Pure Church

Inspiring Lives with Iain Murray. Listen here.

Yeah that's me. The last mobile phone I owned was a bag phone you plugged into the cigarette lighter of your car.

Jeff Purswell with a brief biblical theology of preaching as the central event in the gathered worship of God's people:

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.

Read the entire post here.

Today I begin sermon preparation for Gen. 28:10-29:30. What a joy it is to look long into God's word with the privilege of then sharing it with His people! As I do so, I'm reminded of a couple of quotes from a short article we read in yesterday's staff meeting.

On one occasion, Spurgeon was asked the secret to his ministry. He replied without hesitation, "My people pray for me." Elsewhere he writes:

The sinew of the minister's strength under God is the supplication of his church. We can do anything and everything if we have a praying people around us. But when our dear friends and fellow helpers cease to pray, the Holy Ghost hastens to depart, and "Ichabod" is written on the place of the assembly.

What can we do without your prayers? They link us with the omnipotence of God. Like the lightning rod, they pierce the clouds and bring down the mighty and mysterious power from on high.... The Lord give me a dozen importunate pleaders and lovers of souls, and by his grace we ill shake all London from end-to-end. (C.H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (repr. Ed. Pasadena: Pilgrim Publications, 1980), vol. 24, p. 445).

A second quote came from Pierre C. Marcel in The Relevance of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1963), pp. 101-102:

When, then, will the believers en masse understand that they are primarily responsible for the preaching which they hear, yes, more than their preachers? If every pastor knew and felt that the congregation was praying and that each member had prayed, that the congregation was supporting him, interceding for him... what preacher would not feel himself a new man and whose preaching would not be transformed? Once again, preaching the word is a function and activity of the Church, not the function and specialty of a man.

Finally, a familiar saying among Dutch pastors translated (by Joel Beeke) as follows:

"If you pray me full, I'll preach you full."

Enjoy praying and preparing for the word on Sunday!

Oliver Wendell Homes:

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all."

Here.

Our man in Fulham, London, Mike Gilbart-Smith, posts at the 9Marks blog two video sermonsfrom Stuart Ollyott on "How Not to Preach Boring Sermons." (part one and part two)

A Christianity Today video that's an interesting look at prosperity teaching in Africa. (HT: Z)

The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

John Piper abominates this teaching. I'm with John. Poverty--as disastrous as it is--doesn't warrant abandoning the only hope of the gospel with the false hope of 'prosperity.'

From time to time people ask that question. It has at least two variants. They could be asking if God and Allah are the same Being. Or, they could be asking if the words are simply interchangeable.

James White posts a short article from Malaysia, where Christian Bibles were confiscated because they use "Allah" as the term for "God," which in Malay, like Arabic, is the term for God. Apparently, some Muslims in Malaysia have decided this is a silly question and have taken the discussion out of the public realm. I'm not sure which is more remarkable: that such a thing happens, or that there is so little outcry unless professing Christians were to do such a thing.

The story:

(CNN) -- Authorities in Malaysia have seized more than 20,000 Bibles in recent months because they refer to God as "Allah," Christian leaders said Thursday.
The seizures have fed fears among minority groups, which see signs of encroaching Islamic fundamentalism in the predominantly Muslim but multi-racial country.
"There is a growing sense of Islamic assertion, yes," said the Rev. Hermen Shastri, general-secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia. "There is some concern."
The Bibles were written in the country's official language, Malay -- in which the word for God is "Allah," as it is in Arabic.
However, Malaysia's government says the word is exclusive to Islam.
Its use in Christian publications is likely to confuse Muslims and draw them to Christianity, the government says. So it has banned use of the word in Christian literature.
"Malay has borrowed from Arabic, just as it has from Sanskrit and Portuguese," Shastri said. "We have maintained the community has the right to use the word.
"But I think this has ignited a cause in the Muslim communities, who are interpreting it as a siege on Islamic beliefs."
A Home Ministry official directed requests for comment to the ministry's Publications and Quran Text Control Department, which enforces the ban. An employee there redirected calls to a spokeswoman, who in turn asked CNN to call the Home Ministry back. Calls to other departments were similarly redirected.
A Roman Catholic weekly newspaper, The Herald, is challenging the ban in court after the government threatened to revoke its license for using the word in its Malay edition. Hearings on the case have gone on for two years.
"We quote it as it is. We cannot change the text of the Scripture," Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew told CNN last year. "I cannot be the editor of the Bible."...

This is a video clip from Cone's appearance at Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union a few years back. I can agree with some of Cone's critique of the predominantly African-American (and for that matter, American0 church, but notice the distortions. How many can you count in this 7-minute clip?



And it's the stuff that he almost gets right that is the most poisonous and dangerous. Can anybody seriously maintain that this man, a professor of systematic theology, inadvertently misquoted Matthew 16:25 at the end of his comments? What he distorts is so critical to understanding everything that the misquote is sinister.

Tony Carter wonders "Is Balance a Four-Letter Word." And he's dragging Packer and Terry Johnson in on his side. I think he's right.

We never feel Christ to be a reality until we feel him to be a necessity.

-Austin Phelps, quoted by Gordon Keddie in Preacher on the run: The Message of Jonah (Hertfordshire, England: Evangelical Press, 1986), p. 85

Last night we had a moving time of prayer during our evening service. We prayed for a number of items and issues, but two threads emerged through the prayers: the majesty of God and the plight of the lost. With fervency we praised God for who He is, and with brokenness we interceded for lost family and friends.

While attending and participating in the God Exposed conference at SEBTS, I had the privilege of sitting down with my first pastor, Peter Rochelle, and three new friends to talk about diversity in the SBC. The audio is up and I hope it's an encouragement.

Now there's a question I would have never thought to ask. But the folks here are asking it and interviewing some who say, "Yes!"

I hope you are. It's going to be a feast on and in the word of God! If you're thinking of coming, remember that the "early bird registration" lasts until Saturday. A snippet to whet the spiritual thirst:

Together for the Gospel: T4G 2010 Conference from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Register here.

Sometimes answering the basic questions helps us see larger issues more clearly. Take for example the issue of church membership. There's a fair amount of ink spilled on that topic by folks arguing for and against membership. And it can seem like an odd thing to assert or deny if you start at the question of membership itself. But if you go back to basics, the answer seems much simpler and clearer, at least to me.

Take for example this quote from James V. Brownson's The Promise of Baptism: An Introduction to Baptism in Scripture and the Reformed Tradition. He's answering the question, "What is a Christian?" Brownson first talks about what it means to be an individual Christian:

So Christians are disciples, followers of Jesus who seek to learn and to grow, and who live their lives trusting that God has called and chosen them before they even made their own choice to become disciples. They are thus deeply aware of God's kindness and grace which precedes and empowers their own commitment to Christ. Disciples live by faith, trusting in this grace as the foundation for their lives. (p. 5-6)

He then moves on to consider the wonderful truth about our union Christ, summing up this way: "Christians are always learning and growing toward becoming in their daily lives the kind of persons that they already are in their union with Christ." (p. 7)

Finally, he draws out the corporate implications of what it means to be an individual Christian united to Christ:

Up to this point, we have been discussing what it means to be a Christian. But in a very real sense, there is no such thing as an individual Christian. When God joins Christians to Jesus, God also joins them to something bigger than themselves; they become incorporated into the church, the "body of Christ." In the New Testament, it is inconceivable for Christians to think of themselves as united to Christ without also thinking about the ways they are united to other Christians. This was true even in Jesus' own ministry. He didn't have one disciple; He had twelve, and many more beyond his "inner circle." Almost all of the learning of Jesus' disciples took place as a group, rather than one-on-one interactions with Jesus. This same pattern continued in the early church, as Christians gathered in groups called ekklesiai (the Greek word for "churches," which can also be translated "meetings" or "assemblies"). From the beginning, it was unimaginable that someone might become a Christian without also becoming part of a church, a local gathering of disciples of Jesus. The union with Christ experienced by Christians also unites them to each other. (p. 7)

If we're clear on what the thing is, we're clearer on subsequent questions. If we know what a Christian is beyond "my personal relationship with Jesus," then we're likely to be clearer on the nature and necessity of church membership. I wonder if those who oppose church membership aren't guilty of not having thought enough about what it basically means to be a Christian.

I appreciated this post from Mockingbird on the return of Mark McGwire to major league baseball as a batting coach. I wonder if you agree?

The Buzzard Blog is circling prey again. This time he's giving some good thoughts in "3 Truths That Change Your Life."

Fifteen Years of Faithfulness. It was a great treat to join the saints at CHBC this weekend to celebrate Mark Dever's 15th year at the church and to give God thanks for all He has done there in that time. God in His kindness has sent 27 pastors to at least five countries from CHBC in 15 years. That's not counting all the interns and staff persons who are faithfully serving in other ways. May the Lord greatly magnify Himself with more fruit and make all our ministries as fruitful in their own right. Here's a post and video from one member. (HT: Gospel Coalition)

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. A very funny, insightful, and educational look at the Confederate subculture of the South. Also a decent overview of some Civil War facts and fiction. I thought the war was over, but apparently it's still being fought in some quarters. The title suggests the book might be mocking, but it turns out to be a rather warm outsiders (author Tony Horowitz is Jewish) look into what's inside things like Civil War re-enactments, Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, and other such things. Very good read, including some provocative concluding chapters examining the current state of "race" relations in Civil War and Civil Rights battleground states.