The Reformed Cactus

For the Lord's Day - Second Sunday of Lent

2012-03-04T06:55:00.002-07:00

“Our substitute, then, who took our place and dies our death on the cross, was neither Christ alone (since that would make him a third party thrust in between God and us), nor God alone (since that would undermine the historical incarnation) but God in Christ, who was truly and fully both God and man and who on that account was uniquely qualified to represent both God and man and to mediate between them. If we speak only of Christ suffering and dying, we overlook the initiative of the Father. If we speak only of God suffering and dying, we overlook the mediation of the Son.”

~ John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 156.

For the Lord's Day - First Sunday in Lent

2012-02-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

“… man is alienated from God by sin and God is alienated from man by wrath. It is in the substitutionary death of Christ that sin is overcome and wrath averted, so that God can look on man without displeasure and man can look on God without fear. Sin is expiated and God is propitiated.” ~ David Wells, The Search for Salvation

For the Lord's Day

2012-02-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

“To believe in the Triune God of Scripture who speaks and acts in history requires an act of apostasy from the assumed creed of our age.” Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way p.15

A celebration of the life of a great Christian

2012-01-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

One hundred years ago this day (January 30, 1912), Francis August Schaeffer IV was born. Though not as well known as he was when he died from lymphoma in 1984, Schaeffer’s influence is still being felt in evangelicalism.

Francis Schaeffer at 100
HT: JT

For the Lord's Day

2012-01-29T07:04:00.002-07:00

"I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am." — John Newton

For the Lord's Day

2012-01-21T13:03:00.002-07:00

“The salvation of man consists in knowing, and serving God. Such is our God who not only is all-sufficient in Himself but who with His all-sufficiency can fill and saturate the soul to such an overflowing measure that it has need of nothing else but to have God as its portion.” — Wilehlmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:91

For the Lord's Day

2012-01-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

“To properly evaluate the place of good works in the Christian life, we must understand that grace maintains the value of God’s children apart from any merit of their own; but we must also understand that God uses our obedience to promote our good and his glory. By our accomplishments God works his holy purposes in our lives, provides us with many temporal blessings and, most of all, fulfills our Spirit-instilled longing to honor God with all our heart, soul, mind and might.” ~ Bryan Chapell, President of Covenant Seminary in Holiness by Grace

For the Lord's Day

2012-01-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

'The biblical motive for being a forgiving person may be deeper than being forgiven. It is true to say: The motive for being a forgiving person is that we have been forgiven by God when we did not deserve it (Ephesians 4:32). The bottom of this motive is not God’s forgiveness, but what God’s forgiveness gives. It gives us God. … God is the goal of forgiveness. He is also the ground and means of forgiveness. It comes from him; it was accomplished through his Son; and it leads people back to him with their sins cast into the deepest sea. Therefore the motive for being a forgiving person is the joy of being freely and joyfully at home with God."

– Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

For the Lord's Day and for the New Year

2012-01-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.” -- William Temple

For the Lord's Day

2011-11-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

“Grace makes sense to us only in light of the sin to which it provides the remedy. Consequently, the more sensitive we are to sin, misery and danger, the more clearly we will grasp the wonder of God’s salvation. Grace is only ‘amazing’ when we see that it is ‘a wretch like me’ it saves. Only sinners seek Jesus as a Savior!” - Dr. Sinclair Ferguson in Puritans – Ministers of the World

For the Lord's Day

2011-11-06T06:56:00.002-07:00

“Part of saving faith is the assurance that you will have faith tomorrow. Trusting Christ today includes trusting him to give you tomorrow’s trust when tomorrow comes. Often we feel like our reservoir of strength is not going to last for another day. The fact is, it won’t. Today’s resources are for today, and part of those resources is the confidence that new resources will be given tomorrow." -- John Piper in A Godward Life

For the Lord's Day - Reformation Sunday

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

“If God had perceived our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.” -- Donald A. Carson in A Call for Spiritual Reformation

For the Lord's Day

2011-10-23T08:11:00.002-06:00

“In the Scriptures God daily comes to his people, not from afar but nearby. In it he reveals himself, from day to day, to believers in the fullness of his truth and grace. Through it he works his miracles of compassion and faithfulness. Scripture is the ongoing rapport between heaven and earth, between Christ and his church, between God and his children. It does not just tie us to the past; it binds us to the living Lord in the heavens. It is the living voice of God. ~ Herman Bavinck

For the Lord's Day

2011-10-09T08:33:00.000-06:00

"I thank you, O God, for the relief and satisfaction of mind that come with the firm assurance that you govern the world; for the patience and resignation to your providence that are afforded as I reflect that even the tumultuous and irregular actions of the sinful are, nevertheless, under your direction, who are wise, good, and omnipotent, and have promised to make all things work together for the good of those who love you.”

Prayer of Susanna Wesley (1669 – 1742)

Mother of 19 children including John and Charles

For the Lord's Day

2011-10-02T08:16:00.000-06:00

“… our audience in corporate worship is not people. Corporate worship is not about pleasing people, whether ourselves, the congregation, or unbelieving seekers. Worship in the corporate gathering is about renewing our covenant with God by meeting with Him and relating to Him in ways that He has prescribed. We do this specifically by hearing and heeding His Word, confessing our own sinfulness and our dependence on Him, thanking Him for his goodness to us, bringing our requests before Him, confessing His truth, and lifting our voices and instruments to Him in response to and in accord with the way that He has revealed Himself in His Word.”

-- Mark Dever in The Deliberate Church

For the Lord's Day

2011-09-25T08:12:00.002-06:00

“It is a great advantage to be wise. Wisdom is different from mere knowledge of the facts. Some very wise people have little formal education. And some very educated people, who know many facts, are not wise. Wisdom is the insight and sense of how to live in a way that accomplishes the goals for which we were made: the glory of God and the good of man. And since glorifying God involves delighting in God, and the good of man involves sharing our joy in God, therefore wisdom is the only path to deep and lasting joy.”

-- John Piper in When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy

For the Lord's Day

2011-09-18T09:03:00.002-06:00

“True faith – created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel – is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything that God reveals in his word is true, but also a deep-rooted assurance that not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace earned for us by Christ.”

Zacharius Ursinus, 1534 – 1583

For the Lord's Day September 11, 2011

2011-09-11T08:37:00.000-06:00

Question 1. What is your only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. ~ From the Heidelberg Catechism, 1563

For the Lord's Day

2011-08-07T08:10:00.000-06:00

How to avoid a wasted life: “God created me – and you – to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion – namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. -- Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

For the Lord's Day

2011-07-31T08:19:00.000-06:00

“Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, not matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always in His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take place along with him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.” - - B. B. Warfield, Works, vol 7, p. 113

For the Lord's Day

2011-07-24T07:48:00.000-06:00

“Grace makes sense to us only in light of the sin to which it provides the remedy. Consequently, the more sensitive we are to sin, misery and danger, the more clearly we will grasp the wonder of God’s salvation. Grace is only ‘amazing’ when we see that it is ‘a wretch like me’ it saves. Only sinners seek Jesus as a Savior!” ~ Dr. Sinclair Ferguson in Puritans – Ministers of the World

For the Lord's Day

2011-07-17T08:29:00.002-06:00

“The Trinity puts personhood at the very center of existence, originating with God. God is not a solitary being, eternally lonely until he creates us. God is independent and does not need us, because He is both one and three… This Trinitarian God establishes my sense of personal identity within reality. The distinction between the creature and the Creator reflects the very nature of God, in which divine distinctions are made within organic personal unity.” ~ Peter Jones in One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference

For the Lord's Day - Communion Sunday

2011-07-03T08:02:00.000-06:00

“The Lord’s Supper is not for all indiscriminately as the gospel is. The Lord’s Supper is chiefly commemoration and communion. It is for those who discern the Lord’s body, who can commemorate his death in faith and love. And since the supper is also Communion it is obviously for those who commune with Christ and with one another in the unity of the body which is the church…. It is part of the whole counsel of God that those conditions be clearly and insistently set forth, to the end that those who are eligible partake and those who are not refrain.” -- John Murray, Collected Writings

For the Lord's Day, second after Pentecost

2011-06-26T07:58:00.000-06:00

“Until our consciences are bound by Scripture so that our actions are the product of conviction, we will be the victims of fluctuating fancies and susceptible to the “security” that is offered in conformity to a long list of human taboos. Convinced, grace-filled, spirit-led obedience to God’s Law really is the pathway to freedom. Remember, the law is not the dynamic of our sanctification, God’s love for us is not on the basis of duty, but neither does His love for us free us from duty.” ~ Alistair Begg, Pathway to Freedom