The Church is Burning

Professor David Wells blogs over at 9 Marks on how the church is burning while we watch:

The problem, though, is that the consequences in our churches of increasingly vapid biblical teaching, personality-centered pastoring, invasive individualism, contempt for the past, and an egregiously non-theological kind of evangelicalism have now been accumulating for years. And this makes for easy-pluckings by anyone who seems to have a better idea or who offers more for less.

Wells' God-centered, God-given, thoroughly biblical insights on modern Christianity make his books well worth picking up.

Dever on Subjective "Guidance"

Pastor Mark Dever blogs over at Together for the Gospel on how many contemporary believers wrongly practice decision-making:

The desire for such a subjective sense of leading, however, is too often, in contemporary evangelical piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting.

Indeed.

(HT: JT)

Packer on the Gospel of God

I noted the helpfulness, strength, and clarity of J.I. Packer's introductory essay to John Owen's classic The Death of Death in the Death of Christ a few posts ago, but I wanted to give you a better taste of Packer's insights. Bible study guys, here you go:

The old gospel was “helpful,” too — more so, indeed, than is the new — but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.

From this change of interest has sprung a change of content, for the new gospel has in effect reformulated the biblical message in the supposed interests of “helpfulness.” Accordingly, the themes of man’s natural inability to believe, of God’s free election being the ultimate cause of salvation, and of Christ dying specifically for His sheep, are not preached. These doctrines, it would be said, are not “helpful”; they would drive sinners to despair, by suggesting to them that it is not in their own power to be saved through Christ. (The possibility that such despair might be salutary is not considered; it is taken for granted that it cannot be, because it is so shattering to our self-esteem.) However this may be (and we shall say more about it later), the result of these omissions is that part of the biblical gospel is now preached as if it were the whole of that gospel; and a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Thus, we appeal to men as if they all had the ability to receive Christ at any time; we speak of His redeeming work as if He had done no more by dying than make it possible for us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God’s love as if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence “at the door of our hearts” for us to let them in. It is undeniable that this is how we preach; perhaps this is what we really believe. But it needs to be said with emphasis that this set of twisted half-truths is something other than the biblical gospel. The Bible is against us when we preach in this way; and the fact that such preaching has become almost standard practice among us only shows how urgent it is that we should review this matter. To recover the old, authentic, biblical gospel, and to bring our preaching and practice back into line with it, is perhaps our most pressing present need. And it is at this point that Owen’s treatise on redemption can give us help.

There are some incredible lines in there, and the whole thing is worth the 30-45 minutes it will take you to read it. Please drop me a comment or an email if you have any questions or comments, because knowing what Packer means will likely be the difference between being a serious Christian or a lightweight - and it could be the difference between knowing Christ or not knowing Him at all.

Why Do You Read?

Pastor-reader-blogger Colin Adams has a wonderful list of 20 reasons to read good Christian books. Each of the reasons forced me to ask, "Why do I read what I read?"

(HT: JT)

God, Money, and the Good Eye

Lately I've been reading Pastor John Piper's short book on Jesus' commands, In Our Joy, (which is itself a distillation of Piper's longer book on Jesus' commands, What Jesus Demands from the World) and I came across this excellent paragraph on God, money, and the good eye. Piper, expounding Jesus' words in Matthew 6:19-34, writes:

You have a good eye if you look to God and love to maximize the reward of his fellowship—that is, lay up treasure in heaven. You have a good eye if you look at Master-money and Master-God and see Master-God as infinitely more valuable. In other words, a “good eye” is a wisely valuing eye, a discerning eye, an astutely treasuring eye. It doesn’t just see facts about money and God. It doesn’t just perceive what is true and false. It sees beauty and ugliness; it senses value and worthlessness; it discerns what is really desirable and what is undesirable. The seeing of the good eye is not neutral. When it sees God, it sees God-as-beautiful. It sees God-as-desirable.

Please pray with me that we would see God as infinitely more valuable that all the riches of this world. Pray that we would love Him more than money and comfort and safety and our own lives!

Maybe I'll post more on this later - Jesus makes so many eye-opening, earth-shattering statements in the Bible that it would take several lifetimes to discuss them all.

Kids In Mind

This link to Kids-in-mind.com has been down below on the right, in the links list under "Smart," ever since I started this site, but I had a conversation with a buddy last night that reminded me just how important it is to look ahead at movies before you take your friends, your wife, or your kids to see them. He rented a movie with his wife that they both squirmed and fast-forwarded through and regretted it later, and I have made the same mistake with my wife.

So, when you are considering whether to see a movie, go to Kids In Mind and read their review of it. They give three ratings, from 1 to 10, based on the movie's objectionable content - sex, violence, language - and let you decide its merit for yourself. It'll be worth the extra two minutes to keep you from seeing something you would have rather not seen.