Posts from — May 2009

Aimless movement in time will produce an ordered world! You might as well suppose that if you stir up a mass of type with a stick long enough, the letters will be found to have arranged themselves in the order in which they stand on the printed pages of Dante’s Inferno. It will never happen — though you stir for an eternity. And the reason is that such effects do not happen, but are produced only by a cause adequate to them and directed to the end in view. . . . Assuredly, what chance cannot begin to produce in a moment, chance cannot complete the production of in an eternity. . . . What is needed is not time, but cause.

—Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield

Via: Michael Haykin

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!

—Psalm 33:12

Via: Joshua Project

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

—2 Corinthians 5:21

Via: ESV Daily Verse

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

—Philippians 1:6

Via: ESV Daily Verse

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

—Psalm 118:22-24

In other words, Jesus points out that already in Psalm 118 written hundreds of years before the sending of the Son, the plan was laid out: The Messiah will be rejected, killed, and raised from the dead. And this is all “the Lord’s doing.”

The death of the Son was not a surprise. It was a plan.

What God said, in fact, was: “The builders will reject my Son and I will make him Lord and Christ.”

—John Piper
How Not to Read a Parable

Via: Desiring God Blog

How, then, can we behold the glory of Christ? We need, firstly, a spiritual understanding of his glory as revealed in Scripture. Secondly, we need to think much about him if we wish to enjoy him fully (1 Peter 1:8). If we are satisfied with vague ideas about him we shall find no transforming power communicated to us. But when we cling wholeheartedly to him and our minds are filled with thoughts of him and we constantly delight ourselves in him, then spiritual power will flow from him to purify our hearts, increase our holiness, strengthen our graces, and sometimes fill us ‘with joy inexpressible and full of glory.’

—John Owen
The Glory of Christ

Via: Of First Importance

Via: Grace Baptist Church

Christ is the glory of God. His blood-soaked cross is the blazing center of that glory. By it He bought for us every blessing–temporal and eternal. And we don’t deserve any. He bought them all. Because of Christ’s cross, God’s elect are destined to be sons of God. Because of His cross all guilt is removed, and sins are forgiven, and perfect righteousness is imputed to us, and the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Spirit, and we are being conformed to the image of Christ.

Therefore, every enjoyment in this life and the next that is not idolatry is a tribute to the infinite value of the cross of Christ–the burning center of the glory of God. And thus a cross-centered, cross-exalting, cross-saturated life is a God-glorifying life–the only God-glorifying life. All others are wasted.

—John Piper
Don’t Waste Your Life

Via: Of First Importance

Obedience must be in and through Christ. He hath made us accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). Not our obedience, but Christ’s merits procure acceptance. In every part of worship we must present Christ to God in the arms of our faith. Unless we serve God thus, in hope and confidence of Christ’s merits, we rather provoke Him than please Him. As, when king Uzziah would offer incense without a priest, God was angry with him, and struck him with leprosy (see II Chronicles 26:20); so, when we do not come to God in and through Christ, we offer up incense to Him without a priest; and what can we expect but severe rebukes?

—Thomas Watson
Obedience

Via: Of First Importance