Book Review: Jesus + Nothing=Everything by Tullian Tchividjian

I am a huge fan of the Star Wars movies—particularly the original trilogy that I saw as a child.  There isn’t a man my age that didn’t imagine himself swooping in with a lightsaber to defeat the forces of evil, saving the day, and being hailed as a hero.  One of my favorite scenes comes in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is talking to Yoda trying to convince him that he is serious enough to train to be a Jedi.  Yoda looks him up and down and says:  

“This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away, to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was! Hm? What he was doing!” 

That’s a pretty good summation of the human heart, in some respects.  And, as Tullian Tchividjian says in his book Jesus+Nothing=Everything, when you look in your heart and you see dissatisfaction or longing in some form, you see a place in your heart that needs a confrontation with the gospel.  In this book, he examines Paul’s epistle to the Colossians and drives home the point that the gospel is the answer to the deepest longing of our hearts because in Christ we have been fully accepted by God, blessed, redeemed, and saved from God’s holy wrath against our sin.  In short, Tchividjian drives home Paul’s point that Christ is supreme over all creation and that in Him we have everything we need.  Without Him, therefore, even if we have everything this world offers, we really have nothing.

Rather than extolling a gospel of legalism, or as he terms it “performancism”, Tchividjian exhorts believers using the book of Colossians to trust in the finished work of Christ.  Christ has already kept the law—He has done the work to deliver us from hell by dying on the cross.  Therefore, we can’t add anything to that work by our behavior.  We don’t live holy lives in order to earn salvation, but rather we have been freed by Christ from the curse of the law and enabled by the Holy Spirit to joyfully follow Christ.  When we realize that Jesus is more precious, more beautiful, and more valuable than anything this world has to offer, when our hearts are captivated by the gospel of grace, we find true satisfaction that all the things that we look to now (men’s approval, money, fame, status) can never provide.

In short, this would be an amazing book for personal study and reflection.  I would also commend it for a group Bible study.  We all need to be reminded of the gospel and reminded that the gospel is not just for those who need to be converted, but it’s also for Christians.   We are reminded in this book that the gospel doesn’t just save us, it also sanctifies us.

Habakkuk 1:12-17 “Whatchu talking about, Jehovah?”

I praise God that He gives us what we need not what we want. I am so thankful that He’s sovereign and in control of everything and that in spite of how scary things look I know I can trust Him to be good. But when life gets scary, sometimes it’s hard for us to remember His faithfulness especially when facing the unexpected. Habakkuk talked with God and asked Him why He allowed sin to go unpunished. God replied that He was going to punish sin and He was going to use the Babylonians to do that. This announcement that an cruel nation that worshipped its own military might was going to be God’s instrument of judgment was beyond shocking to the prophet—crushing might be a better word for how Habakkuk felt. He knew the kind of people the Babylonians were and therefore he knew the danger his people, friends and family, were in.

First of all, notice in Habakkuk 1:12, the prophet appeals to the eternal character of God and His promise to Israel. God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the children of Israel. Because God is eternal and His covenant was an everlasting covenant, the prophet reasoned “We shall not die”. He assumed that with such a fierce enemy that the nation of Israel would be wiped off the face of the Earth. And from the descriptions we read in God’s revelation to Habakkuk that sounds about right. One thing is for sure, they weren’t coming over to play tiddlywinks.

The prophet’s second point is that because God is holy and pure, it doesn’t make sense for Him to use sinners to accomplish His purposes. In fact, Habakkuk sees this as out of character for God. The latter half of verse 12 in most Bibles is punctuated with a period. I think it would be better taken as a question. “God, how can you use them?” The fact is, God can use all circumstances, people, and places to accomplish His sovereign will. God never causes sin and God is not evil, but even sin and evil are no surprise to God and they can do nothing to thwart His purposes. As vile as the Babylonians were, God was able to use their vileness as a tool to discipline His people Israel.

Finally, Habakkuk asks “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” His point in Habakkuk 1:13-17 seems to be “You know what they’re like, Lord. How can you look at them when you know they treat people like the catch of the day in a seafood restaurant?” The Babylonians treated the people they conquered harshly and eventually that would come back to haunt them. But when God revealed the fact that they were going to conquer Israel to the prophet, all Habakkuk knew was that his people were going to be treated as little more than raw material for them to build the Babylonian empire. Because of their conquest, Habakkuk 1:16 tells us, the Babylonians lived well—on the backs of those they conquered and enslaved. Ultimately, Habakkuk wonders “Will they go on like this forever?”
Now, friends, you and I know that God will ultimately punish sin. So, when we face a situation like Habakkuk and there are people acting in ways that we know are sinful and we wonder where God is, we can remember that He is where He was—in Heaven, on His throne, right where He was when He punished His Son on the cross for that sin that grieves us. Because He is faithful, we can trust Him, no matter how much we hurt.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture is taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

Matthew 9:18-19 Surely He Has Borne Our Grief

In Matthew chapter 8, we read several accounts of Christ healing people of various ills. Some people teach, wrongly, that supernatural healing is normative for Christians and cite Christ’s healing ministry as proof that physical freedom from sickness is somehow part of the atonement. However, the evidence in scripture, not to mention the life experience of millions of Christians living and dead all over the world proves quite the opposite. Because of the effects of sin, our bodies and this world are both corrupted and therefore subject to disease and death. However, during His ministry on earth, Christ healed people not just to demonstrate compassion on them and certainly not to allow them to live their “best life now”. Rather, the primary reason was to be obedient to God and demonstrate that when He claimed deity, He wasn’t just making stuff up—it was true and the miracles were the proof.

As we come to our text in Matthew 9, we need to keep those truths in focus as we attempt to interpret the text. What Matthew is teaching us here is not that, as Christians, we will never get sick. Rather, he intends for us to understand that Jesus is God and as God can do things only God can do. The fact that people knew He was able to do these things is pretty evident. While He was correcting some misconceptions on the part of the Pharisees and John’s disciples (Matthew 9:11-17), He was approached by a leader of the local synagogue whose daughter was close to death (Matthew 9:18). Now, Matthew just gives us the general details about the scene—the man came to Jesus, worshipped Him (“knelt”—proskyneō 4352) and begged Jesus to come heal his daughter. Mark and Luke fill in the details for us as they did in Matthew 8:5-12. The man’s name is Jairus and his daughter was on the verge of death. Matthew records that the synagogue leader says his daughter “has just died”, but the English translation doesn’t really do the Greek justice—it could just as easily mean “by this time she must have died”.

Now, remember when Jesus healed the centurions servant, the Roman soldier refused to allow Jesus to come to his home, He claimed he was unworthy and cited Jesus’ authority in the matter. “If I have authority over soldiers, I don’t have to be present to make sure something is done. Likewise, since I recognize your authority over disease, I know you don’t have to be present for the disease to obey you” he essentially said. The man, who was considered a “dog” to Jewish people, had faith enough to trust Christ to heal his servant.

Observe here (Matthew 9:18), this man who knew God, knew the scriptures, and apparently recognized Jesus as able to heal His child, or else why would he have risked his position in Jewish religious life to call on Him, came to Jesus, worshipped Him, but needed Him to come to where the girl was dying so that He could heal her. He didn’t have the faith to believe that Christ could just speak, where they were, and heal his little girl.

However, this lack of faith doesn’t dissuade Christ. Out of His love, compassion, and obedience to His Father, Jesus agrees to go and brings His disciples with Him. As we read this and contemplate on the situation and Christ’s response, we should be touched by the compassion that Christ shows here and elsewhere for those who are sick and hurting. We should also be thankful that even when our faith is weak and we find it hard to trust Christ, Christ still loves us and accepts us where we are. He truly is our faithful High Priest.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture is taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

Habakkuk 1:5-11 “Be careful what you wish for”

On Sunday evening, our pastor has been preaching through the book of Job. All throughout the book, Job proclaimed his innocence and wished for an audience with God to please his case. At the end of the book, Job gets his wish. However, I’m thinking about half a chapter in, Job wishes he had not gotten what he asked for. God of course give him a scathing rebuke that basically says “I am God. You are not. Be quiet”. Here, in Habakkuk, the prophet pleads his case before God. As I read verse 4, I almost wouldn’t be surprised if verse 5 read “And the Lord dissolved Habakkuk before His eyes, and Job was no more”. I mean, Habakkuk begins his conversation with God basically accusing God of not caring about the evil people did and not acting as judge of sin. I imagine, much like Job, Habakkuk envisioned his discussion with God ending with him setting God straight. However, much like Job, the conversation did not turn out at all like he thought it would.

Habakkuk asked God “What are you going to do about judging the sin of Israel?” God chooses, in His wisdom, to reveal His plan to Habakkuk. He tells him in verse 5 to prepare to be shocked—“You are not going to believe this. You think I’m not working. Well, just wait till you see what I’m going to do”. To judge the sin of His people, God has chosen the roughest, toughest, meanest bunch of hooligans the world had seen up to that point—the Chaldeans (Habakkuk 1:5).

The 101st Babylonian Infantry

Of course, we read about them elsewhere in the Bible as the Babylonians (Kings, Daniel, and Isaiah). The name may be changed here, but the carnage is the same. The Babylonians were the first real world power. Sure, the Assyrians conquered multiple nations, but the Babylonian empire was bigger and their armies were fiercer. In my mind, I imagine this group like a biker gang—they were some bad dudes and God revealed to Habakkuk in verses 5 and 6 that they were going to be His instruments of judgment to punish Israel for their continued sinful disobedience.

Notice the chilling description Habakkuk records of these people. In verse 6, we’re told they are “…bitter and hasty…dreaded and fearsome”. They stab first and ask questions later. They saw themselves not as above the law, but rather they saw themselves as the law (“…their justice and dignity go forth from themselves…”). They didn’t answer to anyone. Their motto was “I’m the boss, apple sauce” and they had the military might to back up their bully-like attitude.

They were the best there was at what they did.

Their cavalry, Habakkuk 1:8 tells us, was swift and deadly. The terrible picture painted leaves little hope for escape or mercy. You can’t outrun a leopard, you can’t out fight a wolf, and you can’t hide from the high flying eagle. No matter where you run, these guys are going to get you and when they get you, they’re not there to play tiddlywinks or Monopoly. Verse 9 further portrays the deadly peril that Israel faces—we’re told the Babylonians come marching with “all their faces forward”. In other words, they are persistent, determined. They didn’t come to negotiate. They’re not looking for your money so you can’t buy them off. They want territory and they want to enslave people. And we read in Habakkuk 1:10 that the people can’t even depend on their leaders for protection because the Babylonian see them as little more than the punch line to a joke. Your walled cities? They build up siege ramps and take your city like a hot knife through butter. They don’t worship God but rather this godless, heathen nation worships their “own might” (Habakkuk 1:11).

Just reading the description of the terrible judgment that God has prepared for the nation of Israel is gut wrenching. Can you imagine how Habakkuk felt when God revealed that to him? He had come to God with a legitimate concern, even if it was expressed disrespectfully and God gives him news that had to have turned his stomach. The same thing, brothers and sisters, happens to us all the time. Oh, God doesn’t directly reveal His plans to us like this but we face scary, trying circumstances. How should we respond? Where is the hope in our trials? We can hope in God. God is sovereign, in control of all things, and we can trust Him even in the midst of the saddest, scariest, most pain circumstances because He is God and He is faithful.

In this post, all scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

Book Review—Give Them Grace by Fitzpatrick/Thompson

First of all, stop what you’re doing now and go buy this book. If you’re a parent, you need to read this. If you’re not a parent but you’re a Christian, you need to read this. We need to be constantly reminded of the gospel and so I want you to stop reading this book review and go buy the book.

Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let me say first of all that I appreciate the message in this book and the sincerity of the messengers. Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, a Christian mother and daughter, did not write this book to give a method or set of steps to improving your child’s behavior. If you’re looking for Twenty Ways to Change your Kid in Twenty Days you are going to be sorely disappointed. In fact, if I had to summarize the book’s message in one sentence, it would be this: Believe the gospel and preach it to your kids.

So often as parents we just want our kids to behave—in my case, I just want quiet. We focus on encouraging good behaviors and punishing bad behaviors and, as the book points out, this kind of training is necessary and has its place. However, what most of us tend to do as parents is focus on doing good and not doing bad as a goal as if it’s the be all end all of existence. In contrast, the gospel tells us the exact opposite. The gospel tells us that we are lost, sinful, and wretched and could never do anything good enough, let alone good. The fires of hell will burn for all eternity all around many good, moral people who showed up on time for work, never talked back to authority, helped little old ladies across the street. If all we do is teach our kids to be good, or worse, to feign goodness when someone is looking, we have failed our children and failed God in the calling He has given us as parents.

Rather, as the authors point out, we should look at our children’s misbehavior and recognize our own sinful heart and open rebellion against our heavenly Father. Further, we should use those opportunities to encourage our kids to see their own sinful heart and remind them that their sin condemns them before God but that God loved us. Because God loved us, He sent a Savior, Someone to rescue us from our sin. This is not to say that we don’t discipline our children and correct them when they misbehave, but rather that we don’t just stop there. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves and our children and using their own sin to remind them of their need for a Savior is a great way to do just that.

In short, I would recommend this book to anyone for that very reason—these ladies explain the gospel clearly and remind the reader of the depths of human sin. They also explain effectively the dangers of moralism. Those are two lessons no Christian can hear too often.

Habakkuk 1:1-4 “Yeah, well if God is so good…”

Stop me if you’ve had this happen to you. You’re sharing the gospel with someone who is trying to come up with some rationalization why they refuse to believe. They get irritated or whatever and blurt out something along the lines of “Oh yeah, well, if God is so good then why…”. And the “why” could be any number of things from something really significant (“…why did my little brother die of cancer when he was 8 years old…”) to some things that are somewhat less than significant (“…why have the Yankees won the World Series so many times…”). I know God is sovereign and we’d be condemned as committing a heresy if we admitted it, but the fact is you and I (those of us who have trusted in Christ’s death on the cross as payment for our sins and have repented) have asked the same question even if we’ve never asked it out loud. I might surprise us to know that people asked the same sort of question in scripture—more than one person actually. For the next few weeks (months?) we’re going to take a look at just such a person, the prophet Habakkuk.

Habakkuk lived in Jerusalem during a time of great spiritual wickedness. If we looked at a two minute highlight reel of the history of Israel from when they entered the land, one pattern would become painfully obvious. They would fall into sin, God would punish them through various means, they would repent, and God would save them. Rinse, lather, repeat. According to Adam Clark’s Bible commentary, Habakkuk probably lived during the reign of Jehoiakim somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 B.C. II Kings 23:37 tells us that this king did “what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his fathers had done” So, while the nation of Judah had good kings from time to time, this guy was not one of them. And, as was typical during the reign of an evil king, he led the nation into committing sin against the Lord. To say the least, our friend Habakkuk lived in troubled times.

So, Habakkuk did as the Holy Spirit inspired him to do—he recorded this prophecy. The first verse tells us that this was an “oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw”. He didn’t make this up. We do not find here the ramblings of some guy who is just ticked off at the government or at God and wanted to vent. In fact, the word “oracle” can be translated “burden” which, as you read the book, becomes pretty descriptive of what the prophet probably felt when he received this divine revelation. He had a burden for his people and what he saw going on. He was burdened when God revealed to him that He was going to do. I suspect, also, that he was still burdened even when he had accepted that God was sovereign and would do what pleased Him, but it was a different kind of burden—a burden to see God glorified even in the midst of horrifying circumstances.

As Habakkuk opens his prophecy, we observe the man being completely raw and honest about how he feels. If I had to characterize his tone I would call it angry. To me, he sounds angry at God. In the second verse of the book, we find that he complains “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?” In other words, “God, why are you not doing anything?” And, lest we think that Habakkuk thinks it’s just that God doesn’t see or hear what is happening, he spells it out for us very plainly in verse 3 when he asks “Why do you look idly at wrong?”

He doesn’t just question God’s apparent inaction, but goes so far as to question His character. He continues to describe the awful conditions he lives in as he concludes verse 3 saying he is surrounded by “destruction…violence…strife and contention”. Because of all the evil Habakkuk sees, he believes God should act and judge. However, since he doesn’t see God acting in judgment, he concludes that “the law is paralyzed…[and]…justice never goes forth”. Or to put it more bluntly, “If God is so good, why is there so much evil in the world.”

Habakkuk, then, asks exactly the same question that we are asked so often when we share the gospel. As we continue to study this book, we’ll see the answer he’s given and I believe come to praise God for His sovereignty and justice.

Scripture quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

Matthew 9:14-17 A Pair of Skewed Perspectives—John the Baptist’s Disciples part 2

The Pharisees had a wrong perspective about Jesus and what He taught. They perceived that He was not up to their standards of holiness because He ate with people they considered sinners. They also believed that they were themselves righteous. Of course, we know that there is no one who is righteous—we all stand before a holy God justly condemned for our sins apart from faith in Christ and His finished work. However, it wasn’t just the Pharisees that did not understand Christ. The disciples of John the Baptist also had a skewed perspective. As we saw the last time we looked at these verses, the disciples of John the Baptist asked Jesus about fasting. He helped them come to understand that His disciples did not fast because, first of all, it wasn’t time for them to be fasting. Let’s take a look at another reason why His disciples didn’t fast like John’s disciples did.


In verses 16 and 17, Jesus used two illustrations that pretty well everyone in the Middle East would have understood. He told these disciples, in essence, that the new truths He taught didn’t fit with the Jewish religion as they practiced it. In verse 16, he compared the truth of the gospel to a piece of new cloth. Trying to fast as the Pharisees and priests taught while believing the gospel that Christ preached would be like taking that new piece of cloth that was not shrunk and sewing it onto an old coat that had a tear. When the patch shrunk, and it would shrink, it would pull away from the coat and make an even bigger tear. One cannot take the truth of the gospel and pair it with forms of external, man-centered self justification and not expect a problem. The Pharisees and religious leaders taught that it was by keeping the law and ceremonies that a person was made right with God. I don’t think that Jesus is forbidding anyone from fasting but rather he was giving the proper perspective on it. A person cannot be made right with God because they observed some ceremony. Trying to do that is disastrous—it just doesn’t fit.

In like manner, He said trying to take the new wine of the gospel and pour it into the old forms of the religion practiced by the Pharisees would be a complete waste. The truth of the gospel could not be contained by those old forms and customs. The gospel of forgiveness of sins based on faith and repentance could not fit with the doctrine of self-atonement. Because true righteousness is received through faith as a gift it could not be earned through human work. Therefore, the gospel was, and is, incompatible with the attempt that many people, even some of them believers, make to secure their right standing with God by being good. As I had preached to a congregation before, salvation is not about right doing producing right being but rather it is about right being producing right doing.

How sad it is when people try to justify themselves by being religions. It is vain, futile, and ultimately, as Jesus says here, leads to ruin. The gospel that He preached was a pure, life giving gospel that actually saves not a works based gospel that only serves to remind a person that they’re never good enough. We are not good enough to stand before a holy God, but because of the finished work of Christ on Calvary, we are declared righteous. Brothers and sisters, may we rest securely in the finished work of our Lord. As He said from the cross, “It is finished”.

Matthew 9:14-17 A Pair of Skewed Perspectives—John the Baptist’s Disciples part 1

John the Baptist was a pretty interesting character. He probably wouldn’t have been invited to preach in our churches if he was around today, which wouldn’t make much of a difference to him, I would bet, because he’d be in the “boondocks” or some part of town that most of us wouldn’t be caught dead in preaching the gospel. His disciples, as we observe here came to Jesus with questions that were born out of a skewed perspective just like the Pharisees—skewed ii a different direction, perhaps, but skewed none the less. In short, the disciples of John had an incorrect perspective on the situation of Jesus’ disciples and the scope of Jesus’ ministry.


First of all, notice their perspective on Jesus’ disciples. They ask Jesus in Matthew 9:14 why His disciples do not fast as the disciples of other teachers did. Now, observe the tone they used. It doesn’t appear that they were accusatory or combative. They were just asking a question—clarifying. Furthermore, while the Pharisees fasted according to Jewish tradition on holy days as well as regularly during the week, it’s possible that at this point when they spoke to Jesus that John’s disciples were grieving the loss of their teacher after he was executed by Herod the Great. Therefore, they may have been asking Christ why His disciples were not fasting to mourn with them, since he was Christ’s cousin, or they may have been asking why they didn’t follow the same ceremonies as the disciples of other teachers.

In any case, Christ loving clarifies His disciple’s situation for them. Please notice, as I’m sure you have, that Christ does not forbid fasting or abolish the practice. Rather, He points out the unique situation of the disciples and why they are not fasting. Borrowing from the custom of Jewish weddings, which were basically huge parties, he makes the analogy that He is the bridegroom, the disciples are the wedding guests and as such it would not be proper for them to mourn (Matthew 9:15). While Christ is with them, they don’t have any reason to mourn. The Messiah has come and is preaching to good news of the gospel. The dead are being raised, the lame walk, and the blind see. For the person who had their eyes opened to this truth, there couldn’t possibly have been any happier time. Rejoicing, not weeping, would be the response you would expect of someone who had been given by God the revelation of Who Christ was.

Furthermore, as we continue to read in Matthew 9:15, Christ notes that there will be a time in the future when His disciples will fast—they will have reason to mourn. As He did several times in His ministry, he predicts a time when “…the bridegroom is taken away…” referring to the time when He was crucified. Of course, we know how sad and fearful the disciples were immediately after the crucifixion but at the time neither the disciples of John nor Christ’s own disciples realized exactly what lay ahead. However, though John’s disciples couldn’t have known exactly what Jesus meant, Jesus did point out to them the fact that they didn’t have a clear perspective on why His disciples didn’t fast. In short, the time wasn’t right.

Psalm 1:4-6 There is a Payday--Count on it.

I know I blogged through Psalm 1 sometime back a few years ago (see here).  However, I've recently had the chance to preach through that psalm.  Here is the link to the 3rd and final sermon I preached out of that psalm, which if truth be told should have been the 2nd half of the 2nd sermon I preached.  Oh well, c'est la vie.

Colossians 1:1-2 The Power of the Gospel

I began preaching through the book of Colossians this past Sunday.  Here is the link to download the audio.

Audio Sermon Links

Here is the link of the new page I added where I'll post links to audio from sermons I have the opportunity to preach.  At the moment, I'm using a freebie audio hosting site so the links won't play audio directly--you have to down load them.  But come on, you've got room on your mp3 player for some more sermons, right?  Of course you do. 

Fundamental Friday's--God's Revelation in Scripture

In the early 1900's. a twelve volume work on theology titled The Fundamentals was published. This massive work, in my most humble of opinions, is just as relevant today if not more so with the ever increasing attacks on the faith of Christians--and that's just from folks inside the church. I wanted to publish some excerpts from this work that I think will be greatly encouraging to you.


But there is another revelation which God has given of Himself to men-a more definite and personal one. He gave them up to the thoughts of their own heart, and selected one man, Abraham, to go out from his friends and kindred, so that in his seed all the nations of the world might be blessed. Then, first, out of Abraham came the people of Israel, to whom were committed the oracles of God; and from this period began the history of the written Word. Moses narrates the beginning of things, also records the law, and holy men of God speak and write as they are moved by the Holy Spirit. That is inspiration—a divine in-breathing.


In giving us these narratives it may be said, moreover, that God, who numbers the very hairs of our head, exercised a providential control, so that what was reported by His chosen men should be the real facts, and nothing else. To what extent He inspired those men with the very words used by them, it is not for us to know, but probably more fully than we suspect.

But when God, after having communicated the law to Moses on Mount Sinai and in the Tabernacle, communes with him as a friend with friend, and Moses writes "all the words of this law in a book" (Deut. 28:58; 31:24), then Moses really becomes the pen of God. When God speaks to the prophets, "Behold, I put my words in thy mouth," and "the words that thou hearest thou shalt say to this people," then these prophets become the very mouth of God. When Christ appears to John on Patmos, and says, "To the angel of the church write these things," this is an instance of verbal dictation.

But just here we are amused at those weak-minded critics who, with hackneyed phrases, talk so glibly about "mechanical instruments" and "mere verbal dictation." Does then a self-revelation of the Almighty and a making known of His counsels, a gracious act which exalts the human agent to be a co-worker with Jehovah, annihilate personal freedom?The Bible is, consequently, a book which originated according to the will and with the co-operation of God; and as such it is our guide to eternity, conducting man, seemingly without a plan and yet with absolute certainty, all the way from the first creation and from Paradise on to the second or higher creation and to the New Jerusalem (Comp. Gen. 2:8-10 with Rev. 21:1, 2).

Acts 2:36-38 Now THAT'S An Invitation

This past Sunday, I had the chance to preach in the church I pastored before I moved to Tennessee, Matthew's Memorial Baptist Church.  Here is a link to download the audio from the sermon.  I pray that you are encouraged.

Psalm 1:3--True Sucess According to Scripture

I know I blogged through Psalm 1 sometime back, but I've had the oppotunity to preach through it recently.  Here is the second sermon I preached on Psalm 1:3.  I think you have to download it as it won't play in the browser when you click the link.  I pray that you are encouraged.

Fundamental Friday's--God's Self Revelation in Nature

In the early 1900's. a twelve volume work on theology titled The Fundamentals was published. This massive work, in my most humble of opinions, is just as relevant today if not more so with the ever increasing attacks on the faith of Christians--and that's just from folks inside the church. I wanted to publish some excerpts from this work that I think will be greatly encouraging to you.

But now the question arises whether God, who is both the Creator of all things and the Father of spirits, has revealed Himself to his creatures, or to His own children, the work of His hands. Such a question might surely provoke one's laughter. For what is the entire universe? what is this created nature of which we form a part? what is air? and water? and fire? what are all organized beings, my body with its many parts put together in such a highly artistic and inscrutable fashion; my soul with its infinite capabilities so little understood by myself? What are all these matters but a progressive revelation of God, given to us, as it were, in a series of concentric circles rising one above another toward their Source? For this purpose it was that God created the visible, so that through it we might perceive the invisible, and for this purpose the whole creation was made, so that through it might be manifested the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and godhead (Rom. 1:20). Creation-is only the language of "the Word that was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, and by Whom all things were made" (John 1:1-3). What does this Word declare? What else but the great infinite name of God the Father, the primal source of all things, the name that must be hallowed? There was a time, however, even before the world was, when there existed nothing but God and his name. All the different works of creation are only letters in this great name.

The Security of Sound Doctrine--Philippians 3:1-2

I published a blog post from Philippians 3:1-2 some time back.  However, I had the chance to preach this past Sunday and chose that text for my sermon.  Here is the audio.  I pray that you are encouraged.

Psalm 2:10-13 You Betta Reck-ah-nize

I was a school teacher some years ago. In one of my classes, a couple of the lunk-heads (i.e. students) were picking at one another. The one boy said something about the other one’s mother I think (“Yo’ momma breff so stank…”). The other boy didn’t like it and proceeded to go across the room to teach the other kid the error of his ways. Now, some of the students got in front of the kid that was about to be pounced on and I got in front of the kid that was headed over there. I don’t remember his name, but we’ll call him Bob. Bob was a good kid, basically, but he was highly ticked off right that second. He was standing in front of me and I had my hand on his chest to keep him from plowing forward. Did I mention he was about 6’5”, 220ish? Yeah, so he had stopped walking forward and was just standing there and I realized “You know, if dude decides to roll me over and go after that kid, there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it.” I knew I was in real trouble if he didn’t get control of himself because he could have hurt me badly. As we read the last few verses of David’s second psalm, we see the focus of the psalm come full circle. It started with humankind plotting their rebellion. It ends with humankind being warned against that rebellion.


As we saw in Psalm 2:4-6, God has already decreed that Christ will be exalted above everything and that the plans of rebellion plotted by mankind are just a joke to Him. We find in Psalm 2:7-9 that Christ has been promised total dominion and will judge those who will not bow to Him. Now, with that in mind, we find the kings and rulers are given sound advice. They are told first of all to “be wise” (Psalm 2:10). Since God has settled in His mind Who will be King and since the Son has announced that He has been given total dominion over everything, committing treason and rebelling against the omnipotent authority of Christ would be the exact opposite of wisdom. It would be more like suicide. The wise thing to do, then, would be to submit because as we read in verse 9, you are not going to be standing when He gets finished with the judgment.

They are further told to “be warned”. In other words, pretend like this is a life or death choice, because it is. The judgment that is coming is real. It will be final. There will be no surviving or standing there and taking it like a man. When Christ comes to execute His judgment, there will be no one left standing that opposed him. Therefore, when it happens, don’t act like you haven’t been told it was coming.

What can these rebels do to avoid their fate? Submit. Surrender is the only option. They are told, basically, to become willing servants of this King. They are advised to “Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling”. Further, they are told to humble themselves and “Kiss the Son”. When you know you’re completely outmatched and overwhelmed, throwing yourself to the mercy of your opponent isn’t a bad idea. Particularly when you realize that if you don’t you may “perish in the way”. Depending on how one understands the next Hebrew phrase, the time to judgment may be short (“for his wrath is quickly kindled “ (ESV)) or even the slightest bit of his anger may be too powerful to withstand (“his wrath is kindled but a little “(KJV)). In any case, those who look to Him for salvation (“refuge”) will not be put to shame.

So, as we have examined this psalm of David, I wonder, have you examined yourself—your heart? Are you one of the proud, brave rebels who says “I will not have Him to be God over me”? Or are you instead one of those who has trusted Him to save you? The consequences of that decision are very real and eternal. I pray that you have trusted Him, because if you have, He will not turn you away.

Unless otherwise indicated, in this post scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Fundamental Friday's--God the Creator

In the early 1900's. a twelve volume work on theology titled The Fundamentals was published. This massive work, in my most humble of opinions, is just as relevant today if not more so with the ever increasing attacks on the faith of Christians--and that's just from folks inside the church. I wanted to publish some excerpts from this work that I think will be greatly encouraging to you.

There remains, therefore, only this alternative: either the world produced itself, or it was created. That all things came into existence spontaneously, and therefore that we must suppose an origination of immeasurably great effects without any cause, or believe that at some time a nothing, without either willing or knowing it, and without the use of means, became a something-this is the most unreasonable assumption that could possibly be attributed to a human being. How could anything act before it existed? or a thing not yet created produce something? There is nothing more unreasonable than the creed of the. unbeliever, notwithstanding all his prating about the excellence of reason.


But if this world did not produce itself, then it must have been created by some Higher Power, some Cause of all causes, such as was that First Principle upon which the dying Cicero called. Or, to use the words of Dr. Klein, that originating cause must have been a "Supreme Intelligence that has at its command unlimited creative power" (Kosmologische Briefe, p. 27). Hence what that Intelligence does is both illimitable ante anfathomable, and it can at any time either change this world or make a new one. It is therefore prima facie silly for us, with our prodigiously narrow experience, to set any kind of bounds to the Supreme Being; and a God who works no miracles and is the slave of his own laws implanted in nature; such a God as the New Theology preaches, is as much lacking in being a true Divinity as is the unconscious, but all-wise "cosmic ether" of Spiller, or the "eternal stuff" of other materialists.

We conclude, then, that the universe was created, or that God is the author of all things.

Sermon--Psalm 1:1-2 What does the Bible say about happiness?

I know I've blogged through this psalm already, but I've had the opportunity recently to preach it so I've uploaded the audio here.  It is something of a pain because you have to download it but surely your iPod has room for one more sermon, right?

The Gospel isn't Everything-It's the Only Thing II Corinthians 5:21

I had the opportunity to preach this past Sunday.  Here is the audio from the message in II Corinthians.  I'm using free file hosting so I don't think it will play for you in the browser.  Instead you have to download it.  But come on, you've got enough room on your MP3 player for another sermon, don't you?  :-)