READ THIS: http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=4155
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If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:1-17, ESV)
The browser-based model is much more in line with Google's vision, I
think. There are a lot of apps in the app store that would be more
appropriate as web apps. Also, Safari would be able to relay location
to Google with a higher frequency than opening an installed app, since
the apps only run while they are open, and the browser would be active
more often, e.g. when using Google Reader.
The Holy Spirit creates this desire [for holiness], not only by showing us our sins, but also by showing us God's standard of holiness. He does this through the Scriptures. As we read and study the Scriptures or hear them taught, we are captivated by the moral beauty of God's standard of holiness. Even though His standard may seem far beyond us, we recognize and respond to that which is "holy, righteous, and good" (Romans 7:12). Even though we fail so often, in our inner being we "delight in God's law" (Romans 7:22). (Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p. 74)There is a tendency for some Christians to look at the Law with hatred, as towards a former slavemaster, instead of looking at it as the beautiful standard of God's holiness. One of the things that I appreciate about covenant theology is its respect for the Old Testament law, not as an alternate path, nor as the thing that Jesus came to rescue us from, but rather, as part of the progressive revelation of the gospel. In Romans 7:14, Paul says that "the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh"--the problem is not with the law, but with the fleshly striving to obey it, because it cannot be obeyed in the flesh. In other words, our contempt should be aimed at our carnality, and not at the law.
The children of your bereavement
will yet say in your ears:‘The place is too narrow for me;
make room for me to dwell in.’Then you will say in your heart:
‘Who has borne me these?I was bereaved and barren,
exiled and put away,but who has brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone;from where have these come?’”- Isaiah 49:20-21, ESV
Amazingly, both Stevenson’s and Lewis’s fathers kept on sending stipends to their sons through the years of rejection. In spite of words like, “I am simply incapable of cohabiting any house with my father” (Stevenson); and, “I really can’t face him” (Lewis), the fathers kept supporting their sons.Read the whole thing.
Six years after his father’s death, Lewis wrote to a friend to catch him up on the last decade: “My father is dead.... I have deep regrets about all my relations with my father (but thank God they were best at the end). I am going bald. I am a Christian.”
Perhaps sending money through the broken years was the right thing to do. Perhaps not. What it shows is not approval, nor that the sorrow had disappeared. Rather, it reveals a kind of bond between fathers and sons that is the foundation of pain, not its removal.
Sitting at our kitchen table, he helped us figure each other out. Soon we were getting to the heart of the matter. Molly turned to me and said, "You never treat me like you appreciate me."This is one of the most important things I learned in pre-marital counseling. If my wife says something in the heat of an argument, perhaps a generalization, and it seems inaccurate to me, the cause of my frustration is not that I'm right and she's wrong. Rather, the cause is my own failure to acknowledge her feelings, which are very true and very legitimate. As Abraham Piper said about his own situation, "Her frustration was true because, whether or not I was grateful to my wife, I was perceived as an ingrate." The appropriate response from me is not to tell her why she's wrong or accuse her of slander and demand her repentance, but rather, to try to understand why she feels that way, and to seek to change myself, and to bring healing and reconciliation to the situation.
I looked at her. I looked at our pastor. And then I listed three ways that I'd shown appreciation for her that morning. As far as I was concerned, things were taken care of. She thought I didn't act appreciatively, but I just showed her (definitively, I might add) that I did.
As you can imagine, things were not taken care of. As a matter of fact, my list, for all its accuracy, was completely irrelevant to Molly. This was when our pastor pointed something out to me that has forever changed the way I interact with my wife, and with everybody, for that matter.
He told me that, sure, it may be wrong to say that I never show appreciation, but clearly she feels that way, and right now that's what needs to be dealt with. And not just dealt with but acknowledged, understood, respected. Her words may have included a factual error, but what she was saying was completely true.
In my marriage, it doesn't matter whether I'm thankful if I don't seem like it... Paying attention to those who disagree with us and taking them seriously, even if we're pretty sure we'll still disagree, is part of what it means to be in the body of Christ. It's humbling; it sanctifies. It will make us better husbands and wives. It will make us better Christians, and maybe even better Calvinists. (Abraham Piper)
I would say it took me a good year from the time I experienced an initial breakthrough until I really felt my spiritual equilibrium was more "normal." Changing metaphors, if the initial crisis was a massive earthquake, I felt aftershocks for a long time. And some were strong.Read it here
My experience is that God brings deliverance from these things gradually. Because his purpose is to strengthen faith and character. A different analogy: it is similar to endurance and strength training. It's the adversity of the struggle that builds spiritual understanding, muscle, and endurance. And it generally takes longer and is more difficult and painful than we imagine at first.
If we would stop treating Sunday as a second Saturday, one more day to run to Home Depot, one more day for the kids' soccer games, if we would rediscover Sunday as The Lord's Day, focusing on him for one day each week, what would be the immediate impact between today and one year from today?Sent from my iPhone
By one year from today, we will have spent 52 whole days given over to Jesus. Seven and a half weeks of paid vacation with Jesus.
He's a good King. Maybe we should put him first in our weekly schedules. (http://christisdeeperstill.blogspot.com/2009/07/second-saturday.html)
The third chapter of Michael Horton's book Introducing Covenant Theology
is a difficult one, but we are encouraged by looking at the opening of chapter four, where he says we have our most difficult work behind us.The man taking the oath is identified with the slaughtered animal. "Just as this calf is cut up, so may Matiel be cut up," is the way it is put in the text of an Aramaic treaty from the eighth century BC, and an earlier document describes a similar ceremony: "Abba-An swore to Yarim-Lim the oath of the gods, and cut the neck of a lamb, (saying): 'If I take back what I gave you....'" Among the Israelites it seems that a common way of identifying the parties was to cut up the animal and pass between the parts. [See Jer. 34:18.] From this ceremony is derived the Hebrew idiom for making a treaty, karat berit, "to cut a treaty." (p. 40)God alone was the one who walked between the animal parts in Genesis 15, indicating that he was taking responsibility for the covenant in its entirety. The covenant is based entirely on God's faithfulness. But Paul says in Romans 3:3-4a (ESV) that his faithfulness extends to the Sinaitic covenant as well: "What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar..." Moses had this same attitude in Deuteronomy 4:30-31 (ESV):
When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice. For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.God's covenant faithfulness can be traced back even further, to Adam and Noah. Horton writes,
We could even include the promise made to Adam after the fall--the so-called protoeuangelion, as a type of unconditional royal grant treaty. unlike the obvious conditionality of the first arrangement with Adam, Genesis 3 promises Adam and Eve a messianic seed who will undo the damage they have caused in their alliance with the serpent. (p. 43)
The covenant with Noah is a "unilteral promise of God, and it makes no difference what Noah does," since it is made despite full knowledge that "the thoughts of a man's mind are evil from childhood" (p. 42, citing Hillers)What is the justification for God's unconditional faithfulness even when the nation is so unfaithful? It is the "representative king who fulfills Israel's personal obligation and therefore the terms of the everlasting covenant" (p. 44). We have already seen this in the protoeuangelion, but we also see it in the Mosaic law, in Deuteronomy 4:18-20 (ESV):
And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.This is why Paul can say that "Christ is the end [the point aimed at; the purposed goal] of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Rom. 10:4, ESV, cf. John 1:17, 45). We receive the promises by identification with Christ through faith.
The sactions (threats) of the covenant made with God at Sinai must be taken seriously, and whatever continuity necessarily exists between the covenant of grace running through both testaments--the differences even structurally between, on one hand, the covenants with Adam, Abraham, and David concerning a seed and, on the other, the quite contingent and mutually adopted arrangement that distinguishes the Mosaic economy--must not be swept aside by theological prejudice. (p. 47)This is the "trembling" posture we must have when we approach Scripture (Isa. 66:2).
God chose Israel and redeemed them from Egypt not because of their own righteousness, but because of his tender mercy (Deuteronomy 6-8). Their being saved from Egyptian captivity and brought into the Promised Land is a matter of grace, pure covenant grant (Gen. 26:5). So also is the status of every Israelite as a justified person in God's sight: all by grace along, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Abrahamic covenant. However, once in the land, it is up to Israel as a nation to determine whether it will remain in God's land or be evicted from it.This is similar to the final judgment of believers, when we will be judged by our works. By the works of the law no one will be justified (Gal. 2:16)--we are justified by faith in Christ's gracious work for us on the cross--but make no mistake, we will be judged.
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. (Rom. 2:6-11, ESV)
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Cor 5:10, ESV)
Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess* to God.”So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. (Rom. 14:10-12, ESV)
In which day, not only the apostate angels shall be judged, but likewise all persons that have lived upon earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, to give an account of their thoughts, words, and deeds; and to receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil. (Westminster Confession of Faith 33:1)For believers, our works will be judged only to determine our reward. By God's grace, we who believe will be free from condemnation in the final judgment:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18, ESV)We are not saved by our works, but by unconditional grace of God. But our regeneration is confirmed by our obedience (James 2:17, etc.), and the rewards we will receive in heaven are at least in some sense conditional upon our obedience. "If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward" (1 Cor 3:14, ESV). So let us be diligent to make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10).
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Rom. 3:31, ESV)Posts in this series:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”The Covenant of Works was broken when Adam sinned, and all humanity is suffering the consequences. There is no sort of "back to the Garden" spirituality available for us. Adam blew it. If there were second chances available for that covenant, then humans would not have been banished from Eden. All of the remaining covenants God makes with Man in Scripture are part of the Covenant of Grace.
"[T]he very fact that God does exercise patience in this relationship points up that the Sinai covenant is not simply identical to the pre-fall Adamic covenant. After the fall, a covenant of works arrangement--even for a national covenant rather than individual salvation, cannot really get off the ground if absolutely perfect obedience is the condition."So the Covenant of Works existed for about a chapter and a half, from the middle of Genesis 2 through chapter 3. The rest of Scripture is about the singular Covenant of Grace. But don't take my word for it. Here is Chapter 7 of the historic Westminster Confession of Faith (ca. 1646), in its entirety:
(Don't be thrown off by that word, "dispensations," as it means something completely different here than the way Dispensationalists use it.)Of God's Covenant with Man
1. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.
2. The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.
3. Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.
4. This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed.
5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.
6. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.
Hamlet's friend Horatio quips, "I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done." A colloquial version of that would be, "I knew you would need an explanatory marginal note to figure that one out." "Edified by the margent:" this is an allusion to a statement in the preface to the Geneva Bible, where the editors tell the readers that for "good purpose and edification" they "have in the margent noted" certain things. "Edification ... in the margent;" "edified by the margent." (http://www.reformation21.org/articles/shakespeare-and-the-geneva-bible.php)
HT: JT
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In celebration of John Calvin's birthday, R.C. Sproul's Ligonier Ministries is giving away a special gift every day this week "for a donation of any amount." Today's gift is Steven Lawson's The Expository Genius of John Calvin, from his "Long Line of Godly Men Profiles" series. I encourage you to pick up a copy today.
HT: John Piper, "The Pastor As Scholar", sermon
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Some of them haven’t read anything by R.C. Sproul or any of the famous reformed apologists that are out there today. They’ve just been reading the Bible, and reading it with an open mind and an open heart and this is where they’ve come....HT: JT
I think it’s an encouraging sign to me that among young people especially the older denominational paradigm of, “Let’s build a great church. Let’s put up our fences. Let’s say that we’re the biggest and the best,” you know, that old “Rah! Rah! Rah!” ecclesiology, doesn’t sell very well. I think, in particular, we spend too much time building fences around our backyard and not tending to the foundation on which the building stands. We paint our fences, we hold them up – “I’m this, not that!” – and, in the meantime, the foundations are being eroded. And what you sense and what I’m sensing, I think, is a renewed interest in the foundations. Reformed theology is a way of talking about that. It’s a way of getting in touch with the reality of the faith, with God, with the Scriptures, with Jesus Christ and salvation, with the mission of the church in the world. Reformed theology, at its best, is about those things. It’s not about, “I’m a Baptist, not a Presbyterian,” or, “I’m this kind of Baptist, not that kind of Baptist,” or, “I’m a conservative, not a moderate,” or, “I’m a moderate, not a conservative.” Those types of old-fashioned political distinctions, I think, no longer have the bite they used to. (Source)
I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me;Pride is so deceitful. It is the sin of Satan (1 Tim. 3:6, NASB, cf. Isaiah 14), with which he tempted the first woman, Eve (Gen. 3:4-6), by which temptation the entire human race was hurled into the state of Total Depravity. It was reflected dramatically in the sin of Babel (Gen. 11) and is the root of the general idolatry that is the default condition of human beings throughout the ages.
I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me.I said, “Here am I, here am I,”
to a nation that was not called by my name.I spread out my hands all the day
to a rebellious people,who walk in a way that is not good,
following their own devices;a people who provoke me
to my face continually,sacrificing in gardens
and making offerings on bricks;who sit in tombs,
and spend the night in secret places;who eat pig’s flesh,
and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels;who say, “Keep to yourself,
do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.”These are a smoke in my nostrils,
a fire that burns all the day.Behold, it is written before me:
“I will not keep silent, but I will repay;I will indeed repay into their bosombecause they made offerings on the mountains
both your iniquities and your fathers’ iniquities together,
says the LORD;
and insulted me on the hills,I will measure into their bosom
payment for their former deeds.” (Isaiah 65:1-7, ESV)
The most provoking iniquity of the Jews in our Saviour’s time was their pride and hypocrisy, that sin of the scribes and Pharisees against which Christ denounced so many woes, v. 5. They say, "Stand by thyself, keep off’’ (get thee to thine, so the original is); "keep to thy own companions, but come not near to me, lest thou pollute me; touch me not; I will not allow thee any familiarity with me, for I am holier than thou, and therefore thou art not good enough to converse with me; I am not as other men are, nor even as this publican.’’ This they were ready to say to every one they met with, so that, in saying, I am holier than thou, they thought themselves holier than any, not only very good, as good as they should be, as good as they needed to be, but better than any of their neighbours. These are a smoke in my nose (says God), such a smoke as comes not from a quick fire, which soon becomes glowing and pleasant, but from a fire of wet wood, which burns all the day, and is nothing but smoke. Note, Nothing in men is more odious and offensive to God than a proud conceit of themselves and contempt of others; for commonly those are most unholy of all that think themselves holier than any.(Notice how Henry's language here clearly alludes to the parallels in Christ's judgment of the Pharisees in passages like Matthew 6-7, Matthew 23, Luke 18:9-14, and the like.)
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,“I have been found by those who did not seek me;But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”
Once Francis of Assisi became a celebrated figure and the object of constant adulation, he is said to have assigned to a fellow monk the task of reminding him of his failures and of how little he deserved the praise he was receiving. There are other reasons to confess our sins to one another constantly, but the mortification of our pride is chief among them.
In the second half of chapter 2 in Introducing Covenant Theology, Michael Horton drills down towards the characteristics of the biblical covenant. It is founded on God's transcendence, his sovereign election, and his grace, which is proclaimed loudly in his forbearance.Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. --Exodus 32:15-20 (ESV)God had the right to utterly annihilate the people of Israel after this rebellion, but he didn't. Horton says this is proof that the Covenant of Works (which we will later see was the covenant between God and Adam in the Garden of Eden before the Fall) can no longer be enforced. Justification by works cannot expected by any means, and we see that the entire point of the Law is to point to Christ. In this sense, even the Sinaitic covenant is one of grace.
What degree of disobedience God could put up with in order to allow Israel to keep its tenure in his land was always up to God, of course. His patience (long-suffering) received all too many opportunities to be displayed. Yet the very fact that God does exercise patience in this relationship points up that the Sinai covenant is not simply identical to the pre-fall Adamic covenant. After the fall, a covenant of works arrangement--even for a national covenant rather than individual salvation, cannot really get off the ground if absolutely perfect obedience is the condition. Remember, the purposes of the Jewish theocracy (i.e., the old covenant) was to point forward through types to the coming Messiah. (p. 32)In this way, as Meredith Kline explains, an "appropriate measure of national fidelity" is required in order to "keep the typology legible," and God in his providence certainly made sure this was met.
Both in the narrative of Gen 15 and 17, and in the later references to this covenant, it is clearly stated or implied that it is Yahweh Himself who swears to certain promises to be carried out in the future. It is not often enough seen that no obligations are imposed upon Abraham. Circumcision is not originally an obligation, but a sign of the covenant, like the rainbow in Gen 9.He goes on to point out some differences between the Abrahamic covenant and the Sinaitic, since the latter did impose obligations. He seems to be implying that there are two covenants, a conditional one, and an unconditional one, and that we are going to learn more about them as we get further into our study (Lord willing).
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