A Hard Truth about Sexual Sin

A Hard Truth about Sexual Sin:

God-Centered vs. Man-Centered

Question: Do you feel most loved by God because he makes much of you, or because he frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?

If we are God-centered simply because we consciously or unconsciously believe God is man-centered, then our God-centeredness is in reality man-centeredness. Do we treasure God because of his excellence or mainly because he endorses ours?

- John Piper - Read the rest here

Piper: On Grace in Marriage (and Relationships)

Grace Bent Outward:

Then, having shown us the basis of God’s forgiveness in the cross, Paul says in Colossians 3:13b,

“As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

In other words, take the grace and forgiveness and justification that you have received vertically through the death of Christ and bend it out horizontally to others. Specifically, husbands to wives and wives to husbands.

Why the emphasis on forgiving and forbearing rather than, say, an emphasis on romance and enjoying each other?

1. Because there is going to be conflict based on sin, we need to forgive sin and forbear strangeness, and sometimes you won’t even agree on which is which;

2. Because the hard, rugged work of forgiving and forbearing is what makes it possible for affections to flourish when they seem to have died;

3. Because God gets glory when two very different and very imperfect people forge a life of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.

To hear more of this click HERE

What is Sin?

When Paul describes the sins of his own people in Romans 2:24, the climax of the indictment is this: "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

What makes sin, sin, is not first that it hurts people, but that it blasphemes God. This is the ultimate evil and the ultimate outrage in the universe.

The glory of God is not honored.
The holiness of God is not reverenced.
The greatness of God is not admired.
The power of God is not praised.
The truth of God is not sought.
The wisdom of God is not esteemed.
The beauty of God is not treasured.
The goodness of God is not savored.
The faithfulness of God is not trusted.
The promises of God are not relied upon.
The commandments of God are not obeyed.
The justice of God is not respected.
The wrath of God is not feared.
The grace of God is not cherished.
The presence of God is not prized.
The person of God is not loved.

The infinite, all-glorious Creator of the universe, by whom and for whom all things exist (Rom. 11:36) - who holds every person's life in being at every moment (Acts 17:25) - is disregarded, disbelieved, disobeyed, and dishonored by everybody in the world. That is the ultimate outrage of the universe.

John Piper - The Greatest Thing in the World

Abortion is about sin.

In response to this post from DesiringGod.org

Abortion is about sin. At it's root. Fornication is a sin and one consequence of this sin is "unplanned pregnancy". The government may not have the right to prevent people from fornication, but they should have the right to prevent sinners from murdering a human life.

Pro-choice = Pro-sin without the consequences.

Don't Waste Your Life - Sermon Jam Video

Another wonderful treat from Desiring God:

It Was the Preached Word that Saved Me

April 27, 2009 By: John Piper - www.desiringgod.org

It seems that God has indeed designed that the inspired Word of the Bible become uniquely powerful by passing through a Spirit-filled person on the way to make a dead heart live.
Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)

One reason for this is that the saving Word is gospel, that is, news. News is to be heralded. The news-quality is captured in the kind of speaking that announces, declares, proclaims, heralds, exults over the truth of what God has done in Christ.

Here is Spurgeon’s tribute to the power of “the preached Word.”

Personally, I have to bless God for many good books…but my gratitude most of all is due to God, not for books, but for the preached Word—and that too addressed to me by a poor, uneducated man, a man who had never received any training for the ministry, and probably will never be heard of in this life, a man engaged in business, no doubt of a humble kind, during the week, but who had just enough of grace to say on the Sabbath, “Look unto Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth.”

The books were good, but the man was better. The revealed Word awakened me, but it was the preached Word that saved me; and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights.