my burg

"...concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord... (Romans 1:3-4 ESV) "The first point which we have to make is that the gospel is concerning God's Son.  That is the nerve, the heart and the very centre of the gospel.  There is no such thing as the Christian gospel, and there is no such thing as Christianity, apart from Him.  Christianity, by definition, is Christ Himself.  Now this is something, it seems to me, as one sees so clearly in the New Testament, about which there can be no discussion or argument whatsoever.  There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  That does not mean that the Lord Jesus Christ is a 'bearer' of good news from God.  No!  It means that He Himself is the good news.  It is the Person and what...

"And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."  (Joshua 24:15 ESV) These are among the last spoken words of Joshua as recorded in Scripture.   According to mentalfloss.com here are some last words that people uttered before dying:  -- Blues singer Bessie Smith died saying, “I’m going, but I’m going in the name of the Lord.” -- Frank Sinatra died after saying, “I’m losing it.”  [ Previously, he sung about doing life "his way."] --When Harriet Tubman was dying in 1913, she gathered her family around and they sang together. Her last words were, “Swing low, sweet chariot.” -- Murderer James W. Rodgers was put in front of a firing squad in Utah and asked if he had a last request. He replied, “Bring me a bullet-proof vest.”   -- Si...

"Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.  And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes."  (Ezekiel 36:22-23 ESV) Below is an excerpt from one of the sermons by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Ezekiel 36.  This series of Sunday evening sermons is a powerful example of how to preach the gospel from the Old Testament...  "But salvation also vindicates God's holiness.  He is a holy God. 'I will  sanctify my name,' he says.  'You have profaned it and the heathen have  profaned it.'  How does God vindicate his holiness?  He does it partly by  punish...

So, I made a list of the twelve best books I read this past year.  I don't know why I do this, but it seems appropriate to share this, rather than, say, my favorite dog videos or Instagram photos of what I'm eating tonight.  So, in no particular order I'll dive in:  Setting Our Affections upon Glory: Nine Sermons on the Gospel and the Church , by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Crossway, 2013).  At least once each year I  find myself reading a book of sermons preached by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981).  Simply put, he's just in a category by himself and his  sermons always feed my soul, as well as stimulate thought and affections.  Snippets: "There is only one thing [ the Christian can ] do with time, and  that is to take it and put it into the grand context of eternity."  And, "The great need of the church today, in our sadness and in our slowness, is to  discover the secret of the burning heart." The Christian View of Man , by J. Gres...

"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God."  (Psalm 42:11 ESV) In his classic work, Spiritual Depression (Eerdmans, 1965), Martyn Lloyd-Jones addresses upfront what he considers to be the ultimate cause of spiritual depression, and what generally the cure will be:   "The ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief.  For if it were not for unbelief even the devil could do nothing.  It is because we listen to the devil instead of listening to God that we go down before him and fall before his attacks.  That is why this psalmist keeps on saying to himself, 'Hope thou in God for I shall yet praise Him...' He reminds himself of God.  Why?  Because he was depressed and had forgotten God, so that his faith and his belief in God and in God's power, and in his relationship to God, were not what they ought to be.  We can indeed sum it a...

In no particular order... Reformation:Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow ,  by Carl Trueman (Christian Focus, Reprint 2011).  In this reprint, Trueman (professor of church history) gives a number of important applications for today's church from the Reformation.   How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds ,  by Alan Jacobs (Currency, 2017).  Hard to describe this little book, but it is profound. How community  affects the way we think.  I enjoyed two collections of sermons by Martyn Lloyd-Jones : Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled, (Crossway reissue, 2009). The Cross: God's Way of Salvation, (Crossway, 1986)  Awakening the Evangelical Mind:  An Intellectual History of the Neo-Evangelical Movement ,  by Owen Strachan (Zondervan, 2015)  Along with  Confessions of a Theologian, by Carl F. H. Henry (Word Books, 1986).  Strachan chronicles the rise of the new evangelicals in the 1950s and beyond.  Carl ...

"In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."  (Jn 16:33)   This was true when Jesus uttered these words to his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion.  These words are just as true 2000 years later.  We may have greater knowledge and better technology, but humanity's problems persist: wars, strife, injustice, poverty, lust, anger, fear, loneliness, and despair.   Many people feel that it was (and is) the church's job to change the world for the better, to improve things, to make this world a better place to live.  They would say Christianity has not been the answer to the world's problems, and that the church has held up the world in its progress, and therefore needs to be discarded.  But our Lord did not promise that the world would ever become a  better place or improve over time, even given exposure to the gospel. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in preaching on John 16, makes these statements... Wh...

"I am a Calvinist; I believe in election and predestination; but I would not dream of putting it under the heading of essential. I put it under the heading of non-essential… You are not saved by your precise understanding of how this great salvation comes to you. What you must be clear about is that you are lost and damned, hopeless and helpless, and that nothing can save you but the grace of God in Jesus Christ and only Him crucified, bearing the punishment of your sins, dying, rising again, ascending, sending the Spirit, regeneration. Those are the essentials… While I myself hold very definite and strong views on the subject, I will not separate from a man who cannot accept and believe the doctrines of election and predestination, and is Arminian, as long as he tells me that we are all saved by grace, and as long as the Calvinist agrees, as he must, that God calls all men everywhere to repentance. As long as both are prepared to agree about these things I say we must not break...

timothy ah koy / unsplash "Sin is the most serious matter that has ever entered into the whole universe. Let me put it like this. The problem of sin is the greatest problem that even Almighty God has ever had to deal with.  "Now, creation is a tremendous matter. There was nothing, and God created. There at a certain point the Spirit broods upon the abyss and the chaos, and God said: ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’ God brought light into being by the mere word of his power, his mere fiat. And God created everything in the same way—a word was enough, such is the power of God. He speaks and it is done.  "But when God comes to deal with the problem of man, and man in sin and rebellion, and man in alienation against himself, a word is not enough.  "God cannot forgive sin just by saying: ‘I forgive.’ If he could, he would have done so. Do you imagine that God would ever have sent his only begotten Son to the cross if he could have forgiven the sin of...

"But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."  (Galatians 6:14 ESV) Here are some highlights from The Cross: God's Way of Salvation (Crossway, 1986), a series of messages by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preached in 1963 at Westminster Chapel in London.  "The whole of the New Testament is proclaiming the blood of Christ, the death of Christ upon the cross, on Calvary. It is the heart and centre of the Christian evangel, the good news of salvation." "He [Paul] preached the cross because it is the cross that really does this thing that sets us free, and gives us our salvation. This is absolutely vital." "Nothing is more necessary than that we should be perfectly clear about our authority, and there are only two ultimate authorities: the Bible, or anything else you like. There is no other choice...  Everybody bases his opinion either upon this book or els...

"These things you have done, and I have been silent;  you thought that I was one like yourself.  But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you."   (Psalm 50:21 ESV)  "They substitute their own ideas of God for the true idea of God... Instead of taking God's own revelation of himself, they have substituted their own ideas." (Martyn Lloyd-Jones) Lloyd-Jones speaks of people within the church, people who regard themselves as religious (spiritual), who are interested in God.  Yet, they do so in a way that is guided by their own thoughts.  They are interested in God, but their beliefs are shaped by what they find acceptable or unthinkable to them about God. They say such things as, "I can't believe in a God of wrath, that's unthinkable." They conceive of God in ways to their liking.  They form their own ideas about the love of God, the justice of God, or the righteousness of God, according to their own preferences.  And as such, Lloy...

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.  (Acts 2:46-47 ESV) "Are you burdened about the state of your country?  Are you merely annoyed at the increase in sin, or is your heart full of sorrow for poor men and women who are its victims?  Are you merely annoyed with young people, or do you feel sorry for them because they do know any better, because they have never heard about God and Christ and the possibility of being children of God?  Are you just irritated by them, or does your heart bleed for them?  Do you want to show them this 'marvelous light'?  Do you want to hold before them 'the word of life'?  People come together in fellowship in order that they might shine more brightly and show this evil generation to which they belong t...

"[You] were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."  (Ephesians 4:21-24 ESV) "The whole matter of putting on the new man is in essence the application of truth to ourselves.  It is the most important thing that one can ever discover in the Christian life.  The real secret of Christian living is to discover the art of talking to yourself.  We must talk to ourselves, we must preach to ourselves, and we must take truth and apply it to ourselves, and keep on doing so.  That is the putting on of the new man.  We have to hammer away at ourselves until we have really convinced ourselves.  In other words, this is not something that you wait for passively.  If you wait until you feel like the new ma...

"But that is not the way you learned Christ!-- assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."  (Ephesians 4:20-24 ESV) "The putting on of the new man is something that must be done completely, it must always be done as a whole, and it must apply to the whole of our life continuously.  In other words, we must never do the work in compartments; we must put on the new man not only in certain parts of our lives, it must be the whole of our life.  We must not put on the new man only at certain times or when we are in certain company, or when we are in certain places.  That would be to deny the whole principle.  The new man must be the reigning and the governing principle...

But that is not the way you learned Christ!-- assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."  (Ephesians 4:20-24 ESV) In a sermon on this passage, specifically verse 23, Lloyd-Jones writes... "We now recognize that becoming a Christian does not mean that you simply change your moral suit or your outward behaviour.  Nor does it merely mean that you change your opinions, or change your mind.  But it most certainly means changing the spirit of your mind.  What a distinction!  In other words, Christianity is not something that you and I take up intellectually; it is something that takes us up, and captivates us, and governs us, and controls us." "The Christian is...

"But that is not the way you learned Christ!-- assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus..." (Ephesians 4:20-21 ESV) What does it mean, "you learned Christ"?  Here are some highlights from Martyn Lloyd-Jones' sermon on this passage:  "Christianity is not a vague, indefinite, nebulous kind of feeling or experience; patently it is something which can be defined and described; it is primarily a matter of knowledge." "The Christian therefore, by definition, is a man whose eyes have been opened, while the unbeliever is still blinded by the god of this world."  "How then has it all happened?  There is only one explanation-- this is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Nothing else, nobody else, can do this but the Holy Spirit.  It is His special, His peculiar work.  It is He alone who can remove the veil from the heart." "This truth is the most glorious thing we can ever realize toget...

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!"  (Ephesians 4:17-20 ESV) "...and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."  (1 Corinthians 2:4-5 ESV) "The great philosopher has no advantage over the pagan in this matter of the gospel.  Until both of them come under the influence and the power of the Holy Spirit of God, neither will see it.  But thank God, when the Holy Spirit comes upon both, both will see it; not only the philosopher, ...

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart." (Ephesians 4:17-18  ESV)  "Now go through the whole of your Bible and you will find that this is what it says everywhere about man in sin and about man outside Christ.  It describes the kind of life people live, and then it asks its question, Why do they live like that?  There is, says the Bible, only one explanation: the failure is in their minds, their intellects, and their understanding.  The highest faculty in man has become blunted and blinded; he cannot see because of this pall that has descended upon him; he is surrounded by darkness.  But let me put this a little more theologically.  The most disastrous effect that the Fall of Man produced upon man was in his understanding. ...

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds."  (Ephesians 4:17 ESV) "Doctrine followed by practice is the distinct characteristic of [Paul's] method... doctrine and practice are so intimately related and connected that they must never be divided; Paul cannot deal even with the most practical matters except in the light of doctrine." "Our conduct must always arise from and be dictated by and controlled by our doctrine.  In other words, the Christian life is not a code which is imposed upon us and which we do not understand." "As it follows out of doctrine we must understand what we are doing and what we are not doing.  Or, to put that still more plainly, we should never do things merely because other people are doing them; and we should not refrain from doing things simply because other people refrain from doing them. We must understand why we do them or why we refr...