Pester Brat's Saint and Sinner Hypocrisy Blog

Loving Your Wife With Purpose “He will do whatever it takes to make us holy.” Those words appear on the cover of a book entitled "The Love of God" by John MacArthur. They communicate something of the depth of God’s love for His people demonstrated in His commitment to their holiness (Romans 8:29). The process in which God makes His people holy (Christlike) is called sanctification. Sanctification is progressive by nature, empowered by God, and participated in by His people (Philippians 2:12-13). The desire and the ability to pursue holiness are God given gifts to His children and therefore God glorifying. Though there are many hindrances in the sanctification journey, there remains the guarantee of ultimate success. Completed sanctification or glorification will be realized for Christians when they see Jesus (I John 3:2). The promise of one-day seeing Jesus drives Christians forward in their progress of sanctification (3). An important truth about sanctification is that Chris...

The Liberated Woman Loving Your Husband With Purpose It must be your objective as a Christian to illustrate, in a very positive manner, the love relationship between Christ and His church. One way that is accomplished is by promoting the well being of your family. The Christian woman participates in this process by loving her husband with purpose.The Bible is a book that promotes, with vigor, women’s liberation. The biblical portrait of a godly woman is not painted with—oppressive-- restrictive brushes. The godly woman is a very unrestricted—free—dare we say--liberated woman (she has been set free from her sin and set free to serve the Lord with joy). The godly woman is a woman of great worth, trustworthy, hardworking, diligent, caring, thoughtful, business wise, disciplined, merciful, creative, lovely and most of all she loves God. Her attitude and actions produce a legacy that is praiseworthy (See Proverbs 31:10-31) and demonstrates a joyful freedom.The faithful Christian woman has d...

Pastor Steve Weaver comments in one of the sessions from the Ligonier's Pastors Conference recently in the Orlando Florida area. I had the priviledge of attending last year..... 'Expository Preaching' by Mark Dever The fourth and final session of the day (with the exception of the evening's Q&A which I do not plan to blog) was Mark Dever's (of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.) lecture on expository preaching. He began (after a brief cardiovascular workout) with the question: "What is expositional preaching?" It's not about style, but more about how one decides what to preach. Instead, expositional preaching is exposing God's Word to God's people, or stated otherwise, exposing God's people to God's Word. Dever gave his definition of expositional preaching as "preaching that makes the main point of a text, the main point of the message." Our goal as pastors should be that our people would know their Bibles. Th...

Read Ephesians 1:4-14 to see the foundation of the Word of God in these powerful words below: "For it is utterly impossible that any finite cause, created power, or anything out of God himself, should primarily move and incline the eternal, immutable, uncreated, omnipotent will of God. The true original and prime motive of all gracious, bountiful expressions and effusions of love upon his elect, is the good pleasure of his will. And therefore to hold that election to life is made upon foresight of faith, good works the right use of free will, or any created motive, is not only false and wicked, but also ignorant and absurd tenet. To say no more at this time, it robs God of his all-sufficiency, making him go out of himself, looking to this or that in the creature, upon which his will may be determined to elect." -ROBERT BOLTON

"I Can't Repent" Ichabod S. Spencer ONE of the most solemn assemblies that I have ever seen, was convened on the evening of the Sabbath, in a private house. It was an inquiry meeting; at which more than a hundred persons were present, the most of them young or in middle life. The structure of the house was rather peculiar. There was a spacious hail, about ten feet wide and about forty feet long, extending from the front door along the side of three parlors which opened into it, as well as into each other; and at the rear part of this hail was a staircase extending to the second story of the house. Moveable benches were introduced into this hail, and placed along each side of it, to afford seats for those who attended this meeting, and who could not all be accommodated in the parlors. After the meetings had been continued in this place for a few weeks; it became manifest, that the hail was the preferred place. As the different persons came in and took their seats ‘where th...

My Sins, My Sins - My Savior By Steve Camp My sins, my sins, my Saviour! They daily battle me, Deaf and dumb Thy servant is, save only Christ to Thee; In Thee is all forgiveness, fully free abundant grace, I find my hope and refuge, in Thine unchanging face My sins, my sins, my Saviour! How great on Thee they fall; Seen through Thy patient mercy, I ought forsake them all; Their penalty's forgiven; yet their power suffers me Their shame and guilt and anguish, they laid, my Lord, on Thee My sins, my sins, my Saviour! What cost to Thee ensued Thy heel bruised in temptation, no Devil could subdue Thou wrestled in the garden; and prayed the Cup would pass Thy sanguine sweat, Thou trembled yet, embraced His will at last My sins, my sins, my Saviour! Thou perfect Sacrifice Drained wrath's chalice to the dregs; Thy Father satisfied. O Holy Lamb of Glory, High Priest, Lord God and King We worship Thee with reverence, Thy matchless Name we sing My songs, my songs, my Saviour! No grandeur...

Is Doctrine Necessary? by Michael Bremmer “And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching . . .” (Acts 2:42) No statement more clearly shows the lack of Biblical thinking and discernment in Evangelical Christianity then, “I don’t believe in doctrine, I believe in Jesus.” I have heard this silly statement, and others similar to it, too often to believe that it is only the product of a few reckless individuals. Doctrine in Evangelical Christianity has become not only despised by many, but routinely mocked with seeming spiritual sounding cliches. In place of despised doctrine the Bible is shoved into our faces by these seeming pious individuals, who assert with a certain air of spiritual elitism, “We believe in just the Bible, not church dogma.” The word doctrine, however, comes from the Greek word didache and means “teaching.” In Theology, that is, the study of who God is and what He is like, doctrine means “that which is taught as a formal truth or belief OF THE ...

Thomas Nelson Publishers Needs a Biblical "Align"ment ...which master do they serve? "No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." -Luke 16:13 Dear Blogging Aficionados: If some of you have wondered why I haven’t posted these past six days, it is because I am writing to you from down-under… I have been in the beautiful country of New Zealand since this past Wednesday. The Kiwi’s are such genuine people and the church here has been tremendously supportive and biblically sound. We have enjoyed rich times of fellowship and by God’s grace the ministry here has been received very well. I have been teaching almost solely on the gospel… for which there is a tremendous need in this country. Pastor Russ and the entire team here have been a joy to partner with and I will miss them tremendously when it is time to depart. More to come later tomorrow...

What's Wrong With Preaching Today? by Al Martin I regret the negative way in which this topic has been cast. I think most of us have enough sense of logic to reason from the topic to ourselves and therefore to conclude that this will be an attempt to expose weaknesses in our own preaching. I wish that the title had been a bit more positive. Perhaps ‘Hints to Improve Contemporary Preaching’ would have been more suitable. However, this is the topic that has been assigned to me and so I shall seek to proceed within its framework. By way of introduction, let me say something about the sources of my observations. One would have to be omniscient to be able to make final and absolutely accurate pronouncements as to what is wrong with preaching today. It would also demand that one be exposed to all preaching, be invested with infallible gifts of analysis, and on that basis make some official and pompous pronouncements. Obviously, I make no claim to any of these things. Hence, though the so...

A specimen from the week's e-mail When the recent pacifism thread got interrupted by my brief hiatus, I received a smattering of e-mail from angry pacifists. Their usually non-agressive tranquility was greatly disturbed by my suggestion that some forms of killing may actually be authorized by God—and therefore are righteous acts. I could not possibly answer all who wrote or commented, but I did try to answer as many as possible, starting with the people who seemed most serious. Here's one of my favorites. This guy is a radical Arminian pacifist and political left-winger in the Anabaptist tradition. Noticing that a few of my commenters were appalled at the idea of chub-clubbing the world's most infamous terrorist in the aisle of a Costco store when you could just as easily invite him to a Saturday men's Bible study, our liberal Anabaptist friend sensed blood in the water, and seized the opportunity to berate me about Calvin and Spurgeon. Here's my reply: From: "...

Cheese company will build plant in Elmore County 250 will have jobs the first year at packaging facility -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statesman staff Edition Date: 10-18-2005 One of the largest natural cheese packagers in the United States announced Monday it will build a $27 million packaging plant near the Mountain Home Municipal Airport in Elmore County. Marathon Cheese Corp. of Marathon, Wis., will employ 250 workers during its initial year of operation after opening the facility next December. The privately held company expects the payroll at its first plant in the West to double within five years. A company spokesman said Marathon will ship bulk cheese to Mountain Home, where it will be cut and packaged for sale under various brands including Kraft Foods, Land O' Lakes, Sysco, Sargento and Schreiber Foods. Marathon Cheese Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John L. Skoug said state and city officials "were very aggress...

ANOTHER GOSPEL John Cheesman Many who have read thus far may well feel that they do not recognize the gospel with which they are familiar in what has been said. It is my contention that there is a real and basic difference between the biblical gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the prevailing manmade substitute. To substantiate this claim, I must examine the modern gospel and compare it with Scripture, for our final authority must be Scripture alone, where we find many warnings against false gospels (for example Gal. 1:6—9, 1 Tim. 6:3, 20, 2 Tim. 1:13—14). If we are to be true to our duty to `Test all things; hold fast what is good' (1 Thess. 5:21), we must test all formulations of the gospel against the one true gospel revealed in the Word of God. If the gospel commonly preached today is indeed found to be unscriptural, it follows that much of modern evangelicalism has gone astray on doctrines which are not just of secondary importance, but are at the heart of the Christian faith...