real sin, real sinner

“Confess your faults one to another” (Jas. 5:16).  He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.  It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness.  The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners.  The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner.  So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship.  We dare not be sinners.  Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous.  So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.  The fact is that we are sinners!

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you.  He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov. 23.26).  God has come to you to save the sinner.  Be glad!  This message is liberation through truth.  You can hide nothing from God.  The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him.  He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you.  You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner.  Thank God for that; He loves the sinner but He hates sin…

In confession the break-through to community takes place.  Sin demands to have a man by himself.  It withdraws him from the community.  The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.  Sin wants to remain unknown.  It shuns the light.  In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person.  This can happen even in the midst of a pious community.  In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into darkness and seclusion of the heart.  The sin must be brought into the light.  The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged.  All that is secret and hidden is made manifest.  It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted.  But God breaks the gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).

Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned.  The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil.  He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother.

The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power.

- Bonhoeffer

I have a right to entertainment

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
- Pascal

How to affect an entire generation

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

- Frederick Douglass

The relevance of the church and the indifference of the world

The Church is puzzled by the world's indifference. She is trying to overcome it by adapting her message to the fashions of the day. But if, instead, before the conflict, she would descend into the secret place of meditation, if by the clear light of the gospel she would seek an answer not merely to the questions of the hour but, first of all, to the eternal problems of the spiritual world, then perhaps, by God's grace, through His good Spirit, in His good time, she might issue forth once more with power, and an age of doubt might be followed by the dawn of an era of faith.

- J. Gresham Machen

what is church good for?

“I don’t need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I already know I’m wrong; I need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I think I’m right.” 
- G. K. Chesteron

Sin Boldly

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly,  but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world]  we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness,  but, as Peter says,  we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.  No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.

- Martin Luther to Phillip Melanchthon, August 1, 1521

interact with liberal theology, but make no peace with heresy

Don’t be fooled by those evangelicals who today spend their time praising the insights of liberals and non-evangelicals while trashing or mocking our evangelical forefathers for their intellectual peccadilloes. Make no mistake, God will be the ultimate judge of this contemporary evangelical tendency to turn a blind eye to great blasphemies in liberal theologians who happen to say the odd useful or orthodox thing, while excoriating evangelicals of the past for their mistakes. Too many gnats are strained out, while too many huge elephants are being swallowed whole. Our forefathers were not idiots; neither were they uncouth louts who responded with knee-jerk abuse and anger to any who disagreed with them; but neither were they prepared to play happy families with those whose theology was fundamentally opposed to the gospel. The issues at stake, issues after all, of eternal consequence, were, are, and always will be just too important to be reduced to intellectual parlour games or restricted by the protocols of academic diplomacy. Yes, interact with liberals in an informed and thoughtful manner - the church needs men and women for such a task; but please do not buy into the contemporary culture of evangelical academic protocol which leads only to a useless blurring of what is good with what is bad. Making unconditional peace with heresy should never be mistaken for a proper integration of faith and learning.

- Trueman

grace under fire

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
- Mike Tyson

envy

If you have a problem with other people succeeding, you need to deal with that before the Lord.
- Aucker

books change people

When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue, you sell him a whole new life.

- Christopher Morley

the necessity of the languages for ministry

“One outstanding difficulty in theological education today is that the students persist in regarding themselves not as specialists, but as laymen. Critical questions about the Bible they regard as property of men who are training themselves for theological professorships or the like, while the ordinary minister, in their judgment, may content himself with the most superficial layman’s acquaintance with the problems involved. The minister is thus no longer a specialist in the Bible, but has become merely a sort of general manager of the affairs of a congregation. … If on the other hand, the minister is a specialist – if the one thing that he owes his congregation above all others is a thorough acquaintance, scientific as well as experimental, with the Bible – then the importance of Greek requires no elaborate argument.”
- Machen

sharing the gospel out of guilt

Our evangelism is often unbelievable because we don't listen at all. All too often the gospel we share is an information download, not a loving articulation of how the good news fits into the needs, fears, hopes, and dreams of others' lives. We content ourselves with "name dropping" Jesus, which gets us a √ in performance-based Christianity---unless, of course, we mention the cross, which bumps us up to a √+. This kind of evangelism, however, is more about clearing our evangelical conscience than compassionately sharing the good news with fellow sinners. Very often our gospel is unbelievable because we are motivated by unbelief in the gospel.
- Jonathan Dodson

my safety and obedience to Jesus

Do you choose your neighborhoods to be safe?  Do you go to the suburbs to be safe?  Is your first thought in a call to ministry “will my kids be safe?”  I got so tired of hearing that question when we were looking for associates at my church.  “Is your neighborhood safe?”  NO!  And who cares!  Good grief, what does that question have to do with obedience to Jesus?!
- John Piper, “The Supremacy of God in Missions” 

unbelief and theology

When historians of religion look back at the second half of the 20th century they will marvel at how its theologians could have written so much while believing so little.
- Steven Webb, Christian Century (Dec 4-17, 2002)

never been lost

I've never been lost, but I was mighty turned around for three days once.

- Daniel Boone

Or perhaps it was:
"I've never been lost, but I was mighty bewildered once for three days."

set goals

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.
-Bill Copeland

plan and act!

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
- General George Patton

personal development

Reading makes a full man;
conference a ready man;
writing an exact man.
- Bacon

(and the holy spirit a new man!)

Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.

Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.

- Fortune cookie

only two kinds of people in the world

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.

Pascal

don't try to get god on your side

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God's side.

Lincoln's call to fasting and humility

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

- Abraham Lincoln

we are too sensual and earthly... immediately terrified when hungry!

“Let the doctrine which proceeds from thy mouth be sound. For he expressly uses this word, because it is the means of upholding us in true integrity, that the word of God, which is preached to us, be our spiritual pasture. This will not be perceived at first sight, but such is the fact. And why do we not perceive it? Because we are too sensual and earthly. For when we are in want of food for our body, we are immediately terrified, we become alarmed, we have not a moment of repose, for it touches us nearly. We are sensitive as to this fading life, but we are insensible to all that affects our souls; there is such brutal stupidity that we do not know our wants, though they press heavily upon us. Yet let it be observed that there is nothing but weakness in us, if we are not fed with the doctrine of God. And that is the reason why it is called ‘sound,’ for in this consists the health of our souls. As our bodies are kept in their proper condition by well-regulated nourishment, so our souls are supported by that doctrine which serves not only for nourishment but for medicine. For we are full of vices which are worse than diseases; and therefore our soul must be purged, and we must be healed of them. The method of doing this is, that we profit by the word of God. And so it is not without good reason that Paul gives to it this designation, that it is ‘sound,’ or that it is ‘wholesome.’” — Fr. Ser.

Footnote from ET of Calvin’s commentary on Titus 2:1

“Fr. Ser.” = French Sermon?