No One Changes God’s Law

I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart. (Psalm 40:8)

Because we live in a period known as the age of God’s grace, it has become a popular thing to declare that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid, no longer relevant in our society.

With that context, it has become apparent that Christian churches are not paying attention to the Ten Commandments.

But Dwight L. Moody preached often in the commandments. John Wesley said he preached the commands of the Law to prepare the way for the gospel. R. A. Torrey told ministers if they did not preach the Law they would have no response to the preaching of the gospel. It is the Law that shows us our need for the gospel of salvation and forgiveness!

It is accurate to say that our binding obligation is not to the Old Testament Law. As sincere Christians we are under Christ’s higher law—that which is represented in His love and grace. But everything that is morally commanded in the Ten Commandments still comprises the moral principles that are the will of God for His people. God’s basic moral will for His people has not changed!

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I just finished Feminists Say the Darndest Things by the venerable Mike Adams.  I would commend it to you.

Some eclectic blog posts and videos:

мебели

SermonCentral.com: Free Sermons, Illustrations and Outlines

“Them’s fighting words!” …Seven sentences that should make every Christian cringe

Greg Stier
Dare2Share

How many times have you been in your church’s foyer when a member of your congregation said something so unbiblical that you literally cringed? Or maybe it was in a Sunday school class when that one person (you know who I’m talking about) raises his/her hand and waxes eloquent in an assertion that is so jacked-up theologically that you don’t even know how to begin to respond.  

An Evangelical Response to “An Evangelical Manifesto”

An Evangelical Response to “An Evangelical Manifesto”

Posted: Monday, May 12, 2008 at 6:35 am ET

Who are the Evangelicals? The issue of Evangelical identity and definition has been central to the Evangelical project from its very beginning in America. Given the nature of the movement, definition is elusive and constantly contested.

The release of “An Evangelical Manifesto” on May 7 caught the attention of the national media, and thus it represents yet another opportunity for evangelical definition. The document, released May 7, also represents a challenge, for its framers hope to redefine the movement in the context of our unsettled times.

The Manifesto, released at a press conference at the National Press Club, represents an agenda. The press release offered by the organizers makes that clear:

As always, a thought provoking article from MacDonald. Good reading for the new year on the whole.

I would suggest the Pursuit of God to help with this quest.

Take Time to Be What? - LeadershipJournal.net

Take Time to Be What?
A classic hymn shows why holiness is scarce these days.
by Gordon MacDonald

In the early 1880s, William D. Longstaff wrote a poem that later became a hymn called “Take Time to Be Holy.” In my branch of church tradition, we often sang this hymn. As a kid I considered it uninspiring (sorry, Mr. Longstaff), and I groaned whenever the song leader announced it. Today, decades later, I have taken a fresh look at the song and reconsidered my earlier appraisal. There’s substance here.

Take time to be holy,
Speak oft with thy Lord,
Abide in him always,
And feed on his word.
Make friends of God’s children;
Help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing his blessing to seek.

There are three more verses to Longstaff’s hymn, and the second verse is also worth quoting:

Take time to be holy,
The world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret
With Jesus alone;
By looking to Jesus
Like him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct his likeness shall see.

9Marks

Simply Christian
By N.T. Wright Reviewed by Andrew Davis

HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, 256 pp., $22.95

It is the unique privilege and responsibility of every generation of Christians to explain Christian faith—the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ—clearly and simply to the unbelievers with whom they share their time on the earth. It is also entrusted to every generation of Christians to protect that eternal message from corruption. The first of these two responsibilities is extramural, and causes us to probe the minds and hearts of our unbelieving neighbors to see what unique obstacles Satan has erected that make the gospel unintelligible to them. The second of these is intramural, and causes us to study the words we use to articulate the unchanging gospel and to align those words with the perfectly straight canon of Scripture to be sure they are faithful and true. Christianity must be simply explained, but it must be done in a way that is faithful to the Scripture. Otherwise, it will be simply damaging.

Many experts are promoting N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian as a primary resource for explaining Christianity to skeptics and unbelievers. The dustcover promised “This will become a classic.” Christianity Today heralded it as a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity as a ready-made tool to slip into the hands of unbelieving coworkers. While such tools are extremely helpful in our evangelistic mission, it is  essential that they be faithful to the biblical articulation of the gospel. If the tools we use contain errors, faulty articulations, misleading images and analogies, and harmful oversimplifications, then they do more harm than good. This is especially true if such a book becomes a “classic,” trusted and embraced by a majority of the gospel-loving church.

What Is Mormonism? A Baptist Answer - TIME

What Is Mormonism? A Baptist Answer

Good Article — Those long in the pastorate and those little in the pastorate should appreciate its thrust.

LeadershipJournal.net - So Many Christian Infants

Leader’s Insight: So Many Christian Infants
Why are we so good at leading people to faith and so bad at prodding them to maturity?
by Gordon MacDonald, Leadership editor at large

I have been musing on the words of Martin Thornton: “A walloping great congregation,” he wrote, “is fine and fun, but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.”

“Saints,” he says. Mature Christians: people who are “grown-up” in their faith, to whom one assigns descriptors such as holy, Christ-like, Godly, or men or women of God.

http://www.sfpulpit.com/2007/05/08/mother-church/#more-704

http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=1961

Life Action Revival Ministries::Why Read the Puritans?

Written by Brian G. Hedges   

  The Puritans were the 16^th century English Protestants and their successors in 16^th and 17^th century New England, and it was their concern for church reform and spiritual renewal that earned them the originally derogatory epithet puritan. Unfortunately, most people associate the term with legalism, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and witch hunts, thanks to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.