The attitude of heart with which we come
to our preparation should express
our dependence upon God.
– Alistair Begg in Preaching for God’s Glory
Q&A#9: God’s Creation
Q/A#9
Q: According to God’s Word, how did the world begin?
A: The world began by a direct act of God, who perfectly created all things to reveal his glory.
In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth….
And God saw everything that he had made,
and behold, it was very good.
– Genesis 1:1, 31a (ESV)
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
– Psalm 19:1 (ESV)
For Further Reflection
Read Genesis 1, Hebrews 11:3
Our Response
Enjoy God’s good creation
Praise God for his creation
Passion Points
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
Why You’ll Never Be Free Until You Start Obeying God – Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)
We sometimes define freedom as the ability to do whatever we want to do, but that’s not really how the Bible understands freedom. Freedom is the ability to do what we ought to do—that’s real freedom.
God’s Hidden Purposes in Your Suffering – Leah Baugh (Core Christianity)
God is often working not just for our good but for the good of others through us. Sometimes in our American context, we can get a little wrapped up in our own little world. We can think that our suffering is just all about us and God, that God is only doing something in my life. But as Dr. Ferguson also points out in his sermon, the truth is that God is always working in multiple lives and in multiple ways all at once.
How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing – Tim Challies
The great work God is accomplishing in this world is catching people for himself. He’s saving them by his grace and for his glory. What’s amazing is that he uses people like you and me to help accomplish that. He saves people through the good news of the gospel and he tells you and me to speak out that news. He calls us to be fishers of men, to catch people alive.
Desperately Seeking Transcendence – Own Strachan
When we gather for the weekly worship service, we gather as those starved for God, and starved for transcendence. We have been swimming all week in the normal, trivial, earthly, ordinary, and natural. We need the abnormal. We need the essential. We need the heavenly. We need the extraordinary. We need what is above nature. We need the supernatural. This is what weekly worship gives us. It does not fundamentally give us a little “touch from the Lord,” as if all we need is a divine pat on the shoulder, a quick grin from a hall-crossing deity. It gives us a brush with God. We hide besides Moses in the cleft of the rock, expectantly and reverently awaiting the passing-by of the radiance of the appearing of God’s glory.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with the Lord!
Preaching Point
A man only preaches a sermon well to others if he has first preached it to himself.
– John Owen
Q&A#8: The Word of God
Q/A#8
Q: What does the Word of God teach us?
A: The Word of God teaches us about God, our purpose, our failure, and our only hope of salvation.
From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
– II Timothy 3:15-16 (ESV)
For Further Reflection
Read Isaiah 40, Matt. 22:37-40, Romans 3:10-25
Our Response
Receive Jesus as your Savior
Read God’s Word and follow it
Passion Points
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
The Spiritual Dangers of Disconnecting from Creation – Scott Martin (TGC)
Creation is not an end in itself, something to be worshiped in place of the Creator. It is rather something that points us—if we are willing to pay attention—to a good, gracious, powerful, extravagant, and loving God. A world that disregards or distances itself from creation is a world that will naturally disregard and distance itself from God.
Quiet and Deep Christianity – Andrew Roycroft (Thinking Pastorally)
Ours is an age of fragmentation, of intellectual hopscotch, of results-oriented activity on the one hand and mindless entertainment on the other. We have demolished the stonewalls and uprooted the hedgerows of our intellectual past in favour of speed, convenience, and leisure; the mass production of information on which to gorge ourselves, without a thought for the mental and emotional habitats which have been destroyed in the process. Sooner or later we will have accommodated these changes to such a degree that we won’t even know to feel regret, and by the time my young children reach adulthood the concepts of silence, stillness, meditation, deep reading, and unbroken thought will be so far back in our history that they may scarcely seem real…. A huge, and largely unaddressed, issue is what kind of effect will this tempo and tone have on the life and work of the local church?
An Open Letter to the Timid Evangelist – Brian Hedges (Crossway)
In diagnosing our evangelistic disorders, it helps to remember that effective personal evangelism depends on the convergence of multiple factors including opportunity, character, and skill. Here are a few thoughts about each.
We Don’t Sing for Fun – Tim Challies
One of the trends that has swept our society through the past decades is the “funification” of pretty much everything….Yet singing is not prescribed for Christian worship for the purpose of fun. It actually serves a far higher purpose…
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!
Confession
We all need to confess, and we need to do it every day…. No one is so bad that he or she is beyond forgiveness…. No one is so good that only one or two confessions a year will do.
– Edward Welch in Side by Side
Preaching Point
Gladness and gravity should be woven together in the life and preaching of a pastor in such a way as to sober the careless soul and sweeten the burdens of the saints.
– John Piper in The Supremacy of God in Preaching
Book Collection
This is a bit late, but here are the top five books I read in 2018, followed by links to other best books of 2018 posts. You are bound to find some good suggestions.
My Top Five Books
1. Faithfulness and Holiness – J. I. Packer & J. C. Ryle
2. How Should We Develop Biblical Friendship – Michael Haykin & Joel Beeke
3. Reset – David Murray
4. The Rest of God – Mark Buchanan
5. The Art of Rest – Adam Mabry
Other Lists
Tim Challies (includes lists from several bloggers)
Happy reading!
Preaching Point
The goal of preaching is the glory of God in the glad submission of his people.
– John Piper in The Supremacy of God in Preaching
Brian J. Mikul 