Website Update – Please Update Links!
June 16, 2011
We’ve just completed a website update for calvinpca.org. This blog location will no longer be in use. Please update your blog feed if you still wish to subscribe to our blog.
The new feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CalvinPCA.
If you subscribe via email you will need to re-subscribe through the email subscription on the right-hand column of the new websites blog page.
I’ve also added a Facebook page that is synced with our blog: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Calvin-Presbyterian-Church-PCA/233785159971461
As always you can access our site via our web address: calvinpca.org.
May 21 – The End?
May 17, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I figured I better post now since the world will end on May 21st – at least according to Harold Camping.
As I mentioned on Sunday, Harold Camping and his Family Radio ministry having been working around the clock to get the word out that judgment day will begin on this coming Saturday. If you’ve heard the hubbub and are wondering how to make sense of such predictions, there is good help by way of Robert Godfrey and Albert Mohler.
Godfrey knew Camping personally and in a series of five posts offers tremendous personal insight into Camping’s pathway to serious error. The first post can be found at the Westminster Seminary California blog here.
Albert Mohler offers a brief but helpful response here. For Christians tempted toward mystery religions and hidden messages, Mohler’s words below must be learned:
The Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. The Bible has been given to us in order that we might know the truth, and the truth is clearly revealed in its pages. We are not to look for hidden patterns of words, numbers, dates, or anything else. The Bible’s message is plain and requires no mathematical computation for its understanding. The claim that one has found a hidden code or system in the Bible is an insult to the Bible as the Word of God.
Herman Bavinck on Common Grace
March 9, 2011
From Herman Bavinck’s 1894 lecture entitled, Common Grace:
From this common grace proceeds all that is good and true that we still see in fallen man. The light still shines in the darkness. The Spirit of God lives and works in everything that has been created. Therefore there still remain in man certain traces of the image of God. There is still intellect and reason; all kinds of natural gifts are still present in him. Man still has a feeling and an impression of divinity, a seed of religion. Reason is a priceless gift. Philosophy is an admirable gift from God. Music is also a gift of God. Arts and sciences are good, profitable, and of high value. The state has been instituted by God…. There is still a desire for truth and virtue, and for natural love between parents and children. In matters that concern this earthly life, man is still able to do much good…. Through the doctrine of common grace the Reformed have, on the one hand, maintained the specific and absolute character of the Christian religion, but on the other hand they have been second to none in their appreciation for whatever of the good and beautiful is still being given by God to sinful human beings.
Sin is a power, a principle, which has penetrated deeply into all forms of created life…. It would, if left to itself, have devastated and destroyed everything. But God has interposed with his grace. Through common grace he restrains sin in its disintegrating and destructive working. But this [kind of grace] is still not sufficient. It subdues, but does not change; it restrains, but does not conquer.
Quoted from Anthony A Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, pp. 190-191.
Behold the Lamb
February 24, 2011
In the near future we’ll be learning this song to be sung before communion. You can get a head start on learning by listening below. Lyrics can be found here.
Faithfulness Under Fire
February 21, 2011
Here’s what looks like a very promising children’s book about the author of the Belgic Confession.
Publisher’s Description:
The life of Guido de Bres teaches us that we can find enduring hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, even during persecution. Author William Boekestein sensitively tells the story of de Bres for children, guiding them through his turbulent life and times- from his birth in 1522 in a small Belgium town, to his call to the ministry and study under Reformers such as John Calvin and Theodore Beza, to his authorship of the Belgic Confession and a life of suffering, to his martyr’s death in 1567. Skillfully crafted illustrations and an easy-to-understand narrative combine to capture the interests-and admiration-of the entire family for this amazing Reformation hero.
Endorsements:
“Bill Boekestein shows his pastor’s heart and desire to make the riches of our Reformed heritage known in a simple way in Faithfulness under Fire. Men like de Bres lived in a tumultuous time, and their example of total commitment is needed in today’s world of religious pluralism, tolerance, and moderation. Our children need to learn this devotion and parents need to teach it with all their heart.”
– Daniel R. Hyde, Oceanside United Reformed Church, Carlsbad/Oceanside, CA
“William Boekstein has written a great children’s book about Guido de Bres, author of the Belgic Confession. I have the book and my kids enjoy it. The illustrations by Evan Hughes are excellent.”
– Kevin DeYoung, DeYoung, Restless and Reformed
Antithesis
January 27, 2011
I find myself returning often to David Wells’ series of book that deal with the modern challenges Christ’s Church faces. This quote is from God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams:
The choice for God now has to become one in which the church begins to form itself, by his grace and truth, into an outcropping of counter-cultural spirituality. It must first recover the sense of antithesis between Christ and culture and then find ways to sustain that antithesis. It is, after all, only when we see what the church is willing to give up by developing this antithesis that we see what it is actually for. If it is for God, for his truth, for his people, for the alienated and trampled in life, then it must give up what the post-modern world holds most dear: it must give up the freedom to do anything it happens to desire. It must give up self-cultivation for self-surrender, entertainment for worship, intuition for truth, slick marketing for authentic witness, success for faithfulness, power for humility, a God bought on cheap terms for the God who calls us to a costly obedience. It must, in short, be willing to do God’s business on God’s terms. As it happens, that idea is actually quite old, as old as the New Testament itself, but in today’s world it is novel all over again.
Aspire to Live Quietly
December 29, 2010
The New Year holiday is traditionally a time to reflect on the previous year, and look forward to the next, perhaps making plans and even resolutions for the months ahead. As you look forward to 2011 I want to encourage you to make 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 a part of your plans for the new year:
For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing…. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Here, Paul’s vision of the Christian life is profoundly simple, profoundly doable, and for many, profoundly disappointing.
Why disappointing? Well, simply put, Paul offers no grand vision to the Thessalonians on how to change the world. Instead, he offers them a simple, quiet, steady, faithful, loving, and humble vision of how they ought to live. While so many Christian messages we hear today call us to aspire to world-changing greatness, Paul calls us “to aspire to live quietly, and to mind our own affairs.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for seeing this world transformed for the glory of God. But perhaps that transformation comes, not with a grand vision of how to transform our community, but with a simple vision of how we ourselves might be transformed by God.
Here is how one author puts it:
Paul commends a life that is the very opposite of activist churchianity. Instead, he advocates the way of Christian vocation-Walk humbly and quietly with God. Don’t think it’s your job to change the world. Quit sticking your nose in everybody else’s business. Do your work and do it well. Let Christ’s love for others grow naturally out of that soil. Earn the respect of your neighbors over time as you live your life in Christ. Slow down. Get small. Run quiet. Go deep. Grow up. Keep on keeping on. Stand on your own two feet. Become a mature human being (from Chaplain Mike at internetmonk.com, ht: Gene Veith).
Disappointing? Yes, if your goal is to change the world. But for the rest of us, striving simply to do our job well, and to grow in love towards others, and to live quiet, humble lives for God’s glory and the good of our neighbors, Paul gives us something worth aspiring to in 2011.