“I do not consider my conclusions novel from a historical viewpoint. Nevertheless, with regard to both the righteousness of God and the election of men, the conclusions are not in vogue today, and so exegetical explanation and defense are needed” (p. 15).
The essence of lukewarmness is the statement, "I need nothing." The lukewarm are spiritually self-satisfied.
Consistent Christians never want to exclude Jesus from anything they do.
Jesus makes it clear that eternal life hangs on whether we are ready when he comes.
Pray for total healing and total salvation. But also pray for smaller steps to be made on the way.
Galatians is the preservation of the gospel for Bethlehem Baptist Church. It is for you. Marry it!
The freest people in the world are those who submit most fully to the authority of Christ in Scripture.
A description of the new arrangement of responsibilities among the church staff.
We shouldn't neglect needed improvements. But we should major on exploiting our strengths for God’s glory.
There is one, and only one, gospel. It is therefore astonishing--and tragic--to turn away from it and lose both God and his grace.
Praying is worm-work. You can’t see worms doing their work. But without them you couldn’t plow the field.
To try to explain the change from Paul's pre-conversion persecution to his post-conversion passion for the gospel merely by the work of men is to grasp at a straw.
Become the kind of person who cannot walk by someone in need and do nothing.
Very few people today stand up and praise the unity and coherence of truth.
Anything that helps you express your heart for God and does not hinder other people is good.
When you finally hear and believe the drumbeat of the gospel, the rhythm of your step changes. There is a life in step with the gospel, and there is a life out of step with the gospel.
Preaching that doesn't deal with the details of God's Word will only cater to and cultivate stiff-necked listeners.
The transgression against God is to presume that you can climb your way up a ladder of morality into his favor.
How could Paul have Timothy circumcised and yet totally refuse it for Titus?
The essential mark of a Christian is not how far you have progressed in sanctification, but on what you are relying to get there.
Practically speaking, how do I obey God so that it is “not I but Christ in me”?
The central concern of your life is to ensure that you are a child of Abraham.
Has it ever bothered you that sometimes in the Old Testament when one man sins, many get swept away in God's punishment?
Though arrogance and rage assail, conspiracy will not prevail.
Our English word "hosanna" comes from a Greek word "hosanna" which comes from a Hebrew phrase hoshiya na.
Two reasons, among many, to trust the Easter story.
It is a supreme irony that the people at the cross should look on the dying Savior and mock him with their own misunderstanding of this saying.
If your life is flat, empty, without exhilaration, without significance, without a single and fulfilling orientation, it is because you do not see the risen Christ for who he really is.
When Christ experienced the curse of the law on the cross it was not his own but ours.
Part of the process for determining God’s will for your life is deciding what you are good at. So with churches.
It would be terribly wrong to say that the Mosaic law was opposed in its teaching to the Abrahamic covenant.
Part of the charter for a new group at BBC called Frontier Missions Prayer and Study Group.
If we don't understand why the law was given, we can kill ourselves with it.
Why do people want to get rich when they already have things valued in the millions of dollars?
Hostility is the result of frustrated desire. But when God becomes our soul's satisfaction we turn from war-waging to peacemaking.
When you entrust yourself to Christ you honor him, and he would be denying himself to turn you away.
Four reasons why Unification Church theology should be rejected.
If Satan can't get you to disobey God's commands, then he'll try to make you obey them with the wrong spirit.
The best way to free people from slavish sins and irrational fears is to fill their lives with big and powerful realities.
We are freed from the burden of the law when we are given the power to fulfill it from within. And that happens when Christ is formed in us.
For Paul, the experience of freedom is not icing on the cake of Christianity. Freedom in Christ is Christianity.
If meal time prayers are almost always the same, why not craft some which really say something significant?
Your enjoyment of freedom is much more important to God than many of the day-to-day decisions that fill us with so much concern.
Gratitude seeks to show the value of God’s good will, which it does best in words of praise, a heart of trust, and a life of love.
Being a loving person is absolutely essential to being saved, because the faith which saves by its very essence works through love.
If picnics don’t have to do with God, then we may as well close up shop.
Freedom flows forth in love just as surely as a bubbling spring flows forth in a mountain stream.
A Christian is not a person who experiences no bad desires. A Christian is a person who is at war with those desires by the power of the Spirit.
Real guilt is radically God-centered. Satan’s substitute is the bad feelings we get from a wounded ego.
A brief report of the good things going on at BBC after 3 years as pastor.
John Piper recounts the activities and effects of vacation with his family.
People who bear the fruit of the Spirit know they are worthy only of condemnation. They know that the only pay they can earn is the wrath of God.
If every member could express why we exist as a church, there would be a new intensity about all we do.
If we really care about a person's ultimate welfare, we will confront them with their sin as well as comfort them in their trouble.
We cannot define our mission in terms of deeds alone because any deed can be done with an attitude that does not glorify God.
When you get your paycheck, do you look to the Spirit for how to use this money for God's kingdom?
One way to raise up church leaders is to provide in-house training opportunities.
The mindset of the new creation does not just agree that Christ died for sinners; it glories in the cross.
Jesus is not partial to the healthy. He prefers the homeliest, weakest patients whose eyes sparkle when he enters the room.
There are at least four reasons for why God has given work to mankind.
The announcement of the then forthcoming sermon series, "Desiring God."
God is a perfect Christian Hedonist. It makes him happy to be God and to show us mercy.
Christ has plotted many tactical advances before the time of the final victory.
We live in a superficially Christianized society where thousands of lost people think they do believe in Jesus.
When worship is reduced to a duty, it ceases to exist.
One reason we settle for such ordinary “soap opera” lives is because we have no heroes.
If you abandon the pursuit of full and lasting pleasure, you cannot love people or please God.
What you do with it—or desire to do with it—can make or break your happiness forever.
Screwtape scolds Wormword for not doing more to undermine prayer at Bethlehem.
Marriage is a mystery—it contains and conceals a meaning far greater than what we see on the outside.
Sunday should be a day for delighting ourselves in the Lord in ways we can’t on other busy days.
Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing.
Denying God's control over evil does not bring the healing it purports to.
When Satan huffs and puffs and tries to blow out the flame of your joy, you have an endless supply of kindling in the Word of God.
His work was successful, his marriage okay, his kids out of trouble—why get fanatical about Bible reading and prayer?
The cause of world missions is absolutely assured of success. It cannot fail.
The challenge is great. God is greater. The rewards are a hundred times better than anything the world can offer.
Laymen must be challenged to live for a cause greater than their present jobs.
The human heart hates the truth that creation teaches because it is too humbling.
Knowing someone's name opens up the miracle of fellowship.
The story of Noah and the flood is incomplete in itself. God still hates sin and no remedy was found. The story cries out for an epilogue.
The Noahic covenant seems to rule out the idea that there will be universal devastation before Christ returns.
We need a solid insight into the meaning of Christ's coming that will keep us sober in a world intoxicated by the love of things.
Christmas is a model for missions. As I so you. And that mission means danger.
What was freely given under Moses was purchased by Christ.
Where are the Joshuas? Where are those whose knees are as calloused as their hands?
When God makes a covenant he reveals his own job description and signs it.
The measure of our present experience with Christ is the intensity of our longing for its increase.
The meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed.
