“The Kingdom of Grace to the Kingdom of Glory”

  The Kingdom of grace is nothing but…. the beginning of the Kingdom of glory; the Kingdom of grace is glory in the seed, and the Kingdom of glory is grace in the flower; the Kingdom of grace is glory in the daybreak, and the Kingdom of glory is grace in the full meridian; the Kingdom of grace is glory militant, and the Kingdom of glory is grace triumphant …. the Kingdom of grace leads to the Kingdom of glory.
—Thomas Watson

 

SOLO POR TI - ~Only For You~

SOLO POR TI (Only for you) As I listened to this music today and the beautiful words and voice of Josh Groban, my thoughts went to this — it is — solo por ti — only for you, Lord Jesus, our Husband, our Life, our Breath, our Hope and Desire of our Heart! How can it be that we are so privileged not only to know this Great and Wonderful Savior, but that He loves us and has betrothed us to Himself. Beautiful thoughts indeed. This also reminded me of Octavius Winslow’s “The Lord My Husband” devotional that I had over at “Heavenly Notes” which is incredibly sweet to read.

“The Lord is my portion, says my soul.”

“For your Maker is your husband–the Lord Almighty is his name–the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.” Isaiah 54:5

How many–appropriate to our circumstances, and endearing to our hearts–are the titles and relations of God! Is there one more sacred or precious to the Christian widow than this–”Your Maker is your HUSBAND.” The Lord brings us into a gracious and experimental acquaintance with Himself by the circumstances in which He places us. Just as we learn certain lessons in certain schools, so we learn the relationships which the Lord sustains to us in the positions in life to which those divine relations are the most appropriate. Thus, He may have written you a widow, a “widow indeed,” that He might stand to you in a new and more endeared relation–even as you stand to Him in a new and more dependent character–the relation of a HUSBAND–the character of a widow. As such He is your portion. Your bereavement is so crushing, your grief so profound, your desolation so vast, your loss so irreparable, the pen shrinks from even the attempt to describe it. The strong and beautiful staff is broken, the earthly counselor is perished, the tongue is mute that blessed you, the bosom cold that pillowed you, the eye dim that smiled upon you, and the whole landscape of life is draped in wintry coldness and gloom.

But the Lord is your Portion. “For your Maker is your husband–the Lord Almighty is his name.” Divorced by death from an earthly husband, you are united more especially and closely to a Divine and heavenly Husband–even to God in Christ, who stands now in a new and more endeared relation to you, as you have now a new and more sacred claim upon Him. The widow is an object of His especial regard. No being has He more closely fenced, none for whom He has discovered more tender care. Listen to some of His touching injunctions respecting you. “You shall not afflict the WIDOW.” “Plead for the WIDOW.” “He will establish the border of the WIDOW.” “He relieves the fatherless and the WIDOW.” Such is the divine Portion, under whose sheltering wing you have now come to rest. “Your Maker is your HUSBAND.” All, and infinitely more, that the fondest, most powerful, and faithful husband ever was, the Lord is to you. Let Him, as none other can, fill the vacant place. He can make even your solitary and desolate heart sing for joy. Espouse Christ afresh. Renew your ‘first love’ to Him, the love of your earliest union.

Trace nothing but love in the removal of a human object so dear; and know that love–divine, tender, unchangeable love–will guard, guide, and comfort you until wedded hearts, sundered by death, shall meet to renew a fellowship of love in the glorified presence of Jesus never to be sundered more.

Blessed Jesus! heavenly Husband! let me now be united only and forever to You! Give me Your Spirit to seal the sacred union. Enable me, as enjoined in the word, “to trust in God, and to continue in supplication and prayer night and day, to lodge strangers, to wash the saints’ feet, to relieve the afflicted, and diligently to follow every good work” (1 Tim. 5:5, 10). And thus striving by Your grace to glorify You in the solemn character of a God-fearing, God-trusting widow, enable me to rejoice in You as my portion–my Husband–believing that You will shield me in temptation, supply me in need, comfort me in sorrow, be with me in death, and give me a place at the marriage-supper of the Lamb.

In addition to the loneliness of widowhood, there may be the heavy charge and anxious responsibility of the parent. Your children, are half orphans–fatherless. Be it so. You have now a double claim on God’s care and provision; and that claim, offered in the prayer of faith, He will acknowledge. His promise is–and on that promise you must rely–”Leave your FATHERLESS CHILDREN, I will preserve them alive–and let your widows trust in me.” God will now be, in its fullest sense, your children’s Father. He will preserve them alive; in other words, He will provide for the life that now is, and will make them partakers of the life that is to come in the sovereignty of His grace. Have faith in God! He never yet broke a promise to a saint–He never will to you!

“A Defense of Calvinism”

“John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and laugh at it, too, of a good woman who said, in order to prove the doctrine of election, “Ah! sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards.” I am sure it is true in my case; I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love. So I am forced to accept that great Biblical doctrine. I recollect an Arminian brother telling me that he had read the Scriptures through a score or more times, and could never find the doctrine of election in them. He added that he was sure he would have done so if it had been there, for he read the Word on his knees. I said to him, “I think you read the Bible in a very uncomfortable posture, and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would have been more likely to understand it. Pray, by all means, and the more, the better, but it is a piece of superstition to think there is anything in the posture in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to reading through the Bible twenty times without having found anything about the doctrine of election, the wonder is that you found anything at all: you must have galloped through it at such a rate that you were not likely to have any intelligible idea of the meaning of the Scriptures.”

Charles Spurgeon, “A Defense of Calvinism“

“Prayer” and the Postmodern Church & The New Religious Establishment

A couple of special and excellent reads:

Pastor Sterling VanDerwerker’s “Prayer” and the Postmodern Church, Part I

Blair Brown’s comments and his article “The New Religious Establishment“

If you want a good chuckle (and related to my “duct tape”) post “Amen Power in the Pulpit & Pews” travel over to “Shall We Muzzle the Dame“

“A Call to Spiritual Reformation”

In 2002, at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformation Theology at 10th Presbyterian Church, I had the privilege to sit under the excellent teaching of D.A. Carson and was so blessed I bought all his books. Tonight as I was finishing up my “get finished” bits and pieces stack before my 2007 BB Warfield project, I read this passage from Carson’s “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” and realized that this passage had used the same hymn that I had used for my Thanksgiving post. Lovely! “Be Thou My Vision” is one of my favorite hymns and I especially like the Celtic version I have included here (once again). Be blessed and encouraged by this devotional message and the music.

“Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the most influential preachers of the century. A few weeks before he died, someone asked him how, after decades of fruitful ministry and extraordinary activity, he was coping now he was suffering such serious weakness it took much of his energy to move from his bed to his armchair and back. He replied in the words of Luke 10:20: “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” In other words, do not tie your joy, your sense of well-being, to power in ministry. Your ministry can be taken from you. Tie your joy to the fact that you are known and loved by God; tie it to your salvation; tie it to the sublime truth that your name is written in heaven. That can never be taken from you. “Lloyd-Jones added: “I am perfectly content.”

Here then is a practical test as to whether the excellence I pursue is really for the glory and praise of God or for my own self-image. If the things I value are taken away, is my joy in the Lord undiminished? Or am I so tied to my dreams that the destruction of my dreams means I am destroyed as well?

Paul’s pursuit of prayer of what is excellent is not idolatrous; rather, it is bound up with praising God. He would have understood the ancient Irish hymn:“1/

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;2/

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;

Thou ever with me, and I with Thee, Lord;

Thou my great Father, and I Thy true son,

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;

Thou my whole armour and Thou my true might;

Thou my soul’s shelter, and Thou my strong tower,

Raise Thou me heavenward, great power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;

Thou mine inheritance, now and always;

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, Thou heaven’s bright sun,

Grant me its joys after victory is won;

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

1/D.A. Carson, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” 1992, pp.141-42

2/ Be Thou My Vision, Psalm 141:8 Author: Irish Hymn, C. 8th Century, Grans. By Mary E. Byrne, 1880-1931

“Redemptive-Historical Lectures & More”

Rev. Danny Olinger, General Secretary of OPC Committee on Christian Education will give three Redemptive-Historical Lectures on Saturday, Dec. 9th and Sunday, December 10 at Ketoctin Covenant Presbyterian Church (KCPC) in Purcellville, VA. You can visit KCPC for more information and directions. If your time permits read Rev. Olinger’s interesting article entitled, “The Reformation — Is It Over?” wherein he discusses Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom’s award-winning book, “Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism.”

“With regard to the material principle of the Reformation, sola fide, Van Til argues that Roman Catholicism (both before and after Vatican II) does not acknowledge that man was totally ruined by the Fall. Rather, Rome sees man’s problem starting with his finitude. Man tends naturally toward evil because he is a creature, not because he is a sinner. Supernatural grace, then, was necessary before the Fall; it was lost in the Fall, but man’s essential nature (rationality and free will) remained intact. Human reason is not radically depraved, and thus people can cooperate with God’s grace toward final justification.”

For Van Til, any discussion of Rome and sola fide must start here. Strimple agrees: “The difference between the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation (both in its traditional form and now in its modern, Rahnerian form) and the Reformed doctrine of salvation is the difference between an ontological concept (man as created needing some “additional” gift) and an ethical one (man’s position being his disobedience, needing forgiveness and sanctification).” __Danny Olinger, “The Reformation –Is It Over?”

I am looking forward to Rev. Olinger’s lectures. Our last seminar/lectures with D.G. Hart entitled “Recovering Mother Kirk: The Case for Liturgy in the Reformed Tradition” were most interesting and insightful so I anticipate a blessing for the attendees and another feast of good doctrine with Rev. Olinger.

“Happy Thanksgiving”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;

let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;

let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

Psalm 95:1-2

Music

~Works of Benjamin B. Warfield & Me~

Works of Benjamin B. Warfield & Me

My new project for 2007! I have wanted to get into these for a very long time in “real” read/study rather than as a “look up and see” resource so I decided to finish up all of my book stack and half-finished books so that the road is clear for me to begin this project for 2007. I am tempted to read them out of order (if there is truly an order to them) since my hands immediately reached for Volume V “Calvin and Calvinism” (why is that I wonder?) and once opened, I was fascinated! I love this man’s writing, why is this? Perhaps there is something in his writing that gets to my soul? This is what caught my eye:

“As we read Calvin’s energetic arraignments of the sinfulness of our deflected conceptions of God — the essential idolatry of the imaginary images we form of Him — and our duty diligently to conform our ideas of God to the revelations of Himself He has graciously given us, we are reminded of an eloquent picture which the late Professor A. Sabatier once drew of a concourse of professing Christians coming together to worship in common a God whom each conceives after his own fashion. Anthropomorphists, Deists, Agnostics, Pantheists — all bow alike before God and worship, says Prof. Sabatier; and the worship of one and all is acceptable, equally acceptable, to God. No so, rejoins M. Bois: and there is not a less admirable spectacle in the world than this. Calvin was of M. Bois’s opinion. To his thinking we have before us in such a concourse only a company of idolaters — each worshipping not the God that is but the god who is in the pride of his heart he has made himself. And to each and all Calvin sends out the cry of, Repent! Turn from the god you have made yourself and serve the God that is!!” __Benjamin B. Warfield, Volume V “Calvin and Calvinism” p. 180, footnotes omitted.

Wow, does this sound familiar to the error of contemporary thinking today? This is good-hearty-meaty soul food … Once I embark on these I may never accomplish anything else in 2007 but I will feast nonetheless!

“Materialistic Paternalism, Liberalism & Spiritual Decline”

Today we fill our children’s hearts, minds and recreation with the worldling’s moral, cultural and spiritual values. Just turn on your TV, send them off to a movie, or even worse, allow them in state schools and you know what I am talking about. J. Gresham Machen wrote about this in his little book “Christianity & Liberalism.” Some things never change…today is no different than when he wrote it. Read on…

“Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thought at least to be free.

The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make of America one huge “Main Street,” where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens. God grant that there may come a reaction, and that the great principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty may be rediscovered before it is too late! But whatever solution be found for the educational and social problems of our own country, a lamentable condition must be detected in the world at large. It cannot be denied that great men are few or non-existent, and that there has been a general contracting of the area of personal life. Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritual decline.Such a condition of the world ought to cause the choice between modernism and traditionalism, liberalism and conservatism, to be approached without any of the prejudice which is too often displayed. In view of the lamentable defects of modern life, a type of religion certainly should not be commended simply because it is modern or condemned simply because it is old. On the contrary, the condition of mankind is such that one may well ask what it is that made the men of past generations so great and the men of the present generation so small. In the midst of all the material achievements of modern life, one may well ask the question whether in gaining the whole world we have not lost our own soul. Are we forever condemned to live the sordid life of
utilitarianism? Or is there some lost secret which if rediscovered will restore to mankind something of the glories of the past?

Such a secret the writer of this little book would discover in the Christian religion. But the Christian religion which is meant is certainly not the religion of the modern liberal Church, but a message of divine grace, almost forgotten now, as it was in the middle ages, but destined to burst forth once more in God’s good time, in a new Reformation, and bring light and freedom to mankind. What that message is can be made clear, as is the case with all definition, only by way of exclusion, by way of contrast. In setting forth the current liberalism, now almost dominant in the Church, over against Christianity, we are animated, therefore, by no merely negative or polemic purpose; on the contrary, by showing what Christianity is not we hope to be able to show what Christianity is, in order that men may be led to turn from the weak and beggarly elements and have recourse again to the grace of God.______________

Source: Christianity & Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
This is a great little book for reading/independent study. Shane
Rosenthal’s edited version is cited here and available at ReformationInk

“Amen Power in the Pulpit & Pews”

“Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” Galatians 2:16

Whoever coined the phrase the “frozen chosen” has never participated in worship at our very conservative Reformed worship at KCPC. In fact, they usually would find a group of happy intent listeners quietly rejoicing in the preaching of Christ in power but of late, the message of this new series on Galatians is so wonderful and powerfully preached by Pastor Biggs that it brings out a round of hardy masculine “amen’s” (yes, absolutely in a Reformed OPC church!) from the pews regularly. It is a beautiful thing to hear when the profundity of the Word of God, powerfully and biblically preached, without compromise, exudes from the soul such a happy response that even I have almost had to take some duct tape to church to keep from speaking out myself. I am surely nudging my dear husband to death and whispering softly, “amen, amen and amen!” to the wonderful doctrine brought forth of God’s justification by faith with such clarity and profound exposition. How can I not love Christ more, the brethren more and just love this Pastor to death for allowing me to be such a recipient of God’s blessings? The truths of God’s Word faithfully proclaimed to God’s people by His servants will surely change the lives of His worshippers both inwardly and outwardly and honor our God to the praise of His glorious grace! What can I then say to this, ahhhh, AMEN! [shouting loudly without the duck tape]!

Pastor Biggs Galatians series is online at Sermon Audio here.

btw-he always preaches powerfully 8o)