Frail

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
in thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.

Resources available for those who want them

I have downloaded and listened to (most of) the audio listed below. It's all in MP3 format, so if you live close by me, let me know and I can loan you a copy on a USB “thumb drive” that you can copy to your computer, and from there to your iPod or other device, or even burn onto a CD. Note: These were all given away by their various sources (church, conference, whatever), so there is no copyright issue with my giving them away to you.

• A series of 69 sermons:
• Introduction to the Bible
• Introduction to the Old Testament
• Introduction to the New Testament
• A sermon on each of the 66 books of the Bible.
These sermons (not lectures) were preached over several years by Mark Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.
• The addresses from a conference held in 2006 called Together for the Gospel. Speakers: Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper.
• Together for the Gospel conference held in 2008. Same speakers as above, plus Thabiti Anyabwile.

By the time you have asked for it, there may be additional resources on the thumb drive. If it's there, you can copy it!

Legalism

Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God.

— C.J. Mahaney

Sermons

In my roaming around the internet for lo! these several years, I have, at times, strayed out of the Southern Baptist fields and found things. One of the things I have found is advice on how to evaluate a sermon. So below are two different methods.

First from a Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod pastor comes his three step evaluation criteria. Apply the steps in this order:

1. Is Jesus mentioned?
2. Is Jesus the subject or the object of the verbs?
3. What are the verbs?

The point is that the content of the sermon should be that the Gospel is what Jesus did, not what we do.

The second, one-step, criterion comes from a Methodist bishop. His is probably logically equivalent to the Lutheran's, but is a great deal more succinct. It goes like this:

• Did Jesus have to die for this to make any kind of sense?

A Relationship with Jesus Christ

“Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship.” How many times have you heard that? Besides having a dubious perspective on James 1:26-27, this statement is demonstrably incomplete. Every sentient being in the universe has a relationship with every other sentient being in the universe. If nothing else, they have a relationship called “strangers.”

But when someone says some variant of what I quoted above, they mean a human has a relationship with God through the finished work of Christ. Abraham, though he didn't know Jesus by name, had the promise of God concerning his “Seed”, and in believing God, he was called a friend of God. That was their relationship.

But friendship isn't the only relationship people can have with God: “Creation” is an action by a Creator that establishes a relationship between a Creator with some other being.

“But,” you're protesting, “I mean a personal relationship, not an object relationship.” Fair enough. You may not believe it, but the Bible declares that every human, lost or saved, has a relationship with God. You probably agree that saved people have a relationship of love, as child to Father, as slave to Redeemer, as lost to Finder (see Luke 15).

But I'm guessing you don't think about the relationship of the lost to the Father, Son and Spirit. But they have one. The Bible's word for this relationship is "enmity," the relationship between enemies.

• Romans 5:10
• Romans 11:28
• Philippians 3:18

The lost are enemies of Jesus Christ. When stated that way, it's a bit of a shock. But it has the benefit of being true.

So how can anyone be saved? People can be saved because God loves his enemies.