What I Read Online – 12/14/2011 (a.m.)

• Of Kids and Christmas – Desiring God

  • Christmas is the ultimate celebration of the material. Because Christmas is the time when God became man. Word to Flesh. Unfettered spirit to the hazards and joys and stresses of physical life. Think about it. Some people want to filter the material out of Christmas and morph it into some pure ethereal spirit religious day. And some people want to filter all the spiritual out of it and make it simply a holiday celebrating the purchasing power of plastic. But the power of Christmas is when spiritual and material meet. And it always has been. That is the joy of the season, that is the good news, that is the laughter and the paradox and the earth-shaking magic of Christmas. The infinite Word became a physical baby.
  • The truth is, that’s what it’s like when the Spiritual becomes Material. When God became Man. It’s not easy, because it turns the world upside down, a true cataclysm of joy.
  • Our celebrations aren’t supposed to be smooth, effortless bits of quiet either. They should be as big and as glorious and as spiritual and as physical as we can make them.
  • That first Christmas was enough for all time, and no amount of fussing from us about all the busy work will slow it down. We can give each other stink-eyes all day long, and the world will just go on being transformed. The only thing that we can actually damage by losing sight of the point of Christmas is our children.
  • Because what we do on Christmas is an acted out statement of faith. To our children, we are Christmas. We are their memories. We are the story. We are acting out both the surprised shepherds in the fields with their problems and squabbles and regular lives, and also the heavenly host that came to them singing,“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.”

• Systematic Theology Matters: Seminary: Learning to Fly in “Alternate Law”

  • Much of the time, ministers can get away with this approach. Pastoral ministry usually operates, after all, in “normal law.” But not always. And it is in those emergency situations that nothing can substitute for the intangible skill, forged by countless hours in the classroom and library, to operate in “alternate law.” In a nutshell, that’s why seminary exists.

• Thinking through Arguments in the Public Square – Justin Taylor

  • First, assume the person is expressing at least some good points and try to identify them. This assumption may be false, but the search for common ground with intellectual opponents is a good habit. In the process of identifying these good points, try to argue against your own view.

     

    Second, try to state on paper exactly how you would argue against the view being expressed in an intellectually precise but emotionally calm way.

• I AM and the Burning Bush- Credo Magazine

  • Older theologians often spoke of God’s aseity (pronounced “ah-say’-ity”). This term comes from the Latin and signifies, simply, “from himself.” The aseity of God is the teaching that God is self-existent. He exists eternally, yes, but he exists eternally from himself. He is uncaused and independent. He depends on nothing — and no one — for anything. Just as the divine fire requires no fuel to sustain it, so God himself exists entirely independent of anything or anyone. He is self-sufficient, self-perpetuating, existing only of himself.
  • Here I acknowledge that I’m in over my head. But perhaps this doctrine of God’s aseity helps us just a bit: God exists eternally of himself, dependent on or in need of nothing outside himself.

• The danger of making our experience the norm for others | HeadHeartHand Blog

  • That’s not going to be just our way of being justified, or just the beginning of our sanctification; it’s also going to be a very large part of our ongoing day-by-day sanctification. Our days will be marked by a massive and constant internal battle: to die to the sins of pleasing man and of striving for human praise on the one hand, and to rest in our Christ-bought identity and live for the glory of God alone on the other hand. But just because the primary spiritual battle for people like Tullian and I may be internal, and focused on our identity in Christ, does not mean that it’s going to be the same for other Christians.
  • But I also need to get off the couch, put on my boots, pick up the shovel, and start moving the snow
  • here’s a lot of doing and not doing to be done for sanctification to take place. The hard work involves more than resting in Christ’s performance for me.  Again, there is a significant physical effort and struggle involved in my choices.

• Premarital Sex and Our Love Affair with Bad Stats – Kevin DeYoung

  • Everyone seems to love stats about bad Christians. Non-Christians like to see that we really are fakes. Christians like to think the sky is falling.
  • Here’s the bottom line: don’t believe every stat you read. They are sometimes false and often kind of true, but the real shocking figures are rarely quite as much as meets the eye.

• Now Available: John Piper’s Seminar on Corporate Worship – Desiring God

  • The worship of God . . . should be free at table, in private rooms, downstairs, upstairs, at home, abroad, in all places, by all people, at all times. Whoever tells you anything else is lying as badly as the pope and the devil himself. (What Luther Says, [St. Louis: Concordia, 1959], 1546)

• You Asked: Are the Differing Narratives of Peter’s Denials Reconcilable? – The Gospel Coalition Blog

  • Regarding Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial and the ensuing narrative that describes the denial, Matthew, Luke, and John disagree with Mark in such a way that seems like an irreconcilable contradiction: both accounts logically cannot be true. No commentary has provided a satisfying explanation. Can anyone? Should this interfere with our belief that the Scripture is inerrant?

• Preach the incarnation – Reformation21 Blog

  • ”He was poor, that he might make us rich.
     He was born of a virgin that we might be born of God.
     He took our flesh, that he might give us His Spirit.
     He lay in the manger, that we may lie in paradise.
     He came down from heaven, that he might bring us to heaven….
     
     That the ancient of Days should be born.
     that he who thunders in the heavens should cry in the cradle….
     that he who rules the stars should suck the breast;
     that a virgin should conceive;
     that Christ should be made of a woman, and of that woman which himself made,
     that the branch should bear the vine,
     that the mother should be younger than the child she bare,
     and the child in the womb bigger than the mother;
     that the human nature should not be God, yet one with God
     
     Christ taking flesh is a mystery we shall never fully understand till we come to heaven
     
     If our hearts be not rocks, this love of Christ should affect us . Behold love that passeth knowledge! Eph 3:19”
     
     Taken from Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, pages 196 and 198

• Tebow, Calvin, and the Hand of God in Sports – The Gospel Coalition Blog

  • The historic doctrine of God’s providence teaches that nothing happens outside of God’s purview and ordination.
  • Calvin argued that “God so attends to the regulation of individual events, and they all so proceed from his set plan, that nothing takes place by chance” (I.16).
  • The Lord God oversees and brings to pass all that takes place on this earth, whether unseating kings or precisely placing follicles on our heads (Prov. 21:1; Matt. 10:30).
  • God oversees and ordains all that comes to pass. This includes, as surprising as it may initially seem, football games. The outcome of every football game ever been played was planned by the all-wise, all-seeing mind of God. But this is not saying what some might think. God has also planned every haircut you’ve ever had, and every shopping trip you’ve ever taken. He is lord of football, and he is lord of produce. Nothing happens outside of his sovereign direction.
  • God has a special interest in promoting his gospel and building his church (John 3:16; Rom. 10; Eph. 1). This is not to say that he is uninterested in the ordinary things of the world, but rather to note that the mission of salvation begun after Adam’s fall holds preeminence for God and, by extension, for his followers.
  • And I know, lastly, that the most important story here is not that Tebow and the Broncos are winning in dramatic fashion, but that the Lord seems to have worked in this man such that, though faced with unbelievable fame, major wealth, constant attention, and the classically all-American success story, Tebow seems only to want to talk about the gospel.

• Who Was George Frideric Handel? – Justin Taylor

  • Who Was George Frideric Handel?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.