Progressive Sin

Simple statements often lead me to deeper thoughts than those that require deep thought to begin with.

Sin is always progressive in nature. If you give it an inch, it soon seeks to take a mile. Sin is never content, but always seeks and desires more.

-Tim Challies

Why I Love Study Bibles - Tiny Nuggets of Gold

In reading Jeremiah the following quote is from the study note for verse 2:34:

"Covenant infidelity always leads to ethical infidelity."

We're Back

So lets try and pick this blog back up....

Its been an eventful chapter in this book of life that we are living and writing: Multiple weddings, house buying, Job searching, pain & happiness, and so on. But God has been there through it all. At times it was hard to see Him, and there have been times when we may not have wanted to see Him. But He is gracious and full of mercy, to love us no matter what and to have His un-wavering arms open and ready for us to step into that embrace. The taste of a working relationship with God, one that involves pray, reading the Bible, community with believers, tastes sweet. Its is undeniable that we are most satisfied when we are in that working relationship with Him. So as Paul writes:

"Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." 1 Corinthians 15:56-58

Venture into Fiction..... so far I'm pleased

"When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of the former: don't crap your pants; example of the latter: Columbus discovered America) This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one's parents since infancy. The net result is in a few years of familial hell culminating in the child's exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the post pubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants."

- Excerpt from "The River Why" by David James Duncan

To You Be the Glory

Listening to the new Glory Revealed 2 cd. I have to say that the album ends with an beautifully simple song by Matt Maher and Kari Jobe singing the truth of Romans 11:33-36. The Glory Revealed project is absolutely God glorifying worship... sweet fragrances to the Lord. They simply sing scripture. I apprecatice this being the book-end to the album rejoicing in the fact that all things are from Him, through Him, and to Him be glory forever. I Amen that.

Romans 11:33-36 (English Standard Version)

³³Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ³⁴"For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?"³⁵"Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?" ³⁶For from him and through him and to him are all things To him be glory forever. Amen.

Check it out ---> http://www.gloryrevealed.com/

Think about it

I want to be one free of expectations. I don't know if it is a safety mechanism I have installed but I try my best to not set expectations. They seem to only create pain when they are not meet. Instead I live in the present, accepting what comes and being grateful for what I have. Maybe it's one of the walls that I have built to protect me, but generally I think it works. When we live a life that is absent of these expectations it frees us to simply enjoy life as it comes. Just ask yourself how many times you have been let down b/c you set some expectation (whether it was just or not) and it didn't come through? Think of it this way too….. when is a gift more appreciated…. When it's expected or when it is given just b/c someone thought of you? Maybe this lifestyle isn't for everyone, but it's what I do.

Marriage Mania

Marriage Mania

So with all the weddings coming up (including my own) Calvin & Blogging have been put on hold.

Blogging the Institutes Day 57 : 2.7.2 - 2.7.7

We have heard in Galatians "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law".

Oh the glory of that line. There is however a cyclical view of this. That leads us to the topic of today's reading: How the law leads us to understand the curse, which leads us to Christ.

"Hence he properly calls Christ the end or fulfilling of the Law, because it would avail us nothing to know what God demands did not Christ come to the succor [aid] of those who are laboring, and oppressed under an intolerable yoke and burden."

"Is the Lord, then, you will ask, only sporting with us? Is it not the next thing to mockery, to hold out the hope of happiness, to invite and exhort us to it, to declare that it is set before us, while all the while the entrance to it is precluded and quite shut up? I answer, Although the promises, insofar as they are conditional, depend on a perfect obedience of the Law, which is nowhere to be found, they have not, however, been given in vain. For when we have learned, that the promises would be fruitless and unavailing, did not God accept us of his free goodness, without any view of our works, and when, having so learned, we, by faith, embrace the goodness thus offered in the gospel, the promises, with all their annexed conditions, are fully accomplished. For God. while bestowing all thing upon us freely, crowns his goodness by not disdaining our imperfect obedience; forgiving its deficiencies, accepting it as if it were complete, and so bestowing upon us the full amount of what the Law has promised."... !!!!

Blogging the Institutes Day 57 : 2.6.3 - 2.7.1

The theme of redemption flood Scriptures. From the fall of man to coming of the Kingdom. Christ as Mediator is a constant pursuit. The purpose of the laws, ceremonies, and rites in the Old Testament were to point the Jews to an "end". God is only interested in spiritual worship, for why would God be interested in the shouts of mere human mouths? He wouldn't. He wants man's soul to rejoice, he wants man's soul to sing to Him! These ceremonies were to draw the spiritual out of the dead human flesh. They were to draw the mind up so they could see that something greater would be needed to fully restore them with God. In short, the laws, ceremonies, and rites point to an ultimate sacrifice, of the most pure blood, that can reach deep enough to cleanse a soul! And that sacrifice was satisfied in Jesus Christ.

Blogging the Institutes Day 56 : 2.5.18 - 2.6.2

If you haven't picked up on it yet, Calvin is really trying to get across the depth of what it means to be a fallen human, and that due to our nature we must solely rely on God and His Grace to be near to Him and do good by Him.

"Only agree with me in this, that it is by his (man's) own fault he is stripped of the ornaments in which the Lord at first attired him, and then let us unite in acknowledging that what he now wants is a physician, and not a defender."

"Let it stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design any thing uy what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their sould inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness."

Blogging the Institutes Day 55 2.5.13 - 2.5.17

We continue on the topic of man's ability to chose good, and further support the stance that man can do no good without the aid of God & Grace. Calvin makes two statements that I feel should be documented in order to build this further support.

This one is pretty funny, I can see Calvin saying this to his opposition.

"To the natural powers of man we ascribe approving and rejecting, willing and not willing, striving and resisting, i.e., approving vanity, rejecting solid good, willing evil and not willing good, striving for wickedness, and resisting righteousness."

And in response to those who say, "Then why do any thing at all".

Grace led "good acts" are our own! How great is that! We get a level of credit in God's eyes for those works which we could not do without His Help.

"But though every thing good in the will is entirely derived from the influence of the Spirit, yet, because we have naturally an innate power of willing, we are not improperly said to do the things of which God claims for himself all the praise; first, because every thing which his kindness produces in us is our own (only we must understand that it is not of ourselves); and, secondly, because it is our mind, our will, our sturdy which are guided by him to what is good."

Blogging the Institutes Day 54 2.5.9 - 2.5.12

Why do I think it is of such massive importance that we squash the idea of the human will's ability to chose good?

Answer: So that we can not boast. Because we would. If the human will was able to chose good without the aid of grace and faith, we would give ourselves the glory and rob God of His deserved glory.

"We must, therefore, attend to the admonition of Paul, when he thus addresses believers, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.' (Phil 2:12-13). He ascribes to them (man) a part in acting that they may not indulge in carnal sloth, but by enjoining fear and trembling, he humbles them so as to keep them in remembrance, that the very thing which they are ordered to do is the proper work of God -- distinctly intimating, that believers act passively inasmuch as the power is given them from heaven, and cannot in any way be arrogated to themselves."

Blogging the Institutes Day 53 2.5.4 - 2.5.8

What purpose do teachers, preachers, exhortations, or reprimands have once one becomes a "believer" in Christ? If one is born again shouldn't that be enough? What is the purpose to bible study, of listening to sermons, of talking out issues with friends? Why does it seem like there are so many that think little of these things?

Well, there are MANY purposes for those things, but "had exhortations and reprimands no other profit with the godly than to convince them of sin, they could not be deemed altogether useless. Now, when, by the Spirit of God acting within, they have the effect of inflaming their desire of good, of arousing them from lethargy, of destroying the pleasure and honeyed sweetness of sin, making it hateful and loathsome, who will presume to cavil at them as superfluous?"

The danger of this attitude can be seen across the scope of the Church today. People forget about sin. They accept the grace of God, they accept Jesus. But the only change that is seen in their lives is that they feel eternally forgiven. Their actions don't change, "because they feel forgiven", their views don't change, "they don't have to" they feel forgiven.

Preaching, Teaching, Talking, Reading -- all, if only, bring light to sin. And when sin is brought to your face, the only place you can go is to the Cross. And when you encounter the cross, you will "feel" what forgiven is really like.

And your actions and your view will change.

Blogging the Institutes Day 52: 2.4.7 -2.5.3

The idea of unabated human free will is not biblical; Free will to chose God, free will to do good, free will to make any choice based solely on your own. It's just not. Any semi-serious study of Romans, the Words of Jesus, and the entire Old Testament's pointing to God's redemptive history will prove this. Scriptures continually state that God wills some hearts of flesh and other hearts of stone and that grace is through faith, a gift from God and not of works.

If you believe that free will indeed exist, and that you are the final decision maker in your faith, or that you have the ability to chose good over evil, I honestly pray for you. For if that is the case then you are leaving your faith, and your eternal future in your own hands, your own sinful hands. And where there is sin there is punishment, all the works in the world will not cover up that stain.

"The abettors of this error would see a still better refutation of it, if they would attend to the source from which the apostle derives the glory of the saints -- 'Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and who he justified, them he also glorified' (Rom 8:30). On what ground, then the apostle being judge, are believers crowned? Because by the mercy of God, not their own exertions, they are predestinated, called, and justified. Away, then, with the vain fear, that unless free wills stands, there will no longer be any merit! It is foolish to take alarm, and recoil from that which Scripture
inculcates. 'If thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' (1 Cor 4:7). You see how everything is denied to free will, for the very purpose of leaving no room for merit. And yet, as the beneficence and liberality of God are manifold and inexhaustible, the grace which he bestows upon us, inasmuch as he makes it our own, he recompenses as if the virtuous acts were our own."

Augustine puts it like this, " If you are to receive your due, you must be punished. What then is done? God has not rendered you due punishment, but bestows upon you unmerited grace. If you wish to be an alien from grace, boast your merits."

I wish to be no alien from grace, but a current and forever resident of grace!

Blogging the Institutes Day 51: 2.4.1 - 2.4.6

I enter this subject humbly, as I do not have all the answers, and can not even begin to do a detailed Q&A, but it is a subject that settles well in my soul, one I feel is closest to God in description, and most glorifies Him as Sovereign.

John Piper made a statement during his TULIP seminar, which I feel may have come from the reading of this section. Piper said that God wills means, and God wills ends. At time you may be a functioning part of the means, and at time you may be experiencing the ends.

Calvin puts it this way, "And the interference of divine providence goes to the extent not only of making events turn out as was foreseen to be expedient, but of giving the wills of men the same direction."

The best picture of this is in the story of Job, and how all at once God, Satan, and man can be involved in one singular "evil", yet God is not unjust for allowing that "evil" to occur. Where God uses Satan and man as the means to the ultimate end of humbling Job to produce worship and saying, "What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away."

God will get His Glory. If He were to ever act in a way were the end was not His receiving of Glory, that would be an injustice to Himself, and a very weak picture of a Holy Awesome God.

Blogging the Institutes Day 50: 2.3.10 - 2.3.14

Thank God we are not left to ourselves to preserver to the end. It is only God's Grace that allows us to continually fight off sin and the devil. Without this continual and effectual grace we would not stand a change.

Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, one in which Calvin has quoted quite a bit lately, made a very poignant prayer in regard to perseverance,

"Draw me, who am in some measure unwilling, and make me willing; draw me, who am sluggisly lagging, and make me run."

That's my prayer, and maybe one in which you would consider as well!

Finally Alive - Read It!

"The Son of Man came “to give his life a ransom for many.” This
had to happen as the basis of the free and gracious gift of the new
birth for undeserving sinners like us. And since the new birth is
the gift of eternal life, not just new life, the ransom price had to be
imperishable—not like silver or gold. The blood of Christ is infi nitely
valuable and, therefore, can never lose its ransoming power. The life
it obtains lasts forever. So the way God brings about the new birth
is by paying a ransom for the eternal life it imparts."

-Excerpt from Finally Alive by John Piper.

Read it online for free

"There is nothing new under the sun"

In Ecclesiastes King Solomon sets out on the ultimate experiment..... to find ultimate pleasure. He tries all kinds of avenues; parties, women, kingdoms, work and find one truth, that there is nothing new under the sun. I encourage all who see this to begin to listen to Matt Chandler, lead pastor at the Village Church, clearly and wonderfully teach this amazing book. It has rocked my world.

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons?kw=ecc&type=sermons&match=any

Blogging the Institutes Day 49 2.3.5 -2.3.9

Argument: Everything Proceeding from Man is Corrupt (Continued), Anything Good Proceeding from Man, is actually Proceeding from Christ.

1. "Thus the soul (in its natural state), in some strange and evil way, is held under this kind of voluntary, yet sadly free necessity, not bond and free; Bond in respect of necessity, free in respect of will: and what is still more strange, and still more miserable, it is guilty because free, and enslaved because guilty, and therefore enslaved because free."
2. "Since the Lord, in bringing assistance, supplies us with what is lacking, the nature of that assistance will immediately make manifest its converse, ie., our penury. When the apostle says to the Philippians, "being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ", there cannot be a doubt, that by the good work thus begun, he means the very commencement of conversion in the will. God, therefore, begins the good work in us be exciting in our hearts a desire, a love, and a study of righteousness, or (to speak more correctly) by turning, training, and guiding our hearts unto righteousness; and he competes this good work by confirming us unto perseverance."
   
3. But if the Holy Spirit meant to show that no good can ever be extracted from our heat until it is made altogether new, let us not attempt to share with him what he claims for himself alone.
4. "For in saying (Augustine that is), as he often does, that the Lord prevents the unwilling in order to make him willing, and follows after the willing that he may not will in vain, he make him the sole author of good works.
5. If, when engrafted into Christ, we bear fruit like the vine, which draws its vegetative power from the moisture of the ground and the dew of heaven, and fostering warmth of the sun, I see nothing in a good work, which we can call our own, without trenching upon what is due to God.
6. In this way, the Lord both begins and prefects the good work in us, so that it is due him, first, that the will conceives a love of rectitude, is inclined to desire, is moved and stimulated to purse it; secondly, that this choice, desire, and endeavor fail not, but are carried forward to effect; and lastly, that we go on without interruption, and persevere even to the end."
   

Blogging the Institutes Day 48 2.3.1 -2.3.4

Argument: Everything Proceeding from Man is Corrupt

Points of Support:

1. Christ says that we must be born again, because we are flesh. He requires us not to be born again of the body, but of the mind. The mind must be totally renewed
2. Everything in man, which in not spiritual, falls under the denomination of carnal. But we have nothing of the Spirit except through regeneration (being born again). Everything, therefore, which we have from nature is flesh.
3. Ps 62:9 "Those of low estate are but a breath; those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath." The human mind receives a humbling blow when all the thoughts which proceed form it are derived as foolish, frivolous, perverse, and insane.
4. Rom 3:10-18 "as it is written: None is righteous, no not one, no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." The object is not merely to upbraid men in order that they may repent, but to teach that all are overwhelmed with inevitable calamity, and can be delivered from it only by the mercy of God.
5. "For as a body, while it contains and fosters the cause and matter of disease, cannot be called healthy, although pain is not actually felt; so a soul, while teeming with such seeds of vice, cannot be called sound."
6. But we ought to consider, that, notwithstanding the corruption of our nature, there is some room for divine grace, such grace as, without purifying it, may lay it under internal restraint...If every soul is capable of such abominations (and the apostle declares this boldly), it is surely easy to see what the result would be, if the Lord were to permit human passion to follow its bent...In the elect, God cures these diseases in the mode which we shortly be explained; in others, he only lays them under such restraint as may prevent them from breaking forth to a degree incompatible with the preservation of the established order of things."
7. The virtues which deceive us by an empty show may have their praise in civil society and the common intercourse of life, but before the judgment sear of God they will be of no value to establish a claim of righteousness."

This can be a very scary thought for those who think being good, and doing good, is all that really matters.