YAY - New Weepies!

Just got it today - it's wonderful! =)

I suggest you get it by signing up for emusic - you'll get 50 downloads for free just for signing up, and you can cancel after the first month - that would be 80 songs for $10 - or you could remain and pick a monthly download plan. The one I have allows me to get 30 songs a month for $10 (which is now my monthly budget for music.) If your a indie music lover this is a great (and frugal) solution to buying expensive CD's or downloading illegally.

#4 Paul Washer - Regeneration and Self Denial

(A series of 48 sermons that have angered, broken, impacted, molded,
and changed me.)

#4 Paul Washer -Regeneration and Self Denial
















One of the most impactful sermons I’ve ever heard...it literally turned my
pitiful humanistic theology on it's head.

I think this quote from the message sums it all up perfectly:

“If you have the doctrine of justification without the doctrine of regeneration you have nothing! The same God who has the power to justify wicked men because His own Son died in their law-place under His wrath – that same God has the power to regenerate a heart and make a man not only BE a new creature but act like one.”

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(click below to listen)
#4 - Paul Washer - Regeneration and Self Denial



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A Whole Hearted Recommendation

The Cross
Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1986. 224 pp. (paperback).

Only in the past year or so have I really seen the glory of what Christ did for me that day on that hill, and why it must have happened as it did. Sometimes (in the middle of the night, usually) that beauty overwhelms me and I can't help but praise him for his sacrifice. Dr. Martyn-Lloyd Jones helped me do that last night. This work is possibly the best work I have EVER read on the cross. Almost every page had me in tears and singing praises!

"...The apostle does not merely say that he preaches the cross and that he believes in it. He says, 'God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' So there is more here, and it is to something of this 'more' that I want to draw your attention to now.

'The word 'glory' at once tells us at once that the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the test of every one of us. It is the test of our profession of Christianity. It is the test of our church membership, indeed, of our whole position and profession. There is no more subtle test of our understanding than our attitude to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the cross passes judgment on us all, immediately and of necessity. You cannot remain neutral in the presence of the cross. It has always divided mankind and still does. And what the apostle says is that there are ultimately only two positions with respect to it. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is either an offense to us or else it is the thing above everything else in which we glory.

'My dear friends, there never can be a more important question than this: what does the cross do to you? Where do you find yourself as you think of it and face it? It is one of these two, it is either an offense or else you glory in it. Are we all clear about our position? Do we know exactly where we stand? There are some perhaps saying, 'Well quite certainly it is not an offense, to me, but I am afraid I cannot say I glory in it.' Well, my friend, you are in an impossible position. There are only two positions - offense or glory. As we value our immortal souls, let us examine the matter, let us look into it, let us see what the apostle has got to tell us here, and elsewhere in his writings, about these two positions, in order that we may know for sure."
pp. 41-42

A Matthew Henry Moment

"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Genesis III, 22-24

Observe here, how they were justly disgraced and shamed before God and the holy angels, by the ironical upbraiding of them with the issue of their enterprise: "Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil! A goodly god he makes! Does he not? See what he has got, what preferments, what advantages, by eating forbidden fruit!" This was said to awaken and humble them, and to bring them to a sense of their sin and folly, and to repentance for it, that, seeing themselves thus wretchedly deceived by following the devil's counsel, they might henceforth pursue the happiness God should offer in the way he should prescribe. God thus fills their faces with shame, that they may seek his name, Ps. lxxxiii. 16. He puts them to this confusion, in order to their conversion. True penitents will thus upbraid themselves: "What fruit have I now by sin? Rom. vi. 21. Have I gained what I foolishly promised myself in a sinful way? No, no, it never proved what it pretended to, but the contrary."

"He turned him out, from the garden to the common. This is twice mentioned: He sent him forth v.23), and then he drove him out, v. 24. God bade him go out, told him that that was no place for him, he should no longer occupy and enjoy that garden; but he liked the place too well to be willing to part with it, and therefore God drove him out, made him go out, whether he would or no. This signified the exclusion of him, and all his guilty race, from that communion with God which was the bliss and glory of paradise. The tokens of God's favour to him and his delight in the sons of men, which he had in his innocent estate, were now suspended; the communications of his grace were withheld, and Adam became weak, and like other men, as Samson when the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. His acquaintance with God was lessened and lost, and that correspondence which had been settled between man and his Maker was interrupted and broken off. He was driven out, as one unworthy of this honour and incapable of this service. Thus he and all mankind, by the fall, forfeited and lost communion with God. But whither did he send him when he turned him out of Eden? He might justly have chased him out of the world (Job xviii. 18), but he only chased him out of the garden. He might justly have cast him down to hell, as he did the angels that sinned when he shut them out from the heavenly paradise, 2 Pet. ii. 4. But man was only sent to till the ground out of which he was taken. He was sent to a place of toil, not to a place of torment. He was sent to the ground, not to the grave,—to the work-house, not to the dungeon, not to the prison-house,—to hold the plough, not to drag the chain. His tilling the ground would be recompensed by his eating of its fruits; and his converse with the earth whence he was taken was improvable to good purposes, to keep him humble, and to remind him of his latter end. Observe, then, that though our first parents were excluded from the privileges of their state of innocency, yet they were not abandoned to despair, God's thoughts of love designing them for a second state of probation upon new terms."

Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats? (Pt. II)

A German philosopher many years ago said something to the effect that the more a man has in his own heart, the less he will require from the outside; excessive need for support from without is proof of the bankruptcy of the inner man.

If this is true (and I believe it is) then the present inordinate attachment to every form of entertainment is evidence that the inner life of modern man is in serious decline. The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his own breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.

Schleiermacher held that the feeling of dependence lies at the root of all religious worship, and that however high the spiritual life might rise, it must always begin with a deep sense of a great need which only God could satisfy.

If this sense of need and a feeling of dependence are at the root of natural religion, it is not hard to see why the great god Entertainment is so ardently worshiped by so many. For there are millions who cannot live without amusement; life without some form of entertainment for them is simply intolerable; they look forward to the blessed relief afforded by professional entertainers and other forms of psychological narcotics as a dope addict looks to his daily shot of heroin. Without them they could not summon courage to face existence.

No one with common human feeling will object to the simple pleasures of life, nor to such harmless forms of entertainment as may help to relax the nerves and refresh the mind exhausted by toil. Such things, if used with discretion, may be a blessing along the way. That is one thing, however, the all-out devotion to entertainment as a major activity for which and by which men live is definitely something else again.

The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of sin. The growth of the amusement phase of human life to such fantastic proportions is a portent, a threat to the souls of modern men. It has been built into a multimillion dollar racket with greater power over human minds and human character than any other educational influence on earth.

And the ominous thing is that its power is almost exclusively evil, rotting the inner life, crowding out the long eternal thoughts which would fill the souls of men, if they were but worthy to entertain them. The whole thing has grown into a veritable religion which holds its devotees with a strange fascination; and a religion, incidentally, against which it is now dangerous to speak. For centuries the Church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for what it was—a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability.

For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers.

So, today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God.

Many churches these days have become little more than poor theaters where fifth-rate "producers" peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.

The great god Entertainment amuses his devotees mainly by telling them stories. The love of stories, which is a characteristic of childhood, has taken fast hold of the minds of the retarded saints of our day, so much so that not a few persons manage to make a comfortable living by spinning yarns and serving them up in various disguises to church people.

What is natural and beautiful in a child may be shocking when it persists into adulthood, and more so when it appears in the sanctuary and seeks to pass for true religion. Is it not a strange thing and a wonder that, with the shadow of atomic destruction hanging over the world and with the coming of Christ drawing near, the professed followers of the Lord should be giving themselves up to religious amusements? That in an hour when mature saints are so desperately needed vast numbers of believers should revert to spiritual childhood and clamor for religious toys?

"Remember, 0 Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned ! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim." AMEN. AMEN.

~A.W. Tozer

Lectures From Bryan Chapell’s Homiletics Class

My good friend Tyler recently posted a link to these - 25 lectures from Bryan Chapell's homiletics class over at Covenant Seminary.

I believe them to be such a valuable resource to ministers and laity alike that I've decided to post them here as well. You're basically getting a free seminary level course by a very gifted teacher and brother in the Lord. I'm only on the sixth lecture, but I look forward to the ingesting the rest of them this month!

Dr. Chapell is the president of the seminary and author of several renowned books, including: Christ Centered Preaching, Praying Backwards, and 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus (w/ R. Kent Hughes.)

If you missed the link above, you can find the lectures: HERE.

Goodbye Ol' Header.

I've decided to take the header with all the theologians on it down, and put up a new one in it's place. The main reason for the switch is summarized by the following verse,

"Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; For why should he be esteemed?"
~Isaiah II,22

Although those men on the header have greatly impacted my theology and changed the way I view God (and I feel a GREAT affection for them for doing this), I have been under conviction of having them up there as a sort of "capstone" to the page. In reality, they were only weak, pitiful, broken men of a glorious, wise, and strong God. He should be the one getting the glory from everything we do, and having all those men up there at the top seemed to give them too much esteem. So I've decided to make the old header into the new footer of the page.

Now when ever you want to see ol' B.B. Warfield's crazy mustache or John Owen's inquisitive look, just scroll down to the bottom.

Soli Deo Gloria,

~Graeme

Pierced For Our Transgressions

I wrote a pretty awful review of this really amazing book over at puritanical.org

(Nothing like a little self-deprecation to promote yourself...)

Puritanical or "a passionate review" (feel free to refer to it by either) is my good friend Ryan Thompson's new book review site. Updated weekly - should be a blast.

Next week's book is one I'm particularly excited about!

#3 Tim Conway - Hell is Both Good and Necessary

(A series of 48 sermons that have angered, broken, impacted, molded, and changed me.)

#3 Tim Conway - Hell is Both Good and Necessary

The doctrine of hell reminds us that our sin is no small thing – it is defiance against a holy, infinite, and just God, and must be punished as such if God is to be God.

When I do not keep the Holiness of God always on the forefront of my mind I often, in despair, rail against God because of this doctrine.

Will not the judge of all the earth do right?

“Hell stares our humanistic mindset right in the face.”

"Lord, stamp eternity on my eyelids.” - Robert Murray McCheyne

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Tim Conway is one of the pastors of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas.


(click below to listen)
#3 - Tim Conway - Hell is Both Good and Necessary


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Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats?

"An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most shortsighted can hardly fail to notice it during the past few years. It has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.

From speaking out as the Puritans did, the church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.

My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the church. If it is a Christian work, why did not Christ speak of it? "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15). That is clear enough. So it would have been if He had added, "and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel." No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to Him.

Then again, "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers .., for the work of the ministry" (Eph. 4:11-12). Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll.

Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all His apostles. What was the attitude of the church to the world? We are not sugar candy, —"Ye are the salt" (Matt. 5:13) ---something the world will spit out, not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance, "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 8:22). He was in awful earnestness.

Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into His mission, He would have been more popular but, because of the searching nature of His teaching, many turned away. I do not hear Him say, "Run after these people Peter and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick Peter, we must get the people somehow." Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them.

In vain will the Epistles be searched to find, any trace of this gospel of amusement! Their message is, Come out, keep out, keep clean out!" Anything approaching foolishness is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon.

After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the church had a prayer meeting but they did not pray, "Lord grant unto Thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are. If they ceased not from preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. They turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6)." That is the only difference! Lord, clear the church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her, and bring us back to apostolic methods.

Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the church met them halfway, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment has been God's link in the chain of the conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of the hour for today*s ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire."

~C.H. Spurgeon

A Matthew Henry Moment

"And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the LORD God had taken out of man, made he a woman, and brought her to the man." Genesis II, 21-22

Observe that the woman was made out of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be beloved by him. Adam lost a rib, and without any diminution to his strength or comeliness (for, doubtless, the flesh was closed without a scar); but in lieu thereof he had a help meet for him, which abundantly made up for his loss: what God takes away from his people he will, one way or other, restore with advantage. In this (as in many other things) Adam was a figure of Him who was to come; for out of the side of Christ, the second Adam, his spouse the church was formed, when he slept the sleep, the deep sleep of death upon the cross, in order to which his side was opened, and there came out blood and water - blood to purchase his church and water to purify it to Himself. (see Eph. V, 25,26)

For Your Consideration.

John Piper on the Prosperity Gospel




Paul Washer on the Humanistic Gospel




John Piper on Retirement

A Matthew Henry Moment

"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put a man whom he had formed." Genesis II, 8

Observe the place appointed for Adam's residence was a garden; not an ivory house nor a palace overlaid with gold, but a garden, furnished and adorned by nature, not by art. What little reason have men to be proud of stately and magnificent buildings, when it was the happiness of man in innocency that he needed none! As clothes came in with sin, so did houses. The heaven was the roof of Adams house, and never was any roof so curiously ceiled and painted. The earth was his floor, and never was any floor so richly inlaid. The shadow of the trees was his retirement; under them were his dining rooms, his lodging rooms, and never were any rooms so finely hung as these: Solomon's, in all their glory, were not arrayed like them. The better we can accommodate ourselves to plain things, and the less we indulge ourselves with those artificial delights which have been invented to gratify men's pride and luxury, the nearer we approach to a state of innocency. Nature is content with a little and that which is most natural, grace with less, and lust with nothing.

An Earlier-in-the-Day Meditation, Confirmed!

I was meditating on these very thoughts earlier today, just a few hours before I came across this quote by Calvin in Cornelius Van Til's, "A Defense for Christianity." It's always nice to see thoughts you've had confirmed by doctrinal giants. Assuring.

"All controversies about the nature of man, his sin and his salvation, must be settled by exegesis of Scripture. For although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting Kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward so manifest testimonies, and they flow away without profiting us. For with regard to the most beautiful structure and order of the universe, how many of us are there who, when we lift up our eyes to heaven or cast them about through the various regions of earth, recall our minds to a remembrance of the Creator, and do not rather, disregarding their Author, sit idly in contemplation of his works? In fact, with regard to those events which daily take place outside the ordinary course of nature, how many of us do not reckon that men are whirled and twisted about by blindly indiscriminate fortune, rather than governed by God’s providence? Sometimes we are driven by the leading and direction of these things to contemplate God; this of necessity happens to all men. Yet after we rashly grasp a conception of some sort of divinity, straightway we fall back into the ravings or evil imaginings of our flesh, and corrupt by our vanity the pure truth of God. In one respect we are indeed unalike, because each one of us privately forges his own particular error; yet we are very much alike in that, one and all, we forsake the one true God for prodigious trifles. Not only the common folk and dull-witted men, but also the most excellent and those otherwise endowed with keen discernment are infested with this disease." Calvin, Institutes, Book I, 5,9


It sickens me how sometimes I prop up beautiful and glorious creations of God as idols, instead of things to worship God through. A violation of the first commandment, no matter how small the object is or how little adoration I give the thing.

Lord, help me to see the seriousness of my idolatry, and help me not to let things, even good things that come from Your hand, get in the way of me giving You all the glory I can. Amen.