Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include some really good picks like Wayne Grudem’s Business for the Glory of God, Kevin DeYoung’s Crazy Busy, and David Mathis’ Workers for Your Joy.
Recommended Reading
Christians Need Clearer Thinking About Sterilization. You may disagree with what Matthew Lee Anderson says in this article, but I think you’ll at least agree it’s worth thinking through. What if we Christians have been too quick to embrace voluntary sterilization? “Christian medicine historically has been aimed at healing the body and caring for the dying when there was nothing left to be done. Sterilization serves neither of those ends. When pregnancy might threaten a wife’s life, a husband honors her body and nature by remaining abstinent—rather than surgically contravening her body so that they can continue to have the pleasures of sex without its potentially deadly fruits.”
Confessing Sin. “You did it again. The thing you promised God you wouldn’t do. The guilt and shame don’t even attack anymore. They simply appear, filling you up with feelings that have become so intimate they feel less like enemies and more like old friends. You hate yourself, your sin, and you are on the verge of despair. What do you do in these moments? The moments after the promises of Satan are revealed to be empty?” Here is hopeful instruction for sinners like you and me.
The Trouble Underneath. This article nicely complements the one right before it. Seth Lewis explains that Jesus “didn’t begin his plan of salvation by addressing the problems everyone else focused on. He started by addressing a different problem that got much less attention: the problem in our hearts. He knew that all of our big, scandalous disasters are the symptoms, not the cause. So instead of starting with the massive structural issues, he went straight to the root underneath them all—the root with its tendrils sprouting constantly out of each and every one of our own personal little rebellious hearts.”
One Day, God Will Wipe Away His People’s Tears. Randy Alcorn provides a helpful illustration and then says this: “The climax of Revelation 21:4, when God wipes away all tears from every eye, could not happen without the billions of tears shed because of the evil and suffering we’ve endured (and inflicted). It could not happen had Jesus not borne it on the cross for us.”
Why Don’t Our Sermons Change People? If you find that sermons are not changing people, then perhaps you would do well to read Alistair Chalmers’ thoughts on the matter. “Many of us in conservative evangelical churches rightly prize biblical preaching. We want careful exegesis. We want theological depth. We want context, structure, precision, and faithfulness to the text. And rightly so. The preacher is not called to entertain, speculate, or offer therapeutic musings detached from Scripture. He is called to ‘preach the word’. But somewhere along the way, many sermons have quietly become lectures with a Bible verse attached.”
The Whining Christian Schooled by Paul. “Amazingly, the Apostle Paul seemed never to have worn the mantle of victimhood as a redeemed man, regardless of the physical suffering or social condemnation he experienced. It was antithetical to his ‘in Christ’ perspective. He would not be put to shame as a person for whom Christ had died, risen, and ascended. He had it all!” There is something we can and perhaps should learn from that.
Flashback
How Can We Measure Spiritual Progress? The best way to assess ourselves is to compare ourselves to Jesus, the one who led a perfect and unblemished life, the one who modeled what a human life can be and should be. Such comparison should both distress and encourage.
Affliction teaches us to know ourselves. In prosperity we are for the most part strangers to ourselves. God makes us know affliction, that we may better know ourselves.
—Thomas Watson
