Open Wide Your Mouth and I Will Fill It

"Charissa is the skinniest baby ever."

Those were the last words I remember Christina speaking last night before I fell asleep last night.

As a dad, things like these don't bother me as much as they should, I guess. I keep telling Christina that when Charissa gets hungry or thirsty enough, she'll eat and drink.

Of course, those are the words of a guy who is at work all day and thus not home to enjoy all the attempts to feed our youngest girl.

You see, in the rare occasions that I do get to feed Charissa, she often closes her mouth, turns her head away, pushes the spoon away, or, my favorite, grabs the bowl with gorilla-like strength and flings it and its contents across the floor.

Sometimes I think this is what we as Christians are like with spiritual food. God is more than willing to feed His children with the Bread of Life, but we come up with every excuse to avoid and oppose God's free offer of spiritual sustenance. Unfortunately, this leaves us spiritually emaciated.

Psalm 81:10  speaks of God's willingness to supply His people with all that they truly stand in need of. As the ESV Study Bible notes, this is an indication of God's boundless generosity towards those He has rescued.

"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." (Psalm 81:10b)

Just as God had formerly brought  up His people of old out of the land of Egypt (81:10a) and was willing to provide them with every good thing they needed to make it into the land He guaranteed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God was still willing to bless His people who were inhabiting that very land. (cf. Rom. 8:32)

If only they opened their mouth. If only they understood the limitless bounty of God's grace made available and being offered to them.

        "But My people did not listen to my voice;
           Israel would not submit to Me."

The rest of the psalm (81:12-16) contrasts God's willingness to bless His people with their refusal to simply and gratefully receive them.

Unfortunately, other [less-satisfying] things were more important to God's people. As 81:9 shows, idols were more important. Though we may not bow down of images to Baal, Ashteroth, Chemosh, or Mary, how often we catch ourselves bowing down to the idols of work, family, money, entertainment, sex, sports, peer pressure, comfort, and even religion. In doing so, we are exchanging the life-giving manna of God for broken cisterns that do not and cannot satisfy. (cf. Jer. 2:13)

Dear Christian, what idols are preventing you from opening wide your mouth to receive the blessings of God? What things are keeping you from daily communion with your God via prayer and the reading of/meditation upon God's Word?

Yet for those of us who are willing to open our mouths, God will surely fill them. In the same way that Christina is overjoyed when Charissa gets more food in her mouth than on her shirt, God is likewise overjoyed when we as His dear children open wide our spiritual mouths to be fed with the life-giving and soul-satisfying manna of the Word, Jesus Christ.

The word I love most in this verse is "wide." God tells His people, "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."

The image that comes to mind is a mother crow (my favorite bird) feeding its little ones. There are very few things in all of God's good creation that create such a cacophonous kerfuffle as a nest of baby crows vying for the food their mother has brought them. Their mouths are opened wide (sometimes I wonder if their little beaks will snap they're opened so wide), and their provider is willing to fill it. She would have never left her comfortable abode to find food for them and then return if she wasn't.

Oh that we would not barely open our mouths! This is what Elisha and Abigail do when they're not sure what's on the spoon or fork. They don't trust the one offering them the food. They wince and squirm, but eventually take it. Yet once they realize how awesome a cook their mother is, how widely they open their mouths!

Moreover, God does not say that He 'might' fill our widened mouths. "No", He says, "I will fill it." That's a promise.

Nor does He say that He'll merely give us a sampler or appetizer. He says He will fill our mouths. Like every vessel brought to the prophet of 2 Kings 4 was filled to the brim with the life-providing oil from God, so it will be for us. As the text makes clear, the oil stopped flowing only when there were no more vessels to fill.

Do we see God this way, as the inexhaustible source of blessing to those willing and believing to receive it?

As Jesus Himself taught in Mark 4:21-25,

"With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you."

Dear Christian, whether in prayer or time in the Word, remember God's promise to the people He has already redeemed out of bondage. "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."

In Christ, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan

Jonathan Edwards and Redeeming the Time

"Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:15-16)

The following sermon by Dr. Steven Lawson is one every Christian should watch at least once in their lifetime.

Not every Christian will have the copious hours necessary to read Edwards' seemingly limitless works. But in this one-hour message, the popular and quotable phrase of evangelist C.T. Studd thunderously resounds over and over:

"Only one life, 'twill soon be past;

only what's done for Christ will last."

Now, for anyone who thinks that perhaps this is man-worship and not Christ-worship, please understand that in Christ's infinite grace and wisdom, He has given such men as gifts to the church to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:11-12), and that elsewhere in the Bible, Christians are called to imitate and emulate such men, whom the author of Hebrews includes in his "so great a cloud of witnesses." (12:1)

May we "scope out" (play on Greek verb in Philippians 3:17) such men, and "consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith." (Hebrews 13:7)

May every hearer leave resolved to quit wasting their life with the banal trivialities of this world, and run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking [only] unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." (cf. Hebrews 12:1-2)

May the Christ whom Edwards' served with all his mind, heart, soul, and strength get His due!

To Him alone be the glory, forever and ever,
Amen

Watch and be blessed.

Longing for the New Heaven and Earth

I love spring time.

Today, while Christina was nursing a nasty headache, I took the girls outside to play. Now by saying "to play", I actually mean "to garden".

Though gardening is not often associated with macho masculinity, I defend myself by noting that God Himself was mistaken as a gardener (John 20:15). Take that all you haters. Jesus was not some beer-guzzling, UFC watching, weight-lifting dude. No. Like the first Adam, one of His favorite hats was that of the gardener (see John 15 for more ahem, eisogesis)....

Anyways, I love spring because it reminds me of the promise God repeatedly makes to His people of a new heaven and a new earth. A real, physical, touchable, smellable, workable earth. Kinda like the original Garden of Eden, but better.

You see, God's original creation, which He deemed "very good" on the sixth day, was "earthy". The physical was not bad. Things like work and sex and nature and eating were good. God commanded the first man, Adam (a play on words in the Hebrew), to "work [God's garden] and keep it" (Gen. 2:15).

"Wait", someone may be thinking, "I thought the chief end of man was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." If God created us to worship Him, wouldn't it have made sense for Him to have commanded Adam to first build an altar or edifice for worship?

I think the answer is simply this: before sin irrupted into the world via Adam's transgression/rebellion, the entire world was to be an altar of worship to the true and living God. Now of course, I don't mean that man was to worship creation, as Paul makes it very clear that to do so is blatant and flagrant idolatry (see Romans 1:19-27). Rather, I am thinking that everything was to be done as an act of worship, from gazing upon the grandeur of God's creation (cf. Psalm 19:1) to working and tending it. Every aspect of man's existence was to be an act of adoration and worship. He didn't work for six days and then take off a Sabbath to devote to worship. No. He worshiped the God of the garden as he tended God's garden. He worshiped the God of life as he worked in His living garden.

Creation was a great testament to the glory of God. To get one's hands dirty with God's handiwork was not a bad thing.

Until sin entered into it.

Since then, working and tending God's earth/world has become tedious. I know all too well from personal experience that weeds are "alien" and burdensome. Simply put, in the words of Moses, they are a curse (see Genesis 3:17-19).

I hate pulling weeds. I can only imagine how convicting this would have been for Adam, for he actually knew what a world without weeds was really like. Every weed was like a nasty mirror that revealed his rebellious sin against God. Every weed reminded him of his distrust of God's gracious promises. Every weed reminded him of his preference of the creation to the Creator. Every weed was a reminder to him of the catastrophic effects of sin, not only upon himself, but also upon the world that he was created to govern as God's vice-regent.

And yet at the same time, for Adam, every weed would have been a reminder to him of God's promise to reverse the curse he had introduced into the world.

Similarly for us, every weed is to be a reminder of the need of redemption. Every weed screams out for God to restore His earth to the paradise it once was. Every weed declares that the world we are living in is still fallen and in dire need of emancipation (for this picture, see Romans 8:19-23).

Well, just as weeds remind us of these things, so also does my own sin. My sin reminds me that things are not as they ought to be. Like the weeds of my garden, the sins in my heart may go away for a season, be thinned out and weakened, but ultimately they are here to stay.

And so my tireless, ruthless fight - whether against the weeds in my garden or the sins in my heart - ought to cause me to join in with all creation and cry out (or in the words of Paul, "to groan") for the redemption of all things - not only our physical bodies, but also our physical world (see Romans 8:23).

While on this earth, I am to enjoy it. It is not inherently bad. Christians are not gnostics who deem the spiritual good but the physical bad. No. But even in my enjoyment of things such as gardening, I am to remember that God in Christ has called me to an inheritance much more glorious than anything I could ever imagine (see 1 Peter 1:3-6).

These weeds (or sins), which I tend to curse, are a gracious reminder that I am not to set my hopes on "things below", which are passing away, but on things above, where Christ, who is my hope, is seated at the right hand of God (see Colossians 3:1-4).

As I was simultaneously enjoying the re-emergence of life in my garden and murmuring over the weeds seeking to choke that very life out, the promise God made to us through Peter came to mind:

"But according to [God's] promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13)

Trust me, lately I have been waiting much.

But this "waiting" is not the absence of effort. I'm not waiting on some kind of spiritual cot for Christ to take me home. No.

As John says, he who has this hope purifies himself (cf. 1 John 3:3). This is precisely what Peter reminds his audience, who are groaning for the new heavens & new earth:

"Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for [the new heaven and earth], be diligent to be found in [Christ] without spot of blemish, and at peace" (2 Peter 3:14; see also 3:11-12).

The new life of spring is a great reminder of what God has promised His people. Let us not waste this glorious time of the year. Let it remind us of the new life God in Christ has granted us. And let it remind you that the rest is guaranteed (see Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Corinthians 5:5), since God's great and eternal plan of summing up all things in Christ will indeed come to pass (Ephesians 1:10; see also Colossians 1:20 and context).

So let us not waste our weeding or our waiting.

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

In Him, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan

Love Song for a King

I love Good Friday.

Though I know I need to remind myself of the gospel every single day, there's just something special for me about this day.

I am thankful for the church service I attended today that faithfully proclaimed the majestic beauty of a God who would love sinners so much as to die a brutal death in their place, bearing divine wrath in the greatest act of injustice ever known to man.

As great as the message was, it is the songs we sang that have been filling my mind and flowing through my lips this day. (seriously, props to whoever chose so many songs from Handel's Messiah!)

How thankful to the Lord I am for those hymn writers who have composed songs to help us express our worship of Jesus in words that are both theologically fitting and experientially rich.

It's interesting how the gift of song is one of the most powerful ways we can express our love to someone else. When we were singing, In Christ Alone, I couldn't help but cry. But it was a good cry. A cry of joy. A cry of amazement. A cry of love.

When I first met Christina, my heart was filled with songs, because my heart was filled with love. I remember whistling, humming, and even composing many songs...quite naturally.

This is precisely what happened in Psalm 45.

I love the inspired heading:

        To the Choirmaster: according to the Lilies.
        A Maskil of the sons of Korah; a love song.

A love song.

Listen to how these verses seem to naturally bubble out & usher forth from a heart that is absolutely captivated with the beauty of Another.

   "My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;
      I address my verses to the king;
      my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe."

The verb translated "overflows" by the ESV is used only once in the OT. It is associated with a "cooking pot", and so a good translation would actually be, "my heart is being stirred". Like a good 'ol pot o' stew (for all you KJV-ers, "a mess of pottage") whose tantalizing aroma beckons us to return often to stir it, so is the psalmist's heart. It is constantly being stirred by a "pleasing theme" (literally, "a good word").

As the verse goes on to say, and as the psalm will make abundantly clear, the pleasing theme that occupies the affections of the psalmist is the beauty of his king.

So enamored and ravished with the king's splendor and majestic beauty, the words of this love song flow from the author's tongue just as they would from a scribe's stylus.

Verse 2:

   "You are the most handsome of the sons of men;
        grace is poured upon Your lips;
     therefore God has blessed You forever."

This is the verse that got me. Over and over, as I found myself singing throughout the day, the image burned indelibly upon my mind was of my precious Savior, hanging naked upon the cross, bearing the wrath of God for my sins and rebellious deeds.
 
Yet, this is the One of whom Isaiah said:

   "As many were astonished at You -
       His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
       and His form beyond that of the children of mankind."

   "He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him,
       and no beauty that we should desire Him.
     He was despised and rejected by men;
       a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
     as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised,
      and we esteemed Him not."

I find it amazing that the theme of both the Psalmist and Isaiah is indeed "pleasant". The One whom those at Golgotha hid their faces from is indeed "the most handsome of the sons of men" - that is, to those who have been given eyes to see Him as He really is (see 1 Corinthians 2:8-10).

Furthermore, in v. 3 the Psalmist continues,

   "Gird Your sword on high, O mighty One,
       in Your splendor and majesty!"

The psalmist is not only enraptured by the beauty of the king, but also of the king's might and power.

Again, when many people think of Calvary, they imagine a weak, helpless, impotent Savior hanging upon a tree.

And yet the Bible makes it very clear that the very One hanging on that tree is the King of kings, who as the Commander of Heaven's Armies, could with great ease not only come off the cross, but with a single word decimate the world He created with a single word (see for e.g. John 10:18; 19:10-11).

Paul makes it abundantly clear that in His apparent defeat on the cross, King Jesus carries out the greatest rout of His enemies ever in one fell swoop, not only triumphing over them, but even throwing in a bit of humiliating mockery for good measure:

"[Jesus] disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in the cross" (Colossians 2:15).

Not only was the cross the greatest demonstration of Jesus' might, but as the Psalmist hints at in verses 6 & 7, it was also the most glorious demonstration of His kingly love and justice.

Jesus went to the cross because of His great love for us (1 John 4:10). But He also went to the cross because the "scepter of [His] kingdom is a scepter of uprightness", and because "[He] has loved righteousness and has hated wickedness."

Because of His great love for a world that has gone haywire in its sin, He came into that world to set things straight, to mete out justice and restore order and righteousness, to restore shalom.

And because God the Father's burden is the same as His Son's, He was pleased to anoint His Son to accomplish this mission in the fullness of time (cf. Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10)

As the Psalmist closes, he says that the remembrance of this King will endure throughout all generations, and the nations would all one day sing His praises for ever and ever (see Revelation 5).

As we sang in church today,
 
     E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
     Redeeming love has been my theme [i.e. song], and shall be till I die.
     And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
     Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Hallelujah, what a Savior!

In Christ, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan

P.S. another great theme in Psalm 45 is the King's bride being prepared for marriage

God's Promise to Those Who Generously Support Missions

Psalm 67 (ESV)

TO THE CHOIRMASTER: WITH STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. A PSALM. A SONG

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
   that Your way may be known on earth,
          Your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
       for You judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!
The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear Him!

This has always been one of my favorite texts in all of the Bible. Really, it's a pretty simple text, and one need not peruse a multitude of commentaries to get the essence and thrust of this heartfelt plea for God to be supremely glorified in all the earth.

The psalmist, aware of the flow of redemptive history, rightly understands that God has always purposed His people as the very instrument or conduit through which His blessing is spread and dispersed throughout the world:

• In Genesis 1-2, God blesses His people and commands them to "be fruitful and multiply". In doing so, God's vice-regents will display His reign throughout His creation.

• Even after the Fall of Genesis 3, this pattern of God blessing His people and subsequently commissioning them "occupy" His world for the sake of His name in the account of Noah in Genesis 9.

• In one of the most important sections of the Bible, God chooses Abraham to become His means of bringing His blessing and reigning presence to all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3).

• At another crucially important juncture in redemptive history, God tells the people of Israel that the very purpose He has redeemed them out of their slavery and bondage in Egypt is that they might - as His chosen ambassadors - extend His reigning blessing to the surrounding nations (Exodus 19:5-6)

However, in these promises, there is one prerequisite stipulation that must be kept if God's purpose of blessing the nations through His people is to be carried out: obedience.

For example, though God makes unilateral and unconditional promises to Abraham in Genesis 15, we see that these promises will only come to pass if Abraham "serves [Yahweh] faithfully and lives a blameless life" (NLT). [Cf. Deuteronomy 7-9, etc.].

This is the great tension we find all throughout Scripture: God is sovereign, and His plans cannot be thwarted; and yet, we see throughout the same Scriptures that man has been given a responsibility in the carrying out of God's great and glorious purposes.

Unfortunately, one of the great dangers in the camp of many Calvinists is an unbalanced approach to the Scriptures that focus solely on God's sovereignty to the neglect of mankind's responsibility and role in the great purposes in redemptive history. The reasoning is that since God will save His elect anyways, there is really no great urgency required. Such thinking is wicked and unbiblical, and will result in the forfeiting of much of God's blessing upon one's life.

"God, be gracious to us, and bless us; make Your face to shine upon us!" Why? "So that His ways may be known throughout the earth."

In Hebrew parallelism, God's "way" is how He deals with and demonstrates to His people His "saving power." Simply put, God has powerfully saved His people to be put on display for the nations to see God's glorious and merciful ways towards mankind (cf. Psalm 51:13, NET). The surrounding nations were to look at Israel, and say, "Wow, what an amazingly gracious and merciful and all-wise God is Yahweh, the God of Israel!"

This is why the psalmist asks for a blessing from God. The believer wants God's blessing so that the peoples (NET = "nations") might praise Him (note, the Hebrew verb "praised" can also be translated "confess [sin]").

Why has God prospered us in North America? Not so we can live posh, comfortable, self-indulgent, disobedient lives. No! A thousand times no! God has blessed us financially so that we might contribute to His great and all-consuming cause of bringing praise to His name among the nations.

I love how the psalmist relates the conversion of the nations [through the faithful, obedient proclamation of God's "way"] to a bumper crop harvest. In the old covenant, a sign of God's blessing upon Israel was a bountiful harvest. In the new covenant, the sign is not merely an abundant harvest of fruit or wheat, but an abundant harvest of souls.

Reader, how are you using God's material blessings? Are you spending them upon yourself, or are you wholeheartedly, unreservedly, and uncompromisingly giving "beyond your means" (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:3) to the great cause of the expansion of the gospel of Christ? Remember a characteristic of those who are "righteous" is that they distribute their monetary treasures freely for gospel purposes (2 Corinthians 9:9).

I can personally say that as our generosity increases, so too does God's blessing upon us. He loves to bless those who truly believe and live out Jesus' words, "it is more blessed to give than receive" (Acts 20:35). As our church has gone against "reason" and increased our foreign and local missions' giving, we have seen that indeed God has a great harvest. I am still convinced that had we not been obedient to His word in this regards that we would still be treading water, trying to make ends meet, seeing no conversions or baptisms. Dear Christian, as you give sacrificially to the cause of the spread of the gospel, God's blessing is promised.

It is not enough to ask God to keep us from being liberal in our theology. We need to ask Him to make us liberal in our giving.

Read Psalm 67 over again. Better yet, memorize it. Still better, act upon it. Pray that your church would increase its missions' budget, to support those called to preach the gospel.

God is sovereign, yes. But, are you being obedient?

A simple equation: no gospel = no salvation = no praise of Christ among the nations (read Romans 10:13-17; 15:8-21). What is holding us back? Will we continue to forfeit God's blessing?

Let all the nations praise You, Jesus, let all the nations praise You.

For the glory of God in Christ among the nations,
Pastor Ryan

The [Necessary] Role of Fellowship in our Sanctification

"I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge 

of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ." (Philemon 6, ESV)

In the Greek, this is a very difficult verse to translate into English, as a quick perusal of the many translations of, and technical commentaries on, this verse make clear.

One of the most important principles we learned in studying Greek in seminary is that "context is always king." In other words, as important as scrutinizing every noun, verb, preposition, and participle is, the best way to interpret a passage is to fit it into the overall flow and argument of its surrounding context. 

For example, a sermon emphasizing evangelism will undoubtedly select the NIV's translation:

"I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, 

so that you will have a full understanding 

of every good thing we have in Christ."

Rendered this way, the verse would meant that as we "share the gospel with others", we will begin to understand more fully all of the treasures of the gospel that are at our disposal.

Though this certainly preaches well, we need to ask ourselves, "Is this is what Paul is trying to convey to Philemon in light of the overall thrust of his letter?"

In the previous verse, Paul has just expressed his thankfulness to God for Philemon's faith in Christ which is inseparably linked with - and thus expressed in - a demonstration of his love toward all the saints (v. 5).

The idea between these verses seems to be this:

Philemon, you have demonstrated that you are a believer in the Lord Jesus through the expression of your tangible and generous love towards His people. By sovereign grace, your runaway slave Onesimus has become one of Christ's "saints" (cf. vv. 10, 16). Accordingly, refresh my heart by showing him the love of Christ as well (demonstrated most notably in forgiving him). Receive your new brother-in-Christ with the same generosity that you would receive me, your father-in-Christ (v. 17).

This is precisely what the word koinonia in v. 6 means. It means not so much sharing in the sense that we use it in our modern Christianeze vernacular (i.e. evangelistically), but rather the generous sharing of one's life with other Christians in community. Paul is entreating Philemon not so much to share his faith with respect to evangelism, as he is entreating him to share his faith with respect to generous love.

Now this love is generous in every area: forgiveness, patience, humility, money, time, patience, giftings, deference...everything. 

This is the necessity of Christian community for our common growth in grace. Here is my paraphrase of this massively important verse: 

As we lovingly empty ourselves for the good of others in our community, we will begin to understand and experience the vast, unlimited treasure trove of Christ's riches in grace. 

Put negatively, when we hoard our spiritual resources to ourselves, we will never understand all that Christ has 'put in the tank' (or, bank account), so to speak.

When we actively practice biblical koinonia (i.e. fellowship in the Spirit, Philippians 2:2), we begin to do radically, grace-empowered things, like forgiving our brothers and sisters in Christ; we begin to esteem others as more important; we live sacrificially for the good of others; we share generously of our homes, food, time, money, talents, etc. As we make it our habit to live in community this way, then - and only then - will we begin to understand that Christ's grace is sufficient for all these things, that "we can do all things in Him who strengthens us [to do these very things]" (Philippians 4:13).

As we "share" our faith in this way, our understanding of every blessing that belongs to us in Christ will correspondingly be deepened; we will increasingly begin to "know" Christ in much richer ways.

Dear Christian reader, do you long to experience (lit. "know") more of Christ's riches in your life? Then I appeal to you, as Paul did with Philemon, to be generous in your love towards the saints. This is a great benefit to the cause of Christ in the world (v. 20).

Surprisingly, though I disagree with the "evangelistic" translation of the NIV, this verse, when properly translated and interpreted, is an effective "evangelism" methodology in the NT: as we "share our faith" with one another, we ultimately "share our faith" with a watching world (cf. John 13:35, etc.).

[Sacrificial] love-in-action-in-community is a powerful apologetic to a world that, because of its sinful selfishness, experiences very little of, yet desperately longs for. For example, having a ton of 'friends' on Facebook does not fill the void that this kind of "fellowship" in true [Christ-centered/like] community can. This is powerfully proclaimed in word and deed in a Spirit-filled, Christ-imitating community of "saints".

May we be enabled by the grace of Christ to make every effort to maintain & further the unity of the Spirit we who are in Christ have! This is what a city on a hill looks like! It cannot be hidden.

In Christ, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,

pastor ryan

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on What True Repentance Is and Is Not

In a sermon on "False Prophets", the Doctor distinguishes the marks between a false and spurious 'repentance' versus the biblical record of what true and saving repentance looks like. Lamenting the soft preaching of the contemporary evangelical landscape of his time, he says,

It does not emphasize repentance in any real sense. It has a very wide gate leading to salvation and a very broad way  leading to heaven. You need not feel much of your own sinfulness; you need not be aware of the blackness of your own heart. You just "decide for Christ" and you rush in with the crowd, and your name is put down, and is one of the large number of "decisions" reported by the press. It is entirely unlike the evangelism of the Puritans and of John Wesley, George Whitefield and others, which led men to be terrified of the judgment of God, and to have an agony of soul sometimes for days and weeks and months. John Bunyan tells us in his Grace Abounding that he endured an agony of repentance for 18 months. There does not seem to be much room for that today.

Repentance means that you realize that you are a guilty, vile sinner in the presence of God, that you deserve the wrath and punishment of God, that you are hell-bound. It means that you begin to realize that this thing called sin is in you, that you long to get rid of it, and that you turn your back on it in every shape and form. You renounce the world what ever the cost, the world and its mind and outlook as well as it's practice, and you deny yourself, and take up the cross and go after Christ. Your nearest and dearest, and the whole world, may call you a fool, or say you have religious mania. You may have to suffer financially, but it makes no difference. That is repentance. The false prophet does not put it like that. He heals "the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly", simply saying that it is all right, and that you have but to "come to Christ", "follow Jesus", or "become a Christian." They offer an easy salvation, and an easy type of life always.

Although preached in the year 1952, it is as if Lloyd Jones is surveying the common evangelical landscape today. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

May God raise up a faithful generation of prophets to call a spade a spade. God's glory in the gospel is at stake. Little do we realize that because of our faulty view of sin or our natural inability to come to Christ savingly apart from regenerating grace, the world looks at a 'church' full of goats, and to quote Paul, "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Romans 2:24).

In Christ, and for His glory to the ends of the earth,
pastor ryan