False Christian teachings, trends….
Sowing and reaping is a thoroughly biblical concept which I have often liked to forget about. However, to forget about it is to put your soul in grave danger. Pastor Caldwell presents the idea of sowing and reaping in a clear and memorable way as he preaches through Hosea 10: 11-15. My last post was on Pastor Caldwell’s sermon on repentance; well, knowing the ideas in this post will likely motivate you to desire repentance, and help you move in that direction.
Well, as you are well aware if you have been with us throughout most of this study of Hosea, most of the message of Hosea is a message of judgment. It is a message of warning. It is the Lord through the prophet bringing his people face to face with their sins and the Lord calling upon them to recognize the gravity of their sins and the truly destructive nature of their sins. This is the main message of Hosea. And yet what we cannot miss in the book, what is unmistakable, what appears interspersed all throughout the book is also the certain knowledge of God’s love, God’s amazing patience, his grace, his mercy, because throughout the book you have the Lord calling these people to repent. Don’t just recognize that you have sinned. Don’t just recognize where it all leads, but recognize it so that you are rescued from it. Turn from it. Turn to the living God. Receive his forgiveness and submit your life to him. Obey him. That is the purpose of the book. That is the goal of the book. [opening lines of the sermon copied from PDF]
This post contains comments from Albert Barnes and John Calvin on Philippians 3:10 – “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” It opens with that verse from 5 different Bible translations, as it is good to look to different translations when one is seeking understanding of a given verse; those readers who did not know that see the benefit of doing so.
This post uses the commentary of Albert Barnes to consider Philippians 3:9 “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” This topic is foundational to the Christian life, Romans and Galatians are about it. From my own struggles, and writing about the false teachings that pervade the 21st century church, I am certain that most Christians do not understand this doctrine sufficiently well, such that they are certainly relying only on the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. If you cannot say with certainty that you do, then take a few moments and get some helpful insight.
The two verses considered in this post are important to understand for encouragement and motivation. I believe that and have been reading through Philippians recently for help on the battle front of my own personal spiritual warfare. If you’re flagging in your own spiritual warfare, his words may also be of help to you.
In the 27-minute Mp3 sermon of this post, Pastor Ramsey discusses Pentecost in terms of all the other one-time, unrepeatable events that preceded it; that is, it is the fulfillment of Old Testament promises and prophecies. In the process, he helps listeners see links between Old Testament prophecies and New Testament events. These are explained mostly via events and teaching from the book of Acts. [Highlights points of sermon are provided for those who would rather read]
This post contains 3 videos: a video short, a 17-minute excerpt of the full sermon from which the short came; and the full-length sermon. The Puritan Christopher Love addressed the matter of the Holy Spirit’s work in sanctifying the believer. He focused on two aspects: what the Spirit does to dissuade a believer from sinning; and what the Spirit does to sanctify the believer after he has sinned. Every Christian needs to understand this matter as well as possible such that he/she is receptive to the Spirit’s workings. Highlights are provided for the 17-minute excerpt; a link to some posts in this blog about Jonathan Edwards addressing these matters, but Edwards was not as thorough as Love.
Excerpts from chapter 11 of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion were used to show the unity between the Old and New Testaments. This is part 10 of 10; the preceding posts were very succinctly restated herein. During this series, it was shown that there was only ever ONE people of God; that theories like Dispensationalism are in error…. The big point being, that the God of the Bible unfolded His plan of redemption across the entire face of the Bible: the Old and New Testaments are intimately connected. All those Christians who say the Old Testament was about law and the New about grace, err: since the fall, it was always about grace.
This post contains a video short and a full reading from chapter three, Few Saved. The reading is from J C Ryle’s book, Old Paths. He is thoroughly biblical. Modern evangelicalism, since the late 1800’s has been corrupted by many false movements. [For more on them see a link from this blog to page 11 of the category, Gospel Message. there are several examples of false systems.]
John Gerstner was the mentor of the late R C Sproul, in case you’ve never heard of him. I excerpted a 7-minute, 35-second portion from one of Gerstner’s teaching videos on the WCF. He was reading and explaining the chapters 6-8. Therein, he made a statement that the Westminster Divines would have opposed ‘modern Dispensationalism.’ He went on to explain that salvation, since the fall, has only been by God’s grace through Christ’s atoning work, noting that this biblical view is not held by Dispensationalists.