Posts from — April 2008

We have enough Bibles for every household in America a couple of times over. We have churches galore; religious organizations; educational institutions; religious presses that never stop pouring forth books, Sunday school materials, and religious curricula; and unparalleled financial resources. What don’t we have? All too often we don’t have what the Old Testament people didn’t have. A due and weighty sense of the greatness and holiness of God, a sense that will reach into our lives, wrench them around, lift our vision, fill our hearts, make us courageous for what is right, and over time leave behind its beautiful residue of Christlike character.

—David Wells
The Courage to be Protestant

Via: Ligonier

Via: Don’t Waste Your Life Podcast

Saving faith looks at the horror of sin, and then looks at the holiness of god, and apprehends spiritually that God’s forgiveness is unspeakably glorious.

—John Piper
Future Grace

Via: Desiring God

Sometimes I’m asked how I explain the disproportion between the size of the universe and the smallness of man created as the crown of God’s creation. The tension is felt in Psalm 8:3-5.

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

My answer is that the magnitude of the universe is not meant to correlate with the image, but with the Original. The heavens are not designed to declare the glory of man. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19:1). The point of the universe is that God is great and man is infinitely less great.

I did not say man is not great. Psalm 8 says man is great. “A little lower than the heavenly beings.” Now we are ready to see the point of the universe and why Psalm 8 begins and ends, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” It does not begin and end, “O Man, image of God, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”

Man is great. But compared to God’s greatness, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” The universe is designed to remind us of this distance between’s God’s infinite greatness, and man’s finite greatness. Man must reside on tiny planet earth in a seemingly infinite universe. And the universe must look infinite to be a fitting picture of what it cannot be: infinite. Only God is infinite. The universe is declaring that. Pretty well.

—John Piper

Via: Desiring God Blog

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This message by Dr. R.C. Sproul was included on a CD I received from Ligonier Ministries last week at T4G ‘08. Dr. Sproul is one of my heros in the faith and I have learned more about the holiness, sovereignty, and love of God for his creation from him than anyone else. In this postmodern culture that embraces relativism and denies absolute truth, the exclusivity of Christ is constantly under attack.

Would you dare to stand before God on the day of judgement and say “God, you have not done enough for me?”

Would you look into the face of God and say “One way of salvation is not enough?”

In light of the culture we live in, this message by Dr. Sproul entitled “Christ the Only Way” is both timely and powerful. The helpless condition of man and the magnificent Gospel of Jesus Christ are presented in vivid detail. Soli Deo Gloria!

Christ alone is sinless. Only Christ is sinless. Only Christ has offered an atonement. Only Christ has provided redemption for us. If that’s not enough for you — if that’s too restrictive for you — then go your own way. But it is the only way that God has provided.

You can learn more about Dr. R.C. Sproul and Ligonier at the the ministry’s website.

Update: There is a great video summarizing this message posted at Reformation 21.

The sins of the unrepentant will be avenged in hell; the sins of repentant were avenged on the cross.

—John Piper
Future Grace

Via: Desiring God

Justification by Faith does not mean salvation by believing things instead of by doing right. It means pleading the merits of Christ before the throne of grace instead of our own merits.”

—Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield
Justification by Faith, The Christian Irishman, May 1911

Via: Of First Importance

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross.

—John Stott
The Cross of Christ

Via: Of First Importance

The trouble is that, as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Some feel they have time but not enough money; others feel they have money but not enough time. But for most of us, in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty.

—Os Guinness
The Call

You can get all A’s and still flunk life.

—Walker Percy
As quoted by Os Guinness in The Call