God preserves his people

 

When God initiates his plan of salvation in a person, he will complete it. If he regenerates the heart of a sinner so that he can see the things of God, he will draw him irresistibly to his son, Jesus Christ, who purchased his salvation on the cross, and through the work of the Holy Spirit will escort him through this life to the glory of the Father’s presence. And he will be as secure in that process as if he were living in the loving hand of God himself.
Source: J.D. Wetterling

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Christmas Nativity Scene

Every year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is a display of an 18th century Neapolitan nativity scene. It is the familiar scene – shepherds roused from sleep, an angelic choir, exotic wise men from the East, Joseph and Mary – figures made of wood, clay, and paint.

What is surprising about this scene – unexpected and easily missed by the causal observer – is that the stable, shepherds, and the cradle are set, not in the small town of Bethlehem but among the ruins of mighty Roman columns. The fragile manger is surrounded by broken and decaying columns.

Someone has said of this scene that the artists knew the meaning of this nativity event: The gospel, the birth of God’s new age, was also the death of the old world.

Picture can be found at www.flickr.com by searching for the words: Metropolitan Museum of Art nativity

 

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Augustine and heavenly rewards

R.C. Sproul on rewards

Historic Protestantism has spelled it out that the only way we get into heaven is through the work of Christ, but we are promised rewards in heaven according to our works. Saint Augustine said that it’s only by the grace of God that we ever do anything even approximating a good work, and none of our works are good enough to demand that God reward them. The fact that God has decided to grant rewards on the basis of obedience or disobedience is what Augustine called God’s crowning his own works within us.

(source: R.C. Sproul, Now That’s a Good Question)

Augustine

“He crowns His own gifts, not thy merits. …God crowns in us the gifts of His own mercy …”

God, in crowning our merits, crowns his own gifts

To see other posts on rewards scroll down and click the category ‘rewards’ from the list on the left hand side of this page.

 

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Delighting in Delight

A great post about a father giving a son an expensive present and the son’s gratitude(?).

http://www.challies.com/archives/articles/delighting-in-delight.php

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Preaching and Prayer

Yea, I must say, that for a man to undertake the interpretation of any part or portion of Scripture in a solemn manner, without invocation of God to be taught and instructed by his Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who so proudly and ignorantly engageth in a work so much above his ability to manage.

source: John Owen, Pneumatologia 6:2:7

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Two wondeful quotes on God’s presence

“Christ did not come to do away with sufering; He did not come to explain it; He came to fill it with his presence.”            – Paul Claudel

 

Worship is the human response to the perceived presence of the divine, a presence which transcends normal human activity and is holy.     – A.W. TozerSurely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (Gen. 28:16-17 NRSV).

Before the dream, the place had only been a stopping place reached by sunset (28:11), but when he awoke it had become a holy place. The holy presence of God had penetrated into ordinary (profane) space in a way which had aroused acute awareness on the part of a human being. The sacred (holy) and profane are united in an experience of worship.

Marvin E. T

 

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A.W. Pink – The Sovereignty of God

A.W. Pink has written a classic on the Sovereignty of God. A friend of mine, Adam, asked me to make it available.

click here: The Sovereignty of God

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Young men and reading

“I think that young men should be specially exhorted to read old books. If you have a friend in the ministry who is growing old, urge him to read mainly new books, that he may freshen his mind and keep in sympathy with his surroundings. ‘But must not young men keep abreast of the age?’ Certainly, only the first thing is to get abreast of the age, and in order to do this, they must go back to where the age came from, and join there the great procession of its moving thought.”

John A. Broadus (1827-1895)
His biography can be found here: http://www.siteone.com/religion/baptist/baptistpage/Portraits/broadus.htm

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