Matthew 5:21-32. Further Reading on Anger, Lust and Divorce

Anger.
Three very helpful articles available by David Powlison.Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Great book on Resolving Personal conflict: The Peacemaker, by Ken Sande.

Lust
Good book on Lust for men and women: Sex is not the problem, Lust is by Josh Harris
Helpful online book on pornography for men: Sexual detox: a guide for guys who are sick of porn by Tim Challies

Divorce
Divorce, by John Murray
Good book for those who grew up with divorce understanding ways in which it might have affected them, and taking them to the gospel. Child of divorce, Child of God by Kristine Steakly. She also has a blog.

Marriage (obviously closely related to lust and to divorce, as the former is a distortion of what was intended for marriage and the latter is trying to escape God's good plans for marriage). In recent years there have been several excellent books written on marriage.
Chrisopher Ash, Married for God
Gary and Betsy Ricucci, Love that Lasts
Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say, "I do"

Don Carson on anger: ours and Jesus'

“Our problem is that we burn with indignation and anger, not at sin and injustice, but at offence to ourselves. In none of the cases when Jesus becomes angry is his personal ego wrapped up in the issue. More telling yet, when he was unjustly arrested, unfairly tried, illegally beaten, contemptuously spat upon, crucified, mocked; when in fact he had every reason for his ego to be involved, then, as Peter says, ‘he did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats.’ (I Peter 2:23) From his parched lips came forth rather those gracious words, ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34) ”


The Sermon on the Mount, 46-47.

Great Reading for the Sermon on the Mount

Just started preaching on the Sermon on the Mount yesterday.
Sermon available here

Three great books to recommend to accompany the series

Small: Don Carson
Medium: John Stott
Large: Martyn Lloyd-Jones

If you come to our Sunday evening Services over the next couple of weeks there will be some copies of some of these books being given away for free for those who are quick a sticking their hand in the air at the appropriate moment!

Too funny... is this cabbie in your congregation?

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-story-of-a-friends-cab-ride-in-london

Esther 1-2 wordle

We start looking at Esther this coming Lord's Day at Twynholm Baptist Church.
Interesting that the wordle of Esther 1-2 shows us how the world is often seen. The decisions of kings and nobles is in the forefront of who seems to be in control of this world.The hand of God is unseen; he is never mentioned in the whole book, but he is clearly in control.

Lausanne with Lig

On Sunday night at Twynholm we prayed for lasting fruit at the Lausanne Conference.

Here's a great little debrief from Lig Duncan



HT: Thabiti Anyabwile

Narnia Night with Michael Ward: November 19th, 2010

The Revd. Dr. Michael Ward will be speaking about C.S. 

Lewis, his imaginative world and why Narnia has been able to captivate generations of readers.

Dr. Ward is a world renowned expert on
C.S. Lewis, the author of “Planet Narnia”
and the inspiration behind the BBC Documentary, “The Narnia Code”.

He currently serves as Chaplain of
St Peter’s College, Oxford.

Programme:

6:30pm Talk and Q&A for Children.

7-8pm    Talk for Adults

7-9pm    Narnia video for Children

8-9pm    Q&A, Book signing and refreshments

Venue:    Twynholm Baptist Church,
324 Lillie Road, London SW6 7PP

For more info visit www.twynholm.org 

Notes from Stuart Townend seminar on leading Corporate worship

Stuart Townend on Corporate Worship: seminar given today at Oak Hill College

The "A.R.T. of Corporate worship"

A. ADORATION

1)      The need for both objective and subjective

a.       Objective reflection on the character and work of God

b.      Subjective emotional response to those truths

c.       Great to have had in the last 30 years more songs that have an emotional subjective element... these have caused us getting excited about the experience of worship, but the danger is that my experience of worship becomes the  focus of the song, rather than the songs really being the act of worship by reflecting upon the character of God.

2)      Truth in songs

a.       Teaches us theology

                                                               i.      More people learn their theology through songs than through sermons

                                                             ii.      More likely you leave church humming a song than reciting the sermon!

                                                            iii.      So we must ask the question: what sort of picture do our songs teach us about God?

                                                           iv.      Full range of the characteristics of God: not just his love, but also his justice, his holiness etc.

                                                             v.      Look at 3 months worth of your songs sung in church: are you choosing songs that reflect the breadth of the character of God

b.      Gives a solid foundation for living

                                                               i.      Do your songs reflect the reality of the world in which we live?

                                                             ii.      Look at the life of Paul... the truth speaks into the troubles of life.

1.       For I know that these present sufferings..

2.       Consider yourself dead to sin but alive to righteousness

                                                            iii.      Songs must put the reality of the different experiences of life in the perspective of the reality of the character and promises of God.

                                                           iv.      Cf Psalm 22. The struggle between the present circumstances and the knowledge of God. “Am I going to believe God’s promises or give way to the difficulties of circumstances?”

                                                             v.      Jesus’ instruction sending out the 72... Luke 10:20... they are hugely excited about the experience that they have: Jesus says their joy should be grounded in the reality of the gospel not experience.

c.       Tells the story

                                                               i.      Faith is not routed in dislocated ideas, but in history. We have a story to tell, and so there must be songs that tell the story.

                                                             ii.      Too few songs tell the story.

                                                            iii.      Story telling songs are great in evangelistic circumstances: non-Christians can sing “From the squalor of a borrowed stable” but cannot sing “I love you Lord” without lying.

3)      Leading Congregational Worship

a.       Remind people of the basis for entering in.

                                                               i.      Not our feelings

                                                             ii.      The basis is what God has done in Christ, and who
God is.

                                                            iii.      We want to undermine the idea, “I couldn’t come to church today because I was in a mess, and I need to clean myself up before I can enter God’s presence”. No! We come to him to be cleaned up.

b.      Must start with truth-declaring songs. We mustn’t try and set a ‘vibe’ with a song, but have the truth set the mode.

c.       Must encourage an expectancy that God will be revealing himself as we come together to worship.

4)      In personal Worship

a.       Thanksgiving

                                                               i.      True worshippers of God habitually give thanks to God. Idolators are those who “neither glorify him as God or give thanks to him.” (rom 1:21)

                                                             ii.      Appreciation: not merely saying thankyou to God, but reflecting and exploring the goodness of what he gives

                                                            iii.      Declaring God’s goodness to others (Ps 40:3)
Talking more openly with others about our thankfulness towards God for his work in our lives

5)      Worship in Spirit

a.       Worship is not dependent upon place or ceremony (John 4)

                                                               i.      We can think about rituals or things that we do that ‘create’ worship

1.       “Must be quiet and reflective”

2.       “We must really be ‘going for it’ in song

3.       Lifting hands in great emotion

                                                             ii.      Going into the ‘sanctuary’, the ‘holy place where he dwells’

b.      Worship is a response of the heart

c.       Worship is on God’s terms and not ours

                                                               i.      The danger of a consumeristic ‘this is my worship preference’ approach to worship.

                                                             ii.      Those who lead worship are called to please God and serve the people, not just serve God and please the people.

                                                            iii.      This means that we will sometimes do things that will displease the congregation, but please God.

d.      Worship is Spirit-led and Spirit empowered

R. REVELATION

1)      God is a God of self-Revelation

a.       Revealed in Creation

b.      Revealed in Christ

c.       Revealed in Word

d.      Revealed in our lives

e.      The danger is that we so rely upon the means of revelation (songs, scriptures etc) that we do not look to the Spirit of revelation to use those means that he would reveal the Father and the Son.

2)      Looking for God’s revelation..

a.       In our preparation:          praying for God’s help as we put the song together

                                                               i.      Matt Redman, prefers the term “Lead worshipper” rather than “worship leader”. The Holy Spirit is the “worship leader”.

                                                             ii.      Thinking and praying through the journey of a service that would flow and allow the Holy Spirit to be working.

b.      In our leading: the need to be flexible to what the Spirit is doing, so that we can follow what the Spirit is revealing to his people

c.       From God’s people.

                                                               i.      In a context where others may lead in prayer or prophecy, being ready to be flexible as to how to move on from there with songs rather than thinking that their contribution is a diversion from the journey the Spirit is taking people upon.

T. TRANSFORMATION

1)      Unconsciously: the experience of worship affects us – we come out of church experiencing and being more patient, more Christlike.

2)      Renewing of minds. (Romans 12:1-3)

3)      Sharpening of our consciences

4)      Preparation to receive the word of God, so that when the preacher stands and preaches, our hearts are ready to receive.

Other comments in the Q&A

-          Important to realise that ‘worship leading’ is delegated responsibility from church leadership. There is a need for the elders to have knowledge and responsibility for what goes on in the Sunday service, so that if the worship leader gets a phonecall over Sunday lunch saying “why did we sing that song?” the worship leader can say, “the pastor said it was fine, so you need to speak to him.”

-          Really important to work with the musicians you have rather than try to ‘create a sound’ that you may not have. 

How Members Can Serve the Church on Sunday Morning

Great little list of things that every church meember can do to serve more faithfully every Sunday...

How Members Can Serve the Church on Sunday Morning

The circularity of atheism and the argument of irrefutable testimony

There is a huge amount of circularity in much atheistic thinking.

It goes something like this.

1. It is fair to assume that there is no God because there is no compelling evidence [though they often prefer to use the lower case 'g' - perhaps we should refer to "richard dawkins"]
2. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not compelling evidence for the existence of God because it is not from reliable sources
3. The sources are unreliable because they believe in the possibility of the miraculous
4. Miracles can only happen if there is a God.
5. Therefore the miraculous cannot happen because it is fair to assume that there is no God

Thus the assumption that there is no God a priori rules out any evidence to the contrary.
Dawkins, for example says "‘accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are about as well documented as Jack and the Beanstalk’.'" Yet, I have never heard of him seriously interacting with those accounts. I would love to hear Dawkins attempt to try to refute the historicity of the gospel accounts.

One of the things I find so compelling about the gospel accounts of the resurrection is that the disciples are not presented as people who think that things like resurrections happen! As D.A. Carson points out, they are not sitting in the upper room on Friday evening saying, "I'm so excited, I can't wait until Sunday." They are despondent, disillusioned and fearful. They were as surprised by the resurrection as I think Dawkins would be. So much so that when 10 of them try to persuade the one who wasn't there that Jesus is alive, he says that  he will not believe unless he not only Sees Jesus, but puts his fingers in the nail marks and his hand in Jesus' rather unique wound in his side. As it happens, seeing is enough.

Through history there have been many who have said that they would not believe unless they saw with their own eyes: but then for them, in the end, hearing has been enough: hearing about Thomas who should have believed on the testimony of 10 eyewitnesses, but didn't.

As much as we can, let's start moving our conversations with Non-Christians away from the details of irreducible complexity and intelligent design to irrefutable testimony.