Today in Blogworld 12.01.14

Mike Leake

Home Team Huddle

Here are a few spot on tips for doing family devotions.

Is Your Church Ready?

This was eye-opening for me. I’ve had something to do with youth ministry for over ten years now and I’ve only seen a few cases of child abuse. If this is true, there were likely many cases I never noticed.

Thoughts on Ferguson

I haven’t commented much on Ferguson, but it hits close to home. We drove through the area on our way to my wife’s parents. The above article is from Voddie Baucham. Another viewpoint is given here by Thabiti Anyabwile. These thoughts from Dan Phillips were helpful. But the best I’ve read so far comes from NFL player Ben Watson.

How the Normalization of Pornography Fuels the Rape Culture

This one hits close to home too, as Maryville MO makes the news for something terrible.

If you wanted to see a semi jump over a car, here you go:

Who Are You Living For? (YWS Week 47)

Nick Horton

richardsibbessmallWelcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Summary/Engagement

Let it never be said that gospel-centered is a fad. Sibbes, if nothing else, has shown us that being Gospel centered is not new. It is merely being faithful to the text. We again walk the streets of Christ’s glory with brother Sibbes, learning that Christ is both Lord of the living and of the dead. We learn that Christ purchased a people for himself in his substitutionary death on the cross. We learn that Christians have life through this death and resurrection.

We learn, and read, and nod our heads.

“He will not lose the price of his own blood.”

Application / Further Discussion

We can learn much, but I must stop and ask, did Christ die for you?

It is a wonderful thing to read and hear of Christ’s death and see the beauty of the Gospel. It is truly good news to know that: God created Adam and Eve to live in harmony and joy with him. Yet, they sinned and separated themselves and all their children, all of us, from God. Sin has corrupted all of us and we are by nature at enmity with God. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live perfectly, die in the place of sinners for sin, and raise gloriously from the dead in victory, his sacrifice accepted. It is this Christ, very God of very God, who offers now salvation to all who turn from their sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

Friends, is this you? I do not mean the mere intellectual acceptance of an idea, or the acknowledgement that you know what the gospel is. Have you repented and believed in Him?

Are you living for Him? “We must live the rest of our days, not according to the lusts of men, or of our own lusts, but according to the will of God.” What motivates your heart; your lusts, or your love for Him?

Do you know Him, or just know about Him? Are you my brother or sister in Christ, or have you been lulled into a deluded life of moralism? So much of what passes for Christianity now is nothing more than feel good moralism. “Therapeutic moralistic deism,” as Christian Smith calls it. God is good, he makes me feel good, and I’ll do good to please him.

No. That is not Christ.

God is good, we are not. We cannot earn his love by what we do. We are under his just and right condemnation and wrath awaiting eternal conscious suffering in hell so long as our sins are on our own head. He is just to send you and I to hell for that one “white” lie, stealing a cookie, or speeding on the highway. We minimize these things and consider ourselves good. He measures our sin and considers us evil.

Sin is serious and eternal. Why else would God send God to satisfy the wrath of God? We cannot do it.

Maybe you do know Christ but you need to return to your first love and behold him again as holy, lovely, pure, and beautiful. I am calling all of us to holiness. None of us are perfect, and far from me using that familiar phrase to explain away some seemingly minor sin (yet sin that damns us to hell), I use it to say we must therefore all strive to be holy. I cannot stress strongly enough nor communicate clear enough your dire need for holiness.

It is not legalism to call you to repentance and faith nor is it legalism to call you to holiness.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5)

It is an intellectual faith, full of knowing, deep in truth, rich in knowledge. However, if you do not engage the heart and soul with the mind by not only knowing but repenting and believing, you have not left the starting line of the race. You haven’t even begun. Knowledge of Christ is good, but knowing Christ himself is life.

Are you living for Christ, or are you living for you?

“What is the end of our hearing sermons, or our reading, and all the pains we take in the means of salvation? Not only to know what God will do to us, but what he will have of us.
…
In all things we must labour to direct our lives according to his will.“

–

Last week, we read The Hidden Life.

Next week, we read Salvation Applied.

Today in Blogworld 11.28.14

Mike Leake

Mom Enough

Desiring God has a new book out for moms. It looks like a good one.

The Case for Brainstorming

Some experts believe that brainstorming is ineffective. This article argues for it and explains the benefits of brainstorming.

A Better Way to Do Counseling

Rick Thomas believes that there is a better way to do counseling…and it is called discipleship.

The Sheep Aren’t Stupid

We sometimes like to give illustrations about sheep and call them stupid. Joe Thorn disagrees and believes we should describe them a little more like the Puritan Thomas Watson did.

I would like to say that I want to try this, but I don’t want to be anywhere where the temperature is –29:

Why Sabbath Was So Important

Mike Leake 1 Comment

My devotional time has me in Jeremiah 17:19-27. In these verses God is making a big deal out of their observance of the Sabbath. The LORD says, “Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day…”

In the context this part about the Sabbath seems out of place. The chief problem with Israel and Judah is idolatry. It is so bad that even “their children remember their altars and their Asherim”. They were supposed to be tying the Shema to their door posts instead the kids were learning how to use an Asherah pole.

So why talk about the Sabbath? Is that really the issue?

Is God like the bratty kid that refuses to be your friend because you couldn’t make his birthday party? Are they going into exile because they decided to get a little work done during God’s special day? That seems a bit misplaced.

What idolatry and Sabbath communicate

Let’s pause for a moment and consider the nature of idolatry. Idolatry is the hearts natural response to rejecting God. When we don’t honor God or give him thanks we turn to creation—the stuff we can make, the stuff we can control, the stuff we can wrap our minds around.

Idolatry is the reflection of a heart that would rather worship a lie than bow a knee to the revealed God. It is a heart that needs something in its hands. And so it rejects the uncontrollable God for that which can be manipulated.

Now consider the nature of the Sabbath. The Sabbath would ask a profound question of the Israelites. It would be the barometer by which they could measure their devotion to Yahweh. Essentially Sabbath asks this question: Do I trust the provision of an unseen God or do I trust the work of my own hands?

Now the relationship between Sabbath and idolatry is more clearly seen. When the Israelites get serious about the Sabbath they’ll be serious about rooting idolatry out of the land.

Or so one would think…

The Pharisees and the Sabbath

If you fast forward about 500 years you’ve got a group of passionate Israelites that are rigid in their devotions to the Sabbath. They rightly understood that it was for idolatry and a lack of observing the Sabbath that got them booted out of the land. So, they devoted themselves to observing the Law.

The problem, though, is that while they got the message of Jeremiah 17 they missed the message of Jeremiah 31. Without a change of heart you’ll trade an Asherah pole for a Sabbath and think you’ve done God a favor. And that is exactly what the Pharisees had done.

They lost the spirit of the Sabbath while retaining the letter. They forgot that the Sabbath was made for man and that it was a barometer of the heart. Rather than seeing the Sabbath as a means of trusting the provision of an unseen God they turned the Sabbath into a work of their own hands.  

Conclusion

Even today the question of the Sabbath is vitally important. Will we rest from our works and trust in the provision of Christ? Or will we trust in the work of our own hands? You can’t do both.