14)

Love cannot be expressed to another if truth is withheld. I cannot love an unbeliever and not tell them they are a sinner. The most loving thing I can do for them is to tell them the truth. Withhold that, and I am not loving.

Truth cannot be offered without love. I cannot share the truth, from one sinner to another, without first acknowledging that grace was extended to me and the same is offered to the recipient of my truth. If I speak truth in condemnation, lacking grace for the hearer, and forget the grace shown me, I am not sharing the whole truth.

Which is correct?

"People should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people"

- V for Vendetta

or

"For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
-Rom. 13:3-4

or are they the same?

The Short Room

Trying to find satisfaction (or meaning or purpose) in something in this world is like trying to stand up in a 3-foot tall room.

Two reasons we don't know where the Garden of Eden is

We don't know where the ark drifted in relation to its point of departure.

During and at the end of the flood, the geography was changed.