Grace Abounding

Today I’ve been considering how to can explain the glories of the Gospel to young children. How can my sermons be understandable and relate to kids? When we’re teaching a class in GraceKids, our children’s ministry, how can we explain the Gospel in a way that makes sense to them?

Jill Nelson’s talk, “Presenting the Gospel to Children,” has helped me discover simple yet vivid illustrations and clear definitions for “sovereignty,” “the image of God,” “righteousness,” and “sin.” Her talk from the 2007 Children Desiring God Conference provides a wealth of ideas.

For example, you want to teach that God is our “sovereign ruler”? Give the children crayons and tell them to draw and color whatever they want. Then, pick up the box of crayons and put it to your ear. Tell them you hear the crayons insisting they want to be something different than what the child is drawing. But that’s not right–that’s not the way it works, the children will insist! Crayons don’t determine what they should be…the person coloring does that! Presto–you’ve just clearly illustrated God’s right as our creator to rule our lives…in a way that the children will grasp.

To download the .mp3 or her helpful handout, click here, then scroll  down to her talk entitled “Presenting the Gospel to Children.”

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Can you imagine the thunderous praise that God and the Lamb will receive in glory from the saints of all the ages “to the praise of his glorious grace”? I’m thrilled that an album called Together For the Gospel Live has captured the powerful singing of the 5,000 voices at the T4G Conference to gives us a small taste of what that worship will be like in God’s presence.

In April of this year my wife Christy and I along with Garrett Lee had the distinct pleasure of soaking up Gospel truth at Together For the Gospel ’08 (T4G) in Louisville, Kentucky. Christy and I were exhausted because we’d just driven down from D.C. to South Carolina for my ordination exam at Heritage Bible Church (I got a good grilling…but I passed!) and then on to Louisville for the conference. Nevertheless, we were filled with joy in seeing so many friends in ministry there and being reminded afresh of the wonder of the cross through the preaching at T4G. Can’t wait till T4G ’10.

Last Sunday, God granted our church a rich time of fellowship & unity with Engleside Baptist Church, another local church in Alexandria. We celebrated a joint baptism & worship service where two from our congregation and four from theirs were baptized, picturing the power of the Gospel! Garrett shared our church plant’s story. Garrett, Shayne, and I fielded questions about church planting. I then spoke from 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 on Treasuring the Gospel. This was the closing service of their missions conference, and we were honored to celebrate our first baptisms and our first joint worship service with another church. We can’t wait to worship jointly with them again!

As the Spirit forged genuine love and joy between our congregations, we experienced firsthand the truth of Psalm 133:1  – “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” Thank you, Engleside Baptist, for your love for God and for the greater body of Christ!

Incidentally, a serious electrical fire broke out on Monday, the next day, in Engleside’s church & school building. Everyone was evacuated safely. We’re praying the building will be cleaned of chemical and smoke damage for them to worship there this Sunday. Please lift up the brothers & sisters of Engleside Baptist in your prayers.

History is not just Christ-centered; it is cross-centered. When Paul preaches the Gospel, he preaches “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23).

Even at story’s end, when the saints dwell forever in God’s presence, purged of their sin, the Son of God is known primarily not as the Word, the King of Kings, or Jesus Christ. He is known chiefly as the Lamb who was slain at the cross for his people. In John’s Revelation, Christ appears as “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (5:6). Twenty-nine times he speaks of Christ as the “Lamb” dining at the Marriage Supper, receiving worship from countless throngs, claiming the title deed to the earth, and vanquishing the Adversary.

To be sure, in glory there will be no tears. Yet our precious Christ will be known as the Lamb who has been slain. His wounds forever remind us of the immeasurable cost of our redemption.

“A Debtor to Mercy Alone” is a hymn we love to sing in our church’s gatherings for this very reason. The third verse of Augustus Toplady’s great hymn, with updated words by Bob Kauflin, could not express this truth better:

“My name from the palms of His hands eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains, in marks of indelible grace.
Yes I, to the end will endure until I bow down at Your throne
Forever and always secure; forever and always secure
Forever and always secure; a debtor to mercy alone.”

Every morning I start my day by going to this blog, Of First Importance. There I find a brief quote of the day pointing me to the cross of Christ and God’s immeasurable grace on my behalf. Checking firstimportance.org every day is one of the best ways I try to live in light of the Gospel. It is not inspired Scripture, but it affords me glimpses of God’s greatness and kindness from fellow worshipers of God like C.H. Spurgeon, Paul David Tripp, John Owen, and others.

I cannot always see God clearly in my life. I forget his presence, distrust his promises, and struggle to view imperfect brothers & sisters (imperfect like me!) through grace like God sees them. So I pause, reflect on the cross, and set my thinking right. This how I live out Ephesians 4:23 where God tells us to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

What are ways each day you find helpful to renew your mind and lead it to dwell on Gospel truth?

Watch Paul David Tripp remind us of the depth of forgiveness we receive in Christ. He reads a selection from his new book, Whiter Than Snow, the Gospel in poetic form, to dazzle us with the cleansing and spotless record we gain in Christ’s life and cross-work.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Have you ever find a certain sin sticking to your life like old gum on your shoe sole? You wonder how God’s power at the cross can be unleashed in your life to free you from that sin and cause you to please God.

So often I get sidetracked into trying to please God with my own righteous deeds as a Christian. But I’ll never be able to please God. If I fight that besetting sin in my life by just trying harder to obey Him, I can’t succeed. Even diligently pursuing the means of grace (prayer, meditating on the Word, fellowship with the body) isn’t an avenue to pleasing God by my efforts. I’ll always fall short of God’s expectations.

Enter Christ. I remind my self daily of that little phrase, “in Christ.” This short phrase from Scripture reminds me that since I am united to Christ through faith, God sees Christ instead of me, so I appear before God with Christ’s righteousness, holiness, and faithfulness! When Christ hung on the cross, I was hanging there so God’s wrath against me for that sin was exhausted. When Christ died and rose from the dead, it was me that was dying so that sin could never touch me again; when he rose, I rose out of reach from that sin’s compelling authority. When Christ reached out his merciful hands to serve the needy and sick, they were my hands! So God is infinitely pleased with me already because I am “in Christ,” Christ’s infinite righteousness replaces my inconsistent record.

So instead of serving in my own strength to meet God’s standards, I free to serve out of sheer delight and amazement at God’s kindness through Christ. His immeasurable giving through Christ spurns me on to do whatever he calls. It’s not my duty to obey that I recall, it’s his incredible kindness that motivates me. Remembering you’re “in Christ” is what unleashes God’s sanctifying power in our lives.