Authority

Authority 

from Ray Ortlund's Blog...

“The Rabbis spoke from authority, Jesus with authority.  Those who heard Him ‘were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mark 1:22.  C. H. Dodd renders ‘He taught them like a sovereign, and not like the Rabbis’).  W. Manson . . . cites the saying of Justin Martyr, ‘His word was power from God.’  ‘Thus says the Lord’ is typical of the Old Testament, but Jesus’ characteristic expression is ‘Truly, truly, I say to you.’  The difference is significant.  Jesus appealed to no other authority as He spoke to men of the deep things of God.”
Leon Morris, The Lord from Heaven (Downers Grove, 1974), pages 13-14.  Italics his.

Sunday Morning Prayer

Lord, we pray, as Moses did, that you will be with us this morning. Your presence distinguishes us as your people. We desperately need your Spirit to give us power to worship you, to illuminate your Word, to convict our hearts of sin, to edify your people through spiritual gifts, to bring assurance of adoption to those that are tempted by fear.  Lord, if you are not among us we do not want to gather together. But you have promised to be with us whenever we gather in your name.  Send forth a fresh experience of your Spirit into our gathering this morning.  Holy Spirit, teach us the glory of the risen Savior and the love of the Father.  Be among us, in power, Lord God.

Why is Work Hard?

Recently my daughter asked me a question:

"Daddy, why is work hard?"

Quite surprisingly I was spared by the Lord from only using the moment to challenge her about complaining or urging her to further faithfulness in her chores. (Nothing wrong in doing that! But too often my parenting centers on correction and not instruction.) Instead, a more inspiring answer came to mind.  I explained to her that work is hard, because we are not in heaven yet.   Now, if only I can learn the truth of that answer in my own life!

Too often I think of "heaven" as the absence of work and the presence of something I like to think of as rest...but what is probably better described as laziness.  Now, I fully believe that God gives us regular moments of the absence of work. A good portion of every 24 hours is spent doing nothing but acknowledging our physical limitations in sleep! However,  I also know that God made me for work, for service, for labor.  In heaven, I will have work to do.  But the curse of work, given because of sin, will no longer be present.  The ground will no longer bring forth thorns. I will no longer spend long hours with little apparent usefulness. And in work I will  experience the sustaining grace and power of the Lord Jesus and the complete absence of temptations or sinful cravings, so that my work will be a joy.  I don't doubt that I will still exert effort, and I will still feel my ongoing need for God to sustain my body, glorified though it will be. But work will no longer be "hard" in the fallen-world, sinful-flesh-resistant, thorn-producing way that it is hard now.  Instead we will delight that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and we will find rest for our souls.

Lord, Give me Greater Faith

The main difficulty, therefore, is not in our work, but in ourselves; in the conflict with our own unbelief, in the form either of indolence or of self-dependence. When faith is really brought into action, the extent and aggravation of the difficulty (even were it increase an hundred-fold) is a matter of little comparative moment. Difficulties heaped upon difficulties can never rise to the level of the promises of God. To meet the trembling apprehensions—“Who is sufficient for these things?” the answer is ready—“Our sufficiency is of God.” There is a link in the chain of moral causes and effects, which connects the helplessness of the creature with the Omnipotence of God, and encourages the creature to attempt every thing in the conscious inability to do any thing: and thus “in weakness” thoroughly felt, Divine “strength is made perfect. “ It is equally important to feel our abasement, and to maintain it with a corresponding high; let us realize our weakness and strength at the same moment; let their be a remembrance, as well as a present exercise of faith.

--Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry, page 175-176

The Time I Almost Gave Up - Jerry Bridges

Who Would Dare to Preach?

By Michael McKinley | 2.27.2012 Print

Preaching is a strange business. It requires you to stand up and speak with authority and pointed passion to people who may well be your intellectual and spiritual betters. But a man who has confidence in the word of God has everything he needs for the task. Here’s how Herman Bavinck put it:
For if a minister is not convinced of the divine truth of the word he preaches, his preaching loses all authority, influence, and power. If he is not able to bring a message from God, who then gives him the right to act on behalf of people of like nature with himself? Who gives him the freedom to put himself in the pulpit [a few feet] above them, to speak to them about the highest interest of their soul and life and even to proclaim to them their eternal weal or woe? Who would dare, who would be able to do this, unless he has a word of God to proclaim?
-- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1 (p. 461)

RC Sproul interviews DA Carson on biblical exegesis

Let us not be the spot-finders

Let us not be the spot-finders from Ray Ortlund's blog

Let us not be the spot-finders

“We should be merciful to one another in seeking never to look at the worst side of a brother’s character.  Oh, how quick some are to spy out other people’s faults!  They hear that Mr. So-and-so is very useful in the church, and they say, ‘Yes, he is, but he has a very curious way of going to work, has he not?  And he is so eccentric.’  Well, did you ever know a good man who was very successful, who was not a little eccentric? . . .
Do you go out when the sun is shining brightly and say, ‘Yes, this sun is a very good illuminator, but I remark that it has spots’?  If you do, you had better keep your remark to yourself, for it gives more light than you do, whatever spots you may have or may not have.  And many excellent persons in the world have spots, but yet they do good service to God and to their age.
So let us not always be the spot-finders, but let us look at the bright side of the brother’s character rather than the dark one, and feel that we rise in repute when other Christians rise in repute, and that, as they have honor through their holiness, our Lord has the glory of it, and we share in some of the comfort of it.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, n.d.), I:65.

Parental Amnesia

Parental Amnesia, From Justin Taylor's Blog

Parental Amnesia

Gloria Furman on God breaking through the mundane:

Parental amnesia is not just where you walk into a room and forget why you’re carrying the laundry basket with four dirty coffee mugs in it. That’s called normal. Parental amnesia is where we forget about two things: tomorrow and eternity.

First, we forget that Lord-willing our children will grow up to be adults. I have a hard time imagining my 5-year-old as a 35-year-old or a 65-year-old. Her big goals right now are waiting patiently for her first loose tooth and learning to tell what time it is. Sometimes I think she’ll be five forever and do five-year-old things forever.

Second, we forget that our children are more than just potential adults. They are people made in God’s image and they have eternal souls. When the mundane looms larger than eternal life we forget who God is, who we are, and who our children are.

We tend to forget about tomorrow and eternity when our day is filled with the tyranny of the urgent. Do you ever feel like that ball in the arcade game that ricochets off the walls? Supervise homework while diverting toddlers from swishing their arms in the toilet! Hand down verdicts in Mother’s Court about whose toy it really is! No wonder it’s hard to keep an eternal perspective.

For me, parental amnesia settles like a fog in the morning hours. If I don’t renew my mind through the truths in God’s word then the fog doesn’t burn off and let light of the gospel shine in. By the end of the day I am lost in a cloud of discouragement that doesn’t lift.

It’s easy to let our perspective get buried in an avalanche of cotton blends at Mount Laundry. Even so, we must make an effort to remember that our job is more than feeding, bathing, clothing, and educating our children.

Keep reading on remembering an eternal, gospel perspective.

Waving the White Flag as Victory

Waving the White Flag as Victory
Jared C. Wilson|10:34 am CT

Waving the White Flag as Victory

“We are not just ordinary. Nothing is just ordinary. “The whole earth is full of his glory.” We keep trying to fill it with monuments to our own glory — kingdoms, businesses, hit songs, athletic victories, and other mechanisms of self-salvation. But the truth is better than all that. Created reality is a continuous explosion of the glory of God. And history is the drama of his grace awakening in us dead sinners eyes to see and taste to enjoy and courage to obey.

“Do you realize that it is God’s will to make this earth into an extension of his throne room in Heaven? Do you realize that it is God’s will for his kingdom of glory to come into your life and for his will to be done in you as it is done in Heaven? Heaven is expanding, spreading in your direction.

“That is the meaning of existence, if you will accept it and enter in.

“Heaven is taking over. Yield.”

– Ray Ortlund, Jr., Isaiah: God Saves Sinners (Preaching the Word Commentary: Crossway, 2005).

Psalm 23 and Me

I was meditating on Psalm 23 the other day and remembered something that I'm sure I've heard before, but somehow it seemed new...again. (Isn't that the great adventure of reading Scripture?!)
Halfway through the Psalm, David starts speaking to the Lord directly. In the first three verses God is referenced as 'He'--the One who is our shepherd, who leads and restores us. In verse four there is a change. 'Even though I walk through the valley...you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me..."
I pray this is true of my relationship with the Lord as well. I pray that meditating on God's character leads me to speak directly to him in prayer--that truth always leads to relationship. I pray that I would not only know about the personal care of the Lord, but that I would draw near to the Lord Himself. I pray I would think much about the Lord, that my thoughts would be shaped by truth, and that truth would lead to prayer, prayer to gratefulness, gratefulness to affection, and affection right back to truth.

Sunday Morning Prayer

Lord, today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate your entry into Jerusalem.  I pray you would fill our hearts with awe at your glory as the King returning to his city.  I pray you would amaze us at your willingness to go to Jerusalem knowing that in the coming week the same crowds would turn against you and shout for you to be crucified.  I pray you would give us anticipation for the great day in the future when you will return to your heavenly Jerusalem, bringing your Bride with you.  Bless your people, Lord, as we gather to glorify your name.