More on the family. Marraige is honorable.

Marriage is instituted by God, and biblically understood it is one of the most glorious pictures of the gospel given to us; the picture of Christ being married to us. Of course if marriage is abused, as it often is, it presents a false gospel to us and our children.  So…are you happy and thankful in your marriage?!  We are glad that Christ is happy and thankful to have us as his wife  

        

Notice Hebrews 13:4.  First, this verse is in the context of the gospel. Because we who have come to Mt. Zion, and to Jesus, and the New Covenant, and to the Kingdom of God (Heb 12:22-28), we have our thinking set straight…including how we look at marriage, including specifically our marriage.  Scripture says let marriage be held in high honour, as precious, as greatly prized. 

Marriage is an honorable state before God, and as we honour it in faith even the marriage bed does not make it dishonorable!

I am thankful for the sacraments

Christ Jesus instituted two sacraments for his church, baptism and the Lord's Supper.  Obviously, these sacraments are good, wise, and enriching for the church; Christ instituted them after all.  They are also good because they reveal to us God's will.  The Reformer  Musculus said, "First, baptism assures us that it is God's will to accept us as his people consecrated and consigned to his name.  Secondly, the Lord's Supper assures us of our continuing membership in the company of the redeemed."  Praise God every Sunday we receive the sacrament we are reminded that God keeps us because he gave his life for us, and praise God at every baptism we are reminded the Lord's name is upon us.

In your family life, remember who you are in Christ Jesus.

Family life comes to us everyday.  As believers we are to live life remembering we are in Christ, well in your family life and activities remember who you are in Christ.  Doug Wilson wrote: “All Christian living, including what we call family is based on being before doing…grace.   The perennial temptation is to try to scrap our way into being in Christ by doing (works).  But grace in the Spirit reverses this order.  Grace makes us Christians, and grace gets more doing done than doing does.  In the gospel God works in us both to will and do for his good pleasure ^{(Phil 2:12-13)}.  The gracious Spirit filled Christian does not refuse to do family, he just doesn’t try to work it in for self-righteousness or self-comforts sake. We don’t earn reflecting Christ’s relationship in our marriages, we don’t earn the salvation of our kids, or good behaved children…God gives them to us by grace. 

So fear the Lord and ask him what is needed in your family.  Pray. Ask him for the gift of a good marriage, for the grace to be a godly dad & mom, and for the grace to love your particular family with all its warts!

Preaching: Co-Working with God

"The eternal salvation of the human soul, through the presentation of divine truth, is the end of preaching.  The created mind is never employed so loftily and so worthily, as when it is bending all its powers, and co-working with God himself, to the attainment of this great purpose.  -WDT. Shedd.  Homeletics & Pastoral Theology.

Now is not the time for Christian preachers to stay quiet

Christianity is the true religion because it is from God.  Her message is from God.  Her word, the Scriptures is from God.  Her God is for the world (Jn 3:16).  The church preaches Christ and him crucified which is the wisdom and power of God.  Sure, the world says its foolishness, but when were Christian preachers told listen to the world and keep quiet about God's truth.  Never.

Christian preachers you must not keep silent today.  WGT. Shedd gives us good advice.

"It is no time for Christianity - the only system that has the right to say to the world, 'Thou shalt,' and 'Thou shalt not'; the only system that has a right to utter its high and authoritative, 'He that believeth [in Christ] shall be saved, and he that beleiveth not shall be damned', - it is no time for that absolute and ultimate religion, in and by which this miserable and ruined race must live or bear no life, to be  deprecatory, and 'borrow leave to be.'" -WGT. Shedd

Jesus went his own way...for us

Look at the story of Jesus' boyhood trip to the Temple in Luke 2:41-51.
 
Notice what Jesus said in v.49. “I must be in my Father’s house.”  Sometimes you read this verse this way, “I must do my Father’s business.”  “I must;” Jesus said this often. “I must preach the good news of the gospel.”  “I must go on my way to be the prophet.”  “I the Son of Man must suffer many things.”  “I must go to your house to day Zacchaeus.”  “I must go to Jerusalem.”  God the Father, Jesus knew, was calling him.  He knew he was on a mission from the Father, and he was beginning to learn that he was the Messiah, the Savior of the world.  Here Jesus as a boy really went his own way…for you and me.  Here we learn that he would have to obey God rather than man, even his parents, and serve God his Father…all the way to the cross so you and I could be saved.

The centre of the family is Christ Jesus

If we study the Bible rightly, every subject in it has as its centre Christ and his glory.   The centre of the family, and God’s Word about it, is Jesus Christ.  Marriage is a picture of Christ and his church.  Fatherhood brings children to Christ.  Think of God our Father who is the father of all good things; he brought us Christ.  Motherhood is a picture of the love of Christ for us.  As a hen gathers her chicks, so Christ gathers us to himself.  Children are part of the kingdom of God.  No one is to forbid them from coming to the Lord Jesus; so we are to have a Christ centred focus regarding children.  In some way they are holy when a parent has faith in Jesus. When we talk about family from God’s Word, Jesus is central.

Praise God for the truth of the person of Christ: the Caledonian Creed

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the unity, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

The All-Mighty God

God is infinitely powerful, or almighty. The power of God is that perfection whereby he is able to effect all things that do not imply a contradiction, either to his own perfections, or to the nature of things themselves. "With God nothing shall be impossible," said the angel to the Virgin Mary. "With God all things are possible," said Jesus to his disciples. How great must be that power which produced the beautiful fabric of the universe out of nothing! "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" "For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast."–Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9. His power is still exerted in the preservation of the world; for he upholds all creatures in their being and operations by the word of his power.  - Robert Shaw.  Commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. 

Funny puns for a Saturday.

Here are some great puns to make you laugh.

The Westminister Confession on the gifts of the Spirit

Check out Kevin DeYoung's comments on cessationism and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/ …

A gospel centred preacher

A gospel-centered teacher isn’t satisfied to see his people learn truths about God. A gospel-centered leader wants them to feel those truths. To feel the full weight of God’s provision for us in Christ. To have the heart’s affections stirred to worship the loving God who has saved us by his grace and incorporated us into his family.  - John Piper

Union with Christ

Great description of union with Christ.

In preaching God must give us what we want to give to others.

"Oh Lord my God, hear my prayer, and let Thy mercy regard my longing, since it burns not for myself alone, but because it desires to benefit brotherly charity; and Thou seest into my heart that so it is.  I would sacrifice to Thee the service of my thought and tongue; and do Thou give what I may offer to Thee."  - Augustine, Confessions.

The church has climate

An ethos is a tone, sentiment, or climate of a people or community.  I like the word climate the best. Denominations and individual churches throughout history have had a myriad of climates; from war to greed, from gospel to legalism, from fundamentalism to 19^th century Victorian acceptability etc.   The question is not whether we should have an ethos; the question is which one, and who or what will give us this ethos. 

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer traveled in America in 1930-31 he said this about the American church ethos.  "The church is really no longer the place where the congregation hears and preaches God's word, but rather the place where one acquires secondary significance as a social entity for this or that purpose."  Imagine coming to church only to hear about ourselves and our reason for having church! 

No wonder people left the church from the 1950’s on.  Why go when the climate is so bad or boring.  Praise the Lord this is slowly changing.  God in Jesus Christ is true, challenging, divine, judging, holy, and world-changing.  This is not bad or boring.  To be in Christ and have him proclaimed in church is to be in an exciting environment, in a good climate. 

We can do nothing without God's help

We have no strength in and of ourselves to live as God purposes. The gospel of Jesus gives us strength. (1 Tim 1:12). Gurnall gives a great illustration of this.

"If the ship launched, rigged, and with her sails spread cannot stir, till the wind come fair and fill them, much less the timber that lies in the carpenter's yard hew and frame itself into a ship.  If the living tree cannot grow except the root communicate its sap, much less can a dead rotten stake in the hedge, which hath no root, live of its own accord.  In a word, if a Christian, that hath his spiritual life of grace, cannot exercise this life without strength from above, then surely one void of this new life, dead in sins and trespasses, can never be able to beget this in himself, or concur to the production of it.  The state of unregeneracy is a state of impotency.  'When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly,’  Rom. 5:6."

My new Facebook page

Today I started my own public Facebook page. My goal is simple: to encourage people in the glory of Jesus Christ. To put it another way I want my posts, pictures, church work and whatever else I put up to serve in the spread of the Kingdom of God. Christ's kingdom will spread. He is the victorious King and I pray this Facebook will encourage people in Christ. There is no reason for Him to fail; and so there is no reason for his people to be overcome with fear. John Calvin once wrote, "Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness."

The Facebook name is...Henry Bartsch, Trinity Presbyterian Church

Enjoy!