salvation «

Today’s message came from John 8:21-30. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s how I summed up the flow of the passage:

The only way to be certain that you don’t die in your sins is to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, God’s Son, the one and only “I am.” The content of that faith to be genuine must include four things: His going to the Father, His coming from the Father, His speaking for the Father (validated in the cross and its consequences) and His closeness with the Father.

At the conclusion of the message I made application from the text for believers in terms of how to avoid becoming hardhearted. The condition of the Jews in John 8 chills the reader to the bone in the fact that some so highly religious could actually be so far from the truth. Here are the six principles I gave for avoiding hardness of heart.

Care about not becoming hardhearted. Hebrews 2:1-3 pleads that we play close attention that we not drift away for how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
Stay in close proximity to the word of Jesus through reading, study, meditation, and listening to it preached. The Jews’ fault was they couldn’t bear to hear his word (John 8:43).
Don’t just hear the word of Jesus but hear it so as to obey it. Refuse to be a hearer only but also a doer (James 1:22-24).
Be quick to repent when the word of Jesus comes with power and convicts you of sin. As quickly as possible agree with God about the nature of your sin, confess it, and determine to change. Being slow to repent grieves and quenches the Spirit in your life.
Pray for God to give you continually a soft heart and not allow you to become hardhearted. Jesus exhorted us to watch and pray that we may not enter into temptation (Matt. 26:41).
Daily exhort others as well as receive exhortation from others to avoid sin’s deceitfulness (Heb. 3:12-13). This is particularly true if you live a secret life in any sin area. You must know and be known if you are to avoid becoming hardhearted. Sin loses its power when we bring it out of the darkness and into the light (1 John 1: 5-7).

May the Lord grant us grace to persevere to the end that we might not die in our sins but go to be where He is, with the Father in the kingdom heaven.

saturn

Were he to have had access to modern technology and therefore able to view the likes of Saturn in this photo would John Calvin have referred to it, though stunningly bright and glorious, still vain in some respect?

Absolutely. Creation, though brilliantly putting the glory of God on display, especially in the far reaches of the universe, serves only to leave man without excuse as to God’s existence. It cannot, in and of itself, lead man to a personal knowledge of God and rescue him from his condition of fallen sinner (Rom. 1:20).

This is why Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, speaks of the vanity, of even so many bright lamps.

In vain for us, therefore, does Creation exhibit so many bright lamps lighted up to show forth the glory of its Author. Though they beam upon us from every quarter, they are altogether insufficient of themselves to lead us into the right path. Some sparks, undoubtedly, they do throw out; but these are quenched before they can give forth a brighter effulgence. Wherefore, the apostle, in the very place where he says that the worlds are images of invisible things, adds that it is by faith we understand that they were framed by the word of God (Heb. 11:3); thereby intimating that the invisible Godhead is indeed represented by such displays, but that we have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened through faith by internal revelation from God (Book First, Chapter 5, No. 14).

At this Christmas Eve of 2009 are we not indeed grateful for not just the general revelation of creation, but even more so the special revelation of the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ (John 1:14), and the sacred writings that are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15)?

A million Saturns on display in the universe cannot bring forth that necessary internal revelation from God which only His Son and the holy Scriptures can. The people who walked in darkness have indeed seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2)!