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The Kuyperian Vision of Christ's Lordship
The Kuyperian Vision of Christ’s Lordship ➔ I can’t remember being as excited about anything that wasn’t divinely inspired in a while. Though I’m always on the lookout for new audio to listen to while running, very few things make me want to run longer and faster. The following did. Two days in a row. I can’t recommend it too highly. I’ve already ordered the biography that is mentioned multiple times and plan to start reading it as soon as it arrives.
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Radically Meaningless
Brian Phillips wrote, Tim Tebow, Converter of the Passes, a commentary on the often inconsistent connection between faith and sports. Tebow, because he actually tries to live what he believes, seems to make a great story for those who love him and hate him. Phillips acknowledges, however, that those who want Tebow to fail because he is an evangelical Christian prove a point they don’t really want to make.
The problem is that if you’re rooting against Tebow because he’s religious, you’re giving way to the trial-by-combat impulse.
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Unafraid of Light
Jesus commanded His disciples, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Good works can’t save, but they are fruit of our salvation and a witness to the world. That said, there may be even a better description than doing good. Christians should be doing truth.
I do not mean that believers should do the truth in contrast to those who merely hear or know the truth, though that is true.
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Reformation Day
I spoke yesterday for the Reformation Day assembly at Providence Classical Christian School where our two oldest kids attend. Here’s Maggie as Jenny Geddes and Calvin as a Redcrosse Knight. Below the picture are the notes for my talk.
In Geneva, Switzerland, near the church where John Calvin taught on a daily basis, there is a city park. The park contains a memorial to the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, a football field long wall adorned with statues of Calvin, John Knox, and other Reformers.
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Upsetting Continents
October 31st is Reformation Day. We remember Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the Wittenburg church door and the recovery of the gospel of grace, the light after darkness. We celebrate sola fide, justification by faith alone. Against the Roman Catholic Church that taught the need for co-righteousness, some from Christ and some from men, Luther and the other Reformers fought against the heavy burdens of buying salvation through indulgences or earning God’s grace through good works or through penance and confession.
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Our Life Meal
The Lord’s Supper was instituted by our Lord at the Last Supper. It was the night He was betrayed, the eve of His crucifixion. This was His final meal before being condemned as a criminal, judged by the Jewish and Roman authorities and then executed under a guilty sentence.
Criminals sentenced to death today get a last meal before their execution is carried out. Though the chronology is reversed–Christ ate and then was tried–because of Christ, we are no longer on death row.
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Pouting in the Corner
God possesses many weapons in His judgment arsenal. One of the most dangerous weapons is abandoning wrath, when He gives men over to their sinful desires. Romans 1 documents different groups that love sin so much that God confirms their sinful loves, maintaining their trajectory to destruction. The danger not only relates to the certain end of destruction, but to their blindness, a deceived heart that thinks its getting what it wants.
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Sweeter Than Honey
Over the last month, a few bloggers I follow have posted this video of the Kimyal tribe receiving their very own copies of God’s Word for the first time, and I finally watched it. With tears.
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Sharing More Than Sentences
Our time around the Lord’s table celebrating the Lord’s supper is also called communion. The KJV translates 1 Corinthians 10:16 accordingly.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16, KJV)
The Greek word for “communion” is κοινωνία, translated elsewhere as “sharing” (NAS), “participation” (ESV), “fellowship” (YNG).
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One Buttock Playing
I really enjoyed this twenty minute classical music experiment from Benjamin Zander. The primary take-away observation for me was: leaders with enthusiasm, excellence, long-view, and laughter can’t help but be contagious.
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Welcomed Back
What is the point of confessing sin? Why is it so important?
The point of confession is not primarily to confirm our understanding of the rules, not primarily to agree with God’s righteous requirements. His law is perfect, His commandments pure, His rules true. We acknowledge the standard and submit to His authority when we confess our sins. But confession is not mostly a test of our ability to define righteousness with exactitude.
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Welcome to Watch
Paul told the Corinthians that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). How so?
Among other effects, the Lord’s table is evangelistic, not to those who eat and drink but through them. The bread and cup don’t save, but someone might be drawn to the gospel by watching others celebrate it.
This meal that portrays us eating Christ’s body and drinking His blood makes absolutely no sense to the natural man.
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Confess Them All
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NAS). The death of God’s Son on the cross makes forgiveness possible, His sacrifice means that condemned men can be cleared of charges and cleansed of unrighteousness. Because God gave His only Son, there are two types of sin that can be forgiven when they are confessed.
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Real Love
We celebrate God’s real love for us at the Lord’s table. The bread is real and the cup is real. For those who believe, the communion with God through Christ is real, the knitting together of the body is real, and the love of God is real. We don’t eat and drink for sake of vague nostalgia. We remember the historical sacrifice of the Lamb on the cross. The love we commemorate is not fuzzy feelings.
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Desperation and Deliverance
I think about “the rhythm of desperation and deliverance” all the time.
A pastor who feels competent in himself to produce eternal fruit—which is the only kind that matters—knows neither God nor himself. A pastor who does not know the rhythm of desperation and deliverance must have his sights set only on what man can achieve.
—John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 54
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What Is a Ditch?
Truth lovers love truth and, therefore, they love words and definitions and sentences that carry the truth. Lovers of truth who collect and arrange words can get themselves into trouble with all their word play, defining themselves right off the road of obedience. Religious people are the best, or worst as it were, at finding ambiguity in a cup of dirt.
Once upon a time, a lawyer put Jesus to the test, asking Him how to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25ff).
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Pink on Kosmos
I regularly refer people to A.W. Pink’s observations on the New Testament use of κόσμος in Appendix III of his book, The Sovereignty of God. The motivation for his study is as follows.
Many people suppose they already know the simple meaning of John 3:16, and therefore they conclude that no diligent study is required of them to discover the precise teaching of this verse. [But] the word “kosmos,” and its English equivalent “world,” is not used with a uniform significance in the New Testament.
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Eminent and Transcendent Love
John Owen on John 3:16: “The love here intimated is absolutely the most eminent and transcendent love that ever God showed or bare towards any miserable creature.”
“So” that is, in such a degree, to such a remarkable, astonishable height: “God,” the glorious, all-sufficient God, that could have manifested his justice to eternity in the condemnation of all sinners…: “loved,” with such an earnest, intense affection, consisting in an eternal, unchangeable act and purpose of his will, for the bestowing of the chiefest good: “the world,” men in the world, of the world, subject to the iniquities and miseries of the world, lying in their blood, having nothing to render them commendable in his eyes, or before him: “that he gave,” did not, as he made all the world at first, speak the word and it was done, but proceeded higher, to the performance of a great deal more and longer work, wherein he was to do more than exercise an act of his almighty power, as before; and therefore gave “his son;” not any favourite or other well-pleasing creature; not sun, moon, or stars; not the rich treasure of his creation; but his Son: …that believers, those who he thus loved, “might not perish,” –that is, undergo the utmost misery and wrath to eternity, which they had deserved,– “but have everlasting life,” eternal glory with himself, which of themselves they could no way attain.
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Cultures Are Incarnational
If it’s true that men become and live like who/what they worship (and God says it is, see Psalm 115:4-8), then there can be no truly secular space.
All cultures are the incarnational outworking of a religion or combination of religions. When you deny a transcendent God, this does not eliminate the need for a god at the top to make the system coherent. It just means that the applicants for the position of deity are all, to use one of Hitchen’s favorite words, mammals…If there is no God above the system, then the system is god.
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Our Neighbor's Eating
Immediately preceding Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian church about communion, he admonishes them about their selfishness.
When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?