For The Lord's Day, Palm Sunday

At this time of year many people consider the question "Who is Jesus Christ?" Many reply: "He is a good teacher, but I cannot accept his claim to be God!" C. S. Lewis replies to that statement this way: "That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the things Jesus said would not be a good moral teacher. He would be a lunatic -- on the level of a man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."  ~  Mere Christianity, p. 41

For The Lord's Day

“… man is alienated from God by sin and God is alienated from man by wrath. It is in the substitutionary death of Christ that sin is overcome and wrath averted, so that God can look on man without displeasure and man can look on God without fear. Sin is expiated and God is propitiated.”  ~ David Wells, The Search for Salvation

For The Lord's Day

How to avoid a wasted life: “God created me – and you – to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion – namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.”          -- Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

For The Lord's Day

“Love without righteousness is immorality, though today in some religious circles is it called the “new morality.” Righteousness without doctrine is legalism. This is the kind of religion that existed in Christ’s day in Judaism and against which he was so outspoken. Doctrine without love is a bitter orthodoxy. It is the kind of truth that is rigorously perfect, in a sense, but which does not win anyone. All three of these elements [Love, Righteousness, and Doctrine] must be present in the life of any true and growing Christian.”–         James Montgomery Boice, in the Preface to The Epistles of John

Book Review

Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis by Tim Townsend

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This outstanding work chronicles the ministry of Army Chaplain Henry Gerecke - a Lutheran - as he ministers to the twenty-one Nazi was criminals at Nuremberg. Gerecke was a 50 year old Chaplain who had been ministering to soldiers fighting the Nazis, had seen the atrocities at Dachau, and now was tasked with ministering to the spiritual needs of men labeled as war criminals. Should he stay or go home? How do you preach the gospel to these men? How do you offer comfort? How do you talk of salvation given what they has done?
Tim Townsend offers new insights into a pastor's heart, as well as shedding light on the Nuremberg Trials.
This is well worth your time



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For The Lord's Day

“Until our consciences are bound by Scripture so that our actions are the product of conviction, we will be the victims of fluctuating fancies and susceptible to the “security” that is offered in conformity to a long list of human taboos. Convinced, grace-filled, spirit-led obedience to God’s Law really is the pathway to freedom. Remember, the law is not the dynamic of our sanctification, God’s love for us is not on the basis of duty, but neither does His love for us free us from duty.”              Alistair Begg, Pathway to Freedom

For The Lord's Day

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”              - - D. A. Carson, For the Love of God