Knowing God’s Priestly and Fatherly Grace for the City

This blog article is my intended substitute article for the article of sermon notes that I would normally write after Sunday worship services at my home church Emmanuel.  This past Sunday, I was working for hall patrol of the nursery and children’s education rooms for Emmanuel as part of my community group’s hosting of the Sunday worship service at Emmanuel.  My pastor Scott Seaton is preaching through the book of Exodus on God’s covenant promises, God’s family-bond promises, for His believers, and our response of worship out of the foundation of Christ to God as our welcoming Father.  I plan on resuming the blogging series on Scott’s sermons next week.

I have profited much from reading through the book of Joshua this year.  One passage of Joshua sticks out in my mind as a very practical passage for witnessing the Gospel in major metropolitan cities (as Arlington is becoming): the servant leader Joshua’s dispersion of the inherited lands to the tribes of Israel by lot, from the third lot onward.  This passage of the book of Joshua got me thinking about Jesus’ priestly grace, and God the Father’s adoptive grace at the cross of Jesus, God the Son, for believers, and how this impacts the church’s relationship with cities.

An Updated Reading Schedule: Summer Fiction and Old Christian Books

As a follow-up to the recent blog article I did on the saving grace and common grace of the Gospel, I decided to update my summer reading list and share my books with blog readers.  Some books are fiction novels for reading pleasure.  A couple of books are for spiritual growth in the Gospel, especially for resting with the Lord and worshipping the Lord on Sundays.

For summer fiction, I decided to order some new books to read during the course of each weekday.  I plan on reading six books on a weekly basis, one book for each day.  And I plan to read them in the mornings and evenings as part of soaking in the themes of the stories during the course of each day.

Emmanuel Sermon Notes (7.12.2009): When God Calls You

This blog article continues the sermon series that my pastor Scott Seaton of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (PCA) is doing through the book of Exodus, on God’s reassurance and covenantal grace in the Gospel for His believers.  I write about the sermon from yesterday; but next Sunday, I will in all likelihood not be able to copy down notes from the sermon for blogging the sermon.  I have to do hall patrol for the nursery and children’s classrooms of Emmanuel as part of my community group’s hosting of the worship service of Emmanuel.  Yes, that means I get to wear the little orange chest belt that kindergarten patrols use to help kids cross the street at Barrett Elementary School.  We at Emmanuel are truly dedicated to our city!

Jesus’ Atonement for Sexually Struggling Men and Women: Grace Not for Lemons but for Sinners

“ . . . It would be hard having so many fears not to be angry with people, circumstances, and God. . . . Suppose one’s life is filled with this kind of haunting insecurity and nagging guilt.  It’s easy to want to find emotional relief and comfort in bodily pleasures, and for men this often means sexual fantasies, etc., which can confirm him in his judgment that he is worthless. . . . He just thinks insecurity, and the key to his thinking is found in his whole mind-set which even plans as though he were an orphan.  To replace this mind-set is entirely possible.  I do it almost every day in my whole life.  But what I do is different in one crucial way: I reject this negativistic thinking as unbelief and claim my relationship with God as my Father through faith in Jesus Christ.

I go to the Gospels and read and read until I find myself full of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.  I read Hebrews 11, which tells how the people of faith passed through many dark times.  Though they have my weaknesses, they also show me how faith can triumph.  Personally I do not see anyone as a special case with special problems.

Saving Grace and Common Grace in Christ: The Joy of Being a Book Nerd

Growing up, I read a ton of books – basically, whatever I could get my mitts on and understand.  I would spend hours on end after elementary school and on the weekends perusing whatever old and scarcely read books were available that I could discover and call my own, and no one else’s.  I wore out a couple of library cards getting dozens of books and tiring out the librarians with checkouts.  To give you an idea of my nerd youth: I didn’t settle on the Disney version of Pinocchio – I had to get the old Italian hardback with the difficult translated Italian text.  At age six.

Emmanuel Sermon Notes: The Greatness, Holiness, and Nearness of God

This blog article continues the sermon series that Scott Seaton, my pastor at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Arlington, is preaching from the book of Exodus, concerning God’s character and identity and gracious promises for His believers.  I have thought to blog this sermon series using both my actual notes taken during Scott’s sermons and the audio recordings on the sermons whenever these recordings are available from Emmanuel.

Book Review: “A Murder, A Mystery, And A Marriage,” Mark Twain

I had the pleasure of discovering a small gem from Mark Twain while perusing the aisles of a Barnes & Noble store one day – Twain’s short story A Murder, A Mystery, And A Marriage, Twain’s prelude to his masterpiece and “the great American novel” Huckleberry Finn (New York: Norton, 2003).

 

Twain was in fine literary form with this short story, only recently discovered after a century of the story being misplaced (“Foreword” qtd. in Marriage 9).  And I think that Marriage is a good book for thinking about the Biblical Gospel theme of sinners becoming so shaped and defined by their expectations about marriage that their expectations enslave them to moral depravity apart from God, and how we are to look to Jesus for liberation – and salvation – from the power of idols for knowing peace with God our righteous Father and true home.

Culture Shifts, Life Crises, and Contentment in Christ

It is my personal pleasure to include here a sermon by one of my ruling elders, Jamie Johnson, on life changes and crises and contentment in Christ for my home church, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (PCA).

“Plans Change,” Jamie Johnson (Gen. 45:1-20)

Jamie preached this sermon as a sort of “guest pastor” while our actual pastor and lead elder Scott Seaton was away playing Battleship with his fellow elders at our denomination’s General Assembly.  We plan on one more week of the rack for Scott; then we may let him back into the pulpit again.

Confidence in Jesus’ Priestly Atonement from First to Last

“ . . . ‘The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord; but the prayer of the upright is his delight.’

Wicked men may abound in the external acts of religion, as if they intended to compensate the defects of the inward man.  By this means they flatter themselves into dangerous and presumptuous hopes of the favor of God, and sometimes gain a name among the godly, who are neither qualified nor authorized to search the secrets of the heart.

The Satisfying Marriage Supper of Christ and His Church

“ . . . [Will] the Lord thus take us to his bosom?  ‘He shall gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom,’ Isa. xl. 11; and every saint shall be treated with affection great as that shown to the beloved disciple who leaned on Jesus’ bosom at the sacramental supper.  At the marriage supper of the Lamb, when the beloved drinks with us the new wine in his Father’s kingdom, to that bosom shall we all be gathered; and if oppressed with a sense of unworthiness, we would know how agreeable our presence will be to him, we find the answer here given with a fullness leaving nothing more to be desired.  In the state of heart here represented, is fulfilled the prayer of the Apostle, ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.’  Eph. iii. 17.”

(George Burrowes qtd. in The Song of Solomon, Lafayette: Sovereign Grace, 2001, pp.411-2; John 13:18-26; Matt. 26:26-29)