Charles Spurgeon Documentary Video

Posted on February 23, 2012 by PS

If you like Charles Spurgeon, this documentary video is a good overview of his life in just over an hour.  It covers his conversion, growth as a preacher to his pastorate at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London and the Downgrade Controversy among other topics.

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Family Table Talk

Posted on February 23, 2012 by PS

Family dinner conversations can often be pretty shallow and go something like this – Parent: “How was school?”.  Child: “Good”.  What did you do: “Nothing”.  Parent: “Did you learn anything interest”. Child: “Nope”.  Does that sound familiar?

On the flip side, it’s difficult to relate our work day to a child.  Phone calls, spreadsheets, serving customers, researching a question, building a product are of little interests to kids.  There is a gap between their world and ours, yet we need to find a way to bridge the gap and begin to transition them from a child’s world to an adult world.  Consider these ideas for family table talk to deepen your conversations:

  • Explain what you learned during your personal Bible study, but bring it down to their level.  This not only leads to good discussion, but provides them an example of the spiritual disciple and shows them what God is doing in your life
  • Discuss a catechism question.  Work through a section of the Westminster Shorter Catechism or the Children’s Catechism.  Most will have footnotes to reference the Bible version that support the provided answer
  • Talk through a Proverb that a child could relate to and apply it to something in their life.  Consider Proverbs 1:10 and how they should resist those who tempt them to disobey God.  Here’s a list of Proverbs to teach children
  • Pick a news topic for them to consider.  For example, the persecution of Christians in Sudan in relationship to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:10.  This will vary significantly based on age where abortion can be discussed with older children, while a local robbery may be more at the level of younger kids
  • Challenge them with an ethical question you or a colleague encountered at work.  Lay out the situation that you faced (e.g., a temptation to lie, a request to cheat, an unfair decision) and let them explain how they’d respond to it.  Then talk through what you did and the Biblical basis for your approach
  • Similarly, you could present a ‘sticky situation’ that they may face.  There are many of these  dilemma such as the temptation to join in on making fun of someone at school or cheat on a test.  A good book to help you with this is by Betsy Schmitt
  • Take a historical event and discuss its significance.  It could be related to a particular day of the year (e.g., the start of World War 2) or something that you’re generally familiar with

Make meal time significant through table talk that glorifies God and builds up your family to better honor and serve Him.

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The Glory of Worship by J.I. Packer

Posted on February 19, 2012 by PS

What is worship?  J.I. Packer answers this question regard in an article titled The Puritan Approach to Worship.

Worship is essentially doxology, a giving of glory, praise, honor, and homage to God. In the broadest sense of the word, all true piety is worship. “Godliness is a worship,”

Worship comprehends all that respect which man owes and gives to his Maker…It is the tribute which we pay to the King of Kings, whereby we acknowledge his sovereignty over us, and our dependence on him…All that inward reverence and respect, and all that outward obedience and service to God, which the idea of godliness conveys, is included in this one word worship.  – Swinnock

Usually, however, the Puritans used the word in its narrower and more common sense, to signify simply all our direct communion with God: invocation, adoration, mediation, faith, praise, prayer and the receiving of instruction from his word, both in public and in private.

Worship is an act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thoughts of his majesty….It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reveres his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraces his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and places all his affections upon him…God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore we must approach him with cheerfulness; he is a Spirit of infinite majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; he is a Spirit infinitely high, therefore we must offer up our sacrifices with deepest humility; he is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we must address him with purity; he is a Spirit glorious, we therefore must acknowledge his excellency…he is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying mediator and intercessor  – Stephen Charnock

In worship we must seek to reflect back to God by our response the knowledge that we have received of him through his revelation….That the saints love public worship is a constant Puritan theme. Why their delight in it? Because in worship the saints do not merely seek God; they also find him. Worship is not only an expression of gratitude, but also a means of grace, whereby the hungry are fed, so that the empty are sent away rich…And men honor God most when they come to worship hungry and expectant, conscious of need and looking to God to meet them and supply it.

Many of the better sort of professors (i.e., believers) are too negligent in this matter. They do not long and pant in the inward man after renewed pledges of the love of God; they do not consider how much they have need of them…; they do not prepare their minds for their reception of them, nor come with the expectation of the communication unto them; they do not rightly fix their faith on this truth, namely that these holy administrations and duties are appointed of God in the first place, as the way and means of conveying his love and a sense of it unto our souls. From hence springs all that luke-warmness, coldness, and indifference to the duties of holy worship, that are growing among us.  – John Owen

Separate from Packer’s article, another definition of worship that’s helpful comes from James Torrance: “Worship is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father.”

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Bible Overview Video from Moody Bible Institute

Posted on February 18, 2012 by PS

This is a great overview of the Bible in less than 15 minutes.  It’s over 50 years old, so focus on the content rather than the art work.  The overview covers the consistent theme of the authors of the Bible as the great red cord of redemption and the progress of Biblical history from Genesis to Revelation.  The video breaks down the history into six periods – patriarchs, leaders, kings, rulers, Jesus and the church.

If you like short overview of Bible themes, see the Old Testament Overview and Gospel Summary.

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JI Packer’s Introduction to the Death of Death by John Owen

Posted on February 17, 2012 by PS

John OwenIf you’ve never read JI Packer’s introduction to the John Owen’s classic book the Death of Death in the Death of Christ you must invest the time in it.  The book is long and dense, but the introduction is a classic unto itself because of it’s ability to boil the issues down to their essence and crisply communicate them.

  • Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty. The new gospel conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church. Why? We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God–centered in their thoughts and God–fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be “helpful” to man––to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction––and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was “helpful,” too––more so, indeed, than is the new––but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on Whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its center of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the center of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is  not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of   the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.
  • The preacher’s task, in other words, is to display Christ: to explain man’s need of Him, His sufficiency to save, and His offer of Himself in the promises as Saviour to all who truly turn to Him; and to show as fully and plainly as he can how these truths apply to the congregation before him.
  • To the question: what must I do to be saved? the old gospel replies: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To the further question: what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? its reply is: it means knowing oneself to be a sinner, and Christ to have died for sinners; abandoning all self–righteousness and self–confidence, and casting oneself wholly upon Him for pardon and peace; and exchanging one’s natural enmity and rebellion against God for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the renewing of one’s heart by the Holy Ghost. And to the further question still: how am I to go about believing on Christ and repenting, if I have no natural ability to do these things? it answers: look to Christ, speak to Christ, cry to Christ, just as you are; confess your sin, your impenitence, your unbelief, and cast yourself on His mercy; ask Him to give you a new heart, working in you true repentance and firm faith; ask Him to take away your evil heart of unbelief and to write His law within you, that you may never henceforth stray from Him. Turn to Him and trust Him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn and trust more thoroughly; use the means of grace expectantly, looking to Christ to draw near to you as you seek to draw near to Him; watch, pray, read and hear God’s Word, worship and commune with God’s people, and so continue till you know in yourself beyond doubt that you are indeed a changed being, a penitent believer, and the new heart which you desired has been put within you.
  • The preaching of the new gospel is often described as the task of “bringing men to Christ”––as if only men move, while Christ stands still. But the task of preaching the   old gospel could more properly be described as bringing Christ to men, for those who preach it know that as they do their work of setting Christ before men’s eyes, the mighty Saviour Whom they proclaim is busy doing His work through their words, visiting sinners with salvation, awakening them to faith, drawing them in mercy to Himself.
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John MacArthur’s Question and Answer about the Local Church

Posted on February 16, 2012 by PS

MacArthur Q&AJohn MacArthur answers many questions about the local church from the audience at a recent conference Q&A session.

The session transcript can be found at Practical Concerns in the Local Church.  MacArthur covered the following topics:

  • The limits of pastoral authority based on Hebrews 13:17 (1:00)
  • When to leave a church (7:00)
  • Women as pastors (14:00, 20:45)
  • Contemplative prayer and the spiritual development movement (16:10)
  • Multi-site churches with video streaming of the message (23:20)
  • Personality cult / ‘rock star’ pastors (27:00)
  • Discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit and the providence of God (36:10)
  • The illumination of the Holy Spirit for Bible study (41:10)
  • The difference between the sinful anxiety of fear and Jesus in the garden (43:20)

There is also an interview about theology and ministry

The best MacArthur quotes from the Q&A are as follows:

  • In Jude we are very, very seriously warned about following false leaders, false teachers. How do you judge the true? You judge them by their fidelity to the Word of God, both in what they say and how they live.  There are two ways to be a heretic. You can be a doctrinal heretic and you can be a moral heretic. So you’re to follow those who are true to the faith.
  •  You don’t go to church, you are the church. You take the church to the place.
  •  Don’t be in a big hurry to leave unless you know that the Word of God is being compromised either in the teaching, or in the living of the leadership… But what the questions that need to be asked are, is he faithful to the core of the gospel? Which is a Triune God, deity of Christ, deity of the Holy Spirit, deity of God the Father, the virgin birth, the sinless life of Christ, substitutionary atonement, literal resurrection, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. That’s what I call the drivetrain. If those things are right, you might have to tolerate some of the other things that aren’t nearly as absolutely critical as those are.
  • (In the spiritual development movement) the assumption is that spiritual truth is somewhere inside of you and that is not true. Spiritual truth is outside of you, it is external to you. It is in a book, outside of you. It is not in you. You can contemplate yourself all you want, you can go sit on a rock in the middle of nowhere and think and you will find in you no source of divine revelation whatsoever because divine revelation is external to you, it’s external to every human being, it’s in a book that God wrote. And when you put the book down and start looking into your own brain, all you’re going to do is be led down a black hole.
  • When you talk about the shepherd of your soul, this is somebody that has to be a part of your life, that you trust and you know and you’re in a community of people that have learned to love him and trust him and know his family….Pastors of multi-site churches are not pouring themselves into the lives of people, shepherding people. They’re talking about how much broader they can get rather than how much deeper they can get. How many more people can they touch superficially, not how many people can they touch personally and deeply. That’s not pastoring…that is not pastoring….People need to be shepherded by the man that God puts into their life as their shepherd wherever they are and it doesn’t need to me living here, doing it somewhere else in America.
  • We pay absolutely no attention to the pop culture, we couldn’t care less. We don’t care what they’re doing. It’s irrelevant. We have a fixed point of reference, the Word of God. And I don’t want to link arms with the culture. I want to link arms with the history of the church. I want to quote the great theologians. I want to sing the great hymns that generations of believers have sung and the reason we’re still singing them is because they were so good. I want to link arms with the past. I want people to know that we’re some…we’re a part of something that is multi…multi-national, multi-generational and multi-millennial. It goes back several thousand years. I don’t want people to think we just invented this.  I can tell you everything I need to know about a guy who says he’s a pastor by how much he gives honor to the work of Christ through faithful men through the history of the church and how much he wants to be among them and not an invention of his own. It’s just a problem.
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Truth and the Trinity

Posted on February 15, 2012 by PS

Recently, there’s been quite a debate about the importance of defining the Trinity within the American church.  The question of the importance of and adherence to the historical Nicean and Athanasian creeds has arisen in addition to a discussion of the words we use to ‘describe’ the members of the Trinity (e.g., persons vs manifestations).  This issue is only occurring because churches have drifted away from the historic confessions, creeds and catechisms that grounded the church for hundreds of years.  Without these deep roots and a knowledge of church history, old, settled debates are recast as new topics to explore.  Several helpful articles have been written regarding how to think about essential doctrines and the language that we use to explain our dogma.

  • Contending for Our All: This is a message from John Piper is about the life of Athanasius and his defense of the deity of Christ against the Arian heresy.  Piper offers seven lessons from his life.  The most relevant are 1) Defending and explaining doctrine is for the sake of the gospel of Christ’s glory and our everlasting joy. 2) Loving Christ includes loving true propositions about Christ 3) The truth of biblical language must be vigorously protected with non-biblical language.
  • Piper and Trinitarian Precision: If you prefer to read a summary of Piper’s message, this is the place to go
  • Spectrums of Theological Truth and Error: The article provides several helpful frameworks including for how to think about the essentials and non-essentials of the faith.  One example has three dimensions: 1) what must be believed 2) what must not be rejected and 3) what should be believed
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John Stott on the Quest for Transcendence, Significance and Community

Posted on February 14, 2012 by PS

John Stott provides insight into three ultimate human quests – transcendence, significance and community.  See a portion of the interview below:

What about what some call the greatest mission field, which is our own secularizing or secularized culture? What do we need to do to reach this increasingly pagan society? I think we need to say to one another that it’s not so secular as it looks. I believe that these so-called secular people are engaged in a quest for at least three things. The first is transcendence. It’s interesting in a so-called secular culture how many people are looking for something beyond. I find that a great challenge to the quality of our Christian worship. Does it offer people what they are instinctively looking for, which is transcendence, the reality of God?

The second is significance. Almost everybody is looking for his or her own personal identity. Who am I, where do I come from, where am I going to, what is it all about? That is a challenge to the quality of our Christian teaching. We need to teach people who they are. They don’t know who they are. We do. They are human beings made in the image of God, although that image has been defaced.

And third is their quest for community. Everywhere, people are looking for community, for relationships of love. This is a challenge to our fellowship. I’m very fond of 1 John 4:12: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The invisibility of God is a great problem to people. The question is how has God solved the problem of his own invisibility? First, Christ has made the invisible God visible. That’s John’s Gospel 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

People say that’s wonderful, but it was 2,000 years ago. So in 1 John 4:12, he begins with exactly the same formula, nobody has ever seen God. But here John goes on, “If we love one another, God abides in us.” The same invisible God who once made himself visible in Jesus now makes himself visible in the Christian community, if we love one another. And all the verbal proclamation of the gospel is of little value unless it is made by a community of love.

These three things about our humanity are on our side in our evangelism, because people are looking for the very things we have to offer them.

Source: CT

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God Seeks Worshipers – Horatius Bonar

Posted on February 12, 2012 by PS

God seeks worshipers (John 4:23b).  He does not stand in need of human praise or prayer,Prayer yet He asks for these, He delights in these, He wants the inner praise of the silent heart.  He wants the uttered praise of the fervent lips and tongue.  He desires the solidary praise of the closet; and still more the loud harmony of the great congregation.  True praise is ‘speaking well of God’ in psalms and hymns and spirituals songs, according to His excellency.

God is not the God of the outward, but of the inward; not the God of places, but of living creatures; not the God of cities or mountains, but the God of hearts and souls.  The outward man is nothing.  It is the inner man that He is in a quest for.  Worship must come, not from the walls of the temple, but from the innermost shrine.  It must be something pervading the whole being, and come up from the depths of the soul; otherwise it is but as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.  Instead of constituting worship, outward things are often but excuses for refusing the inward service.  Man pleases himself with a sensuous and theatrical externalism, because he hates the spiritual and the true.  God says, “Give me your heart.”  Man says, “No, but I will give you my voice.”  God says, “Give me your soul.”  Man says, “No, but I will give you my knee and my bended body.”  But it will not do.  “God is a spirit, and those that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23a)  As it is with love, so it is with worship – the heart is everything.  God can do without the bended knee, but not without the broken heart.

But what provision has God made for all of this?  He has made twofold provision of the blood and the Spirit.  The blood satisfies God’s righteousness and the sinner’s conscience.  The Holy Spirit renews the man, so as to draw out his heart in worship.  It is the blood that propitiates, and it is the Spirit that transforms.  God presents this blood freely to the sinner; God proclaims His desire to give the Spirit freely.

God has come to you saying, “I want you for a worshipper”.  Will you become one?

– Horatius Bonar

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Woe to You Who are Complacent – Francis Chan Sermon

Posted on February 11, 2012 by PS

Francis Chan delivered this sermon from Amos 6:1 about complacency in the church at the 2012 Moody Bible Institute Founders Week conference.  It is a very blunt assessment of the gap between where Chan believes the Bible teaches how we should live and deficiency of the American church due to a lock of love of our neighbors.  You can read a summary of message or listen to the audio or video below.  If you’re pressed for time, start at 12:30 when he prays because the opening part of the message is a little unfocused.  For other great resources join Follower of Jesus‘s Facebook fan page or visit the Discipleship Resources page.

For more from him, listen to his balance beam illustration.

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