"Quote" of the Week

I hate all your show and pretense

The hypocrisy of your praise

The hypocrisy of your festivals

I hate all your show

Away with your noisy worship

Away with your noisy hymns

I stomp on my ears when you're singing 'em

I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice

An endless procession of righteous living, living

Instead let there be a flood of justice

Instead of a show

Jon Foreman, Instead of a Show

Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly.  Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.  Alas for the day!  For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.  Joel 1:14-15

Many prefer pastors don’t preach on God’s judgment, but rather on His mercy and grace and love.  What they fail to realize is the stories of God’s past acts of justice and judgment are stories of His love and mercy toward us.  People say, “You are never going to win anybody to Jesus by talking about God’s Judgment.  It's His kindness and love that lead people to repentance.”  Scripture is clear that God’s past judgments and His promise of a future judgment are His mercy.  Reminding us of these things is a loving and kind thing for God to do because they remind us that there is a greater day of judgment coming and are meant to lead us to repentance.

For more on how God's past judgments and His promise of a future judgement are His mercy click HERE and listen to my sermon on JOEL.

"Quote" of the Week

For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.  But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.  
1 Thessalonians 5:2-3

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

The story of God’s love is unique.  In our happy love stories, the guy and the girl who are deserving of love end up in love with one another while the villain gets what is coming to him or her.  Not in God’s story.  In God’s story, the villain is the one who is forgiven and restored and the one who lives happily ever after.  And that should not upset us, because that’s who we are. 

We are the villain of God’s story.  We are the undeserving—we are the immoral—we are the adulterers—we are the enemies—we are the wicked scoundrels—we are the anti-heroes in God’s story.  Yet, though that’s the case, God pursues us and forgives us and restores us so that we can live happily ever after with Him.  The story of God’s love for us is a very radical and unique love story.

For more on God’s unique love for us, click HERE and listen to my sermon on Hosea.  

"Quote" of the Week

"How deep the Father's love for us,

How vast beyond all measure

That He should give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure."

HOW DEEP THE FATHERS LOVE FOR US, Steward Townend, 2002

Once when speaking to a small group of college students in a dorm, I asked to borrow a Bible.  A student handed me a New Testament, and I responded that I wanted a Bible.  The student replied that it was a Bible.  “No,” I said, “that’s just a portion of the Bible.  I’m looking for a copy of the entire Bible.”  This exchange highlighted a viewpoint that pervades the church today.  We tend to neglect the Old Testament, as if it were irrelevant to the people of God and the life of the church today.  We think that because we live in the age of the New Testament, we can find everything we need in that portion of Scripture. 

Augustine, who said that “the new is in the old concealed, and the old is in the new revealed,” found continuity between the Old and New Testaments.  There must be come difference between them because we distinguish between them.  At the same time, although the New Testament possesses a certain newness, it grew out of the Old Testament and remains forever linked to it.  We dare not overlook the element of continuity between the two testaments.  We cannot understand the New Testament apart from the Old, in which God disclosed his character and nature. 

The heretic Marcion produced the first New Testament canon.  His New Testament eliminated any reference to the God of the Old Testament, because Marcion believed that God was an ill-tempered demiurge or subdeity.  Christ, he thought, came to reveal the true God.  Marcion excluded all passages in the New Testament linking Christ to the Old Testament God.  He excluded from his canon Matthew, Hebrews, and a few other books.  Against the Marcionite heresy the church was awakened to the need to delineate carefully all the books to be recognized as belonging to the canon of the New Testament. 

The church was concerned not only to give us the right number of books, but also to speak to this heretical view that had Jesus at war with the God of the Old Testament.  Although that was many centuries ago, Marcionism continues to raise its head.  In every generation the church has to deal with subtle attempts to undermine the Old Testament’s importance. 

The history of redemption did not begin with the birth of Jesus.  In a sense Jesus’ birth was the culmination of all the promises that God had made over the centuries.

Sproul, R.C.  Truths We Confess.  Phillipsburg, New Jersey:  P&R Publishing.  2006.  PP. 219-220

"The new (testament) is in the old (testament) concealed, and the old is in the new revealed."  -Augustine of Hippo