Category: Gospel Centered

Free PDF Download of “The Gospel Centered Life” Curriculum

~ Bob Hayton

Westminster Bookstore has a great deal on a fantastic resource for Sunday Schools and small groups: The Gospel Centered Life. I am already planning on using this curriculum for our college-aged class this Fall at our church. It is an excellent resource from World Harvest Mission.

The message is life-changing and very much in the flavor of some of the Gospel meditations that Tim Keller brings. I’m looking forward to using this with our young people.

For the next two days you can get a Leader’s edition as a free pdf download from Westminster Bookstore. Just click here for the download. The print copy (I have one) from New Growth Press is really sharp and well done. You’ll love this book.

Click the image above for more details on this special offer.

Quotes to Note 30: Pastors as True Shepherds or Mere “Mutton Farmers”

~ Bob Hayton

Recently, I’ve been reading some forums that have been lamenting poor leadership in certain IFBx circles. Some have shared painful testimonies about years of harsh treatment by parents and teachers who ostensibly cared about the children’s welfare, but ultimately just rejected them (literally throwing them out, and disowning them completely) when it became clear that they weren’t keeping in step with the brand of fundamentalism these pastors and church leaders advocated.

Then I stumbled across this quote in studying for my Men’s Bible Study lesson on Mark 6:31-44 where Jesus looks on the crowds with compassion and considers that: “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” I almost started weeping when I read these words about what a true shepherd should be. Praise Jesus he is not like some of the “shepherds” I’ve known…

Most contemporary listeners are unfamiliar with the job description of a shepherd. Lena Woltering has pointed out that a shepherd “is needed only when there are no fences. He is someone who stays with his sheep at all cost, guiding, protecting, and walking with them through the fields. He’s not just a person who raises sheep.” They lead sheep to food and water and are ever mindful of the sheep’s condition (Gen. 33:13). They gather lambs that cannot keep up in their arms (Isa. 40:11). They seek out lost sheep, and when they find them, they carry them back to the fold on their sholders (Luke 15:5). They guard against predators and thieves. It is a dirty and hard job. Woltering castigates those bishops who regard themselves as “tenders of the flock” and brands them as little more than “mutton farmers.” “They build fence after fence after fence, keeping the flock within sight so they don’t have to dirty their feet plodding along the open fields.” They turn the difficult role of shepherd into a position of rank and superiority and sequester themselves from the sheep. Ezekiel’s castigation of the self-indulgent and irresponsible shepherds in his day (Ezek. 34) is no less applicable today to those who want to dominate and crush others rather than feed them. — David E. Garland, Mark, The NIV Application Commentary, pg. 258-259 [quotes from Woltering were cited in Salt of the Earth 15 (July/August, 1995), 34]

Elyse Fitzpatrick on Parenting by means of the Gospel or the Law

~ Bob Hayton


I’ve just started into Crossway’s new title Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson. It is going to take some time to go through it because it is so powerful and packed with quite the punch. It’s at the same time oozing with grace and has the potential to transform our parenting.

So I present here an excerpt from chapter 1, from pages 33 and 36-37. To learn more about the book, check out the book detail page at Crossway.org, read the book’s introduction and all of chapter 1, or watch this 90 minute video from Desiring God.

There is a marked difference between this kind of gracious parenting and the moralistic parenting I did when I was raising my children. I would alternately tell them that they were good when they sat quietly or tell them that they had to close their eyes and pray or be disciplined when they were bad. My parenting had very little to do with the gospel. I assumed my children had regenerate hearts because they had prayed a prayer at some point and because I required religious obedience from them. This resulted in kids who were alternately hypocritical and rebellious. It taught them how to feign prayer, without pressing them to long for the Savior who loved hypocrites and rebels.

Religious obedience is probably the most difficult and dangerous form of obedience simply because it is so easily confused with conformity to God’s law. It’s the place where most Christian families go terribly wrong. Yes, we are commanded to teach the Word, prayer and worship to our children, but their acquiescence to these things won’t save them. Only the righteous life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves them….

Yes, give them God’s law. Teach it to them and tell them that God commands obedience. But before you are done, give them grace and explain again the beautiful story of Christ’s perfect keeping of it for them. Jesus Christ was the only one who ever deserved to hear, “You are good,” but he relinquished his right relationship with the law and his Father and suffered as a lawbreaker. This is the message we all need to hear, and it is the only message that will transform hearts.

…Everything that isn’t gospel is law. Let us say it again: everything that isn’t gospel is law. Every way we try to make our kids good that isn’t rooted in the good news of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ is damnable, crushing, despair-breeding, Pharisee-producing law. We won’t get the results we want from the law. We’ll get either shallow self-righteousness or blazing rebellion or both (frequently from the same kid on the same day!). We’ll get moralistic kids who are cold and hypocritical and who look down on others (and could easily become Mormons), or you’ll get teens who are rebellious and self-indulgent and who can’t wait to get out of the house. We have to remember that in the life of our unregenerate children, the law is given for one reason only: to crush their self-confidence and drive them to Christ.

The law also shows believing children what gospel-engendered gratitude looks like. But one thing is for sure: we aren’t to give our children the law to make them good. It won’t, because it can’t. In our hearts we know that’s true because the law hasn’t made us good, either, has it? [bolded emphasis, mine]

You can purchase a copy of this excellent book at Westminster Bookstore, Monergism Books, Christianbook.com, Amazon.com, or direct from Crossway.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Crossway Books. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Parenting in a Distinctively Christian Way

~ Bob Hayton ~ 6 Comments

Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and her daughter Jessica Thompson, is truly a must-read book. It is a parenting book that promises to rock your world! That’s my assessment after watching a 90 minute interview of Elyse Fitzpatrick on Desiring God Live.

The thing that struck me the most in watching the interview, was the author’s burden that we parent in a distinctively Christian way. She said something like this: “If your kids were transplanted into a Mormon home, would they notice anything different?” Mormons, Jews, and Muslims even, want their children to respect authority, be nice to their siblings, fit into society and grow up to be good, moral people. Is that all we’re after as Christian parents?

I thought immediately of Bryan Chapell’s point from his book Christ-Centered Preaching. He said something like: “If the sermon you preached could be equally preached in a Jewish synagogue, Mormon Tabernacle or Muslim mosque, then you didn’t preach a Christian sermon.” (I’m totally paraphrasing by the way….)

What is distinctively Christian about our parenting? Are we sending the wrong message when we chide our children for disobeying the rules claiming they should have been able to obey them? Do we expect our kids to have the power to just obey by will-power? Is that how we live the Christian life?

Fitzpatrick went on to say how there are two kinds of children, basically. Prodigals and elder brothers. The law has an effect on prodigals, it causes them to chafe and run. The law has an opposite effect on elder brother-types, the Pharisees. They enjoy the law because they can keep it, and it’s an occasion for pride to them. Both of these types of children (and there are often more than one type inside one kid), need to understand that mercy trumps judgment. Mercy is better than law. Sadly, too often, all we give either child is a healthy does of law with little idea of Christian mercy and God’s grace.

When we praise our children, too, we can subtly instill in them a love of praise and the notion that if they try hard and do well, they’ll earn favor. But this idea is antithetical to the Gospel and is NOT how God views them.

All this is from the interview, and it really makes me want to pick up this book. I highly encourage my readers to pick up a copy of it as well. For now watch the interview, it will be worth the investment of your time. Once I get the book, I hope to blog some more about the themes covered in this book.

The book just released and is available at these fine retailers: Westminster Bookstore, Christianbook.com, Amazon.com, and direct from Crossway Books.

May 21, 2011 – The Day the World Didn’t End… What Now?

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

My heart was affected deeply when I read this account of Robert Fitzpatrick, a New Yorker who spent over $100,000 to warn the world about May 21,2011. 6pm, the time the global earthquake marking the start of Judgement Day (and the rapture of the elect) should have reached New York City, came and went, and Fitzpatrick was left surprised. The New York Daily News was with him in Times Square soon after 6pm.

He said: “I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand.”

The 60-year-old said he had no regrets. “I did what I had to do,” he said.

“I’m just surprised – I don’t understand it. It’s locked in for 2011.”

“I obviously haven’t understood it properly because we’re still here,” he said.

“Let’s just say I’m surprised that nothing has happened – everything in the bible indicated it.” [source, also see this report]

I’m saddened because Fitzpatrick, and countless thousands of others, have been misled by an apparently well-intentioned, radio teacher, Harold Camping (of Family Radio).

What’s worse, is that the world has front-page headlines about how the rapture didn’t happen, and how “Bible-believing Christians” are just a bunch of end-times-frenzied cooks.

Please hear me now. This does not represent historical, orthodox Christianity. The Christianity which can trace its general teaching from now back to Jesus himself, has not embraced this nonsense. And if you are reading this and you are also one who was surprised, or disappointed, that May 21 didn’t turn out to be “the day”, please keep reading.

Christianity isn’t a religion based on being a good person and trying to follow the Bible and “doing what you have to do”, like Fitzpatrick believed he had done. It’s a life of faith and trust in what Jesus Christ has accomplished on our behalf. This isn’t about an elect few sneering at the loss masses around them. Instead it is depraved sinners, recognizing that apart from Christ we too, would be without hope and bound in our sin.

Jesus Christ bore our punishment, the judgment day that we deserved, on the cross of Calvary. Jesus Christ, God’s own Son – equal with God in power and glory, yet incarnate in human form – Jesus took our place. The Creator of this world, had a plan from before it began, to redeem a believing remnant of his fallen creatures and shower them with grace and joy for all eternity. His message is one of love, yet He is a God who will judge the world for sin. We will give account to God.

Jesus is our substitute, though, for those who have faith in Him. Jesus promises to accept all who come to Him, and He will not cast any of them out. Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross not only holds back the angry hand of God directed at us for our sin, it also turns God’s view of us into a loving and joyful embrace. Since we are united with Jesus Christ by our faith, God sees Jesus’ goodness when He looks at us. Our sins are gone, and our righteousness is infinite (since it is Jesus’ righteousness credited to us).

Through the Cross, God redeems His own people – those who repent of their sins and follow after Christ through continual faith and a desire to please Him – and He does more than that. He promises to remake this world – to undo the wrong that was done. He will rid the world of sin’s presence one day, at the Second Coming of Christ. And Jesus will reign and rule in splendor for all eternity with His own. The world will be a “new world”, and heaven will literally come down to earth.

Yes, Armageddon is part of this. God will judge sin. But the victory is sure, and it doesn’t depend on us recognizing the date or the hour, either! God’s people are to live lives that are eager for His coming – which is why they won’t be surprised when it does come. Their identity, their all and all, is Jesus. Sure they mess up and fail. Yes some of them get preoccupied with how bad the world is and all that needs fixing here and there. But at heart, all true believers know they aren’t better than anyone else. Instead they are thankful for God’s grace in their lives. They continue to hope, and the cling to the Word.

The Word of God is His message for us. But this message needs to be understood and read carefully. It is not an engineering text book, nor a blueprint or math game. It is a grand story. The story of Creation, Fall, Judgment, and Restoration. It is a story of God’s dealings with His people. The Bible says we aren’t to seek a “private interpretation”. God has given His people teachers down through the years and up through now. God says that in the Church He will be glorified through all ages, so the church age is not over (Eph. 3:21). In Bible-believing churches, there are safeguards from wide variety of radio, TV and internet teachers who would have us befuddled and confused. There are elders to guard the flock and safety in a multitude of counselors.

The mystery and hidden things of the Old Testament have been revealed in the New Testament. The church is the culmination of God’s plan for the ages. Jesus Christ is the final Word to mankind (see Hebrews 1). The Bible isn’t a jigsaw puzzle that’s intentionally obscure, it is a revelation of God’s will. The New Testament declares time and again that what was originally somewhat obscure has now been made plain for all through Christ. In fact, Paul and others believed they were living in the last days (see 1 Cor. 10:11 for an example). The last age is here. All that is left is for Christ to return and bring to consummation all His glorious promises for His own.

If May 21, which seemed so air-tight (when it comes to all the numerological connections that were given for it)– if May 21 is not the day, then perhaps you should consider that numerology is something not explicitly taught in Scripture. This whole approach to interpreting the Bible is bankrupt. I challenge those who had been believing Camping’s teaching to turn the radio off and go find a Bible-believing local church. Listen to the preaching and teaching for a while. Read the Bible without Camping’s books in front of you. Let God speak to you through His Word. He will guide you to the Truth.

If you have questions or comments, I’m happy to try and respond as I’m able in the comments section below or you can use the contact tab on the blog here, to talk to me privately. May God bless those who are in Fitzpatrick’s shoes tonight.

Picture credited Debbie Egan-Chin/News, accessible at this story page from New York Daily News.