Category: Gospel

Don’t look to your past. Look to Jesus.

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“Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. . . . Never look back at your sins again. Say, ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ.’ That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions and to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say, ‘I rest my faith on Him alone, who died for my transgressions to atone.'”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, p. 35.

 

HT: Zach Nielsen

When everyone will give account

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So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. — Romans 14:12

If you notice, that verse says “each of us.” That means believers and unbelievers alike. So, the question is, what if, as a believer, I have a poor account to give on that day? What we need to remember is that when we were saved by God, Christ covered our sins on the cross — past and future. But we also know that we still struggle daily against sins and thus need to continually look to the sacrifice Christ made for us (I John 1:9). 

The thing to remember is that we are NOT saved by our works but by the blood of Christ. If we are pointing to a lifetime of good works as our salvation then we are relying on our own efforts and not Christ’s. And we will not enter into the Kingdom of God. Instead, our acceptance on that day will be on the basis of Christ’s atoning death.

What then, is the purpose of our deeds once we have been saved? The recounting of our deeds will be evidence that Christ died for us. For some there will be ample fruit, and for others there will be little to point to. Both, however, will enter based on the blood of Christ. Depending on what fruit was shown in our deeds, we will be rewarded accordingly in the kingdom to come.

For more on this, see John Piper’s recent Q&A at Desiring God.

People of the Book

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The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. — Acts 17:10-12

This was the passage we looked at today at church. In the passage, it says the people in Berea “were more noble” than those in Thessalonica, who expelled Paul and Silas from their midst. In the ESV Study Bible, it says: Noble translates the Greek eugenēs, which originally meant “of noble birth” or “well born.” The word was also applied to people who exhibited noble behavior, in that they were open-minded, fair, and thoughtful.

In other words, Luke is commending those who are open-minded when it comes to examining the scripture, those who look to it daily, examining what it says and not trying to shape it with their own biases and preconceived ideas. It is my prayer that I will seek God’s word so that it may teach me, rebuke me, encourage me, shock me and ultimately make me into someone who knows God intimately. The world likes to tell you what the Bible says and how it is either right or wrong about what we see every day. Instead, we need to go to the Bible first and let it be the prism through which we see everything else.

Free stuff for graduates — and anyone

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Free-Stuff FridayTim Challies, as part of his regular Free-Stuff Fridays, is offering a great collection of books that would make a fine gift to a graduate or maybe just a great collection to your personal library. From Crossway Books:

As part of the contest, all you need to do is sign up for a free drawing by midnight tonight. Thanks much to Tim for offering these great books! Go to the link above to sign up.

God stands alone

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Just to be clear, here is what God says in the Bible about whether there is anyone — or anything – like him in all the universe. So, then the next thing is, do you know him?

 

HT: Abraham Piper at Desiring God

Hearing the voice of the shepherd

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My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. — John 10:27

Erik Raymond has written a great post today and a great reminder that we can never make Jesus more appealing than he is. I cannot take Jesus and make him clearer and more appealing than he is in the Bible. As I read through John 10 today, I saw Jesus boldly make claims that offended his hearers and led them to want to kill him. I thought, “If Jesus himself can be rejected by some of his listeners, what makes me think I can do better?”

It took a miracle of God to break through my own resistance to him when I became a believer. He made what was heart of stone become alive to him and changed my passions. Did that mean that others didn’t play some part? By all means, no! But the final, saving action was done by God alone and I responded to that work of God.

We believe because we hear the voice of the Shepherd and follow. The fact that Jesus preached his message while he was on earth and we have the Bible points to the fact that, while we are saved by God alone, there are means he uses to bring us to that point. To those who don’t believe, this is all foolishness, but the hope is that it will one day be clear to them through Jesus Christ.

 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. — I Corinthians 1:22-25

Remembering William Cowper: Don’t trust the certainties of despair

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The life of William Cowper is one that causes you to give pause and wonder. On this day in 1800 he passed on from a life filled with pain and darkness. For a man who wrote many inspiring hymns and poems, he suffered much in his life. He found Christ in his 30s, yet suffered for decades with a kind of debilitating depression that left him paralyzed with doubt. Many times he tried to take his own life.

In his message at the Bethlehem Pastors Conference in 1992, John Piper said that one of the lessons learned from the life of William Cowper is that we must “all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of his pessimism. But we have seen that Cowper is not consistent. Some years after his absolute statements of being cut off from God, he is again expressing some hope in being heard. His certainties were not sureties. So it will always be with the deceptions of darkness. Let us now, while we have the light, cultivate distrust of the certainties of despair.”

The video below (click to view it) is from Mars Hill Church in their series The Rebels Guide to Joy entitled “The Rebels Guide to Joy in Loneliness.” Let us not abandon those around us who are saved but struggle mightily against the darkness.

william-cowper

A reason to smile as a Christian

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There’s a lot of “self” in our culture, even as Christians. But the truth is, if we were just left to ourselves, we would be in dire straits. Thankfully, God breaks through our lives to show us something truly wonderful that we can look at with great joy. Thanks much to Erik Raymond at Irish Calvinist for this great post. Here is just a portion of it:

Apart from Christ we are alienated; we have no way to God. But on top of this, we are neither able nor willing to come. We are content in the giving God the stiff arm with one hand and with the other, holding up the mirror as we admire our own perceived glory.

But God does not leave us there.

He powerfully, lovingly, mercifully, and graciously overtakes the sinner with an irresistible view of the glory of Jesus Christ. This is called sovereign grace.

In 2 Corinthians 4 we learn that in addition to being totally depraved we are under the influence of Satan’s eye blinding techniques (2 Cor. 4..4). But notice what we can’t see? The text says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

It is the glory of Christ that we are blinded from seeing.

Ah, but what does the ever gracious and sovereign God do?

The God “who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4.6).

God has made us to see the glory of Christ! We did not stumble upon this truth. We were not taught it by men. We didn’t inherit it in this country like some sort of unalienable right. NO! The sovereign God of the universe has crashed through your sinfully barricaded heart with his powerful sovereign grace so that you would be able to see the beauty, worth, goodness, power, and attractiveness of Christ! He has done this for you!

Don’t be cowards: Christ rose so we could get on mission

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Matt Chandler, who pastors at The Village Church in Texas, gave this admonition to his congregation on Easter Sunday as part of his message entitled “The Call to Mission.” He wanted them to think about what the resurrection of Jesus means in how they live their lives. In other words, since Jesus didn’t just die for our sins but rose, what does it mean? It is a sharp but helpful point he drives home:

Ladies, how many Bible studies are we going to do, I am just saying, can we maybe run some of the plays instead of just studying them? Men, how many Bible studies we gonna do, how much you going to study before you start to play? I mean that’s what makes the thing so stupid down here. Everybody can talk it, nobody wants to engage anybody with it. Or at least very few of us do. 

Why? ‘Well, cause I have a lust issue.’ Well OK, submit to Christ, get in recovery, and live on mission, it will reveal all that stuff, it will be horrible, God will just rip it out of you and replace it with His grace and mercy, it will be awesome in the end. I mean if you’re waiting till you’re perfect to live life on mission you’re going to die without much mission. 

It’s coming! Do you get this? Do you get that 2000 years ago, in fact farther back than than He told Abram, “This is how it’s going down.” and it has stayed true to the line right up till now where a massive portion of Africa has become believers, a massive portion of China has become believers, South America blowing up with the gospel. 

The gospel is penetrating the world, do you know how this ends? With you and me in front of Him with the Kingdom of God, new heaven, new earth coming down, no more injustice, no more pain, no more sorrow, God’s redeemed, God’s elect, God’s Kingdom, Kingdom of God, established! Now do you think anybody is going to give a trash how much money you have right now? How much comfort you have right now? Who’s cool and who’s not? Who drove what and who didn’t? Who was well liked in the neighborhood and who wasn’t? You think ANY of that is going to matter? No one will care! But a lot of people will be embarrassed.

Chandler points to the book “Total Church”  where Steve Timmis and Tim Chester encourage people to imagine that they are a part of a church planting team in a cross-cultural situation in some other part of the world and answer the following questions:

  • What criteria would you use to decide where to live?
  • How would you approach secular employment?
  • What standard of living would you expect as a pioneer missionary?
  • What would you spend your time doing?
  • What opportunities to share the gospel would you be looking for?
  • What would your prayers be like?
  • What would you be trying to do with your new friends?
  • What kind of team would you want around you?
  • How would you conduct your meetings together?

Chandler says their point is that we tend to think of missional living as something that just missionaries in foreign countries do instead of what we should all be doing. That is the challenge for all of us.

Reaching the churched masses with the gospel

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The tragedy here in this country, in particular, is that there are many people who sit in churches or have had just enough church experience that they feel they are right with God when their hearts are anything but that. Matt Chandler talks about this in the video below.