Michael Oh: Gospel Growth in Japan

Michael Oh from Urbana 09 on Vimeo.

Joshua Harris: Michael's personal story and the history of enmity between Koreans and Japanese makes his missionary zeal all the more compelling.

Mark Rogers: Last February Michael Oh, a missionary to Japan, gave a powerful sermon at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors, titled “Missions as Fasting.” In it he tells of his call to missions, describes the need for the gospel in Japan, and outlines his ministry there, before giving a moving challenge to forsake present comforts for the global exaltation of Christ. If you listen to it, your heart will grow for Japan and the glory of Christ!

D. A. Carson has described Michael Oh as “a remarkable young man, being used by God in ways that are wisely breaking all kinds of molds in Japan.” Molds need to be broken among the Japanese people, the second largest unreached people group in the world. After nearly 500 years of Christian witness, the evangelical Christian population is only 0.25%. Missionary work is legal there, but many missionaries labor for years and see very few come to Christ.

Oh started Christ Bible Seminary in Nagoya, Japan in 2005. Several other ministries have been started alongside the seminary, including a church plant (All Nations Fellowship), a lay-training institute, and a downtown ministry to young people.

We should pray for Michael Oh and all involved in this ministry. Some may want to consider supporting it, as they are in the process of raising $1.5 million for a campus. There is a desperate need for pastoral training and effective church planting in Japan, and Oh’s ministry has witnessed some encouraging fruit. For example, it is the fastest growing seminary in Japan, and over 90 people have been attending All Nations Fellowship – a remarkable number for a young church in a country where the average church size is 30-35 people. We should also pray for other faithful missionaries and pastors in Japan. May God grow his church for the good of that nation and the glory of Christ!

(HT: Joshua Harris)

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry: Five principles of engagement

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry (memorial page) sets forth five principles that had consistently guided his editorial policy when he was the first editor of Christianity Today:

1. The Bible is critically relevant to the whole of modern life and culture—the social-political arena included.

2. The institutional church has no mandate, jurisdiction, or competence to endorse political legislation or military tactics or economic specifics in the name of Christ.

3. The institutional church is divinely obliged to proclaim God's entire revelation, including the standards or commandments by which men and nations are to be finally judged, and by which they ought now to live and maintain social stability.

4. The political achievement of a better society is the task of all citizens, and individual Christians ought to be politically engaged to the limit of their competence and opportunity.

5. The Bible limits the proper activity of both government and church for divinely stipulated objectives—the former, for the preservation of justice and order, and the latter, for the moral-spiritual task of evangelizing the earth.

(HT: Christianity Today)

Sam Storms: Killing Sin with Christian Hedonism

Sam Storms in a message titled "The Practical Sin-Killing Power of Christian Hedonism" gave five ways for pastors to work for their own joy and the joy of their people.

1. Weave into the spiritual and intellectual fabric of your people the awareness that God's designs in the moral commandments of Scripture are to expand their capacity to enjoy him and not to inhibit it. (See Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Christian Happiness.")

2. Preach often on the bigness and the beauty of God.

3. Labor to turn their eyes from the pathetic, little, transient pleasures of what can be seen and felt and tasted to the grand and eternal pleasures of the glory that is to come.

4. Build into the mental, emotional, and theological framework of your people an understanding of how suffering serves joy. (For a good resource, direct your people to Matt Chandler's videos about the brain cancer he is facing.)

5. Be an example to them of joy in your own life and relationship with God.

(HT: Desiring God)

The center of every hope

“God is the center of every hope worth cherishing for man.”

—Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 61

(HT: Of First Importance)

Better news simply does not exist!

“The gospel, in brief, is the good news about the person and finished work of Jesus Christ. Consider for a moment that the eternal Son of God relinquished the glories of heaven to become a man, a human being like you and me. He lived a perfect and sinless life (unlike you and me), fulfilling every requirement of God’s holy law in a way we could never hope to accomplish. And then in a glorious display of God’s love for sinners like us, he willingly received the full fury of God’s righteous wrath against sin by dying for our sins on a cruel Roman cross.

Because God’s absolute and perfect holiness demands an equivalent holiness from all who come before him, in ourselves we are hopelessly lost and condemned. But Jesus, who had no sin of his won to pay for, took our place, paid our penalty, and suffered our punishment. Because his death as our substitute was perfectly sufficient to pay for our sin, God vindicated him by raising him from the dead. So now all who place their trust in Jesus’ work on their behalf and turn from their sin will be forgiven, counted righteous in him, and saved from judgment for all eternity . . . all by God’s marvelous grace. This is the gospel. This is the good news. Better news simply does not exist!”

- Gary & Betsy Ricucci, Love That Lasts: When Marriage Meets Grace (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2006), 21-22.

(HT: Of First Importance)

What the gospel teaches

“The gospel teaches that what could not be found in us and was to be sought in another, could be found nowhere else than in Christ, the God-man… who taking upon Himself the office of surety most fully satisfied the justice of God by His perfect obedience and thus brought to us an everlasting righteousness by which alone we can be justified before God.”

- Francis Turretin, Justification (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, year not available), 29.

(HT: Of First Importance)