by the TeamPyro P.R. Wonk
hat with all the hectic preparations for the Shepherds' Conference, and especially the busyness of the week itself, I've had to stifle my blog-output. And I've been juggling a few short items in my mind that I keep meaning to blog about. Here they are all at once: John MacArthur |
 Highly Recommended. |
Speaking of good stuff, bold apologists, and drab-looking websites, James White's material on Le Tombeau de Cameron has been superb. I hope you have been reading it.
Congratulations to Dr. and Mrs. Warnock!
For the faithful few, blogging this week has been like a fourth or fifth-level priority between projects due at work and being actually sick. If you want to know what I'm thinking about, my Pastor has started a men's group on Wednesday mornings in which we will be reading J.I. Packer's edition of Luther's The Bondage of the Will, and I just received the newly-minted Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ edited by Schreiner and Wright.
ur friends at Logos Bible Software (an all-around excellent program) have just announced the coming release of Charles Simeon's Horae Homileticae Commentary (21 volumes). Spurgeon said of this work:
Horae Homileticae; or, Discourses digested into one continued series, and forming a Comment upon every book of the Old and Near Testament; 21 vols. 8vo. Seventh edition. Lond., H. G. Bohn. 1845. S.f2 10s. [Being the entire works of Charles Simeon, with Copious Indexes, prepared by T. Hartwell Horne.] Not Commentaries, but we could not exclude them. They have been called "a valley of dry bones": be a prophet and they will live.Spurgeon read Simeon and occasionally quoted from him. He began his commentary on Psalm 11 with Simeon's summary. Our favorite Superstar Brit blogger, Dr. Warnock, apparently had a hand in encouraging this edition of Simeon's works.
Anyway, I had this 6-part series at my blog about Christmas which you'll have to read for yourself if you're interested because this is a blog for original stuff -- not recycled trash. Recycled Spurgeon, maybe -- but not trash. My point is that I took 6 parts to finish that series and I didn't get to say something. I couldn't figure out how to work it in, so I brought it over here. And it works in nicely with Dan's post from yesterday, so it's all gravy -- it's like we planned it.
I was on a bit about how the wrath of God is a sort of necessity in Christmas, and I got to the place where I was saying that we ought to love the incarnate Jesus to the degree that we have been spared the wrath of God -- that this is what Christmas ought to be all about.
So far, so good, right?
Listen: I couldn't figure out how to work in what it means to love the incarnate Christ. is that stupid? So that's the topic here -- loving Christ.
The first thing to say about that is, a real Jesus requires real love. One of the gripes I hear from non-believers (and nearly non-believers -- you know who you are) is that Christians are real emotional and relational clods. We don't really have a lot of emotional range -- we can get indignation out real good, and maybe stoic fortitude, but things like happy, compassionate, friendly in a non-salesman-like way, and all the upside of human emotional pitch seems to be someplace outside our repertoire. And honestly -- they have a small point. Even Bono -- who they might call a believer -- doesn't seem very happy even when he's doing whatever it is he says nobody else is doing.
But here's the thing: while loving Christ produces a real love for people, it must produce a real love and not merely an emotional love for people. Because it must itself be a real love for Christ and not merely a zinger-and-Code-red rush of emotional sugar for Jesus.
You know: Christ died for our sins. He was born and allowed himself to be birthed in a stable -- a cave or a shack -- and slept his first night in the air of Jerusalem Bethlehem (sorry -- that's what I get for being up late) in a feeding trough. They weren't expecting Him, and they didn't clean up the barn before he showed up -- it was a dirty place in a barn-like sort of way. And Jesus did that in order to die for our sins.
Think about what Christ gave up to then die for our sins. He gave up the throne of Heaven where he was only worshipped for the sake of growing up the son of a carpenter. He gave up having no needs to be was hungry from time to time. He gave up eternal perfection and beauty to smell like a person who didn't have any deodorant ever, and lived among people who were exactly like that. And he loved these people.
He loved them! He loved John the crazy baptizer who, after being thrown in prison, had his doubts about whether Jesus was the Christ, who even asked if he and his disciples should look for another Messiah. He loved Peter, and Peter was quite a pill -- one of those friends who was always making promises and not keeping them. He loved his mother who, even though she saw the angel and gave a virgin birth, doubted that Jesus was sane and pleaded with him to stop what he was doing. He loved Mary who had demons, and Martha who worked too hard, and Lazarus their brother.
Who do we love? I mean besides out spouses and our kids: who do we love in a way that is more than a wish of good luck to that person? Do you love anybody in an active and obvious way?
Would they agree with you that you do this?
Listen: in this way -- this Christmas way -- God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son. Gave His son! God did something about love at Christmas which people could see and hear and touch with their own hands. And we are called by His name to be a people like that given Son.
So this Christmas, with 13 shopping days left, take your mind off the cookies and the wrapping paper and the fake tree with the lights burned out, and think about the love that is manifest in the baby in the manger. Because that Love is not just a greeting card kind of love, and it's not a cue-the-orchestra kind of emotional state: that love is a working love, a living love which overcomes the world.
Be part of that love. And not just at Christmas, but maybe you could start at Christmas -- like a present to your conscience or something. I don't have any practical suggestions about how to do that because you people are all over the planet. But get off your KBs and pull yourself away from the blogs for a half hour and love someone the way Christ loves you -- that is, in a way which they do not deserve and that you can pay out lavishly.
There is no law against that kind of love.
Let me start this post with something really obvious: we had 27 entries in the contest, and 10 of them got ZERO votes via purchases. ZERO. That means people nominated t-shirts which they themselves were unwilling to buy even at the ridiculously-cheap price of $ 9.98. And we get about 4,000 readers a day -- and we only sold 35 items! Somebody get a caluculator and figure out the percentage of apathy that comes out to ... The only peson who has any excuses for doing that is the person who nominated Chrysostom, for whom I never got the spell-check updated. The rest of you -- that's just proof of my original thesis that these designs are not even one-up designs.
CONTEST Slogan QTY
x Lloyd-Jones Total 7
x Whitefield Total 4
x Not Finney Total 3
x S Lewis Johnson Total 3
x Bahnsen Total 2
x Bunyan Total 2
x Chalmers Total 2
x Owen Total 2
x Pink Total 2
x Tyndale Total 2
x Augustine Total 1
x Berkhof Total 1
x Charnock Total 1
x Polycarp Total 1
x Sibbes Total 1
x Turretin Total 1
Calvin Total 11
Edwards Total 11
Luke 18:14 Total 8
Spurgeon Total 8
Orthordox Gangsta Total 7
Luther Total 4
apply to the forehead 3
Get schooled @ TeamPyro 3
Machen Total 2
TeamPyro 3
VanTil Total 2
Warfield Total 2
C. Hodge Total 1
Good Advice Total 1
Henry Total 1
Kuyper Total 1
Not just a homeboy Total 1
OG Calvinist Gadfly 1
TeamPyro! Total 1
Tea-Total T-shirt Total 1
VanTil Total 1
For those of you who were worried about it, "Richard Sibbes" and "Louis Berkhof" have been spell-checked in the t-shirt contest with just under a week to go. I am sure, frankly, that they were handicapped by my spelling errors, but now that you have a week to order your junk, you nutty Sibbes and Berkhof fans will probably pummel all the Lloyd-Jones fans.
t appears Frank's pawn shop has competition from a more or less authoritative source:
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his weekend GraceLife sponsored a family conference. Between Saturday and Sunday, I spoke a total of five times (plus a Q&A session), and that's why there was no BlogSpotting post Saturday. Here is an abbreviated make-up post. These are by no means all the links we could cite from this week, but it's as much as I can do at the end of a loooooooong weekend:
I am certain Dan has something very insightful to say today. I am, unfortunately, out of pocket and can't find 45 minutes to knock out a decent TeamPyro post.
omeone pointed out that it's been more than a week since I've written and posted anything substantial on the blog. Quotes from Spurgeon don't count, because I didn't write them.
I wrote a post, and was about to put it up this morning, when I saw that Frank had already posted. So, since I never bump Frank, I just left it on our server in "Draft" status, and will sling it out tomorrow, DV.
So today was my 53rd birthday. They're less fun every year.
The picture at the right is the t-shirt we are giving away, and if you click it you'll notice it's the value-priced T. It's perfect summer wear as it is light cotton. I considered giving away a stein, but the mere metion of such a thing left the blog in a state of near civil war, so I chose this item instead.
Here's the contest: name the top 5 reasons you personally ought to receive the teamPyro shirt on the block. You have until Thursday at 5:00 PM blogger time to get your entry in. On Friday around lunchtime, I'll announce the winner -- and I'm setting the time right now so Dan can post something pithy immediately after I do to knock me off the top slot.
It is likely I will be the only judge as the other Pyros are not as amused by the contests as I am, but keep in mind that they may e-mail to spike your entry if you say things untoward about them.
Let the hoopla begin!
I must say something, and I truly do it in all humility.Now, before the fireworks begin, let’s make sure I agree with all the excellent points that were made here. By a long shot, it is far more important that we express the Gospel, support the church locally and globally, and that we stand for unity in truth, than it is to buy one of our little trinkets that are doing so well with the readers.
First off, I love visiting this blog. I especially find James Spurgeon's posts insightful and edifying. Having said that...
I really wish that the Pyromaniacs blog wouldn't give into the temptation to "market"themselves and further fleece the flock by selling t-shirts and other logo-laden merchandise. Doesn't this just add to the whole atmosphere of consumerism and materialism that plagues the Church already? Why not encourage your readers to give to missions instead, especially those in the unreached 10/40 window? America is just so wasteful, especially in the Church.
You guys really do seem to have your fingers on the pulse of the Church when it comes to what we need to hear doctrinally, and yet there is a whole separate area, one in which the Church is failing miserably, that you could use your highly visited blog to address and impact for the positive.
There is a small, new ministry called "Good Measure International" that is selling t-shirts for $15 that say something like, "My t-shirt helped feed a hungry child for a month, what did your t-shirt do?"All the proceeds from the shirts go to ministries who minister the Gospel and help meet the physical needs of the poor. Now THAT's a worthy t-shirt and money well spent.
I don't mean to be a downer on this light posting, but I just had that on my heart to share.
Thank you for always sticking your necks out, and thank you for letting me do the same.
There. I changed shirts. That's much better.
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Amazon also has it. See details at Kress
Also available at Logos
Amazon also has it, available for immediate download on Kindle
View readers' favorite Kindle excerpts
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Hi Phil: