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On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany to voice protest against the Catholic doctrine of indulgences. This is considered the launching point of the Reformation, and is remembered by many as Reformation Day. (On a side note, I find it interesting that so many churches today hold “Harvest Festivals” with not even a mention of the greatest revival in church history. Dan Phillips of TeamPyro fame addresses this quite well.)

Tim Challies has assembled a very complete list of links to numerous blogs and sites with remembrances and thoughts on Reformation Day and related doctrines.

Mike Ratliff has posted an excellent article that deals with the “unconditional election” portion of the doctrines of Grace.

And I also just found an article from C.J. Mahaney (via DG) on the mystery of election.

Good stuff.

Thank you, Tim for suggesting this. And thank you Abraham and John Piper for making it available.

The Gospel in 6 minutes

There are two things I have been mulling over lately regarding prayer. These are not related to each other except by the fact that they both deal with prayer.

First, to whom should we pray? We have been praying with Isaiah most nights before he goes to bed, and in teaching such a small child how to pray I admit that there is a definite “cuteness” in hearing him say “Dear Jesus” as he copies what we say. I have recently changed the wording to “Our Father” or similar. Certainly Jesus is a member of the godhead, but we do not have any examples in the New Testament that direct us to pray to Christ. Yes, we are to pray in the name of Christ: “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13). But even the model prayer Christ provides for us begins with “Our Father.” Is there any reason or example that dictates why we so often pray to Christ instead of the Father? This is not to minimize Christ or his power, but rather to ask ourselves if we are truly following the examples we have been given.

The second thought I have been tossing around is related to what we should pray for, specifically when dealing with the preaching or teaching of the Word. I often hear requests such as this: “Lord, please speak through the man of God this evening” or “Please use this preacher to speak to us this morning.” The request is that God speak to us through the teacher or preacher. This may be nit-picky, but I think it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how God speaks to his children today.

I do not want this to become a cessationism versus continuationism debate, but it is important to note that God spoke often in the early church through dreams, visions, and signs, and that he does not do so today. (That is not to say he cannot, but rather that he does not do so commonly). Today, he speaks to us solely through his Word.

This is important, because I believe a misunderstanding here can launch Christians into some very dangerous waters. We are blessed beyond measure today by having such easy access to countless translations of God’s written word. And we know that this book is utterly and completely sufficient for teaching a Christian how to be “competent, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:17). This Bible is the foundation for Christianity. Without it we would know little of Christ and nothing of the redeeming work he accomplished on the cross. We would know nothing of God’s grace in selecting us for salvation. We would know nothing of the God who spoke the worlds into existence. This Bible contains all objective earthly knowledge about God; there are no other sources for this knowledge! (While nature certainly points to God, it does not tell us directly that he loves us, nor does it provide insight into the detailed workings of his plan, as the canon does.)

If we ask God to “speak to us through a man,” are we asking for the best thing? Are we even asking for something God will do?

Perhaps this is hyper-sensitivity, but carried to a logical conclusion, if we ask God to speak to us through a man, it seems we run the risk of hearing the man, not God. And as soon as I begin depending on a man to tell me what God says, I have started down a dangerous path. We need teachers, but we need those teachers to teach the Bible, because it is through the Bible that God has chosen to speak.

I look forward to Tuesdays. On this day each week, I get to spend anywhere from two to three hours in the car as I drive across the river and through the city to work, rather than getting to work from home. I despise traffic, and drive a vehicle with a manual transmission. But on this one day, I get to listen to one or two messages from Pastor Patrick Abendroth of Omaha Bible Church.

Pastor Abendroth has confidence in his preaching, but is nothing if not humble. He is consistently careful to properly apply passages in context, both culturally and textually. He is one of the most effective expositional preachers I have ever heard.

Today I listened to “What makes the Gospel Glorious” and was filled to overflowing yet again. Here are some quotes that stood out to me:

• We don’t see grace as glorious because we don’t see ourselves as sinners; utterly and completely devoid of any merit whatsoever, to please God in any way, shape, or form.
• …the key to rightly praising Jesus Christ and exalting the cross and exalting what he has done for us and praising him; the key to that is understanding what you’ve been saved from. It’s no wonder we’re mumbling about the gospel. It’s no wonder we’re half-in, half-out in some sort of lackadaisical way, calling what we give to him praise, even though it’s pretty shameful, because we think somehow we’re good enough to earn grace, which is contradiction of terms.
• [an aside on Ephesians 2:1-3] Throughout history, every corruption of the gospel, every perversion of the gospel, has started here. It started by not seeing this. Somehow it’s something other than spiritually dead, and that leads us to somehow it’s something other than just the cross; perhaps it’s the cross and something else.

  But this is the key to understanding salvation; it’s understanding sin… Dead means more than sick. Dead means dead (spiritually dead here..). Dead means more than dying. Dead means more than in danger of dying. By the way, this therefore means that the salvation of the gospel analogy that says: “God throws you the life-preserver, and all you need to do is reach out and grab the life preserver” that’s been so famous shows absolute and complete biblical ignorance. Dead people don’t grab life-preservers. You’re at the bottom of the ocean. You’re fish food, and they’re eating your innards, and you’re swollen, right? That’s the right idea. And God has to go down there and give you a new heart, and make you alive, because you’re dead. So let’s be clear… it’s not that you’re sick. Sinners are dead spiritually… Dead means the total humbling of the sinner before God.

Here are some quotes from a message preached by Byron Yawn while visiting Omaha Bible Church recently. Erik Raymond (the Irish Calvinist) posted a link to this message.

“If we ever think that our best is what maintains our relationship with God, that bears great offense in the mind of God, because Christ came to save us from our own work.”

“We have to get over trying to pay Jesus back for what he did on the cross.” (quoting Erik Raymond)

“We think that when we are at our moral best, that God is applauding us, congratulating us for finally getting our lives straight. That is not the case.”

“Nothing you do can affect your standing before God.”

You can download the MP3 here. Thank you, Erik and OBC, for making this available.

Below are links to a few articles I have recently read that focus on critically important topics, and ones that are seldom addressed fully and biblically.

Sister, Show Mercy! — Dan Phillips sticks “his finger in the fan, up to his elbow” on this one. Thanks, Dan.

On Denominations — Dan Phillips (again!) does an excellent job on the topic of denominations. You have to love this one, with words such as “Epiptopresbymethobaptopalian” and “Calvidispiebaptogelical.”

The “Sinner’s Prayer” in evangelism — The Irish Calvinist addresses a question about the absence of the “Sinner’s Prayer” in the literature he uses while evangelizing.

Tim Challies linked to this Piper post two days in a row. It really is a “must read.”

I just read Al Mohler’s column on Family Time vs. Church Time

According to the article Mohler references, families are increasingly choosing non-church activities over church activities when presented with the need to choose. This is likely more often the result of misplaced priorities (selecting “the world” before “Christ”), but it would be easy to assume this is always the case. I would suspect that Pop Warner has more spiritual impact than the teaching at a lot of today’s churches.

Be sure to read the entire article, or you could miss this:

When “church time” is seen as a competitor to “family time,” something is wrong at church. When family members hardly see each other at church activities, the congregation needs to take a quick inventory of its concept of ministry.

And if you make it all the way through the article, you would have seen the discussion of a Pastor’s life.

I had no idea the amount of criticism that senior pastors continually get. It just never ends. No matter what decision you make, you’ll always have somebody on the other side. That’s really hard for spouses, just to see the person that they love continually under criticism.

It is a great reminder to pray for your pastor and his family.

I was blessed to have been allowed to participate in a class this past weekend that introduced a method of Bible study known as arcing. Living Water Church was unbelievably generous in making such an opportunity available, and Tom Stellar and Jason Abell were incredibly gracious and kind to devote a weekend to teaching the small group of about 60 people.

It is frustrating that there is not more time and effort in our churches to devoted to teaching Christians how to study the Bible, whether the method is arcing, word study, inductive study, or any other method. We have strayed far from the “striving” and “treasuring” attitudes that we should have toward Scripture — It is God’s chosen method of revealing His mind and will to us!! As Piper says in the study book we used, “…if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture.”

As is commonly the case with John Piper’s material, the booklet that very (very!) briefly explains the basic mechanical aspects of arcing is available at no charge.