The Bible Is Not About You

Collin Hansen at the Gospel Coalition blog shares one of my favorite extended clips from one of my favorite pastor/teachers:

To whet your appetite for the 2011 national conference—They Testify About Me: Preaching Jesus and the Gospel from the Old Testament—I wanted to share this clip from Tim Keller’s address at the inaugural 2007 conference. Heath McPherson, a gifted artist himself, mixed Keller’s words with music and paired it with drawings by Gustave Dore. All together the video tells a powerful story of what the Bible is basically about.

That's My King

I've seen & heard this before, but never knew whose voice I was listening to until today. It's the voice of Dr. S. M. Lockridge.


That's My King! from Albert Martin on Vimeo.

(HT: JT)

Adopted is Not an Adjective

From LifeTogether:

Russ Moore spoke last week at our church on the topic, “Why We Want to be Foster Children”:

In Scripture there is no such thing as an adopted child. Adopted is a past tense verb, it is not an adjective. Those who have been brought into the household and family of God are really and truly part of the household of God sharing with their brothers and sisters everything that it means to be in Christ.

• Listen or Watch his sermon
• Preorder his new book, Adopted for Life
• Check out LBC’s new adoption/orphan ministry called Just O.N.E.

Sanctity Of Life Sunday Sermons

DesiringGod.org has a list of sermons given by John Piper on Sanctity of Life Sunday going back to 1987:

• Abortion: The Innocent Blood of Our Sons and Daughters
• When Is Abortion Racism?
• Love Your Unborn Neighbor
• Abortion, Race, Gender, and Christ
• Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
• The Darkness of Abortion and the Light of Truth
• "Father, Forgive, For We Know What We Are Doing"
• God at Work in Every Womb
• Christ, Culture, and Abortion
• Visiting Orphans in a World of AIDS and Abortion
• Where Does Child Killing Come From?
• Be Strong and Fervent in Spirit in the Cause of Truth and Life
• Fasting for the Safety of the Little Ones
• What Is Man?
• Being Pro-Life Christians Under a Pro-Choice President
• Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion
• Abortion: Shall We Listen to Men or God?
• Kingdom Compassion and the Killing of Children
• Rescuing Unborn Children: Required and Right
• Abortion: You Desire and Do Not Have, So You Kill

A Hypocrite's Guide to Preaching

Michael McKinley has a good post at the 9 Marks blog called "A Hypocrite's Guide to Preaching." Here's the 5-point guide:

1. We are all hypocrites to some degree or another. None of us have attained perfection in any of the things we must preach about. But there's a line that shouldn't be crossed... if the gap between your words and your life is too great, you shouldn't be preaching at all. We need people in our lives who can help us think through these things so that we're not at the mercy of an overly tender or calloused conscience.

2. Systematic expositional preaching of Scripture is well-suited to preachers who are also sinners. It serves as a check against our natural tendency to focus on things that we do well and avoid areas where we struggle.

3. Your weakness highlights the power of God's word. There are only four reasons that people would want to listen to anything you have to say:

a. You're brilliant and holy (or at least you've convinced them you are).
b. They don't want to but they are too lazy to go somewhere else.
c. They are forced to listen as a condition of their parole.
d. You are telling them what God says in His Word.

Let's face it, you're not (a) and you don't want to be (b). When you feed your people a diet of God's Word and they learn to trust you to teach it to them faithfully they will listen on His authority, not yours.

4. We should take opportunities to acknowledge our own failures and limitations before the congregation when appropriate. If all of your children are under 5 years old and you are preaching on Ephesians 6:4, you should be willing to acknowledge that your personal experience is still somewhat limited. Then you can remind the congregation that the authority comes from God's Word, not from your personal experience. This approach models humility for your people and will (ironically, perhaps) cause them to trust you more.

And finally,

5. Since you're a hypocrite, every sermon should begin with your own heart. You shouldn't preach it to others until you've preached it to yourself. You can assume that you need to hear God's Word just as badly as the people in your congregation. Beware allowing a bifurcation between what you feel passionately in the pulpit and what you live in your day-to-day walk.

The Centrality Of The Home

One of my friends sent me a link to a sermon from Voddie Baucham, entitled "The Centrality of the Home." In it, Baucham addresses the role of the home in discipling our children, while providing commentary on the common church model used today.

Worship and Service

I've been getting hit from a couple of directions with teaching hovering around the following two verses:

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)

"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." (John 4:23)

From the White Horse Inn's recent broadcast, "Worship in Spirit and Truth" and from Desiring God Radio's recent broadcasts ("The Son of Man Came to Serve" Part 1 and Part 2 and "The Son of Man Came to Give His Life a Ransom for Many" Part 1). From these, I've been challenged to think of what a worship service is, and the differences between our service and God's service.

Michael Horton on the White Horse Inn argues that "spirit and truth" in John 4:23 refer to the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ Himself as The Truth (see John 14:6). The guys share interesting insight into Cain & Abel's offerings (Genesis 4), and the Israelites and the golden calf (Exodus 32), and Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, offering "strange fire" (Leviticus 10) and Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6.

Horton comments on Isaiah's vision:

"This is the way worship is supposed to work... We come in thinking we're okay. We have a little glimpse of God's holiness and are completely undone. He stoops to forgive us; confirms that, ratifies that, with bread and wine, and then He sends us out into the world as witnesses and people who are loving and serving our neighbors in our vocations."

Horton on our "worship experience," tainted by the Fall:

"Ever since the very beginning, we want to offer what we have. We don't want to be served by God. We don't want Him to come down to us in judgment and justification. We want to rise up to Him to justify ourselves."

Kim Riddlebarger had this to say about Sunday morning services:

"This is an amazing event that's about to happen. The Creator and Sustainer of all; the Redeemer of my soul is going to come and visit me and my fellow sinners. He's going to speak to us. He's going to serve us this wonderful glorious feast. He's going to be present when we sing to Him."

From the end of John Piper's sermon, "The Son of Man Came to Serve" (originally delivered December 17, 1995):

"Our new daughter, Talitha Ruth, arrived in our home Friday night at 9 1/2 weeks old. She smiled. She cooed. She ate. And she fell asleep in her crib. And slept for seven hours. She did not serve us at all. She is totally dependent on being served by us. If she insists on serving us rather than our serving her, she will die. This is why Jesus said, 'Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 18:3).

"It's almost Christmas. Open your heart to receive the best Christmas present imaginable: Jesus giving himself to die for you and serve you, all the rest of eternity. Receive this. Turn away from self-help and sin. Become like little children. Trust him. Trust him. Trust him with your life."

From Piper's opening prayer in "The Son of Man Came to Give His Life a Ransom for Many":

"We call this a worship service and I sometimes think we get it all wrong. It is Your service of us now. You are serving us with Your word. You are serving us by Your spirit. You are serving us a banquet of truth and of life-changing insight into your character and your glory. And I pray that You would humble us not to serve You now, but to receive Your service."

I highly encourage you to listen to these - they're tremendous.

Romans 12:1

I enjoyed this sermon on Romans 12:1 ("I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." - ESV) from John Piper, broadcast this past week as Desiring God's radio podcast on Monday & Tuesday.

Piper caught my attention at a couple of points, which came across in the podcast, but not in the manuscript. First, in talking about our bodies, I'll start with text from the manuscript:

1. Bodies. "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

The point here is not to present to God your bodies and not your mind or heart or spirit. He is going to say very clearly in verse two: "Be transformed in the renewal of your mind." The point is to stress that your body counts. You belong to God soul and body, or you don't belong to him at all. Your body matters.

...

The offering of our bodies is not the offering of our bodily looks but our bodily behavior. In the Bible the body is not significant because of the way it looks, but because of the way it acts. The body is given to us to make visible the beauty of Christ. And Christ, at the hour of his greatest beauty, was repulsive to look at. Isaiah 53:2-3 describes him: "He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows,and acquainted with grief." The beauty of Christ is the beauty of love, not the beauty of looks. His beauty was the beauty of sacrifice, not skin.

God doesn't demand our bodies because he wants models for Mademoiselle or Planet Muscle. He demands our bodies because he wants models of mercy.

This is where I tried to get down what he said in the podcast, expounding on his manuscript:

We need to embed this biblical truth into the minds & hearts of our little ones, beginning at 2, 3. What kind of a bathing suit do you put your three year old in? You think you're going to change them at 13? Don't count on it.

We need to embed into our children this truth. My body means, before God, my behavior, not my looks. For the sake of anorexia, for the sake of bulimia ... because, in part, of a culture that is so unbelievingly relenting in the lies it tells about bodies. From the littlest girl and the littlest boy, lie after lie after lie is coming to them about what their body means. And I'm afraid many parents play right into it.

If we could just embed in our children the truth. God looks on the inward man and how it works itself out in mercy by the body. He does not look upon the body to see its muscles and curves and hair distribution and complexion. If only we could help them early on.

...

You have a body to give bodily evidence that Jesus is your treasure. ... And that will mainly show by your behavior, and not your looks.

Then, in talking about "holy." Again, I'll start with text from the manuscript:

3. Holy. "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

Probably the best explanation of holy bodies comes from Romans 6:13 where Paul said almost the very same thing he says here, using the very language of "presenting" our bodies to God, only he refers to our bodily "members" and not just our bodies. "Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life [i.e., a living sacrifice], and your members to God as instruments for righteousness."

And more "expounding" on his manuscript from the podcast:

Let these hands be for instruments of righteousness in the world. As they click on the keyboard or push the mouse and click, let every click be righteousness. Swear it! Nail it! "I will not make my index finger on the left key an instrument of unrighteousness." Swear it! Oh, brothers, draw a line in the sand, before you meet Jesus. and make these hands holy.

What does it say in 1 Timothy? "I beseech all men everywhere to lift holy hands in prayer." Are they dirty? What have you done with your hands in the last 24 hours? What keys have you punched? What have you touched? What magaziness have you opened? What channels have you turned to with these hands? You have defiled hands this morning, defiled eyes, defiled mind? I am so thankful for the blood of Jesus, are you not? It is only through Christ that these hands can be acceptable.

Sovereign Grace Messages

From JT at Between Two Worlds:

Keith Plummer points out that "Sovereign Grace Ministries is giving an invaluable gift to the body of Christ by making their store's entire collection of MP3 messages available for free download. Audios are sorted by topic, event, and speaker." Here are some of the speakers:

Randy Alcorn
Mark Altrogge
Mike Bullmore
Mark Dever
Ligon Duncan
Wayne Grudem
Joshua Harris
C. J. Mahaney
John MacArthur
Carolyn McCulley
Albert Mohler
John Piper
David Powlison
Ken Sande
R.C. Sproul
Bruce Ware

Father's Day

As my first Father's Day as a father draws to a close, I wanted to share this exhortation to dads from a sermon given by John Piper on Father's Day 1986:

[Children] ought to see in their human father a reflection—albeit imperfect—of the heavenly Father in his strength and tenderness, in his wrath and mercy, in his exaltation and condescension, in his surpassing wisdom and patient guidance. The task of every human father is to be for his children an image of the Father in heaven.

After reading that and thinking of the immense task that lies before me, I could only give thanks to my Heavenly Father for providing an earthly father that was such a reflection for me. So thank you Dad, and thank You, Abba, Father.

(HT: Desiring God Blog)

New Attitude 2007

From Justin Taylor:

The New Attitude audio messages are all now available for free download (free registration required):

• Joshua Harris – Discernment
• Mark Dever – Discern Your Doctrine
• Albert Mohler – Discern Your Culture
• C.J. Mahaney – Discern Your Heart
• Eric Simmons – Discern the Graymatters
• John Piper – Discern What Pleases God: Himself
• John Piper – Discern What Pleases God: Personal Obedience
• C.J. Mahaney – Discern How to Apply

They write:

For the first time ever, we're offering all audio messages from this conference as free MP3 downloads. You can download them one by one or choose the download set of all eight messages. (In order to view these free downloads, you'll need to log in to our online store or follow the easy instructions to create an account.) In addition, an MP3 CD containing all conference sessions will be available for $12.00 next week.

Although the conference is over, the conversation on humble orthodoxy continues. Visit www.newattitude.org for blog posts, free downloads, and other resources to help you apply the truth of God's Word to your life.

God has used Piper & Mahaney to teach me a lot in the past 7 or 8 years, and I'm looking forward to listening to each of these messages.

The Compost Pile

As I continue to "work" my way through John Piper's sermon series on marriage, I listened to "Marriage: Forgiving and Forbearing" (read or listen) today. He ended the sermon with an analogy of a compost pile that I was thought was quite good:

So what about the compost pile? Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future and you see beautiful flowers and trees and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of your marriage they may seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and your spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.

But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but it feels like that’s all there is—cow pies. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. And here you begin to shovel the cow pies. You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say to each other: You know, there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can. And then, we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of field. We will pick some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful for the part of field that is sweet.

Our hands may be dirty. And our backs make ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again—because we are chosen and holy and loved.

---

© Desiring God

Once again, follow the links to read or listen to this sermon, or go to the page for the entire sermon series here.

Go There With You

After listening to a couple of John Piper's sermons about marriage (see previous post), I thought back to my wedding. My wife and I will celebrate our 5th anniversary next month. While I was in college, I heard the following song and immediately asked my sister if she would sing it in my wedding. Not exactly a strange request, as my sister has sung in many weddings. The strange part was that I wasn't even dating anybody at the time, let alone planning a wedding. Well, three years later, my sister made good on her word and sang Steven Curtis Chapman's "Go There With You" at my wedding.

I know you've heard me say these words before
But every time I say I love you the words mean something more
I spoke them as a promise right from the start
I said death would be the only thing that could tear us apart
So now that you are standing on the edge of the unknown
I love you means I'll be with you wherever you must go

I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

I see it in your tears you wonder where you are
The wind is growing colder and the sky is growing dark
Though it's something neither of us understands
We can walk through this together if we hold each other's hand
I said for better or for worse I'd be with you
So no matter where you're going I will go there too

I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

I know sometimes I let you down
But I won't let you go; we'll always be together
I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

Marriage

I've been quite blessed with the examples of marriage that God has surrounded me with. My wife and I are probably in the minority, but we don't have any immediate family members or close friends who have suffered through divorce. Not that we're surrounded by perfect people or perfect marriages - not by any means. But we are surrounded, for the most part, by couples who take marriage seriously as a covenant picture of Christ and His church.

John Piper, Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, has been preaching a series on marriage titled "Marriage, Christ, and Covenant: One Flesh for the Glory of God." Here are links to the sermons thus far:

• Staying Married Is Not About Staying in Love (It's About Keeping Covenant), Part 1 - Read or Listen
• Staying Married Is Not About Staying in Love (It's About Keeping Covenant), Part 2 - Read or Listen
• Marriage: God's Showcase of Covenant-Keeping - Read or Listen
• Marriage: Forgiving and Forbearing - Read or Listen
• Marriage: Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant - Read or Listen
• Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 1 - Read or Listen
• Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 2 - Read or Listen
• The Beautiful Faith of Fearless Submission - Read or Listen

If you really want, you can even watch video of any of these sermons at DesiringGod.org.

I've listened to the first two sermons and been humbled to be reminded that my marriage is not about me, or even about loving my wife, but is ultimately about glorifying God, who sent His Son to give His life for His bride. Whether or not you read or listen to any (or all) of the sermons, please remember to pray for the marriages of those around you. Pray that they would be examples, dim as they may be, reflecting the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

Where Were You?, Part 3

Today I listened to CJ Mahaney's sermon from September 16, 2001. In it, he addresses the question of how Christians are to respond to the despicable acts of terror perpetrated on our country on 9/11. Mahaney gave a passionate, eloquent message based on Romans 12:9-13:5, explaining the difference between the role of Christians as members of the body of Christ vs. the role of our government as "the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath." You can listen to the sermon here, or read it here. The sermon climaxes in Mahaney's closing prayer. I highly recommend downloading the mp3 file, if only to listen to the prayer, which is about the last 6 minutes. Text doesn't do it justice, but here is an excerpt from the prayer:

Lord, we pray that you would have mercy on all those who have been involved in this atrocity. By your Spirit, through your Word, through your church, throughout the world, we pray that there would be conviction of sin upon all those who have participated and perpetrated these acts. We pray that you would awaken their consciences; we pray that they would recognize the sinfulness of what they have done. We pray that they would recognize that they have offended you and have aroused your wrath. We pray that they would fear you and we pray that they would flee to the Cross and appeal for forgiveness of their sins.

Lord, we pray for there to be conversions among these various terrorist networks. We pray for a mighty work of your Spirit, the glory of which can only be ascribed to you. We pray that in the months and years to come, we will hear of individuals who have been genuinely converted by the grace of God through the proclamation of the gospel. Father, we as your church, representing you, and in obedience to your Word, do not repay evil with evil, but instead join our voices together to appeal to you to have the same mercy on them that we experienced when we heard the gospel, when you forgave our sins, when you regenerated our hearts. Extend that mercy to yet another group of undeserving sinners, we pray for the glory of your Son.