Commentaries

If you are like me, you want to research a purchase before it is made.  Well, with commentaries I am no different.  I recently found a great site to help with the research:  http://www.bestcommentaries.com/

I really like the fact that it lists the top 2 recommendations for each book of the Bible.

Picking a version

A good site for researching the different versions of the Bible.  Remember, the translations are not inspiried, nor inerrant.  Sorry King James only people.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/versions.html

Abortion and God

From The Bethlehem Institute:

 

 

 

“In this urgent moment, it is our conviction at The Bethlehem Institute that the church needs to be reminded that abortion is primarily and ultimately an injustice against God.

 

As John Piper has said,

Abortion is about God, the Creator of the universe, the Giver and Sustainer of all life, the Judge of the living and the dead, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Redeemer and Forgiver of all who trust him. Abortion is about God.

 

To leave God out of the picture of abortion is to trivialize it. All things are trivial without God. God is the ultimate reality over the universe. All other reality is derivative and dependent and has no ultimate meaning at all without reference to God the ultimate reality. In him we live and move and have our being. If we leave him out of account, we know nothing of any lasting significance about ourselves or the world. (From the sermon, “Where Does Child Killing Come From?” available at Desiring God)

 

To that end, we have designed a unique six-week Sunday School curriculum advancing the truth that the deepest evil of abortion is that it defies God’s supremacy over life in the womb. Entitled Abortion Is About God: Reframing a Moral Issue, the course will aim to provide a biblical and theological foundation for the pro-life cause. Moreover, the course will aim to bring a God-centered perspective to bear on this contested issue.

 

In addition to asserting that abortion is fundamentally an offense to the glory of the Creator, the curriculum will celebrate the sovereignty of God over all of life, will lift up the good gifts of children and parenthood, and will proclaim the mercy freely offered to all through the gospel. Students will gain a deeper understanding of this issue by closely examining key biblical passages, answering provocative questions, and considering sermons and writings from the ministry of John Piper. It is our prayer that this course would be used by God to awaken the church afresh to the horror of abortion as a belittling of the glory of God and an assault on those made in His image.”

 

 

 

What I learned today

1) When your wife is upset and is “venting” you should not correct her. By this I mean, scritpure, sermons, book, general common sense are all off limits.  You should just listen, and respond with a “really” or “yea, I know” once and a while.

2) I like change.

3) If you are not able to read the Psalms, and then when you are depressed, used what you have learned/read from the Psalms, you need help.  Making a statement like “I know I should use doctrine when I am down, I just do not feel like it” shows an incomplete understanding of the doctrines or a lack of trust in them. 

4) If the sovereignty of God does not get you through hard times, you do not understand it.  You need to.

Jesus and the NT

Kinda cool!

Total Depravity and Marriage

Jolly Blogger shows us how sound docrtine helps keep his marriage going:

Total depravity is key because it reminds me that my wife is married to a sinnner, so I need to go easy on her - she’s got a tough life being married to me.  It also reminds me that she is a sinner so I don’t have to burden her with a load of expectations she can never meet.  Grace reminds me that her performance is not the basis of my acceptance of her any more than my performance is the basis of God’s acceptance of me.

Does God Author Sin?

Desiring God offers some thoughts:

In his last three sermons, John Piper has made some provocative statements about God’s sovereignty over sin.

• August 12: “God created [Satan and his demons] knowing what they would become and how, in that very evil role, they would glorify Christ. Knowing everything they would become, God created them for the glory of Christ.”
• August 19: “God is sovereign over Satan, and therefore Satan’s will does not move without God’s permission. And therefore every move of Satan is part of God’s overall purpose and plan.”
• August 26: “[E]verything that exists—including evil—is ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. . . . Adam’s sin and the fall of the human race with him into sin and misery did not take God off guard and is part of his overarching plan to display the fullness of the glory of Jesus Christ.”

J.I. Packer Interview on Election

What is meant by the phrase “unconditional election”?
Why do we need an election?
Doesn’t this detract from our responsibility to respond to the gospel?
If I’m one of the elect, God will save me, and if I’m not, I cannot be saved anyway, so why worry about it?
Isn’t foreknowledge the basis of election? Didn’t God choose us because he looked down into the future and foresaw that we would believe in him?
Wouldn’t it be unfair for God to elect one person to heaven, but then not elect my next-door neighbor?
How essential is this doctrine to our understanding of salvation in general?
Is this something really practical for the Christian and not something that should be left in the seminary classroom for theological debate?
If this doctrine is true, is there any reason to believe that the gospel invitation is genuine?

Read Dr Packer’s brief answers to these questions here.

(HT:  Reformation Theology)

Does Prayer Change God’s Mind

Does God actually listen to the prayers of people and then respond by doing something that they asked for? Here’s a more difficult question: does prayer actually change God’s mind? They seem simple, but there is some ‘heady’ theology behind those questions. It underscores the need for theological study. That’s why it’s always so sad to hear today’s trendy church leaders putting-down the study of theology. Well in this short audio clip, RC Sproul answers those questions, plus tells you two additional things that you must know about prayer.

Perspectives on Predestination

This is a sermon preached by Rev. Hofstetter attempting to give a good perspective on what predestination is, what it is not, and what it is for.  

Christian, if by now you are not immensely encouraged, then you must spend much time deeply thinking on these things. We certainly this morning have not answered every question raised by the concept of predestination, but we have seen that the idea is far richer and deeper than it is otherwise portrayed. It is not simply about who gets in and who doesn’t; it is about God’s character and God’s love. It is not simply about doctrine, but about God’s love to us, and about all the plans which God has and in which he includes us as an integral part. And we have seen that the reason God includes this truth is to encourage us and to reveal to us the true foundation for our relationship to him.