death to self-righteousness

the Gospel ends self-righteousness.

ht to Timmy Brister

danger of moralistic deism

here is Matt Chandler talking about the necessity of the centrality of the Gospel and the danger when it is assumed.

Love that last line.
“But you don’t put God in your debt. I know this because really really faithful men in the Scripture have it go really really bad for them.”
hat [...]

everday Gospel

via Ramblin’ Pastor Man, here is a short video with John Piper explaining that we need the Gospel every day.

law/gospel

iMonk goes on a rant about law preaching versus gospel preaching that is both entertaining and informative. take a look.
In other words, it’s an unmitigated disaster unless the Gospel is heard louder, longer and much clearer than anything else.
I’d really like to apologize to anyone- and there are a lot of these people- who [...]

Terminal Generation?

Dr. Mohler is wondering if we are at the terminal generation of evangelicalism. It is a very fair thing about which to wonder.
We should be very concerned about certain trends in contemporary evangelicalism that threaten this integrity. The first is an ominous confusion about the Gospel itself. The heart of the Gospel is the [...]

learning vicarious suffering

courtesy of vitamin z, I saw this quote from Tim Keller:
“You need to get used to this reality. Once you become a parent, for the rest of your life, you’ll never be happier than your unhappiest child, because your heart is tied to your kids. That is a way of learning the gospel because before [...]

prayer request time

John Mark has some ideas for matters about which we should be praying. Here are a couple. Go read his post for the rest.
Advancement of God’s Kingdom (Matt. 6:10)
Explicitly that God’s will be done (Matt. 6:10)
Thank God for each other being together for the Gospel (Phil. 1:3-5; 1, Thess. 1:2)

Romans 5:6-8

Romans 5:8 is well known. “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” But the thought that Paul is expressing actually begins in verse 6. Here is the whole thing:
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ [...]

Why plant churches

Why should we plant more churches? aren’t there enough of them already? Don’t existing churches have room for at least a few more folks? why plant new ones when there are so many of every flavor already around?
Mike McDaniel answers the question here on JD Greear’s blog.
In his book Firefall, [...]

contending and contextualizing

The church must both contend for truth and must contextualize truth to be effective in evangelism. Compare II Timothy 1:14 to I Corinthians 9:22.
Hunter Beaumont’s diagnosis of the current evangelical moment is that we are over-contextualizing and under-contending:
But in postmodernity, the cultural scorn has shifted. The supernatural is plausible again, but exclusivity and assertiveness [...]

gospel centered preaching

here is Matt Chandler talking about gospel centered preaching as opposed to silly irreverent myths

p.s. I am trying to remember where I saw this and will update with a link when I remember

Relevance

Joe Thorn has a quote from John Piper regarding relevance that says:
As a preacher, I think a lot about relevance. That is, why should anyone listen to what I have to say? Why should anybody care? Relevance is an ambiguous word. It could mean more than one thing. It might mean that a sermon is [...]

Gospel Centered

Dodson posted a bit from Tim Keller’s piece about what it means to be gospel centered. I am reposting that one, plus another one farther down in the article.
I do not simply mean by ‘gospel-centered’ that ministry is to be doctrinally orthodox. Of course it must certainly be that. I am speaking more [...]

Making it plausible or unthinkable

Al Mohler has completed posting a six part series on abortion which is the edited transcript of the sermon he gave on Sanctity of Life Sunday. excellent message excellently presented.
here are the links to the parts for some weekend reading.
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
and here is an excerpt from part 5 that [...]

“contextualizing” is not a dirty word

Todd Burus has done some homework regarding biblical examples of contextualizing. Go take a look.
here is a bit of his work, but you have to go read the rest to see his argument and evidence:
A rough definition of “contextualization” for the church is “being aware of the cultural context in which lost people around [...]

what is the target?

Ed Stetzer has some interesting thoughts about the gospel that we are preaching and the goal of conversion according to that gospel. Here is his full article at catalyst.
the excerpts that Ed posted on his blog follow:
I continue to see movements gaining traction among Christians that do not seem to have many converts. In [...]

christians and culture

Carl Trueman is raising a contrary voice to the current fashion of cultural engagement in evangelical churches and doing it with style. This article holds together tightly and is not very amenable to slicing out a piece for a tease, but here is the introductory paragraph anyway. you really should go read the [...]

Santa Claus v. Grace

the best Christmas news you could ever receive.

hat tip to Vitamin Z

preaching test

Ligonier has posted a quote from Al Mohler on the mystery of preaching:
R. Albert Mohler:
“There is something deeply mysterious about Christian preaching, both in terms of its communication and in terms of its content. After all, what we preach is not what the world expects to hear. It is not a message they will hear [...]

John MacArthur on TBN

here are two clips from TBN with Kirk Cameron interviewing John MacArthur. Like Vitamin Z says, did they not know what he would be talking about?
These two clips are about 20 minutes of biblical goodness on the gospel of Jesus from the words of Jesus. Just watch and listen. wow.
[...]

the love of God

Yesterday we went to the early service at Great Hills Baptist Church. Natalie had to attend a choir program and write about it for her choir grade. the program was decent, but sort of overproduced and too jazzy in a way that made it feel like we hadn’t been to church. When [...]

what is christmas?

love this video.
That’s Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.
hat tip to Adrian Warnock

a bit of Tim Keller

Darryl Dash interviews Tim Keller here and here. they are short and interesting so go take a look.
here is a tease from part 1:
The evangelical Church is bitterly divided into groups that say, either we should change the culture “one heart at a time” by evangelizing individuals, or we should change the culture by [...]

mark dever on the Gospel

here is Mark Dever on the good news of the Gospel.

hat tip to Ramblin’ Pastor Man

note to self

here is the Ikonograph describing how he preaches the Gospel to himself.
this sounds eminently edifying.
Preaching the gospel to myself has served to encourage me in my putting to death the deeds of the flesh, as well as cementing the truth of the one and only, true gospel. Here are a few of the [...]