Burk Parsons writes:

Christianity is a creedal religion. You cannot separate Christianity from its ancient creeds. In fact, every true Christian adheres to the ancient creeds of the church, whether he knows it or not. We all have creeds. Whether formal or informal—whether written or unwritten—in one way or another, we all have creeds in which our beliefs are expressed.

Read more »

Do faith and repentance go together as a right response to the gospel?

If so, which should come first?

Would insisting that repentance is necessary in conversion call for a kind of work that takes away from the empty-handedness of faith? Does it compromise salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone?

Sinclair Ferguson gives sound biblical answers here.

10 AM Worship

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3 PM Worship

Mark Brown writes:

 Until recently, it was usual to identify Christians by common labels like Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. Today, it’s more typical to ask, “What style of worship do you prefer?” This shift from a focus on doctrine to a focus on preference is fraught with danger. God addresses this problem in Malachi 1.

The problem involved both the priests and the people of God. God asks, “where is my honour? …where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name” (v. 6). They are surprised! “How have we despised your name?” God answers, “By offering polluted food upon my altar… When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?” (v. 8). Why did God want only unblemished animals (Dt. 15:21)? It was because the sacrifices prefigured the spotless Lamb of God, the sinless One who alone is qualified to pay for our sins. Without that perfect atonement, we can never stand in the presence of the Holy One who is a consuming fire.

But these priests had no sense of the awesome holiness of God … or of the greatness of his salvation. And so they had no heart love for him … or for his people. They were not true shepherds. They were hirelings, professionals who contented themselves to keep the people happy. It was a conspiracy of the flesh. They let the people bring “sacrifices” that involved no sacrifice. They brought what we might call garage sale cast-offs … things they didn’t want themselves … things they, in fact, were happy to get rid of. They brought their leftovers, not their firstfruits (Prov. 3:9). Their worship was polluted, not pure.

To sacrifice is to give up something you value because you value God even more. It is to relinquish something out of devotion to God. Because David loved God more than anything else, he refused to offer sacrifices which cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24). But today, as in Malachi’s day, the popular attitude seems to be that, when it comes to God, anything will do. Do you give God your firstfruits? Or do you figure that your leftovers are good enough for God?

God asks for one day in seven for worship and one dollar in ten of our income. As our Creator and Sustainer, God has a claim on all our time and all our money. Statistics today show that only about 20% of the U.S.A. goes to worship on the Lord’s Day. Church giving averages a paltry 1-2%. How many today profess loudly to be Christians and yet ignore God’s Day and God’s tithe and give him rather an occasional hour and a few leftover dollars?

A generation ago teens never worked at part-time jobs or played sports on Sundays. Now both work and sports are common on the Lord’s Day and many children of Christian parents are working and playing rather than worshipping God in the assembly of his people. Will Christian parents sacrifice and say with Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD”? Will confessing Christians value the living and true God more than the gods of money and sports? Have you been giving God first place with your family’s time and money? Or are you giving him polluted worship, sacrifices that involve no sacrifice?

The priests should have rejected the polluted sacrifices. But they were more worried about upsetting the unfaithful worshippers than they were about offending the holy, sovereign God. God says, “Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favour?” (v. 8). Would the government be happy with such service? Would they give you an “A” for effort? Where then is your respect for the King of kings? Today, are you one who would never be late for work, but you can’t seem to make it to church on time? Do you conscientiously pay the 40% tax burden on the average American but you can’t bring yourself to tithe to the living God? Is God really pleased when you drop in at church once a week and go through the motions? Do you genuinely offer yourself as a living sacrifice to the living God? Or do you mumble the hymns half-heartedly and daydream during the prayers and the sermons?

The priests found worship to be a “weariness” (v. 13). They were not just weary in the work. They were weary of the work. They were bored! Confessing Christians, are you, like these priests, weary of God’s true worship? Would you rather give your Sunday to the Lord or keep your weekend for sports and leisure? Let’s call this what it is: irreverence! Why is there so much irreverence? Why all this barren, fruitless religion of our day? It is because we have forgotten the greatness and glory of our God. “For my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts” (v. 11). The real answer to our weary and polluted worship is a new vision of the glory of God. Martin Lloyd-Jones reminded us that the purpose of preaching is to give us a sense of the presence of God. True worship involves a strange mixture of fear and joy! We rejoice with trembling in the presence of a holy and gracious God. Through the pure offering of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we can come into God’s holy presence because the Lamb of God is the perfect sacrifice that has paid for our sins. Surely such a great God and such a great salvation is worth more than leftovers!

J. G. Vos wrote:

“Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement” (Heb. 9:27).

In his book The Problem of Pain C. S. Lewis wrote: “All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.”

There is an end of everyone’s road. So far as this world is concerned, death is the end of the road. This puts a period to human pride, vanity, pretension, all earthly activity—even all service of God in this world. Sometimes we hear someone say: “Take care of yourself; death is so permanent.” For the Christian, of course, death is not really permanent. Yet there is a sense in which death is permanent even for the Christian—it is permanent so far as this world is concerned. As far as this earthly life is concerned, death is the dead end of the street, the end of the road. As God says to the ocean waves, “Thus far but no farther,” so he says to every human being: There is an end of your earthly road. Thus far but no farther shall you travel.

At the end of the road we meet with God. When the end of our earthly road is reached, we will meet, not extinction, but God—the living, holy, personal God. When that time comes, God will be intensely real to every person, even to those who have drifted through life while scarcely giving God a serious thought. All doubts and pretenses will fall away. Each person will fully realize in the end that God is all that really matters.

For the saved Christian this will mean unspeakable happiness and glory. But for the unsaved sinner, it will mean the inevitable facing of reality at last—the reality that the person has evaded and blinded himself to and deceived himself about God for a whole lifetime.

The judgement of God, the Bible tells us, is according to truth (Rom. 2:2). Truth and reality will have to be faced at last. At the end of the road the difference between right and wrong will be as clear as crystal. He one and only way of salvation in Christ will be as plain as daylight, as undeniable as the light of the noonday sun. But for those without Christ, it will be too late. The door of eternal life will be forever shut. There will remain only the final disposal of a human life according to the absolute justice of God. The unsaved sinner will pass from God’s presence into hell, where his personality will be progressively eaten away by the acid of sin and selfishness, for ever and ever to all eternity.

We should always be ready for the end of the road. The fact is a certainty; the time is unknowable; therefore we should be always ready. “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). There is only one way to be ready for the end of the road. That is to make sure that we are in Christ by repentance and faith.

A dead rabbit on a large cake of ice was floating down the Niagara River toward the falls. An eagle dropped out of the sky and started eating the rabbit. As the ice drifted nearer to the great cataract, the eagle continued eating the rabbit. Finally, a short distance from the falls, the eagle tried to fly away. He flapped his wings but could not get into the air. His feet had melted their way into the ice and he was trapped, and perished in the torrent of water rushing over the great waterfall. Just so, many sinners think they will accept Christ at some future time only to find out when the end comes that it is too late. When we meet God at the end of our earthly road, what will the outcome be? Make sure of salvation in Christ while the door is open! Jesus said, “whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (Jn. 6:37).

Johannes G. Vos (1903-1983) was a minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (Covenanter). He served as a missionary in Manchuria from 1931 until 1941, and later taught Bible and chaired the Bible department at Geneva College for many years. This material first appeared in the periodical, Blue Banner Faith and Life, created and edited by Dr. Vos.