The Good News About Bad Churches

Charlie was an active 11-year-old with autism. His parents had been thinking about attending church. They decided it was time to try to find a congregation that would love them, and love their son. About halfway through Sunday school one morning, Charlie's parents were summoned. The volunteers couldn't handle him. They were asked to find another church, because this church "just couldn't meet his needs." Other churches conveyed the same sentiment. The family finally gave up and decided that attending church was too hard. 

 

We all know people who have been hurt by the church. People who have been so offended, wounded, or even abused that they have given up on it. Perhaps you've had this experience yourself.   Continue at Diane Leclerc

Our Desperate Condition, God’s Amazing Provision

Albert N. Martin was the pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, NJ for over 40 years. In recent years due to health issues he had moved to Michigan to be closer to his wife’s family. One day, while I was still living in New Jersey about 45 minutes away from Montville, I had heard he would be back to visit Trinity and would preach during the Sunday morning service.

I wasn’t a member there, but I had visited on multiple occasions to sit under Pastor Martin’s preaching. So I went back to Trinity with a good friend of mine who is a member there. And I was excited. I was looking forward to hear what Pastor Martin had to say. What wonderful message, exhortation, rebuke, did he have for the congregation he loved and shepherded for nearly half a century?

He began his message by talking about the Bible, how it’s quite a large book, and really is more like a library, being a collection of books. And then he started talking about the overarching message of the Bible that’s recognizable in certain “capsule statements” that are given throughout revelation.

God has given us these wonderful little capsule statements that give us the heart of the whole message of the Bible. And those statements become like a door into this marvelous, panoramic, overarching message of Bible. And if you can grasp those particular portions, you have a handle on what the Bible is all about. (04:03-04:39)  Continue at Mike Riccardi

Christmas Is Disturbing

“Disturbing?” you say. “You don’t need to tell me Christmas is disturbing. It disturbs my children, my routine, my bank account. It’s just about the most disturbing event of the year.”

 

Surely Christmas does disturb the children, but the excitement they enjoy is usually worth it. Yes, our routines are disturbed, but when all is done, most people enjoy the decorating, shopping, cooking, and social occasions. And while the holiday can disturb our bank accounts, many of us still find joy in giving to our children, spouses, relatives, and friends.

These things aren’t really what I have in mind when I say that Christmas is disturbing. I mean that the religious aspects of the celebration are disturbing. Or should be.

Many people who otherwise ignore God and the church have some religious feeling, or feel they ought to, at this time of the year. So they make their way to a church service or Christmas program. And when they go, they come away feeling vaguely warmed or at least better for having gone, but not disturbed.   Keep Reading>>>

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The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News

In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul defines spiritual death as blindness to glory. Last Friday we looked into God’s prescription for that blindness. In the sovereign exercise of His will, God shines in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. He overcomes our resistance to the Gospel—caused by our blindness to glory—by giving us the light needed to see things as they actually are. This is the miracle of regeneration.

The Deepest Level of God’s Redemptive Work

Along with understanding this sovereign prescription, we observed that in 2Cor 4:4 and 4:6 Paul outlines three levels of God’s redemptive work, and that as we progress through each level we come to greater depth and greater ultimacy in God’s work of salvation. God has shone in our hearts to give the Light (that’s level 1) of the knowledge, or of the gospel (that’s level 2), of the glory of God in the face of Christ (that’s level 3). This is the deepest level of the redemptive work of God. This is what our eyes are opened to see. This is what salvation is about!

Can you see that in the text? Paul calls the gospel “the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” And Scripture frequently speaks of salvation in these terms. Hebrews 2:10 describes Jesus’ ministry of salvation as “bringing many sons to glory.” 1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ suffered once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring us to God. And 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14 says it in a shockingly clear way: God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Keep Reading>>>

A Place for Weakness

One of the things I appreciate about Michael Horton is that he writes both for the academy and also the congregation. It’s a mark of a good theologian to do both well. Horton is a professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California. Some of his outstanding titles include Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, People and Place, We Believe, and A Better Way. He is also the publisher of the indispensible monthly journal Modern Reformation and host of the White Horse Inn radio program.

This relatively slim volume was originally published with the title Too Good to Be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype, which I rather liked. Zondervan has released it with a new title and a new cover, and I am glad that new attention is being given to this outstanding book.

A Place for Weakness is driven along by an unrelenting but refreshing realism. There are no false promises here. There are no clichés or newly discovered secrets for “living in victory.” Horton helps us understand suffering as unromantic but deeply purposeful. In other words, we do not have to pretend that suffering does not hurt and cause dismay. At the same time, we are confidently pointed to the mysterious comfort that everything that comes our way passes through the hands of our good and sovereign God. “The unity of God’s sovereignty and goodness that will be finally disclosed on the last day has already dawned decisively in the work of Christ” (45).    Keep Reading...

Horton defines “the bottom line of this book” in this way:

The gospel is good news for losers, that in fact we are all losers if we measure ourselves by God’s interpretation of reality rather than our own. The demand for glory, power, comfort, autonomy, health, and wealth creates a vicious cycle of craving and disillusionment. It even creates its own industry of therapists and exercise, style, and self-esteem gurus—and churches—to massage the egos wounded by this hedonism. When crisis hits, the soul is too effete to respond appropriately. We become prisoners of our own felt needs, which were inculcated in us in the first place by the very marketplace that promises a “fix.” We become victims of our own shallow hopes. We are too easily disappointed because we are too easily persuaded that the marketplace always has something that can make us happy (26).

Why the Gospel Is Good News for Believers . . . Now

What Is the Gospel?

The gospel is the good news that God sent Jesus to undo what Adam undid (see, e.g., Heb 2:5–9; 1 Cor 15:20–28; Rom 5:12–19): Jesus died and rose again for sinners, just as God promised (1 Cor 15:1–8). It is the good news that we can once more be truly human. No longer are we, like Adam, evicted from God’s presence and under his wrath. The garden—the kingdom—has been regained with a plus. It is the good news that we sons of the second Adam have been remade—not just considered to be remade (Rom 3:21–26)—but actually remade—not fully . . . yet (2 Cor 3:18)—but actually, truly. We’ve been re-born, made new, which is to say re-generated. We sons of the second Adam were remade, raised with him to new life. His resurrection guarantees our own (1 Pet 1:3; Eph 2:5–6; et al.). We are new creatures (2 Cor 5:17). Yes, this means something terribly important for the future (1 Cor 6:14; 2 Cor 4:14). And, yes, it means we’ve got something we must share now with our unbelieving neighbors before its too late. However, for far too long we’ve missed what the gospel means for us now. We’ve missed why the gospel is good news for Christians today. Read it all HERE

Unspeakably Good News! Our Times, His Appointment

”To know that while our feelings fluctuate, and our frames vary, and our experience ebbs and flows as the tide, yet our righteousness varies not, changes not, and that we are not justified one moment more really, more freely, more completely than another, is a mercy unspeakably great.” ~Octavius Winslow 

A Father’s Hand

“My times are in your hand.” Psalm 31:15

Our times of adversity are also in God’s hand. As every sunbeam that brightens, so every cloud that darkens, comes from God. We are subject to great and sudden reverses in our earthly condition. Joy is often succeeded by grief, prosperity by adversity. We are on the pinnacle today, tomorrow at its bottom. Oh! What a change may one event and one moment create! But, beloved, ALL is from the Lord. Continue Reading>>>

The Good News We Almost Forgot

As much as I disliked Catechism nights and as much as I came to dread publicly reciting the answers, I have often since expressed my gratitude for them. Though I was sometimes quite committed to not learning, still I did learn and those classes, based on that old document, helped lay a theological foundation in my life. That Catechism teaches sound theology and does so in a time-honored way. As the church emphasized the importance of theology, taking time to deliberately lead their teenagers into a systematic faith, they taught us that the Christian faith could never be less than theology. They didn't just tell us what to believe, but they taught us how important it is to believe what is true. Read the whole thing HERE

The Good News We Almost Forgot

I’ve written before about how awkward it can feel to plug your own books. But I press on nonetheless, because you all are kind and I believe this book is important. My newest book, The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism will be available at the end of March. If the topic itself doesn’t thrill you, just look at the sweet picture of Ursinus. He’s part professor, part Santa Claus, part back-from-Davy-Jones’-Locker Pirate of the Caribbean.

Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of the Reformed confessional tradition in general and of the Heidelberg Catechism in particular. But even if you are not Reformed or have a “no creed but the Bible” aversion to catechisms and confessions I encourage you give the Heidelberg a try. It is better than you think.

And for those of you who grew up with the Catechism and would like to forget the experience, I assure you: the Heidelberg is better than you remember.

Here’s a few paragraphs from the opening couple pages. Read the rest HERE

The Lamp of the Body