Recently Scott Thomas at the ACTS 29 blog posted the following on Calvinism.  Enjoy!

Recently I read The Five Points of Calvinism co-authored by David Steele, Curtis Thomas and Lance Quinn (P&R Publishing). I felt it was a shepherdly treatise on the doctrines of grace that can help the layman to understanding the centrality of God in the salvation of man. The book quotes JI Packer, whom I had the pleasure of spending the day with recently. I think his explanation of Calvinism as “one point” is brilliant.

Packer said, “The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are inseparable. They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners.

“God – the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing.

“Saves – does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies.

“Sinners – men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners – and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedalling the sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the “five points” are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen.”

J.I. Packer, “Introductory Essage,” in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, by John Owen (London: Banner of Truth, 1959) 4-5.

This week the Blazing Center blog posted some helpful thoughts on the effect economic ups and downs should have on us who are followers of Christ.

Recently a banker told me that our current financial crisis is the worst he’s seen in his lifetime.

A man in our church recently watched his investments plummet $20,000.  Another mentioned that retirement had been on his radar screen, but now it seems to have sunk into the horizon.

When billionaire Warren Buffet feels his blood pressure rising or his nerves on edge, he calms himself by looking at snapshots of his family or playing a game of bridge with his friends. (The Intelligent Investor, Oct 18, 2008)

Husband: Honey, we’ve lost everything.  My retirement’s gone, and our investments are down the toilet.

Wife: Here, dear, why don’t you look at some photos of your grandchildren?

Husband: Ahh, my grandchildren….Arghhhh! They’re doomed!  I got nothin’ for them!  They’ll be forced to work in sweat shops and stand in bread lines!

Whether it be our finances, a wayward teen, health challenges, or anything else that tempts us to fear, God’s Word has a much better solution than playing bridge or looking at photos:

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. (IS 26.3-4)

To keep the mind stayed on God is to anchor our thoughts on God’s character and promises, to continually look to him, pray to him, and hope in him.  One way to set our minds on God is to worship him for his attributes.  For example, “Lord, I praise you, that you are all powerful - you can meet my needs.  You are unchanging in your faithfulness, mercy and steadfast love.  And even in this trial, you have compassion on me as a father on his children.”

We must keep our eyes on Christ, not our circumstances:

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” (MT 14.28-30)

As long as Peter kept his eyes fastened on Jesus, he was able to walk on water.  But when he shifted his eyes from Jesus to the wind, he began to sink.

If we’re always checking the market, the polls, or the paper more than our bibles, we’ll sink.  You’ll never hear a newscaster say, “The Dow Jones dipped 700 points today, but don’t worry, God’s in control!” Or, “We’re on the verge of a world-wide depression, but don’t fear, God feeds the sparrows; surely he’ll care for us.”

So rivet your eyes on Christ and He will guard your heart with his peace that surpasses understanding.

For many of us, a feeling of guilt is our first response to the subject of bible study.  While there may be an appropriate sense of conviction we must reject any sense of guilt that comes from thinking we have to be good enough for God.  This is the kind of thing that Stephen Altrogge deals with in the following post from the Blazing Center blog.

If you could use one word to describe your current devotional life, what would it be? Mine would be “scraps”. So often I feel like all I can muster is a distracted scrap of devotion to God. For example, here’s what my Bible reading time often looks like:

Step 1: Open Bible. Pray that God would meet me as I read his word.

Step 2: Read diligently for thirty seconds, taking in at least three full sentences.

Step 3: Begin wondering if I’ll ever receive my tax refund, because it sure would come in handy right now.

Step 4: Feel guilty for being distracted. Try to “come back” into the presence of God (whatever that means).

Step 5: Repeat steps one and two plus additional prayer of repentance for being distracted.

Step 6: Begin thinking about my next killer blog post that will rock the blogosphere.

Step 7: Repeat steps 1, 4, and 5.

You get the point. It’s a constant battle against my sinful nature, which will seize on the slightest distraction. Many times I feel guilty instead of refreshed after doing my devotions. I feel like I didn’t pray enough, or with enough passion, or for enough people. And I certainly didn’t have enough love for God. My feeble scraps of devotion to God are pathetic, with a capital “pathetic”.

But God has been teaching me about devotional scraps lately. My devotion (probably too strong of a word) to God is nothing more than scraps, but God accepts, and even delights in those scraps. And when I get distracted, I don’t have to work my way back into God’s presence. I can come right back to God and experience full acceptance. Why? Because Jesus Christ is holding the door open. Always.
God’s love for me has nothing to do with my devotion and everything to do with Christ’s perfect devotion. Jesus was passionately devoted to God. He didn’t offer any scraps, he offered perfect obedience and love. And then his life ended. Abruptly. Brutally.

Now his righteousness is mine, and he perfects my feeble scraps of devotion and presents them to God. God loves Jesus, which means God loves me, end of story. The door to God is held open by the cross.

So yes, my worship is nothing more than scraps. But to God, they’re delightful scraps, made perfect by his son. How freeing this truth is. Today let’s throw aside any hope we have in our scraps of devotion and place all our hope in Christ. True devotion to God starts at the cross.

Can you relate to my feeling of devotional scraps?

Owen Strachan over at his blog recently posted the following on our avoidance of hard words and need for them.  Let me preface his comments by emphasizing that it is only the gospel of our all sufficient Savior that frees us to recieve hard words.  It is only because of the cross that we can face our sin with hope.

Are you an HSP?  Are you a “highly sensitive person?”  If so, please note that the following book is available to you: Highly Sensitive Person’s Companion: Daily Exercises for Calming Your Senses in an Overstimulating World.  Or, you could go with the classic text on the HSP, The Highly Sensitive Person.  Parenting an HSP?  Check out the website designed especially to assist you and, specifically, to lighten the heavy burden of your wallet.

In all seriousness, we are living in an incredibly sensitive age.  The existence–and best-seller status!–of the aforementioned texts shows the prevalence of sensitivity.  Don’t believe me?  Try telling someone you know a hard truth about them.  Tell them, as gently as you possibly can be, that there is something that they need to work on–their parenting, their interaction with the opposite sex, their manner with people, and so on.  I can almost guarantee you that they will react sensitively.  In a culture that values self-esteem and derides self-control and self-abasement, sensitivity is thoroughly in style.  Hard words are out; soft words are in.

Which brings us to a difficulty reality: the Bible places great value on hard but necessary words.  Consider Proverbs 26:5-6:

“Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” the text reads, indicating that a huge part of friendship, surprisingly enough, is to wound, by which we mean rebuking, warning, counseling, even scolding.  These aren’t “in” words today.  Anything but.  But they are thoroughly biblical words.  They often bring life, though in our highly sensitive age (HSA, for those of you scoring at home), we think that they bring death.  We think that for someone to chastise us is for them to irreparably harm and wrong us.  Sure, once in a while, we’ll tolerate a little counsel, a few scattered suggestions here and there, but we have precious little stomach for anyone who wants to sit us down and walk us through a plan for godliness in an area of weakness.

Do a little historical experiment with me.  When was the last time that someone really searched your soul?  By this I mean, when was the last time that a close friend gave you extended counsel in an area of your life that involved measured rebuke and warning?  Or, to extend this into the realm of the truly alien, when was the last time that you personally sought such counsel from a trusted companion?  Can you remember the last time you did so?  Have you ever done so? (more…)

The following is a post from 2 years ago- still just as timely now as it was then:

Mark Lauterbauch, in his fourth in a series of posts on the gospel and 1 Peter, relates some helpful thoughts about how the beleiver is to love his community.  Below are his conclusions.

Peter tells them also to LIVE SUCH A GOOD LIFE or live an HONORABLE LIFE among the Gentiles.  In other words, Christians are to be present in the world but living differently from the world.  And the differences are more than what we don’t do — the difference includes what we do.  We are to do good works.

Good works are about how I live — and good works serve other people. They are works of caring for needs, generous giving, and pursuing justice in the world.

I have been thinking about this some — this means that my life is to make the community in which I live a better place — that is what good works do.  My neighborhood should be safer and more caring because of our presence.  My work should be different because I am there.  There are people with needs that should be met by me because I am doing good.

How does this tie into the Gospel story?  Peter has already established that they are part of God’s redeeming plan and story.  And God’s story includes this truth for our day — we live in a day in which God is showing kindness to the world. He is making the sun to shine on the evil and the good. He is delaying judgment because he is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3). So Christians display the kindness of God by living lives abounding in good works.  And Christians are generous in doing good because God has been extravagantly generous with us in his grace.

Jonathan Edwards said that true love meant a large heart — the inclusion of the good of others as though it were my good.  Peter is saying the Gospel enlarges our hearts.  And our good works commend the Gospel to people who can see but may not want to listen.

Do we love the people around us?  Do we consistently wish for and seek the best for our community?  Do the people in our neighborhood know of our love?

A couple of recent quotes from the blog Of First Importance.

“There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to Christ’s being. All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us – however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense – it is a personal union.

Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.”

- Sinclair Ferguson on John 15 at the 2007 Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference in Grantham, PA.

“If we are to change we must be regularly preaching the gospel to ourselves and believing it. We must be continually showing ourselves, and those we counsel, the depths and greatness of God’s love for them. We must stop wasting our time trying to convince ourselves that we are lovable, and instead rest in the glorious fact that we are loved. It is this message which God uses to change us at the motivational level.”

—Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Fellowship Group Handbook, 9

Brad Hilton emailed me this week with an incredible resource he has put together.  He has assembled a collection of the songs we sing through amazon MP3 and through itunes. What this allows you to do is to purchase the songs we sing to listen to throughout the week.  This could be a great way to familiarize your family with the songs and prepare for worship each Sunday.

Here’s what Brad says about utilizing this resource.

This is a sampling of the songs used in the worship rotation at Sovereign Grace Fellowship. You can purchase the songs from either Amazon.com or the iTunes music store. These songs are in a digital format to be used on your computer or ipod. However, once you purchase the songs there is a variety of music management tools (such as iTunes) that will allow you to copy the songs to audio cds that will play in car and home stereos. You can also purchase the entire audio CD after clicking on a song at the Amazon.com store if you would prefer to own the entire album.

Many of you will prefer the Amazon.com version of the songs because they can be used on a wider variety of devices and are sometimes encoded at a higher quality. They can also be imported into iTunes if you happen to own an ipod.

You can access these below or if you want to come back later you can click on the link titled “Songs” in the menu on the right side of this page.

The following is a post from the Desiring God blog written by Matt Perman.  It is refreshing how he sees the health as the economy in terms of loving the people around him and not merely in terms of his own financial well being.  Another good encouragement to prayer.

I pray for the economy at all times, not just times of crisis, because as Christians we are to wish for and seek the welfare of others. There are few things that have more impact on the welfare of large groups of people, in the physical sense, than the state of the economy. Therefore, I believe that the command to “love your neighbor” implies that we desire, seek, and pray for the welfare of the economy.

A healthy economy serves people in multiple ways. Here are two.

First, it is better for people to be able to work for their living than to have to depend upon others to provide for their needs. For example, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to work with their hands so that they “will not be dependent upon anyone” (1 Thessalonians 4:12; see also 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12).

In addition to this, as Wayne Grudem has pointed out in his book Business to the Glory of God , economic productivity is the only long-term solution to global poverty. We have seen this manifestly demonstrated over the last several hundred years as economic freedom has, through God’s grace, lifted millions out of poverty, and it remains true for the future.

Second, a healthy economy more effectively allows for the wide-scale implementation of proactive initiatives for the good of others. This is where I want to spend my time—focusing on things that do good for people on a large scale, both physically and spiritually. The multi-faceted creative initiatives that are enabled by a healthy economy include both the initiatives of for-profit businesses as well as the social and spiritual good that non-profit organizations are able to do.

It is absolutely true that God does good through times of hardship and not just health. This is not just true, but glorious. Yet this does not give us reason as Christians to be nonchalant about whether hardship comes. We are to guide our actions and desires by God’s will of command, which is to seek our nation’s (and the world’s) welfare, just as God commanded Jeremiah: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:7).

Our leaders need extraordinary wisdom as they determine the most effective way to deal with the current tumultuous situation in the financial markets. This weekend is especially significant as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and congress flesh out the details of the bold plan that is needed to end this situation.

Join with me in praying that the Lord would grant accurate and profound wisdom to our leaders to do this successfully—and join with me in continuing to do this at all times no matter what the situation.

I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings [make sure not to forget that!] be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

This is a pretty huge topic these days and everyone seems to have an opinion.  I thought I would post a couple of items I’ve come accross that seem to have a biblial perspective on things.

The best place to start of course is Scripture itself- the only infallible word on these things.  Josh Harris recently posted the following selection of verses on money.

This week I came across a couple of posts on the issue of husbands and marriage.  Sometimes I think many of us as men are sleep walking through our marriages without grasping the significance of what we are called to do- there is an incredible privilege and weight that goes along with being a husband.  We should be driven daily to the free grace of God that covers our failures and to further striving to reflect our Savior in our marriages.

The first is from Justin Buzzard at Buzzard Blog.  His wife gave birth to their second son this week and he received the following advice from one of the elders at his church.

…I am adding a prayer for your marriage, clearly more stress and pressure will be applied with two young ‘uns and all the great stuff you are involved in.

We talk about being “intentional” all the time, over the next year you are really going to have to be intentional in putting Taylor’s needs ahead of your own. She will be 24/7 putting the needs of two boys ahead of her wants, desires and needs…that’s the just the way it is in this stage with multiple kids….so she is going to desperately need someone to pamper her and put her first…prioritize her.

Guess what that is YOU I know this sounds kind of like a raw deal (I mean who is going to be pampering Justin?). But this is the Biblical model. Christ laid down his life so that He could present the church (bride) blameless. I think as men we have that same challenge, we need to be building into our wives by serving them, meeting their needs, putting them first in all things…that’s how we lead them to a deeper relationship with Jesus.

Fight the very human desire to want something for yourself. When those thoughts come try and transfer it to, “how can I take something off of Taylor’s plate today?”.

I know this may sound a bit brutal in lieu of all you have going on….but God made you strong for a purpose, He gave you an abundance of gifts for a purpose, and He has provided many friends to pray for you all for a purpose…

The second is a video clip of John Piper that Vitamin Z posted this last week on the importance and magnificence of marriage.