Preaching the Bible Unbiblically

Alistair Begg:

There’s a way to preach the Bible unbiblically…You can use the Bible as the springboard for all kinds of ideas, can’t you? Look around in here, find something that fits your fancy, and then launch a rocket off it. People say, ‘That was amazing, wasn’t it? Remarkable what he got out of that.’ Well of course it is because he put it in before he got it out.”

Sex and Faith

Dr. Benjamin Wiker reviews the book, How the West Really Lost God, by Mary Eberstadt at tothesource. I encourage you to read the entire article:

From 1972 to 2002 the percentage of Americans attending church or synagogue dropped from 41% to 31%, and much of this fall is connected “by the fact that fewer adults are now married with children.” Wherever we look, we find that the destruction of the family causes or accelerates the destruction of faith. And, to note the obvious, the sexual revolution put people at odds with the moral doctrines of the faith. “The more people had sex outside of marriage, the less incentive there was to form marriages in the first place—and the more reluctance to sign on to official Christian (or similar religious) teaching in these matters. With more people living without marriage, more men and women had profound reasons to tell themselves that the Judeo-Christian moral code was out of date—and to be kindly inclined toward experts and even clergy purveying the message, as more and more men and women of the cloth would come to do.”

That last point has a most serious sting we should not miss. The very churches—the so-called mainline churches—that liberalized their sexual moral code, are the very churches who have, since the 1960s, experienced the greatest decline in numbers.

CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE HERE. . . .

None is Exempt from Trouble

Do you too often feel as if everything is against you? Charles H. Spurgeon sheds a different light on this attitude:

The king also himself passed over the brook Kidron. (2 Samuel 15:23)

David passed that gloomy brook when flying with his mourning company from his traitor son. The man after God’s own heart was not exempt from trouble, nay; his life was full of it. He was both the Lord’s Anointed, and the Lord’s Afflicted. Why then should we expect to escape? At sorrow’s gates, the noblest of our race have waited with ashes on their heads, wherefore then should we complain as though some strange thing had happened unto us? The KING of kings himself was not favored with a more cheerful or royal road. He passed over the filthy ditch of Kidron, through which the filth of Jerusalem flowed. God had one Son without sin, but not a single child without the rod. It is a great joy to believe that Jesus has been tempted in all points like as we are. What is our Kidron this morning? Is it a faithless friend, a sad bereavement, a slanderous reproach, a dark foreboding? The King has passed over all these. Is it bodily pain, poverty, persecution, or contempt? Over each of these Kidrons the King has gone before us. “In all our afflictions He was afflicted.” The idea of strangeness in our trials must be banished at once and forever, for He who is the Head of all saints, knows by experience the grief, which we think so peculiar. All the citizens of Zion must be free of the Honorable Company of Mourners, of which the Prince Immanuel is Head and Captain. Notwithstanding the abasement of David, he yet returned in triumph to his city, and David’s Lord arose victorious from the grave; let us then be of good courage, for we also shall win the day. We shall yet with joy draw water out of the wells of salvation, though now for a season we have to pass by the noxious streams of sin and sorrow. Courage, soldiers of the Cross, the King himself triumphed after going over Kidron, and so shall you. (Morning & Evening)