vassal of the King

Unfortunately, when I was reading this afternoon, I came across this very disheartening quote from a fairly well-known theological apologist: I also think a serious reader of Scripture can doubt that God's Word plays a determinative role in the human knowledge of God. I leave out the source for the author's own sake. But my question to this man is, " If you can't understand God from the Scriptures, then where do you find understanding about God?" I was shocked when I read this quote. I know what you're thinking, "Geoff took this quote out of context." I answer, "Nope." So I go back to my original thought, if you can't know God from the Scriptures - or as he would phrase it, you can doubt God's Word (problem there #1) plays a determinative role in the human knowledge of God . I leave you with this thought: Never read and take in everything you hear as absolute, true, biblical and sound truth - even from so-called "evangelic

This marvelous hymn, written by a new convert just after believing in Christ, expresses deep joy and bewilderment at the sacrifice of the God-Man for us. Read the chorus, Amazing Love, How can it be that Thou My God shouldst die for me? And Can It Be Charles Wesley (1739) 1.And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood! Died he for me? who caused his pain! For me? who him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? 2.'Tis mystery all: th' Immortal dies! Who can explore his strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine. 'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore; let angel minds inquire no more. 'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore; let angel minds inquire no more. 3.He left his Father's throne above (so free, so infinite his grace!), emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam's helpless race.

May it not cross your mind that your pastor sits around all day enjoying the ease of life doing chores at home with just a few minutes remaining on Saturday night needed to prepare a sermon (if we could even call it that). We trust that pastors labor weekly over the biblical text to find a sermon. Let it be known to us all that we have an enemy who is very active in endeavoring to discourage and discredit and destroy our ministries. Herein lies the reason why the shepherd must labor over the text for a sermon. And it is for this very reason that he needs to do so. We know that Satan is the god of this world (2 Cor 4:4) and we also know that, now, the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19). For these reasons, I believe that pastors are constantly under spiritual attack from Satan and his minions. I pray that as pastors, we would be sobered by this realization and be reminded to set our hope completely on the Word of God which is completely sufficient for every aspe

Everyone who reads this silly blog knows that my hero is Dr. Steven J. Lawson . He is pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church , in Mobile, Alabama. He is also founder of New Reformation Ministries and an author of dozens of books! In any case, J. W. Hendryx interviewed Steve Lawson at Monergism . It is worth a read. I will copy it here for your read. I love this man! 1. Who are those that have had a profound influence on you and your ministry (both living and deceased)? and why? God has been pleased to bring select men into my life, individuals who have played a strategic role in shaping me into what God desires me to become. Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” This says, certain men have a stimulating and sharpening effect upon us. This has been true with me. Undoubtedly, the most powerful influence has been John MacArthur, pastor/teacher of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles , CA . What I have learned from Dr. MacArthur is an unwavering com

I want to declare to you that the pornography industry is more rampant than you may think or realize. I was surfing the web for some statistics yesterday and came across these startling facts. Before I give them to you, I want to begin with a quote from Scripture as our foundation: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. So here goes: At 13.3 billion, the 2006 revenues of the sex and porn industry in the U.S. are bigger than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball combined . Worldwide sex industry sales for 2006 are reported to be 97 billion. To put this in perspective, Microsoft, who sells the operating system used on most of the computers in the world (in addition to other software) reported sales of 44.8 billion in 2006. Survey conducted by "Internet Filter Review." The No. 1 se

By way of review we have been discussing the dire need for expository preaching in contemporary pulpits today. Here is my working outline: Expository Preaching has three purposes: 1. Exposing the congregation to the knowledge of God 2. Explaining the meaning of a text to know and understand the meaning of Scripture 3. Exhortation to the congregation leading them to obedience and to response Today we are going to focus on the third purpose of expository preaching. By the way, this list is in no way exhaustive, just a simple clear-cut outline that captures much of what expository preaching is - or ought to be. 3. Exhortation to the congregation leading them to obedience and to response. We will look at the absolute necessity of exhorting the people of God to apply the biblical truths to their lives so as to see a fruitful change toward godliness. Think of this sad - but true - reality: "As the 20th century closes, a great deal of concern has been

Today, one of the top AOL news stories had this heading and, of course, it grabbed my attention, Man says he found fried mouse in chips. I had never anticipated these two items going together, but I guess this is not an impossibility! So I read this article about a Jack Hines, a 66-year old man from Havre, Montana, who said: "I was snacking on the chips Tuesday when I pulled out the crispy rodent." Now don't let this ruin your appetite, but he continues... "Good thing I seen it. I got it all the way up to my mouth," he said. "I felt the fur, I brought it back down and just looked at it and threw it behind my back." Believe it or not, Frito-Lay is sending a representative to retrieve the bag and the mouse this weekend. Both will be shipped to company headquarters in Plano, Texas, for an investigation. Call me crazy, but that just seems a little bit too much for me. Here is what I would do if I had a bag of potato chips and suddenly found a mouse in

It is my goal today to continue the study on " The Need for Expository Preaching " in our churches today. Here is my working outline: Expository Preaching has three purposes: 1. Exposing the congregation to the knowledge of God 2. Explaining the meaning of a text to know and understand the meaning of Scripture 3. Exhortation to the congregation leading them to obedience and to response Yesterday I discussed the need for expository preaching because it exposes the congregation to the knowledge of God as revealed through the pages of inspired Scripture. Today I want to discuss the second definition of expository preaching: 2. Explaining the meaning of a text to know and understand the meaning of Scripture. By this I simply mean that expository preaching is systematically working through a passage of Scripture - paragraph by paragraph, verse by verse, and even word by word - so as to gain a full understanding of the meaning of the text ." Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddox in

It is my hope over the next few posts I will lay before you the need for expository preaching . I hope to do this in defining expository preaching in three various ways. Expository Preaching : 1. Exposing the congregation to the knowledge of God 2. Explaining the meaning of a text to know and understand the meaning of Scripture 3. Exhortation to the congregation leading them to obedience and to response* I hope that you will better understand what expository preaching really is, and furthermore, that you would long in your soul for expository preaching. Today we will look at: I. Expository Preaching - Exposing the congregation to the knowledge of God . It must be understood first and foremost that it is in the pages of Scripture that God is understood. That is not the only means by which God reveals Himself, however. There is the revelation of God in a general (that is, universal) way in and through creation (Psalm 8, 19 and Romans 1). But God can be known in his essence, characte

Elizabeth and I have been spent this week at Hume Lake Christian Camps with our youth group from church. We had about 45 students at three different camps, so we made our rounds to the various camps throughout each day and we had a blast. A few nights ago at the Jr. High Bible Study meeting, the speaker, Phil Payne, began his message with Romans 11:22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God . He continued by noting that we oftentimes think of the kindness of the Lord, but how often do we really consider the sternness or the severity of God. There are two lies that have crept into the church. Not only that, but the church has bought into these lies. The first lie is that “God wants us to be happy.” The second lie is that “Life is all about me.” Is it God’s heart for me to really be happy? Yes we must have joy. But is my happiness really God’s passion for me? Second of all – and closely related to the first is this. Is life all about me? Does God make decisions and plan

In his masterful work, Preaching and Preachers , Martin Lloyd Jones says that a "dull preacher is a contradiction in terms" (87). He spends a great deal of time in the chapter on "The Act of Preaching" in that preaching must be passionate, urgent, powerful, prayerful, vibrant, serious and the like. Just one quote is worthy of reflection: " What is preaching? Logic in fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is a theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or at least the man's understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and shou

John Owen said: "Let not men deceive themselves, sanctification is a qualification indispensably necessary unto those who will be under the conduct of the Lord Christ unto salvation. He leads none to heaven but whom He sanctifies on the earth. This living Head will not admit of dead members." Quoted in J. C. Ryle, Holiness [1979], 45.

Romans 10:1-4 Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. 3 For not knowing about God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Please pray with and for Elizabeth and I as we head to New York City. A world center for commercialism, financialism, professionalism and sexualism (and many other "isms"). It is truly our privilege and honor that we bear the responsibility of wearing the name of Jesus on our chest (literally) for the next week walking the busy streets of Manhattan to share the Gospel with both Jews and Gentiles. This is the Jews for Jesus' mission statement: "We exist to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide. " To see a

James 1:27 27 This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress , and to keep oneself unstained by the world. If this is pure and undefiled religion , then we better listen up to this. James so clearly notes that the duty of the believer is to visit and care for those in need - and two examples of that are the orphans and the widows. I went to CNN.com and found this headline story, Shunned from society, widows flock to city to die by Arwa Damon. Let's read it and grieve together: Ostracized by society, India's widows flock to the holy city of Vrindavan waiting to die. They are found on side streets, hunched over with walking canes, their heads shaved and their pain etched by hundreds of deep wrinkles in their faces. Specifically, Hindu widows are shunned from society when their husbands die, not for religious reasons, but because of tradition -- and because they're seen as a financial drain on their fam

The RidiculousAn assortment of seemingly crazy state driving laws exists and can be found easily across the internet. Most of these examples are sourced from newspapers and come from the site www.dumblaws.com, whose editors did not respond to a call for comment. Here goes: In California , no vehicle without a driver may exceed 60 miles per hour. In Florida , if an elephant, goat or alligator is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle. In Montana , it is illegal to have a sheep in the cab of your truck without a chaperone. In Oregon , a door on a car may not be left open longer than necessary. In Tennessee , it is illegal shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile (good luck finding a whale in Tennessee!). The lesson, just be careful out there - it is a dangerous world! :=) SOURCE: AOL News

Alistair Begg in his article, What Happened to Expository Preaching is an excellent read. In it, he notes so well, "Young men beginning pastoral ministry are besieged by members of their congregations wanting them to begin their sermons with man and his need instead of God and his glory. Paranoid preoccupation with a new millennium is due more to a preoccupation with ourselves and our needs than to a humble dependence upon the unerring truth of the Bible. The antidote to such a virulent disease is biblical preaching that allows the Scriptures to establish the agenda." It is not as though I have been in full-time ministry for a lifetime, but having been involved in some sort of pastoral ministry for some years now, I can say that this statement by Begg is absolutely true. It is no wonder that the churches who are faithful to the Word of God are not growing by leaps and bounds while the seeker churches and the emerging churches or those that are not preaching the glory of G

I was reading yesterday and preparing for an interview I have in coming weeks and I came across a section in my class notes entitled: The Synoptic Problem . Now, the title itself is misleading for I do not believe there is a "synoptic problem." Let me explain. The Synoptic Problem is the "problem" of the origins of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Thus, there are many critics who believe that because Mark has very little material that is original, that Matthew and Luke simply got most of their information from their Gospel from Mark. Thrown into the mix is another "alleged gospel" called " Q. " "Q" is a document that is also supposedly used by the Synoptic writers from which they also gathered much information. However, if one simply holds to inspiration, inerrancy and the different purposes and emphases of each Gospel, then there really is no synoptic problem . Here is a quote I came across: This conservative response [