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Morality and the Priority of the Church by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

December 30, 2009 by ADMIN

But you will see at once that the purpose of all this [Christian morality laws] is simply to set a limit to sin and to the results of sin and wrongdoing. All I have been describing can do nothing more than control sin and keep it within bounds. I think it is obvious that it is an entirely negative work. All of these enactments and all councils and committees concerned with morality, and the Lord’s Day Observance Society, and all these movements, can never make anybody a Christian. It is a very great sin to confuse law and grace.

It is because of this, then, that I go on to say that really these laws and regulations and various other things have nothing to do with Christians as such, and that is why I said earlier on that these things are not primarily the business of the church. That is also why I, as a minister of Christ and as a minister of the church, never speak on any temperance platforms. I have never spoken for any one of these organizations designed to observe the Sabbath, nor have I ever spoken on a morality platform. My reason is that it is the business of the church to preach the gospel and to show what I would call, with Paul, “a more excellent way.” That is why the church must always be very careful to ensure that nothing she does or says should ever detract from or compromise her message and her gospel.

The church, in other words, must never hide behind the law of the land and she must never try to enforce her message by using the law of the land, for that is to compromise her gospel. It is to make the unbeliever out in the world say, “Ah these people are trying to force this upon us, they are using law in order to get it done.” No, at all costs the church must keep her message pure and clean, and she must take her stand on the purity of the gospel nd upon that alone.

D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Sanctified through the Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), pp. 14-15.

Posted in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Reforming Reflections |

Puritans and the Modern Church by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

December 30, 2009 by ADMIN

Is the Christian church adaptable? As I see it, the tragedy is that we still seem to be clinging to the forms and the methods of the Victorians. Nothing is more extraordinary than to see men who have forsaken the Gospel long ago still clinging to the methods and the forms and ceremonial of the Victorians. It is not surprising that people no longer attend churches. The people who have forgotten the gospel cling to the old forms and methods; and the world scoffs. The whole thing is ridiculed. And, indeed, we have no right to complain of the ridicule.

I do not want to be unfair, so let me balance my statement. We are not going to fight this modern battle successfully by repeating the sermons of the Puritans verbatim, or adopted their classifications and sub-divisions, and their manner of preaching. That would be futile. We must learn to hold onto the old principles but we must apply them, and use them, in a manner that is up-to-date.

Forgive a personal reference. I am going to do what the Apostle did in the 11th chapter of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. I am going to be a fool, and to say something about myself. I remember how, in the very first year when I began to preach, I was preaching in a service with an old preacher who was over eighty years of age. Having listened to my feeble effort, and having heard me for the first time, the old man made this comment which encouraged me greatly. He said, “Though you are a young man, you are preaching the old truths I have been trying to preach all my life.” He went on, “You are preaching the old truths, but you have put a very modern suit on them.”

That is what I am trying to say. We need the old truths in a modern suit. You must not clothe them in the old staid terminology or manner or method that was appropriate in the past. The moment we become slaves to any system–I do not care how good it was in its age and generation–we all are already defeated, because we have missed this whole principle of adaptability. So we do not need gramophone records, not even of the Puritans! We need the truth that was preached by the Puritans, but preached in a manner that will show its relevance, its adaptability to the most urgent modern situation. God forbid that our methods should deny the very message we are trying to preach, either by imitating the latest methods of worldly entertainment or by methods that are so archaic as to make our message irrelevant.

D. M. Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), pp. 290-91.

Posted in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Reforming Reflections |

Every Christian is a Theologian by R. C. Sproul

December 30, 2009 by ADMIN

Every Christian is theologian. We are always engaged in the activity of learning about the things of God. We are not all theologians in the professional or academic sense, but theologians we are, for better or for worse. The “for worse” is no small matter. Second Peter warns that heresies are destructive to the people of God and are blasphemies committed against God. They are destructive because the theology touches every dimension of our lives.

The Bible declares that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. This declaration sounds strange. It is almost as if the biblical writer blunders. He seems to confuse the mind and the heart. We normally associate thought with the brain and feelings with the heart. So what does it mean to say a man thinks in his heart? The phrase to think in the heart refers to thoughtful reflection. Many ideas are briefly entertained by the mind without ever penetrating the heart. Those ideas that do grasp us in our innermost parts, however, are the ideas that shape our lives. We are what we think. When our thoughts are corrupted, our lives follow suit.

We all know that people can recite the creeds flawlessly and make A’s in theology courses while living godless lives. We can affirm a sound theology and live an unsound life. Sound theology is not enough to live a godly life. But it is still a requisite for godly living. How can we do the truth without first understanding what the truth is?

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, do we want to have a theology? That’s a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology? Do we embrace true or false doctrine?

R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Wheaton,IL: Tyndale, 1992), vii.

Posted in R. C. Sproul, Reforming Reflections | 1 Comment »

How to Attract a Congregation by C. H. Spurgeon

December 30, 2009 by ADMIN

I believe that the best, surest, and most permanent way to fill a place of worship is to preach the gospel, and to preach it in a natural, simple, interesting, earnest way. The gospel itself has a singularly fascinating power about it, and unless impeded by an unworthy delivery, or by some other great evil, it will win its own way. It certainly did so at the first, and what is to hinder it now? Like the angels, it flew upon its own wings; like the dew, it tarried not for man, neither waited for the sons of men. The Lord gave the word; great was the company of them that published it; their line went forth throughout all the world, and the nations heard the glad tidings from heaven.

The gospel has a secret charm about it which secures a hearing: it casts its good spell over human ears, and they must hearken. It is God’s own word to men; it is precisely what human necessities require; it commends itself to man’s conscience, and, sent home by the Holy Spirit, it wakes an echo in every heart.

In every age, the faithful preaching of the good news has brought forth hosts of men to hear it, made willing in the day of God’s power. I shall need a vast amount of evidence before I shall come to the conclusion that its old power is gone. My own experience does not drive me to such a belief, but leads me in the opposite direction. Thirty years of crowded houses leave me confident of the attractions of divine truth: I see nothing as yet to make me doubt its sufficiency for its own propagation. Shorn of its graciousness, robbed of its certainty, spoiled of its peculiarities, the sacred word may become unattractive; but decked in the glories of free and sovereign grace, wearing the crown-royal of the covenant, and the purple of atonement, the gospel, like a queen, is still glorious for beauty, supreme over hearts and minds. Published in all its fulness, with a clear statement of its efficacy and immutability, it is still the most acceptable news that ever reached the ears of mortals. You shall not in my most despondent moments convince me that our Lord was mistaken when he said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself.”

From The Sword and the Trowel (August, 1883)

Posted in C. H. Spurgeon, Reforming Reflections |

Regarding Prayer before Football Games by Jim Ehrhard

December 30, 2009 by ADMIN

Regarding Prayer before Football Games by Jim Ehrhard

An Honest, Biblical Response

This past year, the Supreme Court banned prayer before High School football games.  Many Christians have spoken in very pious terms about this action, calling it an evidence of persecution of Christians and advocating that Christians stand up for their rights by praying the Lord’s Prayer immediately after the National Anthem.  Christian radio stations tout such an approach as a way to “obey God rather than obeying man.  Such approaches are wrong theologically and historically.  However, the issue is emotionally charged.  Every time I mention this, I am accused of not being willing to stand for my Lord and of not being an evangelical Christian who cares about the gospel.  But we must be biblical in our responses, not cultural.  Some of the greatest mistakes made by the evangelical church historically have been when we have confused cultural values with biblical commands.  Please consider the following:

  1. The Bible never mentions praying before football games (or any other sporting event).  When we stand for Christ (obeying God rather than obey men), we must make sure that we are doing something that God has indeed commanded.  To pray before a football game is never commanded (though it may be permitted).
  2. We need to be logical rather than emotional.  While prayer at football games has been traditional, prayer at basketball games, baseball games, track meets, etc. has not.  Why is football so important to merit public prayer before games and other sports not?  What upsets many here is not the violation of a biblical principle (that God tells us to pray before sporting events), but the violation of a tradition that has little to nothing to do with true spirituality.  Most of the prayers prayed at football games are not spiritual but ceremonial, and often led by ministers who have nothing to do with the gospel.  This should concern us more than the Supreme Court’s decision to ban such prayers.
  3. To call this ban “persecution” is to minimize the sufferings of those who are truly persecuted for the preaching of the gospel.  It is to make prayer before football games as important as the preaching of the gospel.  First century Christians would be shocked to hear us call this persecution.  They were not permitted to meet together for services or to tell neighbors about the gospel—they would have thought it laughable if the Roman government had decided to rule against prayer before the games in the coliseum.  Don’t praise God for those who “stand up for the Lord in the face of persecution” by chanting a rote prayer before a football game.  It’s not even in the same league, so to speak.
  4. Furthermore, we should question the praying of a prayer that Jesus never told us to pray (The Lord’s Prayer).  He told His disciples to “pray after this manner.”  In the history of the Christian Church, those who used the Lord’s Prayer in such a rote fashion were the ones who most frequently persecuted the evangelical church.  Even today, the most liberal of churches pray the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday and we would not consider their ritual action to have anything to do with true prayer.  We must be careful about joining in such actions that have no biblical basis.
  5. Finally, we are commanded to honor our government and obey its laws unless those laws clearly contradict a command of God.  If the issue were preventing the gospel from being shared (as it was in Acts 4), then we should be willing, not only to go to jail for sharing the gospel, but even be willing to go to our death.  In this case, however, we do not have such an issue.  Instead, we are demonstrating to the world a rebellious spirit that does not witness for the Lord at all.  Consider the opposite.  What if the government had ruled that no Moslem prayers could be prayed, and following the national anthem, groups of Moslems stood up and defiantly chanted their prayers to “demonstrate their freedom” to obey God—would we praise such actions?  Not at all.  Christians everywhere would be offended and would call such actions rebellious (and probably demand that school authorities remove the Moslems from our games).  This is why we must be certain that our actions really do “obey” God rather that satisfy our cultural or traditional desires.

I normally do not respond to such issues but this is a serious one that is emotionally charged (I think because in many cities, football is almost as sacred as Christianity).  As believers, we need to make certain that we do stand for the Lord—where He has required—and not waste our energy and destroy our witness on issues that have nothing to do with the gospel.

I hope you will read this with understanding and search the Scriptures to see if these things are true.

Jim Ehrhard, Teaching Resources International

Posted in Jim Ehrhard, Reforming Reflections |

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