One of the great tests of expository preaching is that people should be able to go back to the Scriptures when they are at home and dig out for themselves precisely what the preacher has dug out for them.

This is at least part of the answer to the question preachers frequently face: “How do you feed your own soul? How do you avoid running dry yourself?” Such questions appear to ignore the obvious truth that when the Word of God grips your own soul and you are feeding upon it as you study, then there is bread for the sower as well as bread for the eater.

It ought surely to be impossible for us to meditate on the Word of God and pour over its truth and pray out the meaning of it and yet be unblessed ourselves. The preacher must never be a mere academic when he is preparing to preach the Scriptures. Both in our ministry and in our personal lives, we need to bear witness to our deep confidence in the saving and sanctifying power of the Word of God.

The younger son finally “came to himself” and decided to return home. For centuries this phrase has been interpreted to mean “he repented.” But did he? In his soliloquy in the far country he expressed no remorse, only a desire to eat. He did not say “I shamed my family” or “I caused my father deep pain and anguish.” He doesn’t even voice regret that he lost the money. While talking to himself he thinks, in effect, Others eat while I am hungry. I must do something. Some Arabic versions have translated it as “he got smart.” For 1,800 years Arabic and Syriac versions have never used language in the text that implies repentance.

Restoration to the family and community was only possible, (he assumed) after he paid back the money he had lost. But he had no marketable skills. Hence his plan to seek job training so that he could join the work force. Only then could he save his money (like other craftsmen), compensate for his losses and one day again take his place in the family and community.

But to be accepted as an apprentice with a craftsman he would need his father’s backing. The game plan therefore was to make a “very humble speech” that would (he hoped) convince his father to back him—just once more!     

The church of Christ has a certain task to fulfill with respect to dogma. To preserve, explain, understand, and defend the truth of God entrusted to her, the church is called to appropriate it mentally, to assimilate it internally, and to profess it in the midst of the world as the truth of God.

It is most definitely not the authority of the church that makes a dogma into dogma in a material sense, elevates it beyond all doubt, and enables it to function with authority. The dogmas of the church have, and may have, this status only if and to the degree they are the dogmas of God. The power of the church to lay down dogmas is not sovereign and legislative but ministerial and declarative.

The question remains why he [Paul] does not challenge the institution of slavery directly. At least seven factors need to be kept in mind by way of reply.

(1.) We must not envision slavery in ancient Rome as if it closely resembled the institution that bought and enslaved Africans in the American South (and elsewhere) until after the Civil War of 1861-65. Slaves held almost every kind of job in the ancient workplace. These included senators, doctors, teachers, all kinds of craftsmen and manual laborers, as well as the more despised trades like rowers or mine workers. This is not to say that Roman slaves were not at times severely mistreated. Female slaves, in particular, were often subject to the sexual whims of their masters. But it is to point out that slaves with good positions and reasonable masters often lived better than many freed persons.

(2.) Again, unlike the American experience, slavery in the Greco-Roman world was not based on racism but on the subjugation of conquered territories. Thus no visual clues set slaves apart from their free counterparts; people of all the existing races and ethnic groups could become enslaved or feed. Individuals at times even voluntarily sold themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts.

(3.) There was little ideological precedent for the abolition of slavery. Among Jews, only the Essenes and the Egyptian Therapeutae publicly renounced the use of slaves, and in Greco-Roman philosophy only the sophists opposed it in any consistent fashion. While various slave revolts punctuated pre-Christian history, all without exception failed and most led to ruthless massacres of the insurgents.

(4.) Closely related to this last point, in a culture that had never experienced any alternatives and in which Christianity had no significant power base, attempts at the emancipation of slaves in general, who comprised perhaps as much as one-third of the Roman population, would almost certainly have failed and perhaps led to the destruction of Christianity in the process.

(5.) The eventual manumission of slaves in the Roman Empire was normal, with most domestic servants set free by age thirty.

(6.) Even after manumission, slaves often remained in relationship with their previous masters, at times still owing them financial obligations of various kinds. But the measure of freedom they received required them to provide for their own “room and board,” which was often more difficult and at a lower standard than when they worked as slaves, especially when their masters were reasonably prosperous.

(7.) Perhaps most importantly of all, the main concern of apostolic Christianity involved the inward, spiritual transformation that occurred when human beings were reconciled to God and that enabled them to look forward to a glorious eternity with Him, whether they ever experienced the outward, physical liberation from unpleasant circumstances in this world (recall 1 Cor. 7:17-24).

Nevertheless, Paul had taught in 1 Corinthians 7:21b that slaves who could acquire their freedom should do so. And by focusing on equality in Christ, irrespective of social or economic status, Paul certainly planted the seeds for the more explicit abolition movements in later centuries, instigated primarily by people with Christian convictions.

Name any affliction that is upon you: there is a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you pour a pail full of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison.

Now then it is no marvel that some men think this doctrine to be strange and hard, for it does not fit in at all with man's natural understanding. If a man asks of the philosophers, they will always tell him that God loves such as are worthy of it, and that, since virtue pleases Him, He also marks out such as are given that way to claim them for His people. You see then that, after our own imagination, we shall judge that God puts no other difference between men, in loving some and in hating others, than each man's own worthiness and deserving. But, at the same time, let us also remember that in our own understanding there is nothing but vanity and that we must not measure God by our own yardstick, and that it is too excessive a presumption to impose law upon God so that it would not be lawful for Him to do anything but that which we could conceive and which might seem just in our eyes.

The matter here, therefore, concerns the reverencing of God's secrets which are incomprehensible to us, and unless we do so, we shall never taste the principles of faith. For we know that our wisdom ought always to begin with humility, and this humility imports that we must not come weighing God's judgments in our own balances or take it upon ourselves to be judges and arbiters of them. We must be sober because of the smallness of our minds, and since we are gross and dull, we must magnify God and say, as we are taught by Holy Scripture [Ps. 36:6], Lord, thy counsels are as a great deep, and no man is able to give an account of them.

You see then that the reason why some men find this doctrine hard and irksome is because they are too much wedded to their own opinion and cannot submit themselves to God's wisdom, to receive His sayings soberly and modestly. And truly we ought to take warning from what Paul says, namely, that the natural man does not understand God's secrets but regards them as stark foolishness [1 Cor. 2:14]. And why? Because we are not His counselors but must have things revealed to us by His Holy Spirit, or else we shall never know them, and we must have them in such measure as He gives them to us.

Paul speaks here of the things we know by experience, namely, that we are God's children, that He governs us by His Holy Spirit, that He comforts us in our miseries and that He strengthens us through patience. We should not conceive any of all these things unless we were enlightened by His Holy Spirit. How then shall we understand that which is much higher, namely, that God elected us before the creation of the world? Since the matter stand thus, let us learn to put away all that we conceive in our own brain and put it under foot, and let us be ready to receive whatever God says to us, casting away our own judgment and assuring ourselves that we cannot bring anything from our side but utter stupidity.

Now it is true the doctrine of the gospel ought not to be the less esteemed when it is preached and published openly before the whole world, but yet it behooves him who tells it to have it thoroughly imprinted on his heart and to say the same thing to himself, and before God and His angels, which he speaks before men; for otherwise it would merely be a jangle, or rather a profaning of God's Word, if a man should step up into the pulpit to talk like an angel, but, at the same time, not be affected in heart, nor be persuaded of that which he speaks.

It would be better for a man to be drowned a hundred times than for him to bear the most excellent testimony everywhere to salvation and to God's truth and, at the same time, not be so persuaded in himself of the thing that he preaches.

We need to be aware that our Lord Jesus Christ did not appear unexpectedly, as if God suddenly decided to provide a remedy for fallen humanity! For Jesus Christ has always had power; even from the beginning people had to come to Him for salvation! Faith has always been the means

In other words, we need to know that our hope of salvation today is not something new, but has been the same since time began. Gospel teaching is the same doctrine that has been taught to all believers who have ever lived.

This is compatibilism…God remains sovereign over everything, and His purposes are good; He interacts with human beings; human beings sometimes do things well, impelled by God’s grace, and He gets the credit; we frequently do things that are wicked, and although we never escape the outermost bounds of God’s sovereignty, we alone are responsible and must take the blame.

If we picture the crucifixion of Jesus Christ solely in terms of the conspiracy of the local political authorities at the time, and not in terms of God’s plan (save perhaps that He came in at the last moment and decided to use the death in a way He Himself had not foreseen), then the entailment is that the cross was an accident of history. Perhaps it was an accident cleverly manipulated by God in His own interests, but it was not part of the divine plan. In that case, the entire pattern of antecedent predictive revelation is destroyed: Yom Kippur, the Passover lamb, the sacrificial system, and so forth. Rip Hebrews out of your Bible, for a start.

On the other hand, if someone were to stress God’s sovereignty in Jesus’ death, exulting that all the participants “did what [God’s] power and will had decided beforehand should happen” (Acts 4:28), while forgetting that it was a wicked conspiracy, then Herod and Pilate and Judas Iscariot and the rest are exonerated of evil. If God’s sovereignty means that all under it are immune from charges of transgression, then all are immune. In that case there is no sin for which atonement is necessary. So why the cross? Either way, the cross is destroyed.

In short, compatibilism is a necessary component to any mature and orthodox view of God and the world.  

Some people see in the cross nothing more than a fine example of sacrificial love. They cannot find there anything of atonement, of triumph over the powers of darkness, of the satisfaction of God’s justice, of bearing away the sins of others. They see only an example of self-sacrificing love, an example to be emulated.

John Denney gave one of the most trenchant responses to that emphasis almost a century ago. What would we think, he asks, or someone who ran down the Brighton pier at full tilt, loudly proclaiming his love for the world, and who jumped off the end of the pier and drowned? Surely we would not praise his love; surely we would pity his dementia. For one cannot meaningfully speak of self-sacrificing love unless there is a purpose to the self-sacrifice. This pathetic person’s “self-sacrifice” is a tragic waste to be pitied, not a noble example to be emulated.

[NOTE: Carson is asked "Why don’t you answer questions concerning a favorite or “most influential” book or author?" Here is his response:]

If you ask me what theological books I recommend that have been influential in my life; I don’t have a clue how to answer that. Because the first serious theological book I read—when I was 14—was Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life. At the time it was a huge incentive to personal holiness. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It was influential at the time, but since then I’ve come to the conclusion, that exegetically and theologically, it was a lot of hogwash. But nevertheless it was an incentive to personal holiness at the time. So it was influential.

Books can become influential in your life at a certain stage or certain existence or if you’re bereaved or if you’re just at a place where you’re asking those sorts of questions, those books are really helpful. But that doesn’t mean that should be on anybody’s “must read” list.

God alone is to be praised for our salvation because it comes to us without any human cause. Going back before creation (Eph. 1:4) to identify the source of that love reveals the God chose before any national, family, or personal achievements would warrant His love.

Some commentators debate whether the election in Ephesians 1:4-6 is corporate (a group is elected) or individual (each person is chosen). While a corporate dimension should not be ruled out, to insist that election is merely corporate would be to overlook the way that the personal blessings of being "chosen" and "predestined" (Eph. 1:4-5) are part of the larger picture of spiritual blessings Paul describes in Ephesians 1:3-14; and these other spiritual blessings undoubtedly have individual dimensions (e.g., redemption, forgiveness, sealing of the Holy Spirit).

Paul uses the assurance of predestination to strengthen the church for her struggles against evil and discouragement. This perspective does not solve all our logical questions about predestination; however, understanding Paul's purpose helps us properly contextualize our presentation of this precious doctrine when we talk to others. Predestination was never meant to be a doctrinal club used to batter people into acknowledgments of God's sovereignty. Rather, the message of God's love preceding our accomplishments and outlasting our failures was meant to give us a profound sense of confidence and security in God's love so that we will not despair in situations of great difficulty, pain, and shame.

You would count him a madman who would expect to grow taller by being thoughtful, or to lengthen his life by greatening his cares. Why, says Christ, you can no more reasonably expect to make provision for your own life by such cares. This is no more the way to increase or secure your outward concerns, than it is to add a cubit to your stature.

All that you may be tempted to be careful about is cared for already, by One who can infinitely better look after it than you yourselves, or any, or all creatures for you. What need is there, then, of your carefulness? If all the creatures in heaven and earth, angels and men, high and low, should faithfully engage themselves to take care of all your concerns; would you not think this a sufficient discharge of all your cares as needless? Oh but you have unspeakably more; that God, who is unspeakably more considerable than all the creatures in the world, has engaged Himself to take care of you, that you shall want nothing that is good, that nothing shall befall you but what is really best for you; and to take such care of this, as to take care off from you; and is not your carefulness then needless? 

The glory of Christ’s rule is not still future; it is already established in heaven. Jesus not only goes to prepare a place for us; He has already built the new Temple by His resurrection and by the union of His people to Himself.

Though we may look respectable and harmless to one another as we sit in our church pews listening to sermons, when God looks at us He sees the truth. He sees our sins crying out for judgment, so that His creation will know that the judge of the earth will do right. Yet He forbears. He is patient with us, even right now—with me as I speak these words and with you as you listen. He is patient. He shows mercy.

But God will not finally endure injustice. He will pour out the wrath we so richly deserve. Amazingly, for all those who repent of their sins and trust in Him, God’s wrath has been poured out of Christ, our loving substitute who laid down His life at the cross on Calvary. Yet those who do not repent and believe will receive God’s wrath upon themselves.

So it was with the Canaanites. In their destruction we see an expiration of God’s mercy. Every time they ignored their own consciences and defied the image of the true God within them, they spent His mercy. Every time they hated another, or got drunk, or worshipped the fertility god Baal through cult prostitution, they spent more of this rich mercy. Every time they worshipped their god Molech by putting a knife through the hearts of their own children or casting them into the flames, they spent still more. Indeed, every day the people of Canaan drew breath and failed to repent, they cried out for the end of God’s mercy and the beginning of His justice. Finally, God said “Enough!” To use the language of the Bible, the cup of their sins had become full to overflowing. God’s mercy expired. And so He commanded Joshua and the Israelites to be partial ministers of the judgment all humankind will one day face, apart from Christ.

Do we need to justify God’s actions here? The longer I think about it, the harder time I have justifying our own questions. God commanded the Israelites to accomplish His good and just purposes, even as He commanded them to obey Him in other matters. 

Preaching has always played a central role, if not the central role, in Christian worship. This is because the importance of careful discursive exposition and instruction was not inherited from the Enlightenment but from Judaism.

The Jews studied and memorized the Hebrew Scriptures, not as an idle exercise in gaining information, but as worship. The rabbis were given the task of instructing the people in the ways of the faith, teaching them the laws, conforming, admonishing, and encouraging their listeners. They were preachers.

In the centuries before Christ, the Jews gave their greatest devotion to cultivating the art and science of reading and preaching the Scriptures. They understood growing in scriptural knowledge as not only essential to true piety but as glorifying to God.

Consistency is not a postmodern virtue. And nowhere is this more aptly displayed than in the barrage of criticism leveled against the church.

The "church-is-lame" crowd hates Constantine and notions of Christendom, but they want the church to be a patron of the arts, and run after-school programs, and bring the world together in peace and love. They...

...bemoan the over-programmed church, but then think of a hundred complex, resource-hungry things the church should be doing.

...don’t like the church because it is too hierarchical, but then hate it when it has poor leadership.

...wish the church could be more diverse, but then leave to meet in a coffee shop with other well-educated thirty-somethings who are into film festivals, NPR, and carbon offsets.

...want more of a family spirit, but too much family and they’ll complain the church is “inbred.”

...want the church to know that its reputation with outsiders is terrible, but then are critical when the church is too concerned with appearances.

...chide the church for not doing more to address social problems, but then complain when the church gets too political.

...want church unity and decry all our denominations, but fail to see the irony in the fact that they have left to do their own thing because they can’t find a single church that can satisfy them.

...are critical of the lack of community in the church, but then want services that allow for individualized worship experiences.

...want leaders with vision, but don’t want anyone to tell them what to do or how to think.

...want a church where the people really know each other and care for each other, but then they complain the church today is an isolated country club, only interested in catering to its own members.

...want to be connected with history, but are sick of the same prayers and same style every week.

...call for not judging “the spiritual path of other believers who are dedicated to pleasing God and blessing people,” and then they blast the traditional church in the harshest, most unflattering terms.

Please think twice before putting on a Star Spangled gala in church this Sunday. I love to hear the national anthem and “God Bless America” and “My Country, Tis of Thee,” but not in church where the nations gather to worship the King of all peoples. I love to see the presentation of colors and salute our veterans, but these would be better at the Memorial Day parade or during a time of remembrance at the cemetery.

Earthly worship should reflect the on-going worship in heaven. And while there are many Americans singing glorious songs to Jesus there, they are not singing songs about the glories of America. We must hold to the traditions of the Apostles in our worship, not the traditions of American history.

The church should not ask of her people what is not required in Scripture. So how can we ask the Koreans and Chinese and Mexicans and South Africans in our churches to pledge allegiance to a flag that is not theirs? Are we gathered under the banner of Christ or another banner? Is the church of Jesus Christ-–our Jewish Lord and Savior–-for those draped in the red, white, and blue or for those washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science said that Jesus did not die but only when through "what seemed to be death." However, the biblical record is emphatic that Jesus died:

(1.) He underwent a sleepless night of trials and beatings that left Him exhausted.

(2.) He was scourged--a punishment so horrendous that many men died from it before even making it to their crucifixion.

(3.) Jesus was crucified, and a professional executioner declared Him dead.

(4.) To ensure Jesus was dead, a spear was thrust through His side and a mixture of blood and water poured out of His side because the spear burst His heart sac.

The reason for our hope is God’s faithfulness to His people. God is committed to save for Himself a people of His own. He does this not by searching for perfect paragons of virtue, but rather by reaching down to rebellious sinners and transforming them from the inside out. This is usually a slow work, but God is not in a hurry. The slow work often involves painful paths, as God strips away the things in which we have placed our trust instead of Him.

The God who empties us and strips away, however painfully, those precious things in which we are trusting knows what it is to be stripped of all of His possessions, left alone and abandoned by His friends, and hung empty on a cross. Every tear of loss that God inflicts on us is a tear whose cost He Himself understands.

At the conclusion of a covenant agreement, it was sometimes the custom for the parties to walk between the pieces of a torn-up animal. This served as a kind of acted-out curse. What they were saying was, "If I break the covenant, may I be torn to pieces like this animal."

But in God's covenant with Abram, only one of the parties passed between the pieces: God Himself in the form of a blazing, smoking torch (Gen. 15:17). That foreshadowed the pillars of cloud and fire on Mount Sinai. The one who would give the law was here showing that grace comes first, for this was a totally one-sided covenant. It depended entirely on God for its fulfillment. Do you see how amazing this was? God, the ever-living One, was saying, "I would rather be torn apart than see my relationship with humanity broken, the relationship that I have promised to establish through Abram's descendant."

By what figure could God have demonstrated His commitment more graphically to Abram? How could it have been displayed more vividly? The only way would have been for the figure to become a reality, for the ever-living God to take on human nature and taste death in the place of the covenant-breaking children of Abram. And that is precisely what God did in Jesus Christ.

On the cross, the covenant curse fell completely on Jesus, so that the guilty ones who place their trust in Him might experience the blessings of the covenant. Jesus bore the punishment for our sins, so that God might be our God and we might be His people. Each time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim God in human form, broken for us and for our transgressions, so that our relationship with Him might be restored.

You say you want to find the will of God in your life. But are you walking wisely, in the sense of walking carefully? Are you attending to your opportunities? Few things are more common among those who complain that guidance has become a very frustrating thing for them than the failure to use the present opportunities God has given to them! Be careful, then, how you walk. Walk wisely!

Be delivered from the mistaken idea that guidance is something which comes like a bolt from the blue and overtakes us. It is not. Guidance is the way in which God leads us as we think through the implications of it in our lives. It involves using our minds to think through the path which God wants us to take in His service. It requires familiarity with Scripture, and fellowship with the Spirit, who alone knows the mind of God.

Those who walk in love, in the light, and in wisdom, develop an assurance that, whatever their failures, they are walking on the path in which all of God’s promises may be received. They know that, however dark and dangerous this path may be, they could not be happier or safer anywhere else. In the knowledge that they are living in obedience to God, all the circumstances and providences of life can be accepted gladly as from the hand of their Father in heaven. To Him they can go with the fears and anxieties which His will seems to have cast on their lives. They know that He is using all of these experiences to transform them into the image of Christ. For this He has predestined them. They know of a certainty therefore that all things will cooperate for their good, and that nothing can ever separate them from the love of God in the Lord Jesus Christ! That is why they are able to be thankful to the Lord for the ways in which He has brought them.

Jesus, the disciples' Lord and Master, had washed their dirty feet. But it was more than a single act--it was also a vivid parable of all that He had done and would do for them. It was a picture of His coming from God, laying aside the expressions of His eternal glory, becoming man, taking the servant's place on the Cross, dying for them, and then returning to His rightful place with His Father.

It is fascinating to place this event side by side with Paul's explanation of what he calls "the mind of Christ" which is found in Philippians 2:5-11:

In the upper room, Christ's incarnation was presented in microcosm. It was intended to be a visual introduction to teaching that would bring the disciples to a knowledge of God (John 17:2) in a depth they had never before experienced. That is why so much of the teaching that followed Jesus' act of washing set out to explain to them the relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  

Know and therefore preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” [1 Cor. 2:2]. That is a text far easier to preach as the first sermon in a ministry than it is to preach as the final sermon.

What do I mean? Perhaps the point can be put sharply, even provocatively, in this way: systematic exposition did not die on the cross for us; nor did biblical theology, nor even systematic theology or hermeneutics or whatever else we deem important as those who handle the exposition of Scripture. I have heard all of these in preaching...without a center in the person of the Lord Jesus.

Paradoxically not even the systematic preaching through one of the Gospels guarantees Christ-crucified centered preaching. Too often preaching on the Gospels takes what I whimsically think of as the “Find Waldo Approach.” The underlying question in the sermon is “Where are you to be found in this story?” (are you Martha or Mary, James and John, Peter, the grateful leper...?). The question “Where, who and what is Jesus in this story?” tends to be marginalized.

The truth is it is far easier to preach about Mary, Martha, James, John, or Peter than it is about Christ. It is far easier to preach even about the darkness of sin and the human heart than to preach Christ. Plus my bookshelves are groaning with literature on Mary, Martha...the good life, the family life, the Spirit-filled life, the parenting life, the damaged-self life...but most of us have only a few inches of shelf-space on the person and work of Christ Himself.

But now we see God coming down in flesh, and so intimately united our flesh to Himself, that it has no proper substance of its own, but is united with the divine person: so it is easy to imagine what worth and value must be in that blood; and how eternal love, springing forth triumphantly form it, flourishes into pardon, grace, and peace.

It is indeed infinite mercy, that God is come so near you, as to dwell in your flesh; and that He fixed upon such an excellent method to save poor sinners.

Since Jesus Christ has assumed our nature, then He is sensibly touched with the infirmities that attend it, and so hath pity and compassion for us, under all our burdens. Oh, what a comfort is this to us, that He who is our High Priest is heaven, has our nature on Him, to enable Him to take compassion on us!

God and man in one person! As man, He is full of experimental sense of our infirmities, wants, and burdens; and, as God, He can support and supply them all.

The biblical writers never say that God is good because He says He is good, and that He says He is good because He is good. That would be narrow circularity. Rather, they describe and praise God’s mighty acts of deliverance, His kindness in providence, and His grace in salvation. These are big, bold, obvious evidences of goodness. They overwhelm believing readers and call from us almost involuntarily the confession that God is good. At this stage of our thinking, there may seem to be no circularity at all.

But as we think more deeply, we realize that, of course, we learn of these evidences from God Himself. We learn them from God’s Word, and the biblical writers themselves learn them from God’s inspiration. There is also general revelation: God reveals His goodness through His actions in the course of nature and history, both in the experience of the biblical writers and in our own. So everything we know about God’s goodness comes from Him. God’s revelation is both our ultimate criterion of truth and our sole source of knowledge about God’s goodness. We believe that God is good, then, because God tells us that He is good. So the circularity is present. But it is a broad circularity, not a narrow one. It is a circularity loaded with content, full of evidence, and richly persuasive. We are literally surrounded by evidence of God’s goodness.

So when someone says that for God to be His own standard allows Him to be an arbitrary despot, declaring what is good today to be evil tomorrow, the critic is not dealing with the reality of God’s revelation. The God who reveals Himself in all creation is simply not that kind of person. We do not know Him as an arbitrary despot. We have heard of arbitrary despots, but our God is not like them.

God has made us to hear His voice, as obedient children listen to a loving father. We know Him because He knows us and addresses us. He declares His goodness, and He demonstrates it richly. We don’t merely know the bare fact that God is good; we know Him. We learn to trust someone by observing his or her behavior. With God, there is far more evidence than that, for all creation presents to us His actions and His love.

By contrast, Protestants point to what the Bible says very clearly in numerous places about justification – that justification is an event not a process. It’s a once-off declaration by God that the sinner is cleared of all guilt, and is thus completely blameless and righteous in his sight because of – and only because of – the sacrifice of Christ on his behalf. According to the Bible, when God justifies us, he doesn’t do it gradually by infusing righteousness into us; he declares us righteous when we put our faith in Christ.

Two fundamental questions needed to be addressed:

(1.) Was the God of Israel or the god on whom the Canaanites depended (Baal, who was believed to reign as king among the gods because he had triumphed over the sea god) the true and mighty God? By opening the way through the flooded Jordan, the Lord would show both Israel and the Canaanites that He is Lord over the waters.

(2.) Did the Lord of the Israelites have a rightful claim to the land? By passing safely through the Jordan at the head of His army, God demonstrated the validity of His claim.

In the ancient Near East a judicial verdict of the gods was commonly obtained by compelling an accused person to submit to a trial-by-water ordeal. Usually this involved casting the accused into a river (if the person drowned, the gods had found him or her guilty; if not, the gods had acquitted the individual). In Israel, however, another form of water ordeal was practiced (see Nu 5:16-28).

It is significant that the Lord would enter the Jordan first and then remain there until His whole army had crossed safely over. His claim to the land was thereby vindicated before the eyes of all who heard about it. And it was His claim, not Israel’s; she accompanied Him through the Jordan as His army, “baptized” into His service. 

The prayer of Gideon and his testing of God with the fleece needs to be carefully understood. Many Christians have taken this ‘putting out the fleece’ as justifying their demanding of God a particular sign to assure them that their decision in a particular matter is the right one. The fact that Gideon seems arbitrarily to choose the sign is seen to justify our choosing anything as a sign. What is overlooked is that Gideon’s prayer acknowledges that he is skating on very thin ice and provoking the Lord to anger.

The point is that his prayer and his fleece-test are misplaced. Gideon has been called for this task and assured that God the mighty warrior is with him. He has been told that he will deliver Israel from the Midianites and God, in condescending mercy, has already given him a sign. That should have been more than enough, yet he still demands another sign. But God is merciful and grants it.

The use of this narrative to justify such an approach to guidance is clearly misplaced, and ignores an enormous amount of biblical material on guidance. Although Gideon gains confidence and routs the Midianites, he is weak and vacillating and eventually falls into idolatry.

Further evidence that the early believers rejected the validity of the ‘slave-free’ antithesis as a primary way of classifying humankind may be seen in the numerous ‘one another’ commands found in the New Testament. Christians are enjoined to:

(1.) Love one another [John 13:34-35, Rom. 13:8, 1 Pet. 1:22, 1 John 3:11...]
(2.) Serve one another [Gal. 5:13]
(3.) Accept one another [Rom. 15:7]
(4.) Be hospitable to one another [1 Pet. 4:9]
(5.) Greet one another with a holy kiss [Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 1 Pet. 5:14...]
(6.) Be devoted to one another [Rom. 12:10]
(7.) Honor one another [Rom. 12:10]
(8.) Live in harmony with one another [Rom. 12:16; 1 Pet. 3:8]
(9.) Bear with one another [Eph. 4:2; Col. 3:13]
(10.) Be kind and compassionate to one another [Eph. 4:32]
(11.) Carry one another’s burdens [Gal. 6:2]
(12.) Forgive one another [Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13]
(13.) Build one another up [1 Thess. 5:11]
(14.) Admonish one another [Col. 3:16]
(15.) Encourage one another [1 Thess. 4:18, Heb. 3:13, Heb. 10:25]

Crossing the Jordan River officially ends the exodus event and is perhaps the climactic event in the book of Joshua. It has numerous parallels and contrasts with the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14:

(1.) In Exodus the Israelites are leaving Egypt, the land of slavery; in Joshua they are entering Canaan, the Promised Land of plenty.

(2.) In Exodus they are fleeing from the pursuing Egyptian army; in Joshua they are advancing to attack Jericho.

(3.) The Presence of God plays a huge role in both events. In Exodus God is in the fire and cloud that protects fleeing Israel. In Joshua the Presence of God is in the ark of the covenant, which is at the center of this significant event.

Apparently during the time of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites had not been continuing the practice of circumcision, perhaps signifying a rupture in their covenant relationship with God. Now, after crossing the Jordan, the Israelites circumcise all of those who had been born in the wilderness, thus recommitting to the covenant. They then celebrate the Passover in the Promised Land and eat of the produce from the land. The daily provision of manna ceases. The exodus is officially over.

The Call

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
And such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes His guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.

Praying without ceasing is keeping our hearts in such a praying frame that we are always ready to pray…to have the habit of always freely and sweetly breathing out our requests unto God. It is to take all occasions to prostate ourselves before the throne of grace. To do this we must certainly do two things:

(1.) Be not too much in the business and pleasures of this life: the world with its affections must not be allowed to stifle and extinguish the holy flames ascending to heaven.

(2.) If we would maintain a praying temper, be careful not to fall into the commission of any known and presumptuous sin. The guilt of sin lying upon the conscience will exceedingly deaden a heart for prayer.

Scripture teaches that we are justified through faith, yet even this act of faith was graciously determined by the triune God before the creation of the world.

Purposes are different from their fulfillment; determinations are different from their accomplishment. God has determined not only the ends but the means by which He will achieve them. God may have determined our life span and where we would live (Acts 17:26), but these hidden purposes are fulfilled through our planning and investigation, real estate agents, moving companies, employers, and so forth. Even in our salvation, God fulfills His electing decree through myriad means--the prayers of friends and relatives, a neighbor who brings us to church or shares the gospel with us after work, and many other influences and events of which we are not even aware.

In neither Calvin's writings nor the Reformed confessions does predestination occupy a central place, and especially on this topic warnings abound against speculation (Dt 29:29). Consideration of God's predestination is of inestimable benefit if we find our election in Christ as He is offered to all people in the gospel, but a dangerous labyrinth if we presume to investigate God's secret counsels.

So what about the justice of apparently innocent people suffering Achan's punishment? All Israel suffers the defeat and loss of life at Ai while Achan escapes unscathed. Further, in his confession, Achan names no accomplices or co-conspirators, yet his children, livestock, and personal property share his punishment.

Some readers may view this as unfair (the punishment does not fit the crime) and mystifying. The problem is that in Joshua 7 our modern, individualistic worldview bumps into the more corporate worldview of the Bible. The former says that individuals benefit from or suffer for what they themselves do (or do not do). Usually, they are exempt from the benefits or deficits of what others do (or do not do). For it to be otherwise, individualism says, would be unjust. (American culture particularly prizes a strong variety of this worldview called "rugged individualism.") In the Bible's world, however, whole groups benefit or suffer because of the actions of an individual, and no one reckons this unjust.

It is crucial that we understand the contrast between these two perspectives; otherwise we will not understand Joshua 7-8 and much of the Bible. More important, we moderns finally need to catch up with the Bible and see things as God sees them. Only then will His transformation of us approach His vision for us as Christian people.

The so-called dutiful lie ignores how precious the truth is in God's sight. Even lies told for very good purposes are not free from divine disapproval. Moreover, even if in the de facto providence of God, Rahab's untruth allowed the two spies to escape harm, this does not therefore justify such a method. God is not reduced to unholy acts to fulfill His will. At most God allowed His purposes to be fulfilled in this most unusual manner, because His grace can operate in spite of the sinful maneuverings of men and women. Untruth cannot be vindicated simply because it is closely tied to the total result.

Any other conclusion would eventually validate David's adultery because the next heir in the Messianic line, Solomon, resulted from David's union with Bathsheba. We are specifically told that David's sin was abhorrent to God. It happens we are not told the same about Rahab's sin. This is no reason to vote differently in the two cases; each violates a clear commandment of God.

We cannot say that protecting innocent lives is a greater good than the demand always to tell the truth. Scripture nowhere advocates or allows for such hierarchy. To do so would pit part of God's nature against other parts of His nature. We need to follow all of God's Word, and that Word involves respect for both life and truth, as difficult as that is in a world that often pits one moral absolute against another.

Kelly lists reasons not to have an 'altar call' at the end of a service:

(1.) The altar call is simply and completely absent from the pages of the N.T.

(2.) The altar call is historically absent until the 19th century, and its use at that time (via Charles Finney) was directly based upon bad theology and a man-centered, manipulative methodology.

(3.) The altar call very easily confuses the physical act of “coming forward” with the spiritual act of “coming to Christ.” These two can happen simultaneously, but too often people believe that coming to Christ is going forward (and vice-versa).

(4.) The altar call can easily deceive people about the reality of their spiritual state and the biblical basis for assurance. The Bible never offers us assurance on the ground that we “went forward.”

(5.) The altar call partially replaces baptism as the means of public profession of faith.

(6.) The altar call can mislead us to think that salvation (or any official response to God’s Word) happens primarily on Sundays, only at the end of the service, and only “up front.”

(7.) The altar call can confuse people regarding “sacred” things and “sacred” places, as the name “altar call” suggests.

(8.) The altar call is not sensitive to our cautious and relational age where most people come to faith over a period of time and often with the interaction of a good friend.

(9.) The altar call is often seen as “the most important part of the service”, and this de-emphasizes the truly more important parts of corporate worship which God has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing).

(10.) God is glorified to powerfully bless the things He has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing), not the things we have invented. We should always be leery of adding to God’s prescriptions for His corporate worship. 

Death is the mighty conqueror before whom we are all helpless. We can only beat our fists in utter futility against the unyielding and unresponding tomb. But the Good News is this: death has been defeated; our conqueror has been conquered. In the face of the power of the Kingdom of God in Christ, death was helpless. It could not hold Him, death has been defeated; life and immorality have been brought to light. An empty tomb in Jerusalem is proof of it. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Moses tells the flood story in Genesis 7 and 8 using a numerical/chronological structure, framing the center of the story (Genesis 8:1). Consider these verses:

> And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth (7:10).

> The flood continued forty days on the earth (7:17a).

> And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days (7:24).

> At the end of 150 days the waters had abated (8:3b).

> At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven (8:6-7a).

> He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark (8:10).

Joshua’s Preparation for Ministry:

(1.) Joshua led the victorious battle against the Amalekites. [Ex 17:9-14]
(2.) Joshua, the servant of Moses, accompanied the Jewish leader to the mountain of God. [Ex 24:13]
(3.) Joshua was the attendant of Moses from his youth. [Nu 11:28]
(4.) Moses changed his name from Hoshea (“salvation”) to Joshua (“the Lord saves”). [Nu 13:16]
(5.) Joshua, along with Caleb, spied out the land of Canaan with 10 others. Only Joshua and Caleb urged the nation to possess the land and, thus, only they of the 12 actually entered Canaan. [Nu 14:6-10, 30, 38]
(6.) Joshua was indwelt by the Holy Spirit. [Nu 27:18]
(7.) Joshua was commissioned for spiritual service for the first time, to assist Moses. [Nu 27:18-23]
(8.) Joshua followed the Lord fully. [Nu 32:12]
(9.) Joshua was commissioned a second time, to replace Moses. [Dt 31:23]
(10.) Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom. [Dt 34:9]

Christ has spoken in the Bible, and He holds us responsible to understand, interpret, obey, and teach what He said – as opposed to deconstructing everything the Bible says. Notice that Christ repeatedly rebuked the Pharisees for twisting Scripture, disobeying it, setting it aside with their traditions, and generally ignoring its plain meaning. Not once did He ever excuse the Pharisees’ hypocrisy and false religion by apologizing for any lack of clarity in the Old Testament.

The issue is not lack of evidence, but stubborn unbelief driven by the love of sin. People are unwilling to accept the inescapable consequence of the resurrection; namely, that Christ is God, the God of Scripture, and they are accountable for every violation of His law and in need of His grace. Thus sinful men, in an irrational effort to evade their guilt and accountability to the one true God, have concocted various theories in a futile attempt to explain away the reality of the resurrection.

Rahab’s faith was no dead faith, but manifested by works. In this raw and young convert faith was not without its effects. This effect was accompanied with much self-denial, which was seen in two things:

(1.) In preferring the will of God before the safety of her country, and cherishing those guests who were strangers before the gratifying and pleasing of her own citizens. We are bound to love, and we are bound also to see the welfare of our country; but we are bound to love God more than our country. Therefore we owe fidelity to Him first, and then to the place we live in, and we are to promote their welfare so far as is consistent with our fidelity to our supreme Lord.

(2.) The other instance of her self-denial was her venturing her life rather than betraying those messengers of Joshua, that were the worshippers of the true God. It was an action that might have been of dangerous consequence to her; but, to manifest her fidelity to God, she overlooks the threatenings and cruelty of her citizens, the promiscuous events of war, and the burning of the city in which she and her parents lived; and so in the effect, by her faith, she renounced all to serve the true God. Acts of self-denying obedience, in which we do deny ourselves for God, check our natural love, and thwart our lusts and hazard any interests.

When God calls us to it, can we part with our conveniences of life, all that is near and dear to us in the world, upon the proper and sole encouragement of faith? This is a mighty evidence of faith.

Suppose you were in debt, and friend paid it by laying down some costly jewel, a thousand times more valuable than all the money you owed. This would be paying your debt with a precious thing. This is what Christ has done. His blood is a thousand times more precious in the sight of the Father than the blood of sinners. If He died for me, then I have been redeemed with precious blood.

It is the blood of a spotless Lamb. This made it precious. Had Christ been sinful, His sufferings would have been for Himself. For this reason He can suffer for another, that He was a spotless Lamb, without sin in His life, without sin in His death, so that every drop of His sufferings was for our sins.

That a price had to be paid shows that we were in a state of slavery. We have been bought back from it, not with silver or gold, not with corruptible things, not with things that rust and grow old. Rather, with the precious blood of Christ, the blood of a spotless Lamb.

Preaching is not a mechanism for communication that was developed by preachers who needed something to do on Sunday. It was not some kind of sociological or technological adaptation by the church in the first century in an effort to come up with something to fill the time between the invocation and benediction. It was the central task of preaching that framed not only their understanding of worship, but also their understanding of the church.

The Devil doesn’t mind “family values” as long as what you ultimately value is the family. Satan doesn’t mind “social justice” as long as you see justice as most importantly social. Satan does not tremble at a “Christian worldview” as long as your ultimate goal is to view the world. Satan doesn’t even mind born-again Christianity as long as the new birth is preached apart from the blood of the cross and the life of the resurrection.

The following is excerpted from a letter written in January 1780 by John Newton to John Ryland, Jr. on the occasion of Ryland's marriage to Betsy:

You cannot love your Betsy too much, if you love her in a proper subordination. Look at her while you are reading this, and it will help you to see an illustration of my meaning. You have not all her love. She will continue to love her relatives, and if she had a thousand friends, she has room enough in her heart for them all. But there is a peculiar kind of regard due to you, which she cannot, will not, dare not to transfer to another.

Just so, the Lord leaves us scope enough for the exercise of our affections towards creatures. But there is a sense in which we must love Him wholly and only. To Him our love must be supreme, and unrivaled. And that not merely in our judgment, but in our habitual exercise and walk.

The nature and being of God is the foundation of all true religion and religious worship in the world. The great end for which we were made is to worship and glorify God; and that which renders this worship our indispensable duty is the nature and being of God himself.

There are, indeed, some acts of religious worship which chiefly respect what God is to us, or has done for us; but the principal and adequate reason of all divine worship, and that which makes it such, is what God is, in Himself.

Because He is; that is, because He is an infinitely glorious, good, wise, holy, powerful, righteous, self-subsisting, self-sufficient, and all-sufficient being; the fountain and author of all being and good; the first cause, last end, and sovereign Lord of all; therefore He is to be worshipped: therefore we are to admire, adore, and love him; to praise, to trust and to fear Him.

This is to glorify Him as God; for as ‘all things are of Him, and through Him, and to Him’, to Him must be the glory for ever.

Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? You must always be at it while you live; do not take a day off from this work; always be killing sin or it will be killing you.

He that stands still and allows his enemies to exert double blows upon him without resistance will undoubtedly be conquered in the end. If sin is subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work in the business of killing our souls, and we are slothful, negligent, and foolish in this battle, can we expect a favorable outcome?

The blood of Christ purges us from our sin...His blood has a double consideration: not only atonement and reconciliation, but also purging and sanctification...

By faith the lusts and corruptions which might defile us are mortified, subdued, and gradually worked out of our minds. All actual defilements spring from the remainder of defiling lusts working in us...

Faith considers two motives to stir up our utmost diligence to prevent the defilements of sin.  

(1.) It seeks to participate in the excellent promises of God. Considering these brings a strong encouragement to the souls of believers to seek after universal purity and holiness [2 Cor. 7:1]. 

(2.) Faith considers the future enjoyments of God in glory, which cannot be ours without our being purified from sin [Heb. 12:24]. 

God the Father "chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world." (Eph. 1:4) Before creating anything, the Father chose people to belong to Him. Why does Paul speak concerning the timing of predestination? For the same reason that he introduces a time element in Romans 9:11-12: "Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of His call—she [Rebecca] was told, 'The older will serve the younger.'" Paul says that God chose Jacob over Esau before either one was born in order to accentuate the fact that election is based on the free will of God, not that of human beings. God's choice of the twins before birth shows that God did not base His choice on anything they did but on His own sovereign purpose.

Similarly, when Paul says that God chose us before the creation of the world, he emphasizes God's purpose in election. We obviously did not even exist before the creation of the world and could not, therefore, contribute anything to our predestination. Paul teaches the same truth in 2 Timothy 1:9, where he describes God's grace as that which "He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began."

We conclude, then, that Paul's locating election before creation flies in the face of the Arminian concept of conditional election: the idea that God chose us based on His forseeing our faith in His Son. To the contrary, God chose us before we were in order that, after He had called us to Himself in salvation, we would praise Him for His free grace.

Does Christ's incarnation save? The answer depends on what exactly is being asked. Does Christ's incarnation save in and of itself? The answer is no. Salvation does not come automatically to humankind when the eternal Son of God becomes a man. But does Christ's incarnation save as the essential precondition for the saving deeds that follow? The answer is yes.

Only a divine-human Redeemer would do. If the Son had not become a human being, He could not have lived a sinless human life, died, and risen again to deliver His people. He could not have ascended, sat down at God's right hand, poured out the Holy Spirit, interceded for His own, and come again. To perform these saving works, He had to become one of us. In that important sense, Christ's incarnation saves.

Because Jesus is the living Word of God, and because God never changes, then God always way and is like Jesus--always Christ-like! God is holy, they way Jesus is shown to be holy in the Gospels. God is compassionate and caring, sovereign and mighty, just as Jesus reveals in those books. But, most of all, Jesus reveals God's love for us. If you want to see the glory of God, in His holiness and compassion and might and especially in His love, you will find it only in the face of Jesus Christ.

If this is true--if Jesus is the living Word who reveals God to us--then His coming is the most important thing ever to happen in this world. In worldly terms, Jesus accomplished nothing. But God's Son did not come to build a financial or military empire, or to leave a record in the fading pages of worldly glory. Instead, He came to show the way to God that He Himself would open for us by His death on the cross for our sins. Since He is God, and since He came to save lost sinners, what He did demands our fervent attention and heartfelt faith.

Among the privileges of sonship we gain through our adoption in Jesus Christ are these:

(1.) A relationship with God as Father, with open access into His presence.

(2.) The right to God’s care and provision, both materially and spiritually through the Holy Spirit.

(3.) The privilege of God’s fatherly discipline as He works in us for a harvest of righteousness and peace.

(4.) The right to inherit all our Father’s goods in the age to come.

Sometimes people take "foreknowledge" to mean that God simply foresees the faith that we produce by our own self-determination. Then on the basis of what we do He predestines us to sonship. That makes the whole glorious chain of salvation hang ultimately on our act, not God's.

But this interpretation will not work. It assumes that faith is something we produce by the power of self-determination rather than being a work of God's sovereign call in our lives. That does not fit with Romans 8:30: "Whom He called, these He also justified." If all the called are justified, then the call of God is not a mere invitation to people with the power of self-determination. Rather it is an act of creation in people who are spiritually dead. What the call creates is faith. Therefore when God looked forward into history from His standpoint in eternity He did not see free people using powers of self-determination to believe; He saw people enslaved to sin and spiritually dead, whose only hope was that the sovereign call of God would create the faith He commands.

It is the glory of God and His essential nature mainly to dispense mercy (but also wrath) on whomever He pleases, apart from any constraint originating outside His own will. This is the essence of what it means to be God. That is His name. ... In choosing unconditionally those on whom He will have mercy and those whom He will harden God is not unrighteous, for in this "electing purpose" He is acting out of a full allegiance to His name and esteem for His glory. ... God is our creator and as such has as much right to make of us what He wills as a potter has over his clay to make from the same lump a vessel for honor and a vessel for dishonor. We have no right to dispute with God our maker.

For those who, like myself, confess Romans 9 as Holy Scripture and accord it an authority over our lives, the implications are profound. We will surely not fall prey to the naive suggestions that we cease to pray or that we abandon evangelism. If we did that, we would only betray our failure to be grasped by this theology as Paul was who "prayed without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17) and who labored in evangelism "harder than any of the other apostles" (1 Cor. 15:10). On the contrary, we will be deeply sobered by the awful severity of God, humbled to the dust by the absoluteness of our dependence on His unconditional mercy, and irresistibly allured by the infinite treasury of His glory ready to be revealed to the vessels of glory. Thus we will be moved to forsake all confidence in human distinctives or achievements and we will entrust ourselves to mercy alone.

The painful things that come into our lives are not described by God as accidental or as out of His control. This would be no comfort. That God cannot stop a germ or a car or a bullet or a demon is not good news; it is not the news of the Bible. God can. And ten thousand times He does. But when He doesn’t, He has His reasons. And in Christ Jesus they are all loving. We are taught this sovereignty so that we will drink it in till it saturates our bones. He is getting us ready to suffer without feeling unloved.

So when suffering comes, God’s children are meant to experience it as God’s fatherly discipline. It does not speak well of our faith if we doubt His love or if we become angry at God when He ordains pain in our lives. The story of Ruth (along with Joseph and Job and Esther and others) is in the Bible to prepare us for bitter providences by showing us again and again that God is doing a thousand things that we do not know. And they are meant for our good.

As part of the Basics 2005 pastors' conference, Derek Prime gave the following ten questions that he asks when studying Scripture in preparation to preach:

(1.) What do the words actually mean?

(2.) What light do other parts of the Bible throw upon this part?

(3.) Where and how does what this part declares fit into the complete revelation God gives us in the Bible on this subject?

(4.) What does it teach us about God?

(5.) What does it teach about men and women in their relationship to God?

(6.) What relationship do these words have to the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and what light does the gospel as a whole throw upon them?

(7.) What experiences do these words outline, or explain, or try to create or cure?

(8.) What was the application of these words to the people at the time?

(9.) How do these words apply to us now?

(10.) What are we told either to believe or to do?

Mind, then, when your text is chosen, that you understand it and see right through it; that you know precisely what you want to prove, what you want to teach, what you want to establish, and what you want people’s minds to carry away. If you yourself begin in a fog, you may depend upon it you will leave your people in darkness.

Mark this one thing. Amongst other attributes that shine in God, there is specially His holiness and displeasure against sin, for God showed His displeasure against sin in turning His rebellious angels out of heaven. Heaven itself could not bear sin. It turned Adam out of paradise, and is the chief procurer of God's wrath; but all these are nothing to that hatred of sin that appeared in Christ. The purity of God appeared in Him above all things in the world, and it will at the day of judgment appear more in sending the greatest part of the world to eternal destruction and torment.

But it is not so much as in making His Son a curse. Therein we see the holiness of God, that rather than man's sins should not be satisfied for, He would set apart His own Son to satisfy it. How much then is the holiness of Christ, that offered Himself for it? How much is the holiness of God, that gave His Son to take it away? Can any man now believe in God as his Father first, and in Christ as his Savior, and live in sin?

What was said? / What contrast was implied?

(1.) Men “form” idols [44:9] / God “forms” the world and His people

(2.) Idols do not help; give no profit [44:9] / God strengthens and helps His people

(3.) Their witness does not see, know [44:9] / God’s witnesses see and know

(4.) Idol makers tremble in fear [44:11] / God’s people need not fear

(5.) Idol makers will be ashamed [44:11] / God’s people will not be ashamed

(6.) Idol makers get tired and weary [44:12] / God strengthens so people are not weary

(7.) Idol makers measure on wood [44:13] / God measures out the heavens with His hand

(8.) Idols are images of humanity [44:13] / God made man in His image

(9.) Idols are wood and metal [44:14] / God made the wood and the metals

(10.) People worship what they make [44:15] / The Maker/Creator should be worshipped

(11.) People seek divine deliverance [44:17] / Only God can bring real deliverance

(12.) Idols blind people’s eyes [44:18] / God opens people’s eyes

(13.) Idols give no understanding [44:19] / God gives wisdom and understanding

(14.) Idolatry is a deceptive lie [44:20] / God reveals the truth

(15.) Idols lead people astray [44:20] / God calls people to turn from lies

Jesus' point in John 6:44 is that people cannot come to Him unless they are compelled to come by the Father--unless God drags them. If you are in Christ, that is exactly how you came to Christ. The Holy Spirit dragged you there.

He did not drag you kicking and screaming against your will, because He had changed your will before you came. Had He not changed the disposition of your heart, had He not put into your heart a desire for Christ, you would still be a stranger and an alien to the kingdom of God, because your will, while free from coercion, is still in bondage to sin. That will that you think is so free is, in fact, a slave imprisoned to yourself. You are your own slaveholder. Your will is enslaved to your dispositions, to your desires, which, the Bible says, are wicked continually, prior to conversion.

Before conversion, we are free to sin; after conversion, we are free to sin or to obey God. In heaven, when we are in glory, we are free only to obey. That is what we call royal freedom, the most wonderful freedom, where our choices will only be good. We will have no inclination whatsoever to do anything wicked or evil.

The humanistic view, that true freedom means that we have an equal ability to go to the left or to the right, to do what is sinful or what is righteous, is a myth. It it not only unbiblical, but irrational. We must rid our minds of that notion and realize that at the heart of this matter is original sin. Prior to our conversion, we are enslaved to wicked impulses. But when the Spirit sets us free from bondage to sin, then we are truly free.

In every believer’s heart there is a constant struggle between the old nature and the new. The old nature is very active and loses no opportunity of employing all the weapons in its deadly arsenal against newborn grace; while on the other hand, the new nature is always on the lookout to resist and destroy its enemy. Grace within us will employ prayer and faith and hope and love to cast out the evil; it takes to itself “the whole armor of God” and wrestles vigorously. These two opposing natures will never stop struggling as long as we are in this world…

The enemy is so securely entrenched within us that he can never be driven out while we are in this body: But although we are closely followed, and often in fierce conflict, we have an Almighty helper, Jesus, the Captain of our salvation, who is always with us and who assures us that we shall eventually be more than conquerors through Him. With such assistance the newborn nature is more than a match for its enemies.

Are you fighting with the adversary today? Are Satan, the world, and the flesh all against you? Do not be discouraged nor dismayed. Fight on! For God Himself is with you. Jehovah Nissi is your banner, and Jehovah Rophi is the healer of your wounds. Do not fear, you will overcome, for who can defeat Omnipotence? Fight on, “looking to Jesus”, and although the conflict is long and tough, the victory will be sweet, and the promised reward will be glorious.

From strength to strength go on;
Wrestle, and fight, and pray,
Tread all the powers of darkness down,
And win the well-fought day.

What, then, of human freedom? To answer that question we must distinguish between "free agency" and "free will." To say that man has free agency is to say that he is free to do what he wants. If he wants to reject Christ, he can. If he wants to accept Christ, he can. In brief, the human will is free to choose whatever the heart desires. However, apart from the interposition of divine grace, no one wants or will to have Christ in his thinking or in his life.

On the other hand, to say that a person has free will is to say that he has equal ability or power to either accept or reject the gospel. It is to say that he is as able to believe as to disbelieve, and that this ability springs from his own making and is native to him...a person is no more free to act or to will or to choose contrary to his nature than an apple tree is free to produce acorns.

Note well. I am not saying that, when confronted with the gospel, a person cannot exercise his or her will. All of us have a will and are capable of exercising it in the making of choices. What I am saying is that, when confronted with the gospel, we cannot will well. We are not kept from believing against our wills. "Whoever comes to me," declares Jesus, "I will never cast out." (John 6:37). The problem, however, as Jesus goes on to say, is that "no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." (John 6:44)

Why is it that no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him? Is it because the Father prevents him from doing so? Is it because the Father or the Son or the Spirit has put an obstacle or a barrier in his way to keep him from coming when he urgently desires to do so? God forbid! Neither is it because the person lacks the requisite volitional and intellectual faculties to make a positive choice. It isn't because of some physical defect that he repudiates the gospel.

The reason no one can come to Jesus is that it is not in our nature to come. It is our nature, and therefore our will, to flee from Christ, not come to him. The fact is, and a sad fact at that, we do not want to come. We are delighted not to come. We willingly and freely and voluntarily choose to stay in our sin and unbelief, because we find nothing at all in Jesus that is alluring, appealing, truthful, or in any way an improvement on what we already are and have on our own. Were we ever to come to the point of wanting to come to Christ for life, we could do so. Indeed, Jesus say we most assuredly will! But such "wanting," such "coming," is not of our own making. It is of God. It is of the Father who in eternity past "gave" us to the Son and now in time "draws" us to faith. Simply put, no one, of himself or herself, wants to be saved. But whoever, by God's power, is made willing shall be saved!

Idolatry is simply trying to build our identity on something besides God. An idol is anything that’s usurping the proper place of God in our lives. An idol is anything or anyone that you conclude, in your heart, you must have in order for your life to be meaningful, valuable, secure, exciting, or free.

Here’s one way to get your idols into focus: simply think about whatever it is in your life that, if you lost it, would make you want to quit living. Or, to put it positively, what are you really living for? What are you functionally depending on to make life worth living? Ultimately, if it’s anything or anyone other than Jesus, then it’s become an idol.

No one knows or may legitimately seek to know the exact time of Christ's return. Some passages remind us of the certainty, even the 'soon-ness' within the perspective of the timeline of the history of redemption, of Christ's coming. But others remind us of those events that must take place before Christ's return, which permit us to speak of God's 'patience' in this present period in calling the nations to repentance. Furthermore, several passages clearly forbid any attempt to know the day or the hour of Christ's second coming.

In the light of these biblical considerations, Christian believers are duty-bound to be cautious and circumspect about the time of Christ's return. We must live expectantly, knowing the time is short and Christ's return is certain. But we must also live responsibly, carrying on with the work demanded of us in the interim period between Christ's ascension and coming again. Such responsible living demands that we resist the temptation to predict the time of Christ's return. Those who attempt to set a timetable for the return of Christ disobey the teaching of God's Word. They also risk bringing the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ into disrepute, should their allegedly 'biblical' predictions fail to come to pass.

Place all your trust in the grace of Christ, and it will crucify the old man. Be weak in yourself and strong in the Lord, and by faith you shall be more than a conqueror.

A Christian is someone who asserts that Jesus was dead but is now alive and that as a result of this fact we can be saved. The question asked at the opening of this chapter was, what, in light of all these sermons [the ones recorded in the book of Acts], has the resurrection of Jesus made possible for us?

If Jesus had not been raised, none of the following things, listed in order of their appearance in Acts, would have been possible:

(1.) The sending of the Spirit [Acts 2:33]
(2.) Physical healings [Acts 3:15-16]
(3.) The conversion of sinners [Acts 3:26]
(4.) Salvation by union with Jesus [Acts 4:11-12]
(5.) Jesus’ role as the leader of His church [Acts 5:30-31; 9]
(6.) Forgiveness of sins [Acts 5:30-31]
(7.) Comfort for the dying [Acts 7]
(8.) The commissioning of gospel messengers [Acts 9; 10:42]
(9.) Freedom from the penalty and power of sin [Acts 13:37-39]
(10.) Assurance that the gospel is true [Acts 17:31]
(11.) Own our resurrection [Acts 17:31]
(12.) Jesus’ future judgment of this world [Acts 17:31]

We should never neglect to stress how Jesus died and bore the punishment for our sins. But without any declaration that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and is now reigning, the biblical gospel has not been preached at all.

Salvation is not merely a case of believing in something that happened thousands of years ago. We are not saved by a belief. We are saved by union with a person. We cannot separate the propitiatory work of Christ from Christ Himself. We are saved not only by believing the fact that Christ died for our sins, but by union with the crucified and risen, exalted Savior. Only through union with a living Savior who has in Him the virtue of His atoning death do justification, forgiveness, and all the blessings of redemption become ours.

Jesus was our obedience substitute during His life, our punishment substitute in His death, and our rebirth substitute in His resurrection. When we become united with Jesus, His life of obedience, His painful death, and His resurrection power are all credited to us. When someone becomes a Christian, a spiritually dead person is united with a life-giving one. His resurrection produces a resurrection in us. We are connected to the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

We should hate sin infinitely more than ever we loved it.

You can no more conceal your sin than you can defend it.

Be as speedy in your repentance as you would have God speedy in His mercies.

He who is not resolved to be an enemy of sin is conquered by it.

Whatever is not of God's own appointment in His worship He looks upon as 'strange fire'. And no wonder He is so highly incensed at it, for it is as if God were not wise enough to appoint the manner in which He will be served.

Men will try to direct Him, and as if the rules for His worship were defective, they will attempt to correct the copy, and superadd their inventions. A godly man dare not vary from the pattern which God has shown him in the Scripture.

This is probably not the least reason why David was called 'a man after God's own heart', because he kept the springs of God's worship pure, and in matters sacred did not superinduce anything of his own devising.

If you try to wring every book out like it was a washcloth full of information (and nothing but information), all you will do is slow yourself down to a useless pace. Go for total tonnage, and read like someone who will forget most of it. You have my permission to forget most of it, which may or may not be reassuring, but you will forget most of it in either case. Most of what is shaping you in the course of your reading, you will not be able to remember.

The most formative years of my life were the first five, and if those years were to be evaluated on the basis of my ability to pass a test on them, the conclusion would be that nothing important happened then, which would be false. The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them.

Mark everything striking that you read -- you won't remember everything you read, and you won't even remember everything you mark. Nevertheless, it is not a sin to remember some things, or to mark them in a way to be able to find them again.