I am Second

"Christ is never fully valued, until sin is clearly seen. We must know the depth and malignity of our disease, in order to appreciate the great Physician."
J.C. Ryle. The Gospel of Luke, 1858.

"I believe that God will save His own elect. And I also believe that if I do not preach the Gospel, the blood of men will be laid at my door."
C.H. Spurgeon

This week has been an odd week. As of late, I have had a rather joyous season of life albeit the momentary ups and downs of daily living are something from which a person can never be truly separated from. About a week ago, a fierce restlessness settled in, something of a cross between anxiety, discontent, and hormones strong enough that if my thoughts were to propagate into actions I could have fathered a small village of some sort. One of my friends told me that women are not the only ones who go through a regular hormone cycle of sorts, a fact unbeknownst to me, as men on the whole do not discuss this. Who knew?

Well, apart from some of the mild mental disturbances of this past week, I have had many thoughts come to me that have been quite beneficial to me. The recurring them of the week has been how much people need to hear the Gospel. After all of the "stuff" connected with being a Christian is out of the way. the question(s) we come back to are: "What is the Gospel?", and "What must I do to be saved?".

When people are in despair or have half their dreams ripped apart, people don't usually say "All I know is Christ, the cross, and pretribulation premilleniumism." This might be the case in some Fundamental/Independent Baptist churches, but it is not the norm. People who are going through crazy things in life cling to the cross and to that alone.

It is easy to get lost in the various things in life that come up, and a person will never get to a place where they don't need to know and hear the Gospel. The cross of Christ and being freely justified by grace alone through faith alone through it is where the church stands or falls. If we do not have free and abundant grace from God to save us, we have nothing; there is no good news apart from that.

It is odd to see how much we need to hear the Gospel, how good it is to hear it, and how easy it is to forget about it when the feelings of discontent or restlessness settle in. I remember a long time ago when I was starting to date a girl I liked I was having another week where I was feeling quite restless and thoughts began to flood my mind about how this girl would bring contentment and satisfaction to my life. I was deluded enough to believe that this person would in time be a large source of satisfaction in my life and that I would not longer feel restless the more we got to know each other. I remember having a dream one night that week that deeply disturbed me but revealed a lot to me about what I was believing in my heart.

I remember seeing this girl in my dream with a voice speaking in the background telling me that she would bring satisfaction to my soul. The voice went on and on, and was almost believable until it got to a certain point. The voice in my dream spoke saying:

"In fact, she will be such a source of satisfaction that she will even die for your sins."

The next thing I know I saw her on a cross, and the voice said:

"Behold, your God!"


This dream has always disturbed me in ways beyond what is expressible in words. This dream revealed that my heart had made this girl my god, a source of worship for my soul. The dream revealed that I had forsaken the only place where true satisfaction can come from.

The dream still flashes through my mind even up to this today whenever I begin to build my alter "to an unknown god". Our idolatry isn't always as obvious as us demanding X (whatever X may be for us at the moment) to die for our sins to restore our souls.

Jeremiah tells us something quite interesting about this.

"My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
(Jeremiah 2:3, NIV)


The older I get, the more I am realizing that I need the Gospel every second of every day. I cannot live without it. I need to be a Gospel-centered person, both for my sake and for the sake of a dying world around me. My future, the world's future, depends on it.

The Present State of the World

This was originally written in Dutch and the English translation was made in the 1950's, so this is not exactly the easiest read due to the language and the content of the excerpt. However, this is an amazing excerpt of an even more amazing book (by an even more amazing author), which will give deep nourishment to anyone willing to wade through what Bavinck is saying.

The Present State of the World

“When the first man and woman have transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, their punishment does not follow immediately nor in full force. They do not die on the self-same day they have sinned, but remain alive; they are not sent into hell, but instead find themselves entrusted with a task on earth; their line does not perish: they receive the promise of the seed of the woman. In short, a condition now sets in which God had known and which God had established, but which man had not been able to anticipate. It is a condition which has a very special character. It is one in which wrath and grace, punishment and blessing, judgment and long-suffering are mingled with each other It is the condition which still exists in nature and among men and one which comprehends the sharpest of contrasts within itself.

We live in a strange world, a world which presents us with tremendous contrasts. The high and the low, the great and the small, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the good and the evil, the truth and the lie, these all are heaped up in unfathomable interrelationship. The gravity and the vanity of life seize on us in turn. Now we are prompted to optimism, then to pessimism. Man weeping is constantly giving way to man laughing. The whole world stands in the sign of humor, which has been well described as a laugh in a tear.

The deepest cause of this present state of the world is this: because of the sin of man, God is continually manifesting His wrath and yet, by reason of His own good pleasure, is always again revealing His grace also. We are consumed by His anger and yet in the morning we are satisfied by His mercy (Ps. 90:7, 14). His anger endures but a moment, in His favor is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:6). Curse and blessing are so singularly interdependent that the one sometimes seems to become the other. Work in the sweat of the brow is curse and blessing at once. Both point to the cross which at one and the same time is the highest judgment and the richest grace. And that is why the cross is the mid -point of history and the reconciliation of all antitheses.”

Our Reasonable Faith. Herman Bavinck. Baker Book House. 1956. Pages 44-45.

Awesome Testimony

"The first lessons I ever had in theology were from an old cook in the school at Newmarket where I was an usher. She was a good old soul, and used to read The Gospel Standard. She liked something very sweet indeed, good strong Calvinistic doctrine, but she lived strongly as well as fed strongly. Many a time we have gone over the covenant of grace together, and talked of the personal election of the saints, their union to Christ, their final perseverance, and what vital godliness meant; and I do believe that I learnt more from her than I should have learned from any six doctors of divinity of the sort that we have nowadays. There are some Christian people who taste, and see, and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days. The cook at Newmarket was a godly experienced woman, from whom I learned far more than I did from the minister of the chapel we attended. I asked her once, “Why do you go to such a place?” She replied, “Well, there is no other place of worship to which I can go.” I said, “But it must be better to stay at home than to hear such stuff.” “Perhaps so,” she answered; “but I like to go out to worship even if I get nothing by going. You see a hen sometimes scratching all over a heap of rubbish to try to find some corn; she does not get any, but it shows that she is looking for it, and using the means to get it, and then, too, the exercise warms her.” So the old lady said that scratching exercised her spiritual faculties and warmed her spirit. On another occasion I told her that I had not found a crumb in the whole sermon, and asked how she had fared. “Oh!” she answered, “I got on better tonight, for to all the preacher said, I just put in a not, and that turned his talk into real gospel.”
-C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography: The Early Years, 1834-1859

Ash Wednesday

"By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

(Genesis 3:19; Mark 1:15. ESV)


From the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.

...

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This is season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

...


If ashes are to be imposed, the Celebrant says the following prayer

Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

The ashes are imposed with the following words

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

...

Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live, has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and with sincere hearts believe his holy Gospel.

Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy;through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Quote of the Year

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”
John Newton

Bill Clinton the "Calvinist"

Embedded video from CNN Video

Random Post of the Day 2

Sometimes I am really glad that we didn't get stuck in 80's culture. At other times I am glad for the 80's because I don't know any other decade that make a song such as the one below.