Election

No, not the kind of election you're thinking of:

...the conversion of a sinner being not owing to a man's self determination, but to God's determination, and eternal election, which is absolute, and depending on the sovereign Will of God, and not on the free will of man; as is evident from what has been said : and it being very evident from the Scriptures, that the eternal election of saints to the faith and holiness, is also an election of them to eternal salvation; hence their appointment to salvation must also be absolute, and not depending on their contingent, self-determining Will."
- JONATHAN EDWARDS

The Blind Boys Of Alabama - Way Down In The Hole

This is an old Tom Waits song sung by The Blind Boys Of Alabama on their CD "Spirit Of The Century". This is a great CD.

Ligon Duncan on How You Should Pray for President-elect Obama

We ought to commit ourselves to pray for our new President, for his wife and family, for his administration, and for the nation. We will do this, not only because of the biblical command to pray for our rulers, but because of the second greatest commandment "Love your neighbor" and what better way to love your neighbor, than to pray for his well-being. Those with the greatest moral and political differences with the President-Elect ought to ask God to engender in them, by His Spirit, genuine neighbor-love for Mr. Obama.

We will also pray for our new President because he (and we) face challenges that are not only daunting but potentially disastrous. We will pray that God will grant him wisdom. He and his family will face new challenges and the pressures of this office. May God protect them, give them joy in their family life, and hold them close together.

We will pray that God will protect this nation even as our new President settles into his role as Commander in Chief, and that God will grant peace as he leads the nation through times of trial and international conflict and tension.

We will pray that God would change President-Elect Obama's mind and heart on issues of crucial moral concern. May God change his heart and open his eyes to see abortion as the murder of the innocent unborn, to see marriage as an institution to be defended, and to see a host of issues in a new light. We must pray this from this day until the day he leaves office. God is sovereign, after all.

To read the whole thing click here:

http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2008/11/some-initial-thoughts-on-prayi.php

Admonition by John Calvin on the Election

Let us then continue to honor the good appointment of God, which may be easily done, provided we impute to ourselves whatever evil may accompany it. Hence he teaches us here the end for which magistrates are instituted by the Lord; the happy effects of which would always appear, were not so noble and salutary an institution marred through our fault. At the same time, princes do never so far abuse their power, by harassing the good and innocent, that they do not retain in their tyranny some kind of just government: there can then be no tyranny which does not in some respects assist in consolidating the society of men.
John Calvin, commentary on Romans 13:3.

President Obama

It's very easy to forget--especially for those of us who are on the younger side--that it was only a little over 40 years ago that there were Jim Crow laws in the US. Just a generation ago, many African Americans were segregated from whites in public schools, transportation, restrooms, and restaurants.

Last night, the United States has elected a biracial man to serve as its leader.

It would be an understatement to call this a watershed cultural moment in our country's history.

No matter who you voted for--or whether you voted at all--it's important to remember that, as President, Barack Obama will have God-given authority to govern us, and that we should view him as a servant of God (Rom. 13:1, 4) to whom we should be subject (Rom. 13:1, 5; 1 Pet. 2:13-14).

• We are to pray for Barack Obama (1 Tim. 2:1-2).
• We are to thank God for Barack Obama (1 Tim. 2:1-2).
• We are to respect Barack Obama (Rom. 13:7).
• We are to honor Barack Obama (Rom. 13:7; 1 Pet. 2:17).

There are many qualifications to add to these exhortations but it's still important to remember that these are requirements for all Bible-believing Christians.
http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/11/president-obama.html

Charles Spurgeon on Providence

I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes—that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens—that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence—the fall of sear leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

(Charles Spurgeon, ‘God's Providence’, sermon on Ezekiel 1:15-19, 1908.)

Are We Preaching The Same Message Jesus Preached?

Tim Keller, from his new book The Prodigal God (pg.15-16):

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishoners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Participating in God’s Providence

“Hereafter you will consider that everything that happens to you , both great and small, is sent by God to help you in your warfare. He alone knows what is necessary for you and what you need at the moment: adversity and prosperity, temptation and fall. Nothing happens accidentally or in such a way that you cannot learn from it; you must understand this at once, for this is how your trust grows in the Lord whom you have chosen to follow.”

-From Way of the Ascetics by Tito Colliander

The Believers Influence In The World - Salt - Part 2

The Fact: “You are salt” or literally, “You only are the salt.”
The word “you” is plural indicating the whole church is to be salt and light. The salt of the earth is you! Every Christian! The fact you are salt shows you are living in a decaying world. This is both a privilege and a responsibility.
This is our nature, not what we should be, but what we are! We cannot change what we are but we can waste what we are. Salt can lose its effectiveness and the light can be put under a bushel. This does not deny the miracle that changed us, it only defeats the ministry that challenges us.

The Importance of Salt: It’s Three-fold Usage

First, salt purifies. Salt is an antiseptic, used to clean teeth or as a mouth or eye wash. One of the characteristics of the world is impurity, the lowering of standards. This stands for the believer’s purity of mind, conduct and motive. He has a purifying influence on the world. This combats the error that because the world is rotten, Christians should disassociate from the world as much as possible. Some people think you should let the world go to hell. But the fact is that salt never does any good on the shelf. To be effective it must be applied at work, at home, in politics, in art, in science. You must get out of the salt shaker!
Second, salt preserves. Salt is used to cure meats and keep them from rotting, there were no refrigerators back then and salt was the key to preserving meat. This is the believer’s influence in the world to keep it from rotting and receiving God’s judgment. Decay is caused by death. On the outside some of the structures of our society look sound but inside they are rotting away and it is only a matter of time before they fall (government, courts, law and order, marriage, etc.). This combats the error that so many people have embraced, "man is good", "the world is good and getting better". The world systems, its governments, its science, its philosophy are not getting better, the world and the people in it are basically rotten to the core. This doesn't sit well with many Christians but it does with the bible.
Third, salt seasons, adds flavors. Christianity is to life what salt is to food, it is to add a good flavor not a bad one. Some Christians are so narrow so legalistic so religious that the flavor they add turn people away. The world proves over and over again that life without Jesus is tasteless. Just look at all the pleasure mania, the brainless entertainment, the perversion in literature, movies and music, then add murder, hatred, wars, injustice, and so on. The believer is to minister God’s life, healing, deliverance, the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit adding flavor to the world. Christians have no business being boring, being brainless, being unable to thoughtfully make an argument for the faith. In the world’s eyes Christians are the ones who take the flavor out of life and it shouldn't be that way.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Today I picked up a new boxed set on Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. There are two CD's of music that includes all the music from the two concerts many songs that were never released and a two hour documentary film on the single most important day in Cash's career. I can't wait to watch and listen. If you've never watched this music video it is very powerful. Trent Razor of Nine Inch Nails wrote the song but Cash made it his own.

B.B. King - Paying The Cost To Be The Boss

Here's a song from B.B. King in his prime. When I was learning to play lead guitar I would sit in my bedroom with my stereo my B.B. King records and my electric guitar copying the licks he played. I once covered this song but I don't think the lyrics would go over big today.

Charles Spurgeon: Life from a Dying Savior

"Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior. All other topics in Holy Scripture are important, and none of them are to be cast into the shade. But the death of the Son of God is the central sun of all these other minor luminaries. May this house be utterly consumed with fire before the day should come here when there should be given an uncertain sound about the atonement. This is not merely a doctrine of the church; it is the doctrine of the church. Leave this out, and you have no truth, you have no Savior, and you have no church."--Charles Spurgeon

Cluelessness

The Believers Influence In The World - Salt - Part 1

In Matthew 5:13 Jesus said "You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." This verse is the start of a new section in the Sermon on the Mount. We are moving from abstract definition of a Christian to a functional one. This teaching on the believer as salt and the next teaching on the believer as light deal with the believer’s influence in the world in which he lives. If you live according to the Beatitudes you will function as salt and light. Salt acts secretly, its work is not noticed immediately, but is seen afterward. To live as salt means that your life as a Christian will make a difference in the long run. By contrast light is something that is seen right away and makes immediate changes. To live as light means that your life as a Christian will have obvious and clear impact on others around you.

Salt was greatly valued in the ancient world, the Greeks called salt divine. Roman soldiers were given salt rations and would revolt if these rations were changed. The Romans held that except for the sun nothing was more valuable than salt. The English word “salary” literally means “salt money”, this is where we get the expression “that person’s not worth their salt”. In the ancient world salt was a symbol of purity and faithfulness, and Jesus dared to apply this symbol to those who trust Him. This says something about the character and conduct of a Christian's life.

Do you know what Salt Is? Salt comes from the union of chlorine (a gas, vapor, from above) and sodium (a dark metal of the earth). We could say that Chlorine represents the Holy Spirit and sodium represents the unregenerate man that when combined produce salt, a white pure substance which represents a new creation, someone who as Jesus said has been born again. in John 3:3 Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

Johnny Winter - Highway 61

When I play with The Sam Lay Blues Band we opened for Johnny. After the concert we sat in the dressing room playing acoustic blues. Johnny got out his national steel guitar out and we played the blues for quite awhile and drank a few beverages. Johnny is an albino and is a strange looking dude. This was recorded at Bob Dylan's birthday party at Madison Square Garden 10/16/1992.

Phil Keaggy - Master & Musician Tour

All of Life is Repentance

On this day 491 years ago, Martin Luther sent out his Ninety-Five Theses to some church leaders. It's also reported that he also posted his proposal at the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which served as the university bulletin board.

The first of the Ninety-Five Theses was this:

Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite [Repent Ye], willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

Tim Keller writes:

On the surface this looks a little bleak! Luther seems to be saying Christians will never be making much progress. But of course that wasn't Luther's point at all. He was saying that repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. Indeed, pervasive, all-of-life repentance is the best sign that we are growing deeply and rapidly into the character of Jesus.

Jack Miller writes:

What we must see is that God never promised to transform us into super Christians who would never again sin and never again need to repent. He never promised anyone strength apart from continued dependence upon Himself....

Be encouraged then, fellow believer. In calling you to daily repentance, the Lord Jesus is not simply giving you good advice. He is saying, "If you are a child of mine, you must continue to repent."

From Dashhouse.com, Darryls blog

Reformation Day

Today is a significant day–it’s October 31. While many will celebrate Halloween at this time, we want to take advantage of this day to acknowledge a far more significant event that took place on the same day, some 491 years ago. It was October 31, 1517 when a young monk named Martin Luther walked to the Castle Church at Wittenberg, mallet in hand, to nail his famous 95 Theses to the door. Luther was primarily concerned about the role of indulgences (essentially, buying favor & forgiveness from God) and he wanted to have a public discussion about this heinous abuse of the gospel.

Through the providence of God, Luther’s act–which was merely aimed at reforming some of the more egregious practices of the Roman Catholic Church–became the symbolic spark that soon launched a wildfire of reform throughout Europe. As scholars turned back to the Scriptures in their original languages, as God’s Word was treasured above tradition, as the corruption of the church was challenged–and most importantly, as the clarity of the gospel call of Justification by Grace Alone through Faith Alone was recovered–the Protestant movement grew and the Reformation had begun.

Though the Reformation had many and far-reaching effects, there have been five key areas, and five corresponding slogans, that are employed to capture the meat of the Reformation. They are referred to as the 5 solas, from the Latin word for “alone” or “only.” Each day next week, we will be posting on one of the solas as we see how God led the church to recover what had been lost and/or obscured for many years. This truly is a day to celebrate God’s kindness in leading us into truth.

Reformation Solas from Crossway Life, posted by Steve Heitland

A Review Of The Shack by Tim Challies

This review is a 15 page pdf document that you can print, e-mail, or download to your computer. It is a detailed review of this book that every christian who read the book or who is interested in the book should read. It never ceases to amaze me at the gullibility of Christians. I went into our local christian bookstore and was amazed to three 8 foot shelves filled with the shack. I've been to the chicken shack where they had great buffalo wings but I have no interest in recommending this shack. Following is a small portion from Tim's intro to the review.

"Despite the book’s popularity among Christians, believers are divided on whether this book is biblically sound. Where Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver says it “has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim Progress did for his,” Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says, “This book includes undiluted heresy.” While singer and songwriter Michael W. Smith says “The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God,” Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle says, “Regarding the Trinity, it’s actually heretical.”
A review of the Shack Download it here

Self Righteousness against the Self Righteous

Responding to some discussion related to Tim Keller's excellent new book, The Prodigal God, Tullian Tchividjian has an important post here. An excerpt:

There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we can become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, ”That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are good. That makes me better than you.” See the irony?

In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous!

Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the religious and the irreligious; the “buttoned down” and the “untucked.” The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are when it comes to our own sin. For example, it was easy for Jonah to see the idolatry of the sailors. It was easy for him to see the perverse ways of the Ninevites. What he couldn’t see was his own idolatry, his own perversion. So the question is, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean?

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both directions!

G.K. Chesterton on "Change You Can Believe In"

"It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshiper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote-

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into.

The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought about the past or future simply impossible."

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Brit Hume Leaving Fox

by Sarah Pulliam
From Christianity Today

Fox News anchor Brit Hume is leaving the cable news network after 12 years, saying "Christ is a big piece of it."

“Family is a big piece of it,” he told Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times. “And Christ is a big piece of it. And golf is a big piece of it.”

As he prepares to anchor his last presidential campaign, Hume said he’s eager to immerse himself in a more spiritual life after dwelling for so long in the secular. The anchor described himself as a “nominal Christian” until 10 years ago, when his son Sandy committed suicide at age 28.

“I feel like I was really kind of saved when my son died by faith and by the grace of God, and that’s very much on my consciousness,” said Hume, who plans to get more involved in his wife’s Bible study group.

Get This, and You'll Get Sound Economics

Thomas Sowell:

"Chief Justice John Marshall said it all in one sentence: 'The power to tax is the power to destroy.' It is not the money that is taxed away that is destroyed. What is destroyed is the wealth that does not get produced in the first place, because high taxes make its production not worthwhile."

And:

"The economy is not a zero-sum game where someone gains what others lose. The whole economy can lose when ill-considered policies gain political popularity and stifle economic growth."

To read the rest of the article Click here

All Blues - Kenny Burrell

The Hugo Chavez Democrats

By Peter Ferrara on 10.29.08 @ 6:08AM

The polls place the approval rating of Congress at 12%, the lowest in history, and only about half President Bush's miserable rating. But if the election polls are correct, we will soon be governed by ultraliberal, San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House with an even bigger House Democrat majority, liberal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with a filibuster proof majority of 60 Senate Democrats, and left-wing extremist Barack Obama as President, rated as the most liberal member of the Senate, ahead even of Ted Kennedy.

The polls do not show that the public agrees with these leftist nutcakes on the issues. For example, Newt Gingrich reports results of a poll that asked what was more important as the focus of national economic policy, economic growth or income redistribution. The public favored economic growth by 84% to 9%, which is exactly what I would expect. But the public is about to place government overwhelmingly in the hands of those who firmly believe just the opposite.

To read the whole article click here: The American Spectator