Josiah C > Recent Status Updates

Book 2 done.

Really good stuff on methodologies. Our presentation must make clear that this is a serious matter, a matter of life and death. Our presentation must not trivialize the Gospel, and our seriousness in presentation cannot be artificial. We will only do it if we know really and personally that the things of God concern life and death and eternity.

I always love Piper’s emphasis on the affections. Where there is no warm love for Christ and His appearing, there is likely a dead heart.

“why should any man prefer his composures before David’s Psalms, is it because they are more excellent?”

The book is “…intended for the more ignorant, (such as the most are who question, or deny the singing of David’s Psalms) and therefore contrived and framed with the greatest plainness, so as they might best serve to give understanding to the simple.”

So far this book is Christian Hedonism’s bigger, stronger, smarter, more pious brother. It’s a fountain to a thirsty soul.

Pretty solid so far. A very concise guide to reformed systematic theology like this is really helpful.

Very insightful and convicting that wandering thoughts in worship is the sin of hypocrisy. The mouth, eyes, and ears may be engaged, but the heart is not.

I really like that Mounce emphasizes recognizing patterns over rote memorization.

Chapter one may be the best thing I’ve read on conversion.

While I’m not sure I would have appreciated it then, I really wish I had this book as a freshman in Bible college. It should be required reading for first year divinity and seminary students.

Calvin’s chapter on each part of the world governed by providence is terrifying and delightful.

Haldane gives another very compelling argument for Sabbatarianism from Isaiah. In Isaiah’s prophecies of the Messianic age, there is an expectation of Sabbath keeping (56:2-7). Jesus even quotes one of these passages, “my house will be a house of prayer for all nations,” announcing the Messianic age at the cleansing of the temple. Just a few verses before in Isaiah the Gentile keeping the Sabbath is prophesied.

Haldane gives a compelling argument for Sabbatarianism that I have not heard before. In Mt 24, Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple, i.e., a time where ceremonial Jewish rites are explicitly abolished and yet he tells his disciples to hope that they do not have to flee on the Sabbath, showing that the Sabbath is not abrogated with the abrogation of those ceremonial rites (Mt 24:20).

Understanding Romans 14 to abrogate Sabbath keeping under the New Covenant “…is a most pernicious error, an error exhibiting great ignorance of spiritual things and one highly calculated to retard the progress of the Christian divine life.”

Calvin’s articulation of the eternal generation of the Son as well as his defense of the Angel of Jehovah in the Old Testament being Christ is masterful.

This has been even more helpful than the Mortification of Sin so far. In chapter 6, Owen gives a strong warning to not think we are strong enough to resist any temptation ourselves given the several biblical examples of men much stronger in faith than us who have fallen prey to temptation.