These Scars - Grace Gems

These scars!

(Charles Spurgeon)

"Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne!" Revelation 5:6 

Why should our exalted Lord appear in heaven--with His wounds? The wounds of Jesus are--His glories, His jewels, His sacred ornaments. To the eye of the believer, Jesus is lovely, because He is "white and ruddy"; white with innocence, and ruddy with His own blood. We see Him as the Lily of matchless purity--and as the Rose crimsoned with His own gore. Christ is lovely in His life and His teaching--but oh! there never was such a matchless Christ as He who hung upon the cross! There we behold all His beauties in perfection, all His attributes developed, all His love drawn out, all His character expressed!

Beloved, the wounds of Jesus are far more lovely in our eyes--than all the splendor and pomp of kings! The thorny crown is more attractive than any imperial diadem. Jesus wears the appearance of a slain Lamb--as His court dress in which He wooed our souls, and redeemed them by His complete atonement. 

Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ--they are the trophies of His love and of His victory! He has redeemed for Himself a great multitude whom no man can number--and these scars are the memorials of the fight! Ah! if Christ delights to retain the thought of His sufferings for His people--how precious should His wounds be to us! 

"Behold how every wound of His,
A precious balm distills, 
Which heals the scars that sin had made, 
And cures all mortal ills. 

Those wounds are mouths that preach His grace; 
The ensigns of His love; 
The seals of our expected bliss,
In paradise above!"

Grace Gems (choice ELECTRONIC books, sermons & quotes)

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Sovereign Grace Treasures (choice PRINTED books)

Authority

In my men's D-Team this past week, were discussing Romans 1:18-32.  In this section, we see the results and consequences of man not honoring God as God and not giving Him due thanks.  As a result, God gave mankind over to their depravity and their futile thinking.  In this section, we see a list of sins and wickedness that is beyond comprehension.  

One of the things that we stopped to talk about was in verse 30.

"...slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents..."

The question we thought about was this:  Why does "disobedient to parents" belong in this section?

As we talked it over in context of the entire passage it boiled down to one word:  AUTHORITY.  Man was given over to their sins because they refused to acknowledge God as God.  They refused to give Him thanks.  In essence, they were denying His existence because if they chose to acknowledge His existence, they had to acknowledge His AUTHORITY in their lives and thus submit to it and certain changes must take place.  Children being blatantly disobedient and living a lifestyle of rebellion and disobedient to parents boils down to their refusal to submit to the God given AUTHORITY  in their lives.  Romans 13 tells us that we are to obey our earthly AUTHORITY because it was placed there by God.  God established AUTHORITY because we are sinful and without AUTHORITY every man would do what is right in his own eyes resulting in chaos.  God is the ultimate AUTHORITY as our Creator and God.  Man has, since the beginning of time, tried to ignore and disprove that reality.  They have refused to acknowledge it and even begun to teach that which is now our national creed:  There is no such thing as true for false; there are no absolutes.  

In a word:  RELATIVISM.

Relativism is nothing more than an attempt to ignore and escape from the AUTHORITY of God.

Let me put it this way:

• GOD IS THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY
  
• God has established a system of government and authority on earth in order to prevent man from doing what is right in his own eyes and chaos resulting.
  
• God tells us that by disobeying this earthly authority, we are really disobeying Him and refusing HIS AUTHORITY in our lives.  
  
• To disobey civil AUTHORITY is to disobey God.  (Unless of course they are asking you to do something that goes against the Word of God.  God's law is higher and His AUTHORITY is greater.)
  
• To disobey parents is to disobey God
  
• Wives, to refuse to submit to husbands, is to refuse to submit to God's authority.
  
• Husbands, to refuse to give yourselves up for your wife, as Christ did for the church, and to refuse to love self-sacrificially is to refuse to submit to God's AUTHORITY in your life.
  

So yes, disobedient to parents belongs in this section of vile sins.  A blatant lifestyle of rebellion and disobedience is a refusal to submit to the God given AUTHORITY in their lives.  Refusing to acknowledge and submit to this AUTHORITY is really a refusal to submit to God and to honor Him as God and to acknowledge His right to rule over you; it is refusal to submit to His AUTHORITY.  

Think about this the next time you refuse to obey your earthly AUTHORITY.  It is not ultimately that AUTHORITY you are refusing or that you will be held accountable too. It is God.

Says Who - Ligonier Ministries Blog

Says Who?

from Ligonier Ministries Blog

Shared by you

Seek Ye First
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

It is a rather tedious and tiresome thing to pull the legs out from under our national confession. Our creed is not just internally inconsistent, it is not just incomprehensible, it is both these things rather quickly. That is, you do not start out with the fundamental premise, build a string of thirty or so syllogisms and come to a conclusion that contradicts the premise. You start with A, blink, and non-A is staring you right in the face. Our national creed is this- There is no such thing as true and false. The refutation is this- is it true or false that there's no such thing as true or false? It's over already. As I already noted, this devastating critique is by this point both tedious and tiresome. Potent and compelling, yes, but still boring as soggy graham crackers.

That this creed hasn't a leg to stand on doesn't keep it from being the very pillar of our society. Not a stable pillar, of course, but then we are no longer living in a very stable society. The more interesting question is this- how did an idea so utterly foolish come to be the very foundation of our culture? Why would a people, especially a people so given to intellectual pride, embrace such obvious folly? Because we're foolish enough to believe that such will allow us to escape the call of God on our lives. Because while we profess ourselves to be wise, God gives us over to the foolishness of our own thinking (Romans 1:22).

Relativism is not driven by honest epistemological skepticism. That is, its impetus isn't the result of uncertainty about truth. It is driven instead by ethical perversion. It exists not in the end so that we can escape truth per se, but that we might escape a particular truth- that we are sinners in rebellion against God. We deny that there is truth, so that we can deny that we there is a Truth to whom we must give an answer. It is an attempt to escape from authority.

As is so often the case, the folly that infects the world soon infects the church. According to George Barna, fifty-four percent of those who profess to be evangelicals also agree that there is no objective true and false. This is as absurd as the notion that there is no objective true and false. Evangelicals, by definition, are those who affirm the objective truth of the evangel (the gospel). But this is not the only way relativism assaults the church. In infects our understanding of the Bible itself. We come to the Word of God not to find out what Godsays, but to find out what it says "to me." We open our Bibles not to find, "Thus saith the Lord" but to find grist for our own mills, to affirm, "Thus is what it means to me."

Those of us in the Reformed camp, while hopefully not falling for this folly, have at least failed to fight it well. To be sure we have our share of worldview gurus who are willing and able to refute this nonsense. Such we ought to be doing. But we spend most of our time manning the barricades against assaults on the sovereignty of God. Charismatics speak of the Holy Spirit. Dispnsationalists write about the end times. The Reformed talk about God's sovereign power.

Of course it is good and wise to speak about the Holy Spirit, as long as we are speaking biblically. It is right and proper to write about the end times, as long as we are writing biblically. It is sound and fitting to talk about god's sovereign power, as long as we are talking biblically. What we tend to skip lightly over, however, is God's sovereign authority. That when He speaks the winds and the waves obey speaks not just to His power, but to His rule. He is God Almighty, there is no other. When He speaks, He need not persuade us of what He says. He need not either overpower us. Instead, because He is the Creator and we but creatures, when He speaks we must ever and always reply, "Amen."

While it is certainly true that the modern, or should I say post-modern church suffers from acute worldliness, that we stumble because we follow the world, the broader reality is that the world follows us. That is, we do not fail to submit to God's Word because they out there are relativists. Instead, they are relativists, not submitting to God, because we first do not submit to Him. If we want to live in a world where authority is recognized and honored, we need be a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people that bow before God's Word. The world will continue to collapse until the church learns, within her own walls, to be more faithful.

Jesus said as much when He, with all authority, commanded us all to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Our first calling is to get our own house in order, to become sons and daughters who honor our Father. When that happens, and only then, all these things will be added unto us. All that we worry about, or even all that we hope for for a better, sounder, safer, broader culture, will then come to pass. First, however, we must get first things first. Our sound refutations of foolish worldviews will get us nowhere, until we submit to all that He has said. Submission is our mission. Let God be true, and every man a liar.

*****

Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr. is founder of the Highlands Study Center in Mendota, Virginia, 
and is author of Believing God: 12 Biblical Promises Christians Struggle to Accept.

Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr. explains how the kingdom is advanced in our everyday lives and gives us a picture of how all things in life fit into the battle between God and the Devil in his column Seek Ye First.

Served by God, Serving Man

Served By God, Serving Man

from Ligonier Ministries Blog

Pro Ecclesia: For the Church
by David Mathis

My dad hasn't been to seminary. He has no formal theological training. Nobody pays him and Mom for their endless hours serving the church. But they could write an article on sacrificial service to the church. They've lived it.

Pop is a dentist in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He and Mom moved to town in the late seventies after dental school and a couple years practicing on marines. They didn't know anyone when they arrived. They visited churches, soon found one, and have been there for over three decades now.

I remember Pop giving all day Saturday to referee church basketball and getting up before five to get things ready for the men's breakfast. Mom gave herself to the ladies of the church and helped launch the prayer room. I remember Pop putting the final touches on his Sunday school lesson and driving straight from work to an evening search committee or deacons' meeting.

The kids didn't suffer from our parents' church service. We only benefited. Parents who served the church became more and more sacrificial at home.

I guess my folks are old school -- and biblical. They didn't join First Baptist for the entertaining music or youth ministry or cool preacher. They found a church where they could be blessed by God and be a blessing to others.

So many of us think about it the other way around. We think of church in terms of our serving God and receiving from others. But this is backwards.

Sacrificial service in the church doesn't start with serving. It starts with being served by God. Then as we are satisfied in Him and who He's revealed Himself to be in His crucified Son, we gladly overflow in service of others.

The Bible actually warns us against serving God. There is a clear sense in which we must not serve Him. Jesus' spokesman Paul says that God is not "served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25).

We humans can't give God anything that He hasn't already given to us. Jesus' ancestor David prayed, "All things come from you, and of your own have we given you" (1 Chron. 29:14). Nowhere is this seen clearer than in Jesus Himself, who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

Beware serving the God who became man not to be served!

But there's another sense in which Christians do serve. We serve others. And we do so "by the strength that God supplies" (1 Peter 4:11). God is the giver. Our posture toward Him is one of receiving, even in our service.

As we turn from facing God to face our fellow Christians, there should be a reorientation of the posture of our souls from receiving to giving. What amazing communities our churches are when we gather both with the expectation of receiving from God and with the
expectation of giving to others.

It's easy to miss the gospel way either by attempting to give to God or by presuming to receive from others. Take, for instance, many from my dad's generation. Born to World War II veterans who knew duty and the valor of service, they get the idea of serving others but transpose this to their relationship with God: "Grit your teeth. Do your duty. Serve God and man. Sacrifice for God whether you like it or not."

This isn't gospel. Dutiful sacrifice doesn't honor God as much as it honors our stone-like will. And thus it undercuts the very source of strength that enables us to serve others.

On the other hand, I've seen some from my generation expect to receive from God, but accompanying this good expectation is a tragic, culture-capitulating, self-centered posture of feeling entitled to receive from others.

Neither of these errors is "in step with the truth of the gospel" (Gal. 2:14). Believing the gospel reorients our posture toward God. Jesus did not come to be served by us, but to serve us by giving His life. He is the giver. We are the recipients of His grace.

And believing the gospel also reorients our posture toward others. We no longer expect to receive from them. Our default stance becomes one of giving. As Jesus has infinitely blessed us, so we want to bless others -- finite as that blessing will be. And in serving them, we point them to Jesus who blesses infinitely.

The church that seeks to give to God and receive from others will suffocate faith and smother love. But if Jesus' gospel takes root, we will gladly come to God to feast and drink. Then with our hands full and our thirst being quenched, we will most gladly do good to others, especially the church -- those who are of the household of faith (2 Cor. 12:15; Gal. 6:10).

O, how we need pastors and laymen like Pop and Mom! With every healthy vocational minister should be a crew of church-serving lay people who will receive from God and then give themselves to meet the needs of their church. I saw it in my parents and a pack of other selfless leaders as I grew up in Spartanburg, and I see it at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where I am now.

May God raise up a generation of men and women who are so satisfied in Jesus that we are resolved to sacrificially pour ourselves out for the joy of His church.

*****

David Mathis is executive pastoral assistant to Pastor John Piper at Bethlehem Baptist Church and Desiring God in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Each month, the editors of Tabletalk select an influential pastor or scholar to address issues pertinent to the life and ministry of the church in Pro Ecclesia.

Grace Gems - A Little Thing

A little thing?

(Charles Spurgeon)

Beware of light thoughts of sin. It is sadly true, that even a Christian may grow by degrees so callous, that the sin which once startled him--no longer alarms him in the least. We palliate and excuse our sin; we throw a cloak over it; we call it by dainty names.

Sin, a little thing? Is it not a poison! Who knows its deadliness! 

Sin, a little thing? Do not the little foxes--spoil the grapes? Does not the tiny coral insect--build a rock which wrecks a navy? Do not little strokes--fell lofty oaks? Will not continual droppings--wear away stones? 

Sin, a little thing? It girded your Redeemer's head with thorns--and pierced His heart! It made Him suffer anguish, bitterness, and woe! Could you weigh the least sin in the scales of eternity--you would fly from it as from a serpent, and abhor the least appearance of evil. Look upon all sin as that which crucified your Savior--and you will see it to be "exceeding sinful."

Grace Gems

I am constantly challenged and moved by my daily diet of Grace Gems.  The men of God who have gone before me are mentors and teachers to me and I am wise to learn from them.  Below, I have reposted a daily feed I received from Grace Gems as well as the full text surrounding the verse mentioned in the post.  Read the section in its context and then read the article.  Be challenged to walk worthy of the calling to which God has called you.

My Prayers are with you...

2 Samuel 21:1-14 (English Standard Version)

David Avenges the Gibeonites

1Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David(A) sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, "There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death." 2So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but(B) of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. 3And David said to the Gibeonites, "What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement, that you may bless(C) the heritage of the LORD?" 4The Gibeonites said to him, "It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel." And he said, "What do you say that I shall do for you?" 5They said to the king, "The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel, 6let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them before the LORD at(D) Gibeah of Saul,(E) the chosen of the LORD." And the king said, "I will give them."
7But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of(F) the oath of the LORD that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. 8The king took the two sons of(G) Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab[a] the daughter of Saul, whom(H) she bore to(I) Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite; 9and he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the LORD, and the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest,(J) at the beginning of barley harvest.

10(K) Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens. And she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day, or the beasts of the field by night. 11When David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, 12David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead,(L) who had stolen them from the public square of(M) Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. 13And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan; and they gathered the bones of those who were hanged. 14And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in(N) Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father. And they did all that the king commanded. And after that(O) God responded to the plea for the land.





Those ghastly corpses might well have affrighted Rizpah!

(Charles Spurgeon)

"Then Rizpah, the mother of two of the men, spread sackcloth on a rock and stayed there the entire harvest season. She prevented vultures from tearing at their bodies during the day, and stopped wild animals from eating them at night." 2 Samuel 21:10

If the love of a woman to her slain sons, could make her prolong her mournful vigil for so long a period--shall we be weary of considering the sufferings of our blessed Lord? She drove away the vultures--and shall not we chase away those worldly and sinful thoughts which defile our minds? Away, you evil birds! Leave the sacrifice alone!

Rizpah bore the scorching heat of summer, the night dews and the rains, unsheltered and alone. Sleep was chased from her weeping eyes--for her heart was too full for slumber. Behold how she loved her children! Shall Rizpah thus endure--and shall we give up at the first little inconvenience or trial? Are we such cowards--that we cannot bear to suffer with our Lord? She even chased away the wild beasts, with courage unusual in her gender--and will not we be ready to encounter every foe for Jesus' sake?

Her children were slain by other hands than hers--and yet she wept and watched. What ought we to do--who by our sins, have crucified our Lord! Our obligations are boundless, our love should be fervent, and our repentance thorough!

Those ghastly corpses might well have affrighted Rizpah! But in our Lord, at whose cross-foot we are sitting, there is nothing revolting--but everything attractive! Never was living beauty so enchanting, as a dying Savior! To abide by His cross--will be our solace.

For Thought and Discussion

As I was studying through my Romans bible study this morning (3-29-09), I came across a "For Thought and Discussion" question that I really had to grapple with a bit.  Here is the question:  "If it were possible to obey God's Law on your own, without His enabling power, would God declare you righteous without faith in Christ's work?"

Here is the reason I found this question so difficult; I cannot fathom myself or anyone else ever being able to do so. I know from scripture that all men are totally depraved and none do good, none can do good, and none seek after God or even have a desire for God apart from God's work in their lives.  The question seemed stupid and absurd to me.  

However, as I stopped to ponder this question, I answered it with a "yes."  With that in mind, think about this.  If we were indeed able to obey and keep the whole Law perfectly, without His aid or assistance, it would suggest that we were not totally depraved but did indeed have some good in us apart from God and it would nullify the need for Christ to come and die in the first place.  Paul, in his writings, refutes these idea profusely and says that it cannot be.  Salvation is through Christ alone; through His grace and our faith in Him by repenting of our sin and turning to Him.  

Yes, I suppose that if we were able to keep the whole Law, God would declare us righteous apart from the work of Christ.  However, this is not possible.  We are a totally depraved people who cannot do anything good apart from the work of Christ.  If we had been able to do so, Christ would never have had to come and all of scripture would be a lie.

Praise God that it is and always will be all about Christ!  Praise God that salvation is through Christ and Christ alone!  Praise God that it does not depend on me.