Urban Puritano

The Apostle Paul Wrote a detailed and systematic explanation of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. His audience was a diverse metropolitan mix of believers. Urban Christians! Aren't we all? 

Paul's method of missionary fund raising is as counter intuitive as God's work of redemption in Christ. Romans is Paul's tour de force theological treatise concerning God's tour de force purpose of acquiring a people for all of history. God's Word to all of us is to know His will in salvation. For that to take hold, Paul had to explain the nature of our predicament and why it is so great. Therefore, he also needed to explain why believers all stand in so great a debt of so great a salvation.

That sinners can be acquitted for transgressing God's holy standards is the greatest news possible! Episode 13 covered the first part of an essay on Romans that Reformed theology stalwart, Gordon H. Clark, wrote for the Biblical Expositor in 1960. We continue in this episode to look over the shoulder of one who traced the argument of the Apostle Paul and, therefore, the Holy Spirit. 

What follows for the normal Christian once believers are by grace through faith acquitted for their sins? 

May God cause teachers, preachers, pastors, church planters, and lay people to get the Gospel right for the glory of God and the good of His people!

The providential intersection of lives often leads to unexpected outcomes. In light of Pastoral Appreciation Month and on the eve of Reformation Day, we offer a chilled out conversation with Pastor Brandon from Christ the King Reformed Baptist Church and talk about his road to and through the ministry.

Whether you are Baptist or Presbyterian, pastoring a church requires grit. Church Eldership is not for the faint of heart. What theology best serves as the foundation for God-glorifying pastorate? You guessed it: Reformed Theology. Robust, realistic, and always rallying to the Word of God for the people of God!

https://christthekingrbc.org/

https://christthekingrbc.org/church-blog

https://christthekingrbc.org/church-blog/jerusalem-and-jesus-the-shadow-of-christ-in-the-conquest-of-zion

The Apostle Paul wrote a detailed and systematic explanation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His audience was a diverse metropolitan mix of believers. Urban Christians! (Aren't we all?)

Paul explained that we are all great sinners who are in great need of so great a salvation. 

As we approach the anniversary of the Reformation, let's start the celebration early by listening to what a Reformed stalwart of yesteryear wrote on the Reformation's central tenets. Gordon H. Clark wrote what he called a "bare outline" in the Biblical Expositor of 1960 on Paul's Epistle to the Romans. 

May God cause teachers, preachers, pastors, and church planters to get the Gospel right for the glory of God and the good of His people!

The Covid-19 pandemic turned this country's workers into patients, worshippers into zoomers, and its citizens into subjects. We are now denizens. Strictly speaking, it's not Covid's fault. The fault lies squarely at the feet of the ruling class at the federal, state, and local levels. The medical industrial complex (Big Pharma and Big Government with its useful idiots in the complicit media) successfully transformed healthcare's medical paternalism into medical tyranny. Seemingly, overnight.

Where were Christian ethicists? There were lockdowns, school closures, businesses ruined, parks filled with sand, vaccination passports, and thousands coerced to receive a medical intervention to retain employment they were carrying out before Covid-19 vaccines were available. Informed consent? Coercion? Therapeutic proportionality? Autonomy in assessing beneficence and non-maleficence?

Where was the Church? Does the Christian faith have moral eyes and ears or an ethical voice or is she deaf, dumb, and blind to the concerns of the common man? Does the sovereignty of God in the area of ethics even apply or must Christians accept the utilitarian ethics of soft totalitarianism? 

I am simply asking the questions.

There will be a reckoning. It's already started...

The right reading of Scripture neither bifurcates the Old from the New Testament nor the literal from the spiritual sense of Scripture. In fact, "when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly." Are you an audacious or an arrogant interpreter of Scripture? 2 Samuel 5:6-10 is a fascinating test case for a seriously literal, full, single sense, Christocentric understanding of Scripture. 

I know "manifold" (multiple or many) senses of Scripture are becoming all the rage amongst a few Protestant scholars, some pastors, and their seminarian whippersnapper acolytes. But a seriously single sense of Scripture should be embraced by all Protestant believers because it emerges from Scripture itself. After all, the Reformation's "Dangerous Idea" is that the Bible was addressed to the populace at large and that because the Scripture is perspicuous and rational, a correct understanding is within everyone's reach. Scripture's message is sufficiently clear and evident to all who apply a due use of the ordinary means. 

The conquest of Zion as detailed in 2 Samuel 5:6-10 has deeper, not dual or quadruple, meaning. Let's take a look and scratch the surface on Jerusalem and Jesus: The Shadow of Christ in the Conquest of Zion.

The providential intersection of lives often leads to unexpected outcomes. Today, we offer a chilled out interview with Pastor moises NATAN from Iglesia Cristo el Redentor and talk about his road to and through the ministry. From Amistad Cristiana to Nuevo Pueblo (an OPC Church Plant ministry) to Cristo el Redentor. Learning from diverse and various experiences and people is God's providential design. Whether you are Baptist or Presbyterian, church planting requires grit. Church planting is not for the faint of heart. What theology best serves as the foundation for God-glorifying church plants? You guessed it: Reformed Theology. Robust, realistic, and always rallying to the Word of God for the people of God! 

The beauty of God's Word is that whether you read it with a Systematic Theology lens or a Redemptive Historical lens, you will always find coherence and consent of its parts. In EP 8, we scratched the surface on the spiritual dynamic that gave birth to the Church and the ensuing spiritual antithesis that was realized after Genesis 3:15. We perceived a theological resonance between the enmity God graciously and sovereignly placed within redeemed mankind and the serpent and what the Scriptures later develop as the doctrine of effectual calling. We continue our consideration of the people of God as an assembly of the saints through the Biblical motif of the "kingdom of God". Gird your loins and attune your heart to the theological resonance found in Scripture concerning the kingdom of God. 

The Biblical Doctrine of the Church is so multifaceted that it can hardly be exhausted in one passage of Scripture, one podcast episode, one Sunday School lesson, one sermon, or even a seminary education. The doctrine of the Church is deeply rooted in multifaceted motifs and theologies that its exploration begins in this life and will continue on throughout eternity. 
In broadest terms, the "Church" refers to the whole body or number of believers that have been, are, or shall be recipients of mercy and grace through Jesus Christ, whether they are in heaven or on earth, whether from Old Testament times or from New Testament times and forward. The point is that anybody truly saved by grace has efficaciously been summoned from this sinful state and gathered into one new body under Christ.
Today's episode scratches the surface on the spiritual dynamic that gave birth to the Church and ensuing spiritual antithesis that was realized after Genesis 3:15.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:
A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the Old Testament: The Gospel Promised (Edited by Miles V. Van Pelt)
Reformed Confessions Harmonized (Edited by Joel Beeke & Sinclair Ferguson)
The Mystery of Christ: His Covenant & His Kingdom (By Samuel Renihan)
Los Pastores y El Rebaño (By Humberto Casanova Roberts)

What does the prayer life of a disciple of Jesus look like? On today's bonus episode of Urban Puritano, we continue our exploration of Expository Preaching. My method is eclectic. Broadus-Robinson, Greidanus-Chappell, Beeke-Bunyan. A Text is analyzed according to its subject and complement in order to arrive at the sermon's proposition. A Fallen Condition Focus is infused throughout the message which goes from abasing man to exalting Christ for His provision in His offices. The Biblical Text is privileged with the understanding that no Biblical Text is an island unto itself. Today's Text is Luke 11:1-13.
"Prayer According to Jesus, Part 1"
I. Introduction
  A. Secular Point
  B. Personal Point
  C. Biblical Point
  D. Theme Announced/Text Read
  E. Prayer for Illumination
II. Body of Sermon
    A. Doctrine: The prayer life of a disciple of Jesus should be characterized by the priorities of the Father's Kingdom
        1. What Jesus provoked in His Disciples
        2. What Jesus provided for His Disciples
            a. The Preface: "Father"
            b. First Petition: "Hallowed be your Name"
            c. Four Uses or Words of Application
            d. Second Petition: "Your Kingdom come"
III. Conclusion-Summary    

¿Cómo se vé la vida de oración de un discípulo de Jesús? En el episodio de hoy, continuamos nuestra exploración de la predicación expositiva. Mi método es ecléctico. Se analiza un Texto según su tema y complemento para llegar a la proposición del sermón. Un enfoque de condición caída se infunde a lo largo del mensaje. Todo debería conducir a un mensaje que humilla al hombre y exalta a Cristo según el pasaje. El Texto Bíblico siempre es privilegiado.

Estén atentos al mensaje basado en Lucas 11:1-13. Se titula, "La Oración Según Jesús, Parte 1"
I. Introducción
  A. Punto Secular
  B. Punto Personal
  C. Punto Bíblico
  D. Tema Anunciado y Pasaje Leído
  E. Oración por Iluminación
II. Cuerpo del Sermón
   A. La Vida de Oración de Un Discípulo de Jesús Debería Ser Caracterizada Por Las Prioridades del Reino Del Padre
       1. Jesús Provocó En Sus Discípulos el Deseo de Orar Por Su Ejemplo Constante
       2. Jesús Proveyó A Sus Discípulos el Currículo de la Oración
           a. El Prefacio - "Padre"
           b. Primera Petición- "Santificado sea Tu Nombre"
           c. Cuatro Palabras de Aplicación
           d. Segunda Petición- "Que Tu Reino Venga Pronto"
   B. Conclusión- Resumen