Jimmy Needham & Trip Lee: Grace Amazing

Machen: He Is More Than A Means to an End

"We are subject to many pressing needs, and we are too much inclined to value God, not for His own sake, but only because He can satisfy those needs. . . .

[Food, clothing, companionship, and inspiring work] are lofty desires. But there is one desire that is loftier still. It is the desire for God Himself. That desire, too often, we forget.

We value God solely for the things He can do; we make of Him a mere means to an ulterior end. And God refuses to be treated so; such a religion always fails in the hour of need. If we have regarded religion merely as a means of getting things--even lofty and unselfish things--then when the things that have been gotten are destroyed, our faith will fail. When loved ones are taken away, when disappointment comes and failure, when noble ambitions are set at naught, then we turn away from God. We have tried religion, we say, we have tried prayer, and it has failed. Of course it has failed! God is not content to be an instrument in our hand or a servant at our beck and call. . . .

If we possess God, then we can meet with equanimity the loss of all besides. Has it never dawned upon us that God is valuable for His own sake, that just as personal communion is the highest thing that we know on earth, so personal communion with God is the sublimest height of all? If we value God for His own sake, then the loss of other things will draw us all the closer to Him; we shall have recourse to Him in time of trouble as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." via Dane Ortlund

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God... 1 Peter 3:18 

Oh Praise the One Who Paid My Debt!

Doug Wilson: Enemies of Grace

"We are afraid of grace getting carried away, and so we want to slap some conditions on it . . . Grace is not something we do. Grace is not something we can control. Grace is not something we can manage. 

And this means that we in the Church need to recognize that the guardians of grace are frequently its most dangerous enemies. Grace is God's declared intention of favor for the whole world, whether we like it or not." 

John Stott: The Object of Faith

“To say ‘justification by faith’ is merely another way of saying ‘justification by Christ’. Faith has absolutely no value in itself; its value lies solely in its object. Faith is the eye that looks to Christ, the hand that lays hold of him, the mouth that drinks the water of life.” via OFI

Valley of Vision: The Water of Grace

O changeless God,
Under the conviction of the Spirit I learn that
the more I do, the worse I am,
the more I know, the less I know,
the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
the more I love, the more there is to love.
O wretched man that I am!

O Lord, I have a wild heart and cannot stand before you;
I am like a bird before a man...

Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite,
who sins more safely because grace abounds,
who tells his lust that Christ's blood cleanses it,
and who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved...

My mind is a bucket without a bottom...
always at the gospel well but never holding water.
My memory has no retention,
so I forget easily the lessons learned and your truths seep away.

Give me a broken heart that carries home the water of grace.

Peter's Betrayal: One of the Best Sermons that I Have Ever Heard

This is how we should all be preaching: throwing all of the flawed biblical characters - as well as ourselves - under the bus and exalting Christ. He is faithful while we are faithless. He is strong while we are weak. He resists while we succumb.. 

Check out Steve DeWitt's Christ-centered, grace-filled, and man-dethroning message here. You'll be glad that you did.

Love

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

Martin Luther: Union with Christ

So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where he is there I shall be also!" via GOG

Martin Luther: God Accepts Only the Wretched

"God accepts only the forsaken, 
cures only the sick, 
gives sight only to the blind, 
restores life to only the dead, 
sanctifies only the sinners, 
gives wisdom only to the unwise fools. 

In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace. 

Therefore no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God's material, and God's purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite." via GOG

Matt Chandler: No Condemnation

HT: GOG

Sam Storms: Forever Forgiven

"God has taken your sin and placed it out of sight behind his back. All he sees now when he sees you is the blessed righteousness of his own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the love of forgiveness.

Still not good enough? Still not convinced? Still afraid that your sins will do you in? Then pay close attention to the word of the prophet Micah...He has something important to say about the kind of God we have:

 "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:18-19).

How much more graphic do you demand God to be before you enter into the joy of his forgiving love? All vestige of condemning guilt is gone. Again, "just as God said he put our sins behind his back, so here he says he will hurl them into the depths of the sea. They will not 'fall overboard' ; God will hurl them into the depths. he wants them to be lost forever, because he has fully dealt with them in his Son, Jesus Christ." HT: GOG

Dane Ortlund: The Grace of God in the Bible

"There is always a danger of squeezing the Bible into a mold we bring to it rather than letting the Bible mold us. And, there could hardly be more diversity within the Protestant canon--diverse genres, historical settings, authors, literary levels, ages of history.

But while the Bible is not uniform, it is unified. The many books of the one Bible are not like the many pennies in the one jar. The pennies in the jar look the same, yet are disconnected; the books of the Bible (like the organs of a body) look different, yet are interconnected. As the past two generations' recovery of biblical theology has shown time and again, certain motifs course through the Scripture from start to end, tying the whole thing together into a coherent tapestry--kingdom, temple, people of God, creation/new creation, and so on.

Yet underneath and undergirding all of these, it seems to me, is the motif of God's grace, his favor and love to the undeserving. Don't we see the grace of God in every book of the Bible? (NT books include the single verse that best crystallizes the point.)

Genesis shows God’s grace to a universally wicked world as he enters into relationship with a sinful family line (Abraham) and promises to bless the world through him.

Exodus shows God’s grace to his enslaved people in bringing them out of Egyptian bondage.

Leviticus shows God’s grace in providing his people with a sacrificial system to atone for their sins.

Numbers shows God’s grace in patiently sustaining his grumbling people in the wilderness and bringing them to the border of the promised land not because of them but in spite of them.

Deuteronomy shows God’s grace in giving the people the new land 'not because of your righteousness' (ch. 9).

Joshua shows God’s grace in giving Israel victory after victory in their conquest of the land with neither superior numbers nor superior obedience on Israel’s part..."

Read the rest of his list here.  

Sinless

Suffering he knew.

Pain he knew.

Loneliness he knew.

Temptation he knew.

Grief he knew.

Betrayal he knew.

Loss he knew.

But sin he did not know.

For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin... 2 Corinthians 5:21

From Shadows to Substance: Jesus is the True and Final Scapegoat

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. Leviticus 16:21-22

Can you see it? Can you see Christ in this passage? Check out Isaiah 53 to read some serious parallels to this 'sin-bearing' account in Leviticus.

Jesus is the true and final scapegoat bearing the sins of His people once and for all on the cross.

In Leviticus we see the shadow, in the passion accounts of Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John we see the substance.

What is Your Problem?

What is your problem? I mean, what is your real problem? Is it money issues, perhaps girlfriend or boyfriend struggles, or health concerns? Maybe insecurity, not having the right clothes, or malicious gossip that is being spread about you? Is the root of your issue unloving parents,  friends that have betrayed you, or a difficult marriage? 

You do have a problem. I do have a problem. The real problem, however - the big problem is this: we are sinners, we are by nature enemies of God, and we are, apart from God's grace, guilty in the eyes of the perfect judge. 

That is your big problem. That is my big problem. The problem is sin. The problem is our subsequent enmity with the Creator. The problem is that God is completely just and therefore that sin cannot go unpunished; it disgusts him. In short, all of us, from the rapist to the church lady, are in trouble. None can escape His judgement. No one is good enough to meet His standard.

Pastors often don't want to tell us that because you and I don't want to hear it. We'd rather hear 5 tips on how to have our best life now. But we need to hear it every day. I am telling you now because I have nothing to sell. I am not interested in your tithe. I don't need the pews filled. I don't have a horse in this race. I don't even know who you are. But, this is your issue. This is my issue. Nothing is more important or pressing. We are all guilty and we know it. 

Fortunately there is a gospel. Fortunately there is grace. Fortunately there is a solution to the problem - his name is Jesus. He succeeded where we fail, He resisted where we have succumbed, and He bore that sin and judgement so that we could be free. 

John Piper: The Supremacy of Christ

Tim Keller: The Gospel Is...

"The Gospel is—we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, and at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace."

Wright: The Hurricane Has Become Human

"How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? 

Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the more devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it’s a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. 

Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between..."

Cheap eBook Alert: The Pilgrim's Progress

Right now Amazon is selling Crossway's beautifully updated and illustrated kindle version of The Pilgrim's Progress for only $.95 here. It usually sells for $12.99.

There Are Essentially Only 2 Religions

"There are not thousands of religions. There are not even hundreds of religions. There are only two: one which tells you that salvation comes as a reward for what you have done, and one which tells you that salvation comes by what somebody else does for you. That’s Christianity. All the rest fit under the other. And if you think you can get your salvation by your own efforts, then Christianity has nothing to say to you. But if you know you need to be saved, then you are a candidate." -Ironside via Buzzard

The Law & Gospel Distinction

"This difference between the Law and the Gospel is the height of knowledge in Christendom. Every person and all persons who assume or glory in the name of Christian should know and be able to state this difference. If this ability is lacking, one cannot tell a Christian from a heathen or a Jew; of such supreme importance is this differentiation." -Luther

"Ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupts Christianity." -Beza

“All religions contain portions of the Law. Some of the heathen, by their knowledge of the Law, have advanced so far that they have even perceived the necessity of an inner cleansing of the soul, a purification of the thoughts and desires. But of the Gospel not a particle is found anywhere except in the Christian religion.” -Walther

“We cannot say that we are preaching the Word of God unless we are distinctly and clearly proclaiming both God's judgment (law) and his justification (gospel) as the regular diet in our congregations.” -Horton

Free Audiobook Download: Knowing God by J.I. Packer

This month Christian Audio is giving away the audiobook Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It's a great book. You can download it for free here. HT: JT