Saturday, March 28, 2009

Sound Doctrine; Sound Words- by Phil Johnson

This is an awesome sermon by Phil Johnson speaking about the many different "fads" that have entered the church today in the name of "relevance". I pray that you would have ears to hear this sermon because I believe it is packed with truth from God's infallible Word that will change us and cause us to stand firm even in today's ever changing culture.


Thursday, March 26, 2009

George Whitefield on Effectual Calling




George Whitefield, the Calvinistic Methodist, was a fiery, passionate preacher of the Gospel. In the following sermon on Ephesians 2, he likened the sinner to dead Lazarus who Jesus called forth from the grave. It is a blunt, unvarnished message so different from the saccharine, feel-good sermons often heard from today’s pulpits:

“Come, ye dead, Christless, unconverted sinner, come and see the place where they laid the body of the deceased Lazarus; behold him laid out, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, locked up and stinking in a dark cave, with a great stone placed on top of it. View him again and again; go nearer to him; be not afraid; smell him, Ah! how he stinketh. Stop there now, pause a while; and whilst thou art gazing upon the corpse of Lazarus, give me leave to tell thee with great plainness, but greater love, that this dead, bound, entombed, stinking carcase, is but a faint representation of thy poor soul in it natural state;...thy spirit which thou bearest about with thee, sepulchered in flesh and blood, is literally dead to God, and as truly dead in trespasses and sins, as the body of Lazarus was in the cave. Was he bound hand and foot with graveclothes? So art thou bound hand and foot with thy corruptions; and as a stone was laid on the sepulchre, so there is a stone of unbelief upon thy stupid heart. Perhaps thou has lain in this estate, not only four days, but many years, stinking in God’s nostrils. And, what is still more effecting, thou art as unable to raise thyself out of this loathsome, dead state, to a life of righteousness and true holiness, as ever Lazarus was to raise himself from the cave in which he lay so long. Thou mayest try the power of thy boasted free will, and the force and energy of moral persuasion and rational arguments (which, without doubt, have their proper place in religion); but all thy efforts, exerted with never so much vigor, will prove quite fruitless and abortive, till that same Jesus, who said ‘take away the stone” and cried “Lazarus, come forth,” also quicken you. This is grace, graciously offered, and grace graciously applied. Or as the Confession [Westminster Confession] originally puts it, “grace offered and conveyed.”

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Fear of The Lord - part 2









(Download Here - 51.9mb)

Last Sunday I ministered on the Fear of the Lord in Reverence. To the one who places faith in God, what does it mean to fear the Lord? The fear of the Lord in reverential and worshipful obedience is the beginning of wisdom ( Proverbs 9:10 ). The reverential fear of the Lord begins with a proper knowledge of Who God is: the incomprehensible Soverign who created all things for His glory and demands worship from all His creation. God can never be put in a box, categorized or classified. He is infinitely Transcendent and totally set apart in essence than anything that has been made. In His creation of the magnificently large universe, He shows that He is only something like it, for He holds the worlds in the palm of His hands. The nations are as a drop in a bucket, and Heaven is His throne and the earth is His footstool. The God of the Christian is infinitely and eternally wise, holy, good, merciful, kind and loving, and yet He is a God of justice, a God of wrath to those who resent and reject Him, and He will not let the guilty go unpunished. His grace is incomprehensible, enduring forever and He is a God who is the essence and source of all Holiness and in His courts the doorposts shake violently because of the greatness of His power. While realizing He is all these things and much much more, this is not enough to just have the proper thoughts about God, because the Bible says in James 2:19 that the even the demons believe that there is One God and tremble. We must praise Him, glorify Him, savor and rejoice in Him for all that He is and worship Him with our entire beings. Many lives in the Bible have encountered the Almighty and fell as dead in His presence, hiding their faces and trembling before the Creator of the universe like a leaf in the wind , while rising up from His presence radically changed and empowered by His glory and effectual call.





While we all may not have experienced the physical manfestation of God's glory in a burning bush or miraculous vision of His throne room, that same power of His presence is present in the conversion of a sinner. The regeneration of the Holy Spirit, the gift of repentance and faith, and the newness of life in Christ is one of the greatest displays of God's glory and His grace.
Jeremiah 32:40 tells us that in the new covenant, the covenant that God makes with His sheep through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, He will put the fear of Him in their hearts...why? so they will not, shall not, and never desire to depart from Him. The fear of the Lord makes one wise because it causes one to 1) see themselves for who they really are: sinners in the eyes of a wrathful God, who demonstrated His love for us by sending His Son to die in our place.(Romans 5:8) 2) Love the Lord, reverence and obey Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength...with everything and all of who we are. 3) The fear of the Lord causes us to depart and turn from evil and turn twoards Him ( Proverbs 3:7; 8:13; 10:27 14:27 )(thereby repeating point #2)
The fear of the Lord and the Knowledge of Him is not some "old -fashioned Grandfather's religion"..its much more...its life, wisdom, satisfaction in Him and even God Himself looks to the one who fears Him (Isa 66:1-2) . Notice the Lord doesent look to the one who "has the most wealth, or has the most need, or is the most confident and perfect in all his ways"...who does the Infinite, Transcendent Creator of the Universe, who created all things by His word, look to? The one who is poor and contrite in spirit...who trembles at His word.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Eight Things to Do with Evil

Eight Things to Do with Evil

On the one hand:
1. Expect evil. “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet. 4:12).
2. Endure evil. “Love bears all thing, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7; cf. Mark 13:13).
3. Give thanks for the refining effect of evil that comes against you. “Give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20; cf. 1 Thess. 5:18). “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering
produces endurance . . .” (Rom. 5:3–5).
4. Hate evil. “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Rom. 12:9).
5. Pray for escape from evil. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13).
6. Expose evil. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness,
but instead expose them” (Eph. 5:11).
7. Overcome evil with good. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).
8. Resist evil. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4:7).

- from John Piper's book "Spectacular Sins"

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Jesus Died


Jesus Died! - Paul Washer from I'll Be Honest on Vimeo.


May you be touched by this awesome video by Paul Washer about the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Fear of The Lord - part 1

The Fear of The Lord part 1 - Audio Sermon









(Download Here - 56.7mb)


This Sunday I preached on the fear of the Lord - in resentment. This message was the first of two in which ill be talking about the fear of the Lord, both in reverence and in resentment. Today, I spoke briefly about the fear of the Lord in resentment, saying that the fear of the Lord in resentment is understanding the position that siners are in when they continually commit crimes against a Holy God. Proverbs 9:10 was the text from which i came and I used a second text from Romans 11:22. It is so important that we have a balance in knowing Who God is. So many people desire to know of only His goodness, mercy, love and kindness; and while all this is well and good, if this is all we choose to believe about God we will become unbalanced in our conception of Him and begin to attribute things to Him which are not characteristic of His nature. Now, we will never fully comprehend all of Who God is because we serve a God who is Incomprehensible and He wont be fitting into any box that men try to put Him in. But God has revealed some characteristics about Himself to us in His Word and we must search the scriptures to see Who God has revealed Himself to be.


Furthermore, we must have a balance in knowing Who God is. It is not just enough to know of His goodness without knowing of His severity. We must know that because God is Infinitely Loving and Holy , he must hate sin and all that is associated with it...and from this we see His hatred for sinners ( Psalms 7:11 ), His fury for those who walk contrary to Him ( Leviticus 26:28 ) and we see how both of these attributes "co-exist" and never shift apart from each other in Romans 5:8-10.
In short, the fear of the Lord to those who resent Him means that the wicked need to know where they stand in the eyes of a Holy God - and that they are not just dealing with some mortal authority who "suggests" that they get it together. The wicked are under God's wrath and God is actively their enemy in their enjoyment of sin and self-pleasure. God's wrath abides on those who persevere in a lifestyle of sin and He will not rest until justice has been served. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:11 , "therefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." No man is ready for the terror of the Lord, no man can endure or stand in the day of His wrath, and therefore the sinner needs to fear the Lord because he has been found on His radar and unless God miraculously regenerates the heart of that wicked sinner and causes Him to fall upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in His saving work on the cross, there remains nothing but wrath for the one who rejects God.

All men are born under the bondage of sin, and all men are born enemies of God and conceived in iniquity, and therefore all men need to realize that they are in need of a Savior, a substitue for their crimes in the eyes of a Holy God who will not let the guilty go unpunished. Men need to fear Him who can destroy body and soul in hell. (Matthew 10:28) For those who would continually reject God and to those who would fall back having tasted of His good word ( Hebrews 6:6 ), there is the wrath and terror of God which is Hell...eternal separation and torment in the presence of the King. This is the fear of the Lord to those who resent Him.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Sufficiency of Scripture

The Sufficiency of Scripture - Audio Sermon









(Download Here - 45.8mb)






This week I had the opportunity to preach on the Sufficiency of Scripture. The text was from 2 Timothy 3:16 (thanks to RefTagger I no longer have to type it out). The context leading up to verse 16 is awesome because Paul is telling Timothy that perilous times will come in the last day because men will be lovers of self and lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. God will not endure these who will not glorify Him and those who exchange His glory for that of corruptible man and beasts. ( Romans 1:21 ) Because these people are lovers of self more than lovers of God they seek to better themselves, become more moral, more externally appealing, more successful...all in the glorification of self. This ambition to become "better" produces a form of godliness; something that looks like "Im trying to better myself, and do the right thing, trying to be more "moral, honest, "pietous". And the form looks good, it looks right, it looks noble, but when you present these same "lovers of self" with the truth of God's Word, the Bible, and you tell them that it has all things necessesary pertaining to life and godliness, and then tell them that God is our sufficiency, then they reject it and deny the power of the Word. 2 Timothy 3:5.
These lovers of pleasures and lovers of self will continue to deceive many, and wax worse. We see them in the churches and pulpits of America and we see them in the media, convincing people to live for themselves, to use God to give them a "better life" and to be the "self-made man". Their end will be made manifest is what Paul says and God will not endure those who are lovers of themselves more than lovers of Him. In Romans 1:24 it says He gives them over to their desires.













Paul continues writing to Timothy and says to observe his life, his doctrine, his testimony, his persecutions and afflictions. Paul had gone through so many things at Iconium, at Lystra,and at Antioch: near death experiences, left for dead outside of a city, stoned, persecuted, railed against, excorcising witches..he wasnt making this up. And he says that the Lord delivered him from all of these things. Then Paul follows up by saying in verse 12, that all who will live godly in Christ will suffer persecution. So much for the "best life now", "12 steps to a happy life", "make a better you" teachings of the lovers of pleasure in verse 2. Paul was saying that this is what made the difference between those false teachers and those silly women and himself. No matter what life threw at Paul, he stood on God's Word, and God delivered and kept him. God was in control in Paul's life. These false teachers wanted to make their own life, eliminate all suffering and persecution from it, throw out all affliction and then command God to make it the way they designed it. Thats wrong! Thats making God stand on your word, rather than you standing on His.
In short, Paul tells Timothy to stick with the infallible, correcting, true, inerrant and all sufficient scriptures. Why? For in them is salvation in Christ, not in self or pleasure; and in them are life and completion and the ability to do the will of God.
Stick with the scriptures, make them your priority, your standard. Throw out all advice from the world, and from people who only want to appease you and not glorify God. Stand on His word and make them the foundation to your home, your family,your marriage, and your relationships. God's Word is Sufficient and is enough for all matters of faith and conduct for the Christian.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A.W. Tozer - Standing for Truth

"We have developed in recent times a peace-loving, soft-spoken, tame and harmless brand of Christian of whom the world has no fear and for whom it has little respect. We are careful, for instance, never to speak in public against any of the false cults lest we be thought intolerant. We fear to talk against the destructive sins of modern civilization for fear someone will brand us as bigoted and narrow. Little by little we have been forced off the hard earth into a religious cloud-land where we are permitted to wing our harmless way around, like swallows at sundown, saying nothing that might stir the ire of the sons of this world. That Neo-Christianity, which seems for the time to be the most popular (and is certainly the most aggressive), is very careful not to oppose sin. It wins its crowds by amusing them and its converts by hiding from them the full implications of the Christian message. It carries on its projects after the ballyhoo methods of American business. Well might we paraphrase Wordsworth and cry, "Elijah, thou shouldst be living at this hour; America has need of thee." We stand in desperate need of a few men like Elijah who will dare to face up to the brazen sinners who dictate our every way of life. Sin in the full proportions of a revolution or a plague has all but destroyed our civilization while church people have played like children in the marketplace. What has happened to the spirit of the American Christian? Has our gold become dim? Have we lost the spirit of discernment till we can no longer recognize our captors? How much longer will we hide in caves while Ahab and Jezebel continue to pollute the temple and ravage the land? Surely we should give this some serious thought and prayer before it is too late--if indeed it is not too late already. "

-A.W.Tozer

Thursday, March 5, 2009

"Only In America" Part 2




I wont say too much on this one, but in the words of the late great comedian Bernie Mac, all I have to say is "Nuff Said"...In a recent poll "President Barack Obama’s popularity overwhelms that of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa, according to a new poll that shows Obama as the person Americans named as their hero."






The Article - Here









This isn't a heresy hunt this time,...its just foolishness. Im really not too bothered by this article, rather, this headline, because it just proves Romans 1:21-27. The reason this country is the way it is is because men would rather give glory to men than even recognize God as being God. In this article, I think that its total foolishness and blasphemy that people would even put Jesus Christ in the same category as President Obama, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa. Jesus Christ is Lord and He is Lord Transcendently,meaning He is totally in a class by Himself.
The error that people, and even many Christians fall into is the error of "inspiriation". Because men are self- centered, we are always looking for something to "inspire" us, something or someone to give us hope. All of these people "inspire us"; people look unto them as inspirational figures who have generated change, and while their influence upon society is a good influence, Jesus Christ does not belong in their company. Why? He is God, and God has done and is doing way more in Jesus Christ than anything that could ever be done in one of these "inspirational figures". Christ did not come to inspire you, He came to radically change you , and if Jesus only inspires you then He hasnt really gotten to you. Many on that day who have been inspired by His name will say "Lord, Lord have we not cast out devils in your name, and done many mighty works in your name, and in return Christ will turn and say to them "Depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew you." Christ is not and cannot be just an inspirational figure that you set on the shelf along with all your other historical figures of influence. He is God and there is no one like Him.
God didnt create this universe to just inspire us. He created everything so that He would get glory and be glorified in it. He made the entire universe and all things beyond it and in it for men to fall on their faces and throw themselves upon God Almighty and worship Him and enjoy Him. Its more than just inspiration, because inspiration has to come around every once in a generation. Everyone who is without Him will always need some earthly inspiration and will always look for some mortal to find it in. Obama might inspire you, but only Christ can change you. Ghandi might enlighten your brain with a few proverbial truths, but only God can transform a man by the renewing of his mind. Oprah's benevolence might draw your admiration, but Jesus Christ is the only one who can radically change a man from being an enemy of the Almighty God, both wicked and sinful, and transform him into being a son of God- created after the image of Him in righteousness and true holiness. As long as men are just "inspired", they're still depraved...and are in need of far more than more inspiration. Jesus Christ is the only one who can provide lasting, real change in you and He will never change, yesterday, today and forever...

I will say , in defense of Christ in this poll, although He needs no defending, that Christ is not in a popularity contest. Its actually surprising that He is #2, being that His gospel was rather offensive to most of the people that heard it in His day, and they killed Him for it.... and it seems to offend many today as well. The Media mocks Him, Preachers water down His message in order to appease more sinners, and this country wants to kick Him out of His own holiday...that we made for Him....
In short, Christ is really in no contest with any of this worlds "figures". He is totally in a class by Himself, and on the day of Judgment, it wont really matter if he or some man was your "hero" or not, is He your Lord? Here's a stat for you "inspiration seekers" to chew on:
Obama, Dr.King, Mother Theresa, Kennedy, or anyone else "inspirational" is no closer in essence to Jesus Christ than the smallest atomic particle or the lowest worm under the earths soil. Christ's transcendency places an infinite gap between their "vapor" of glory and His.

Only in America do people refute Christ as God, give Him a Holiday, take Him out of the holiday, call themselves Christians, and then deny that in their lifestyles...all the while claim they are inspired by Him as a person...but persecute those seeking to be like Him.... What did you say Bern?.."Nuff Said"

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Focus of Worship













This is an excerpt out of a book Im reading called "God's Passion for His Glory" by John Piper. What is the focus of our worship to God on Sunday mornings, or at times when the church is gathered together corporately? Is the focus man-centered in attempting to glorify God, or is the focus God-centered, glorifying Him at all times? The quote:

The basic movement of worship on Sunday morning is not to come with our hands full to give to God, as though He needed anything (Acts 17:25), but to come with our hands empty, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God, not the feelings of entertainment. We ought to come hungry for God. We should come saying " As the deep pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O'God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Ps. 42:1-2). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God.


Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing - not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends - nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. This convivtion breeds a people who go hard after God on Sunday morning. They are not confused about why they are in a worship service. They do not view songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or mere duties. They see them as means of getting to God or God getting to them for more of His fullness - no matter how painful that may be for sinners in the short run.

If the focus in corporate worship shifts onto our giving to God, one result I have seen again and again is that subtly it is not God that remains at the center but at the quality of our giving. Are we singing worthily of the Lord? Do the instrumentalists play with a quality befitting a gift to the Lord? Is the preaching a suitable offering to the Lord? And little by little the focus shifts off the utter indispensability of the Lord Himself onto the quality of our performances. And we even start to define excellence and power in worship in terms of the technical distinction of our artistic acts. Nothing keeps God at the center of worship like the Biblical conviction that the essence of worship is deep, heartfelt satisfaction in Him, and the conviction that the trembling pursuit of that satisfaction is why we are together.

Furthermore, this vision of worship prevents the pragmatic hollowing out of this holy act. If the essence of worship is satifaction in God, then worship cant be a means to anything else. We simply cant say to God, " I want to be satisfied in you so that I can have something else." For that would mean that we are not really satisfied in God but in that something else. And that would dishonor God, not worship Him.

But in fact, for thousands of people, and for many pastors, the event of "worship" on Sunday morning is conceived of as a means to accomplish something other than worship. We "worship" to raise money; we "worship" to attract crowds; we "worship" to heal human hurts; to recruit workers; to improve church morale; to give talented musicians an opportunity to fulfill their calling; to teach our children the way of righteousness; to help marriages stay together; to evangelize the lost; to motivate people for service projects; to give our churches a family feeling.

In all this we bear witness that we do not know what true worship is. Genuine affections for God are an end in themselves. I cannot say to my wife: "I feel a strong delight in you, so that you will make me a nice meal." That is not the way delight works. It terminates on her. It does not have a nice meal in view...

I do not deny that authentic corporate worship may have a hundred good effects on the life of the church. It will, just like true affection in marriage, make everything better. My point is that to the degree that we do "worship" for these reasons, to that degree it ceases to be authentic worship. Keeping satisfaction in God at the center guards us from that trajedy."

2009 Reading List

I realize its coming up on the end of the first quarter in this year (2009) and I wanted to post the books that will be on my list to read this year, and the books that I have already read:

*completed
-in progress

My Amazon.com Wish List


*Spectacular Sins and their Global purpose in the Glory of Christ - John Piper

*The Gospel According to Jesus - John MacArthur

*God's Passion for His Glory - John Piper

*John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God - John Piper

*The Doctrine of Repentance - Thomas Watson

*Dont Waste Your Life - John Piper

-The Art of Prophecying - William Perkins

-Justification and Regeneration - Charles Leiter

-The One True God - Paul David Washer

-A Body of Divinity - Thomas Watson

Pilgrims Progress - John Bunyan

12 Sermons on Repentance - Charles Spurgeon

*Finally Alive - John Piper

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ - John Piper

Institutes of the Christian Religion - John Calvin

Im sure there will be more added to this list, but for now, this is it...
Any recommendations on good Christian literature?