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Faith…

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My AM sermon today will be on Hebrews 11:1-2, describing what faith is.  Here’s a longer definition from Phil Hughes on what v.1 is driving at and I’ve added space for emphasis…

[Faith is a] conviction
     that is not a static emotion of complacency
     but something lively and active,
not just a state of immovable dogmatism
    but of vital certainty
which impels the believer to stretch out his hand, as it were
     and lay hold of those realities on which his hope is fixed
     and which, though unseen, are already his in Christ.

Hoping to hold out this kind of faith today…

Weekend Preview – Faith Defined

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This coming Lord’s Day, we finally get to Hebrews 11, specifically vv.1-2.  In this opening statement, we have faith defined with terms like assurance and confidence.  Often, people think that Christianity is some blind leap into the dark.  But, the Bible paints faith in entirely different concepts.  Faith is, actually, centered and fully reliant on the reality that is ours in Christ.

Looking forward to this Lord’s Day as we revel in these and other truths.

Your Brain, Memory & God’s Word…

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There was a great post a couple of days ago entitled Hidden In the Heart.  The writer, in my estimation, was seeking to sound a wake up call for us to not be numbed to the effects that technology has on us, but to redeem them for the glory of God and the good of the Gospel.  Here’s a sampling of this:

If we are to be holy we need to hide the word in our hearts, and that means a deliberate commitment to memorisation and meditation. It means a refusal to allow our brains to be trained by the world, a resistance to the laziness that the interweb can breed in our all-too-susceptible minds; it means a commitment to holiness that is willing to re-train and develop the faculties of our hearts contrary to the trend and tendency of the age in which we live, and to make sure that we pack into the armoury that array of weaponry necessary for the constant fight against ungodliness, temptations within and without. We must love that truth, know that truth in its sense and substance, in its particular words and phrases, understand it as a treasure and as a weapon, and learn how to use it in the combat with sin.

I invite you, then, to fight the effect of technology in your heart and soul and fight to renew your mind.  With you in this fight…

The Resurrection of Jesus

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Here’s my Edifier article from the March/April 2012 Church Newsletter of Crestview:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)


I know it may be difficult to wrap your mind around this, but Easter is just around the corner. And, if you’re like me, I often find myself needing help to be able to praise God for what He’s accomplished in raising Christ from the dead. It was with great joy, then, that I read these words from Octavius Winslow:


“The resurrection of Christ is a vital doctrine of Christianity. It sustains an essential relation to the spiritual life of the believer. Viewing it in connection with the union of Christ and His people, the two facts become identical— standing in the relation of cause and effect. Our Lord, in His great atoning work, acted in a public or representative character. He represented in His person the whole elect of God, who virtually were in Him, each step that he took in working out their redemption. In His resurrection from the grave this was preeminently so. The Head could not be resuscitated apart from the body. Christ could not rise without the Church. Thus, then, the new or the resurrection life of Christ, and the inner or spiritual life of the believer, are one and indivisible. Now, when the resurrection of the Head is spiritually realized, when it is fully received into the heart by faith, it becomes a quickening, energizing, sanctifying truth to each member of His body. It transmits a power to the inmost soul, felt in all the actings and manifestations of the spiritual life. Blessed are they who feel, and who feel daily, that they are indeed “risen with Christ,” and who find every new perception of this great truth to act like a mighty lever to their souls—lifting them above this “present evil world”—a world passing away.

“Perhaps no circumstance connected with the resurrection of Christ conveys to the mind a clearer idea of its bearings upon the happiness of the Church than the part which the Divine Father is represented as having taken in the illustrious event. His having committed Himself to the fact at once stamps it with all its saving interest. “Whom God has raised.” “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father.” “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead.” By this act of raising up His Son from the grave, the Father manifested His delight in, and His full acceptance of, the sacrifice of Christ, as a finished and satisfactory expiation for the sins of His people. So long as Jesus remained in the grave, there was wanting the evidence of the acceptance of His death; the great seal of heaven, the signature of God, was needed to authenticate the fact. But when the Father released the Surety from the dominion of death, he annihilated, by that act, all legal claim against His Church, declaring the ransom accepted, and the debt cancelled. “He was taken from prison,”—as the prisoner of justice—the prisoner of death—and the prisoner of the grave; the Father, in the exercise of His glorious power, opens the prison door, and delivers the illustrious Captive—and by the door through which He emerges again to life, enters the full justification of His whole Church; for it is written—“He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”

“A more important truth— where all are of infinite moment to the happiness of man—is not found in the Word of God. As it forms the keystone to the mighty arch of Christianity, so it constitutes the groundwork of spiritual life, upon the basis of which the Holy Spirit of God quickens the souls of all, who are “the called according to His purpose.” It was a knowledge of this truth which awoke the ardent desire of the apostle’s soul, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.” (Evening Thoughts, Feb 8)


I hope you find the truths found in this brief excerpt helpful. The resurrection is not some insignificant, meaningless event. No. In the resurrection, believers are united with Christ and now truly live, not for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again for us. Blessed to celebrate this with you once again…

Weekend Recap – Pursuing Endurance

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We enjoyed a great Lord’s Day at Crestview yesterday.  My AM sermon from Hebrews 10:36-39 entitled Pursuing Endurance is now online.  The sermon sought to unpack the amazing call to endure found for these early believers.  Specifically, because of the promises of God and the urgency of Christ’s return, we should pursue God’s will for us: endurance.  I hope it was helpful to you.

We didn’t have any PM activities on the night of 3/4.

Hope you have a great week.

Weekend Recap – Lessons in Suffering

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My sermon from 2/26/12 entitled Lessons in Suffering from Hebrews 10:32-35 is now online.  The sermon sought to unpack the reality of the situation these early believers faced and then help give us encouragement for the sufferings we might face.  Put simply, because of the realities that are ours in the Gospel, we can endure suffering with joy and confidence.

In the evening, my small group studied “Sins of the Tongue” in Bridges’ Respectable Sins.  We had good discussion and were helped by the standard for speech found in Ephesians 4:29.  Again, we are driven to the Gospel for help.

Hope you had a great Sunday.

What Drove Those People?

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In Hebrews 10:32-35, we read of a people who endured suffering “sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.”  These people “joyfully accepted the plundering of their property” since they knew that they themselves “had a better possession and an abiding one.”  That was their secret.  Or, as F.F. Bruce put it on p.271 of his commentary on Hebrews:  

“The eternal inheritance laid up for them was so real in their eyes that they could lightheartedly bid farewell to natural possessions, which were short-lived in any case.”  

Today, we live in a day and age in which even Christianity is sometimes overly caught up in property and possessions.  Maybe this is true because we are much more wrapped up in the stuff of here and now and not in believing that we have a better possession that will abide forever.  This Sunday, join us as we look at this amazing passage and what drove these people to endure such suffering.  

Weekend Recap — Collision Course, Session 1

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This past Sunday PM, 2/19/12, we kicked off Collision Course at Crestview.  A series of videos and talks about the meaning of manhood, allowing men to sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron.

Here’s the video from session 1:


We also added these notes:

Session 1—2/19/12PM
Masculinity Defined
With Doug Wilson
Masculinity Is the Glad
Assumption of Responsibility
(http://vimeo.com/30751344)
Scott Anderson: So Doug, when John [Piper] invited you to speak at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors coming up in 2012, he noted that he’s been amazed to see in the past 25 years or so this resurgence among the young reformed guys in their embracing of complementarity and he would not have foreseen that: a bunch of young reformed guys reformed and also concerned about Biblical Manhood.  He’s been heartened by that and thus we want to do this conference on it.  I wonder if you have any kind of working definition for Biblical Masculinity or Biblical manhood as you understand it?
Doug Wilson: Yeah, the working definition that I have is that masculinity is that which takes responsibility, so the glad assumption of responsibility or to fill it out a little bit more, the glad, sacrificial assumption of responsibility is masculinity.  So, my understanding of Christ’s teaching is that authority flows to those who take responsibility.  And, authority flees those who try to evade responsibility.  And so, when men try to evade responsibility through laziness or brittle egos or whatever, however much they make excuses, authority, natural masculine authority, is running away from them.  But when they take responsibility—husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church—that’s the assumption of responsibility, and that’s the sacrificial assumption of responsibility.  And, when a man does that, he begins functioning as a head ought to function.  He is the head, regardless, but he begins functioning the way a masculine head ought to function.  So, the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility is how I would understand masculinity. 
Some Scriptures That Unpack This:
In the Garden before the Fall and before Eve, God gave Adam the task of naming animals: (Genesis 2:19-20)  “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.” 
After Eve’s sin in the Garden, God comes looking for Adam: (Genesis 3:8-9)  “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
God considers men those who sacrificially take responsibility: (Ephesians 5:23) “…the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”
Therefore…some questions for application:
1) In what areas do you need to take responsibility?
2) What is keeping you from doing this gladly?
3) What sacrifices will this mean for you and how do they compare with the sacrifice Christ has made for the church?
4) What effect do you think that your taking responsibility might have on those around you?
5) How can other men help encourage you and hold you accountable in your assumption of responsibility?
Hope you have a fruitful time unpacking what we discussed.

Weekend Recap – Fair Warning

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My sermon from 2/19/12AM was entitled Be Warned from Hebrews 10:26-31.  The sermon sought to unpack the warning we have in this heavy part of Scripture.  Simply put, God seeks to inspire our perseverance in the Gospel by warning us of the consequences that will be ours if we abandon the Gospel.  It was full of rich application and awesome insight.  I hope you’re helped by it, too.