Much better than liquid, ice, gas…
One biblical picture of the Trinity is that the Father is the speaker…, the Son is the word he speaks (John 1:1-14; Rom. 10:6-8 [alluding to Deut. 30:11-14]; 2 Cor. 1:20; Heb. 1:1-3; 1 John 1:1-3; Rev. 19:13), and the Spirit is the breath that carries the word to its destination (Ps. 33:6…) – John Frame in The Doctrine of God
My wife loves the game show network. This is ok with me until a certain dude’s voice comes through the speakers. A man should not sound like that, it makes me cringe. Really it makes me want to vomit. My response is an alloy made with more sin than grace. Here is likely another man who never had a real father and has likely never had the gospel radically revamp his idea of manhood, and rather than feeling sorrow and compassion I just get angry. The gospel he needs I deny him in my self-righteousness. Nevertheless, for illustration purposes, his voice is irritating; to me.
In contrast I love Morgan Freeman’s voice. He really should be the only one allowed to do TV and radio commercials. If an audio Bible ever comes out with Morgan as the voice, be assured I will buy it.
Still greater is God’s voice, His Word. ‘Greater’ is an adjectival understatement of colossal size. His voice is majestic. It can come to us in awesome thunderous booms (Exodus 19:19), or in the softest whisper (1 Kings 19:12-13). His voice both causes (Psalm 29:3-5) and calms (Mark 4:39) storms. No one talks like our God (Psalm 33:6).
Sadly sin causes us to run from His voice. Adam hides when he hears the sound of the LORD God. The word translated sound here is more often translated voice. It is dense in the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 5:25; 8:20; 15:5; 18:16; 26:14; 27:10; 28:1, 2, 15, 45, 62; 30:8, 10). In Deuteronomy we see that the voice of the LORD is something to be obeyed. When Adam hears it he is further disobeying. He does not come forward in broken repentance, he hides. Sin makes us to vomit with fear at His Holy voice, its purity makes us cringe. How evil is the evil that could make me hear such a golden tongue in this way?
But Adam is not allowed to hide; the divine words confront and interrogate him. Yes, they expose his nakedness and his guilt, but keep listening, they also hold out promise. The thunder of judgment turns to a whisper of promise.
God has thundered against the Son, so you might hear the whispers of His eternal love for you.
I discovered this little gem reading Keller’s The Prodigal God. I especially love the last stanza of this hymn, let me know what you think.
We Were Sinners Once as You Are By John Newton
Shall men pretend to pleasure
Who never knew the Lord?
Can all the worldling’s treasure
True peace of mind afford?
They shall obtain this jewel
In what their hearts desire,
When they by adding fuel
Can quench the flame of fire.
Till you can bid the ocean,
When furious tempests roar,
Forget its wonted motion,
And rage, and swell, no more:
In vain your expectation
To find content in sin;
Or freedom from vexation,
While passions reign within.
Come, turn your thoughts to Jesus,
If you would good possess;
‘Tis he alone that frees us
From guilt, and from distress:
While he, by faith, is present,
The sinner’s troubles cease;
His ways are truly pleasant,
And all his paths are peace.
Our time in sin we wasted,
And fed upon the wind;
Until his love we tasted,
No comfort could we find:
But now we stand to witness
His pow’r and grace to you;
May you perceive its fitness,
And call upon him too!
Our pleasure and our duty,
Though opposite before;
Since we have seen his beauty,
Are joined to part no more:
It is our highest pleasure,
No less than duty’s call;
To love him beyond measure,
And serve him with our all.
Readability (1-3): 1
Length: 202 pgs
Author: Mark Dever and Paul Alexander
There is an ocean of contemporary books being written about the church. They are an ocean. They are ever changing, never steady, constantly fluctuating. If things appear calm from the surface there is either turbulence underneath, or a storm approaching. In this ocean of pragmatic, novel, faddish, and often unbiblical approaches to church there are a few solid islands to set your feet on, islands that are grounded and steady. Mark Dever is one such Island. If someone were to ask me who was a good contemporary author to read on the church, I would first think of Mark Dever. Mark’s concept is very simple and sadly radical to the western church – that is the Word of God which should shape our church. Here are the first six paragraphs of the introduction.
What are we building?
It would be patently stupid to start construction on a building without first knowing what kind of building we plan to construct. An apartment complex is different from an office complex, which is different still from a restaurant. They all have different blueprints, different kinds of rooms, different materials, uses, and shapes. So the process of building will be different, depending on what kind of structure we’re planning to build.
The same goes for building a church. A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It’s not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn’t devise it.
It only makes sense, then, for us to revisit God’s Word to figure out what exactly He wants us to be building. Only then will we understand how to go about building it. Negligence here will result in both temporal and eternal futility. Temporally, a church is a spiritually heavy thing to build, and it is designed for heavy relational use. It requires the strongest materials, and those materials must be placed in the correct, load-bearing positions specified on the biblical blueprint so that structural integrity is built in. No matter how beautiful the facade, our structure will crumble if we build on a sandy foundation or with shoddy materials.
Eternally, our work will withstand the fire of the last day only if we build with the “gold, silver, precious stones” specified on the biblical blueprint (1 Cor. 3:12). Building without that blueprint will virtually guarantee that we will build with the cheaper and more abundant resources of “wood, hay, straw,” all of which will burn in the end (vv.
13-15). Ignoring God’s plan for the church and replacing it with your own will ensure the eternal futility of your work. Here at the outset, then, it is critical to reflect biblically on this foundational question: What is a local church?
Fundamentally, God intends the local church to be a corporate display of His glory and wisdom, both to unbelievers and to unseen spiritual powers (John 13:34-35; Eph. 3:10-11). More specifically, we are a corporate dwelling place for God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Cor. 3:16-17), the organic body of Christ in which He magnifies His glory (Acts 9:4; 1 Corinthians 12). The Greek word for church is ekklēsia, a gathering or congregating of people. The church is God’s vehicle for displaying His glory to His creation.
The uniqueness of the church is her message—the Gospel. The church is the only institution entrusted by God with the message of repentance of sins and belief in Jesus Christ for forgiveness. That Gospel is visualized in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both instituted by Christ. The distinguishing marks of the church, then, are the right preaching of this Gospel and the right administration of the biblical ordinances that dramatize it.
Because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, and because of what has happened to Him, and because of our union with Him, it is true to say of us that our whole relationship to sin and all it can do has been fundamentally changed. We are no longer in the position in which we were when we were born as the children of Adam. We were under the dominion, under the reign, and the rule of sin. That is no longer the position, we have been ‘translated’ out of that ‘into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son’ (Colossians 1:13). – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, pp. 124-125
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. – Genesis 3:6
She took… and ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will taste poverty and death before ‘take and eat’ become verbs of salvation. – Derek Kidner
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ – Matthew 26:26
As we come to this detailed outworking of his argument by the Apostle it is essential that we should hold clearly in our minds what he is setting out to do. He is refuting the charge brought against his teaching stated in the first verse, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’ He is not giving an exposition of the way of holiness and of sanctification, as is commonly suggested; he is simply refuting the charge that is brought against the doctrine of justification by faith, and against the finality and certainty of our salvation in Christ. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 42
Dating without any reference to marriage is as dangerous as shooting a gun without any reference to a target.
Genesis 2:18-25 gives us the context for intimacy between a man and a woman, it is marriage. Do not decontextualize the intimacy of marriage and place it in dating. Courtship should correspond to marriage the way a Nerf gun corresponds to a handgun, there will be similarities, but they are drastically different.
Please don’t carry the analogy too far though. Dating may be the Nerf gun, but it is still serious. Be faithful with the lesser Nerf gun of dating, and you will be prepared to be faithful with the real gun of holy matrimony. Date with purpose, not for leisure. A marriage that expounds the mystery of Christ and His Church is the target – AIM!
…he debated with fellow religious prisoners whether the assurance of God’s love promoted holiness or license. Fellow prisoners challenged Bunyan saying, ‘You must not keep assuring people of God’s grace because they will do whatever they want.’ Bunyan responded, ‘That is not true for God’s people. If you keep assuring God’s people of his grace, then they will do whatever he wants.’ – From Christ-Centered Preaching by Brian Chapell
The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge [antinomianism] being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 8
No Other Boast 