the gate

Have you ever heard anybody say we are saved by faith? Do you think we are saved by faith?

Well here’s what the great Princeton theologian, B. B. Warfield, says:

Our faith itself, though it be the bond of our union with Christ through which we receive all His blessings, is not our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord. Nothing that we are and nothing that we can do enters in the slightest measure into the ground of our acceptance with God. Jesus did it all.
- from The Power of God Unto Salvation, 1903, p. 49

The saving power of faith resides thus not in itself, but in the Almighty Savior on whom it rests…. It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ…. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith, or the nature of faith, but in the object of faith…. We could not more radically misconceive it than by transferring to faith even the smallest fraction of that saving energy which is attributed in the Scriptures wholly to Christ Himself.
- from “The Biblical Doctrine of Faith,” in Biblical Doctrines, 1981, pp. 502-504

Am I just splitting hairs? Does it really matter? Oh, you better believe it does! To borrow from the apostle Paul, if you are trusting in your faith to save you, you are still dead in your sins, your faith is worthless, and you are of all people the most to be pitied. We are saved by Jesus — not by faith. It’s not just the Word of Faith and prosperity preachers and their adherents that need to know this; it seems that many people in churches everywhere — even the best ones — are trusting in their faith, and not in Jesus.

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As many of you know, Lee and Lucy Robertson (and yes, Twila and Noel too) will be moving to Rolla, MO, where Lucy will be working for My Father’s World, a company that publishes curriculum for Homeschool and Christian schools. Check out the link to learn more about them.

As they explain under the Missions tab, My Father’s World was started to help fund Bible translation. I’ve had many conversations with people across the years about starting businesses for the purpose of funding Kingdom endeavors and activities (not just so people can afford to give more, but where the profits of the business are for mission). It’s great to now know about someone else with such a focus, and to know that’s the kind of thinking that brought Lee and Lucy to this chapter of their lives. One of our core values at Gateway is a Global Heartbeat. Lee and Lucy were part of the original team that started Gateway, and played a vital role in helping to hammer out our core values. Across the years, I’ve seen this value lived out in their lives in so many ways (including their whole family going with us to India last year).

The founders of My Father’s World started God’s Word For The Nations to help make God’s Word available in the heart language of all people. (You can see some of their current projects by clicking that link. If you didn’t already click the missions tab link above, you can do that now, right here.) I encourage you to check out some of the wonderful work they are doing.

Lee and Lucy, thank you for sharing your love for Jesus and your love for people all these years with a community called Gateway. Thank you for living out our core values in real ways day-by-day and year-by-year. Thank you even now for doing that which is costly and uncomfortable, in many ways, because of your Global Heartbeat. The power of your example of love and obedience challenges us all, and is for us a bittersweet experience. It is sorrowful to see you go, while at the same time encouraging, joyous, and refreshing. There is a sense in which this is what it is all about. It’s not just talking about it, it is living it. In some ways, your going can be compared to raising children only to see them grow up and move out on their own — that’s what you want; you know it’s coming; but when it happens, it is bittersweet (trust me, I know).

Thank you for doing so many, many things the right way all these years, and now again, as you take the next step in life following Jesus. We bid you Godspeed.

[If you want to give some love to the Robertsons, or say thank you, please do so in a comment.]

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last night at house church, we read and discussed 1 john chapter 3 together.  read it for yourself…right now.

seriously, i’m waiting.

you too, we’re all waiting on you…

** whistles awkwardly **

ok, now we can continue.  do you realize that now that you’ve read God’s word, you are expected to act on it?  as steve put it a few weeks ago, God may or may not use His people to speak His word, but when we read the Scripture, we know with absolute certainty that God is speaking to us.  and since God did not mean for His word to be studied to death and never acted upon, we can conclude easily that now that you have read 1 john chapter 3, God expects you to do something about it.

penny put it very well at the end of our study, that if we do not commit ourselves to live this, then we have missed the point.  this is what separates the hearers from the doers.

my commitment was to love G by modifying the way i read the Bible.  i read the Bible by myself most of the time….that’s just the way i like to do it.  i read my Bible over lunch at work or jump on the Internet most of the time.  but G will never gain a value for reading the Bible if he never sees me doing it.  so i am going to change things up so that he can see me. 

others talked specifically about reaching out to coworkers and praying for people more consistently (among other things).  we committed ourselves to love in specific ways as a community and as individuals.

this passage talks about laying down our lives for the brethren.  as we grow in community with our brethren, we both learn others needs and expose our own.  then we can serve and love one another.

how will you commit to living love this week?  BTW, that was not rhetorical.

talk amongst yourselves…

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The late Walter Martin, who equiped the church on how to deal with cults and false teachers, would say, “When you see the exit sign run, don’t walk to it.”

Well if you see someone like this guy behind your pulpit on Sunday or any other time, you would do well to heed Walter Martin’s words.

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So not everyone in your church is perfect? You don’t agree with everything someone in your church says or does? Then rejoice, because you now have a prime opportunity to learn what Christian love is. Here’s how Pastor Mark Dever explains it.

Through Christ, then, being reconciled to God means being reconciled to everyone else who is reconciled to God.

[…]

We demonstrate to the world that we have been changed, not primarily because we memorize Bible verses, pray before meals, tithe a portion of our income, and listen to Christian radio stations, but because we increasingly show a willingness to put up with, to forgive, and even to love a bunch of fellow sinners.*

You and I cannot demonstrate love or joy or peace or patience or kindness sitting all by ourselves on an island. No, we demonstrate it when the people we have committed to loving give us good reasons not to love them, but we do anyway.

Do you see it? It’s right there—right in the midst of a group of sinners who have committed to loving one another—that the gospel is displayed. The church gives a visual presentation of the gospel when we forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us, when we commit to one another as Christ has committed to us, and when we lay down our lives for one another as Christ laid down his life for us.*

Together we can display the gospel of Jesus Christ in a way we just can’t by ourselves.

[…]

If your goal is to love all Christians, let me suggest working toward it by first committing to a concrete group of real Christians with all their foibles and follies. Commit to them through thick and thin for eighty years.* Then come back and we’ll talk about your progress in loving all Christians everywhere.

*emphasis mine

excerpted from What Is a Healthy Church?, Pastor Mark Dever, pp 24,28,29,30

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recently at our house church, we read about the antichrists.  all of you that know me know that i am not quick to drop “heretic” post-it’s on people’s foreheads.  but i thought you guys should all see this for yourselves.  it’s pretty heavy, and in my opinion, exactly what the Scripture is talking about.

matthew 7:15 - “beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

authors note: i know it gets a little cheesy near the end with the epic soundtrack , but the show clips are the clearest of the youtube videos out there.

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I got this from a Journal I get online. I think it is good for fathers to realize how important they are to their children. Hope this motivates us to continue to be there for our children and/or encourages us to step up to the plate and do what we ought. Hope you enjoy.

Top Ten Father Facts — National Fatherhood Initiative
The National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) was founded in 1994, by former White House advisor and civil society scholar Don Eberly and child psychologist Wade Horn. The mission of the organization is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, and committed fathersNFI’s Father Facts (4th edition) is a comprehensive review of research on fatherhood and family trends. Here are NFI’s “top ten father facts” showing that children suffer greatly from the absence of their biological fathers.¹

1. 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.
2. Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
3. 1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.
4. 43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.
5. Over 3.3 million children live with an unmarried parent and the parent’s cohabiting partner. The number of cohabiting couples with children has nearly doubled since 1990, from 891,000 to 1.7 million today [c. 2000].
6. Fathers who live with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring relationship with their children than those who do not. The best predictor of father presence is marital status. Compared to children born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a father-absent home.
7. About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.
8. Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
9. From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled, from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined. However, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable.
10. Children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.²
    

    Footnotes:

    1	See also Kairos Journal article, (2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14-15) — Timothy and the Single-Parent Home
    2	Wade F. Horn, “Top Ten Father Facts,” National Fatherhood Initiative Website (2002), http://www.fatherhood.org/fatherfacts_t10.asp (accessed February 7, 2006).

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in the paper this morning is a story about a 4 year old that drowned in a bathtub last night in south pasadena.  it reminded me a bit about when our friend found his son floating face down in a pool days before leaving for the mission field.  those were questioning days for them.  is the Lord telling them they should stay?  is the devil resisting them because they must go?  the boy made a miraculous recovery and they went, and they have done much to further the Gospel in that country.

last weekend, i was almost in tears as i read this (from phillip yancey’s book “Prayer”):

Charles Edward White, a college professor in the state of Michigan…listened to these and other accounts of missionaries who had come to Nigeria in full awareness of the dangers, and of their children who had no such choice and succumbed to those dangers.  He imagined the sorrow of the households that no longer heard the happy cries of a three-year old, that lost a first grader just as she was learning to read.

The graveyard at Miango tells us something about God and about his grace.  It testifies that God is not a jolly grandfather who satisfies our every desire.  Certainly those parents wanted their children to live.  They pled with God, but He denied their request.

The graves also show us that God is not a calculating merchant who withholds his goods until we produce enough good works or faith to buy his help.  If anyone had earned credit with God, it would have been these missionaries.  They left all to spread the gospel in a hostile environment.  But God does not hand out merit pay.

Not only do we learn about God’s nature from the Miango graveyard, but we also discover truths about His grace. God’s grace may be free, but it is not cheap.  Neither purchasing our salvation nor letting us know of the gift was inexpensive.

Beginning with Abel, many of the witnesses to divine grace sealed their words with their blood.  Jesus asked the Jews which of the prophets was not persecuted?  When he first sent out his disciples, he promised them betrayal and death.  Then, at the end of his ministry, he promised his followers that as they carried his word, they would face trouble and hatred.

“The only way we can understand the graveyard at Miango,” White concluded, “is to remember that God also buried his Son on the mission field.”

For a missionary couple who stand beside a mound of earth in the garden in Nigeria, no logical explanation of unanswered prayer will suffice.  They must place their faith in a God who has yet to fulfill the promise that good will overcome evil, that God’s good purpose will, in the end, prevail.  To cling to that belief may represent the ultimate rationalization - or the ultimate act of faith.

as the days draw nearer to fostering, i think of more and more reasons to bail on it.  and i’m not talking about the easy excuses like comfort and such.  they are mostly thoughts about how this may affect my son.  am i doing the right thing by putting him in harms way?  people always ask me if i’m prepared for the heartache of a foster child returning to their family.  but what about G?  he will hurt too and he can’t reason it out.  even worse, it’s not not even his choice.  i am choosing his life and his pain for him.  in all honesty, my stomach is in butterflies even now.

but how do i teach my son to love people and to sacrifice without modeling that myself?  how do i teach him that others are more important if i don’t lead the way?

my prayer is that God will use these experiences to make Christianity real to him.  my prayer is that G’s connection with God will not be theoretical philanthropist mumbo-jumbo.  i want him to meet God in full and experience all the highs and lows of knowing the One that lived them too.  Jesus walked through the valley of the shadow of death and He feared no evil.

i am not advocating placing your children in harm per se.  but in this world of evil, choosing good has its inherent dangers.  as parents, we cannot let that stop us.  remember when tolstoy said “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”?  we impede the movement of the Gospel when we cower in a corner afraid of the “what if’s”.

i fear G growing up with no real understanding of living out the Truth more than i fear any potential scars.  i fear him looking at me as an adult and telling me to my face that he reads the Bible and sees something different in there than he saw in our home.  mostly, i fear him becoming a kid who knows more about the Bible than about living it.

parents, lead the way.  don’t punk out and let the devil have his victory.  in your homes “preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.”

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Pastor Mark Dever was recently asked, “What’s one thing you’ve learned after years of reading the Bible about how to read the Bible well?” Here’s his wise advice.

That it’s more important that I keep doing it than what I get out of it at any particular time.

A lot of young Christians will have an exciting quiet time on Monday and a really exciting one on Tuesday and an awesome one on Wednesday but then something happens on Thursday and they actually don’t even do it and Friday they do it and they feel guilty and it isn’t that good and Saturday they do it but it’s late and they were discouraged…and then they just get discouraged because they’re not always having a super experience. That’s where I would look at them and say, “Just keep going. Aim at obedience in a long direction, set in a pattern for decades. If you just keep going you’ll gain so much by consistency and faithfulness that there’s no way you can gain just by sudden experience.”

So, just keep reading — that’s the most important thing. If you miss a day, or a few days, don’t beat yourself up, and don’t give up. If you need a plan for reading, click here or here.

source: Mark Dever on Personal Bible Reading
for more from Mark Dever, check out Capitol Hill Baptist Church and 9 Marks Ministry

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Satan aims to cultivate disunity in the body of Christ so that the grand evidence for Christ’s divine reality is shattered. Proverbs 15:18 says, “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.” Short tempers and long grudges breed strife and disunity in the church. But in John 17:23 Jesus said that unity in the church is a great evidence to the world of his reality. So if Satan can preserve and deepen grudges among God’s people, he will have achieved a great goal—the hiding of Christ’s reality from the world.

source: Satan Seeks a Gap Called Grudge, by John Piper

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