Jesus' Tomb - the documentary aftermath

The guys from Pulpit Magazine have posted a great compliation of responses to the documentary and the "discovery" in general. A great read. HERE

God is the Gospel - Chapter 3

• Preachers can say dozens of true and wonderful things
  about the gospel and not lead people to where the gospel is leading.
• God is the gospel. That is, he is what makes
  the good news good. Nothing less can make the gospel good news.
  God is the final and highest gift that makes the good news good.
  Until people use the gospel to get to God, they use it wrongly.
• We are not capable of changing God. We cannot pay our own debt.
  “Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his
  life” (Ps. 49:7). Therefore, in his great mercy, God intervened to put
  Christ forward as the propitiation of God’s own wrath (Rom. 3:25).
• Thus justification has these two sides: the removal of sin because
  Christ bears our curse, and the imputation of righteousness because
  we are in Christ and his righteousness is counted as ours.
• Every person should be required to answer the question, “Why is it good news to you that your sinsare forgiven?” “Why is it good news to you that you stand righteous
  in the courtroom of the Judge of the universe?”
• if God is not treasured as the ultimate gift of the gospel, none of his gifts will be gospel, good news. And if God is treasured as the supremely valuable gift of the
  gospel, then all the other lesser gifts will be enjoyed as well.
• Forgiveness is simply a way of getting obstacles out of the way so that we can look at each other again with joy
• Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing
  and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if
  Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to
  get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It’s a way of
  overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don’t want
  God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
• morally we are not good enough in our fallen condition and would be consumed
  in the fire of his holiness if we saw him fully for who he is.
• Created beings simply cannot look on the Creator and see him for
  who he is.
• What I am trying to express here is that the glory of Christ, as
  he appeared among us, consisted not in one attribute or another, and
  not in one act or another, but in what Jonathan Edwards called “an
  admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.”
• The glory of Christ is not synonymous with raw power. The
  glory is the divine beauty of his manifold perfections. To see this
  requires a change of heart.
• The ability to see spiritual beauty is not unwavering. There are ups
  and downs in our fellowship with Christ. There are times of
  beclouded vision, especially if sin gets the upper hand in our lives for
  a season.
• You can’t see and savor God as supremely satisfying
  while you are full of rebellion against him and he is full of wrath
  against you. The removal of this wrath and this rebellion is what the
  gospel is for. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s
  glory and the removal of every obstacle to our seeing it and savoring
  it as our highest treasure. “Behold your God!”

Will Quinn be #1? -- He'd like to think so

According to this article posted at ESPN. Brady Quinn would still like to think he is the #1 pick. 100+ people attended the ND pro day. I'm guessing for the most part no to watch the linemen. The only things that crossed my mind were wether he is going to start his career with a rep for being injury prone. We all know he is tough but if he had to have his knee drained twice in 2 months that should place some question marks in people's mind; especially those teams that play on turf.
Side note: Isn't it amazing that the NFL can stay on top of the headlines 12 months a year?

God Is the Gospel -- Chapter 2

• many true and precious aspects of the gospel can be
  affirmed, and yet the final and greatest good of the gospel be missed.
• Interestingly the Bible
  (including the Greek Old Testament1 and New Testament) uses the
  noun “gospel” (eujaggevlion) seventy-seven times and the verb for
  “preach the gospel” (eujaggelivzw) seventy-seven times. In the vast
  majority of these uses the meaning is assumed rather than defined.
• There simply can be no good news without a living God who
  created the universe.
• In other words, the reign of God has broken into this world to set things right for the sake
  of his people; therefore repent and believe this good news. In fact, if
  you do, you are part of his people. In a world so full of brokenness
  and sin, there simply can be no good news if God does not break in
  with kingly authority. If God does not come with sovereign rights as
  King of the universe, there will be only hopelessness in this world.
• when he sheds his blood, it will be for others, and it will obtain the longpromised
  “new covenant” that promised, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). That much Jesus made plain.
• The Holy Spirit is the down payment,
  a guarantee of the fullness of joy we will know in the perfected
  fellowship with the Father and the Son in the age to come
  (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5).
• The trouble here is that we need to distinguish the experience of
  salvation in particular persons and the promise of salvation through
  believing in Christ. The actual experience of a particular person’s
  being saved is not part of the gospel. But that experience happens
  when the person believes the gospel, and part of what they believe
  is the promise that on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus
  they will be saved. So the way we should say it is that the promise
  The Gospel—The Biblical Scope of Its Meaning 31
  of salvation is part of the gospel, but the actual experience of salvation
  in particular persons is not part of the gospel, but the result
  of the gospel.
• The King must die before he reigns. Otherwise the
  justice of his reign would only bring judgment and not salvation. So
  all the kingdom blessings demonstrated in the Gospels had to be
  purchased by the blood of Christ. This is why the cross must ever
  be the center and foundation of the gospel and why the blessings of
  the gospel should only be called gospel in relation to the cross.
• The actual salvation of the nations comes
  through the blood-bought promise of Gentile salvation in the
  gospel. If the gospel were parochial, it would not be the gospel.
• The death of Jesus in our place was the act of God’s grace that makes all acts of grace righteous in God’s sight.
• every blessing that comes to redeemed sinners
  comes on the ground and by the power of God’s grace. By grace God
  sent the Son to die, and by that death everything we need in order
  to be eternally happy in God is ours. “He who did not spare his own
  Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously
  give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). The gospel is the good news
  that because God did not spare Christ, he will not spare any
  omnipotent effort to give us everything that is good for us.
• But for the most part the good things mentioned in this chapter
  as essential parts of the gospel are not the final good of the gospel
  and would not prove to be good for us at all if the unmentioned
  supreme good were not seen and embraced. That good is God himself
  seen and savored in all his glory.
• If you embrace everything that I have mentioned in this chapter about the facets of the gospel, but do it in a way that does not make the glory of God in Christ your
  supreme treasure, then you have not embraced the gospel.
• They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God
  in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights
  in God above all things, and by delighting display his supreme
  beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever.

politics, draft picks, parents, ... it's all for the kids

We had week one of our Little League (LL) tryouts today. Here are a few radom thoughts on the day and LL in general. FYI, I am managing a majors division baseball team, will help with my daughter's minors softball team, umpire at least my fair share of games, and work the concession stand. I'm not even on the board (only because of the threat on life and limb that my spouse has wisely set before me.)

• I love baseball and I love the ballpark.
• what an awesome opportunity it is to interact with people in this environment
• I need to remember what an opportunity it is
• having kids stand in line to field balls and hit in front of adults with the hopes of being picked is an awfully intimidating thing
• give me a good attitude, heart and supportive parents over pure talent any day
• new pitching rules are really going to put a premium on kids that can throw strikes!
• sometimes I wish that we lived in a part of the country where baseball could be played more than 3-4 months of the year
• keeping the Kingdom in mind while doing all things LL is important
• moving up to a more competitive level will likely cause some challenges for me; I am competitive by nature.
• I need to find good ways to deal with some potentially problem kids/ parents that I know already that I will have.
• I can't wait for the snow to melt so we can get on with practices
• there will be some "good" players that don;t make it into majors this year
• did I mention that I love baseball?!?!?!?!

God Is the Gospel -- Chapter 1

I've decided to read this book, broken into parts as a portion of my TAWG (time alone with God). I will then post the notes and any thoughts I have accompanying them by chapter. This will officially be listed as book #5 in my 2007 reading list. Here is chapter 1.

• gospel means good news. Good news is for proclaiming—for
  heralding the way an old-fashioned town crier would do.
• It is easy in our day to lose the sense of wonder and amazement
  at the news quality of the gospel. If we would feel what the good
  news of the New Testament really was, we should not forget the way
  it was announced in Luke 2:10-11: “The angel said to them, ‘Fear
  not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for
  all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
  Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’”
• The war will be over soon, and there is no longer any doubt as to who will win.
  Christ will win, and he will liberate all those who have put their
  hope in him.
• The good news is not that there is no pain or death or sin or
  hell. There is. The good news is that the King himself has come,
  and these enemies have been defeated, and if we trust in what he
  has done and what he promises, we will escape the death sentence
  and see the glory of our Liberator and live with him forever.
• But the gospel is not only news. It is first news, and then it is doctrine.
• When the gospel is proclaimed, it must be explained.
• Our question is not merely, what is the gospel? Our question is: What is the ultimate good of the gospel that makes all the aspects of good news good? What is the goal of the
  gospel that, if we miss it, takes all the good out of the gospel? What
  do we mean when we say God is the gospel?
  

Game of the Week - Kitten Cannon

A long time favorite. This one never seems to drop off the top 10 list at Addicting Games.

KITTEN CANNON

Whats your best score? Mine was 421 on about 5 tries tonight.

Free John Piper Book -- Yes I said FREE

You can get a PDF copy of John Piper's Book God is the Gospel here. Free books are good. Free books from well respected writers who challenge our thought patterns are great. I just started going through it and the following excerpt from the Introduction has me thinking, convicted, wondering, hoping, and provoked. It might take me a while to get through this one.


The sad thing is that a radically man-centered view of love permeates
our culture and our churches. From the time they can toddle we
teach our children that feeling loved means feeling made much of.
We have built whole educational philosophies around this view of
love—curricula, parenting skills, motivational strategies, therapeutic
models, and selling techniques. Most modern people can scarcely
imagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than
feeling made much of. If you don’t make much of me you are not
loving me.
But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens
his worth, undermines his goodness, and steals our final satisfaction.
If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love,
then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest
mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy
their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls
must look beyond him for satisfaction.
This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admiration
is subtle. It creeps into our most religious acts. We claim to
be praising God because of his love for us. But if his love for us is
at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We
are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-
centered. We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is
a witness to our worth. Who then is our pride and joy?

Cars I've owned

I've been checking out the CARS series from NewSpring Church . It got me to thinking about the vehicles that I have had. Here's my list. What's yours?

• '85 Honda Spree
• '81 Chevy Malibu
• '85 Pontiac Grand Am
• '79 Kawasaki KZ750
• '92 Dodge Dynasty
• '99 Dodge Caravan
• '87 Jeep Comanche
• '93 Ford Aerostar

Finding purpose in 2 conversations

Two things I was reminded of this evening while at wrestling camp:

1. You often never get to the things that you plan
2. We need to be ready at all times for an outreach conversation

I had planned to sit back, watch the boys wrestle, and read/ take a few notes from one of my current books. Turns out, that lasted for about 5 minutes. I had one conversation regarding the prioirty that sports (specifically wrestling at this time) has in our lives. I was able to talk about how we have established church as a priority the majority of Folkstyle tournaments are out of the question for us, because they are on Sunday. Not because wrestling or a tournament on Sunday is necissarily a bad or sinful thing; but because if we chose that we would be choosing to miss our worship service for approx. 8-10 weeks in a row. Good conversation.

Next thing I know, a dad from Little League (LL) slides up next to me. We spent the next 40 minutes or so just talking LL, kids, life stuff in general. No blatant spiritual connection; just getting to know one another better. This is a man who I have talked to several times in the past few years. Never worked directly with him, kids never on same LL team, or anything, just an aquaintance. It struck me that it might not continue to be that way, God seemed to show me that he may be someone I will have coninued contact with. Time to help scatter seed, throw a little water and aee what grows under the direction of the Holy Spirit. It really is fun when God lets you in on the things that He is working out in other people.