Great Lessons from John Newton

I have been listening to sermons that John Piper has delivered over the years on Biographies of Famous men on the faith. They have been blessing me greatly. I listen to the stories of these men's lives and the lessons we can learn from their strengths and weaknesses. Their triumphs and their failures, and i want to be like these men. Listen to these men's lives as piper tells it and let your heart grow and let you soul pray out to God to make you like these men. I pray that, I want to be like these men. I so desperately want God to help me become like Jesus; To have his strength and his tenderness. Here is one great example, A quote from a sermon piper gave on the life of John Newton:

Ever since I came to Bethlehem in 1980 this vision of ministry
has beckoned me because, soon after I came, I read through Matthew and Mark
and put in the margin of my Greek New Testament a "to" (for tough) and a
"te" (for tender) beside all of Jesus' words and deeds that fit one category
or the other. What a mixture he was! No one ever spoke like this man.
It seems to me that we are always falling off the horse on one side or the
other in this matter of being tough and tender—wimping out on truth when we
ought to be lion-hearted, or wrangling with anger when we ought to be
weeping. I know it's a risk to take up this topic and John Newton in a
setting like this, where some of you need a good (tender!) kick in the
pants to be more courageous, and others of you confuse courage with what
William Cowper called "a furious and abusive zeal."[2] Oh how
rare are the pastors who speak with a tender heart and have a theological
backbone of steel.

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might
in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched
by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are
matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way
around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study,
whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical
discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling. I dream of great defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known
for the delight they have in God and the
joy in God that they bring to the people of God—who enter
controversy, when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but
because they love Christ and the church.

There's a picture of this in Acts 15. Have you ever noticed
the amazing unity of things here that we tend to tear apart? A false doctrine
arises in Antioch: some begin to teach, "Unless you are circumcised . . . you
cannot be saved" (v. 1). Paul and Barnabas weigh in with what Luke calls a
"not a little dissension and debate" 2). So the church decides to send them off
to Jerusalem to get the matter settled. And amazingly, verse 3 says that on
their way to the great debate they were "describing in detail the conversion
of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren" (v. 3).
This is my vision: The great debaters on their way to a life-and-death show down of doctrinal controversy, so thrilled by the mercy and power of God in the gospel, that they are spreading joy everywhere they go. Oh how many there are today who tell us that controversy only kills joy and ruins the church; and oh how many others there are who, on their way to the controversy, feel no joy and spread no joy in the preciousness of Christ and his salvation.

One of the aims of this conference since 1988 has
been to say over and over again: it is possible and necessary to be as strong and
rugged for truth as a redwood and as tender and fragrant for Christ as a
field of clover.So now, with the help of the life of John Newton, I want
to say it again. And make no mistake: our heroes have feet of clay. There
are no perfect pastors. Newton himself warns us:
"In my imagination, I sometimes fancy I could
[create] a perfect minister. I take the eloquence of –, the knowledge of –, the
zeal of –, and the pastoral meekness, tenderness,
and piety of –: Then, putting them all together into one man, I say to
myself, "This would be a perfect minister." Now there is One, who, if he
chose to, could actually do this; but he never did it. He has seen fit to do
otherwise, and to divide these gifts to every man severally as he
will. [3]So neither we nor Newton will ever be all
that we should be. But oh how much more like the Great Shepherd we should
long to be. Newton had his strengths, and I want us to learn from them. At
times his strengths were his weakness, but that too will be instructive

A Great Quote from "Gospel Centered Hermeneutics" by Graeme Goldsworthy

I am reading a great book Called "Gospel Centered hermeneutics" by Graeme Goldsworthy. You can purchase this book by Clicking hereI would really recommend this book to you. It is a very well done presentation of the state of Hermeneutics today and how we got to where we are. Also, what we can do to right the ship in the Church. I thought i would share this quote. It is fantastic.

Because of the interaction of God's grace and human sinfulness, the word that accompanies the event, and the event that is interpreted by the word, must be more than mere information giving. It must be a redemptive word-event that has the power to break through our self-imposed, sinful darkness. It is not the story as story that does this. Redemption is in the event by which God reconstructs an acceptable human history while judging the unacceptable. The doctrine of justification by faith involves the substitution of God's righteous history in Christ for our fallen and condemned histories or rebellion...The gospel reminds us that God will judge history by the man he has appointed, in demonstration of which he has raised him from the dead (Acts 17:31)/ the corollary of the gospel-based eschaton is that all people should repent of their own part in the dysfunctional nature of human history (Acts 17:30). god has put our rebellious history to death in the death of Christ. In the resurrection of Jesus he has brought the eschaton into our history. The resurrected Jesus is the new man of the new age. That single past event guarantees that, through our faith union with Christ, our past and our present will find consummation in the future.

Lets get out there and be a nuisance to the world I love Spurgeon

This would be from PyroManiacs and team pyro. Phil Johnson and his crew run that. If you are not aquainted with this blog you should be. here is the link to them http://teampyro.blogspot.com/

Please read and enjoy and then get out there and witness, or teach, or preach. Please just go out and do something.

12 September 2009

Christian, Be a Nuisance to the World
Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Incomparable Bridegroom and His Bride," a sermon preached on Sunday evening, 10 June 1866, at the Met Tab.

Christians, be troublesome to the world! O house of Israel, be like a burdensome stone to the world! You are not sent here to be recognized as honorable citizens of this world, to be petted and well-treated.

Even Christ himself, the peaceable One, said, "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?"

What I mean is this, we are not to be quiet about our religion. The world says to us, "Hold your tongue about religion, or at least talk about it at fit times; but do not introduce it at all seasons so as to become a pest and a nuisance."

I say again, and you know in what sense I mean it, be a nuisance to the world; be such a man that worldlings will be compelled to feel that there is a Christian in their midst.

An officer was walking out of the royal presence on one occasion, when he tripped over his sword. The king said to him, "Your sword is rather a nuisance." "Yes," was the officer's reply, "your majesty's enemies have often said so."

May you be a nuisance to the world in that sense, troublesome to the enemies of the King of kings! While your conduct should be courteous, and everything that could be desired as between man and man, yet let your testimony for Christ be given without any flinching and without any mincing of the matter.

Jeff Allen's Amazing Testmony

WOW PLEASE WATCH THIS IT IS SO AMAZING