Its Such a Blessing That We Still Have Preachers Who Preach It

I was horrified when i think or read statements by men of the faith that get older. Many of them (J.I. Packer, John Stott, F.F. Bruce and others) as they age, they get soft in their theology and their Gospel proclamation. I am so refreshed when i heard the first sermon of John MacArthur at his church 40 years ago. After 40 years he is still preaching the same strong and true Gospel. That is so refreshing. He gave this message, and half of the church left. One sermon, the first sermon...and half the church quits. That is what we need. Men that will preach the Gospel so strongly that the unsaved and false converts leave. I hope that i will be blessed on day with that. Adrian Rodgers said "the problem with preachers today is no one wants to kill them anymore." Men and Women of God PREACH THE GOSPEL PREACH IT LOUD AND HARD IT IS THE MOST LOVING THING YOU CAN DO IS WARN THEM TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME. ESPECIALLY AT CHURCH!!!!! Please don't be so naive to think that everyone in your church is saved. Preach as a dying man to dying men. Here is an excerpt of his first sermon. You can read or hear the whole thing at: http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/1316A

And then we read about the fact that there are various dimensions of the
church. The mustard seed illustration gives the idea that the church is
going to explode and it's going to be a great big thing including real and
unreal, true and false. And so the Church Age is going to be a very
strange era and truly it is. For under the name church, quote/unquote, we
have all kinds of things going on today. Christ commanded John in Revelation to
write to the Sardis
church, "I know thy works that thou hast the name that thou art alive and art
dead." What a commentary on most churches today. They have a title,
they have a name, but they're dead. And why are they dead? Well they're
dead initially because the people within them are dead. I would say that
the great majority of church members in America today probably...probably and
according to Billy Graham statistics this is pretty accurate, probably the
majority of them don't even know what it is to be a Christian and they're dead
spiritually. Paul says in Ephesians 2, "They're dead in sin."
Consequently dead people are going to constitute a dead church and the church is
not suffering today or dying today because of a tax from the outside, most
churches Satan wouldn't even waste powder and shot on them, they're dead from
the inside.
But on the other hand, a vital church, a
living church, a church that in reality knows Jesus Christ and proclaims His
gospel, that kind of church is always going to be under attack because that kind
of a church must be the conscience of the community. A church that is
alive, a church that is one proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ is going to
become an issue in the community. Jesus said, "Woe unto you when all men
speak well of you." The church in the world must always be at opposite
poles because light and darkness have no fellowship. What concord hath
Christ with Belial,
there's no relationship.
Very important to
understand this and Paul elucidates it in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 beginning in
verse 14 where he brings up the fact that the love of Christ is a very basic
issue and that what is really important is that the church is involved in making
new creations out of these dead people. A church that is a real living
vital church is a church that is in the business of taking dead people and
communicating to them the gospel that alone can make them alive. That's the
mission of the church. There is no way biblically under the sun that the church can ever
court the world. The church must be the conscience of the world. The
church must be so well defined that it becomes the antagonist of the
world. For those outside of Jesus Christ, this church I trust, I pray,
this church will be the most uncomfortable seat in the world because we present
a gospel that divides.
It's so true that when the
church courts the world it dies, as I read to you from Revelation 3:1, the Sardis church thought it
was live but it was courting the world and so it wasn't alive, it was
dead. The duty of the church is not only to teach saints but the duty of
the church is to warn men of God's standards. And we're not fair and we're
not faithful to the call of God if all we do is advertise the abundant
life. Now that's a great dimension of salvation, but somewhere along the
line we've got to proclaim that man is a sinner, that he's separated from a holy
God and that in the eyes of God he's an object of God's judgment, he's a child
of wrath, as Paul says in Ephesians. To boldly proclaim Jesus Christ, to
boldly proclaim the truth about Jesus Christ, to boldly proclaim the truth about
man in his sin is to divide. If you'll remember correctly the words of
Jesus Christ in Matthew 10:34 you will remember that He
said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I came not to send peace
but...what?...a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father and the daughter against her mother and the daughter‑in‑law against her
mother‑in‑law and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." So
says Christ.
The true church of Jesus Christ is not
a religious institution which welcomes everybody, it is the body of Jesus Christ
set apart unto God, uniquely married and wedded to the self same Christ,
redeemed by faith. And no one outside of that faith redemption can be a
part of it for that is the requirement for the church and it is our task as a
people and a preacher to warn those who have not received Christ, to warn them
in love but to warn them nonetheless how they are in danger of the terror of the
Lord. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 11, "Knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord, we persuade men." He says when I stop to think about the
coming of the judgment of God, I get busy sharing the gospel. This is our
task.
And our text is such a warning this
morning. Our text is a warning to those who are comfortably entrenched in
the church are who think they're comfortably entrenched in the church but who in
reality are not. This is not a warning to outside people. This is a
warning to us who are involved in the church to be sure that it's real.
And I think it only fair to begin our ministry here that we stop and really
approach this with a sense of sobriety and earnestness, to understand how we
stand in view of God right now as individuals.
I'm sure that in this church right here there are
people who come who do not know Jesus Christ in a personal vital way. I am
convinced that because of the size of the congregation this morning there are
some sitting right here in this audience who have come to church many times but
who do not know Jesus Christ. And perhaps they even have religious
sensations and perhaps they even have sanctimonious emotions but they do not
know Jesus Christ. And it is my conviction that before we as a church can
move together as a body, as a unit, we must become a unit and the only way we
can ever be united and become one as Christ prayed that we might be is that when
we are all are real in Christ. And so I want us to carefully examine our
lives this morning.
Notice the scene in verse
21. There is a phrase "in that day." It's a very important phrase
because it says that there is coming a particular day when Christ is going to
judge. The idea of "in that day" in the Bible is connected with
judgment. This picture is a picture of that day. "In that day"
appears in 1 Corinthians 3 in connection with the time of the judgment of
believers. It appears in various places in the Bible in connection with
the judgment of unbelievers. But it is always a phrase tied in with
judgment, the finality of judgment.
There is coming
a day when God is going to judge. There is coming a day when the Great
White Throne is going to be a reality. In Revelation chapter 20 and I
think it bears our careful reading, in Revelation chapter 20 in verse 11 the
Bible paints this great picture of final judgment. "And I saw a Great
White Throne and Him that sat on it from whose faith the earth and the heaven
fled away and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead
small and great stand before God and the books were opened and another book was
opened which is the Book of Life and the dead were judged out of those things
which were written in the books according to their works." In other words,
they had no faith to commend them, all they could go on was their works.
And if you know anything about that you know that the Bible says, "By the deeds
of the law shall...what?...no flesh be justified." "And the sea gave up
the dead that were in it and the death and Hades delivered up the dead that were
in them and they were judged every man according to his works." Again no
faith, it had to be works. "And the result of works and death and hell, or
Hades, were cast into the Lake of Fire, this is the second death. And whosoever
was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of
Fire."
Now in Matthew 7:21 to 23 we are taken to the final
judgment. We are at the Great White Throne. And we are seeing some
of the people who are confronting Christ at that time. And they are saying
unto Him, "Lord, Lord, here we are, we are the ones who were religious
people." Peter calls this day the day of the judgment and predition of ungodly
men. And the phrase that he uses, "ungodly men," may seem like a very
difficult phrase in view of the fact that these are religious people.
There is an awesome silence at this judgment. And then the silence is
pierced by the words of Jesus Christ as He says in verse 21, "Not everyone that
saith unto Me Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My
Father who is in heaven." Here we have, first of all, the condition for
entrance to the Kingdom, the condition for entrance to the
Kingdom.
What is that condition? How is it
that a man enters the Kingdom of God? How is it that a man becomes a part
of the Kingdom of God? How is it that a man can be in, as it were, with
God in a real vital relationship? How is it? Well, first of all,
it's not the ones who say, "Lord, Lord." But it's those who do the will of
God. In Matthew 25:1 to 13 you have a very
interesting story. You have a story of ten virgins. And they were
invited to the feast. And five of them came and they had prepared by
bringing oils and putting...bringing oil and having it in their lamps. The
other five were foolish and they did not prepare. And in verse 11 of
Matthew 25 the door is shut and the five are on the outside and you remember
what they say, they say, "Lord, Lord, open to us." And the Lord of the
feast says, "Verily I say unto you, I know you not."

Interesting, isn't it, that they were invited to the feast. They had heard
the gospel, in a sense, symbolically. They had heard the proclamation,
"Come to the feast." This is an illustration of God's call to the
world. They even prepared to the extent that they had their lamps.
They even had the right clothes on. They even arrived at the meeting
house. But they didn't get in and their cry was the same as it is in
Matthew chapter 7, "Lord, Lord, open to us." But He says it is not those
that say, "Lord, Lord," but those that do My will.

What a solemn warning. At the end of that parable Christ says, "Watch
therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man
comes."

GIVE US SOME MEN WHO KNOW THE TRUTH

REMEMBER THE REFORMATION! REMEMBER THE GOSPEL! REMEMBER WHAT THESE MEN DIED FOR! REMEMBER AND FIGHT FOR THE GOSPEL AND THE REFORMATION!

George Muller and his Sermon at his wife's funeral

I am preparing a series of messages on 2 Peter. When studying 1:4 "By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises". I'm at work and i miss my wife. As i was thinking about her, we had a report come over the weather alert radio about a tornado watch. I thought what would happen if a tornado hit my house and something happened to my wife. I then remembered one of the precious promises in Scripture that George Muller said in the sermon for his wife's funeral. Here is what he said:

The last portion of scripture which I read to my precious wife was this: “The Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Now, if we have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have received grace, we are partakers of grace, and to all such he will give glory also. I said to myself, with regard to the latter part, “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”—I am in myself a poor worthless sinner, but I have been saved by the blood of Christ; and I do not live in sin, I walk uprightly before God. Therefore, if it is really good for me, my darling wife will be raised up again; sick as she is. God will restore her again. But if she is not restored again, then it would not be a good thing for me. And so my heart was at rest. I was satisfied with God. And all this springs, as I have often said before, from taking God at his word, believing what he says

What a promise is that! If we walk uprightly no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. All Christians sin, but a real Christian who has been born of the Spirit does not walk in a lifestyle of sin. Therefore we can walk "uprightly". If we do that then scripture promises us that God will withhold no good thing from us. So, if a tornado hits our house and our wife and kids die, or a car wreck paralyzes us, or a rapist comes and kills our children, or if we lose all we have to a fire, or our life savings are swindled from us or lost in some kind of theft. Scripture promises us that it was a good thing, and that God withholds no good thing. When you are sick and dying of a horrible disease, or someone you love is and they walk uprightly in the footsteps of Christ, the word promises us that this illness is for our good...Even if it ends in a horrifically painful death. How do you fight sin? How do you fight unbelief? You fight sin and unbelief by believing the promises that God has laid our for us in scripture. Of all the promises in scripture this one is one of my favorites, and besides verses saying of the promises of what Christ did on the cross to redeem us to eternal life, this is the one I hold in my heart and quote to myself as my verse to fight. Believe the promises in scripture and use them to increase and strengthen your faith in Christ and his word. Take heart anyone of you who is suffering, Christ and his word can be trusted.

An Old Post About my Father

I was thinking a lot about my father today, and i wrote this just after his death last year...The hardest thing for me when relating to God is understanding him as "Father". I know I'm not the only one who has had that difficulty. Rochelle and I are discussing baby names and one of them is "Ryan Scott" Scott being the name of my father. I want so badily and pray constantly that the horrid family history of terrible fathers ends with me and my children....I love you dad, even though you never cared to know i exist.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Thoughts about my Father and his death John Calvin talked about the "Imago Dei" which means in Latin "the image of God" The bible says we are made in the image of God. Genesis 1:26,27 says "Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth. So God created man in His own image; In the image of God He created them, make and female He created them." Now many have twisted this scripture to mean a bunch of horrible, blasphemous, and down-right comical mistranslations. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Hebrew writing styles tell us something important here. In English, if we want to emphasize something, we would yell it, or we would, if writing, would capitalize it, in Hebrew, they repeat it, and here we see that God says he created us in his image 5 times. So this is defiantly something that he wants us to know. This is a fact God wants to hammer home in us. So what is it to be made in the image of God? We see that it isn't looking like God in physical appearance. God is a Spirit. God doesn't have a physical substance that we can say, oh, we look just like him, also it says he created male and female, so God doesn't look like a male, a female, or a cross-dresser, it means something deeper than looks. What it means is that we are like God in the fact that he gave us certain attributes that distinguish us from animals and plants. We are creative, we dream, we plan, we do may things that animals and plants do not. House cats have not created a union within an old ladies house to strike because their milk ration is not large enough, beavers don't pull a mortgage from the bank of the bear to pay for the building supplies to build that lovely "add on" to the dam. monkeys don't make a wonderful bio degradable paint and paint their trees purely for aesthetic purposes. A dog doesn't sit around and dream of the time he blew it and could have gone off to college and studied how to be an Arctic survival dog. They function on pure instinct and survival....now many people who i know will read this will say we are nothing more than just animals, i assure you we are not, to claim that degrades your very purpose and existence to nothing...not to mention spits in the Face of God. In this passage we see other things about God that he created us with in his likeness. God is a trinitarian God, The very Hebrew name of God Elohim if you break it down "El"=God "Oh"=Strength "Im"=makes it plural...so the translation of the very name of God means "the Strength of many witnesses" God is One Deuteronomy says "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, The Lord is One." But God has three distinct persons in the trinity..one God three persons. the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Equal in substance, but different in function. God is in perpetual relationship with himself. Content and happy in that union Now God is a relational God, he gave us the desire and ability for us in our nature to be relational. To long relationship. When the first man and woman were made, they walked in perfect union with God, but then sin entered, and that union was lost. Now there is a skism, a break, a chasm, an inability for us to be back in that relationship with God. This Sin spread through our blood stream, all of us, through our beings, contaminating everything about us, just like sugar in a gas tank, we are all born in this sin, we are caked in it, every thought we have, every action we have taken, everything in our life is sin, and caked in it. But this sin, also damaged the perfect plan in relationship we have on earth with each other. The family was designed to be an example of God in heaven on Earth. but now sin destroyed that dynamic. Which gives us, a man who had a cruel and evil heart, and acted in abuse towards a little child, and that child grew up, and because of that experience, decided he would abandon his Child. that child was me. Sin destroyed the ability for me to have a relationship with my father and sin now destroys our ability to have a relationship with our heavenly father. Although we are made in the image of God, it has now been bent and twisted by Sin. In our fallen state, a man can abuse and turn his back on his Child, God cannot turn his back on his children. The problem is that God is holy and cannot look upon Sin, which makes us not the children of God, but as Jesus said, "You are of your father the devil." King David in Psalm 51 says "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me." Paul says in Romans 3 "There is no one who does Good, no not one." Genesis says every though of our hearts is only evil all the time. We are lost in Sin. As my father was dying, he made no effort to ever see me, to ever talk to me, to ever try to reach me, and no effort to repair that breech between us....God isn't like that, he came to earth, in the being of Jesus Christ, and being perfect, lived a perfect sinless life, and died on the cross for us to repair that breach and to pay for the sin that so covers us. so we can again stand before God. My dad died and i never saw him, was not allowed, will have no funeral, no memorial service, and i do not know if i will ever see him again...Jesus died, and I know i will see him again sitting at the right hand of the father, my father, my true father fully restored and glorified. The way for that breach to be repaired in you is to repent of our sins, means to confess them, feel true heartfelt sorrow and brokenness over our sins, which are spitting in the face of Jesus who died for us. Then turning from them and in the power of the holy spirit to have our sinful nature transformed into the likeness of Christ, this will not happen overnight, but slowly we will be sanctified and changed into the likeness of his son, and second, is faith in Christ, faith as you would to a parachute, to trust it as you would as your life your immortal life depends on it, because it does when we do that we are born again, we are sons of God, and will be glorified with Christ and will be forever in relationship with him as we were designed to be where he will wipe away every tear from our eyes...If not, we go to our earthly fathers home...which is Hell..and he is Satan..where the worm never dies, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I Love all of you who read this...I love my father...and i Love my God who loves me so much that he died for me.

Lamentations of a New-Born Soul

by John Newton

"Behold, I am vile!" Job 40:4

O Lord, how vile am I, Unholy and unclean!
How can I dare to venture nigh, With such a load of sin?

Is this polluted heart A dwelling fit for Thee?
Swarming, alas! in every part, What evils do I see!

If in Thy Word I look, Such darkness fills my mind;
I only read a sealed book, And no relief can find!

Thy gospel oft I hear, But hear it still in vain;
Without desire, or love, or fear, I like a stone remain!

Myself can hardly bear This wretched heart of mine!
How hateful, then, must it appear, To those pure eyes of Thine!

And must I, then, indeed,Sink in despair and die?
Fain would I hope that Thou didst bleed For such a wretch as I!

That blood which Thou hast spilt, That grace which is Thy own,
Can cleanse the vilest sinner's guilt, And soften hearts of stone!

Low at Thy feet I bow; O pity and forgive!
Here will I lie, and wait till Thou, Shalt bid me rise and live!

An Evening of Escatology

This is such an enjoyable debate to watch. We as brothers and sisters in Christ can have disagreements and other points of view on a great number of doctrines and be unified in the faith. As long as we affirm together what the gospel is there is room for good and solid heathy debate. I love seeing this and wish we could do it more. I would encourage all of you to do the same. Sit with your friends and your bibles and have good Christ centered and scripture soaked debate

I wish this was a joke, the most horrible thing I've ever heard a church do

If you have a strong stomach and aren't prone to throwing things around the room, then i dare you to read this....I can't believe this happened i wish this was a joke...but no this really happened!!!! And people wonder why i'm against youth groups. This would be why

http://www.folioweekly.com/documents/main092909_000.pdf

Calvin spoken of by Julius Kim

Some reading this may know the story of my father. How our relationship was. This message drove me to tears. I love John Calvin, what that man stood for and I love my father...even though he never cared that i existed. Enjoy this message

My Hero and how he became who he is

My hero is John Piper. I want to be like this man. I want to feel biblical texts like him, yet be grounded in truth. I want to study like him, and know how to see what is in texts like him. God has blessed us greatly by giving us a man like Piper. This is him talking about how he became as he is. Please watch and enjoy

How to Read a Book

Here is a great (and famous) quote from Mortimer Adler’s classic How To Read a Book.

*****

There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher’s icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good.

Confusion about what it means to “own” a book leads people to a false reverence for paper, binding, and type — a respect for the physical thing — the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn’t prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them.

There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best sellers — unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books — a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many — every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.) …

But the soul of a book “can” be separate from its body. A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini’s score of the G minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores — marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them—is the reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.