Last week my wife and I were talking about the ongoing fight against sin in the Christian life and the common tendencies towards laziness or resignation in the pursuit of holiness. She reminded me of this jam by our friends at 10:31 Sermon Jams. This jam, titled War, originates from John Piper’s sermon on Romans 8:10-17. Piper’s ministry will always be equated in my mind with thunder:

“I hear so many Christians murmuring about their imperfections and their failures and their addictions and their short-comings. And I see so little war! ‘Murmur, murmur, murmur… Why am I this way?’ MAKE WAR!”

Listen here:

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Ed Welch: “There is a mean streak to authentic self-control. Self-control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin. The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war. There is something about war that sharpens the senses. You hear a twig snap or the rustling of leaves and you are in attack mode. Someone coughs and you are ready to pull the trigger. Even after days of little or no sleep, war keeps us vigilant.”

In high school, after our evening baseball games were completed, we scrambled into the locker room to change into our shorts for some late night basketball in the school gymnasium. The entire gym was lit by one little emergency light, but that was all we need to play half-court ball. I still have memories of the ghostly gym, the ball echoing throughout the darkness. This was the feeling that came to my mind after reading an excellent article by our friend Justin Taylor on what it must have been like to stand inside the temple of God. The post is featured on the Boundless website today and includes several illustrations from the forthcoming ESV Study Bible. Have a look here.

The latest addition to the hermanbavinck.org archive:

2008.10.03 – Reformed Forum: “Herman Bavinck,” an interview with Dr. Ron Gleason [61:29]. Fast-forward to 26:10 for an excellent introduction to Bavinck. More info or download MP3 (28.2MB). Listen:

Herman Bavinck’s article “The Problem of War” was originally published in 1914, translated into English by Stephen Voorwinde and published in the Banner of Truth magazine (July-Aug 1977) pp. 46-53. It has been reissued by permission of the publisher, retypeset, and now presented on-line as a downloadable PDF. Connect to the hermanbavinck.org article archive to download.

In my opinion, the writings of Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) are some of the most valuable in the long tradition of reformed theology. Thanks to a large financial investment, hard working translators, and the Dutch Reformed Translation Society, Bavinck’s writings have never been more accessible to the English-speaking English-reading world.

For me personally, Bavinck has joined Jonathan Edwards in becoming my life-long theologians of choice—two men I’ve committed an especially large sum of time and money with the goal of garnering all the divine truths their writings offer (note the phrase: “life-long”).

As part of this goal, I’ve accumulated what I believe to be the largest on-line index of Bavinck’s books and articles in the English language. In the future I hope to use the website for a number of other purposes, but for those interested in Bavinck I invite you to have a look and tell me what you think:

www.hermanbavinck.org

Over a large pizza, my friend Stephen and I recently pondered whether blogging serves the Church. Our conversation, and the brief follow-ups, are behind Stephen’s blog post yesterday—“Read Books, Not Blogs.” His thoughts are very helpful.