recommendations!!

okay, i've been wanting to post about this song for some time now, so i'm finally getting around to it. but, while i was busy getting around to it, i did the unthinkable. i finished a book!!! this is a rarity, my friends. so, i thought i'd kill two topics with one post. a song and a book recommendation. warning: this could get long.

song first. well, actually, i'm going to recommend the whole CD to you. but i'm only going to talk about one song. seriously though, get the whole CD. we have it playing in our store, so that means i hear it 2-3 times a day, 5 days a week...and i still get excited every time it starts playing!


"in Christ Alone: modern hymns of worship" by Bethany Dillon & Matt Hammitt
"The Wonder of the Cross"


and i'm posting the lyrics, because i want to make sure you catch them all:

O precious sight, my Savior stands
Dying for me with outstretched hands
O precious sight, I love to gaze
Remembering salvation's day
Remembering salvation's day

Though my eyes linger on this scene
May passing time and years not steal
The power with which it impacts me
The freshness of it's mystery
The freshness of it's mystery

Chorus:
May I never lose the wonder
The wonder of the cross
May I see it like the first time
Standing as a sinner lost
Undone by mercy and left speechless
Watching wide eyed at the cost
May I never lose the wonder
The wonder of the cross

Behold the God - Man crucified
The perfect sinless sacrifice
As blood ran down those nails and wood
History was split in two
Yes, History was split in two

Behold the empty wooden tree
His body gone, alive and free
We sing with everlasting joy
For sin and death have been destroyed
Sin and death have been destroyed

i think i may have posted this puritan prayer before, but it fits w/ this song.

"It seems then, that Christians may forget Christ!...it appears almost impossible that those who have been redeemed by the blood of the dying Lamb, and loved with an everlasting love by the eternal Son of God, should forget that gracious Savior; but, if startling to the ear, it is all too apparent to the eye to allow us to deny the crime."

i have often foolishly regarded the mercy and grace of God as a common thing. i have forgotten the cross, i have forgotten my Savior. i had a debt that i could not pay, Christ paid that debt and gave me His righteousness that i could have never earned. how is it that i can forget that?? Father, remind me daily of the cross!!


and now, for the book. (i told you this could get long)

"The Christian Life" by Sinclair Ferguson

instead of giving you a bunch of random quotes from the book, i'll give you a good taste out of the chapter on Justification.

"To stand before God on the grounds of what we are or have achieved is to expose ourselves to the thorough-going condemnation of the God against whom we have sinned. The only basis for justification which the New Testament recognises (he likes to use the letter "s" instead of "z") is the work of Christ. Of course the source of Christ's work, and therefore the source of our justification, resides in the love of God- not for a moment should we countenance the caricature of biblical teaching, that a loving Saviour reconciles us to a grudging God. But love, as love alone, can never justify. The judge in court cannot justify his guilty child in the dock on the grounds that he loves him. Something more must be done. The New Testament expresses the position thus: we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice...' (rom. 3:24-25) The love of God is the source of our justification, but the death of Christ is its grounds.

...In reality he stood before the Judgment Seat of God to receive the verdict of guilty as the Representative and Substitute for sinful men. So, in Christ a 'wonderful exchange' took place. He became what he was not, a condemned criminal, in order that we might become what we are not, men declared righteous and justified in the sight of God....He came voluntarily under the curse of God, in order to set us at liberty from it (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13). This is what justification really means."