Professor Douglas Moo

Reformed Christians take comfort from Acts 2:39: “the promise is for you and for your children.” God’s promises are multi-generational. Paul’s assurance that children even of just one believing parent are “holy” (1 Cor. 7:14) reinforces our confidence, as does his statement: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31).

We find the root of this comfort in God’s covenant with Abraham: “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant” (Gen. 17:7).

Yet simply being born of believers doesn’t guarantee salvation (Rom. 2:12–29). A child must also be raised faithfully in the covenant (Gen. 18:19; Deut. 6:6–9; Ps. 78:1–7), and he must believe (John 3:18). Only those “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” are children of God (John 1:10–13).

But if there is no blanket promise of salvation to the children of believers, is there no advantage to being born to Christian parents?

Yes! There is great advantage. Like the Jews, they are entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2). That is a tremendous advantage, for “you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23–25).

What other children hear the Word in the home, grow up in the church where they hear the preaching and teaching of the Word week in and week out, and where their friends and teachers encourage them to believe and obey? Where they learn the great hymns of the faith and soon have them in memory?

Yet the promise of salvation is to all who believe, and only to them. Far from unconditionally guaranteeing their salvation, the promises of Scripture to believers for their children establish Christian parents’ responsibility to evangelize our children.

God tells us to command our children to keep the way of the Lord (Gen. 18:19), which includes faith in Jesus Christ. We are to command our children to trust in Jesus for their salvation. We are to teach them the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother,” and its implication, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord” (Eph. 6:1). “Child, God tells you to obey me. I tell you, repent of your sins and trust in Christ.”

In short, we must evangelize our children. We must tell them the gospel at every opportunity, before and after they ever profess faith.

That means teaching them that through law comes the knowledge of sin and therefore no flesh will be justified by works of the law but by faith apart from any such works (Rom. 3:19–28). It means repeating to them over and over again, before and after they are admitted to the Lord’s Table: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

Not only must we evangelize our children, but we also can evangelize them, and our labor will not be in vain. The normal connection between a parent’s faithfully teaching law and gospel to his child and his child’s believing is implicit in one of the qualifications of an elder — he must have “children who believe” (Titus 1:6).

But how can we evangelize our children? Here are three concrete, practical things you can do to ensure that your children regularly encounter the gospel in a context that will encourage them to believe it.

First, and foremost in their younger years, involve them frequently, preferably daily, in family worship. Don’t be intimidated. Keep it simple: read a Bible portion, pray, and sing a hymn or chorus or children’s Bible song.

Second, inculcate the habit of personal devotions. Again, keep it simple. Simply reading a chapter of the Bible and praying are all they need to do. If they want to keep a journal, prayer list, or write notes, that’s fine, but if pushing for it intimidates them, don’t.

Third, have your children, every Lord’s Day, in the worship of God, under the preaching of the Word, in the fellowship of the saints, partaking regularly of the Lord’s Supper from their earliest ability to confess their faith to the elders. While personal and family devotions are important, the Bible emphasizes corporate worship.

But the fundamental thing is this: The more they see that we, though we know ourselves sinners, “[believe] to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein; and [act] differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth,” and principally that they see we “[accept, receive, and rest] upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith describes the acts of saving faith (14.2), the more likely our children will follow in our footsteps (John 5:19).

You can evangelize your children through family worship, teaching them personal devotions, and faithful participation in corporate worship. And take heart. The promise — believe and you will be saved — is to you and to your children!

E. Calvin Beisner

Link to original article here
]]> http://churchresources.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/evangelising-our-children/feed/ 0 connorpci http://churchresources.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/why-the-doctrine-of-election-is-precious-to-me/ http://churchresources.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/why-the-doctrine-of-election-is-precious-to-me/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:51:12 +0000 connorpci http://churchresources.wordpress.com/?p=353 ]]>

For some the doctrine of election (God’s free and sovereign decision to choose a people for salvation from the foundation of the world-Ephesians 1:3-6) is an abominable thought that produces great fear and concern. However, I propose that a clear understanding of this doctrine should instead produce hope and assurance. Allow me to share some of the reasons why the doctrine of election is so precious to me.

The doctrine of election is precious to me because it is biblical. In a display of the Father’s love for the Son, He gives a specific people to the Son (John 6:37). This truth is evident in the testimony of the book of Revelation when it declares that the only ones entering the eternal heaven are those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:27). John further testifies in Revelation 13:8, that these names were written in this book before the foundation of the world. In other words, one fruit of the Father’s love for Jesus, is our salvation. The Father made a free and sovereign decision to save a people as a gift for the Son and for His own glory from the foundation of the world (see also John 8:47; John 10:26-29; Romans 9:10-16).

The doctrine of election is precious to me because it secures my salvation. Jesus declared that all that the Father gave Him would come to Him and that He would never cast out any who came to Him (John 6:37). Jesus delights in receiving and keeping those whom the Father gives Him because He came to do the Father’s will (John 6:38-40), and the Father’s will is that Jesus not lose any of the ones that the Father has given Him but that He raise them all up on the last day (John 6:39).

The doctrine of election is precious to me because it encourages me to pursue holiness. Paul reminded the Thessalonians “God chose you as the first fruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13, ESV). The Bible assures us that even though now we are only gradually being conformed to the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), we will at glorification be completely conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29).

The doctrine of election is precious to me because it is the basis for assurance of my salvation. Because God gives a people to the Son, and because the Son receives that people and keeps them, I am assured that I will never be cast out (John 6:37), nor perish, nor be snatched out of Jesus’ hand (John 10:28). Can you imagine such assurance?  The God who predestines for salvation (election) will insure that all whom He calls to salvation will ultimately be glorified (Romans 8:30).

The doctrine of election is precious to me because it encourages me to share the gospel and gives me hope for fruit in evangelism and missions. Not only does the Father give a people to the Son (John 6:37), and not only does the Son receive these people and keep them (John 6:37-39), but the Father also assures that those whom He gives to the Son will come to the Son. It is the Father’s will that everyone believing in the Son have eternal life (John 6:40), and these who believe can only come at the Father’s drawing (John 6:44, 65). Therefore, if the Father gives a people to the Son, and He assures these people come to the Son, then we can be assured that evangelism and missions will bear fruit (Acts 13:48), and we can find encouragement in our Lord’s words to Paul, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” (Acts 18:9-10, ESV).

Finally, the doctrine of election is precious to me because it moves me to make much of God through Christ (true worship) and little of myself (humility). May we understand election and may it strip us of personal pride and move us to worship the Sovereign Lord in all His glory and grace.

Juan Sanchez is the Senior Pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, TX and a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

I am no musician. I play no part in a choir or a musical team. I do love words, and as a sidebar to my job I get to participate in editing worship song lyrics. But there you reach the limits of my musical gifting.

Even so, my friend Bob Kauflin recently invited me to speak at the WorshipGod09 conference and to address an audience populated by faithful servants engaged in leading worship, singing, and serving musically in diverse ways. These are gifted people and we benefit from their example, leadership, and service each Sunday in our local churches.

But as much as I appreciate what they do, I told them the following: What you do each Sunday is important, but it’s not most important.

Musical worship is inspiring, informative, and a wonderful privilege, but there is nothing more central to Christian worship than the preaching of God’s Word. Notice I did not say preaching is a great and necessary follow-up to worship, or that preaching is an optional extra in worship. Preaching is central to worship each Sunday.

Let me illustrate this point through a few great worship services in your Bible.

Think of Mount Sinai where God rescues and gathers his people specifically. He says, “Let my people go so that they may worship me.” So in that gathering to worship, what is the climax? It is the giving of the Law.

A few books later, in Deuteronomy, the people are gathered beside the Jordan. Their wanderings are finally at an end. They are on the cusp of the Promised Land, and Moses renews the covenant with the next generation. What is at the heart, what is the substance of this gathering? It is the reiteration of the Law of Moses, and we read page after page of preaching, explanation, application, and exposition.

When Joshua brings the people finally into the land, he gathers them together (Joshua 8). What was the climax of that gathering? Was it the singing? No. He read the Law to the “assembly.” (The Hebrew term is regularly translated in the Greek as “church”—the church is the assembly, the gathering of the people of God.) Joshua read the Law to the gathered assembly. And he read it all: “there was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them” (Joshua 8:35). Let’s not miss a thing. Let’s not miss a word. Let’s not miss a stroke.

After the return from exile, Nehemiah gathers the people into a great assembly. What do they do? Ezra reads the Law and then explains it—he exposits it to give the sense of message.

And we could go on through the Bible…

Throughout salvation history, all the way into the new covenant, God’s Word is at the center of worship. The early church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and every church was nourished on God’s Word, all the way down to the last chapter of the last book that Paul wrote, where he tells Timothy to preach the Word “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2).

Why? Why so much preaching? Why all this talking? Because the primary way we encounter God in worship is through the preaching of the Word of God.

Think about it this way. Normally, in what we call “worship,” we spend significant time—perhaps the whole time—addressing God, singing to him, praising him, extolling him, praying to him. Wonderful! But in preaching we are no longer addressing God; he is addressing us. Nothing is more important than this moment. And this is why the most important worship leader in your church is your pastor.

That really gets to the heart of preaching. The Bible is not simply a book that we talk about. When God’s Word is faithfully preached, God is addressing us. God is speaking. We hear not merely a man’s voice. We hear the voice of God.

And when God addresses us, what is the appropriate response? We respond with glad and reverent hearts, with voices that proclaim his praise, and with lives that increasingly reflect his character.

God addresses us with a saving Word. We respond to him with faith, praise, and obedience. That is the rhythm of worship.

———-

Jeff Purswell serves as the Dean of the Sovereign Grace Pastors College and a pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD.

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the centre—wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. (The story in the Book of Genesis rather suggests that some corruption in our sexual nature followed the fall and was its result, not its cause.) What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperOne, 1980), pp. 49–50

This is an inherently difficult question because it touches a very personal and private decision, what to do with the remains of a loved one or what should be done with one’s own remains (it doesn’t get much more personal).

It’s also difficult because these are emotional decisions often made is a very difficult time.

Nevertheless, there are biblical patterns and doctrines from which we can learn and apply to this situation.

There is a consistent biblical pattern of burial of human remains. Perhaps the most outstanding OT example is Abraham’s quest to bury Sarah (Gen 23) as a sojourner in a foreign land. Other significant examples could be cited (e.g., Jacob, Joseph and others). This is clearly the biblical pattern, carrying right through the care given to the deceased body of our Lord himself.

According to the Apostle Paul, the biblical pattern was not grounded in sentiment but in a conviction: the resurrection. In 1 Cor 15 the Apostle Paul used an agrarian metaphor to explain the hope of the resurrection. According to Paul, our bodies are like seeds planted in hope, in the expectation of a glorious (if unusual!) harvest: the resurrection body, i.e., a glorified human body.

As my dear friend and colleague Steve Baugh graciously pointed out to me in 1985 or so, the act of cremation is at odds with the act of planting a body in the soil. For one thing, the imagery is not the same at all. Burial is done with regard to the body’s status as part of the image of God. We don’t just have a body. We are body and soul. That is who we are as image-bearers.

In modernity we’ve been taught to regard the body as a machine and in our disposable age we know what to do with broken down machines: we bin them. But the body isn’t just a machine. The materialists are wrong. However much we may think we know about the body, it is not just a machine. We are persons made in the divine image. Our bodies are part of our personhood. That is why it is wrong, a violation of creational law, to murder (Gen 9:1-6). To attack the body is to attack the image of God.

Thus, burial is not just a cultural custom. It’s an act of faith. When there is a choice between burial and cremation, the latter isn’t just a convenience or an economy, it’s a message about the body and the nature of our humanity and our status as image-bearers.

To be sure, there may be times when burial is simply impossible. In those cases, we must act like sojourners and make do, but just because some are forced by circumstances to a difficult and unhappy choice doesn’t make that choice desirable or preferable.

As to expense, at least some of this difficulty can be faced by planning and wise stewardship. We’re Calvinists. We should expect to die (if the Lord doesn’t come first). Who believes in sin and death more than we? In that case, knowing that the funeral business is a just that, a business in search of profits, if we investigate, we can probably discover less expensive modes of burial. Don’t expect the funeral home to tell you how to be buried inexpensively.

As we contemplate the last thing that will likely happen to our bodies let us at least give some serious thought to the message we are sending about the body and its relation to the image and to human dignity rooted in the image of God. If cremation is unavoidable, we can at least arrange some clear testimony to the hope of the resurrection. If, however, cremation is just one option among many, then we must ask, are we, as much as lies within us, testifying to our hope of the bodily resurrection or are we unintentionally sending another message? There’s no question whether God can and shall re-constitute bodies at the resurrection, the question is what message are we sending by our acts?

R. Scott Clark

(Original post – click here)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on what the church is for:

The primary task of the Church is not to educate man, is not to heal him physically or psychologically…. I will go further; it is not even to make him good. These are things that accompany salvation; and when the Church performs her true task she does incidentally educate men and give them knowledge and information…she does make them good and better than they were. But my point is that those are not her primary objectives. Her primary purpose is not any of these; it is rather to put man into the right relationship with God, to reconcile man to God. (Preaching & Preachers, 30)

I’ll never forget those grief-stricken eyes – sad, hollow, distant. She watched helplessly as her husband’s life withered away. He was a good man in his early forties, the father of two children, and committed to Christ, family, and ministry. Her husband’s dying pushed her to the borders of her faith. What good, what love, what meaning could she find in the death of this young husband and father? How could God let this happen?

To read the rest of this article by Paul David Tripp, click here

1. That your minister would know and love the living God, would have a saving interest in Christ, being purchased by His blood, and thus would be bound to the Lord by the indissoluble bond of the Holy Spirit.

2. That your minister would know, embrace and ever more deeply understand the Gospel and be shaped by it in life and ministry.

3. That your minister would be useful servant of the Lord, that he would know and love God’s word, God’s people, and God’s kingdom; that he would be used to build it up and so that it prevails even against Hell’s gates.

4. That your minister would study, practice and teach the Word of the Lord, by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

5. That your minister would love to pray, because he loves to commune with his God, and that he would be a man of prayer, characteristically.

6. That your minister would be ever dependent upon and filled with the Spirit; and that he would possess true Spiritual wisdom.

7. That your minister would be holy unto the Lord. That his tongue and heart would be wholly God’s.

8. That your minister would be kept from pride, and especially spiritual pride. That the Lord himself would be gracious to slay pride in him, and that your pastor would endeavor to always be putting pride to death, by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

9. That God would give your minister guidance as to where to focus his efforts in ministry.

10. That He would protect your minister from himself, from the enemy of his soul, and from all earthly enemies.

11. That no decision which your minister ever makes or desire that your minister ever pursues would restrict his ability to pour his whole soul into the Gospel ministry.

12.That many would be converted and many built up under your minister’s ministry, to God’s glory alone.

13. That the Lord would bless your minister’s wife, with holiness and happiness, Gospel assurance and Gospel rest.

14. That God would make your minister a decent husband and father.

15. That your minister would be a good friend to his wife, and love her self-sacrificially,

16. That your minister would be a good daddy to his children. That they would love God, their parents and the church.

17. That your minister would be a testimony in the home so that his wife might be able to respect him when he is in the pulpit, and so that your minister will be able to feed her soul, along with the rest of the congregation

J. Ligon Duncan III (born 1960) is a Reformed theologian, professor, author, and minister of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He is currently the senior minister of the historic First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

the difference between truth and error is not a chasm but a razor’s edge.

John Murray

Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between what is right and wrong; rather, it is the difference between right and almost right.

Charles H Spurgeon