tohuvabohu

One of our new youth staff, Kim Weinberg, arrived in Hohenschönhausen, Berlin safe and sound. She’ll be serving the Green family for almost two months. I know she would appreciate your prayers.

Series | The Lord’s Day Here is the second piece of practical advice for how to regard the Lord’s day as the best day. 2. Participate By Getting There Sheesh. Do I really need to say that? Apparently I do. It’s part of the reason I’m writing about the Lord’s day in the first place. It is true that no explicit command for church worship services on Sunday can be found in Scripture.

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Series | The Lord’s Day I previously promised four pieces of practical advice for how to regard the Lord’s day as the best day. Here is the first. 1. Anticipate In other words, prepare for Sunday. Think about it ahead of time. Look forward, count down, and get ready.1 In Your Schedule I understand that life responsibilities do not cease just because it’s Sunday. But if we are serious about honoring the Lord on His day, it will require some effort on our part to forecast what needs to get done and then to do all the things we can before Sunday so that we can participate in as many the events of the body as possible without distraction.

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Series | The Lord’s Day A pastor friend of mine who helps lead a local body on the Lord’s day typically posts the order of service on Saturday so the sheep can prepare. He titled his post a few weeks ago, “Getting ready for the Best Day of the Week.” I’ve been thinking about that ever since. The Lord’s day, the first day, is the best day of the week for Christians.

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Series | The Lord’s Day Our Lord’s day practices require consideration and sometimes qualification. Even so, the following ammendments will be of no avail if you haven’t read the previous post on first day activities. First, I am not saying we must do each one of the first day activities every Sunday in order to properly observe the Lord’s day. There are no commands for proper protocol or procedure of worship services like we conduct today.

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Series | The Lord’s Day The first day of the week, Sunday, was and is the Lord’s day. While the title “Lord’s day” is only used in Revelation 1:10, “first day” is a common identification of the day when believers gathered. In the Old Testament, Israel was commanded to keep the Sabbath; to set apart the seventh day of the week (Saturday) and rest from their work just as God rested from His work of creation.

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Series | The Lord’s Day George Orwell said, Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. I’m not claiming intelligence, but I do think some restatement of the obvious regarding the Lord’s day is an eternally and spiritually intelligent thing to do. Even the phrase itself, the Lord’s day is instructive. It isn’t just Sunday or the first day of the calendar week or the last day of your weekend.

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This video of The Gospel in 6 Minutes is a terrific asset for both evangelism and edification. I benefited from it so much I added it to the one28 About page.

Series | The Lord’s Day In December of 2003 I taught a short series of sermons under the banner “Church Life for Teens.” The initial motivation for that series was that I really wanted students to understand the importance of the biblical ordinances: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I tagged on a short message concerning church etiquette, hoping to instruct students about customary and polite behavior at church (such bottom line basics like not sleeping in church or getting up, leaving, and returning in the middle of a service).

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Happy 10 year anniversary and one million MacArthur Study Bibles. As I said before, “If I was stranded on an island and could only have one print resource, this is the one I want.”

I did not go “back to school” yesterday for the first time in 28 years. The past six years I taught one or more high school Bible classes at our Christian school and the previous 22 years I made my way through the typical course of elementary, junior high, high school, (three) colleges, and then graduate school. That is a lot of school; not necessarily a lot of education, but a lot of school, with a fair share of apprehensive and/or unenthusiastic first days to boot.

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The TruThseeker is back at his blog and crunched some numbers on the average life expectancy increase over three millennia. I’m using my extra 2 minutes and 53 seconds today to write this.

Series | For the Love of God This fifth mark is acutely helpful but typically ignored in the attempt to identify gracious, spiritual affections. 5. Genuine religious affections are relentless. In other words, genuine affections are always increasing and developing. They are not stagnant nor are they easily satisfied with their attainments. They do not applaud themselves and pat themselves on the back for how far they’ve come. Truly spiritual affections are not easily satiated.

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Series | For the Love of God Today we pick up with the next distinguishing mark of genuine religious affections. 4. Genuine religious affections are nature-changing. Though I suppose that this one should be obvious, it apparently is not. When the Bible talks about salvation and conversion and becoming a Christian, it uses language like “born again,” “new creatures,” “taking off the old man and putting on the new man,” “being made partakers of the divine nature” and so on.

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Doug Wilson on why community living is messy, but also why crankiness in the community does not equal authenticity. (Here’s the 1000 words version.)

Justin Taylor linked to this article by Dr. Roger Olson who claims that the Calvinist view of the Minneapolis bridge collapse distorts God’s character. Wow. Where to begin? Olson says, What a strange calamity. A modern, seemingly well-engineered bridge in a major metropolitan area collapsed in a moment without any forewarning of danger. Something similar could happen to any of us anytime. Similar things do happen to us or people just like us–innocent bystanders passing through life are suddenly blindsided by some weird tragedy.

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I thought this was interesting…and tiring. The Rev. Warren Carr of Durham, North Carolina, prepared a questionnaire asking his congregation to tell him how much time that they thought he should give to a list of specified tasks. The members of his congregation were shocked to discover that the average work week indicated by their answers was 82 hours. One answer proposed a schedule of 200 hours–32 more than there are in a week.

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There are a few things I don’t need any help with. I’m good at these things. I don’t need tips from books. I don’t need advice from friends. I know what I’m doing and I do them well. If “Things I’m Good At” was a category on Family Feud, the number one answer according to the survey is: I’m good at thinking about myself. Josh Harris made a similar observation in his recent post titled “My One and Only Week on Facebook.

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My dad shared the following poem with me when I was a kid and I’ve never forgotten it. It was written by Pat Williams, a former NBA General Manager. I shared it during a sermon I recently preached on Men at Work while illustrating the seriousness of taking responsibility. Since numerous people asked me for a copy after the message I thought it might be good for the entire void.

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I’m eager to publish (what is hopefully) the last explanation behind my music video. It was posted first on February 6, and within a week (thanks to the PyroManiac) the video was viewed over 1200 times. I don’t know how many of those views were actually by different people since the Pecadillo informed us that it was not unusual for him to hear the video playing two or three times per visit to his parents’ house.

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When Phil Johnson taught on Spurgeon at the 07SR he referenced some of Spurgeon’s contentions regarding Calvinism. I thought it would be helpful for some of our youth staff and students to get a better grasp on what Calvinism really is, so I began a brief series entitled “God Saves Sinners” during our Sunday morning meetings (see the end of this post for links to that material). We are more than halfway through and I thought now would be as good a time as any to suggest some additional resources for those interested in studying Calvinism on their own.

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Series | Lies Every Teen Believes The second lie teenagers believe is that they are, intrinsically, irresponsible. “Research” shows their brains have not yet fully developed so they can’t be expected to act appropriately. They are not ready to answer for their actions. Experts define adolescence as an extended season for experimentation and prolonged preparation. The teen years are for development and responsibility must be deferred. Inevitably, the teenagers is a disappointment, whose combination of adult capacities and juvenile irresponsibility sows personal heartbreak and social chaos.

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There is a sinewy connection between joy and shepherding and I regret that there are still too many occasions when the two are cut asunder. It isn’t that I lament others seeing the lack, I lament the fact of the lack. I don’t wish that I could hide my joy*less*ness better, rather I want to experience and display joy*full*ness better. The connection between joy and shepherding is consequential. Though Hebrews 13:17 is primarily a call for the sheep to follow the shepherd in such a way that he may shepherd with joy, it establishes the principle that a joyful shepherd is an advantage to the sheep.

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One of the compelling issues in the adolescence, ADD, and ADHD phenomena is the possibility of genetic or hormonal causation. We are told that if it can be scientifically determined that certain actions or attitudes are inherent in a person’s physical make-up, then we are obligated to consider their behavior normal and should remove moral responsibility from the discussion. After all, if they can’t help it, we shouldn’t expect it.

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Series | Lies Every Teen Believes Today we’ll address the first of the six lies of adolescence. Remember, by the name “adolescence” we are not simply referring to the biological changes that take place in a person over a small period of time (i.e., puberty). In our culture the word is more than a convenient catalog of the days, months, and years of being a teen. Adolescence refers to a mindset, and now an entire sub-culture, that has been established by certain lies that need to be laid bare.

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