God's holiness and righteous glory have been desecrated, defamed, and blasphemed by our sin. It is with a holy God that we have to do in our guilt! And there can be no justification, no reconciliation, no cleansing of our conscience, unless the holiness of God is honored and the defamation of His righteousness is repaired. The urgency of our problem with guilt is not that we feel miserable, but that God's name has been blasphemed. We live in a day with such a horrendously inflated view of human potential and such a miserably tiny view of God's holiness that we can scarcely understand what the real problem of guilt is. The real problem is not, 'How can God be loving and yet condemn people with such little sins?' The real problem is, 'How can God be righteous if He acquits such miserable sinners as we?' There can be no lasting remedy for guilt which does not deal with God's righteous indignation against sin. That's why there had to be a sacrifice. And not just any sacrifice, but the sacrifice of the Son of God! No one else, and no other act, could repair the defamation done to the glory of God by our sins. But when Jesus died for the glory of the Father, satisfaction was made. The glory was restored. Righteousness was demonstrated. Henceforth it is clear that when God, by grace, freely justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5), He is not indifferent to the demands of justice. It is all based on the grand transaction between the Father and the Son on the morning of Good Friday at Calvary. No other gospel can take away our guilt because no other gospel corresponds to the cosmic proportions of our sin in relation to God.

John Piper

CATEGORY	CUISINE	TAG	YIELD
Meats		Meats, Ethnic, Main dish	16	Servings

INGREDIENTS

10	lb	Top round, trimmed of fat
1/3	c	Black peppercorns
1	ts	Ground cardamon

INSTRUCTIONS

Wipe the meat on all sides and tie with kitchen string. Place peppercorns
between waxed paper, and with a rolling pin or meat mallet, crack the
peppercorns. Mix the cracked peppercorns with cardamon and press the
mixture into the meat, covering the entire surface. Place meat on a rack in
a roasting pan and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before
cooking.
Preheat oven to 500 deg F. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven
and roast for 1-1/4 hr for rare; 1-2/3 hr for medium. Remove from oven and
let stand 20 minutes before carving.
From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini

A Message from our Provider:

“Sunsets – a gift from God”

It is interesting to note that secular approaches have embraced an approach to confrontation that mirrors church discipline. It is technically called intervention. In essence it says that we can no longer wait for people to destroy themselves and others. They must be presented with the facts about their problem. They are out of touch with reality and need others to present it to them. Furthermore, this is best done by a group of people who deeply love the substance abuser. Curiously, intervention is hailed as one of the most significant advances in drug treatment. Yet church discipline is the original and intervention the imitator.

Edward Welch