Thursday, April 26, 2007

The Best Meal in Town

"And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying,'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.' But they paid no attention . . . Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.' And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests." Matthew 22:1-10 (ESV)

One of the privileges of serving on my church's Session is the opportunity to hand out communion on a weekly basis. It never gets old to me. A few Sundays ago, as the elders were preparing to come forward to return the trays to the pastor, I looked down to see all of the cups that were still remaining in the tray that I was carrying. I was struck with sadness considering the thought that there were many, at that very moment, finishing up brunch or sitting down for lunch all over my town. They had passed up this table, forgone the invite to dine with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, to partake of a food that would fill their stomachs for only a little while. Is this not truly a tragedy?

May we pray that Christ would call out all his elect and, in doing so, there would be no cups left remaining.

Grace and Peace.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Give No Quarter

I just finished reading J. I. Packer's introduction to John Owen's classic the Death of Death in the Death of Christ, published by The Banner of Truth Trust, and I submit that it alone is worth the price of the book. In his essay, Packer gives no quarter to the Arminian, Universalist, or the self-righteous. Responding to the claim that Arminianism is a "result of reading the Scriptures in a 'natural,' unbiased, unsophisticated way," Packer writes: "Certainly, Arminianism is 'natural' in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man, who even in salvation cannot bear to renounce the delusion of being master of his fate and captain of his soul."

Here is another interesting quote from Packer:



"Our minds have been conditioned to think of the Cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a Saviour who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection which cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the human help which God needs for this purpose. As a result, we are no longer free either to believe the biblical gospel or to preach it. We cannot believe it because our thoughts are caught in the toils of synergism[Cf Monergism]. We are haunted by the Arminian idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts, they must be independent acts; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from Calvary. Instead, we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think about salvation, telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on God and the next moment that it all depends on us. This is a hollow anticlimax. . .We have not exalted grace and the Cross; we have cheapened them. We have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does, for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ's death, as such, saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ's death, as such, is sufficient to save any of them. . .It can hardly be wondered at that the converts of the new gospel are so often both irreverent and irreligious, for such is the natural tendency of this teaching."

Note: I have noticed that often the first thing that a new Calvinist will do, after he gets off his knees in thanksgiving to God, is go to his Arminian neighbor and pound him over the head with his new found theology. This will not do. I have found that most Arminians do not even know they are Arminians, where as I have not yet met a Calvinist that did not know he was one. It has also been my experience that most Arminians genuinely believe they are defending the character of God rather than the sovereignty of man. Accordingly, I would urge gentle patience, praying that the Holy Spirit will reveal to them ,this truth, in time.

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Who Limits Atonement?


Here is a classic quote from C. H. Spurgeon on limited atonement or what is sometimes referred to as particular redemption.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Facing the Giants

I saw "Facing the Giants" the other night and it was about what I expected. Unfortunately, the Christian ghetto has once again shown just how bad it is at making movies. Technically speaking, it was good for a low budget film with an almost all volunteer staff. At times it was pretty funny and other times inspiring. However, it was the underlying message that disturbed me. What I got from it, and what I believe most unbelievers will get out of it, is the supposedly temporal blessings of being a faithful Christian. Even more disheartening is the films inability to ask the right question -- i.e., how does sinful man stand in the presence of a holy God? "Sin," which I can't recall the word actually being used once in the entire film, seems to be defined as failure to meet one's personal goals. The film's answer is, if you do your part and believe really hard, God might give you a winning football team, a new F-150 pick-up truck, and you get to go to heaven too! I have heard it said that Francis Schaeffer told his students, regarding evangelism, please first present Christianity as true rather than that it is helpful. In this regard, Facing the Giants misses the mark terribly.

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