Pure Church

One would think that most baptists are "died in the wool baptists," by which I mean are knowledgeable about what baptism is and why it's important, and maybe even a little zealous for the practice. But if the truth be told, most evangelicals--baptists among them--are "soft" on baptism. Far from zealous, many are indifferent.

As a convinced baptist, that saddens me. It saddens me because of the rich theology, symbolism and meaning of this ordinance left to us by our God and Savior himself. So, it's with some delight that I saw JT's reference to Van Neste's paper "Reinvigorating Baptist Practice of the Ordinances." It's also timely because, Lord willing, we'll be considering Matthew 3 on Sunday morning, a text where baptism figures prominently.

Nathan Finn has a series of short posts on Baptists and associations that I find helpful. You can read them here.

Tony Carter has listed a number of Reformed African-American preachers/pastors whose sermons are available on-line. The links are here. If you know of others, please drop Carter a line.

Michael Haykin shares with us "One of Jonathan Edwards' Pneumatological Convictions."

Cerulean Sanctum meditates on "Our Triumphant Holy Week". A clip:

Leonard Ravenhill once said that the sign of the Church wasn’t the cross, but the empty tomb. Though he readily acknowledged the difficulty of rendering an empty tomb in jewelry.

Maybe that’s for the better, for as much as the symbol of the cross has been co-opted by pot-smoking, women-abusing, hip-hop artists; bed-hopping, clueless, Hollywood celebrities; Christians in name only who never got to the real cross; and the the inane, shallow world-at-large, no one’s done a good job transforming an empty tomb into bling.

And that’s good for us, because an empty tomb that defies secularization can still say, “He’s not there.” In fact, about the only place we can say the Lord is not is in that chamber of death. He’s risen. He’s risen indeed.

GospelDrivenLife includes this blunt quote from Leon Morris:

To put it bluntly and plainly, if Christ is not my Substitute, I still occupy the place of a condemned sinner. If my sins and my guilt are not transferred to Him, if he did not take them upon Himself, then surely they remain with me. If He did not deal with my sins, I must face their consequences. If my penalty was not borne by Him, it still hangs over me. There is no other possibility.
--Leon Morris, The Cross on the NT