God is our Secret Place and Hiding Place

On this theme of God as the believer's Hiding Place/Secret Place, here are two resources:

1) Fantastic sermon called the Secret Place by Fred Juhnke on Psalm 91
2) Download Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place, based on Psalm 119:13-14*

*Hurry on this, I think it is only for April!

Jesus is the Lion King

Regardless of your preference/style of music, these lyrics are POWERFUL! They paint a picture of Jesus Christ as THE Lion King, in all His majesty! Scripture often refers to the Lord as the lion of the tribe of Judah. Narnia has it right, Jesus is a LION! (See video here)

Here are the lyrics (about as close as I can get) ...

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
That's how they see Him now Jesus of your convenience
Never heated thumbs up when He smiles
That’s so mistaken--like He can't incinerate
A whole city, wrath more 'dread'-ful (dredlocks) then all Jamaica
And any attitude, anything less than gratitude
Is rebellion, idolatry, or proportionate magnitude
How can you figure you're gonna get with the dude you're attracted to
While the God of the universe is specifically mad at you?
I'm talkin holiness, holier than the holiest
Angels who are beholding Him, cover eyes or they won't exist
Knees are folded when they get close to His awesomeness
His presence 'ill send em repentance or their lives will be over with
Behold the Lamb Christ Jesus, the substitute for the heathen
Only One that can stand the wrath of God and keep on breathin'
Righteous, resurrected Ruler, redeemin' these rebel bein's
This lion's also a lamb for mercy for those who believe it

We all know-oh-oh, this world is a jungle
We only got one hope, oh Zion,
Our God is a king, He's a lion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh Zion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh , oh Zion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ,
Oh Zion
Our God is a king, He's a lion

I know this world is a jungle, baby this life is a forest
And we surrounded by beasts, they seek to kill and destroy us
They say we better take cover, and run for it like Forest
And while they prey on the weak, we just gon keep prayin for em
And fear can't be afforded, the God of Jacob's my fortress
And yeah I'm walkin' in pride baby the Lion is roarin
Persecution n sufferin, they raidin' our villages
They wanna push our wig back like the Indians
We got a King who hears the prayers of the indigent
Ending the fears and in the affairs of the invalid
??? and death was the instrument
So we can see His glory in a clearer lense
No drummer here but we're aware of the snares
Snakes on our heel but He was crushing his head
Took the stripes of a tiger He went out up on a limb
I got a lion king, so this jungle’s just a gym

We all know-oh-oh, this world is a jungle
We only got one hope, oh Zion,
Our God is a king, He's a lion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh Zion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh , oh Zion
Woah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ,
Oh Zion
Our God is a king, He's a lion

You can get this song on a free album download here. There are several other terrific songs on this album!

Free Mp3 CD from D.A. Carson - The God Who is There

Now you can learn about God from the smartest man of our time! All you pay is shipping to get the entire seminar on Mp3 for FREE! The following is from Monergism's website, about the offer ...

Description: With the generous permission of The Gospel Coalition, Monergism Books is giving away for free this incredible seminar by Don Carson.

From The Gospel Coalition blog: On February 20-21 and 27-28, 2009, Don Carson presented a 14-part seminar entitled “The God Who Is There” at Bethlehem Baptist Church’s North Campus in Minneapolis. This series will serve the church well because it simultaneously evangelizes non-Christians and edifies Christians by explaining the Bible’s storyline in a non-reductionistic way.

The series is geared toward “seekers” and articulates Christianity in a way that causes hearers either to reject or embrace the gospel. It’s one thing to know the Bible’s storyline, but it’s another to know one’s role in God’s ongoing story of redemption. “The God Who Is There” engages people at the worldview-level.

Contents

1. The God Who Made Everything
2. The God Who Does Not Wipe Out Rebels
3. The God Who Writes His Own Agreements
4. The God Who Legislates
5. The God Who Reigns
6. The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise
7. The God Who Becomes a Human Being
8. The God Who Grants New Birth
9. The God Who Loves
10. The God Who Dies—and Lives Again
11. The God Who Declares the Guilty Just
12. The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People
13. The God Who Is Very Angry
14. The God Who Triumphs


About the Speaker
D. A. Carson (PhD, University of Cambridge) is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author or editor of more than forty books.

Click here to order!

Download A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God audiobook for free!

I am downloading the audiobook of A.W. Tozer's Pursuing God, free in July from ChristianAudio. Click here for details. If you want to skim the book before downloading, you can read it online here.

Here is a quote to spark your interest:

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of 'accepting' Christ . . . and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd. (pp. 16-17)

I have heard Tozer quoted countless times so I look forward to hearing this classic.

God is Love ... right?

The Bible makes this great affirmation: God is Love (1 John 4:8)! But as Tim Conway* points out in this short video, He is more than just loving and His love is greater than our human minds can comprehend. He is more glorious than that one aspect.

*Sorry, Carol Burnett fans, this is a different Tim Conway. This one preaches the Gospel at Grace Community Church in San Antonio, TX.

Spurgeon discusses Free Will

This quote appeared on Pyro's 'Your Daily Dose of Spurgeon' on May 30th.

Man has become so fallen that he cannot keep the law. Sooner might the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than he that is accustomed to do evil learn to do well (Jeremiah 13:23); but what man cannot do, by reason of the perversity of the flesh, God performs within him, working in him to will and to do of his good pleasure. Oh, what amazing grace is this, which while it forgives our want of will, also removes our want of power!

And, dear friends, is it not a wonderful proof of grace that God does this without destroying man in any degree whatever? Man is a creature with a will,—a "free will" as they sometimes call it,—a creature who is responsible for his actions; so God does not come and change our hearts by a physical process, as some seem to dream, but by a spiritual process in which he never mars our nature, but sets our nature right.

If a man becomes a child of God, he still has a will. God does not destroy the delicate machinery of our nature, but he puts it into proper gear. We become Christians with our own full assent and consent; and we keep the law of God not by any compulsion except the sweet compulsion of love. We do not keep it because we cannot do otherwise, but we keep it because we would not do otherwise, because we have come to delight therein, and this seems to me the greatest wonder of divine grace.

See, dear friends, how different is the Lord's way of working and ours. If you knock down a man who is living an evil life, and put him in chains, you can make him honest by force; or if you set him free, and hem him round with Acts of Parliament, you may make him sober if he cannot get anything to drink, you may make him wonderfully quiet if you put a gag in his mouth; but that is not God's way of acting.

He who put man in the Garden of Eden, and never put any palisades around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but left man a free agent, does just the same in the operations of his grace. He leaves his people to the influences that are within them, and yet they go right, because they are so changed and renewed by his grace that they delight to do that which once they loathed to do.

I admire the grace of God in acting thus. We should have taken the watch to pieces, and broken half the wheels, and made new ones, or something of the kind. But God knows how to leave the man just as much a man as he was before his conversion, and yet to make him so entirely a new man that old things have passed away, and all things have become new.

And this is very beautiful, too, that when God writes his law in his people's hearts, He makes this the way of their preservation. When God's law is written in a man's heart, that heart becomes divinely royal property, for the King's name is there, and the heart in which God has written his name can never perish.

A video by Reddit Andrews on the wrath/love of God

Why does the Bible devote so much ink to God's wrath if God is a God of love? Reddit Andrews touches on that here on The Gospel Coaltion video page:

Does God Love Everybody the Same Way?

Someone at work asked me if God loves everyone equally, believers and unbelievers. I believe Scripture says no. While I can't begin to understand God's love and all it's facets, I do believe the Scripture is clear that God has a special love for His children.

It is important to remember that it comes down to the basis of that love. On what basis are we loved by God? Genuine believers are the ones who have been broken of their sin and seen their absolute unworthiness of God's love. You can't know grace or mercy if you think you are in any way deserving. Like we heard Wednesday night at FCC, Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9:1-13 (see 2 Sam 4:4), was a lowlife socially and the grandson of King David's enemy Saul. But because of his love for Jonathan, David sought him out and gave this social outcast (lame in both feet) a place at the royal table so he could feast with the King daily. In the same way, there is nothing loveable or adorable about me that would make God choose me and adopt me into His family. But to say that He loves those who reject him to the grave in the exact same way, ... that to me is not what Scripture teaches. This is especially chilling when I think that people I love and care may prove by their rejection of Christ, that they are not loved this way.

All mankind is born a rebel to the King and His enemy. We are born dead spiritually and need a miracle to be saved. God clearly has the power to raise us to life the way Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave (John 11:43-44). We put limits on God's sovereignty if we say that there are people in hell that He loved the same way as His own. Does this not say that He was not powerful enough to save them? We give ourselves too much credit if we say that there was something special about us that caught God's eye to save us.

Here is a short video of John Piper discussing this very thing. It is not comprehensive, but he goes to Scripture for an answer to this tough question.



Listen to Jesus words in the High Priestly prayer (John 17) and ask yourself if Jesus loves everyone the same way.

1When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6 "I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

One final note. While God loves His sheep in a special saving way, there is one thing that is clear. We do not know who will ultimately become born again. We should never write anyone off as being hopeless. The Bible and experience (i.e. me!) gives a wealth of evidence that God can change the worst of sinners. Look no further than the apostle Paul (Acts 9:1-19)! He was dragging Christians away from their families and throwing them in prison for worshiping Christ, and this on the very day that Christ encountered him on the road to Damascus to change his heart and history forever. So this truth should not affect our evangelistic fervor. In fact quite the opposite. It is empowering to know that we don't have to win souls, God does that! We just have to be faithful to share the glorious truth of the Gospel and leave the results to God.

Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

MacArthur says, 'No' and stands on the Scriptures in this article. Jim Elliff has a very helpful book on the subject as well called Going Under: Discussions on Baptism.

Do not judge or you too will be judged

Genesis 7; Matthew 7; Ezra 7; Acts 7

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Nothing But the Blood

I got a comment on my blog (on this post about the Curse Motif), so I'm celebrating with a follow-up blog here. To provide more reading on penal substitution, please start with Mark Dever's article, then enjoy other prominent theologians talk about this glorious doctrine.

• Mark Dever's article in Christianity Today
• Dr Greg Bahnsen - Penal Substitution
  
• C.H. Spurgeon - Our Suffering Substitute
  
• Brian Schwertley - The Atonement of Jesus Christ

More importantly than these of course is the Scripture itself.

• Isaiah 53:6 - "the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."
• Isaiah 53:12 - "yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors."
• Romans 3:25
• 2 Corinthians 5:21 - "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
• Galatians 3:13 - "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us -- for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree."
• Hebrews 10:1-4

It has been suggested that the atonement/curse/penal substitution is negative, hateful. Quite the opposite. Knowing what God reveals about His plan for salvation of sinners is about the happiest doctrine you can ever know!

My sin, not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
-It Is Well With My Soul by Horatio Spafford

Curse Motif Video

I have found a new website that is a real blessing: Recover the Gospel. They have a video that is worth sharing. It includes a condensed version of RC Sproul's 'Curse Motif' sermon from the T4G Conference of 2008. This sermon, listed on my sermon favorites (right panel), can be downloaded here. Please check out this video, though, and meditate on the glorious doctrine of penal substitution and what that means for sinners like us who deserve the wrath of the One and Only, Almighty God.

A Plea to Christian Young People to Be Fools by Bryan Elliff

Found this article today, written to young people by Bryan Elliff (CF) when he was 18. It is written for young people but applies to all ages ...

The people of God are called to be fools for the sake of Christ. Many Christian young people are not.

When Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, he was fighting this very battle. He brought into sharp contrast the wisdom of the world and the foolishness of God. To the world in their wisdom, he said in chapter 1, the cross of Christ is utter stupidity. It is bloody, dirty, poor, and intellectually bankrupt—the historical execution of a Jewish, religious criminal. “But,” he said, “to those who are the called . . . [it is] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1:24).” The cross does not cease to be dirty, and bloody, and poor, but to the called, this “foolishness” is seen as the glorious power and wisdom of the omnipotent and omniscient God.

The world hates the gospel. How else can you explain the martyrdom of the many early Christians in the Roman Coliseum, or the beheading of John and Betty Stam, missionaries to China, in 1934, or the brutal torture and death of three missionaries in Asia this past year? To the world in their wisdom, the cross of Jesus Christ is still dirty, bloody, poor, and stupid. And, possibly what is the most hateful of all, it demands of them absolute submission. That is the gospel that you are called to preach and live.

Read the whole article.

Free Grace or Free Will - John Hendryx

John Hendryx Responds to Visitor Struggling with Free Will Vs. Free Grace

visitor: I am struggling with the Calvinism vs. Free Will debate. Why, when one "flees to Christ" as you say is there not the possibility of NOT fleeing to Christ. Is there not a choice involved here? Fleeing to Christ is not a work is it? Turning to Christ is not a work is it? Why is choosing to believe in Christ considered a work by so many Calvinists? When I believed in Christ I gave Him ALL the glory as I then understood that NOTHING I can do would satisfy God. ONLY what Christ did saves me! But I must choose to believe, trust, follow, Flee to Him! Where am I going wrong?

response: Thanks for writing with your excellent question. This hits directly at the crux of the matter. Salvation by grace alone in Christ alone was the very issue of the Reformation that Martin Luther battled the most with Erasmus and the Roman Catholic Church in the Sixteenth Century.

What is this issue of the bondage of the will all about? It points to what the Bible says is the real condition of the natural man. If we set aside church traditions for a moment go through what the Bible asserts about fallen man it may be surprising to you. First we need to establish whether or not man has a free will, according to Scripture. But how do we do this?

The Text not only says that the natural man is a sinner, but that he does not have the Spirit of God. He is not born of the Spirit. Agreed? Jesus says, Flesh gives birth to flesh and the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:3,6) and "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail.”" (John 6:63) & Paul says that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor 2:14). We do not receive things we think are foolish and that we do not understand. The natural man does not have the mind of Christ so even if someone preaches to him until he is blue in the face, he will not respond to the gospel unless God grants belief and repentance (see John 6:65 & 2 Tim 2:25, Eph 2:8). The Bible indeed declares that no one can believe without a preacher but this is not enough by itself …. the seed of the gospel that is cast forth from the preacher must be germinated, so to speak, by the Holy Spirit, if a person is to come to Christ. Paul explains how he knows some were chosen of God. He says, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” (1 Thess 1:4, 5) This is clear evidence the Spirit is necessary, not optional for a person to be made alive so he may come to Christ..without which man would remain naturally dead to the things of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is critical for salvation, so critical that without Him, no one would ever willingly submit to the humbling terms of the gospel, not one would come to Jesus Christ. Agreed? Or do you believe the Scripture teaches that a man can come to faith apart from the Holy Spirit? All true Christians affirm the necessity of the Holy Spirit. So from this very fact, we have established that man has no free will. Again, what is meant when we say no free will? We are not speaking of someone coercing us from the outside. No. It means that we are in bondage to a corruption of nature, out of which we cannot free ourselves BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE THE SPIRIT and hate God by nature (John 3:19). We cannot draw from our own resources to even lift a finger toward our own salvation. Jesus says in the Gospel of John to the Jews that only the Son can set them free, but they are now children of the Devil the father of lies, who lies because it is in his nature. In Romans 6 it reads that natural men are slaves to sin, and elsewhere that that Satan has taken men captive to do his will. If Christ is to set us free then it means we were not free and in bondage.

So it is important to ask, can a person, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, believe the gospel? Does the natural person have the capacity to understand spiritual things? According to the above passages the answer is clearly no. 'No one says “Jesus is Lord” apart from the Holy Spirit.' So the unbeliever is void of the Spirit which is another way of saying that he has no free will. He may make voluntary choices but they are choices of necessity. In other words, he necessarily chooses sin, apart from grace. Nothing he does springs from a heart that loves God. His condition, if left to himself, is hopeless. God must intervene to illumine his mind, open blind eyes, unplug deaf ears, disarm his natural hostility, change our disposition and turn our heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

So if we can agree that a man will not come to Christ apart from the Holy Spirit, then we also agree and have established that the natural man has no free will. God must act if we are to do anything toward our redemption (See John 1:13).

Read the entire article here

Paul Washer: 10 Indictments Against the Modern Church in America

This is a great sermon a brother in Christ shared with me. Every American who professes Christ out to listen to Washer's powerful message calling us back to a Biblical view of His church.

Paul Washer - 10 Indictments Against the Modern Church in America

Read the transcript here, or play/download video or audio here.

Check out this unbelievable quote from the transcript:

Here in America because of the last several years, several decades of evangelism the idea of 'born again' is totally lost. It only means that at one time in a crusade you made a decision and you think you were sincere. But there is no evidence of a supernatural recreated work of the Holy Spirit in your life. If any man, not if some men, if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. (2 Cor 5:17)
And now it is the same today. What do we face? I will tell you what we face. ... What we face is the sinners’ prayer. And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on it is that.
You say. “Brother Paul...” Yes, in the same way that infant baptism, in my opinion, was the golden calf of the Reformation, for the Baptists and the Evangelicals and everyone else who has followed them today, I will tell you, that sinners’ prayer has sent more people to ell than anything on the face of the earth.
You say, “How can you say such a thing?”
Go with me to Scripture and show me, please. I would love you to stand up and tell me where anyone evangelized that way. The Scripture does not say that Jesus Christ came to the nation of Israel and said that “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, now who would like to ask me into their hearts? I see that hand.”
That is not what it says. He said, “Repent and believe the gospel. (Mark 1:15)”
Now men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so in their salvation if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes, I am because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.”
No. They say, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” And they live like devils. But they prayed a prayer. And some of them... I heard of one evangelist who was coaxing a man to do that thing. Finally the man felt so uncomfortable the evangelist said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I will pray to God for you and if it is what you want to say to God, squeeze my hands." Behold the power of God.
Decisionism, the idolatry of decisionism. Men think they are going to heaven because
they have judged the sincerity of their own decision.
When Paul came to the Church in Corinth he did not say to them, “Look, you are not living like Christians so let’s go back to that one moment in your life when you prayed
that prayer and let’s see if you were sincere.”
No, he said this, “Test yourselves, examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith. (2 Cor 13:5)”
Because I want you to know, my friends, salvation is by faith alone. It is a work of God.
It is a grace upon grace upon grace. But the evidence of conversion is not just your examination of your sincerity at the moment of your conversion. It is the on going fruit in your life. It is the ongoing fruit in your life.
Oh, my dear friends, look what we have done. Isn’t a tree known by its fruit? What 60%, 70% of America thinks it is converted, born again. We kill how many thousands of babies a day? We are hated around the world for our immorality. Yet we are Christian.
And I lay this squarely, the blame, at the feet of the preacher.

If God is So Powerful and So Good, Why do Bad Things Happen?

Great thoughts on the age old 'problem' of God's sovereignty and human suffering ...

HT: Jared

Great quote on what Christ suffered for the elect

I've been trying to comprehend what Christ's suffering on the cross must have been like. I know, impossible. Living the Cross-Centered Life has helped a lot as I've been going through that jewel of a book. Today's Spurgeon quote was fantastic as well.

"Christ died, not for one sinner, but tens of thousands, for multitudes whom no man can number. Think, then, what must have been the crushing blows which Jehovah laid on him when those strokes were inflicted to satisfy divine justice for the sins, the crimes, the transgressions of ten thousand times ten thousand of those for whom he died."

Clarifying Calvinism ...

I came across a great series of blog posts over on Pulpit, Clarifying Calvinism. The series is aptly named because it "clarifies"--a nice friendly-sounding word with no combative connotations--what is (and isn't) taught in "Calvinism". Aside from the inevitable emotions which the word "Calvinism" itself sometimes elicits ...

... the title is helpful and appropriately named!

No matter what "side" you're on in this debate (even if you don't know!), this is an interesting and helpful series of short posts that add light to the topic.

Here are some things I liked about the series:

1. it differentiates "hyper Calvinism" (which is bad, very bad) from actual, historic Calvinism.
   
2. it provides some a short list of very good resources for further study ... some books and 2 mp3 resources (a short-version: a single message on "the Story of Calvinism", and a LONG version, a 74-message series entitled "The History and Theology of Calvinism").
   
3. it is personable/informal and fair, something I'd share with my Arminian friends with no worry of undue offense. The author shares his own personal journey in "the doctrines of grace" and yet does it in a non-condescending way.
   
4. it is balanced. Where else will you find a defense of Calvinism which actually recommends reading the top book from the "other side"?
5. it has some good insight on 1 John 4:19 that I'd never considered before.
   
6. finally, the messages are broken down into short, readable posts that you can read in 5-10 minutes each.
   

Click here for Part 1, and I am confident that you will soon be looking for the subsequent installments on the menu on the right!

Meet J. Gresham Machen

Bob from Kids4Truth introduced me to J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) this week in his post, Life Founded Upon the Truth by J. Gresham Machen.

I am glad he did. This is a great article about the late Princeton theologian and defender of the Faith against the Modernism of his time. Here is a great quote that is still relevant even 71 years after his death.

Do not be deceived, my friends. This notion that it does not make much difference what a man believes, this notion that doctrine is unimportant and that life comes first, is one of the most devilish errors that are to be found in the whole of Satan’s arsenal. How many human lives it has wrecked, how many mothers’ hearts it has broken! ... Out of the Pandora box of highly respectable philosophy come murders, adulteries, lies and every evil thing.

... I have been talking about the snarl into which men have come, only in order that at the last I may lead you to the place where that snarl may be straightened out. What does the Bible say about the question that we have been discussing this afternoon? What does the Bible say about the question whether doctrine is merely the changing expression of life or whether — the other way around — life is founded upon doctrine?

You do not have to read very far in the Bible in order to get the answer. The answer is given to you in the first verse. Does the Bible begin with exhortation; does it begin with a program of life? No, it begins with a doctrine. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That is the foundation doctrine upon which everything else that the Bible says is based.

The Bible does present a way of life; it tells men the way in which they ought to live. But always when it does so it grounds that way of life in truth.

The enemy in the war on truth is no longer modernism, but post-modernism. I'm reading John MacArthur's Truth War and it is an excellent exposition of the book of Jude, which calls us "to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (v3)." I hope to write more about this book when I finish, but I will at this point venture out on a limb and recommend Truth War!

T4G Downloads

Let me set the stage with this fantastic quote:

As never before in our day has the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ been under such attack as it is right now. The difference between today and in times past, is that the theological liberals and unregenerate pundits were "out there"; distant from the inner orthodox circles of evangelicalism. They were bold and they were obvious; they would objurgate the gospel with every breath in their lungs and without hesitation. However, today, the enemy approaches with a cunning subtlety; a covert hellish seduction. As an angel of light masquerading the gospel of grace with their doctrines of demons and satanic righteousness. I often have said here that Satan doesn't want to fight the church as much as he wants to join the church. And he is doing so today with pastors and laity alike are embracing with an eery, undiscerning, unguarded, enthusiastic acceptance. (from Steven J Camp's blog, Camp on This)

Enter T4G: "Together for the Gospel (T4G) began as a friendship between four pastors. These friends differed on a number of theological issues, like baptism and the charismatic gifts. But they were committed to standing together for the main thing—the gospel of Jesus Christ.."

You can get free downloads of the speakers in this April's Together for the Gospel Conference in Louisville, KY. Check out this all-star line-up...

• 1 Ligon Duncan - Sound Doctrine – Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry
• 2 Thabiti Anyabwile - Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church
• 3 John MacArthur - The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
• 4 Mark Dever - Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology
• 5 RC Sproul - The Curse Motif of the Atonement
• 6 Albert Mohler - Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution
• 7 John Piper - How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice
• 8 CJ Mahaney - Sustaining a Pastor's Soul

Steve Camp posts a summary of each session here.

Enjoy!