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Month: March 2017

What I Read in March

I read a bunch of great stuff in March. I haven’t included everything, as there will be some reviews being posted over the next few weeks, but overall March was a great month with marriage, means of grace, history, intelligent design, and some good old (new) superhero adventures. Know the Creeds and Councils Having sat in more than one class on church history, I’ve seen plenty of material covering heroes and heretics, councils, creeds, and controversies of the early years. This little book by Justin Holcomb was such a great springboard; every chapter short and punchy, and closed with a “so what?” for Christians today. While you’ll move through this book easily, if you’re like me it will act like a living map where the…

Wednesdays on the Web (29/03)

Productivity or Virtue? It’s uncanny (and simultaneously encouraging) how much this author is like me, both then and now. The ability to be self-aware of how I’m prioritising goals, relationships, and unexpected demands for my time is vital if I’m to be the kind of person I think I should be. Preaching and Personality I’ve mentioned this article more than a few times in the last week, and I continue to think about it in light of my preaching this week. Gary Millar is as qualified as anyone to discuss the tension between being faithful to the text, but also recognising that God is interested in letting your personality tell the story, as long as Christ remains the only focus. 10 Fun Things to do…

Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is not the Enemy of Faith

For many Christians, the very idea of having doubt is unthinkable, even sinful. Solid Christians are those who not only know what they believe, but are ready with an answer to tell you why it is the way it is, and why – if those around them would simply read scripture as it should be read – they would come to the same rock solid, unshakable conclusions. Enter Barnabas Piper, who is bold enough to ask the question “what is belief?” and explore the critical difference between doubt based in belief and doubt that undermines belief. Through personal and often painful story, Piper recounts his journey from being a born-and-raised Christian who went on to graduate from seminary, always having the right answers, to one…

Wednesdays on the Web (15/03)

When Suffering is the Megaphone and God is the Whisper A helpful reminder from Mike Leake that God is faithful to his promises, even when in the midst of our great pain we can’t hear his voice, let alone respond believingly to his promises. Complaining Never Wins the Culture In light of recent events – from Trump winning the election to that gay moment in the upcoming Beauty and the Beast movie – I’ve come to see more clearly that Christians tend to be defined more for what they complain about. I’ve read Trevin Wax’s blog for years, and he’s certainly come (for me) to be a trusted cultural interpreter. BONUS: J.D. Greear weights in along similar lines, and Nathan Campbell also adds value for the…

What Makes a Missionary?

There’s an underlying assumption in the Christian church that somehow if you travel overseas and help out in an orphanage that you can assign yourself the designation missionary. Building houses, rescuing girls from trafficking, and equipping villages with clean water are all wonderful acts, but it seems to me that this broad use of the term brings with it widespread negative implications for the entire evangelistic enterprise of the church. In a recent article linked to by the International Missions Board the author provides this definition of mission: [Mission] is God’s plan that people from every nation, tribe and language will come to saving faith in Jesus through the preaching of the Gospel. Perhaps that seems simplistic. And in a sense, it is. But it’s also worthy of…

Wednesdays on the Web (08/03)

God Wants our Sad Esther Fleece from the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission reminds us that while the culture around us pushes the message that sadness is a ‘negative’ emotion and we should aim to avoid it at all costs (whether by medication, or distraction, or relationship, or whatever) God has not only given us these emotions, but also the language to express them, and a book which is full of lessons on how to face suffering on the days when we don’t have it together. Pixels are People In light of its potentially destructive power, why would any Christian use social media? The short answer is because the Lord is sovereign and pixels are people. There are more than three billion Internet users around the…

Sacrifice, Substitution, and Surrender

Recently I’ve been getting so much out of North Pine Baptist Church’s series on the Temple and Tabernacle that I’ve made an unofficial transcript of the latest message. I’m sharing it here because of the gospel-soaked, scripture-rich content and the immense good news and practical application that it presents for Christians today.



Morning everyone, good to see you all today. Let’s pray shall we.

Father this morning we continue in this series entitled God in Our Midst and we want to thank you that you are indeed here with us this morning. Lord we are in the presence of a Holy God. This morning as we look at this bronze altar and what it signifies – what it points to – we pray again that you might have grace upon us. That you might help us to understand and grasp in a deeper way the significance of sacrifice; of the sacrifice that has been made for us through Jesus Christ. Lord this morning as we hear from your word we ask that our minds and our hearts would be clear; that they would be attentive to what you have to say to us today. Lord convict us in our hearts, help us to know the very things you want to speak to us about this morning. For you – indeed we know – want to speak to us, and we thank you for that. We pray this morning as we open up this passage together that Jesus Christ might be honoured and glorified. Amen.

Romans 6:23 says this: “For the wages of sin is death”. The wages of sin is death. Wages have featured a lot in the news this week. Those of you who have been across the news this week will know that there has been penalty rates and things like that discussed in the media. When we think about wages we understand them to be those things which are owing to us because of the work we’ve done. We work, we get paid; they’re our wages. But the bible clearly states that when it comes to the things that we’ve done, the work that we’ve done, the sin we’ve committed before God, then we have something owing to us for that. And that is death. We all deserve to die because of our sin.

Puts a real cloud down on everything, doesn’t it.

And you might think this morning as we start off this message and we think about sin and the fact that it deserves death you might think “well you know what, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

Last week as we began the series on the tabernacle, we focused on the fact that God is a holy God. That his holiness points to his absolute perfection. His absolute purity. His absolute goodness. His absolute glory. His absolute justice and righteousness. His separateness or his apartness from everything else. Nothing can come even close to this holy God because he is so perfect and glorious and righteous and just. He is so pure. If we liken God in his holiness to the sun, it is both good and terrifying at the same time. It brings heat and light in order for life to grow and flourish, but it also has the capacity to kill anything that comes close to it. And because God is holy, it means that he is like that sun in that he cannot have anything to do with sin, that as soon as we draw close, as soon as sin comes anywhere in the vicinity of God it is consumed by his holy fire. His holiness naturally condemns and destroys sin and anything affected by it.

Well then, how do we ever hope to approach this holy God? How can we ever hope to have any kind of relationship with him? To come into presence? Well we discover how we do that through this imagery of the brazen altar in the tabernacle. This bronze altar. And we’ll see this and what it ultimately points to.

Forgiveness: Rarely Easy, Never Optional

In the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35), Jesus tells of a servant who owed his king a great sum of money. The king ordered the man be sold, along with his wife and children to pay the debt. However the servant fell on his knees imploring the king to have patience with him, and the king ended up forgiving him; the servant now completely released from the debt. But then that same man went out and seized a fellow servant who owed him a relatively small sum and demanded he paid back what was owed, throwing the man in prison until the debt was paid. Having witnessed this, several people went and told the king and the unforgiving servant was himself thrown into…

Give Up Lent for Lent?

Recently The Cripplegate published a thoughtful piece on why evangelicals should consider giving up Lent. Like everything on the Internet, it was praised or pummeled with opinions from every point along the spectrum. The post contained a helpful overview of (Catholic) church history pertaining to the development of Lent, followed by a self-diagnostic of sorts where we take a good look at our motivations for participating in Lent and step back to look at the way in which we’ve choosen to engage with it. In short, this author felt that the act of giving something up as a way of preparing for Easter is simply anachronistic. Far from a response that would be titled ‘here’s why I think he’s wrong’,  I offer these thoughts to encourage what…

Wednesdays on the Web (29/02)

Marriage, Hospitality and the Spiritual Life Dr. Stuart Devenish makes four observations for Christian couples. He writes “if our faith isn’t being put to work in our marriage-relationships, it can hardly be put to work in relationships outside of marriage” Why Papa of The Shack is not Aslan of Narnia The follow-up to last week’s post on why you should not waste your time or money on the upcoming movie of The Shack. Challies has three excellent points (he had me at allegorical fiction). Read this, and you’ll be persuaded that life is too short for bad films. Growing (in) Humility If the world, the flesh, and the devil continually tempt us to pride, and humility is essential for spiritual progress, what are some practical…