Good works, not optional

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Posted on July 14th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Calvin's Institutes, Dead guys & history, Spiritual Growth, Theology.
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I’m still reading through Calvin’s Institutes - trying to keep up with the Reformation21 blog-challenge to read it through this year.  It has been a remarkably edifying time for me.

The goal, early on, was to keep up with typing in quotes that have stood out.  I’ve fallen way behind!  I was helped by Ref21 blogger, Justin Taylor, who helped repackage Calvin’s arguments about the age old controversy of works and faith with respect to justification and the judgment seat of Christ.

Not surprisingly, the caricatures of John Calvin advancing an antinomianism fall flat if one reads through the section that Calvin-in-a-year readers are reading right now.

I recommend you, Pivoter, read…

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Posted on July 9th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Apologetics, Church Life, Dating / Courtship, Emerging/emergent, Spiritual Growth, Theology.
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A few weeks ago one of the pastors of a Sovereign Grace church sent around an email volley to other Sovereign Grace pastors asking what books they might recommend specifically for 18-30 somethings.  I’m sure there are much better answers but here are a few that would come to mind.

Just Do Something (Kevin DeYoung)

Best book on the topic of discovering God’s will - which is the most popular Pivot-aged (18-30) question by far!

Stop Dating the Church, (Joshua Harris), Why We Love the Church (Kevin DeYoung)

Many of our young adults have read Josh’s book. Those who haven’t, should.  DeYoung’s book on the church was just released.  It looks like a great book for the generation most influenced by postmodernism. A good antidote to the mass exodus of millennials from the church.

What is a Healthy Church Member (Thabiti Anyabwile)

A solid encouragement to the college-age roamer who comes to the college/career meetings but never reads his bulletin or shows up on a sign up list to serve.

Gospel-Centered Books

Hold the center!  Any of our excellent Sovereign Grace or otherwise published works that press on the centrality of the gospel and its relevance for our lives would be vital reading.  Close your eyes and pick anything by Mahaney, Bridges, or Ferguson.

Worldliness (edited Mahaney) or Set Apart (Hughes)

Addressing matters of godliness, love of the world, wisdom and vigilance. Perennially important for 20 somethings.

Tactics (Gregory Koukl)

A short, engaging, funny, yet substantive book on how to strengthen one’s conversational apologetics and get armed and ready for all the opinionated 20 somethings that we call university students.

The Reason For God (Timothy Keller)

A longer, more in-depth study through some of the major objections to Christian faith. Keller’s approach is so winsome and his style of writing so fresh, it’s hard to come away from this book without a greater appreciation for the beauty and compelling nature of God’s truth.

What Is a Christian Worldview (Philip Ryken), pamphlet

Beautifully written and might make a good short study through Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration motifs. I would guess that if you wanted to get people’s feet wet in the Calvinism/election issues, that the companion pamphlets in the Basics of Reformed Faith series would likely be very well-written and concise. Another good study of the ‘bible storyline’/biblical theology would be Edmund Clowney’s The Unfolding Mystery.

What’s the Difference (Piper), 50 Crucial Questions (Piper/Grudem)

Or anything that clearly presents biblical complimentarianism. Campus Ministries in many places have given up this position and become card-carrying egalitarians. So even Christian college-aged people who come to our meetings often have NO category for the phrase “men are called to lead.”

Boys Meets Girl (Harris), Holding Hands Holding Hearts (Phillips), Doing Things Right In Matters of the Heart (Ensor)

The books dovetail at many points but compliment each other nicely by moving off the mains into different directions. Ensor’s book fits into the complimentarian study category as well.

A Call To Spiritual Reformation (Donald Carson)

Teaching young people to pray the way the NT writers prayed. Excellent. Also Carson’s Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Brief, helpful resource on a much distorted doctrine.

Dead Guy Books/Studies

John Piper’s biographical works in The Swans are Not Silent Series are very good. Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture would be a great study for young men.

Bunyan, the pilgrim and hymnwriter

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Posted on July 7th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Dead guys & history, Spiritual Growth.
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Our family has been reading through Douglas Bond’s wonderful book, Mr. Pipes and the British Hymn Makers and today we finished it.  Bond’s book is historical fiction.  Two American children spend a summer in England, bump into an elderly man who has been nicknamed “Mr. Pipes”.  They travel around together, eating at pastry shops, taking tea times, visiting ‘Dragon’s Grotto’, learning how to sail and herd sheep and all along, getting disabused of the notion that old things are dead and lifeless.  Mr. Pipes tells them stories of Thomas Ken, William Williams, Isaac Watts (one of our two favorite chapters!), John Newton, William Cowper and other great hymn writers from church history.  Since this book focused on British hymn writers, they were able to walk through parts of town, pick flowers from the same gardens, sing in the old buildings in which one or another great hymn-writer could’ve been found in days gone by.

In the last chapter, as the kids finally get to take their sailing voyage down The Great Ouse River to Bedford, they discover that had they come down river in 1655, they might have witnessed John Bunyan’s baptism.  They get to hear Bunyan’s great hymn, which was a musical summation of Pilgrim’s Progress:

Who would true valour see, let him come hither;

One here will constant be, come wind, come weather.

There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent

His first avow’d intent to be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round with dismal stories,

Do but themselves confound, - his strength the more is.

No lion can him fright, he’ll with a giant fight,

But he will have a right to be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit;

He knows he at the end shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away; he’ll fear not what men say;

He’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

Arriving in Bedford, where Bunyan ministered, they stood before a large bronze statue and Mr. Pipes explains:

“John Bunyan preached his last sermon in London before he died in 1688,’ said Mr. Pipes.  ‘Many years later Bedford raised this statue in his honor.  Notice well his posture - eyes lifted to heaven; the best of books - the Bible - open in his hands; the law of truth on his lips; and his back against the world.’ … ‘Remember,’ Mr. Pipes continued, ‘on your own, you will always fail - every time - but God has given his children armor and weapons to fight all the enemies of your souls.  Use the means of grace, all-prayer, the key of promise, your sword - God’s Word, worship, and the singing of hymns.  And with God before you, live as pilgrims with your back to the world - they’ll follow better that way - and your eyes on the heavenly kingdom.’”

Must-Get Cds

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Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Miscellany.
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It’s late so I’ll get straight to it.

Together For the Gospel Live by Bob Kauflin (Sovereign Grace produced the project)

The concept is quite simple.  One piano.  One microphone.  And 5000+ predominantly male voices singing several very old and some modern hymns.  I can’t think of another cd with this kind of staying power.  I have listened to it dozens of times.  The songs are such rich expressions of the glory of God and his redemptive work in Christ.  Our favorite family hymn of late is And Can It Be, which I memorized long ago but had never heard the melody line until this project.  I remember hearing Ligon Duncan answer a question from Mark Dever, “But, Lig, are there times that loud singing could be positively appropriate?” … “Yes,” Duncan interrupted.  “When you sing ‘And Can It Be’ it better be loud!”  Having heard this song and so many others, set so beautifully with piano accompaniment and vocal lead by Bob Kauflin , Duncan’s remark makes sense.  Our pastoral team attended the conference and participated in corporate worship there in the Louisville Convention Center.  Many moments in which I could only read the words through tears and listen.  That still happens.

Resurrection Letters volume II by Andrew Peterson

Bob Kauflin passed this along to me with high recommendations.  It is outstanding.  Peterson’s songs are lyrically rich and musically interesting.  But they are so much more.  He has a great ability to take familiar passages, O.T. allusions and N.T. parables and draw out the gospel thread that binds them all together.  It’s inescapable that the writer is not only a gifted musician but a student of Scripture and lover of the gospel.  Hosea, The Good Confession, and Hosanna are songs that I regularly wake up singing.

Pivot this Sunday night

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Posted on June 26th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in E-NEWS.
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18-30s, don’t forget Pivot is this Sunday! 7pm at LCC.  Check here for directions.

Shakespeare, a Christian writer?

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Posted on June 25th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Miscellany.
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Earlier this year, the boys and I read through The Children’s Shakespeare by E. Nesbit.  They are abridged renditions of eleven of Shake’s most famous plays.

Literary scholar, Leland Ryken, editor of the Literary Study Bible, comments on what one of the great surprises in his scholarly career:  coming to regard Shakespeare as a Christian writer.

Gospel in 6 minutes

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Posted on June 23rd, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Messages, Missions/missional.
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We’re continuing our Incarnate Series at the Pivot this Sunday night.  Hope to see all the usual suspects and if you’re in the area, it’d be great to have you join us.

This series is focused on how we are to live and speak as representatives of Christ in this world.  I haven’t started developing the message yet, but this Sunday night is slated to be about telling the gospel.

Here’s Piper - whom we affectionately call jpipes - doing it in 6.

Easily edified?

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Posted on June 19th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Church Life, Spiritual Growth.
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A truly great post by Justin Taylor.  Convicting, awakening.

Piper on the prosperity gospel

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Posted on June 16th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Church Life, Cultural Issues, Theology.
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Said as only Piper can.

I am so grateful to God for John Piper’s God-centeredness.  This is Piper ablaze. I hope this two and a half minute video rekindles in you, as it does in me, a deep passion for God-centered preaching. If you haven’t read The Supremacy of God in Preaching, do your soul a favor and read it.

Book recommendations

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Posted on June 11th, 2009 by matt mason. Filed in Messages, Spiritual Growth, Theology.
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Haven’t been able to post lately.  I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things though in the next couple of weeks.

The NEXT Conference, formerly called New Attitude, was exceptional.  If you weren’t able to go and want to catch up on what you missed, you can download the messages at their website.

Also, Justin Taylor has been asked to pass along some book recommendations as a follow up to the theme of the conference.  What are some great books related to the Person and Work of Jesus Christ?