Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Thomas Watson on How Faith is Wrought

How is faith wrought?

By the blessed Spirit; who is called the "Spirit of grace," because he is the spring of all grace (Zech 12:10). Faith is the chief work which the Spirit of God works in a man's heart. In making the world God did but speak a word—but in working faith he puts forth his arm (Luke 1:51). The Spirit's working faith is called, "The exceeding greatness of God's power" (Eph 1:19). What a power was put forth in raising Christ from the grave when such a tombstone lay upon him as the sins of all the world—yet he was raised up by the Spirit. The same power is put forth by the Spirit of God, in working faith. The Spirit irradiates the mind, and subdues the will. The will is like a garrison, which holds out against God: the Spirit with sweet violence conquers, or rather changes it; making the sinner willing to have Christ upon any terms; to be ruled by him as well as saved by him.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom: Ted Kluck on Cynicism and Sin

"Cynicism is described accurately by Paul Miller in A Praying Life: 'Shattered optimism sets us up for the fall into defeated weariness and, eventually, cynicism. You'd think it would just leave us less optimistic, but as humans we don't do neutral well. We go from seeing the bright side of everything to seeing the dark side of everything. We feel betrayed by life.'

"And when we feel betrayed by life--and God--sin usually follows. We sin because we fundamentally distrust that God's plan will be enough to bring us the happiness (or esteem or comfort) that we crave the most. So we look to the world to provide those things. And many times, from Christians, we're just implored to 'sin less.' We buy the forty-ninth Internet filter for our computers, or take on our fifth accountability partner. Those things, mind you, are good and helpful. But like John Piper asserts in Future Grace, we must replace the sin with something greater."

Ted Kluck
Finding God in the Dark

Maundy Thursday Sermon...Denying Jesus

Last night at our Maundy Thursday service, I preached from Luke 22:31-34 on Denying Jesus. Audio is available here and below is an excerpt.

Peter needed to come to a realization and it's the same realization we need to make: We do not strive on the basis of our own strength; we thrive on the basis of God's strength. When we are weak, he is strong through us.

We need to remember at all times that it is not our personal holiness that earns our spot with God. I need to remember that I am a wretched, miserable sinner, saved by grace alone that I might pursue holiness to the glory of God. And I even fail at that having been saved, and yet, as great as my sin is, the grace of God is greater still! And I must remember that always.

God pours out his grace on us. He floods us with his grace. And we must realize too that he does this not merely so that we would be receptacles of his grace, but that it might flood into us and flow through us and pour out of us into the lives of others. We are to be conduits of God's grace, not merely receptacles of it.

Now what does that look like? Well, it means that we ought to serve humbly, realizing that we are no better than anyone else. It means that we should serve selflessly and sacrificially. It means that we should offer forgiveness to those who have offended us, to those who have wronged us, to those who have injured us, to those who are even our enemies. Not because they deserve it, but because they need it, and because when we needed it Christ Jesus gave it to us.

A Word for Preachers...Chapell on Grace-Focused Preaching

"No matter how great your skill or accolades, you are unlikely to lead others closer to God if your heart does not reflect the continuing work of the Savior in your life. A grace-focused ministry recognizes the repentance our prayers must consistently express, confess the divine aid that grants us the strength of our resolutions, obeys God in gratitude for forgiveness Christ supplies, expresses the humility appropriate for a fellow sinner, exudes the joy of salvation by faith alone, and reflects the Love that claims our own souls and accepts our service without any merit of our own. Preaching without a grace focus concentrates on means of earning divine acceptance, proofs of personal righteousness, and contrasts with those less holy than we.

"The necessity of grace in balanced preaching inevitably points both preacher and parishioner to the work of Christ as the only proper center of our sermons. Christ-centered preaching is not merely evangelistic, nor confined to a few gospel accounts. It perceives the whole of Scripture as revelatory of God's redemptive plan and preaches every passage within this context--a pattern that Jesus himself introduced to us (Luke 24:27)...(T)he Bible requires us to construct our messages in such a way as to reveal the grace that is the ultimate focus of every text, the ultimate enablement for ever instruction, and the only source of true holiness."

Bryan Chapell 
Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon

Christians Sometimes Miss the Point of Christmas, Too

The other day I was at the store looking at cards when I saw a pretty, red and gold card with the following acrostic emblazoned upon its front:

Christ
Holy One
Redeemer
Immanuel
Savior
Teacher

I was thankful that amidst all the commercialization and materialism of Christmas, someone had remembered the Reason for the Season (do I need a little TM after that?). I couldn't help but shake my head in dismay though when I opened the card to find this inside:

Did you catch the word that set me off?

DESERVE.

Too often we (even we, in the Church) think of God as being like Santa Claus, keeping two lists: "Naughty" and "Nice." The whole point of Christmas though is that not one of us is good enough to attain "Nice" list standing. What we (each and every one of us) DESERVE is nothing less than the convicting judgment of a righteous God, who perfectly understands how very short we fall from the standard of holiness that is required of us.

But that's the great thing about Christmas. In it we see the grand manifestation of the grace of God in the fact that he did not give us what we DESERVE. Rather he took on human flesh that he might live the perfect life we fail to live, and die the atoning death we DESERVE to die. You see, for those who trust in Christ, God doesn't keep a record of your naughtiness to hold against you. Rather, he has worked graciously, savingly, forgivingly, "canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." (Colossians 2:14)

It's understandable that non-Christians would miss the point of Christmas. But if you call yourself by the name of the One who was laid in a manger over 2000 years ago, please don't make that same mistake.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Ryken on Legalism

"Christianity is not a performance-based religion. Those who are saved by grace also live by grace, and their growth in grace is due to the gracious work of God's Spirit. This is what preserves Calvinism from legalism. If someone who claims to be a Calvinist turns out to be a legalist, he or she must not understand the doctrines of grace very well after all, because the true Calvinist is overwhelmed by God's mercy for sinners. A graceless Calvinist is thoroughly repugnant to the gospel, for unless the pursuit of holiness is motivated by an ever-deepening love for God and his grace, it quickly becomes joyless and fruitless."

Philip Ryken

What is a True Calvinist?

The Antidote to Both Legalism and Antinomianism

Below is a video promo from Sinclair Ferguson's book, By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me. The whole video is worth watching, but the 30 seconds from 1:15 to 1:45 especially are pure gold as Ferguson points out,

"Characteristically as Christians, we either fall down on the side of legalism or we fall down on the side of antinomianism. And we've often thought the way to solve legalism is to just have a little touch of antinomianism. Or the way to solve antinomianism is you need more law, whereas when Paul deals with both of those pastoral problems he deals with them essentially in the same way: by pointing us to the grace of God that is in Jesus Christ."

(HT: Dane Ortlund)

Conference Reminder

Don't forget! The 9th annual Mid-Michigan Conference on Reformed Theology is coming up in just over three weeks. Make sure you take advantage of this great time of fellowship and teaching on October 27th.

The conference this year will focus on the theme of Genesis: Five Testimonies to Grace. The speakers (all pastors from throughout the region) are:

• Doug Graham (Knox Presbyterian Church) speaking on Adam
• Robert Dickie (Berean Baptist Church) speaking on Enoch
• Jason Roddy (Pilgrim Presbyterian Church) speaking on Abraham
• Mark Hudson (Tyrone Covenant Presbyterian Church) speaking on Jacob
• Hal Polk (Calvary Presbyterian Church) speaking on Joseph

If you would like more information (or would like to access audio from past years' messages), you can access the conference page on Calvary's website by clicking here.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Chapell on Sharing in Christ's Identity

The nature and benefits of sharing Christ's identity could be seen in a comparison to the modern gas stations that allow us to use our credit cards at the pump. I have learned to appreciate these pumps not simply because I no longer have to hike into the office of the station to pay, but because I don't have to go to the station at all. If my son needs the car, I can give him my credit card to use at the pump. At his current economy he usually doesn't have the means to get what he needs, so he uses the card with my name on it. With my permission and according to my desire, he assumes my identity. Though he cannot fulfill the conditions required for payment, my son has all of my credit available to him. He meets the qualifications required to use that pump because the machine gives him the credit that is really mine. My son, though he could not provide it himself, acts with my identity and, thus, has all the credit that I have earned.

Bryan Chapell
Holiness by Grace

A Word for Preachers...Mohler on the Grace of God to the Preacher

"Another critical point for the preacher to understand is that God has given him this calling not for his own benefit but for the benefit of the church. Look at what Paul says in Colossians 1:24: 'I rejoice in my sufferings.' he says, 'for your sake.' He ministered 'for the sake of his body, that is the church.' Our calling to preach is a calling to serve others, and it is given to us entirely by God's grace. We have been called out and granted a stewardship that we do not deserve and that we are not capable of fulfilling. Nonetheless, God chooses us to carry it out."

Al Mohler
He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Trueman on God's Work Contra Our Sin

"Indeed, one of the most amazing things about church history is the fact that the kingdom of God progresses so often in the teeth of the immortality and infidelity of the people and their leaders. To declare, then, that the church's current problems are is not to forge an unbreakable cause-effect link between our individual behaviour and the effectiveness of the gospel. And thank God that this is so! If such a link existed, who of us here today would ever have been converted? It is only through grace that God enables sinful men and women to lead others to Christ."

Carl Trueman
Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

One of My Favorite Bible Verses

I love passages of Scripture that boldly and clearly proclaim that God's love for us is not conditioned upon our prior obedience, but rather is what motivates us to obedience. As such, 2 Timothy 1:9 is one of my favorite verses, speaking of God, "who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began."

Praise be to God for his glorious grace!

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Chapell on True Standards of Holiness

"It is very hard, but biblically necessary, not to judge others because of their disagreement with our judgment regarding scripturally uncertain issues. An 'Aha! moment' occurred for me in ministry when I learned to ask a key question about advising others: Is it more wrong to allow what God prohibits, or to prohibit what God allows? This is actually a trick question because both alternatives are equally wrong. Either alternative would put me in the position of Lawgiver. God allows only himself the prerogative to determine holy standards."

Bryan Chapell
Holiness by Grace

Wednesday's* Words of Wisdom...Matt Chandler on Gospel-Centeredness

Oops! I didn't post this yesterday. But "Thursday's Words of Wisdom" just isn't quite as catchy...

"(A)ll your church attendance, all your religious activities, your Sunday school attendance medals, your journals, having a "quiet time," reading the Scriptures -- it's all in vain if you don't have Christ. When you read (1 Corinthians 15:1-7; Galatians 1:6-9; Galatians 2:20-3:5 and Philippians 3:4-9) together, you get a feel for his attack on the Christian, moralistic, therapeutic deism of his day. We are saved, sanctified, and sustained by what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the power of his resurrection. If you add to or subtract from the cross, even if it is to factor in biblically mandated religious practices like prayer and evangelism, you rob God of his glory and Christ of his sufficiency."

Matt Chandler
The Explicit Gospel

A Word for Preachers...David Murray on the Preacher's Heart

"The pendulum of the preacher's heart must be continually swinging between two states. He must know that he is a hell-deserving sinner with a deceitful and desperately wicked heart. And he must know that he is saved by the grace of Jesus Christ through faith in his blood. The further and faster the pendulum swings between these two convictions, the better. No one has a right to preach who is not totally and utterly convinced of his own misery and of Christ's saving mercy."

David Murray
How Sermons Work

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Bryan Chapell on Spiritual Armor

"Because God provides each aspect of our armor, we need not fear its failure against Satan's attacks. Our confidence is not in our ability to stand but in the ability of our armor to withstand assault. Whenever we begin to point to our godly practices as the source of our spiritual protection, our virtues become tools of unbelief in which we deny the need of grace and assert the rule of self. We do not put on the armor of God by trusting in the more vigorous performance of our duties, but by relying on God's provision for our protection. We gain the confidence to rely on God's armor when, on Scripture's authority, we perceive his protection to be as real as the armor Paul observed on the soldier guarding him in prison while he penned these words."

Bryan Chapell
Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy That is Our Strength

Dane Ortlund on Staying Christian in Seminary

You may have noticed in the right sidebar of my blog that there is a section called "Most Popular Posts." At the top of the list, you'll find that of all the posts I've written, the one that has gotten the most traffic is my post entitled Seminary Doesn't Need to Kill Your Faith. It was a response to a series that Desiring God had started entitled How to Stay a Christian in Seminary and focused on the fact that far from being a place of spiritual turmoil, Covenant Theological Seminary was a sweet foretaste of heaven for me.

Fellow Covenant alum Dane Ortlund wrote a post yesterday entitled Staying Christian in Seminary in conjunction with the Desiring God series. In it he suggests that among the many good words of advice, there are two things in particular that the seminary student should remember:

1. You are justified by another.
2. You are strong in weakness.

In both of these, much is made of God's grace, and our need to be in performance-mode is minimized. If you are a seminary student, I highly recommend you read Dane's entire post. In fact, the gospel-centeredness of this post is so rich that it would benefit you greatly even if seminary is the last place you expect to find yourself.

Grateful for Grace

"So the real question is whether we delight in and cherish the grace of God. Is our song, 'Grace, grace' from beginning to end? Do we magnify God's grace in our personal and corporate worship? With our children? In our world view? In the workplace? If every benefit we have comes from God's hand and choice, then we must be the most grateful people in the world."

Sean Lucas
From Zeal for Godliness: Devotional Meditations on Calvin's Institutes

Grace That Saves and Sanctifies

O LORD GOD,
Teach me to know that grace precedes, accompanies, and follows my salvation,
     that it sustains the redeemed soul,
     that not one link of its chain can ever break!
From Calvary's cross, wave upon wave of grace reaches me,
     deals with my sin,
     washes me clean,
     renews my heart,
     strengthens my will,
     draws out my affection,
     kindles a flame in my soul,
     rules throughout my inner man,
     consecrates my every thought, word, work,
     teaches me Your immeasurable love.

From Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Gerhard Forde on Salvation by Faith Alone

"We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age old question, 'What shall I do to be saved?' the confessional answer is shocking: 'Nothing! Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!'

Gerhard Forde
Justification by Faith—A Matter of Death and Life