J. C. Ryle & Passionate Preaching For Lost Souls

April 10, 2010 By revheff in Sunday Morning Tags: conversion, gospel, preaching 2 Comments

Tomorrow, Lord willing, we step back into John’s gospel and the 6th sign, the healing of the man blind from birth in John 9:1-12. You can listen to part one here.

The title of the message is The Day the Light of the World Made Blind Eyes See (Part 2).

In many ways as we tackle the significance of the means Jesus employed in healing the man – anointing his eyes with mud, commanding his washing in the pool of Siloam – we will return to the gospel and the need for passionate preaching for lost souls.

After my message on Resurrection Sunday last week, someone sent me this quote by J. C. Ryle. It raised the temperature on my preaching thermostat to want to preach passionately and faithfully the gospel particularly when the text so plainly requires it. My hope is it will do the same for you on the listening end.

Would you like to know the reason why we who preach the Gospel, preach so often about conversion? We do it because of the necessities of men’s souls. We do it because we see plainly from the Word of God that nothing short of a thorough change of heart will ever meet the demands of your case. Your case is naturally desperate. Your danger is great. You need not only the atonement of Jesus Christ – but the quickening, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, to make you a true Christian, and deliver you from hell (Old Paths, “The Holy Spirit”, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1999], 275).

May the Lord meet us in and through His word tomorrow with grace and power to convert and strengthen.

When the Divine Collides with the Depraved

January 26, 2010 By revheff in Exposition, Sunday Morning Tags: gospel, grace, justice Leave a comment

Here, for your further reflection, is the conclusion to Sunday’s message in John 7:53-8:11.

Neither do I condemn you. That’s grace. From now on sin no more.That’s truth. How can He do this? On what basis can He forgive her sin and command her repentance? On what basis as the Holy One of God can He be just and yet the justifier of the likes of her, of you, of me? The cross! He sees the cross! He calculates the cross! He pleads the cross for her, for you, for me! For there in a matter of months He will give His life for her adultery and my lust and your deceit and our hypocrisy and an infinite number of other infinitely offensive sins by depraved sinners the likes of us. By that means and that alone can the wrath of God be satisfied, sin be punished, and the clemency of grace be bestowed. Hallelujah, what a savior! Jesus what a friend to sinners indeed!

Jesus is divinely flawless in His manner of dealing with both. The belligerent hypocrite He slams with conviction. Let him who is without sin judge. The broken prodigal He showers with compassion. Neither do I condemn you. But not a syrupy version of love so thus He transforms – go and sin no more.Which are we? Either way we need the promise of the gospel, the grace of God in Jesus on the cross to pay the penalty for our religious moralism and/or our shameful profligacy. See the Savior and His manner. He is the Messiah, repent and believe and go and from now on sin no more as a way of life in either error.

You can listen to the entire message here.

Adoption – Our Fountain Privilege

January 3, 2010 By revheff in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: adoption, gospel 5 Comments

I worked hard this morning in my message to persuade that adoption is the highest privilege afforded by the gospel.

It might be easier for me than some to embrace that, since I am an adopted son in the earthly realm.

I mentioned today that Nancy and I spent yesterday with my extended family to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday. That’s her along side my stepdad.

I never stop marveling at the alien love that causes a man to make someone else’s child his son and heir. See what kind of love is this!

If you still need convincing on this idea of the uniqueness of adoption as a gospel blessing, Wayne Grudem offers his take in his systematic theology:

God could have given us justification without the privileges of adoption into his family, for he could have forgiven our sins and given us right legal standing before him without making us his children. It is important to realize this because it helps us to recognize how great are our privileges in adoption. Regeneration has to do with our spiritual life within. Justification has to do with our standing before God’s law. But adoption has to do with our relationship with God as our Father, and in adoption we are given many of the greatest blessings that we will know for all eternity. When we begin to realize the excellence of these blessings, and when we appreciate that God has no obligation to give us any of them, then we will be able to exclaim with the apostle John, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).

It’s true. It’s really true. We are beloved children of our heavenly Father. See it. Savor it. Secure it by faith.

A Particularly Disturbing Question

December 22, 2009 By revheff in Books Tags: God's love, gospel, grace, legalism 4 Comments

I have just finished reading Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Dutton, 2008, 138 pages).

In it he presents a treatment of the familiar story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He is inclined to rename the parable The Two Lost Sons. He believes that Jesus takes aim in the story at both irreligious outsiders and moralistic insiders. Both, Keller claims, are lost and in need of salvation. Jesus, in particular, he argues, targets moralists in telling the story to show them their need for the gospel as much as the younger brother types who give themselves to profligate waste.

Early on Keller tips his hand where he is headed with all this by offering his answer to the question why people like Jesus but not the church.

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think (p. 15-16).

When I first read that I put a question mark in the margin. I am not entirely sure I agree with the logic behind Keller’s argument. I’ve learned to do that over time rather than just take everything that comes down the pike from a respected author (and make no mistake, I highly respect him – I just purchased copies of his book The Reason for God for several members of my family for Christmas).

My question to his question is does the conclusion in the last sentence from that quote hold water? I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. Is the church in corporate worship as an entity of God’s called out ones supposed to be inherently attractional to either kind of brother? It seems to me that rightly done the church gathered may be offensive to either crowd and only attractive to the gospel enthralled given its unique purposes.

I haven’t come near to the end of my reflections on this question but I wonder if we simply need to be more concerned with taking the gospel of our extravagantly gracious God “without” to the lost (that seems to me to be the thrust of the story in Luke 15 as far as Jesus’ aim is concerned) and “within” the church more consistently rebuke both the wayward and the legalistic who think they know Jesus but deny hin by their actions until they do come to grips with the heart of the Christian faith which is gazing upon the glory of the grace of Jesus.

What do you think?

By the way, I recommend the book. Definitely a worthwhile read.

A Spiritual Revolution in Iran

November 30, 2009 By revheff in Missions Tags: Evangelism, gospel, Missions, persecution Leave a comment

Oh, my, the gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation for those who believe!

I read this report today in Voice of the Martyrs’ Newsletter, December, 2009 issue about the current spiritual climate in Iran, third on the world watch list of countries most likely to persecute Christians:

There is a revolution going on in Iran, but it is not a revolution at the ballot box or among marchers on the streets. It is a revolution embedded in the soul of many Iranians.

Iranians are coming to Jesus Christ. Not just a few, but thousands. Recently one of our Iranian contacts told us that if Christians say the name Jesus out loud in a public place, people will come up to them and ask more about him. Many are so hungry for Christ that they will pray to receive him as soon as the gospel is presented to them. Some estimate that there are now more than 1 million Christians in Iran, and the number grows daily (p. 12).

The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14)! The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church Jesus builds (Matt. 16:18)!