Aaron Armstrong's Blog, page 362
July 16, 2012
Links I Like
C. Michael Patton:
If you do not show your true colors—worse, if you don’t have true colors, they will go to someone who does. Unfortunately, the crowd that they will find are made up of atheists, agnostics, and relativists. Why? Because they are almost always honest about their struggles. If they cannot find identity in a Christian crowd, they will find it in another.
Why No Denomination Will Survive the Homosexuality Crisis
Kevin DeYoung:
There is no way, short of a...
July 15, 2012
Life Enough to Set the World Aglow
If the Church were led to wipe out of existence all products of the thinking of nineteen Christian centuries and start fresh, the loss, even if the Bible were retained, would be immense. When it is once admitted that a body of facts lies at the basis of the Christian religion, the efforts which past generations have made toward the classification of the facts will have to be treated with respect. In no branch of science would there be any real advance if every generation started fresh with no...
July 14, 2012
Knock Loudly at the Door of Grace
It is not that a person should shout, or scream, or be very loud, in order to prove that they are in earnest. But it is desirable that we should be hearty and fervent and warm — and ask as if we were really interested in what we were doing! It is the “effectual fervent” prayer that “avails much.” This is the lesson that is taught us by the expressions used in Scripture about prayer. It is called, “crying, knocking, wrestling, laboring, striving.”
This is the lesson taught us by scripture examp...
July 13, 2012
3 Quotes on Expository Preaching
There are few subject related to public ministry more critical than preaching. Here are three quotes I’ve found from some of my favorite theologians on the subject:
The size of the text is immaterial, so long as it is biblical. What matters is what we do with it. Whether it is long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly without addition, subtraction or falsification. In expository preaching p...
Links I Like
Kevin Fiske:
KF: How important is the Old Testament to Paul’s discourse as he writes this letter? Would you briefly touch on some of the more prevalent OT motifs that Paul incorporates, and how they enrich our understanding of the redemptive work God has done for us in Christ?
JVF: Paul’s Bible was his Old Testament. If you were to ask him to quote the Bible, he would have undoubtedly quoted the Old Testament. If you pricked his finger, he bled Old Testament Scri...
July 12, 2012
Theological Famine Relief and Christian Identity
One of the things I’m so thankful for is the gift of beneficial resources God has blessed us with in North America. We have so many wonderful, God-glorifying books and resources at our finger tips and we should thank God for these things. But God has not given these things to us for our benefit alone. Thousands of pastors all around the world have virtually no access to any sort of theological education.
That’s why I’m incredibly excited about The Gospel Coalition’s International Outreach:
As G...
Pain is a Wonderful Symptom
The world, it is obvious, has fallen into this primary and fundamental error, an error which one could illustrate in many different ways. Think of a man who is suffering from some painful disease. Generally the one desire of such a patient is to be relieved of his pain, and one can understand that very well. No-one likes suffering pain. The one idea of this patient, therefore, is to do anything which will relieve him of it. Yes; but if the doctor who is attending this patient is also only con...
Links I Like
Kevin DeYoung:
On Sunday I finished aneight week sermon serieson the doctrine of Scripture. In this last sermon I encouraged the church to have the same doctrine of Scripture that Jesus did. If he his our Lord and our Master—even if he were only a great teacher—surely we want his view of the Bible to be our view of the Bible.
After working through four main texts (John 10:35, Matthew 5:17-19; 12:38-42; 19:4-5) I provided a summary of Jesus’ doctrine of Scripture.
Cooki...
July 11, 2012
A Surrendered Will is a Free Will
This past week I finally got around to reading Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus by Bill Clem. While the book didn’t have me at “hello” as they say (more on that when I eventually review the book), the further I read it, the more impressed I become. Clem gets the tension that we all feel in our discipleship journey well and he’s able to articulate it well.
For example, how many of us haven’t been frustrated at one time or another about the idea that God does indeed have a determined p...
Links I Like
Tullian Tchividjian:
It is not exactly breaking news to say that our culture has an aversion to suffering, regardless of how inescapable it may be. This is because we—you and me—have an aversion to suffering. Who wants to suffer? But the conscious avoidance of pain is one thing; the complete intolerance, or outright denial of it, is another.
The Torching of Earthen Vessels: A Reply to Frank Turk
Matt Anderson:
It’s oddly fitting that while we were examinin...
