Author Archives: Matt Jury
The Meaning of the Atonement
The meaning of the atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross he took our place and bore our sin.
John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 15.
Be Still, for the Presence of the Lord
Worship Is a Reflection of Our Perceptions of God
The feelings of a worshipper will always be reflections from what he thinks he perceives its in the countenance of his God. They will be gloomy if the god is a sombre personage, and cheerful if he is a glad being. Now the revelation of God in the Bible is the unveiling with growing clearness of a countenance of unspeakable love and beauty and gladness. He is made known to us as ‘the blessed God’ — the happy God…. This same communication of gladness is seen in the life of our Lord, not only during those early sunny days in Galilee when His ministry opened under a cloudless sky, but even amid the darkness of the last hours at Jerusalem, for in His final discourse Jesus prayed that His joy might be in his disciples in order that their joy might be full.
W. F. Adeney in Peloubets Select Notes on the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching: 1948 (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co., 1947), 145.
Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me All the Days of My Life
The child of God is pursued by divine goodness all of his life and is never, ever able to escape it.
HT: girltalkhome.com
The Greater Fear Overshadows the Lesser Fear
Glimpsing the Blinding Glory of the Holiness of God
All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and humanity. If we bring got down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we trouble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely “hell-deserving sinners,” then and only then does the necessity of the Cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.
John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 111.
Faith Is NOT Fatalism
There is a sulking submission and there is a cheerful submission. There is a fatalistic submission which takes this attitude—this is inevitable, so I must bow to it; and there is a thankful submission, receiving with gratitude whatever God may be pleased to send us. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes” (Ps. 119:71). The Psalmist viewed his chastisements with the eye of faith, and doing so he perceived the love behind them. Remember that when God brings His people into the wilderness it is that they may learn more of His sufficiency; when He casts them into the furnace it is that they may enjoy His presence.
Mercies Anew
I recently finished a series of messages in the book of Nehemiah. Click on the link below for an annotated bibliography of the books I used. Bear in mind that the comments were made based on their usefulness to me personally. You may find the books to have greater or lesser influence if you were to use them.
Life Is Worship 