Reformed Blogging

Jeremiah 6:16 has one verse often used by preachers to call for an old-fashioned revival. The world tends to say that the world is "old-fashioned" because of its refusal to adhere to modernistic lies. I'm not saying that modernization is a bad thing. What I want to emphasize is that modernistic preachers are dangerous. It would be a good thing for a church to embrace new technology but not to sacrifice old-fashioned Christian values in accepting them. It's good for a church to accept technology like using Microsoft Powerpoint, digital censorship to filter out unsavory sites from the Internet in the church grounds, use a powerful ventilation system, to provide temperature checks as some churches re-open (limited) during this pandemic, and other new technology. What a church should not do is to embrace modernistic heresies or any heresy that defies the old-fashioned or timeless values that the Church must abide on from the Bible. The problem in Jeremiah 6:16 is the peop...

I really can't count the number of times I get annoyed whenever unbelievers get the Scriptures wrong. It's written in plain simple English yet all he or she does is misinterpret it. Why does that happen? John F. MacArthur's sermon " Why the World Reject God's Word " has this meaningful excerpt: I said a couple of weeks ago that we understand that nonbelievers don’t believe the Bible, can’t believe the Bible, have no interest in the Bible. It’s not only unclear to them, it’s obscure; they have no ability to understand it . So they don’t understand us, how we can be so passionately committed to the Word of God and love it so much and love obeying it for the sake of the love that we have for the One who died for us and rose again. They don’t understand it. And on the surface I understand why. Let me give you some reasons why non-Christians don’t believe the Bible, okay.  Let’s go back to verse 18 of chapter 1. “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those wh...

I'm not enjoying the pain of the epidemic. Rather, I'm enjoying the presence of God as I endure the epidemic. The big issue is having to be self-quarantined isn't going to be easy. However, I do weigh myself more fortunate than the people during the London Cholera Outbreak of 1854. Towns under quarantine had no way to listen to Charles H. Spurgeon's sermons in the town that was providentially not under quarantine. I can't imagine how Christians under quarantine in other towns felt having to stay home at that time. The Internet doesn't necessarily have to be the tool of the Devil. Science itself in the right hands can be used for the greater glory of God. Internet today would allow me to listen to the sermons of dead godly men even after they've long entered into glory. Right now, I think one of the ways to enjoy the quarantine is to spend time listening to sermons of the late R.C. Sproul Sr. on the Internet. I haven't listened to Sproul's sermo...

I was reading through Pulpit & Pen some time ago and I realized one thing - both Charles and Andy Stanley are out of touch. While I don't want to deny that Charles had written a good devotional called "In His Presence" but there's one book called "Eternal Security" which ends up providing false assurances for false converts. Here's some quotes from his book that I consider to be really heretical: “Even if a believer for all practical purposes becomes an unbeliever, his salvation is not in jeopardy” (Chapter 10, p. 93). “And last, believers who lose or abandon their faith will retain their salvation, for God remains faithful” (p. 94) The problem of Charles' book is that he denies the one essential truth that CANNOT be separated from eternal security. This truth is called the Perseverance of the Saints. It reminds me of a theological argument gone bad with an Easy Baptist. He continued to insist in these same points that you can have etern...

One of the many passages that puzzle me is when David said in Psalm 51:4 saying, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." At first, it sounds really illogical. It's maybe because modern English today uses the word sin more often. There's no difference between a sin and a fault. James 5:10 in some modern translations say to confess our sins one to another (but this doesn't justify confessing to a priest) while the King James says to confess our faults to one another. So what's my understanding of David saying that He only sinned against God? This is a very confusing statement. I decided to consult Charles H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David to help me understand a difficult to understand passage: Verse 4 . Against thee, thee only have I sinned. The virus of sin lies in its opposition to God: the psalmist's sense of sin towards others r...

Is the sermon getting too long? That's what I think whenever a pastor's message is that long. You can think that a Sunday service always has its allocated time. Let's say that Sunday school starts at 9:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. We have a 10:00 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. worship service for the morning and 5:00 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. sunset service. There is time allocated for each activity such as the singing of hymns, the choir singing, the special number, the sermon, dealing with unsaved visitors, baptism and dedication of infants. If there's anything that could cause a worship service to conclude in a much later time it's the sermon.  What's with the worship sermon? While overly short sermons can bore me but overly long sermons can also bore me. Some pastors tend to lack discipline or are overly talkative in the pulpit. The exposition may end up becoming longer than John Gill's exposition of Psalm 119 which is the longest Psalm in the Bible. You may have a short vers...

I remember the unforgettable, irritating argument with people over the Scripture. I thought about the time I argued with someone over the Gospel. I tend to think that the only way to witness to the lost is to be as cheesy and offensive as possible towards them. But I thought there's one principle that I fail to consider: it's speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). It also brings me back to 1 Corinthians 13:2 that says I may know a lot but use is it if I don't have any love towards unbelievers? Not the worldly kind of love but the love that rebukes people for their sake and not for my own sake. It's wrong to have a Joel Osteen or sugar-coated feel good gospel. I have every right to get mad at it but to pick fights with its followers is uncalled for. I remembered I argued with an older brother in Christ who said I shouldn't be argumentative towards people. I tend to forget that what set the Christians apart and what makes them bear fruit is not their own ...

I remembered how often I enjoyed taking passages and desiring to expound them. I thought about John F. MacArthur's sermons and books. I remembered picking the book "Fool's Gold" and I started drinking whole ocean of truth in the second chapter called "Plexiglas Preachign: The Devastating Consequences of a Watered Down Message". I can't forget how angry that chapter made me when it stated the truth that watered down preaching is becoming more and more popular. I was further irritated at the prevalence of watered down preaching and I'm seeing the consequences unveil before my very eyes. I'm seeing how watered down messages are really more popular with a crazy world. I thought about how I used to berate MacArthur without any investigation. Many charges were like he supposedly doesn't believe in the blood or that many people miss the point. Another controversial issue is whether or not MacArthur thought that receiving the mark of the Beast a...

I was done with reading John Gill's exposition of the Old Testament a few days ago. The Old Testament exposition was meaningful. Learning about the purpose of the ceremonial law was meaningful such as why God forbade the eating of certain meats. It was indeed set for health reasons to avoid eating anything labeled as unclean especially if one is in the Middle East. I can't get over the exposition of the prophets and I admit it wasn't easy reading through a long exposition. Based on my experience, reading an entire exposition is much heavier than reading through any of the Reformed theology books I've been reading. It's much longer than reading through the several books by John F. MacArthur and R.C. Sproul. There are times I could read several chapters a day but some of the expositions require reflection of one chapter a day. Some of these chapters are very long. It's no wonder you can't contain Gill's exposition of the whole Bible in just one book. ...

Reading through John Gill's commentary is really no walk in the park and I'm momentarily stuck with his exposition of Psalms. It has been a long difficult process that after reading the Bible cover to cover for the nth time. I wanted to chew on my spiritual food to savor the flavor of the Word of God for the Christian life. My Bible reading has been slow trying to understand verse by verse and chapter by chapter. By God's grace I reached the Book of Psalms and I'm in the 89th chapter. The struggle isn't easy. Sin and the forces of darkness are working their way. If Satan's not there then it's one of his demons but I take note that I'm my own worst enemy. The flesh is always trying to give me an excuse not to continue the spiritual exercise of reading a thorough Bible exposition. With psalms as the longest book of the Bible I need God's grace to really read through it. Sometimes, I'm stuck with one to two chapters a day if it's going to b...

I have no doubt that the Bible is really true so I'm not surprised it's hard to find a good preacher. We've got lazy pastors who even say that expository preaching is a "lazy" and "cheating" method to do preaching. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Do these pastors who say that expository preaching is "lazy" and "cheating" realize that preparing an expository sermon is not an easy job. If anybody's lazy it's those pastors who love to do out of context preaching. I get angry whenever they attack sound preaching but also insist in the path of easy "Christianity".  What's worse is that some of these lazy pastors and other opponents of expository preaching are already committing strawman attacks and character assassinations towards expository preaching. One of the worst attacks I've heard from some "Baptist" heretic I had a terrible argument with that the old time pr...

I started reading John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible around November 2016. I started reading from Genesis and now I'm in the sixteenth chapter of Job. Reading through the massive exposition of the late Gill himself gives a lot of real insights. I may not agree with everything a commentator says but reading through the commentary is a lot of hard work. It's much bigger than my first read through Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary.  Reading through an exposition gives me an idea how hard it is to take Scriptures in context, to understand Scriptures in context and to prepare expository sermons. That's why I really get mad at pastors who trash expository preaching to be "lazy" and "cheating", let me tell them that they're the ones who are cheating and lazy. It's easy to take Scriptures out of context but it's difficult to take it in context. Just reading through John Gill's verse by verse exposition gives me pleasure ...

The God-centered church is what I endorse and not the you-centered church or the self-centered church. The problem with people today is that they love the Jeremiah 5:31 type of churches. The priests rule by their means and prophets prophesy falsely. Today, we have pastors bearing rule by their means and a lot of self-proclaimed prophets. They easily cater to people and the God-centered churches aren't popular but so what? I'd rather be with the minority when they're right rather than with the majority when they're wrong (Matthew 7:13-14).  What do I love about the God-centered church? They focus on God and not on man. The Christian lives by the five Solas namely Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gracia, Sola Christus and Soli Deo Gloria or Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, in Christ alone and glory to God alone. It focuses on focusing on Scripture as the governing principle, focusing on that from salvation to sanctification is by faith alone and grace alon...

Scripture taken out of context drives me dizzy. It just gets worse and worse when these people who misquote the Scripture still won't refuse to understand the Scriptures in context even when it's presented in context. Why they reject Sola Scriptura is simple: they want to keep their own tradition while they woefully misquote Mark 7:8-9 to justify their unscriptural practices and doctrines such as praying to Mary, adding works to maintaining salvation, Antinomianism or rejecting the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's hard for me to keep my cool when the Scripture is taken out of context. The reason is because so many people are too lazy to study Scripture that false teachers easily deceive them. Worse, many of them still want to insist in their out of context interpretation rather than in-context interpretation. I really need God's grace to maintain self-control while fulfilling the duty of correcting false teachers. 

Studying the Greek and what it stands for is absolutely important. What I found out is that Roman Catholic apologists may either nicely point out or rudely point out that the word "kath holEs" appears in the Greek text which is translated as "done whole" and the words "eklEsiai" which means "called out". The word eklesia where we get the word "Iglesia" means church or called out assembly. In due fairness, they're right that the word "kath holEs" is found in the Greek but I'd like to point out what's wrong with the argument. Let's tackle on what the word "Catholic" means. Older versions of the Apostle's Creed (which was named as such to summarize the beliefs of the apostles but not written by the apostles themselves) called the church "Catholic". Catholic is simply a synonym for universal yet the early believers in Jesus Christ were not called Catholics but CHRISTIANS in Antioch (Act...

I'm not satisfied reading the Bible cover to cover and not getting to understand more of the Hebrew, the Greek and the context. I've already finished Matthew Henry based on Charles H. Spurgeon's advice that every minister must read it carefully at least once. It's now time for me to proceed to chew on harder meat. The John Gill Commentary is a pretty long verse by verse commentary with an exposition of the Greek and Hebrew. If devotionals were milk and reading the Bible cover the first time was meat, a comprehensive Bible study is tough meat full of tendons. Do you know some of the better tasting meat are chewy and full of tendons? Reading through Gill's commentary means I might be reading through just one to three chapters a day as opposed to me trying to read as much as I can. But slow reading means I'm reflecting on the exposition in such a level. As someone who loves expository preaching, I would say the whole sermon preparation is no easy task. ...

I remembered reading through "The Gospel According to Jesus", "Hard to Believe" and  listening to Ray Comfort's lectures "Hell's Best Kept Secret" and "True and False Conversion". All these books present a non-watered down presentation of the Gospel according to Jesus. But there's one huge problem: no matter how much I present the Gospel and give evidence for my faith, some just refuse to believe. Somehow, I wish I could change people's minds from their unbelief to their belief. I really wish I could change people's minds whenever I tell them the truth or present the evidence of my faith. I could go ahead and gather all the evidence of all sciences to prove the Bible is real, I could study exegesis to get Scriptures into context than out of context and yet the person still doesn't believe. It's very easy to compare that the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Even after all the twelve plagues have hit Egypt he still refused to...

It's very easy to claim anyone is ignorant about Scripture. I guess it's a simple psychological technique used by the Vatican to guilt induce anyone into joining them. Usaved people naturally don't bother to read the Bible properly and they are naturally addicted to man's approval rather than God. Such conditions make them fertile grounds to be blind followers of authority rather than discerning followers of authority. The same goes for how the Roman Catholic institution had banned the laity from reading the Bible for centuries. Some Roman Catholic apologists may give a reason that not anyone can read the Bible for themselves.  What really amazes me (or frustrates me to many levels) is that their interpretation is really faulty because they ignore even the obvious. You can tell the diagram above is going against grammatical context. Even when it's obvious that this points somewhere else, the maker of the diagram still insists that Peter is the Rock. It'...

Although the article I found about  Andy Stanley trashing expository preaching was last May 8, 2015 but I found it to be an interesting read. Here's an answer that Stanley gave that made me go dizzy just reading it: Guys that preach verse-by-verse through books of the Bible– that is just cheating. It’s cheating because that would be easy, first of all. That isn’t how you grow people. No one in the Scripture modeled that. There’s not one example of that. I'm really amazed at that really stupid answer. I feel like my stomach is churning too fast and that he calls it "cheating". Cheating? I really want to ask people who are against expository preaching that it's "cheating"? So don't tell me any teacher who expands on subject matters in just any subject in education like history, math and science are "cheating"? On the contrary, verse by verse preaching is not easy. Taking verses out of context is very easy because all you need to do ...

There was a time I thought John F. MacArthur taught "works salvation" because a lot of stuff were taken out of context and misrepresented. It's a very common practice to take things out of context. A lot of people have done that to the Bible which is God's Word so the can also do it to just anyone. But I thought of one thing that after reading some of MacArthur's books (and I started with "Fool's Gold"), I felt like I was drinking water from a fire hydrant because I drank a lot of spiritual truths I needed to know all at once after I spent several years reading conspiracy theories so I missed a lot of stuff. I felt like I missed a lot in my Christian growth and now the time has come for me to really catch it up. The one book I felt I needed to read was "The Gospel According to Jesus". So I finished "Fool's Gold" and "The Jesus You Can't Ignore". I needed to read "The Gospel According to Jesus" an...