New Reformation Blog
Growth in Grace
When I speak of growth in grace, I do not for a moment mean that a believer’s interest in Christ can grow. I do not mean that he can grow in safety, acceptance with God, or security. I do not mean that he can ever be more justified, more pardoned, more forgiven, more at peace with God than he is the first moment that he believes. I hold firmly that the justification of a believer is a finished, perfect, and complete work and that the weakest saint (though he may not know and feel it) is as completely justified as the strongest. I hold firmly that our election, calling, and standing in Christ admit of no degrees, increase, or diminution. If any one dreams that by growth in grace I mean growth in justification, he is utterly mistaken about the whole point I am considering. I would go to the stake (God helping me) for the glorious truth that, in the matter of justification before God, every believer is complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10). Nothing can be added to his justification from the moment he believes and nothing taken away.
When I speak of growth in grace, I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigour, and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this: that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart; he manifests more of it in his life; he is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace. I leave it to others to describe such a man’s condition by any words they please. For myself, I think the truest and best account of him is this: he is growing in grace.
By J. C. Ryle
Posted by Steven Lawson on February 25, 2010
Love to Christ Strength for the Weak
By C. H. Spurgeon
Excerpted from The Saint and His Savior, p.272-275
Love to Christ will impel us to defend him against his foes.—
“If any touch my friend, or his good name
it is my honor and my love to free his blasted fame
From the least spot or thought of blame.”
Good men are more tender over the reputation of Christ than over their own good name; for they are willing to lose the world’s favorable opinion rather than that Christ should he dishonored. This is no more than Jesus has a right to expect. Would not he be a sorry brother who should hear me insulted and slandered, and yet be dumb? Would not he be destitute of affection who would allow the character of his nearest relative to he trampled in the dust without a struggle on his behalf? And is not he a poor style of Christian who would calmly submit to hear his Lord abused? We could bear to be trampled in the very mire that He might be exalted; but to see our glorious Head dishonored, is a sight we cannot tamely behold. We would not, like Peter, smite his enemies with the sword of man; but we would use the sword of the Spirit as well as we are enabled. Oh! how has our blood boiled when the name of Jesus has been the theme of scornful jest! how have we been ready to invoke the fire of Elias upon the guilty blasphemers I or when our more carnal heat has subsided, how have we wept, even to the sobbing of a child, at the reproach cast upon his most hallowed name! Many a time we have been ready to burst with anguish when we have been speechless before the scoffer, because the Lord had shut us up, that we could not come forth; but at other seasons, with courage more than we had considered to be within the range of our capability, we have boldly reproved the wicked, and sent them back abashed.
It is a lovely spectacle to behold the timid and feeble defending the citadel of truth: not with hard blows of logic, or sounding cannonade of rhetoric—but with that tearful earnestness, and implicit confidence, against which the attacks of revilers are utterly powerless. Over-thrown in argument, they overcome by faith; covered with contempt, they think it all joy if they may but avert a solitary stain from the escutcheon of their Lord. “Call me what thou wilt,” says the believer, “but speak not ill of my Beloved. Here, plough these shoulders with your lashes, but spare yourselves the sin of cursing him! Ay, let me die: I am all too happy to be slain, if my Lord’s most glorious cause shall live !”
Ask every regenerate child of God whether he does not count it his privilege to maintain the honor of his Master’s name; and though his answer may be worded with holy caution, you will not fail to discover in it enough of that determined resolution which, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, will enable him to stand fast in the evil day. He may be careful to reply to such a question, lest he should be presumptuous; but should he stand like the three holy children before an enraged tyrant, in the very mouth of a burning fiery furnace, his answer, like theirs, would he, “We are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us out of the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king! But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
In some circles it is believed that in the event of another reign of persecution, there are very few in our churches who would endure the fiery trial: nothing, we think, is more unfounded. It is our firm opinion that the feeblest saint in our midst would receive grace for the struggle, and come off more than a conqueror. God’s children are the same now as ever. Real piety will as well endure the fire in one century as another. There is the same love to impel the martyrdom, the same grace to sustain the sufferer, the same promises to cheer his heart, and the same crown to adorn his head. We believe that those followers of Jesus who may perhaps one day be called to the stake, will die as readily as any who have gone before. Love is still as strong as death, and grace is still made perfect in weakness.
Sweet is the cross, above all sweets,
To souls enamoured with His smiles,
The keenest woe life ever meets,
Love strips of all its terrors, sad beguiles.
This is as true today, as it was a thousand years ago. We may be weak in grace, but grace is not weak: it is still omnipotent, and able to endure the trying day.
There is one form of this jealousy for the honor of the cross, which will ever distinguish the devout Christian:—he will tremble lest he himself, by word or deed, by omis-sion of duty or commission of sin, should dishonor the holy religion which he has professed. He will hold perpetual controversy with “sinful self” on this account, and will loathe himself when he has inadvertently given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. The King’s favorite will be sad if, by mistake or carelessness, he has been the abettor of traitors: he desires to be beyond reproach, that his Monarch may suffer no disgrace from his courtier. Nothing has injured the cause of Christ more than the inconsistencies of his avowed friends. Jealousy for the honor of Christ is an admirable mark of grace.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
John Rogers - The First Marian Martyr
In the next couple posts, we will look at specific individuals whom God counted worthy to suffer for His name and were used in mighty ways. What an encouragement this should to us as we seek to live for Christ and make Him known. May your passion be ignited and convictions strengthened as you read about these saints of old.
John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, and Reader of St. Paul’s, London
“John Rogers was educated at Cambridge, and was afterward many years chaplain to the merchant adventurers at Antwerp in Brabant. Here he met with the celebrated martyr William Tyndale, and Miles Coverdale, both voluntary exiles from their country for their aversion to popish superstition and idolatry. They were the instruments of his conversion; and he united with them in that translation of the Bible into English, entitled “The Translation of Thomas Matthew.” From the Scriptures he knew that unlawful vows may be lawfully broken; hence he married, and removed to Wittenberg in Saxony, for the improvement of learning; and he there learned the Dutch language, and received the charge of a congregation, which he faithfully executed for many years. On King Edward’s accession, he left Saxony to promote the work of reformation in England; and, after some time, Nicholas Ridley, then bishop of London, gave him a prebend in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dean and chapter appointed him reader of the divinity lesson there. Here he continued until Queen Mary’s succession to the throne, when the Gospel and true religion were banished, and the Antichrist of Rome, with his superstition and idolatry, introduced.
The circumstance of Mr. Rogers having preached at Paul’s cross, after Queen Mary arrived at the Tower, has been already stated. He confirmed in his sermon the true doctrine taught in King Edward’s time, and exhorted the people to beware of the pestilence of popery, idolatry, and superstition. For this he was called to account, but so ably defended himself that, for that time, he was dismissed. The proclamation of the queen, however, to prohibit true preaching, gave his enemies a new handle against him. Hence he was again summoned before the council, and commanded to keep his house. He did so, though he might have escaped; and though he perceived the state of the true religion to be desperate. Heknew he could not want a living in Germany; and he could not forget a wife and ten children, and to seek means to succor them. But all these things were insufficient to induce him to depart, and, when once called to answer in Christ’s cause, he stoutly defended it, and hazarded his life for that purpose.
After long imprisonment in his own house, the restless Bonner, bishop of London, caused him to be committed to Newgate, there to be lodged among thieves and murderers.
After Mr. Rogers had been long and straitly imprisoned, and lodged in Newgate among thieves, often examined, and very uncharitably entreated, and at length unjustly and most cruelly condemned by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1555, being Monday in the morning, he was suddenly warned by the keeper of Newgate’s wife, to prepare himself for the fire; who, being then sound asleep, could scarce be awaked. At length being raised and awaked, and bid to make haste, then said he, “IKf it be so, I need not tie my points.” And so was had down, first to bishop Bonner to be degraded: which being done, he craved of Bonner but one petition; and Bonner asked what that should be. Mr. Rogers replied that he might speak a few words with his wife before his burning, but that could not be obtained of him.
When the time came that he should be brought out of Newgate to Smithfield, the place of his execution, Mr. Woodroofe, one of the sheriffs, first came to Mr. Rogers, and asked him if he would revoke his abominable doctrine, and the evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar. Mr. Rogers answered, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.” Then Mr. Woodroofe said, “Thou art an heretic.” “That shall be known,” quoth Mr. Rogers, “at the Day of Judgment.” “Well,” said Mr. Woodroofe, “I will never pray for thee.” “But I will pray for you,” said Mr. Rogers; and so was brought the same day, the fourth of February, by the sheriffs, towards Smithfield, saying the Psalm Miserere by the way, all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy; with great praises and thanks to God for the same. And there in the presence of Mr. Rochester, comptroller of the queen’s household, Sir Richard Southwell, both the sheriffs, and a great number of people, he was burnt to ashes, washing his hands in the flame as he was burning. A little before his burning, his pardon was brought, if he would have recanted; but he utterly refused it. He was the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield. TGhis sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.”
Excerpt from Fox’s Book of Martyrs
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
Preach the Word - Tabletalk Magazine
Every season of reformation and every hour of spiritual awakening has been ushered in by a recovery of biblical preaching. This cause and effect is timeless and inseparable. J.H. Merle D’Aubigné, noted Reformation historian, writes, “The only true reformation is that which emanates from the Word of God.” That is to say, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were raised up by God to lead this era. At the forefront, it was their recovery of expository preaching that helped launch this religious movement that turned Europe and, eventually, Western civilization upside down. With sola Scriptura as their battle cry, a new generation of biblical preachers restored the pulpit to its former glory and revived apostolic Christianity.
The same was true in the golden era of the puritans in the seventeenth century. A recovery of biblical preaching spread like wildfire through the dry religion of Scotland and England. A resurgence of authentic Christianity came as an army of biblical expositors — John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Samuel Rutherford, and others — marched upon the British Empire with an open Bible and uplifted voice. In its wake, the monarchy was shaken and history was altered.
The eighteenth century witnessed exactly the same. The Bible-saturated preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Tennents thundered through the early colonies. The Atlantic seaboard was electrified with the proclamation of the gospel, and New England was taken by storm. The Word was preached, souls were saved, and the kingdom expanded.
The fact is, the restoration of biblical preaching has always been the leading factor in any revival of genuine Christianity. Philip Schaff writes, “Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures.” That is to say, every great revival in the church has been ushered in by a return to expository preaching.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher of Westminster Chapel London, stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to true preaching — biblical preaching, expository preaching — is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must begin in the pulpit.
In his day, the prophet Amos warned of an approaching famine, a deadly drought that would cover the land. But not an absence of mere food or water, for this scarcity would be far more fatal. It would be a famine for hearing God’s Word (Amos 8:11). Surely, the church today finds itself in such similar days of shortage. Tragically, exposition is being replaced with entertainment, doctrine with drama, theology with theatrics, and preaching with performances. What is so desperately needed today is for pastors to return to their highest calling — the divine summons to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
What is expository preaching? The Genevan reformer John Calvin explained, “Preaching is the public exposition of Scripture by the man sent from God, in which God Himself is present in judgment and in grace.” In other words, God is unusually present, by His Spirit, in the preaching of His Word. Such preaching starts in a biblical text, stays in it, and shows its God-intended meaning in a life-changing fashion.
This was the final charge of Paul to young Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Such preaching necessitates declaring the full counsel of God in Scripture. The entire written Word must be expounded. No truth should be left untaught, no sin unexposed, no grace unoffered, no promise undelivered.
A heaven-sent revival will only come when Scripture is enthroned once again in the pulpit. There must be the clarion declaration of the Bible, the kind of preaching that gives a clear explanation of a biblical text with compelling application, exhortation, and appeal.
Every preacher must confine himself to the truths of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. The man of God has nothing to say apart from the Bible. He must not parade his personal opinions in the pulpit. Nor may he expound worldly philosophies. The preacher is limited to one task — preach the Word.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” This remains the crying need of the hour.
May a new generation of strong men step forward and speak up, and may they do so loud and clear. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
By Steve Lawson
© Tabletalk magazine
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church - January 22-23, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church
~ The Supremacy of Christ ~
Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker
January 22-23, 2010
Charleston Baptist Temple
209 Morris Street
Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
When I speak of growth in grace, I do not for a moment mean that a believer’s interest in Christ can grow. I do not mean that he can grow in safety, acceptance with God, or security. I do not mean that he can ever be more justified, more pardoned, more forgiven, more at peace with God than he is the first moment that he believes. I hold firmly that the justification of a believer is a finished, perfect, and complete work and that the weakest saint (though he may not know and feel it) is as completely justified as the strongest. I hold firmly that our election, calling, and standing in Christ admit of no degrees, increase, or diminution. If any one dreams that by growth in grace I mean growth in justification, he is utterly mistaken about the whole point I am considering. I would go to the stake (God helping me) for the glorious truth that, in the matter of justification before God, every believer is complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10). Nothing can be added to his justification from the moment he believes and nothing taken away.
When I speak of growth in grace, I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigour, and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this: that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart; he manifests more of it in his life; he is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace. I leave it to others to describe such a man’s condition by any words they please. For myself, I think the truest and best account of him is this: he is growing in grace.
By J. C. Ryle
Posted by Steven Lawson on February 25, 2010
Love to Christ Strength for the Weak
By C. H. Spurgeon
Excerpted from The Saint and His Savior, p.272-275
Love to Christ will impel us to defend him against his foes.—
“If any touch my friend, or his good name
it is my honor and my love to free his blasted fame
From the least spot or thought of blame.”
Good men are more tender over the reputation of Christ than over their own good name; for they are willing to lose the world’s favorable opinion rather than that Christ should he dishonored. This is no more than Jesus has a right to expect. Would not he be a sorry brother who should hear me insulted and slandered, and yet be dumb? Would not he be destitute of affection who would allow the character of his nearest relative to he trampled in the dust without a struggle on his behalf? And is not he a poor style of Christian who would calmly submit to hear his Lord abused? We could bear to be trampled in the very mire that He might be exalted; but to see our glorious Head dishonored, is a sight we cannot tamely behold. We would not, like Peter, smite his enemies with the sword of man; but we would use the sword of the Spirit as well as we are enabled. Oh! how has our blood boiled when the name of Jesus has been the theme of scornful jest! how have we been ready to invoke the fire of Elias upon the guilty blasphemers I or when our more carnal heat has subsided, how have we wept, even to the sobbing of a child, at the reproach cast upon his most hallowed name! Many a time we have been ready to burst with anguish when we have been speechless before the scoffer, because the Lord had shut us up, that we could not come forth; but at other seasons, with courage more than we had considered to be within the range of our capability, we have boldly reproved the wicked, and sent them back abashed.
It is a lovely spectacle to behold the timid and feeble defending the citadel of truth: not with hard blows of logic, or sounding cannonade of rhetoric—but with that tearful earnestness, and implicit confidence, against which the attacks of revilers are utterly powerless. Over-thrown in argument, they overcome by faith; covered with contempt, they think it all joy if they may but avert a solitary stain from the escutcheon of their Lord. “Call me what thou wilt,” says the believer, “but speak not ill of my Beloved. Here, plough these shoulders with your lashes, but spare yourselves the sin of cursing him! Ay, let me die: I am all too happy to be slain, if my Lord’s most glorious cause shall live !”
Ask every regenerate child of God whether he does not count it his privilege to maintain the honor of his Master’s name; and though his answer may be worded with holy caution, you will not fail to discover in it enough of that determined resolution which, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, will enable him to stand fast in the evil day. He may be careful to reply to such a question, lest he should be presumptuous; but should he stand like the three holy children before an enraged tyrant, in the very mouth of a burning fiery furnace, his answer, like theirs, would he, “We are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us out of the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king! But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
In some circles it is believed that in the event of another reign of persecution, there are very few in our churches who would endure the fiery trial: nothing, we think, is more unfounded. It is our firm opinion that the feeblest saint in our midst would receive grace for the struggle, and come off more than a conqueror. God’s children are the same now as ever. Real piety will as well endure the fire in one century as another. There is the same love to impel the martyrdom, the same grace to sustain the sufferer, the same promises to cheer his heart, and the same crown to adorn his head. We believe that those followers of Jesus who may perhaps one day be called to the stake, will die as readily as any who have gone before. Love is still as strong as death, and grace is still made perfect in weakness.
Sweet is the cross, above all sweets,
To souls enamoured with His smiles,
The keenest woe life ever meets,
Love strips of all its terrors, sad beguiles.
This is as true today, as it was a thousand years ago. We may be weak in grace, but grace is not weak: it is still omnipotent, and able to endure the trying day.
There is one form of this jealousy for the honor of the cross, which will ever distinguish the devout Christian:—he will tremble lest he himself, by word or deed, by omis-sion of duty or commission of sin, should dishonor the holy religion which he has professed. He will hold perpetual controversy with “sinful self” on this account, and will loathe himself when he has inadvertently given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. The King’s favorite will be sad if, by mistake or carelessness, he has been the abettor of traitors: he desires to be beyond reproach, that his Monarch may suffer no disgrace from his courtier. Nothing has injured the cause of Christ more than the inconsistencies of his avowed friends. Jealousy for the honor of Christ is an admirable mark of grace.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
John Rogers - The First Marian Martyr
In the next couple posts, we will look at specific individuals whom God counted worthy to suffer for His name and were used in mighty ways. What an encouragement this should to us as we seek to live for Christ and make Him known. May your passion be ignited and convictions strengthened as you read about these saints of old.
John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, and Reader of St. Paul’s, London
“John Rogers was educated at Cambridge, and was afterward many years chaplain to the merchant adventurers at Antwerp in Brabant. Here he met with the celebrated martyr William Tyndale, and Miles Coverdale, both voluntary exiles from their country for their aversion to popish superstition and idolatry. They were the instruments of his conversion; and he united with them in that translation of the Bible into English, entitled “The Translation of Thomas Matthew.” From the Scriptures he knew that unlawful vows may be lawfully broken; hence he married, and removed to Wittenberg in Saxony, for the improvement of learning; and he there learned the Dutch language, and received the charge of a congregation, which he faithfully executed for many years. On King Edward’s accession, he left Saxony to promote the work of reformation in England; and, after some time, Nicholas Ridley, then bishop of London, gave him a prebend in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dean and chapter appointed him reader of the divinity lesson there. Here he continued until Queen Mary’s succession to the throne, when the Gospel and true religion were banished, and the Antichrist of Rome, with his superstition and idolatry, introduced.
The circumstance of Mr. Rogers having preached at Paul’s cross, after Queen Mary arrived at the Tower, has been already stated. He confirmed in his sermon the true doctrine taught in King Edward’s time, and exhorted the people to beware of the pestilence of popery, idolatry, and superstition. For this he was called to account, but so ably defended himself that, for that time, he was dismissed. The proclamation of the queen, however, to prohibit true preaching, gave his enemies a new handle against him. Hence he was again summoned before the council, and commanded to keep his house. He did so, though he might have escaped; and though he perceived the state of the true religion to be desperate. Heknew he could not want a living in Germany; and he could not forget a wife and ten children, and to seek means to succor them. But all these things were insufficient to induce him to depart, and, when once called to answer in Christ’s cause, he stoutly defended it, and hazarded his life for that purpose.
After long imprisonment in his own house, the restless Bonner, bishop of London, caused him to be committed to Newgate, there to be lodged among thieves and murderers.
After Mr. Rogers had been long and straitly imprisoned, and lodged in Newgate among thieves, often examined, and very uncharitably entreated, and at length unjustly and most cruelly condemned by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1555, being Monday in the morning, he was suddenly warned by the keeper of Newgate’s wife, to prepare himself for the fire; who, being then sound asleep, could scarce be awaked. At length being raised and awaked, and bid to make haste, then said he, “IKf it be so, I need not tie my points.” And so was had down, first to bishop Bonner to be degraded: which being done, he craved of Bonner but one petition; and Bonner asked what that should be. Mr. Rogers replied that he might speak a few words with his wife before his burning, but that could not be obtained of him.
When the time came that he should be brought out of Newgate to Smithfield, the place of his execution, Mr. Woodroofe, one of the sheriffs, first came to Mr. Rogers, and asked him if he would revoke his abominable doctrine, and the evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar. Mr. Rogers answered, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.” Then Mr. Woodroofe said, “Thou art an heretic.” “That shall be known,” quoth Mr. Rogers, “at the Day of Judgment.” “Well,” said Mr. Woodroofe, “I will never pray for thee.” “But I will pray for you,” said Mr. Rogers; and so was brought the same day, the fourth of February, by the sheriffs, towards Smithfield, saying the Psalm Miserere by the way, all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy; with great praises and thanks to God for the same. And there in the presence of Mr. Rochester, comptroller of the queen’s household, Sir Richard Southwell, both the sheriffs, and a great number of people, he was burnt to ashes, washing his hands in the flame as he was burning. A little before his burning, his pardon was brought, if he would have recanted; but he utterly refused it. He was the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield. TGhis sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.”
Excerpt from Fox’s Book of Martyrs
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
Preach the Word - Tabletalk Magazine
Every season of reformation and every hour of spiritual awakening has been ushered in by a recovery of biblical preaching. This cause and effect is timeless and inseparable. J.H. Merle D’Aubigné, noted Reformation historian, writes, “The only true reformation is that which emanates from the Word of God.” That is to say, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were raised up by God to lead this era. At the forefront, it was their recovery of expository preaching that helped launch this religious movement that turned Europe and, eventually, Western civilization upside down. With sola Scriptura as their battle cry, a new generation of biblical preachers restored the pulpit to its former glory and revived apostolic Christianity.
The same was true in the golden era of the puritans in the seventeenth century. A recovery of biblical preaching spread like wildfire through the dry religion of Scotland and England. A resurgence of authentic Christianity came as an army of biblical expositors — John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Samuel Rutherford, and others — marched upon the British Empire with an open Bible and uplifted voice. In its wake, the monarchy was shaken and history was altered.
The eighteenth century witnessed exactly the same. The Bible-saturated preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Tennents thundered through the early colonies. The Atlantic seaboard was electrified with the proclamation of the gospel, and New England was taken by storm. The Word was preached, souls were saved, and the kingdom expanded.
The fact is, the restoration of biblical preaching has always been the leading factor in any revival of genuine Christianity. Philip Schaff writes, “Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures.” That is to say, every great revival in the church has been ushered in by a return to expository preaching.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher of Westminster Chapel London, stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to true preaching — biblical preaching, expository preaching — is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must begin in the pulpit.
In his day, the prophet Amos warned of an approaching famine, a deadly drought that would cover the land. But not an absence of mere food or water, for this scarcity would be far more fatal. It would be a famine for hearing God’s Word (Amos 8:11). Surely, the church today finds itself in such similar days of shortage. Tragically, exposition is being replaced with entertainment, doctrine with drama, theology with theatrics, and preaching with performances. What is so desperately needed today is for pastors to return to their highest calling — the divine summons to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
What is expository preaching? The Genevan reformer John Calvin explained, “Preaching is the public exposition of Scripture by the man sent from God, in which God Himself is present in judgment and in grace.” In other words, God is unusually present, by His Spirit, in the preaching of His Word. Such preaching starts in a biblical text, stays in it, and shows its God-intended meaning in a life-changing fashion.
This was the final charge of Paul to young Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Such preaching necessitates declaring the full counsel of God in Scripture. The entire written Word must be expounded. No truth should be left untaught, no sin unexposed, no grace unoffered, no promise undelivered.
A heaven-sent revival will only come when Scripture is enthroned once again in the pulpit. There must be the clarion declaration of the Bible, the kind of preaching that gives a clear explanation of a biblical text with compelling application, exhortation, and appeal.
Every preacher must confine himself to the truths of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. The man of God has nothing to say apart from the Bible. He must not parade his personal opinions in the pulpit. Nor may he expound worldly philosophies. The preacher is limited to one task — preach the Word.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” This remains the crying need of the hour.
May a new generation of strong men step forward and speak up, and may they do so loud and clear. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
By Steve Lawson
© Tabletalk magazine
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church - January 22-23, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church
~ The Supremacy of Christ ~
Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker
January 22-23, 2010
Charleston Baptist Temple
209 Morris Street
Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
By C. H. Spurgeon Excerpted from The Saint and His Savior, p.272-275
Love to Christ will impel us to defend him against his foes.—
“If any touch my friend, or his good name it is my honor and my love to free his blasted fame From the least spot or thought of blame.”
Good men are more tender over the reputation of Christ than over their own good name; for they are willing to lose the world’s favorable opinion rather than that Christ should he dishonored. This is no more than Jesus has a right to expect. Would not he be a sorry brother who should hear me insulted and slandered, and yet be dumb? Would not he be destitute of affection who would allow the character of his nearest relative to he trampled in the dust without a struggle on his behalf? And is not he a poor style of Christian who would calmly submit to hear his Lord abused? We could bear to be trampled in the very mire that He might be exalted; but to see our glorious Head dishonored, is a sight we cannot tamely behold. We would not, like Peter, smite his enemies with the sword of man; but we would use the sword of the Spirit as well as we are enabled. Oh! how has our blood boiled when the name of Jesus has been the theme of scornful jest! how have we been ready to invoke the fire of Elias upon the guilty blasphemers I or when our more carnal heat has subsided, how have we wept, even to the sobbing of a child, at the reproach cast upon his most hallowed name! Many a time we have been ready to burst with anguish when we have been speechless before the scoffer, because the Lord had shut us up, that we could not come forth; but at other seasons, with courage more than we had considered to be within the range of our capability, we have boldly reproved the wicked, and sent them back abashed.
It is a lovely spectacle to behold the timid and feeble defending the citadel of truth: not with hard blows of logic, or sounding cannonade of rhetoric—but with that tearful earnestness, and implicit confidence, against which the attacks of revilers are utterly powerless. Over-thrown in argument, they overcome by faith; covered with contempt, they think it all joy if they may but avert a solitary stain from the escutcheon of their Lord. “Call me what thou wilt,” says the believer, “but speak not ill of my Beloved. Here, plough these shoulders with your lashes, but spare yourselves the sin of cursing him! Ay, let me die: I am all too happy to be slain, if my Lord’s most glorious cause shall live !”
Ask every regenerate child of God whether he does not count it his privilege to maintain the honor of his Master’s name; and though his answer may be worded with holy caution, you will not fail to discover in it enough of that determined resolution which, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, will enable him to stand fast in the evil day. He may be careful to reply to such a question, lest he should be presumptuous; but should he stand like the three holy children before an enraged tyrant, in the very mouth of a burning fiery furnace, his answer, like theirs, would he, “We are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us out of the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king! But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
In some circles it is believed that in the event of another reign of persecution, there are very few in our churches who would endure the fiery trial: nothing, we think, is more unfounded. It is our firm opinion that the feeblest saint in our midst would receive grace for the struggle, and come off more than a conqueror. God’s children are the same now as ever. Real piety will as well endure the fire in one century as another. There is the same love to impel the martyrdom, the same grace to sustain the sufferer, the same promises to cheer his heart, and the same crown to adorn his head. We believe that those followers of Jesus who may perhaps one day be called to the stake, will die as readily as any who have gone before. Love is still as strong as death, and grace is still made perfect in weakness.
Sweet is the cross, above all sweets, To souls enamoured with His smiles, The keenest woe life ever meets, Love strips of all its terrors, sad beguiles.
This is as true today, as it was a thousand years ago. We may be weak in grace, but grace is not weak: it is still omnipotent, and able to endure the trying day.
There is one form of this jealousy for the honor of the cross, which will ever distinguish the devout Christian:—he will tremble lest he himself, by word or deed, by omis-sion of duty or commission of sin, should dishonor the holy religion which he has professed. He will hold perpetual controversy with “sinful self” on this account, and will loathe himself when he has inadvertently given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. The King’s favorite will be sad if, by mistake or carelessness, he has been the abettor of traitors: he desires to be beyond reproach, that his Monarch may suffer no disgrace from his courtier. Nothing has injured the cause of Christ more than the inconsistencies of his avowed friends. Jealousy for the honor of Christ is an admirable mark of grace.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
John Rogers - The First Marian Martyr
In the next couple posts, we will look at specific individuals whom God counted worthy to suffer for His name and were used in mighty ways. What an encouragement this should to us as we seek to live for Christ and make Him known. May your passion be ignited and convictions strengthened as you read about these saints of old.
John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, and Reader of St. Paul’s, London
“John Rogers was educated at Cambridge, and was afterward many years chaplain to the merchant adventurers at Antwerp in Brabant. Here he met with the celebrated martyr William Tyndale, and Miles Coverdale, both voluntary exiles from their country for their aversion to popish superstition and idolatry. They were the instruments of his conversion; and he united with them in that translation of the Bible into English, entitled “The Translation of Thomas Matthew.” From the Scriptures he knew that unlawful vows may be lawfully broken; hence he married, and removed to Wittenberg in Saxony, for the improvement of learning; and he there learned the Dutch language, and received the charge of a congregation, which he faithfully executed for many years. On King Edward’s accession, he left Saxony to promote the work of reformation in England; and, after some time, Nicholas Ridley, then bishop of London, gave him a prebend in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dean and chapter appointed him reader of the divinity lesson there. Here he continued until Queen Mary’s succession to the throne, when the Gospel and true religion were banished, and the Antichrist of Rome, with his superstition and idolatry, introduced.
The circumstance of Mr. Rogers having preached at Paul’s cross, after Queen Mary arrived at the Tower, has been already stated. He confirmed in his sermon the true doctrine taught in King Edward’s time, and exhorted the people to beware of the pestilence of popery, idolatry, and superstition. For this he was called to account, but so ably defended himself that, for that time, he was dismissed. The proclamation of the queen, however, to prohibit true preaching, gave his enemies a new handle against him. Hence he was again summoned before the council, and commanded to keep his house. He did so, though he might have escaped; and though he perceived the state of the true religion to be desperate. Heknew he could not want a living in Germany; and he could not forget a wife and ten children, and to seek means to succor them. But all these things were insufficient to induce him to depart, and, when once called to answer in Christ’s cause, he stoutly defended it, and hazarded his life for that purpose.
After long imprisonment in his own house, the restless Bonner, bishop of London, caused him to be committed to Newgate, there to be lodged among thieves and murderers.
After Mr. Rogers had been long and straitly imprisoned, and lodged in Newgate among thieves, often examined, and very uncharitably entreated, and at length unjustly and most cruelly condemned by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1555, being Monday in the morning, he was suddenly warned by the keeper of Newgate’s wife, to prepare himself for the fire; who, being then sound asleep, could scarce be awaked. At length being raised and awaked, and bid to make haste, then said he, “IKf it be so, I need not tie my points.” And so was had down, first to bishop Bonner to be degraded: which being done, he craved of Bonner but one petition; and Bonner asked what that should be. Mr. Rogers replied that he might speak a few words with his wife before his burning, but that could not be obtained of him.
When the time came that he should be brought out of Newgate to Smithfield, the place of his execution, Mr. Woodroofe, one of the sheriffs, first came to Mr. Rogers, and asked him if he would revoke his abominable doctrine, and the evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar. Mr. Rogers answered, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.” Then Mr. Woodroofe said, “Thou art an heretic.” “That shall be known,” quoth Mr. Rogers, “at the Day of Judgment.” “Well,” said Mr. Woodroofe, “I will never pray for thee.” “But I will pray for you,” said Mr. Rogers; and so was brought the same day, the fourth of February, by the sheriffs, towards Smithfield, saying the Psalm Miserere by the way, all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy; with great praises and thanks to God for the same. And there in the presence of Mr. Rochester, comptroller of the queen’s household, Sir Richard Southwell, both the sheriffs, and a great number of people, he was burnt to ashes, washing his hands in the flame as he was burning. A little before his burning, his pardon was brought, if he would have recanted; but he utterly refused it. He was the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield. TGhis sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.”
Excerpt from Fox’s Book of Martyrs
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
Preach the Word - Tabletalk Magazine
Every season of reformation and every hour of spiritual awakening has been ushered in by a recovery of biblical preaching. This cause and effect is timeless and inseparable. J.H. Merle D’Aubigné, noted Reformation historian, writes, “The only true reformation is that which emanates from the Word of God.” That is to say, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were raised up by God to lead this era. At the forefront, it was their recovery of expository preaching that helped launch this religious movement that turned Europe and, eventually, Western civilization upside down. With sola Scriptura as their battle cry, a new generation of biblical preachers restored the pulpit to its former glory and revived apostolic Christianity.
The same was true in the golden era of the puritans in the seventeenth century. A recovery of biblical preaching spread like wildfire through the dry religion of Scotland and England. A resurgence of authentic Christianity came as an army of biblical expositors — John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Samuel Rutherford, and others — marched upon the British Empire with an open Bible and uplifted voice. In its wake, the monarchy was shaken and history was altered.
The eighteenth century witnessed exactly the same. The Bible-saturated preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Tennents thundered through the early colonies. The Atlantic seaboard was electrified with the proclamation of the gospel, and New England was taken by storm. The Word was preached, souls were saved, and the kingdom expanded.
The fact is, the restoration of biblical preaching has always been the leading factor in any revival of genuine Christianity. Philip Schaff writes, “Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures.” That is to say, every great revival in the church has been ushered in by a return to expository preaching.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher of Westminster Chapel London, stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to true preaching — biblical preaching, expository preaching — is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must begin in the pulpit.
In his day, the prophet Amos warned of an approaching famine, a deadly drought that would cover the land. But not an absence of mere food or water, for this scarcity would be far more fatal. It would be a famine for hearing God’s Word (Amos 8:11). Surely, the church today finds itself in such similar days of shortage. Tragically, exposition is being replaced with entertainment, doctrine with drama, theology with theatrics, and preaching with performances. What is so desperately needed today is for pastors to return to their highest calling — the divine summons to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
What is expository preaching? The Genevan reformer John Calvin explained, “Preaching is the public exposition of Scripture by the man sent from God, in which God Himself is present in judgment and in grace.” In other words, God is unusually present, by His Spirit, in the preaching of His Word. Such preaching starts in a biblical text, stays in it, and shows its God-intended meaning in a life-changing fashion.
This was the final charge of Paul to young Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Such preaching necessitates declaring the full counsel of God in Scripture. The entire written Word must be expounded. No truth should be left untaught, no sin unexposed, no grace unoffered, no promise undelivered.
A heaven-sent revival will only come when Scripture is enthroned once again in the pulpit. There must be the clarion declaration of the Bible, the kind of preaching that gives a clear explanation of a biblical text with compelling application, exhortation, and appeal.
Every preacher must confine himself to the truths of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. The man of God has nothing to say apart from the Bible. He must not parade his personal opinions in the pulpit. Nor may he expound worldly philosophies. The preacher is limited to one task — preach the Word.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” This remains the crying need of the hour.
May a new generation of strong men step forward and speak up, and may they do so loud and clear. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
By Steve Lawson
© Tabletalk magazine
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church - January 22-23, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church
~ The Supremacy of Christ ~
Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker
January 22-23, 2010
Charleston Baptist Temple
209 Morris Street
Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
In the next couple posts, we will look at specific individuals whom God counted worthy to suffer for His name and were used in mighty ways. What an encouragement this should to us as we seek to live for Christ and make Him known. May your passion be ignited and convictions strengthened as you read about these saints of old.
John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, and Reader of St. Paul’s, London
“John Rogers was educated at Cambridge, and was afterward many years chaplain to the merchant adventurers at Antwerp in Brabant. Here he met with the celebrated martyr William Tyndale, and Miles Coverdale, both voluntary exiles from their country for their aversion to popish superstition and idolatry. They were the instruments of his conversion; and he united with them in that translation of the Bible into English, entitled “The Translation of Thomas Matthew.” From the Scriptures he knew that unlawful vows may be lawfully broken; hence he married, and removed to Wittenberg in Saxony, for the improvement of learning; and he there learned the Dutch language, and received the charge of a congregation, which he faithfully executed for many years. On King Edward’s accession, he left Saxony to promote the work of reformation in England; and, after some time, Nicholas Ridley, then bishop of London, gave him a prebend in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the dean and chapter appointed him reader of the divinity lesson there. Here he continued until Queen Mary’s succession to the throne, when the Gospel and true religion were banished, and the Antichrist of Rome, with his superstition and idolatry, introduced.
The circumstance of Mr. Rogers having preached at Paul’s cross, after Queen Mary arrived at the Tower, has been already stated. He confirmed in his sermon the true doctrine taught in King Edward’s time, and exhorted the people to beware of the pestilence of popery, idolatry, and superstition. For this he was called to account, but so ably defended himself that, for that time, he was dismissed. The proclamation of the queen, however, to prohibit true preaching, gave his enemies a new handle against him. Hence he was again summoned before the council, and commanded to keep his house. He did so, though he might have escaped; and though he perceived the state of the true religion to be desperate. Heknew he could not want a living in Germany; and he could not forget a wife and ten children, and to seek means to succor them. But all these things were insufficient to induce him to depart, and, when once called to answer in Christ’s cause, he stoutly defended it, and hazarded his life for that purpose.
After long imprisonment in his own house, the restless Bonner, bishop of London, caused him to be committed to Newgate, there to be lodged among thieves and murderers.
After Mr. Rogers had been long and straitly imprisoned, and lodged in Newgate among thieves, often examined, and very uncharitably entreated, and at length unjustly and most cruelly condemned by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1555, being Monday in the morning, he was suddenly warned by the keeper of Newgate’s wife, to prepare himself for the fire; who, being then sound asleep, could scarce be awaked. At length being raised and awaked, and bid to make haste, then said he, “IKf it be so, I need not tie my points.” And so was had down, first to bishop Bonner to be degraded: which being done, he craved of Bonner but one petition; and Bonner asked what that should be. Mr. Rogers replied that he might speak a few words with his wife before his burning, but that could not be obtained of him.
When the time came that he should be brought out of Newgate to Smithfield, the place of his execution, Mr. Woodroofe, one of the sheriffs, first came to Mr. Rogers, and asked him if he would revoke his abominable doctrine, and the evil opinion of the Sacrament of the altar. Mr. Rogers answered, “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.” Then Mr. Woodroofe said, “Thou art an heretic.” “That shall be known,” quoth Mr. Rogers, “at the Day of Judgment.” “Well,” said Mr. Woodroofe, “I will never pray for thee.” “But I will pray for you,” said Mr. Rogers; and so was brought the same day, the fourth of February, by the sheriffs, towards Smithfield, saying the Psalm Miserere by the way, all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy; with great praises and thanks to God for the same. And there in the presence of Mr. Rochester, comptroller of the queen’s household, Sir Richard Southwell, both the sheriffs, and a great number of people, he was burnt to ashes, washing his hands in the flame as he was burning. A little before his burning, his pardon was brought, if he would have recanted; but he utterly refused it. He was the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary’s time that gave the first adventure upon the fire. His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to go, and one sucking at her breast, met him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield. TGhis sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and quarrel of the Gospel of Christ.”
Excerpt from Fox’s Book of Martyrs
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 27, 2010
Preach the Word - Tabletalk Magazine
Every season of reformation and every hour of spiritual awakening has been ushered in by a recovery of biblical preaching. This cause and effect is timeless and inseparable. J.H. Merle D’Aubigné, noted Reformation historian, writes, “The only true reformation is that which emanates from the Word of God.” That is to say, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were raised up by God to lead this era. At the forefront, it was their recovery of expository preaching that helped launch this religious movement that turned Europe and, eventually, Western civilization upside down. With sola Scriptura as their battle cry, a new generation of biblical preachers restored the pulpit to its former glory and revived apostolic Christianity.
The same was true in the golden era of the puritans in the seventeenth century. A recovery of biblical preaching spread like wildfire through the dry religion of Scotland and England. A resurgence of authentic Christianity came as an army of biblical expositors — John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Samuel Rutherford, and others — marched upon the British Empire with an open Bible and uplifted voice. In its wake, the monarchy was shaken and history was altered.
The eighteenth century witnessed exactly the same. The Bible-saturated preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Tennents thundered through the early colonies. The Atlantic seaboard was electrified with the proclamation of the gospel, and New England was taken by storm. The Word was preached, souls were saved, and the kingdom expanded.
The fact is, the restoration of biblical preaching has always been the leading factor in any revival of genuine Christianity. Philip Schaff writes, “Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures.” That is to say, every great revival in the church has been ushered in by a return to expository preaching.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher of Westminster Chapel London, stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to true preaching — biblical preaching, expository preaching — is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must begin in the pulpit.
In his day, the prophet Amos warned of an approaching famine, a deadly drought that would cover the land. But not an absence of mere food or water, for this scarcity would be far more fatal. It would be a famine for hearing God’s Word (Amos 8:11). Surely, the church today finds itself in such similar days of shortage. Tragically, exposition is being replaced with entertainment, doctrine with drama, theology with theatrics, and preaching with performances. What is so desperately needed today is for pastors to return to their highest calling — the divine summons to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
What is expository preaching? The Genevan reformer John Calvin explained, “Preaching is the public exposition of Scripture by the man sent from God, in which God Himself is present in judgment and in grace.” In other words, God is unusually present, by His Spirit, in the preaching of His Word. Such preaching starts in a biblical text, stays in it, and shows its God-intended meaning in a life-changing fashion.
This was the final charge of Paul to young Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Such preaching necessitates declaring the full counsel of God in Scripture. The entire written Word must be expounded. No truth should be left untaught, no sin unexposed, no grace unoffered, no promise undelivered.
A heaven-sent revival will only come when Scripture is enthroned once again in the pulpit. There must be the clarion declaration of the Bible, the kind of preaching that gives a clear explanation of a biblical text with compelling application, exhortation, and appeal.
Every preacher must confine himself to the truths of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. The man of God has nothing to say apart from the Bible. He must not parade his personal opinions in the pulpit. Nor may he expound worldly philosophies. The preacher is limited to one task — preach the Word.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” This remains the crying need of the hour.
May a new generation of strong men step forward and speak up, and may they do so loud and clear. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
By Steve Lawson
© Tabletalk magazine
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church - January 22-23, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church
~ The Supremacy of Christ ~
Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker
January 22-23, 2010
Charleston Baptist Temple
209 Morris Street
Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Every season of reformation and every hour of spiritual awakening has been ushered in by a recovery of biblical preaching. This cause and effect is timeless and inseparable. J.H. Merle D’Aubigné, noted Reformation historian, writes, “The only true reformation is that which emanates from the Word of God.” That is to say, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers were raised up by God to lead this era. At the forefront, it was their recovery of expository preaching that helped launch this religious movement that turned Europe and, eventually, Western civilization upside down. With sola Scriptura as their battle cry, a new generation of biblical preachers restored the pulpit to its former glory and revived apostolic Christianity.
The same was true in the golden era of the puritans in the seventeenth century. A recovery of biblical preaching spread like wildfire through the dry religion of Scotland and England. A resurgence of authentic Christianity came as an army of biblical expositors — John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Samuel Rutherford, and others — marched upon the British Empire with an open Bible and uplifted voice. In its wake, the monarchy was shaken and history was altered.
The eighteenth century witnessed exactly the same. The Bible-saturated preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Tennents thundered through the early colonies. The Atlantic seaboard was electrified with the proclamation of the gospel, and New England was taken by storm. The Word was preached, souls were saved, and the kingdom expanded.
The fact is, the restoration of biblical preaching has always been the leading factor in any revival of genuine Christianity. Philip Schaff writes, “Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures.” That is to say, every great revival in the church has been ushered in by a return to expository preaching.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher of Westminster Chapel London, stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to true preaching — biblical preaching, expository preaching — is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must begin in the pulpit.
In his day, the prophet Amos warned of an approaching famine, a deadly drought that would cover the land. But not an absence of mere food or water, for this scarcity would be far more fatal. It would be a famine for hearing God’s Word (Amos 8:11). Surely, the church today finds itself in such similar days of shortage. Tragically, exposition is being replaced with entertainment, doctrine with drama, theology with theatrics, and preaching with performances. What is so desperately needed today is for pastors to return to their highest calling — the divine summons to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
What is expository preaching? The Genevan reformer John Calvin explained, “Preaching is the public exposition of Scripture by the man sent from God, in which God Himself is present in judgment and in grace.” In other words, God is unusually present, by His Spirit, in the preaching of His Word. Such preaching starts in a biblical text, stays in it, and shows its God-intended meaning in a life-changing fashion.
This was the final charge of Paul to young Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Such preaching necessitates declaring the full counsel of God in Scripture. The entire written Word must be expounded. No truth should be left untaught, no sin unexposed, no grace unoffered, no promise undelivered.
A heaven-sent revival will only come when Scripture is enthroned once again in the pulpit. There must be the clarion declaration of the Bible, the kind of preaching that gives a clear explanation of a biblical text with compelling application, exhortation, and appeal.
Every preacher must confine himself to the truths of Scripture. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. The man of God has nothing to say apart from the Bible. He must not parade his personal opinions in the pulpit. Nor may he expound worldly philosophies. The preacher is limited to one task — preach the Word.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” This remains the crying need of the hour.
May a new generation of strong men step forward and speak up, and may they do so loud and clear. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church.
By Steve Lawson
© Tabletalk magazine
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church - January 22-23, 2010
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church
~ The Supremacy of Christ ~
Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker
January 22-23, 2010
Charleston Baptist Temple
209 Morris Street
Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church ~ The Supremacy of Christ ~ Dr. Steven Lawson - Guest Speaker January 22-23, 2010 Charleston Baptist Temple 209 Morris Street Charleston, WV 25301
Cost: FREE!
More details and registration at http://randolphonline.org/ministries/conference/ or (304)342-3257.
“The Supremacy of Christ” is the theme for this inaugural conference. Our guest speaker is Dr. Steve Lawson of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. The goal of this conference is to exalt the truth of Christ’s supremacy over all things. Our desire, along with many others, is to immerse this region with the glory of our Savior and the beauty of the gospel. For this reason, the Appalachia Conference on Theology and the Church exists. There is no charge for the conference, but please visit our website and pre-register. A light lunch will be provided on January 23rd to all attendees.
The Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be providing a large selection of Christian books and Bibles available at discount prices. The resources they offer are radically God-centered and helpful to the soul. As a special gift for early conference registration (by January 9th), you will receive a $5 coupon for the bookstore. So, not only can you come to the conference free of charge, but you can also receive a discount at the bookstore! We look forward to seeing you January 22nd and 23rd.
Posted by Steven Lawson on January 5, 2010
What is Reformed Theology?
Lecture 1, Introduction :
This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Lecture 1, Introduction : This Lecture is from the Teaching Series What Is Reformed Theology?.
About the Teaching Series, What Is Reformed Theology?
There is something healthy about returning to one’s roots. When it comes to evangelical Christianity, its roots are found in the soil of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformers protested the corrupt teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, so today evangelicalism itself is in need of a modern reformation. In What Is Reformed Theology?, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers a comprehensive introduction to Reformed theology. Simply put, it is the theology of the Protestant Reformers and the heart of historical evangelicalism. As C.H. Spurgeon once said, Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity.
www.ligonier.org/learn/series/whatisreformed_theology/introduction/
Posted by Steven Lawson on December 12, 2009
2010 Expositors' Conference: The Glory of God in Preaching
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at:
www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
The 2010 Expositors’ Conference will take place on September 27th-28th at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Featured speakers will be R. C. Sproul and Steve Lawson.
Register at: www.christfellowship.cc
Posted by Steven Lawson on November 17, 2009
God's Absolute Sovereignty
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign. Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over everything. T he carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.
But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). “Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Eph. 2:8, 9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were “predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (vv. 4, 5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:28-30).
When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:1, 2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning … saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isa. 46:10). He is not subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the secret counsels of His own will.
Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him” (1 Cor. 8:6).
What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1 Sam. 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to accomplish good (Gen. 45:7, 8; 50:20; Rom. 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.
Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls” (v. 11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (vv. 15, 16).
Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (v. 19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (vv. 20, 21).
Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Rom. 2:19, 20), so that punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented, “You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (v. 37); “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life” (v. 40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (v. 47); and, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65). How both of those two realities can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.
Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8, 9).
We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34).
By John MacArthur. Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
A Biblical Model of Lay Ministry
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson
Executive Director
Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Nehemiah is often regarded as an ideal role model for spiritual leadership—and he certainly is that. He had all the strengths of good leadership: he was decisive, well-organized, a wise overseer of other people, a good administrator, and a skilled project manager who knew how to get things done.
He likewise had all the biblical qualifications for spiritual leadership: godly character, a consistent testimony, a burning zeal for the Lord, a desire to serve, and a commitment to honor God in all that he did. Above all, his prayer life was exemplary. (Perhaps more than any other single character in the OT, Nehemiah teaches us what a vibrant prayer life ought to be like.)
Nehemiah also had all the masculine traits Scripture associates with men who are called to be shepherds and overseers among the people of God. He was passionate but not driven by his emotions; he was a hard-working man himself, but he also understood the importance of delegating tasks; and he loved people, but never compromised on matters of principle.
What’s often missed about Nehemiah is that he is primarily a model for lay leadership. Some of the key lessons of his life and work are as immediately applicable to laymen as they are to pastors and teachers in the church.
Nehemiah himself was not a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a theologian, or a teacher. As far as we can tell from Scripture, when Nehemiah began his ministry in Jerusalem, he had never been a leader of any kind. He apparently had no special training to do what he ultimately did. He was simply a model of hard work, practical ministry, and principled living.
He is the epitome of what every lay person in the church should aspire to be. And his leadership shows us what all spiritual leadership should be like.
When we meet Nehemiah on the pages of Scripture, he was a servant in the king’s palace in Shushan, in Persia—far from his homeland, which he had never even seen.
As servants go, he was an important one. But this special status among servants certainly gave him no particular renown in Jerusalem. He was still a servant, not anyone’s boss.
In fact, as far as the people of God in Jerusalem were concerned, Nehemiah was an outsider and a latecomer with direct ties to the ruling echelon of their former captors. That probably even made him somewhat suspect at first.
So he labored among them as a layman and a fellow-worker. And he earned their respect as a leader solely by serving them, and by being a flesh-and-blood example of what all the people of Israel ought to be.
So, as it turned out, his work as a servant was his training for his life’s work. After all, servitude is the best kind of training for spiritual leadership, because a servant is exactly what Jesus said every true leader ought to be (Mark 10:44).
Nehemiah is thus a reminder to us of how God uses the weak things of the world to accomplish His work (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Next time you read Nehemiah, bear that in mind: this book is full of rich lessons for lay people who want their lives to count for the Lord.
As someone who has technically been a layman for most of my ministry, I love this aspect of Nehemiah’s life-message. He teaches us that whoever we are, whatever our background or training, and whatever our position in life—God has gifted us and called us to use our gifts as servants. If we’re willing to serve, He can use us in a mighty way.
© 2008 by Phil Johnson Executive Director Grace to You
Resource can be found at www.gty.org
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Should a Church Discipline a Member for Non-Attendance?
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages:
==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders.
==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine)
==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
Each local church is imperfectly a manifestation of the truth, purity and unity of the body of Christ. Persistent non-attendance for unjustifiable reasons is calculated to destroy the credibility of the church. But discipline needs to be introduced with much wisdom and with the support of the oversight of the congregation. It needs:
Insuring that on becoming communicant member every professing Christian understands what he or she is being committed to in the local church.
The Presbyterian former practice of insisting on a rule of “adherents” (prior to membership) and the Methodist trial-period prior to membership were expressions of a concern for high standards for members.
If discipline is necessary it should be exercised in stages: ==>Personal admonition/counsel from elders. ==>With-holding attendance at the Lord’s Supper (impossible in churches where no supervision exists over who partakes of bread and wine) ==>Removal from membership role.
Two extremes to be avoided: severe, authoritarian standards of discipline, and laxity which ignores unfaithful behavior. The devil’s quest strategy is to blur the line between church and world.
Additional Reading: R.B. Kuiper. The Glorious Body of Christ
By Iain Murray. Resource can be found on www.9marks.org
Ian Murray entered the Christian ministry in 1955 where he served as assistant to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel as well as several other ministry positions. He is a co-founder of Banner of Truth Trust and now is retired and living in Great Britian.
Posted by Steven Lawson on October 13, 2009
I dream of a new reformation that is not simply a renewal of life but a new vision of life. As long as Christians restrict their Christianity to a religion, a faith that is compartmentalized and isolated from life, there can be revival but never reformation. We need to hear and do the Word of God in all of our lives."
Founder & Chairman, Ligonier Ministries
Orlando, FL
