Dust on the Throne

Because of the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ, the dust of earth now sits on the throne of heaven.  
 — Philip Graham Ryken

Luke 24:36-51 (ESV):
As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, "Peace to you!" But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.

Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.

Rock --- not the Sea

Believe God's Word and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your Rock is Christ, and it is not the Rock which ebbs and flows, but your sea.
    - Samuel Rutherford

Quote of the Week - John Newton

When I hear a knock at my study door, 
        I hear a message from God.

It may be a lesson of instruction;
perhaps a lesson of patience:

but, since it is his message, it must be interesting.”
               
               —John Newton

Good Literature?

 

If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today. You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of good literature.

       
            -Mahatma Gandhi

Quote of the Week - Martin Luther

Someone asked Martin Luther what we contribute to salvation, and he said, "Sin and resistance!"

-Michael Horton, in a Christianity Today interview by Mark Galli

Quote of the Week - Os Guinness

"We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself."

Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life

Quote of the Week

The occupational hazard of liberal Christians is to leave open questions the Bible closes, and of conservative Christians to close questions the Bible leaves open. 


      -   Clark Pinnock

Sabbath Rest

"Our activity can promise us everything and make us forget God. Therefore God commands us to rest from our work. It is not work that supports us but God alone; we live not from work, but from God alone.... The Sabbath rest is the visible sign that human beings live by the grace of God and not by works.       --Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Gospel in Four Words

"'Come unto me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you.’ You say, ‘Lord, I cannot give you anything.’ He does not want anything. Come to Jesus, and he says, ‘I will give you.’ Not what you give to God, but what he gives to you, will be your salvation. ‘I will give you‘ — that is the gospel in four words.

Will you come and have it? It lies open before you.”

- C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament

Quote of the week - C.S. Lewis (Mere Fleabites)

Quote by C.S. Lewis:

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Quote of the Week - Spurgeon

“The glory of salvation is that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus is completely pardoned. It is not some of his sin that is put away, but all of it. I rejoice to look upon it ...

We are plunged into the fountain of redeeming blood and cleansed from every fear of ever being found guilty before the living God. We are accepted in the Beloved through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, justified once for all and forever before the Father’s face! Christ said, ‘It is finished,’ and finished it is. And Oh, what a bliss is this — one of the things that may well stagger those who have never heard it before. But let them not reject it because it staggers them but rather let them say, ‘This wonderful system which saves and saves completely, in an instant, simply by looking out of self to Christ, is a system worthy of divine wisdom, for it magnifies the grace of God and meets man’s deepest necessities.’”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), I:451-45

Our response to Satan’s accusations

I like this new blog called "Of First Importance" that is compiled by Josh Etter, Fred Eaton and Bart Byl.

Our response to Satan’s accusations

“Satan accuses Christians day and night. It is not just that he will work on our conscience to make us feel as dirty, guilty, defeated, destroyed, weak, and ugly as he possibly can; it is something worse: his entire play in the past is to accuse us before God day and night, bringing charges against us that we know we can never answer before the majesty of God’s holiness.

What can we say in response? Will our defense be, ‘Oh, I’m not that bad?’ You will never beat Satan that way. Never. What you must say is, ‘Satan, I’m even worse than you think, but God loves me anyway. He has accepted me because of the blood of the Lamb.”

—D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 98-99

Worry is a Sin? (Again)

Good Quote from Thabiti Anyabwile

We obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.

We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that’s all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a characterstic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.

Kevin DeYoung in Just Do Something (pp. 47, 48)

Quote of the Week- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Quote of the week - C.S. Lewis

Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.

- C.S. Lewis