Memorial Day - Remember

For the Lord's Day

“It is a great advantage to be wise. Wisdom is different from mere knowledge of the facts. Some very wise people have little formal education. And some very educated people, who know many facts, are not wise. Wisdom is the insight and sense of how to live in a way that accomplishes the goals for which we were made: the glory of God and the good of man. And since glorifying God involves delighting in God, and the good of man involves sharing our joy in God, therefore wisdom is the only path to deep and lasting joy.” -- John Piper in When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy

For the Lord's Day

“I believe in the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should have never chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.”     --   Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Baptist minister

For the Lord's Day

“The effort to repay God, in the ordinary way we pay creditors, would nullify grace and turn it into a business transaction. If we see acts of obedience as installment payments, we make grace into a mortgage… Let us not say that grace creates debts; let us say grace pays debts… Past grace is glorified by intense and joyful gratitude. Future grace is glorified by intense and joyful confidence. This faith (confidence) is what empowers us for venturesome obedience in the cause of Christ.” – John Piper in Future Grace

Piper on Forgiveness:

The biblical motive for being a forgiving person may be deeper than being forgiven. It is true to say: The motive for being a forgiving person is that we have been forgiven by God when we did not deserve it (Ephesians 4:32). The bottom of this motive is not God’s forgiveness, but what God’s forgiveness gives. It gives us God. … God is the goal of forgiveness. He is also the ground and means of forgiveness. It comes from him; it was accomplished through his Son; and it leads people back to him with their sins cast into the deepest sea. Therefore the motive for being a forgiving person is the joy of being freely and joyfully at home with God.   – Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

@ the Resurrection

Q.  What does the resurrection of Christ profit us?

A   First, by His resurrection He has overcome death, that He might make us partakers of the righteousness which He has obtained for us by His death; second, we also are raised up by His power to a new life; and, third, the resurrection of Christ is to us a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection.

   -- The Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day Seventeen, 1563

Sorry, I meant to post this yesterday and got very busy with things here @ church.

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, the Son of God or a Savior!" 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