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The Triune God

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:53:38 GMT

The Triune God Of The Bible

The doctrine of the Trinity — that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each equally and eternally the one true God — is admittedly difficult to comprehend, and yet is the very foundation of Christian truth. Although skeptics may ridicule it as a mathematical impossibility, it is nevertheless a basic doctrine of Scripture as well as profoundly realistic in both universal experience and in the scientific understanding of the cosmos.

Both Old and New Testaments teach the Unity and the Trinity of the Godhead. The idea that there is only one God, who created all things, is repeatedly emphasized in such Scriptures as Isaiah 45:18:

“For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; …I am the Lord; and there is none else.”

A New Testament example is James 2:19:

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble.”

The three persons of the Godhead are, at the same time, noted in such Scriptures as Isaiah 48:16:

“I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, there am I; and now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me.”

The speaker in this verse is obviously God, and yet He says He has been sent both by The Lord God (that is, the Father) and by His Spirit (that is, the Holy Spirit).

The New Testament doctrine of the Trinity is evident in such a verse as John 15:26, where the Lord Jesus said:

“But when the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from the Father, He shall testify of me.”

Then there is the baptismal formula:

“baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19).

One name (God) — One "what" and three "who's."

JESUS — That Jesus, as the only-begotten Son of God, actually claimed to be God, equal with the Father, is clear from numerous Scriptures. For example, He said:

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).

HOLY SPIRIT — Some cults falsely teach that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal divine influence of some kind, but the Bible teaches that He is a real person, just as are the Father and the Son. Jesus said:

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come” (John 16:13).

TRI-UNITY — The teaching of the Bible concerning the Trinity might be summarized thus. God is a Tri-unity, with each Person of the Godhead equally and fully and eternally God. Each is necessary, and each is distinct, and yet all are one. The three Persons appear in a logical, causal order. The Father is the unseen, omnipresent Source of all being, revealed in and by the Son, experienced in and by the Holy Spirit. The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit from the Son. With reference to God's creation, the Father is the Thought behind it, the Son is the Word calling it forth, and the Spirit is the Deed making it a reality.

We “see” God and His great salvation in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, then “experience” their reality by faith, through the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit.

Though these relationships seem paradoxical, and to some completely impossible, they are profoundly realistic, and their truth is ingrained deep in man's nature. Thus, men have always sensed first the truth that God must be “out there,” everywhere present and the First Cause of all things, but they have corrupted this intuitive knowledge of the Father into pantheism and ultimately into naturalism.

Similarly, men have always felt the need to “see” God in terms of their own experience and understanding, but this knowledge that God must reveal Himself has been distorted into polytheism and idolatry. Men have thus continually erected “models” of God, sometimes in the form of graven images, sometimes even in the form of philosophical systems purporting to represent ultimate reality.

Finally, men have always known that they should be able to have communion with their Creator and to experience His presence “within.” But this deep intuition of the Holy Spirit has been corrupted into various forms of false mysticism and fanaticism, and even into spiritism and demonism. Thus, the truth of God's tri-unity is ingrained in man's very nature, but he has often distorted it and substituted a false god in its place.

Most Important Verse in the Bible

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:31:39 GMT

Most Important Verse in the Bible

A friend of mine texted me the other day asking me a question. I thought it was a very interesting question to say the least. Is there a real answer to this question? Perhaps! Only God Himself can truly answer it. But in the mean time I think there is room for speculation. Biblical speculation that is! So here is the question and why I feel it is so…

Q: What is the most important verse in the Bible? Not your favorite! BUT most important?

I have a favorite verse. 2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This verse is a complete gospel message. No more no less! I love this verse! But that’s not what the question is asking. The question asks what is the most important verse?

My answer: John 5: 39. "You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me;

With one small but powerful statement our Lord Jesus gives us the key to unlocking the testimony of the Scriptures. They are about Him! When reading every verse of the bible we need to remember this hermeneutic. We need to see Christ in all the scriptures verse upon verse and line upon line. Though His name does not appear he is still the main character. Does your church preach Christ from the scriptures? How often does the sermon you hear point you to Christ? The Lord Himself had the opportunity to preach in this way after His resurrection on the road to Emmaus…

Luke 24: 27. And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

I can only imagine what He spoke. Showing How He is the true Adam who kept the garden pure and saves His bride. How He is the true Israel and good land flowing with milk and honey bringing His people out of the bondage of a foreign land in to Himself! How He is the true Joshua who leads His people in to the promise land. The true David, the true manna from heaven, the true temple, the true government, and finally He is the true sacrifice, the true lamb that is slain for the forgiveness of sins AMEN!

What do you think? What do you think the most important verse in the bible is and why do you think it?

Why some Old testament laws are not followed

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:33:14 GMT

Applying God's Law

Written by Michael Horton of the White Horse Inn.

You know, every time a debate comes up on homosexual marriage or on war, a whole host of topics; on one hand conservatives sometimes invoke the theocratic promises, commands, and threats of the old covenant as if they could just be lifted from the context of Israel's covenant with God and apply to any modern country. While liberals and secularists simply dismiss these Old Testament passages as morally offensive "texts of terror."

But there is a third option: namely, to interpret the Bible as it interprets itself. The Bible isn't a manual of timeless ethics, but a history of redemption. Within that unfolding history, there are different covenants that include their own structure of laws. To be sure, there are universal moral laws that God inscribed on the human conscience in creation, as in the Ten Commandment and Jesus' summary. But the civil and ceremonial laws of the Mosaic covenant were attached, as Calvin calls them, as appendices of the Ten Commandments for the era in which he had taken Israel under his wing as his special nation. This is a unique, unrepeatable, and non-transferable relationship. As long as Israel obeyed these laws that separated the nations as holy from among the other nations, it would be blessed. If the nation disobeyed, it would be sent into captivity. However, the promise that God made to Adam and Eve of a coming redeemer, which was solemnized in the covenant with Abraham, was an unconditional covenant. As Paul declares in Galatians, the later covenant that the nation of Israel swore at Mount Sinai to obey all of the words of the law could not annul the earlier covenant that God swore to Abraham: namely, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

In different eras of redemptive history, God descends to dwell with a particular people, creating a small-scale copy of his heavenly temple. During these eras, when every aspect of life-civil and religious-is declared by God to be holy, there are frequent suspensions of ordinary providence and common law in favor of God's direct miraculous acts of judgment, deliverance, and reigning. The Garden of Eden was just such a holy sanctuary, then the ark in which God carried Noah and his family to safety, then finally the land of Canaan. There is God's demand to sacrifice Isaac, which God withdrew just before Abraham was to plunge the knife into his only beloved son. There is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Only begrudgingly did God accede to Israel's demand for a human king, since God alone was the direct ruler of his people. And then there are the holy wars in which God himself led armies to cleanse the land of wickedness, idolatry, oppression, violence, and immorality. An analogy might be the declaration of martial law, in which some constitutional liberties are suspended. During these Old Testament episodes, when God directly intervens in executing his judgment and establishing his righteous rule, we have previews of Christ's ministry as prophet, priest, and king. The whole apparatus of Israel's theocracy, including its distinctive laws, was not to last forever but to foreshadow Christ's kingdom and his work of redemption and his return in final judgment of the whole world.

Take Christ out of the center of this history, and the Old Testament becomes a strange book of laws written by a primitive people to justify their own land-grabs through ethnic cleansing.

So now we go back to these so-called "texts of terror" and what do we see? We see the serpent corrupting God's holy garden, and Israel as God's viceroy called to cleanse it from impurity. We see God standing in personal judgment over creatures he made in his own image who have nevertheless turned their gifts against him and each other. In their idolatrous religion, they sacrifice children to the gods and raid neighboring peoples in merciless violence, leaving a trail of blood and tears. Folks, if you have trouble with the righteous wrath of God in these Old Testament portraits, you are not going to do any better with Jesus, who spoke of everlasting punishment in hell more vividly and repeatedly than any prophet.

But for now, Jesus repeatedly explained in his earthly ministry, it is not an era of martial law but of common grace. In the Sermon on the Mount, he takes the place of Moses at Mount Sinai: "You have heard it said, 'Hate your enemies,' but I say, 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...For God sends rain upon the just and the unjust alike.'" Far from saying these laws were wrong, Jesus fulfilled the law in every detail. In fact, during his ministry he said, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning." Not only his earthly emissaries, but Satan himself was now dethroned, cast out of the heavenly sanctuary where he accused the brethren day and night. James and John want to call down fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village that rejected the gospel, but Jesus "rebuked them sharply," we read, and reaffirmed the purpose of his mission: namely, to preach the gospel and indeed to be the gospel by his death and resurrection. Jesus certainly warned of a final judgment up ahead, but this is the Day of Salvation.

Because of this regime-change, there are no holy wars because there is no holy land-except for the spiritual war in heavenly places that we fight with the Word of the gospel and the holy temple "made without hands" which is Christ and his body. As we read in Hebrews, the old covenant has been rendered "obsolete" by the arrival of the perfect prophet, priest, and king: our Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need a holy land or a geopolitical realm because now the reality has arrived. Although the New Testament repeats the moral laws that he gave to humanity in creation and to Israel at Sinai, the laws that form the unique constitution of the old covenant theocracy are no longer in force. With the apostles, therefore, we read the Old Testament in light of its fulfillment in Christ, which is revealed in the New Testament. We do not flatten out the biblical commands as general, timeless, universal principles, but follow the New Testament's own approach as it interprets the old covenant in light of the new.

Reformation Day

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:49:48 GMT

Reformation Day

October 31^st is the day the Reformed churches worldwide remember the event where Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door at Wittenberg. What was supposed to be an in-house debate was soon taken to the masses by feisty students who saw great merit in the things Luther mentioned and the current abuses of the Catholic church in that day.

Should the church today be sad or happy about this event? I say both! We should lament the division that has been evident since this great event. Truth is, all Protestants who hold to the ideals put forth in the Reformation should be in constant prayer for the healing of the great schism that has divided us. One the other hand however, we should rejoice and shout in great thanks to God that the gospel of Christ was once again put forth in all of it’s glory!

That great and powerful “good news” that we are justified as a free act of God’s grace (unmerited favor) through the person and work of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Not that any work or rite performed by us and for us could attain that salvation or any work done by us after our confession could help us maintain it. Rather that the Holy Spirit working in the heart of the sinner brings them to faith (thought and deed) in the actions of the Son done on their behalf so they may have peace with the Father! Amen!

Alas, we now stand in a day where churches that are labeled Protestant are not preaching that gospel. Their births have no roots in the Reformation and the word “Protestant” means nothing more to them than not Catholic. They preach peace over truth and would gladly stuff the true gospel in a closet in order to be loved by the world around them. The Reformers saw this event and preached it’s coming. Their thoughts were that the gospel of Christ is anti-intuitive. It is the only religion where all the work is done by God and all the benefits are lavished on the sinner. Man does not think this way in his natural state. Thus we see a return to Rome in so many Protestant denominations. Not in name mind you… But in Theology! At least Rome agrees that God is the original moving agent in salvation where many churches have embraced a full blown Palageian view of God’s economy. Works salvation! It is when we see this mode in operation around us that the Reformed believer needs to thank Christ in all reverence that the gospel is still being put forth by the remnant…

Yours truly as Jesus

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:31:28 GMT

Well, we did it. As told in the post below yours truly and several of our youth group students performed the Everything skit along with our youth group band... Not to shabby with only two practice dates under our belts! I'm just glad I was able to shave my beard off! Man, those things get itchy!

Powerful Gospel Skit

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:29:51 GMT

So this weekend our Presbytery is holding it's annual youth retreat titled Reality Factor. Last year was a fantastic time with the students and there is anticipation that this year will be just as good. Below is a skit that were going to perform. Not sure how many of you have seen this skit but I have yet to grow tired of it. I'm not an easily moved person emotionally, yet this skit and the music get me every time! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. It is nothing less than the gospel performed...

Two ways to read the Bible

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:35:58 GMT

Two Ways to read the Bible

There are two ways to read the Bible. The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you: what you have to do in order to be right with God, in which case you’ll never have a sure and certain hope, because you’ll always know you’re not quite living up. You’ll never be sure about that future. Or you can read it as all about Jesus. Every single thing is not about what you must do in order to make yourself right with God, but what he has done to make you absolutely right with God. And Jesus Christ is saying, “Unless you can read the Bible right, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you’ll never have a sure and certain hope. But once you understand it’s all about me, Jesus Christ, then you can know that you have peace. You can know that you have this future guaranteed, and you can face anything.”

~Tim Keller

Reformed doctrine from 529 AD

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:49:08 GMT

See, the Church believed this stuff way before the Reformation... It just lost it somewhere..

"...if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10). (Council of Orange: Canon 6)

This statement is speaking about monergism. A staple of Reformation thought.

natural law

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:47:19 GMT

Natural Law

Natural law is the moral revelation that God gives in creation itself.

When appealing to natural law, believers need not feel that they are compromising their Christian convictions, for natural law is authoritative and true; it is part of God's own revelation, after all. Neither need Christians fear that they are appealing to a standard that is unknown or foreign to unbelievers; God has inscribed the natural law on the heart of every person (Rom. 2:14-15), and all people know the basic requirements of God's law, even if they suppress that knowledge (Rom. 1:19, 21, 32). Most every unbeliever, in fact, accepts the truth of at least some aspects of the natural law. True, they do not accept it for what it really is, the revelation of the living and triune God. But most people, when pressed, would admit that acts such as murder, stealing, and lying are immoral, and they themselves generally avoid such actions. Most people would also claim that law and government exist to protect people against those who would kill, rob, or defraud them.

The fact that most unbelievers, though refusing to worship the true God, still to some significant extent acknowledge and live by the truth of his law as it is known by nature is something for which Christians can be very grateful. Because of this, societies generally retain some degree of order and justice. And it provides Christians with the opportunity to engage unbelievers in genuine moral dialogue on issues of public policy.

(Taken from David VanDrunen's article, "Natural Law and Christians in the Public Square" in Modern Reformation, March/April 2006)

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:14:43 GMT

SAW THESE GUYS ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA. WHATCH THIS THEN CLICK ON SOME OF THEIR OTHER VIDEOS...

Amazing huh?