Around the Web and Blogosphere (7/15/08)

Thanks to Tony at The Shepherds Scrapbook for his post: Ferguson: Supporting the imperatives to holiness. In the post he relates a quote from Sinclair Ferguson on holiness that says:

“The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen. We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. … Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry.”
- Sinclair Ferguson, message from the 2007 Banner of Truth Conference, Our Holiness: The Father’s Purpose and the Son’s Purchase.

I know this has been my heart to make sure that when I preach of the imperatives to holiness that I also speak of the fact that for those that are His there is also the great hope that He has not only called for holiness but has equipped and works for that end in us. There is no real hope in imperatives to holiness without the corresponding indicatives that support them.



You can now download the introductory notes on Psalms from the upcoming ESV Study Bible: Introduction to The Psalms



At the Reformed Baptist Fellowship is an article entitled: Parachurch-So what’s the problem? While not all may agree with the assessment of the Parachurch it does bring up important questions as to their biblical warrant. In reading the comments it is clear that the question is not so much with regards to the needs of many of the Parachurch ministries that are out there but how does this idea apply to Missionary Societies of the past and today. My personal opinion, based on what I see in scripture, is that those ministries need to be under the auspices of a local church. They may have support from other sources to help them but they need to be accountable to a local church somewhere. An example of this is a Missionary ministry such as Heart Cry Ministries which is a ministry of First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.



At the 9Marks website one of the articles from the July/August eJournal is: 30 Practical Ways For Pastors to Love Their Wives & Families. While I am sure there are other things that can be added and some that may need to be adjusted, I am not sure I can get up any earlier to do my quite time as I am already up at 4AM for work, these are a great place to start. As I read through them I had to say ouch a few times and realize that I may not be as proactive as I should be in caring for my wife and family.