Monthly Archives: December 2011

Here is a great little quote from a great Christian of the past. Help keep your Christmas priorities in the right place.

As I briefly mentioned in church on Sunday, there is currently a debate going on regarding the historicity of Adam and Eve. Was Adam a real man or is he a metaphor to tell us that God is behind everything? Romans 5 tells us that we are all children of one man

Romans 5

¹²Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— ¹³for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. ¹⁴Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

¹⁵But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. ¹⁶And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. ¹⁷For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

¹⁸Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. ¹⁹For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. ²⁰Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, ²¹so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Here is a little video of John Piper speaking about the issue.

This is simply a marvelous rendering of an ancient Christmas carol

Psalm 123

¹To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
²Behold, as the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he has mercy upon us.

³ Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
⁴Our soul has had more than enough
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

Looking unto Jesus. Psalm 123 begins with a testimony that the Psalmist lifts up his eyes to God. That just about sums up what the source of most of our anxiety, depression, stress related maladies. Peter walks on water while looking to Jesus and as soon as he takes his eyes off Christ and focusses on the storm and drowning and the impossibility of what he is doing and perhaps a host of other things in a second, he goes down. And to a man who has just walked a greater distance on water than any other human being in the history of humanity, save Jesus Himself, Jesus says “O little faith.” Little faith?? The man has just walked on water! How can Jesus call Him “little faith”? Perhaps because Peter stopped looking to Christ. He started doubting that the God who got him that far could get him the rest of the way.
We look with eyes of faith. We look by trusting God and not the things God gives us. We look by remaining constant in prayer. We look by studying the Scriptures and obeying them. We look by committing ourselves to a group of believers as part of a church and encouraging one another , lifting one another up, correcting one another and sarpening one another as iron sharpens iron. And we look by going to the table of Christ with a heart of self examination.
Look to Him.

The title of the article is “Women, Stop Submitting to Men” and you can find it here and we need more of this kind of stuff. The author is Russell Moore. Love it when somebody gets it right.

An animated telling of the Christmas story. The beauty of this one is that it does not start with the announcement to Mary but with the creation of the world, the fall and the necessity of a Saviour. It gives us an understanding of what the Bible is all about. Hope you enjoy.

Psalm 63:1
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Is it possible to seek for God in a cavalier manner? Is the Psalmist inferring here that it is possible to chase after God half heartedly? Of course. There are many who want to know God but not as much as they want other things. They will seek for God as long as there is nothing better to do. They will embrace the Gospel merely as a means to avoid hell but with no real desire for God or even or pleasing Jesus Christ. This is real searching for God but it is not real conversion or salvation. This is an inoculation against hearing the Gospel. To say to such people that they are false in their faith, which they are, would incur all kinds of reasons why they are truly wanting God. And that is true as well. But really seeking God is not always the same thing as saving faith. Satan knows God in many ways. But the faith that saves is a gift from God evidenced by a surrendering up of everything for Him. Unless we take up our crosses we are not saved. We must count the cost. We have no inheritance if we are not suffering with him. (Romans 8:16-17). We can honour Jesus with our lips and still have hearts that are far from Him. There is no such thing as half hearted saving faith. There may be weak faith, faltering faith. The truly saved will sin in many ways. But real saving faith wants Jesus. It sincerely wants Him.

The Zondervan Publishing house has this short biographical sketch of the scholar Robert Mounce:

“Dr. Robert H. Mounce, president emeritus of Whitworth College, is the author of a number of well-known biblical commentaries, including the volume on Revelation in the NICNT. Dr. David Hubbard, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, refers to him as “one of our generation’s most able expositors.” He was involved in the translation of the NIV, NLT, NIrV, and especially the ESV.”

We admire people who make great accomplishments for the sake of the Gospel. I am amazed at the intellect that can produce great well thought books and scholarly materials. But there are far greater things being done for the faith. Watch this video and know why Mounce really deserves to be an example to follow.

Christmas season has officially begun. The Christian world celebrates the birth of the eternal Son of God into our world as a real human being in order to save it from the punishment it deserves. And yet, even today, with all our technologies and capabilities there are countless millions of people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. And they need to. Maybe you are one of the ones God is calling to help people tell them.

Consider this

Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove
Isaac Watts

Come, holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all thy quickening powers,
Kindle a flame of sacred love,
In these cold hearts of ours.

Look, how we grovel here below,
Fond of these trifling toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys.

In vain we tune our formal songs,
In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues,
And our devotion dies.

Dear Lord! and shall we ever lie
At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to thee,
And thine to us so great?

Come holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all thy quickening powers;
Come shed abroad a Saviour’s love,
And that shall kindle ours.

The line that grabs me in this hymn is “look how we grovel here below fond of these trifling toys”. Oh how true that is! We are so fond of little things that get in our way of communion with God. We are so afraid of losing things. We value the gifts of God more than the God of the gifts. We willingly walk into sin. Our love to God is so cold and His to us is so great. What a marvelous thing grace is! We must never sin to make grace abound, but the sad fact is that we hardly have to try to do that. We sin and grace will abound. We will strive for holiness. We will pray and commune and we will still fall. Oh how we grovel, being so fond of earthly toys.
Lord, thank you for the power and magnitude of the cross. Thank you for the sustaining power of Jesus Christ. Thank you that you do not tire of honouring your Son and thank you for the inestimable blessings that all this, and more, gives us. Words fail and yet even as we find our words inadequate and our hearts fill to overflowing with wonder at what God has done, we can still drift away and sin.
What a thing the human heart is!! How it can be filled with wonder one moment at the love of God and the next fall into some thought or act or word that just about comes from the pit. Oh Lord, if you do not save us we cannot be saved. If you do not forgive, we are utterly destroyed. Help us this day to put away useless things. Help us to use what you provide so that we are instruments of holiness in the hands of a great Master. Change our wanters so that our desires are always for the holy. Conform us more and more into the image of Christ and may we never be satisfied with the level of sanctification to which we have come.