Month: April 2012

What is man’s primary purpose?

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

At church last night we began looking at the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a series of questions with answers focusing on the Christian faith which were completed in 1647.

If you want to look at / print off the 107 questions of the catechism for yourself you can find the original version here, and if you are really cool you’ll find an updated English version here.

The first question and answer of the catechism is also without doubt the most well know

Question: What is the chief end of man? (What is man’s primary purpose?)

Answer: Man’s primary purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  

And as John Piper has helpfully stated,

New Songs for Saplings

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

Just bought the recently released Questions with Answers Vol. 4: The Word of God, CD by Dana Dirksen for our kids.  We’ve already got the other 3 volumes as I mentioned here and parents will really enjoy these Bible based songs as much as the younger members of the family.

Click on the link below to listen to a sample and then why not click here to order and download the album yourself for less than six quid.

Spurgeon on how many will be saved

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

In his commentary on Revelation 7:9, David Chilton quotes Spurgeon’s exhortation to a gathering of missionaries with these words on whether there are many or few that will finally know God’s great salvation.

“I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished; but I expect the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world.”

Will you be my Facebook friend?

/ David Thomas / 3 Comments

Over 700 billion minutes are spent each month on Facebook.

Tim Chester has some wise thoughts on Facebook, the good, the bad and the potentially dangerous here and here.

Below are some of the warning signs that Facebook (and twitter, blogs ….) might have a control on us they ought not to:

  • Do you check your Facebook page more than once or twice a day?
  • Do you spend more than 20 minutes a day on Facebook?
  • Do you find it difficult to imagine a day without technology?
  • Have you ever read a text or gone online during our gathering?
  • Have you stayed up beyond your normal bedtime because you were on Facebook or playing online games?
  • Do you use your mobile phone during meals or keep it in the bedroom?

 

Nothing less than a saved world

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

“You must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly by while the world, which He has created for Himself, hurtles hopelessly to destruction, and He is able only to snatch with difficulty here and there a brand from the universal burning. The world does not govern Him in a single one of  its acts: He governs it and leads it steadily onward to the end which, from the beginning, or ever a beam of it had been laid, He had determined for it. . . . Through all the years one increasing purpose runs, one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become ever more and more the Kingdom of our God and His Christ. The process may be slow; the progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag. But it is God who is building: and under His hands the structure rises as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone shall be set into its place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved world.” 

Benjamin B. Warfield, from a sermon on John 3:16 entitled “God’s Immeasurable Love” 

More visual theology

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

Tim Challies has been busy again producing  more helpful charts, this time to aid us think more clearly about Our Triune God, and The Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle graphic should be useful as a reference when reading Exodus and Leviticus, but it’s the graphic on the Trinity that’s perhaps most helpful.

Many Christians find the Bible’s teaching on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit hard to grasp and it’s easy to think that as long as we hold God to be three in some way and one in another way, we can’t go far wrong.  That’s a dangerous path that will get us into all sorts of trouble.

The one true God has revealed himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – one God, three persons, and we must relate to our God according to who he is.  Far from being a theological riddle or a teaching for advanced Christian only, the Trinity underpins everything else  God has revealed about himself and his salvation purposes.

The In a clear way this chart shows us some of the false ideas we can have of God and it should help clarify our thinking of the God whom we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God the just is satisfied

/ David Thomas / Leave a comment

When Satan tempts me to despair, 
And tells me of the guilt within, 
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died, 
My sinful soul is counted free; 
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me

Charitie L. Bancroft, 1863.

These well known words from the hymn, Before the throne of God above, remind us that it is God’s justice that brings comfort to despairing sinners in the shadow of the cross.  Satan may well tempt us to despair with our own unworthiness and the sin that so easily besets even those who have walked along the road of faith for many years.

But Peter tells us of the great transaction that occurred on that first Good Friday.  Why did Christ suffer and die, despised and rejected by men and God?

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24)

Our just God will not, cannot punish sin twice.  If Christ bore my sin then, I have no sin left to bare.  Truly, God the just is satisfied, to look on him and pardon me for my sin has already been answered for.