In the end, this anti-intellectual search for truth often leads to the kind of chaos we see dominating the charismatic movement. For others, it leads to disappointment, despair, and apostasy. We would never understand His wrath if there were not an opportunity for judgment. We would never know His mercy if there were not an opportunity for forgiveness.
We would never understand grace if He could not bless those who are unworthy. Table Talk on Trouble and Triumph, Part 2. The paradox between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. This is an apparent paradox — not a true paradox, but an apparent paradox — which faith accepts while reason rejects. Faith accepts this. Table Talk on Trouble and Triumph, Part 1. Divine predestination, divine providence, divine power, divine purpose; divine planning does not void human responsibility.
How in the world can God take every decision, every act, with all its implications by every human being on the planet, leaving them a certain amount of limited autonomy to make their own choices for which they are culpable, and overrule all of that so that it all comes together perfectly into the tapestry of His own divine purpose?
And that with all the contingencies — incalculable, infinite contingencies — everything ends up exactly the way God designed it to end up before He created anyone.
That is a massive, massive mind and inexplicable, incomprehensible power. No one acts apart from the sovereign plan of God. Every choice, every act, every decision made by every human in the world, including the most evil, heinous behavior against the truth and against the Lord, God overrules and fits into His plan for His own ends and His own glory.
For [Jesus], He was being tempted [in the Garden] to abandon holiness and embrace sin bearing. This is incomprehensible to Him.
This is repulsive to Him. Four Features of Triumphant Prayer. We came out of the grave; we have new life, but we stink. We have our dirty grave clothes on. We are a new creation, incarcerated in unredeemed flesh. And we are seduced by the remnants of our fallenness. You must feel afflicted by it. You must feel the pain of it, the assault of it, the repulsiveness of it.
Their needs to be an agonizing in prayer because you love holiness and you hate sin. Unlike modernism, postmodernism does not adhere to one fixed rule to determine the universal truth. Instead, it rejects the notion of universal truth altogether.
Instead, all truth claims are evaluated subjectively. The most compelling motivation for faithful, obedient living should not be the threat of discipline or loss of reward but overflowing and unceasing gratitude for the marvelous mercies of God. Christ made Himself of no reputation precisely by taking on a human nature. He emptied Himself not by pouring out portions of His deity but by adding to Himself full and true humanity. His was an emptying by addition, not by subtraction.
Yet even in taking on human nature, the Son of God fully possessed His divine nature, attributes, and prerogatives. Page Prayer to Jesus Christ constitutes yet another evidence for his deity. Jesus instructed His disciples to pray to Him John ; ; Acts records that the disciples prayed to Christ for guidance in choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot. That is precisely why the Jewish leaders regarded the title Son of God the ultimate high blasphemy.
Based on biblical evidence, the unprejudiced mind cannot doubt the existence of a plurality of persons in the Godhead without impugning the clarity, the inerrancy, and the inspiration of the Scriptures.
Any accurate discussion of the Trinity must begin and end with what the Bible declares. By analogy God is to Christians as the sun is to the moon. But once believers begin to be transformed into the same image at the moment of salvation, they reflect more than they refract.
Scripture responds to the problem of evil not with philosophical reasonings but with divine reassurance of final divine vindication. Scripture shows some ways in which God uses evil to further His purposes: to display divine grace and justice Rom. Scripture shows us that God has always used and is now presently using evil to fulfill His purposes for good. The solution of the problem of evil must be theocentric, not anthropocentric. It must not have as its aim to make man happier or freer but to glorify God.
The greater-good defense is valid only if the greater good is seen as that which glorifies God more fully than a lesser good. Theodicy declares that God is all-powerful and all-good even though this might not seem to be the case since evil exists in the creation. So how does a person shut down conscience? Two ways: misinform it. Conscience is not a law; conscience is a mechanism.
You can shut down pain, right? You can shut down pain; just take drugs. Mask pain. You can mask conscience by misinforming it. How do you do that? You can be anything you want to be. You ought to be able to do whatever you want. You live any way you want. This society in which we live today has been doing that damage for decades, for decades.
All the false religions of the world are attempts to run from the true God. Sheep go astray by nature. Our nature sends us away from God. We flee from God. We flee in some noble effort to feel good about our fleeing, and so we invent false religion to accommodate our rebellion.
The Bible is the most offensive book ever written. It damns the whole human race. No one escapes. The truth of God is the most important thing in the world. The truth reveals God… It must be spoken and it must be written no matter what the effects may be and the effects are predictable.
On the one hand, some people believe and all heaven breaks loose. On the other hand, some people do not believe and all hell breaks loose. Divine Truth Confronts Human Tradition. And Jesus was compelled by the truth. Jesus, The Divine Truthteller.
A true seeker has come under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit by virtue of a true understanding of the law of God. A true seeker has been broken and contrite in heart by being measured against the law of God and found guilty before God. A true seeker knows that there is no way to earn salvation by works.
And a true seeker is so desperate for eternal life as to gladly abandon everything in this life for that greatest of all gifts and willingly submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Those are the tests that separate the false seeker from the true seeker. The true seeker can be saved because God alone produces that kind of repentance and submission. The Impossibility of Salvation — Part 2.
Divine Compassion for Those Deserving Condemnation. If the Spirit of God is at work in your life, nothing will stop you from making this commitment. You have nothing to fear in telling someone that. You do all the important things in life by calculating carefully. Jesus is not offering a makeover. The glory of God is the goal of redemption and the salvation of the sinner is the means to that… Only the people who understand that are the ones that understand what worship is really about.
Seven Characteristics of the Coming King. What is a false religion? All false religions agree on being anti-gospel. This is the greatest attack always on the truth.
All false religions have their own diversities, but all false religions agree in taking a position opposite the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has authority… He has absolute unilateral authority to do whatever He will, whenever He wills, with whomever or whatever He wills… Jesus never in His earthly life asked permission to do anything.
He never sought it from any normal channels in His ministry… No matter what it was, there was no authority to whom Jesus went. He quoted no rabbi. He had permission from no Sanhedrin. He had no rabbinical council to which He was answerable. He was not ordained in the appropriate way that all teachers and rabbis were ordained. And nor was His theology checked and signed off on by the Sanhedrin.
And He teaches without any connection to any prior mentor or rabbi, and without credentials, and without ordination, which could only be given by the Sanhedrin.
Jesus was His own authority. He spoke prophetically. He spoke truly. He rightly interpreted the Old Testament Scripture.
He spoke the true Word of God. They even admitted that. He forgave sin. He healed sick people. He raised the dead. He cast out demons. Popular culture desperately tries to blur the line between genuine love and immoral passion. But all such immorality is a total perversion of genuine love because it seeks self-gratification rather than the good of others.
Impurity is another devilish perversion of love. Here Paul employs the Greek term akatharsia, which refers to every kind of filth and impurity. Specifically, Paul has in mind "filthiness," "foolish talk," and "crude joking," which are the peculiar characteristics of evil companionship. That kind of camaraderie has nothing to do with true love, and the apostle plainly says it has no place in the Christian's walk. Covetousness is yet another corruption of love that stems from a narcissistic desire for self-gratification.
It's the exact opposite of the example Christ set when He "gave Himself up for us" v. In verse 5, Paul equates covetousness with idolatry. Again, this has no place in the Christian walk, and according to verse 5, the person who is guilty of it "has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Such sins, Paul says, "must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints" v.
Of those who practice such things, he tells us, "Do not associate with them" v. In other words, we are not showing authentic love unless we are intolerant of all the popular perversions of love. Most of the talk about love these days ignores this principle. That's not love; it's apathy. God's love is not at all like that.
Remember, the supreme manifestation of God's love is the Cross, where Christ "loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" v. Thus Scripture explains the love of God in terms of sacrifice, atonement for sin, and propitiation: "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" 1 John In other words Christ made Himself a sacrifice to turn away the wrath of an offended deity. Far from dismissing our sins with a benign tolerance, God gave His Son as an offering for sin, to satisfy His own wrath and justice in the salvation of sinners.
That is the very heart of the Gospel. James called it the "royal" or sovereign law — it towers over the rest. Paul said if you keep it, you will be fulfilling the demands of the entire Old Testament Rom.
Recognizing the command is one thing — understanding and practicing biblical love is another. Love in Action When I first came to Grace Community Church, I wanted badly to love everyone, but I couldn't figure out how to get the emotional feeling I thought was necessary.
Some people were kind of irritating, and some even purposely made things difficult for me. I wanted to love them, but I didn't know how. One day I went to a man who was particularly difficult, put my arm around him, and said, "I want you to know something. If there's any way I can ever serve you, I'd sure love to have the opportunity. My attitude toward him didn't change because of how I felt about him emotionally, but because of how I came to love him by serving him.
Loving others is not a question of patting someone on the back and saying, "You're so wonderful, so irresistible. I love you! Sometimes I'm asked how I can minister to individuals in a large church. It is not by running around to everyone and expressing love, but by making sacrifices in my life to help them grow spiritually. I care enough about them to do what is necessary in my life to bring them into conformity to Jesus Christ. If you still have doubts about what biblical love is, ponder this: Has God ever shouted, "I love you!
No; we see the love of God in Christ laying down His life for us. God put His Son on a cross on our behalf. That is how He expressed His love — through sacrifice. Since Christ "laid down His life for us Death isn't always the price; sometimes love requires the sacrifice of your possessions, your time, or some other precious commodity. If you see someone who has a need, you must meet that need as far as you're able, or you prove yourself to be deficient in love.
After all, the Bible says in James we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But it is not what James or the rest of Scripture teaches. Psychologists have made a business out of misinterpreting that verse. They say you must learn a "healthy" self-love to gain a good self-image; if you do not have a high regard for yourself, you will never be able to love other people the way God intended.
That's a serious misunderstanding. Those who advocate the saying, "learn to love yourself before you can love others," naively ignore what the Bible teaches about sin — that it is inherently self interested. To teach someone to love themselves is to justify or encourage the consuming sin of pride and to undercut any effort or desire to sacrifice self and love others.
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