Bridges, Jerry. The Gospel for Real Life.
Carson, D. A. The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians.
Mahaney, C. J. The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing.
——. Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing.
Spurgeon, Charles H. Twelve Sermons on the Passion and Death of Christ.
While the introverts love the discipline of solitude and the extroverts struggle with it, the opposite is true with the discipline of fellowship. Fellowship is living life together with Christian brothers and sisters as the church. The first thing the Bible says is “not good” is for us to be alone. This is because even God exists as the Trinitarian community of Father, Son, and Spirit. We are made in His image and likeness and are therefore made for loving community. God intends for us to have fellowship together as His people.
In addition to regularly taking times of solitude, we also see in Scripture that Jesus spent considerable amounts of time in community with others. In fact, Jesus spent most of His time in community with His disciples and frequently had dinner in the homes of the people He was befriending. Jesus seemed to have particularly close fellowship with the youngest disciple, John (John 13:23), the sisters Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus, whom He loved very much (John 11:5).
Mark 12:33 “To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
John 13:34–35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Romans 12:10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Hebrews 10:25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
–Luke 5:16
As we study the spiritual disciplines, we learn that there are two sides to every discipline. On one hand, there is a contemplative practice, and on the other, there is a corresponding active practice. A healthy relationship with God involves both being and doing.
Subsequently, anyone who practices one aspect of a spiritual discipline without the other becomes increasingly immature and imbalanced in their walk with Jesus.
In the next series of posts we will examine the importance of both solitude and fellowship. Speaking of this in his wonderful book, Life Together, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was murdered by the Nazis) wrote:
“Only in fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to be rightly in fellowship.”
It seems that perhaps nothing would be a more memorable, life-enriching, and memory-making Christmas gift than a trip to Greece and Israel, where Jesus walked and the Scriptures were written.
One of the first things my wife, Grace, told me when we met in 1988 was that she wanted to visit Greece and Israel one day. From August 24 to September 3, 2009, her dream will come true.
I will be leading a tour of Greece and Israel and my lovely wife will be with me, and you are invited to join us. People from Mars Hill Church where I pastor, along with other people from around the world, have already signed up and we'd love to have you join us. For more information and registration, you can visit www.ujtours.com.
We are going to great lengths to ensure that this trip will be memorable. So, if you would like to be baptized, other pastors and I will be glad to baptize you. We are considering either the Jordan River or the Sea of Galilee as our baptismal site. During the trip I will also be teaching at these various sites along the way:
Greece Teaching
Holy Land Teaching
Other sites scheduled for the trip include Athens, Jaffa, Caesarea, Capernaum, Beit Shean, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Qumran, Ein Gedi, Masada, Dead Sea, Holy of Holies, Western Wall (Wailing Wall), Jordan River, and Nazareth. My wife has waited twenty years for this trip, and we'd encourage you to join us for a most memorable trip.
Hengel, Martin. The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament.
McGrath, Alister E. Luther’s Theology of the Cross.
Moltmann, Jurgen. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology.
Shaw, Ian J., and Brian H. Edwards. The Divine Substitute: The Atonement in the
Bible and History.
Tomlin, Graham. The Power of the Cross: Theology and the Death of Christ in Paul, Luther, and Pascal.
Carson, D. A., ed. Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World
Carson, D. A., Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds. Justification and Variegated Nomism.
Forde, Gerhard O. Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life.
Johnson, Gary L. W., and Guy Waters, eds. By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification.
Piper, John. Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness?
——. The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright.
Seifrid, Mark. Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification.
Sproul, R. C. Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification.
Stuhlmacher, Peter. Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective.
Vickers, Brian. Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Imputation.
If you look at porn, have looked at porn, or know someone that looks at porn—download this book, print it out, and read it.
This book is now available to download and print as many copies as you like. It's short and should be cheap to print. We'll be making the book available for purchase soon.
If you’ve missed any of the Peasant Princess sermon series, in which we’ve walked through the Song of Songs, I hope it was not last Sunday. Why? Because we covered the most erotic, passionate, and debated section of the entire book, and possibly the entire Bible.
If you subscribe to the sermon feed this week, you can learn what the Dance of Mahanaim is, why a husband greatly enjoys seeing his wife perform it, and whether or not Song of Songs 7 is really talking about her belly button or something more interesting.
Also, at the end of each sermon in the series, my wife, Grace, and I answer questions text messaged to us during the sermon. So, please help us get the word out and the sermon subscriptions up as we labor to replace Christian porn, adultery, and divorce with hot, hetero, covenantal monogamy.
Who knows, you may even help us leapfrog Oprah and Osteen on iTunes for Religion & Spirituality as we just don’t have their marketing budget and can’t seem to overtake them. But if ever there was a week to make a run, this is it.
In my years of pastoral ministry I have worked very hard to not be political. I believe that my job as a pastor is to preach and teach the Bible well so that my people make their decisions, including their voting decisions, out of their faith convictions.
This election season which has dominated the cultural conversation for many months has been particularly insightful regarding the incessant gospel thirst that abides deep in the heart of the men and women who bear God’s image. Without endorsing or maligning either political party or their respective presidential candidates, I am hopeful that a few insights from the recent election season are of help, particularly to younger evangelicals.
First, people are longing for a savior who will atone for their sins. In this election, people thirst for a savior who will atone for their economic sins of buying things they did not need with money they did not have. The result is a mountain of credit debt they cannot pay and a desperate yearning that somehow a new president will save them from economic hell.
Second, people are longing for a king who will keep them safe from terror in his kingdom. In the Old Testament the concept of a peaceable kingdom is marked by the word shalom. In shalom there is not only the absence of sin, war, strife, and suffering but also the presence of love, peace, harmony, and health. And, this thirst for shalom is so parched that every election people cannot help but naively believe that if their candidate simply wins shalom is sure to come despite sin and the curse.
The bottom line is obvious to those with gospel eyes. People are longing for Jesus, and tragically left voting for mere presidential candidates. For those whose candidate wins today there will be some months of groundless euphoric faith in that candidate and the atoning salvation that their kingdom will bring. But, in time, their supporters will see that no matter who wins the presidency, they are mere mortals prone to sin, folly, and self-interest just like all the other sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. To help extend naïve false hope as long as possible, a great enemy will be named and demonized as the one who is hindering all of the progress to atone for our sins and usher in our kingdom. If the Democrats win it will be the rich, and if the Republicans win it will be the terrorists. This diversionary trick is as old as Eve who blamed her sin on Satan rather than repenting. The lie is that it’s always someone else’s fault and we’re always the victim of sinners and never the sinner.
Speaking of repentance, sadly, no matter who wins there will be no call to personal repentance of our own personal sins which contributes to cultural suffering and decline such as our pride, gluttony, covetousness, greed, indebtedness, self-righteousness, perversion, and laziness. And, in four years we’ll do it all again and pretend that this time things will be different. Four years after that, we’ll do it yet again. And, we’ll continue driving around this cul de sac until Jesus returns, sets up his throne, and puts an end to folly once and for all.
In the meantime, I would encourage all preachers to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and repentance of personal sin. He alone can truly atone for our sins. He alone can deliver us from a real hell. He alone is our sinless and great King. And, he alone has a Shalom kingdom to offer.
Lastly, for those preachers who have gotten sidetracked for the cause of a false king and a false kingdom by making too much of the election and too little of Jesus, today is a good day to practice repentance in preparation to preach it on Sunday. Just give it some time. The thirst will remain that only Jesus can quench. So, we’ve still got work to do….until we see King Jesus and voting is done once and for all.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Gen. 2:25)
Click to go to the Mars Hill Blog
In answering text message questions about sexuality as part of the Peasant Princess sermon series studying the Song of Songs, we have been a bit overwhelmed.
First, the online response has been shocking and we are grateful for all our Internet friends who have tripled traffic to the Mars Hill Church website (www.marshillchurch.org) and also pushed our iTunes podcast as high as #4 under Religion and Spirituality, just behind Oprah, Joel Osteen, and the LDS national conference.
Second, we have been overwhelmed with all of the questions we have received and are answering as many as we can on Sundays. Some of the questions are not best suited for a church service but do merit honest responses, therefore we will answer some of them in this month-long series of daily blogs in an effort to be of further help to Christians everywhere.
The Resurgence is a movement that resources multiple generations to live for Jesus so that they can effectively reach their cities with the Gospel by staying culturally accessible and Biblically faithful.
