We returned yesterday from a four-day pastors’ retreat, and I want to say thanks for praying for us. We had a great time: wonderful fellowship, a bunch of fun, and some very important study and planning together. As Charles Spurgeon says:

“A man can do me no greater kindness than to pray for me.”

Thanks for praying!

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Ladies: Peter Lewis did a great job giving the Girl Talk Blog a makeover. You can check it out here.

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We were well served by Mark’s message entitled “Why Giving?” yesterday. He preached from 1 Timothy 6:17-19 and took us on a guided tour of four towns in the land called Riches: False Hope, Great Giver, Ready-To-Share, and Good Foundation.

I left amazed again at our Great Giver, God. I loved how Mark told us about the gift of colors: how the diversity of colors that we see around us point us to the goodness of God and his generous blessings to us. I had Jack out in the front yard yesterday, showing him leaves changing color on a tree, telling him about the goodness of God to us.

Mark also explained that giving reminds us of the gospel and prepares us for the future. He pointed out that giving is an anchor: it ties our hearts to the local church. I know it’s not unusual for teens to think that they’ll start giving later, when they have regular income. But I want to encourage you to talk to your parents about how you can be giving now. It’s not too early for you to begin worshipping God by giving from what you have.

“You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.” - Randy Alcorn.

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I finished re-reading R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God a couple weeks ago, but I have been thinking about a particular point ever since. On page 250, Dr. Sproul introduces us to a Latin phrase that is central to understanding the Christian life: simul justus et peccator. I know it’s rather early in the morning for Latin, but this is worth thinking about.

He points out that we have a problem: we live in this world as sinners before a holy God. We need to be “just”–that is, to be in right standing before God. But how can sinners be in right standing before the Holy One?

Dr. Sproul explains:

“simul justus et peccator–’at the same time just and sinner.’ That is what a saint [he means any Christian] is, a person who is at one and the same time just, yet sinful.

“That a saint is still a sinner is obvious. How then can he be just? The saint is just because he is justified. When we put our personal trust for our salvation in Christ and in Him alone, then God transfers to our account all of the righteousness of Jesus. His justness becomes ours when we believe in Him. It is a legal transaction.

In other words, we sinners can stand before a holy God not because we are righteous but because we’ve been declared righteous. Believe it or not, this hefty bit of theology has profound implications for our daily lives.

It means simply that when we sin, we can ask for and actually receive forgiveness from God for our many sins. And if we believe that what the Bible says is true, then we can go through life with a clear conscience, no longer weighed down by the burden of sin but set free to obey God, set free to enjoy God.

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Born sometime in the 1490s, William Tyndale died this day, 1536. His was a violent death at a young age: he was strangled and burned at the stake for what the Roman Catholic Church considered heresy: translating the Bible into the English language.

Tyndale was considered by his peers to be a linguistic genius, but his studies of the Scriptures led him to agree with and endorse the emerging Protestant Reformation, bringing him into conflict with Rome and with the Church of England.

Forbidden from translating the Bible into English in his native England and inspired by Luther’s German translation, Tyndale fled to Germany, where he translated the New Testament and had begun to translate the Old when he was lured out of hiding, caught, condemned as a heretic, and put to death in Belgium.

You might be interested to know that the King James version of the Bible is at least 80% Tyndale’s work. Bible scholar Leland Ryken explains Tyndale’s legacy:

“Tyndale’s translation in any case was the foundation of all subsequent translation of the Reformation era and beyond.”

The English language was farily unrefined when Tyndale wrote, so he had to invent words to convey theological meaning from the original languages. We owe him for: peacemaker, passover, intercession, scapegoat, and atonement, to name a few.

His last words: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” We have Bibles we can read in our own English in large part because of William Tyndale and many others like him who literally died to make it possible. Let us thank God that we are able to read, understand, and study the Bible in English. That isn’t true for all who live in the world today.

(Source: Wikipedia and The Word of God in English by Leland Ryken)

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My Mac was upgraded recently to OS X Tiger. Quite an improvement. You might be interested to know that only 22% of the readers of this blog use Macs. 66% of our readers are stuck with Windows XP. The rest are divided between Windows 2000 and Windows 98.

Now, I know better than to start a raging debate between Mac and PC users, but I know it’s not an issue here since we all agree that Macs are far superior to PCs.

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(Photo: Wikipedia)
48 years ago today, October 4, 1957, the first man-made satellite entered orbit. Weighing in at a mere 184 pounds, the spherical Sputnik 1 only survived a few weeks, with a fiery re-entry on January 3, 1958.

Why am I bringing this up? So that we can be amazed again at common grace. It’s all around us; we just have to be on the lookout. Think about it: less than 50 years after these inauspicious extra-terrestrial beginings, we humans have, by the grace of God, set foot on the moon. Six times! The space shuttles have flown more than a hundred missions. Now we have orbiting satellites, like the Hubble telescope, that allow for unprecedented and unbelievable views into deep space, and complex weather satellites that allow us to track and predict hurricanes.

These amazing human accomplishments, and many others like them, should leave us not proud of ourselves, but deeply humbled by the grace of God given to sinful humans. That we should be allowed to explore, even in small measure, the beauty and complexity of God’s creation is a wonder and a marvel. Where do you see common grace around you today?

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You probably wouldn’t think much of it if I asked you: “When were you saved?” You might not bat an eye if I inquired: “Are you saved?” But it might sound strange to you if I asked: “Will you be saved.” It’s not a phrase we use very often.

I was recently reading R.C. Sproul’s Saved From What? and I came across a fascinating explanation about the different ways the Bible refers to salvation. Dr. Sproul explains on pages 21 and 22:

“The Greek language has more verb tenses than we have in English. ‘To save’ is found in the New Testament in every possible sense and in every possible tense of the Greek verb. The Bible speaks of our having been saved from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). Here the ultimate past tense is used in regard to salvation. So in one narrow sense, at least, from all eternity in the hidden wisdom of God, we were saved.

“But the Bible also uses the imperfect tense and says there is a sense in which we were being saved, that salvation from the hands of God for His people is something that He has been working at through all the pages of history.

“The Bible also speaks of salvation in the present tense. There is a sense in which we are saved. The moment we put our trust in Christ and in Christ alone–at that moment God pronounces us justified in His sight. We are safe in the arms of Jesus. We are now in a state of salvation.

“The Bible also says that we are being saved. Salvation is not simply a once-for-all thing. Salvation begins when I have belief; as I grow in grace and in sanctification, that process of sanctification is also described as a process of salvation.

“Finally, the Bible speaks of the future when we shall be saved. We are saved. We are being saved. We shall be saved as we look forward to our glorification together with Christ and the final consummation of our salvation.”

When you think of your own salvation, what verb tense usually comes to mind? We will do well to contemplate the many verb tenses used to describe our salvation.

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